Machine Project

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   "When I first started I was doing a lot of work with technology, so I called the space Machine Project. Today I’m less interested in technology, but I still think it’s a good name. Now I say we’re a machine for making ideas; in come people, resources, context, and opportunities, and out go art, ideas, and philosophies about living in the world. Of course, if you stick around long enough, names stop meaning anything at all except what you are. Now Machine Project is simply the symbol in people’s brains for whatever it is we are."

excerpt from Machine Project THE PLATINUM COLLECTION
By MARK ALLEN, CHARLOTTE COTTON and RACHEL SELIGMAN

Cheers to never starting!

I realized that on the sidebar of this blog, that anyone can see how often I posted something, categorized by year, which I’ve never thought very much about. But now I do often feel self-conscious about if I'm as productive as I want to be, and thinking that the more I write, the more I must have been in a good place...

Up until this writing, for this year it says I’ve written only 5 articles which is about to be on par with 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

In 2018, I only felt able to eek out two post and both were long essays about my appreciation for certain individuals.

There are so many notes I could have posted that I think other people may find interesting, but it just seems probably… T.M.I. (even compared to what I do put out on this blog.) And I think that because I see that some years I'm posting like 14, 16, 21 or 33 times, then surely it must have been a good year!

Right now as I look around me, there are piles of papers/notes that I’ve finally gotten around to labeling with a label maker, or I put it at eye level right next to where I type at my home computer so that I have a constant reminder, but now that I’m thinking about the quantity of posts, it’s stripping out all the goodness that these notes hold for me. And yeah sure, it’s the kind of data that I can look at semi-objectively and think about it simply as “information" and reflect on it, but I think that it also lays out a specific story that I tell myself, about my productivity on such and such a year... but don’t I want to feel less pressured to do the things that give me pleasure? This is the time I've decided to do 50 bad artworks after all... Maybe I can break this feeling that it gives me to compare myself with my perceived potential of myself... by pretending that this was a very impressive year (at least in terms of blog posts)

I also have these annoying daily reminders on my phone that show back to me that I wanted to write about the following things:

other to-dos that I told myself I’d like to write about includes...

writing about Bar-Fund and all the things I've wanted to spout out concerning art and money
writing about Landlord Colors at Cranbrook
writing about following Jennifer Moon around as much as I could to find out how one artist developed having non-art hobbies.

And also one of the topics I felt compelled to write about was going to be about how contemporary artists seem to be living in a time of 'therapy' and somehow I was going to tie that in with reflecting on/reviewing/critiquing Mark Allen’s “How To Make an Interactive Work of Art, For Beginners”

It maybe would have something to do with how it felt outdated as advice for young artists today… It's hard for me to imagine any young contemporary artist making a numbered list sincerely... maybe it seemed oversimplified and somehow didn't take in account the artist block that I feel is very real...

but since I can tell that my main points would have run on the negative side, or it would have projected some surface stuff that says more about me, that's not the story I want to own.

I can admit that what I feel is more akin to simply jealousy of someone who does explore what there is to explore, and why even appear as if I'm punching down (although I wouldn't have written it like that, but it could very well be read that way) when this space and other artist spaces in LA are closing, or have been closed, and it seems almost everyday that someone is discussing the void left in Machine Projects wake. (also I'm thinking of Haruko Tanaka, and other friendly artists that I can't believe are not going to just be around...)

Ok I'm sorry, I forgot where I was going with this. Oh yeah, this is a blog post about how I didn't get around to a blog post...

So something Meghan Gordon said to me while helping me with my art portfolio was that there wasn’t enough of MY voice in it. And that my work usually finds a simple conceit, yet it has a lot of depth... I'm also trying to get myself back into the joy of reading, and from the first pages of Adrienne Marie Brown's Emergent Strategies (shaping change, changing worlds) book, there's this bit about depth and improving our metrics for recognizing what has value:

"We would understand that the strength of our movement is in the strength of our relationships, which could only be measured by their depth. Scaling up would mean going deeper, being more vulnerable and more empathetic." P. 10

So I'm thinking about posting Mark Allen’s voice, his light-hearted writing, specifically the footnotes to the book that was published about Machine Project, because I really liked the candid details that really tell you what it meant to him, and what he really thinks (beyond just a list). One can sense the depth, the wear and tear of that floor, the mechanisms that whirred in that space, but also whirring in their heads, between the ideas of people, in the e-mails...

