For me making art is a bit like doing a french plait. Countless
individual strands beautifully coiffed together to create a dynamic
practical style that provokes comments and boosts the volume of your
hair once you sleep on it a few times and lose or take out your hair
ties.
For the last couple of years I have been closely
examining some strands that have grown out of my head and the heads of
others bearing in mind they would look great fused into a cohesive style
but not being sure how to actually do the plait, or if there is enough
hair involved to give it ultimate body yet.
On a same but
different note, here's a little passage about a new beginning I had
once, and an excerpt from a book that talks about the similarities and
differences between SPIRITUAL EMERGENCES and SPIRITUAL EMERGENCIES. As
far as I can tell, CHARISMA and BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT
TIME almost guarantee the former takes precedence over the latter.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
STRINGING STRONG WORDS TOGETHER
HEY! EXCUSE ME ! here's an article I wrote for Kerry Ann Lee's Permanent Vacation magazine. The one in the zine is handwritten in a moleskine and has some pictures and the answer to the Double Jeopardy Riddle Joke upside down at the start. So you're missing out a little bit by reading it on the net. Missing the punchline, but if you don't have a copy handy please read on and you can ask someone or stumble upon it later ....
CANARY IN A GOLDMINE
The idea for this story grew from a nugget Kurt Vonnegut gave me once, when we were between the covers of a collected volume of his, Wampeters, Fomas and Granfalloons. He was relaying an interview he'd had with Playboy a few years earlier. It was written with ink, that had once been liquid, but through a chain of magical processes I don't understand, had dried onto a succession of bound pages sandwiched inside a slightly thicker cover. (Made from wood I think.)
Not only had the ink performed this unlikely feat of transformation, it had done so in a series of formulaic shapes that my mind ascribed a sound to. Alone they were quite weak. Only a couple of them meant something or could infer a satisfying sound as they stood. I soon realised that on the most-part they were relying upon each others simultaneous presence to make a complete word and even then they needed still more words to make a sentence. Not all of them needed to be there for every word, different configurations united to make different sounds that evoked a range of feelings and images. When I saw the shapes meet I also saw meanings. Please don't ask me how I did that.
I can't help being magic.
To wind it back a bit, reiterate, clarify and recap, somewhere along the line (if we can call it that) these particular shapes I was seeing had become visual representatives of assorted sounds. Individually at first, then they'd congregated together to make even more complex and varied sounds, with meanings too. Some cool ancestors sorted that out so we didn't have to organise it. Thanks for that! Kurt had recognised the communicative power of these letters and strung them together in such a way they managed to say some really radical empowering business that had a physical impact on my body and altered the course of my life. Long story short, a book full of these meaningful chains of letters arrived in my hands and I read it in bed. There was no time to question how all those previous miracles had occurred, I didn't want to pop a valve. So I just read it and wept with joy at the like mind I'd found.
This is what he said about people like us :
Writers are specialized cells doing whatever we do, and we're expressions of the entire society - just as the sensory cells on the surface of your body are in the service of your body as a whole. And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms. I have the canary-in- the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know, coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists - all artists - should be treasured as alarm systems.
For the purpose of this article I'll be the canary and you can be the reader of the magazine. Because that seems like the most obvious dynamic to adopt.
It's a tale about fully discovering your bird side, having a full-blown flap attack and incessantly tweeting about it to all your friends in the hope they will be seduced into coming for a fly with
you. In order to get a common overview of the societal situation and work/play together to nut out a plan of embrace of the honest parts that deserve illumination and investment (both energetic and financial). Empower, sustain and support those parts, lionize them avidly and either zenly integrate the stuff that sucks and hurts (if necessary) or let it get eclipsed out of your mind, and in turn, your reality. Seeing we are all party to this system we inhabit and attacking it is simply attacking ourselves. Ouch. Why not fathom it instead.
Let's zoom out and start with some wide-angle wondering ... Maybe an altogether completely new system is the ticket? That no one has ever thought of because the conditions haven't been quite right before? How can we turn the most inspired, lively, creative and conscious streams of consciousness into the MAINSTREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS?
