Gadfly/Charlatan

  
"On such occasions Rex could talk endlessly, indefatigably, inventing stories about non-existent friends and propounding reflections not too profound for the mind of his listener and couched in a sham-brilliant form. His culture was patchy, but his mind shrewd and penetrating, and his itch to make fools of his fellow men amounted almost to genius. Perhaps the only real thing about him was his innate conviction that everything that had ever been created in the domain of art, science or sentiment, was only a more or less clever trick. No matter how important the subject under discussion, he could always find something witty or trite to say about it, supplying exactly what his listener's mind or mood demanded, though, at the same time, he could be impossibly rude and overbearing when his interlocutor annoyed him. Even when he was talking quite seriously about a book or a picture, Rex had a pleasant feeling that he was a partner in a conspiracy, the partner of some ingenious quack—namely, the author of the book or the painter of the picture."

-Vladimir Nabokov, from Laughter in the Dark

Another 6 'ANOTHER'

From Woods, Water, Women

ANOTHER GIRL TURNS INTO A TREE (1:08)

ANOTHER TREE TURNS INTO A GIRL (1:13)

ANOTHER TALKING TREE-FACE GUY (2:36)

ANOTHER GUY TURNS INTO A TREE (3:20) 

ANOTHER GIRL TURNS INTO A TREE (3:25)

ANOTHER TREE TURNS INTO A GUY (0:00)

Concise Baroque Effluvia as Survivalist Shapeshifter Escapism

From Woods, Water, Women

Rising from the smoking pit – in a dress sequined with dimes – Lally felt a sneeze coming on. This was the final scene of Serpentine, the visual and cerebral apex of a deceptively staid play. At no worse of a time could Nature fly in to tickle Lally’s discrete, feminine, and otherwise invisible, microscopic, and frankly cilia-like nostril-hairs than right fucking now. 

Other phenomena notwithstanding, it’s incredible how quicksilver and elaborate thoughts manifest in a panicked instant, like popcorn blossoming on a skim of hot oil. After discarding the third such zephyr-thought (something involving the prospective folding of the seemingly-inevitable sneeze into the cymbal-crash that was scheduled to strike in mere seconds, so that at least the sound of it would be somewhat challenged, and so that perhaps the more acute dullards in the audience might perceive such a sound-sneeze coordination as a scripted moment), Lally committed herself to an even balsier improvisation: once the real sneeze presented itself, Lally would just keep on “sneezing,” right through the last few minutes of the production. Amazing. 

Once mentally committed to sneezing until curtain, Lally smiled. The subtle shift of her platform’s hydraulics (and the stinging lilt of racing piccolos) cued what should’ve commenced the first of the last slew of Lally’s lines. 

But then came a lurching, an unfathomable mechanical grinding, followed by a theatrical gasp impossibly synchronized by the entire audience. Lally could have relished that a glitch had usurped the significance of her imminent sneeze, but her brain reflexively flooded her system with an even richer panic. 

First, Lally’s sneeze imploded: the knob traveled down her throat and lodged itself somewhere beneath her right breast, burning. Her lines erased, Lally snapped into default-mode. Her body’s sudden, dropping arc righted itself with a cybernetic stand-at-attention—and the audience immediately recognized the implications of its manner. 

“We should’ve known!” screamed a wretch from her nosebleed seats, speaking for all. 

Like all of the advanced models, Lally had self-engineered a program that would override her dominant ones in an imminent-and-inevitable-termination scenario. As the crowd flowed towards the stage (an accelerated birds-eye view of the mob’s migration would echo the physics of a drain sucking dishwater), Lally’s worldview underwent another seachange.

Snark 2.0

Thanks to Kamilah Gill for reposting this article. 

It's interesting to see how zeitgeist-y, cutting-edge interweb technologies/strategies/verbiages are being embraced by institutions to result in (and justify) total pap. 

The following are excerpts from an exchange on Gill's Facebook wall.

Gill: This "museum participatory experience" designer put a jigsaw puzzle in the gallery with the art. The artist initially had a problem with it. I think I would have a problem with it, too. They should have worked together on a solution.

I hope that some of my art associates will see this here on Facebook. I'd love to hear your opinions about it. I would want visitors to be comfortable, but the bits of comfort shouldn't just be random. They should be connected to the art at least a little bit. This looks like she just plopped a living room down in the middle of the gallery, which is kind of tacky and distracting.  

Me: "Plop(ping) a living room down in the middle of the gallery" is kinda au courant.

I agree that, ideally, an artist would be a part of (and certainly kept apprised of) decisions made in a space where they're exhibiting their work. However, it's far more likely that an artist will be somewhat - if not totally - beholden to the (lame, pandering) executive decisions made by whoever has been employed that term to make those kind of choices (especially when dealing with an institution that would endeavor to even have a "(K)reativity Lounge").

It's pretty clear that Ms. Simon is more concerned with implementing her radical "Museum 2.0" agenda (sorry I can't replicate the counter-cultural graffiti font she uses here) and upholding the implications of her bio-blurb to "design and research participatory museum experiences" (and to shamelessly promote her book, herself, etc.). Her post is a nest of self-justifying, obfuscating buzzword-salad that attempts to defend her glaringly inconsiderate/bad decision to "inaugurate" the conversation/puzzle-pit/eyesore. Again, how Simon tries to fold & align such a choice into her "web 2.0 philosophies" is hysterical.

The artist should've just taken her work down and been like: "You're a total dumb-ass, Nina. And pretty patronizing/condescending. And nice 'MUSEUM' temporarily-tattooed gangster-prisoner-style across your knuckles - your bad-ass edginess never ceases to amaze."

But it seems like everyone's just pleased & merry to be having "a thoughtful dialog about these issues."

On second thought, I retract the above diatribe. They should take down Hochstein's antiquated crap and install a Starbucks kiosk.