Although I’ve kind of met him, I honestly would have had no idea that he had this particular voice in him, that he was the creator of the famed Machine Project. To me he was just the partner to Emily Joyce, the guy who seemed like they must have a lot of free time because they seem to make a lot of free posters…

So this is just a long introduction to a lot of short posts that I’m about to put up on the blog, that I’m not the author of but they sound like something I'd say in a parallel universe, and it’ll blow all of my previous years out of the water in terms of “looking productive” if I can't subconsciously not reflect on it in a negative way. But really it’s in celebration of Mark Allen’s interest in accessibility, by… making his super interesting *footnotes more presence, taking the tiny red words and giving them the gravity that I think they have all on their own as inspirational snippets of projects facilitated, made and completed.

Glad I didn't actually try to write a lot more anxiety-ridden but 'original' content, this is wayyy more interesting. It's the stuff that's already in the world, that could have been just a tad more accessible.

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* And I can’t believe that you can still just search "specific sentences" in quotes and include type:pdf in the search bar and poof. The thing I was JUST ABOUT to re-type by hand exists right there in all of its glory ripe for the copy pasta:
http://www.headlands.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/allen_m_hello_2017.pdf

I get to fail, a lifetime of goals

Yesterday, Daniel Johnston passed away and I was worried that his songs would sound sadder at a time where I’m looking for encouragement via brave losers, artists' artists, underdogs, and the disenfranchised who persist.1

Every pause and every lyric would be more bittersweet when there’s the added meaning that in his songs of loss, being seen as a struggling artist, he can’t feel loss anymore. I did want him to get even older and I wanted him to outlive Trump doing whatever it is that Daniel Johnston does when he’s fighting inner demons, but mostly because I’d imagine that even with climate change or other social problems becoming... eh... topical, he’d still be doing his thing, drawing superheroes, and inspiring people to do whatever it is that drives them, even if that means making art about climate charge or uh... something topical.2




In Daniel Johnston’s honor I’d like to present my version of what he inspires me to do. I’d like to share that since making a goal one year ago of applying to 18 opportunities (to put myself out there etc), I have many more than 18 failed applications. (Compared to when I usually happen to apply to 4 things in a year and 1 of them pans out, which is pretty amazing odds I must say.) I think Daniel Johnston would appreciate the sentiment and my weird form of sincerity. Also I do want to say I’m neither grasping for camaraderie, authenticity or pity, but if it’s interesting to you too, maybe you could share with everyone 10 or so things that didn’t work out but turned out ok? I’d be interested in knowing what tone of voice is our ‘Best Serious Professional Self’ and probably laugh at it.

1. Art & Labor (End of August 2018)
2. Guggenheim (September, did it in 1 week)
3. Brazilian Film Festival -> Film Festival
4. Current:LA / Arts Activation Fund (new request for the DCA)
5. Akademie Schloss Solitude (Judy got in!!)
6. Rencontres - Film Festival
7. Images - Film Festival
8. ISCP (NY) (Late December, Took 2 days)
9. Nevada College of Art
10. LA Creative Strategist (Late February)
11. OTIS -- For Teaching (Yay J Moon got it!!) (Took 1 week)
12. Knight Foundation Challenge Grant (Early May)
13. LA Time Capsule project (Ok so technically, I got in this one, BUT it was secretly done with someone else’s artwork!)
14. Glasgow International (Late May, Took 4 days)
15. Bar-Fund (Early May, did it in 2 days)
16. Navel LA Artist-In-Residency (June 2nd, did it in 1 night)
17. Headlands (Early June, Took 2 days)
    
    Took a break from those art applications, and moved to art job stuff. I cold called (e-mailed) art department heads of Cal State LA, East Los Angeles College, Los Angeles Community College and Pomona College just in case they needed any last minute adjunct faculty. No responses either, but next time I'll do a better job following up. I think I got too wiped out to keep working on that whole process which took about a week to get everything together, (but more like it took me two years) and I stopped 6 short before sending out all of the applications I had intended to send out.
18. Human Resources Symposium on new writing (Late August)
19. Navel LA Assembly on Artists & ADHD (I thought my presentation was pretty solid,  this may be the only one I'm pretty bummed out about, and it's very recent, I just found out today)

Putting this up reminds me of people who don’t mind showing their early sketchbooks, or tell people to apply for residencies and stuff even if they haven’t gotten one themselves. Some artists refer to the confirmation of an unsuccessful application as “Not-Yet-Letters” and a stack of rejections is proof of work put in. I think I need to have the guts to fail more often and I gotta do it if I’m going to be encouraging anyone, myself included, to keep on trucking.