Probably bit by bit, one step at a time. Inside out. Start, or continue revolutionising the microcosm that surrounds you and watch in amazement as your dreams go hard and macro without you having to try anymore. This is where doing your art live and direct from the heart comes in. If you do this without stopping to think and censor yourself, for fear of embarrassment or revealing the depths of your vulnerability, you will have the unstoppable power of nature and an unexplainable mystery on your side. What springs forth organically can tell us a lot about ourselves. Be a witness, not a judge. Face the bits that freak you out and respect their presence. Peripheral acknowledgement of problems is useful, without becoming consumed by them. If we continue to plant baby seeds of solutions in each others minds the answers grow of their own accord. The world is a massive puzzle designed to be solved by us and so much of the work has already been done. It just needs a freaky new map.
If fathoming is the goal then communication is paramount. We need an action plan, like how the aforementioned letters teamed up to bring us words. Instead of attacking, how about fusing juju for a mass perpetual woo of the system? Turn it's knees to honey, dazzle and cavort it until it is putty in the hands of party artists with universal natures. Who are guided by their hearts in the interest of preserving and respecting earth’s natural bounty. Live in harmony with that which is truly dope. Have you noticed how parties can be fun and wild and they can also be political, have power and run countries. Why can't they be all of the above? To implement this reality we would probably need hoards of CHARISMA and talent between us and we would need to be wise with how we spend our assigned rations of sweet joules.
The greatest and most transformative treasure of all.
Being a specialised writer canary, who is also part dolphin (privy to echolocation) and part fireworks, I am someone who cannot for the life of her stop exuding words in all directions. Kurt calls writing socially fruitful meditation, which I relate to completely. I exhale they fall out onto the page or into the e-window. Can't always be sure who's saying them but I can feel them write through my whole body and even in parts of me that are not my body, so I do not hesitate to release them into the world. In spite of sometimes exposing my true nature as being totally nuts. But nuts in the crazy sense are in the eye of the beholder and anyway, nuts in their true sense are a dynamic snack full of energy and should be shared amongst friends and friends to be, rather than hoarded and sat on. Unless you are going into hibernation and need a massive store for winter.
The alarm bells I ring are not warnings of danger. They are PARTY ALARM BELLS. Warning society of how incredibly ecstatic, alive and tingly it could be if we excavate our lack of understanding about how ecstatically alive with tingles we are. What absolutely sensational creatures. Basically just harmonic waves, waving back and forth to each other. “Hi!” We could know no bounds if nobody wanted to know them.
Having said that, a few bounds are very practical to have. Not knowing them is only really great until you realise your lack thereof is jeopardising relationships and freaking out your mum. I lost all mine when I dissolved my ego in a puddle of love and am still trying to knock up some prefab partitions so as not to step on too many toes in the process of igniting other eternal internal party flames (which inevitably go external). Can take a while to find out where they go, but conversation and tentative testing of them is a great method for re-establishment. I'm doing it the Japanese way this time round and making them from paper. That way the damage is minimal when earthquakes inevitably strike.
The gold I chirp of is psychic gold, found by panning down deep, beyond personal matters to the infinite realm of imaginary solution and childlike wonder that lies beneath the conditioned falsehoods that pollute our minds and confuse our perceptions of reality. Sounds like a big sweeping call to make but I will still make it lightly now and break it down further in my coming output of word-flow. One that is likely not to cease until I have distilled a crystallised Elixir of Eternal Parties. The alchemical process I employ to perform this alarming task is to make a literal Peace Party Puzzle for zen party pilgrims who care deeply about partying and would like to engage in expansion of their puzzling spherical reality in a decidedly novel way. All the while contributing to a radically logical new myth.
*
Before I explain any further, please bear in mind the meaning these following letters adopt when placed alongside each other ....
Zen does not attempt to be intelligible, that is, understood by the intellect. The method of zen is to baffle, excite, puzzle and exhaust the intellect until it is realised that intellection is only thinking ABOUT ; it will provoke, irritate and again exhaust the emotions until it is realised emotion is only feeling about, and then it contrives, when the disciple has been brought to an intellectual and emotional impasse, to bridge the gap between second hand, conceptual contact with reality, and first hand experience.
Alan Watson in The Spirit of Zen Re-quoted by Christmas Humphries in Zen Buddhism
To paraphrase the birdman in Kevin Hooyman's exquisite new book The First Sign of Anything, it's all about having a series of small targets that keep giving you good feelings and regenerate your joules for the next hit. Lots of little art parties that conjoin to create a monumental art party that no individual could've ever created (or curated) alone. Cos doing it alone isn't REALLY PARTYING.
First target was to get us both on the same page.
Doooiiiiing.
Welcome to my massive puzzle/freestyle thesis about connections and parties. You're party to it now. Just got involved. That article was secretly a letter inviting you to participate and by reading it you already are. A psychic seed has been planted that you’ll have a hard time uprooting because I tucked it really far in while you were marvelling about how letters met each other and thought to make words. Plus it's the first clue in the puzzle. Which is timeless so it doesn't matter if you've already received your other first clues
Now let's end with a quick round of Double Jeopardy! (aka backwards Q and A, but for this one the A’s a Q too and vice versa) I'll be host.
Category : CLASSIC JOKES
for 200 : “What party?”
* (pictured myself hugging nugget by Melbourne artist Andy Hutson)
The idea for this story grew from a nugget Kurt Vonnegut gave me once, when we were between the covers of a collected volume of his, Wampeters, Fomas and Granfalloons. He was relaying an interview he'd had with Playboy a few years earlier. It was written with ink, that had once been liquid, but through a chain of magical processes I don't understand, had dried onto a succession of bound pages sandwiched inside a slightly thicker cover. (Made from wood I think.)
Not only had the ink performed this unlikely feat of transformation, it had done so in a series of formulaic shapes that my mind ascribed a sound to. Alone they were quite weak. Only a couple of them meant something or could infer a satisfying sound as they stood. I soon realised that on the most-part they were relying upon each others simultaneous presence to make a complete word and even then they needed still more words to make a sentence. Not all of them needed to be there for every word, different configurations united to make different sounds that evoked a range of feelings and images. When I saw the shapes meet I also saw meanings. Please don't ask me how I did that.
I can't help being magic.
To wind it back a bit, reiterate, clarify and recap, somewhere along the line (if we can call it that) these particular shapes I was seeing had become visual representatives of assorted sounds. Individually at first, then they'd congregated together to make even more complex and varied sounds, with meanings too. Some cool ancestors sorted that out so we didn't have to organise it. Thanks for that! Kurt had recognised the communicative power of these letters and strung them together in such a way they managed to say some really radical empowering business that had a physical impact on my body and altered the course of my life. Long story short, a book full of these meaningful chains of letters arrived in my hands and I read it in bed. There was no time to question how all those previous miracles had occurred, I didn't want to pop a valve. So I just read it and wept with joy at the like mind I'd found.
This is what he said about people like us :
Writers are specialized cells doing whatever we do, and we're expressions of the entire society - just as the sensory cells on the surface of your body are in the service of your body as a whole. And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms. I have the canary-in- the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know, coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists - all artists - should be treasured as alarm systems.
For the purpose of this article I'll be the canary and you can be the reader of the magazine. Because that seems like the most obvious dynamic to adopt.
It's a tale about fully discovering your bird side, having a full-blown flap attack and incessantly tweeting about it to all your friends in the hope they will be seduced into coming for a fly with
you. In order to get a common overview of the societal situation and work/play together to nut out a plan of embrace of the honest parts that deserve illumination and investment (both energetic and financial). Empower, sustain and support those parts, lionize them avidly and either zenly integrate the stuff that sucks and hurts (if necessary) or let it get eclipsed out of your mind, and in turn, your reality. Seeing we are all party to this system we inhabit and attacking it is simply attacking ourselves. Ouch. Why not fathom it instead.
Let's zoom out and start with some wide-angle wondering ... Maybe an altogether completely new system is the ticket? That no one has ever thought of because the conditions haven't been quite right before? How can we turn the most inspired, lively, creative and conscious streams of consciousness into the MAINSTREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS?
Probably bit by bit, one step at a time. Inside out. Start, or continue revolutionising the microcosm that surrounds you and watch in amazement as your dreams go hard and macro without you having to try anymore. This is where doing your art live and direct from the heart comes in. If you do this without stopping to think and censor yourself, for fear of embarrassment or revealing the depths of your vulnerability, you will have the unstoppable power of nature and an unexplainable mystery on your side. What springs forth organically can tell us a lot about ourselves. Be a witness, not a judge. Face the bits that freak you out and respect their presence. Peripheral acknowledgement of problems is useful, without becoming consumed by them. If we continue to plant baby seeds of solutions in each others minds the answers grow of their own accord. The world is a massive puzzle designed to be solved by us and so much of the work has already been done. It just needs a freaky new map.