Maybe it’s kindof like when people devote themselves to a year of saying “Yes” but instead, it’s a year of being just a tiny bit sure that someone else is going to say YES if I can at least articulate my goals clearly, and then having to keep a good additude when it just doesn’t work out, every time. Maybe someone else might find it interesting as documentation of “things-someone-else-was-100%-convinced-was-their-best-shot-compared-to-applying-for-something-else”, and then you can imagine me sitting in a room next to you when you’re applying for stuff, both of us editing words on a laptop instead of making art, cheering each other on in between being exhausted from the whole endeavor.

I still believe this fundamental truth, if one of my close friends got the opportunity, and part of me is success adjacent, even I'm getting a little closer to my goals, and it's all good. It means that we all did our part, time to celebrate. When a good friend gets that thing to work out, the outcome is actually better than I expected! So in the cases where neither me nor a good friend gets to the second round/gets the opportunity, that can be a real bummer. But to be honest, it’s kindof rare for there to be such a dry spell that no one I know is being awarded, getting that interesting job, getting their work published, getting more support for their practice...

This is an unexpected LA feeling I think (which, still may be unique to my perspective) that when you live, make art, have friends in LA, you're around more of the types of people that apply rigorously and things are clicking just right for friends of all kinds, getting these external rewards. Some people want to gripe that it’s always the same people who get stuff, or it's more conspiratorial where the system is rigged towards affirmative action, but I don’t quite see what the fuss is all about. (I mean other than the fact that the US has a stupidly low budget for funding art and their artists among many other things)
I blindly have faith that everyone including myself would undoubtedly thrive when receiving support  in terms of time, money and/or space, but in some ways it's more of other people’s loss, rather than just my own, if the proposed art doesn’t get to see the light of day. And the same goes for if people don’t support the art practices of my friends. (I just happen to not have any close friends who make mediocre artwork?) Anyways, the whole process shouldn't re-iterate a scarcity/competitive model.

Awards and accolades are kindof just fun slides along our journey of being our own toughest critics. Winning isn’t the point, pleasure is the point.


On the other hand, fuck building character... sometimes I want to remind people about the real pain-in-the-ass part of self-care, (Half of the time I don’t really want to go to yoga, a quarter of the time my sciatica hurts to much to do anything else so it’s not exactly a choice) and I also want to remind people that technology should be used to remind people to appreciate one another when you’re away from technology. I know that’s not everyone’s biggest problem right now, but a boy can dream.

Joey Cannizzarro sent over these hilarious videos that really made me feel understood, that feeling of  when you forcibly break through ones own creative block by sheer will...

SanFear - "This is litreally every artist i know"
https://twitter.com/SanXCX/status/1170480347114397696?s=20

and there's also this gem...
https://twitter.com/birbgod/status/1170900478533754880?s=20

Maybe who I am through my failed applications says more about how far and what I’m willing to fake, (even though you could technically fake a lot), or maybe someone/something might come out of the woodworks, like Rachel did the other day, when she let me know that all of my documentation is not quite right3, or pointing me in a different direction of a different application that is more serendipitous.

Once again, I’m taking the advice of Beth Pickens, Big Magic and Neil Gaiman, and maybe if I go a little further, maybe this was the piece I was hoping to get to after a year of applications; a signifier for a well deserved break. So now that I haven’t gotten any of those opportunities, I should have more time to intentionally do absolutely nothing, and isn’t that the bravest thing that I rarely let myself do?

No one’s yet needing what I’m offering so that just leaves me to wonder what else am I capable of when I’m not perceived as useful? One things for sure, I have a couple ideas for some bad tattoos... and it feels like this is the year.


Other little notes:
1 (don’t get me wrong, I’m 100 percent pro-sadness feelings)

2 (Jim Carrey’s political cartoons of Trump just don’t really cut it for me.
(And now a note on that note... Joe Baiza said I have to ignore all that rich people deciding to do painting as leisure stuff and remember/connect with why I fantasize or do creative things in the first place, like back to when i was just a little kid. When i go back my early wonder-filled moments, I recall that it was a surreal mix of play and nothingness. Baiza of Saccharine Trust, is also the third artist I’ve met so far that when I asked if he’s ever had ‘artists block’ that lasted for a bit of time, his answer was an almost absurdly abrupt “No.” It seems the only thing that stops him is carpal tunnel and too many hours at work.))

3 She wasn't being a jerk about it or anything like that, she just took a longer look at what was in the portfolios I was submitting, and what images were representing my best work, and much of the documentation minimizes, rather than reveals some crazy way of working/thinking that I do "naturally". I can kindof see what she means... but after 18 apps, everything becomes somewhat invisible... So who wants to do a studio visit with me and help me figure that out? Studio visit Tradesies?