If fathoming is the goal then communication is paramount. We need an action plan, like how the aforementioned letters teamed up to bring us words. Instead of attacking, how about fusing juju for a mass perpetual woo of the system? Turn it's knees to honey, dazzle and cavort it until it is putty in the hands of party artists with universal natures. Who are guided by their hearts in the interest of preserving and respecting earth’s natural bounty. Live in harmony with that which is truly dope. Have you noticed how parties can be fun and wild and they can also be political, have power and run countries. Why can't they be all of the above? To implement this reality we would probably need hoards of CHARISMA and talent between us and we would need to be wise with how we spend our assigned rations of sweet joules.
The greatest and most transformative treasure of all.
Being a specialised writer canary, who is also part dolphin (privy to echolocation) and part fireworks, I am someone who cannot for the life of her stop exuding words in all directions. Kurt calls writing socially fruitful meditation, which I relate to completely. I exhale they fall out onto the page or into the e-window. Can't always be sure who's saying them but I can feel them write through my whole body and even in parts of me that are not my body, so I do not hesitate to release them into the world. In spite of sometimes exposing my true nature as being totally nuts. But nuts in the crazy sense are in the eye of the beholder and anyway, nuts in their true sense are a dynamic snack full of energy and should be shared amongst friends and friends to be, rather than hoarded and sat on. Unless you are going into hibernation and need a massive store for winter.
The alarm bells I ring are not warnings of danger. They are PARTY ALARM BELLS. Warning society of how incredibly ecstatic, alive and tingly it could be if we excavate our lack of understanding about how ecstatically alive with tingles we are. What absolutely sensational creatures. Basically just harmonic waves, waving back and forth to each other. “Hi!” We could know no bounds if nobody wanted to know them.
Having said that, a few bounds are very practical to have. Not knowing them is only really great until you realise your lack thereof is jeopardising relationships and freaking out your mum. I lost all mine when I dissolved my ego in a puddle of love and am still trying to knock up some prefab partitions so as not to step on too many toes in the process of igniting other eternal internal party flames (which inevitably go external). Can take a while to find out where they go, but conversation and tentative testing of them is a great method for re-establishment. I'm doing it the Japanese way this time round and making them from paper. That way the damage is minimal when earthquakes inevitably strike.
The gold I chirp of is psychic gold, found by panning down deep, beyond personal matters to the infinite realm of imaginary solution and childlike wonder that lies beneath the conditioned falsehoods that pollute our minds and confuse our perceptions of reality. Sounds like a big sweeping call to make but I will still make it lightly now and break it down further in my coming output of word-flow. One that is likely not to cease until I have distilled a crystallised Elixir of Eternal Parties. The alchemical process I employ to perform this alarming task is to make a literal Peace Party Puzzle for zen party pilgrims who care deeply about partying and would like to engage in expansion of their puzzling spherical reality in a decidedly novel way. All the while contributing to a radically logical new myth.
*
Before I explain any further, please bear in mind the meaning these following letters adopt when placed alongside each other ....
Zen does not attempt to be intelligible, that is, understood by the intellect. The method of zen is to baffle, excite, puzzle and exhaust the intellect until it is realised that intellection is only thinking ABOUT ; it will provoke, irritate and again exhaust the emotions until it is realised emotion is only feeling about, and then it contrives, when the disciple has been brought to an intellectual and emotional impasse, to bridge the gap between second hand, conceptual contact with reality, and first hand experience.
Alan Watson in The Spirit of Zen Re-quoted by Christmas Humphries in Zen Buddhism
To paraphrase the birdman in Kevin Hooyman's exquisite new book The First Sign of Anything, it's all about having a series of small targets that keep giving you good feelings and regenerate your joules for the next hit. Lots of little art parties that conjoin to create a monumental art party that no individual could've ever created (or curated) alone. Cos doing it alone isn't REALLY PARTYING.
First target was to get us both on the same page.
Doooiiiiing.
Welcome to my massive puzzle/freestyle thesis about connections and parties. You're party to it now. Just got involved. That article was secretly a letter inviting you to participate and by reading it you already are. A psychic seed has been planted that you’ll have a hard time uprooting because I tucked it really far in while you were marvelling about how letters met each other and thought to make words. Plus it's the first clue in the puzzle. Which is timeless so it doesn't matter if you've already received your other first clues
Now let's end with a quick round of Double Jeopardy! (aka backwards Q and A, but for this one the A’s a Q too and vice versa) I'll be host.
Category : CLASSIC JOKES
for 200 : “What party?”
* (pictured myself hugging nugget by Melbourne artist Andy Hutson)
Monday, September 17, 2012
SAX CRIMES
Was just remembering the time Carol Brown had this sax consultation with herself in her own peach office on The Party Within The Party Within episode of that old series, Becoming Carol Brown. What was she thinking! Talk about SOCIAL SUICIDE!!!
Cannot believe she did that.
PS. Who's that guy rifling through her filing cabinet? Is that Carol too?
Sunday, September 9, 2012
TIMELESS NOTIONS
Recently I read Kevin Hooymans new book THE FIRST SIGN OF ANYTHING which you can buy here for a measly $10 USD and if I were you I would. Because no matter how hard I looked I wouldn't be able to see any reason why not. I would just forgo something else that costs $10 USD and get the book, if cash was my issue. If time to read the book was my issue, I would just forgo some other time consuming activity to read it. But that's just me. That's what I did. All of the above, and I enjoyed it so much and felt such solidarity with the fruits of Kevins mind I felt compelled to share some of my psychic fruit with him too. Albeit of a similar nature to his, but wrangled into a different format. A much less cohesive format. Because I'm still mid-process in an uber-wrangle of info and NRG and I like talking about it as I go. Seeing I am so hungry for perspectives on the out-of-it things that happen within me and inevitably emerge in some physical form.
So I sent him a lilac moleskine facet of my technicolour freestyle thesis about connections and parties, some pages from the Radical Fusion Felt Blog and a copy of RUSH : Made In Victoria With Chris In It As A Police Officer by Joanna Anderson and Chris O'Brien.
Kevin promptly responded by adding some characters from his own hand to my work, who were muttering about how simple it all is, and that these are the things they like to do. Plus wrote me an encouraging colourful layery letter and also included this most excellent and apt book, D.I.Y Magic, which again, is so far up my alley it comes a full circle through the alarming state of not being funny, all the way back to being funny again..... here's an excerpt from the introduction .....
What is magic? It is the fine and subtle art of driving yourself insane! No really, it is just that. It is a con game you play on your own brain. It is the trick of letting yourself go crazy, and when it’s done right, the magus treads the same sacred and profane ground where walks the madman…
We can read descriptions of myths, of the practices of shamans, but the descriptions we might read by a Pentecostal believer, or a voodoo practitioner ridden by the loa, will be meaningless to us unless we have already been in the state they describe. These are wholly subjective experiences.
If you take these many practices, from across countless fields, cultures, religions, modes of being and systems of ritual (hypnosis, song and dance, duende, speaking in tongues, enchantment, faith healing, divination, out of body experience, sweat lodges, drumming, yoga, drugs, fever and on and on), we find that we are really talking about the same thing: a state where the mind lets go of the normal way of being and is opened up to an experience of existence as a whole that is bigger and without time.
These states are all really different forms of the same thing, or if not precisely the same thing, then near and adjacent territories in a realm that lies parallel to this one, reachable by many means.
In short, rather than advertise this as a book of magick, it could just as well have been labeled a book of psychology hacking. Or a cookbook. Think of it as jail-breaking the iPhone of your mind. Teaching it to do things that its basic programming was never set up for. Advanced self-psychology.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLZ
Soon to be available from Sticky Institute and Wooly Bully in Melbourne.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
INNERVIEW WITH COCO & ME
Here's a Q&A between Coco Solid (Q) and me (A) for her new mag ... (intro by Coco)...
WHO IS CRYSTAL DIAMOND?
To me Crystal Diamond aka Caroline Anderson is a writer, artist and an existential rogue in this world of limits and hang-ups. We met many moons ago at would you believe.... parties (hang tight, this word will prove important later). One day out of the blue she chose to actively deepen our nice-enough friendship by writing to me from Melbourne. She openly told me about a tough time her heart was enduring, so I shared some of my horror stories and insights – and before you knew it, we were (and still are) close pen pals.
As trans-Tasman buds, I was attending her George St Clown parties in Melbourne (an amazing red-head crumping collective made up of Crystal and her sister Joanna – they even have official t-shirts). Crystal was coming to Aotearoa for boogies and the occasional drunk summit. Then something cosmic started to happen.