In Response to: Exactly what is it about Capitalism that you don't like?

It was prompted by Jennifer Moon's bi-weekly Navel LA Assembly (Faction 3 of the Revolution: Redistributing Wealth). In my inability to put my finger on it, I feel like I made something that's not a poem, not an essay, but it captures something that feels true about this moment. But perhaps its vague because it's an on-going conversation*





Capitalist Americans are a greedy, competitive, excitable people. We want to be a part of all of the mixes of races and to have knowledge of the internet at our fingertips. Myself included, we want to experience absolute silence and to tell our friends about it later. We want a convenient protection from Others while we also think of generosity and abundance as a way to mark time. We want to be less depressed before we think about curbing pollution, and want to get rid of corporations if someone else has done enough research to explain how we can live without them.   We tend to use all of our emotions, our youth, our connections, our spirituality in a competitive capacity. We want art to be as pure as possible (not made for a quick buck) and as accessible as possible, specifically based on tools. We want answers in books, paths to happiness and optimism. We want to believe that we’re in the middle, and that we’re in control.

What bothers me about Capitalism is the fear of uselessness, the machismo, the promise of hope and unity (while trying to suppress other value systems, a constant vigilance to erase interconnectedness, death, sleep, responsibility, the absence of debt, peace, theory, history and ease) 

I feel Capitalism’s symptoms and I’m feeling nauseous. There is a co-morbidity of anxiety, addiction, numbness, and sometimes paralysis. It’s our newest deepest placebo, it’s demanding our attention right now.


* ...an on-going conversation... one in which I've always been interested to know the specifics of how and why people accept Capitalism as the best way forward, or if it is not the right focus for critique (perhaps one might suggest "wealth inequality" or "Neoliberalism" instead?), or if they think they've got a handle on it...

Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik with SoftCells presents - "3 domestic alterations"

~Two years ago when Agnes Bolt started her conceptual/curatorial program ‘SoftCells’, there was a lot of upheaval in her life. Some of it was self imposed; bold conclusive decisions made by intuitively listening to what her body was telling her, trying to figure out how to make things more no her own terms. But she couldn’t let these conflicts distance her from a practice she wanted to explore with other people, to keep it accessible, to feel more grounded.

She committed herself, and her body, to being ‘presented on or in relation to’ artwork as a curatorial model with some radically open stakes. In her words, specifically: “Where space and body intersect.”

So far, SoftCells has given Jules Gimbrone, David Horvitz, Danish collective ‘Age of Aquarius’ and more, the ability to bring the social contract, her public persona and her private biological traces to a public extreme. And as an affront to the well-cultivated Instagram image, she’s kindof saying ‘This here is a process and vulnerability is just the beginning. There’s a lovely space between really investing in ourselves and not taking ourselves too seriously.’ (My words, not necessarily hers)

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Open on a sunny Saturday, June 15th, Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik (JLK) created ‘3 domestic alterations’ in Bolt’s home saying to me that “he’s always wanted to make sculptures for a house”. Although not uncommon in L.A. as many homes double as studios as well as exhibition spaces, it graciously accepts the vulnerable conceit of SoftCells, playfully flipping the inside and outsides, making us aware of the body that protects, cleans and provides stasis to itself. The interventions make the house like a body, with a stylized hand-made eyelid facing the highway, a water capture contraption in the shower (requiring Bolt to bring grey water out front to the shrubs), and one of the shrubs has a microphone, like the ear, capturing the sounds of the ocean-like cars passing en masse.

The experience of the exhibition is comfortably associative in its use of live streamed video of Manhattan Beach visitors, waves and digital graininess, which seems to match up with the flowing outdoor audio. The speakers have prickly bits on them, which I found out came from JLK dragging them in the dirt until they were covered in black seeds which blend in an uncanny way.

And like all of my favorite exhibitions do, there are no labels to frame the artworks’ boundaries so my attention is heightened, poring over a rock collection, the shape of empty book shelves, the finger grease on a touchscreen device, books and even remnants of other artists artwork that were too inconspicuous to be needed to be moved… In these informal setups, either the artist or the curator, usually both, acknowledge each visitor and conversations meander between asking you how you’re doing, describing what experiments are still ongoing, and excusing oneself to greet another friend. I’ve been informed that there are still more experiments to come. The exhibition is open for viewing/a shower by appointment until July 14th.

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(other things I liked looking at, but are not actually part of JLK's installation)