Crystal was sending me live reports from the field of her brain saying she was beginning to see some chronic connections. The ego fabric that protected everyone from their true selves was starting to unravel and make less sense to her. Some pretty uplifting secrets were beginning to transmit themselves to her and she was both overwhelmed and over-stimulated. Me being a cynic she managed to keep my faith with the odd psychic observation and super creepy coincidence. (Let it also be known that Crystal is one of my few friends who hasn’t thrashed psychedelic drugs and at the time was more into The Rza than any church, so I just observed this movement engrossed).
Her blog (www. crystaldiamondwrites.blogspot.com) was the de facto home of nervous laughter and puzzled looks among our friends, which was understandable – both Crystal and her musings were getting authentic and wild. She was amazingly honest, hyper-expressive and keeping it surreal. Crystal called her spiritual outlook ’The Party’ with this metaphor proving crucial to how she truly believes humanity should interact. (FYI Celestial updating, restyling and rebranding is something we constantly bond over, why does spirituality have to have such an unfashionable stigma for so many?)
To me, the party was Crystal’s truth and her writing was resonating with me too much to ignore.
Eventually I ended up finding my own remix of The Party Within, I recommend it. Caroline also sends everyone packages, letters, presents or casual symbols from their destiny. To this day I will look at something she sent me a long time ago (a candy wrapper, a picture, a note) and recognize the predictive message that was in it. Shit is usually levels. Anyway I’ll let her explain the rest. >
CS : I'm just gonna jump in the deep end with no water-wings. What is the party?
CD : This is one of those zen
situations where it's easier to say what the party is not. It's not not
pure ecstatic joy and it's not not also really sad. (Heapsa
contradictions in zen). It is a new configuration of consciousness
whereby the dividers dividing your mind into categories dissolve and all
the contents falls into your inner outbox for processing. Your brain
shuts up and stops being the boss and your heart takes charge, pumping
tingly orders all round your body. It's a cellular office party. Inside
YOU.
CS : You describe yourself as a rogue scholar but also a 'Party Artist'. What are the responsibilities of the Party Artist.
CD : Once a party artist has unlocked their inner party vault they party alone exploring all the zones of their own club for quite a while and enjoy themselves quite a lot. Retrace their steps, visit old friends. They continually keep emptying their inner outbox and keep it's contents in circulation via the postal system, internet, direct friend to friend contact. They channel everything that is inside them, ie. thoughts, emotions, genius plans, and look at it when it comes out to get objective perspective, distance themselves from the fruits of their own psyche in order to keep their minds fresh, clean and receptive to incoming transmissions. They revel in this task. Rogue scholars are people who take responsibility for their own education and shoot for honorary doctorates for going hard in their chosen field, outside of an institution.
CS : Crystal, this is gonna be a mammoth can of worms but what happened to you on that fateful day you discovered 'The Party Within'?
CA : I cried.
CS : How do people react when you grow through such a strong psycho-spiritual change?
CS : How do people react when you grow through such a strong psycho-spiritual change?
CD : It
polarises your friend base and sorts out the babes from the babes 2 be.
Lots of people might reckon you have bi-polar disorder or delete you as
their facebook friend cos you're getting too real. Others show mega
compassion, understanding and patience while you moodily struggle
through the transistion from being human to realising you are actually a
dolphin crossed with fireworks then learning to embody that fact inside
your human shell. Many bring you back to earth and enliven you with the
magic of SOUNDS. Music has been my greatest saviour.
CS : Who are some of the people (alive and dead) you call on when you are rendering a large file with the cosmos?
CS : Who are some of the people (alive and dead) you call on when you are rendering a large file with the cosmos?
CD : I must psychically
call on Mum cos she always shows up. For some reason for the big ones I
always call on Andrew Liversidge, an artist from Melbourne who I call my
involuntary psychic professor. I write to him all the time and he never
writes back but for some reason that doesn't deter me. He has some
special powers that transcend bodies for shiz. Also YOU (Coco), Bek
Coogan, Carl Jung, Dan Lucka, Joanna, Torben Tilly, Jo Randerson,
Sam Crawford, SECRETS. There are many.
CS : You regularly send people in your network parcels and artifacts. Why?
CS : You regularly send people in your network parcels and artifacts. Why?
CD : There are many reasons for that. To
pop the bubbles around private documents, starting to brace myself for
the critical views of the external world and learn how to respond
without getting hurt feelings. Provoking discussion regarding the
content, making a physical map of the important connections that
contribute to the book I'm writing, The Party Within. Planting seeds of
ideas for future collaboration, no matter how oblique they might be.
Also so if I die the party lives on, it is a big puzzle and will link up
all these amazing characters from all different areas of my life and
they might have fun making a book or something together. It is a
spontaneous evolver of a project, nothing is set in stone and could all
change on a whim tomorrow. It is more about the joy and connecting
capabilities of the process than any sort of outcome.
CS : Transient as they are to you, what have been some of your favourite possessions?
CD : I had a red wooden diamond that I liked. Records, tapes, 2 lips phones. Moleskine journals. Latex futon, a painting by Maiangi Waitai, salt lamp, Miss Crabb threads, Alexandra Dodds ANATOMY OF CLOUDS ring.
CS : Transient as they are to you, what have been some of your favourite possessions?
CD : I had a red wooden diamond that I liked. Records, tapes, 2 lips phones. Moleskine journals. Latex futon, a painting by Maiangi Waitai, salt lamp, Miss Crabb threads, Alexandra Dodds ANATOMY OF CLOUDS ring.
CS : Describe this monster artistic undertaking you are shadowboxing with in Australia, where you live.
CD : Basically is an installation at Westspace that functions as a mini-series, loosely based on some of my experiences. The project is in the Next Wave festival and is called Wake Up And Wait For The Sun To Rise : 500 Methods For A New Beginning. It's a one month residency at the Meat Market which I am wagging right now to write this. Our collective is TAPE PROJECTS and the series is called Becoming Carol Brown, taken from an extra role I played on Flight Of The Conchords in 2008 who keeps taking a bus out of town, which is something I frequently do.The character is not exclusive though, it is a vehicle for transmitting a bunch of ideas and anyone has the opportunity to step into the role. The room in Westspace is the set and we will provide prompts for action that people can get amongst if they choose to. Costumes will be provided. It is part peach office, part lilac house, part black hole for trashed thoughts, part beach. Each day will be a new episode, some we have roughly pencilled in are ... ANTICIPATING ANTICIPATION, CAROL GETS SOME PERSPECTIVE, THE CYCLICAL NATURE OF BIKE RIDING, A CHRISTMAS CAROL and HUNGOVER BEFORE IT'S BEGUN. Theme song by SECRETS.
CS : Tell us about your recent exhibition in Wellington and the whole 'Year of the Rat' and 'unpacking' ethos surrounding it
CD : Hmm... this is an interview in itself. No time!
CS : How you live totally wastes positive visualization in a fight, lets be real. How would you describe the serendipity and connected way in which things transpire for you on a daily basis.
CD : Progressive Seinfeld.
CS : Where were you born?
CD : Whanganui
CS : Tell us about Crystal Diamond Writes and how that has helped your process
CD : It's
a blog I started in October 2009. At first words flew out forcefully
straight onto the internet, so many of them in a very short space of
time. Outlining my initial book idea, talking about how we are all
mash-ups of all the characters books, music, environmental factors etc
that go into our existence. Sharing some handy life hints then I did a
bunch of profiles on characters that had affected my life dramatically.
Then I put lots of quotes and things on it that gave me heart and egged
me on when I wasn't getting heaps of encouragement elsewhere. It's a
good instant way to socialise psychic fruits without having to go to the
post office. Plus people become aware of the buzz you're on and doors
open up as a result.
CS : How did you get your name?
CD : I
was about 4 and my brother and sister Sean and Joanna used to go down
to the cattlestop and "go to town". In their place Billy and Sally would
return. They looked heaps like Joanna and Sean but weren't. Sometimes
they'd swap letters and be Silly and Bally but there were always fights
over who got to be Silly. I didn't just want to be boring old me so I
dubbed myself Crystal Diamond Necklace, named after my necklace which
was actually red blue and white beads.
CS : How did dressing up as Tina Turner when you were a child teach you the meaning of expression? (I'm just looking for an excuse for you to tell that story cos it makes me laugh so hard)
CD : I
don't have time to regail you right now ! but it taught me that if you
can't do it, just mime and everyones parents will still think you're
cute.
CS : Based on your experience and limitless love for The Party, how can readers at home lambada with life?
CD : Do whatever you want to do, hard and charismatically.
DIG DEEP, BUY MY BOOK
DIG DEEP, BUY MY BOOK
Friday, June 8, 2012
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
here's a mail-out I just did on the electronic postal circuit (write me a message if you would like your inbox to be kept updated on movements within the Movement Movement!) :
Hola,
This is to say THANKS to everyone who came down to the set of Becoming Carol Brown @ West Space during the NEXT WAVE festival, donned pastel skivvies and wigs, became Carol Brown and generously helped themselves revel in their practical tasks in one or more of the following episodes :
Episode 1 : Anticipating Anticipation
Episode 2 : Receiving Transmissions
Episode 3 : Carol Tears It Up
Episode 4 : Carol Re-bakes Old Ideas
Episode 5 : The Party Within The Party Within
Episode 6 : Carol Gets Some Perspective
Epsiode 7 : A Christmas Carol
Episode 8 : Cliff-hangover
Pictures from Episode 5 : The Party Within The Party Within :
Carol in a sax consultation with herself in HER OWN PEACH OFFICE ...
Some guests in Carols brain observing her sax crimes from their respective locations in the middle of everywhere ...
Conga line leaving The Party Within The Party Within to circle the oxygen chamber and finally impregnate the Aussie culture DJ set next door with their imitable brand of highly enthused radically sensual mythically scientific magical party logic ...
She could never have learned to party this hard without you !
+ thanks Pia Johnson for the pics !
Please stay tuned for the next tangible nugget to get panned out of the deep south of Carols' mind ...
Crystal Diamond Sutra : Joule of Transcendental Parties
... it's about NRG
xx
CB aka CD aka CA aka CZA
This is to say THANKS to everyone who came down to the set of Becoming Carol Brown @ West Space during the NEXT WAVE festival, donned pastel skivvies and wigs, became Carol Brown and generously helped themselves revel in their practical tasks in one or more of the following episodes :
Episode 1 : Anticipating Anticipation
Episode 2 : Receiving Transmissions
Episode 3 : Carol Tears It Up
Episode 4 : Carol Re-bakes Old Ideas
Episode 5 : The Party Within The Party Within
Episode 6 : Carol Gets Some Perspective
Epsiode 7 : A Christmas Carol
Episode 8 : Cliff-hangover
Pictures from Episode 5 : The Party Within The Party Within :
Carol in a sax consultation with herself in HER OWN PEACH OFFICE ...
Some guests in Carols brain observing her sax crimes from their respective locations in the middle of everywhere ...
Conga line leaving The Party Within The Party Within to circle the oxygen chamber and finally impregnate the Aussie culture DJ set next door with their imitable brand of highly enthused radically sensual mythically scientific magical party logic ...
She could never have learned to party this hard without you !
+ thanks Pia Johnson for the pics !
Please stay tuned for the next tangible nugget to get panned out of the deep south of Carols' mind ...
... it's about NRG
xx
CB aka CD aka CA aka CZA
Thursday, May 31, 2012
THE RESIDENCY
Here is a photo essay of the residency part.
Didn't the month fly by !
Monday, May 21, 2012
WHAT IS ALCHEMY & HOW CAN WE BE FRIENDS ?
Show opening at The Physics Room in Christchurch tonight, on not a disimilar buzz thematically (externalised process-wise) from what is currently going down on the mind-set of our Next Wave project, BECOMING CAROL BROWN :
The
title of this project, with its nod to alchemy, suggests an outmoded
philosophy. To me alchemy is particularly interesting when understood in
terms of process and not product. It’s not really about attaining gold
from base metals but rather the mental space that that process allows –
that utopia, if you like. Process over product, that’s the key.
— Simon Starling
British artist Simon Starling’s Autoxylopyrocyclobo
Starling
describes his work as ‘the physical manifestation of a thought
process’. As such it is an absurdist response to the terms of the Cove
Park Commission for which the work was executed, which is designed
specifically to enable a contemporary artist to undertake a period of
artistic research in order to produce new work. Using old
technology—steam propulsion and slide projection—Starling provides a
humorously fitting analogy for the possible consequences of future
real-world auto-destruction, referring—in the raising and sinking of his
little vessel—to the Trident submarines that carry missiles as part of
the United Kingdom’s strategy of nuclear deterrence that share their
base in Loch Long. Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Simon Starling
Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Opening Tuesday 22 May, 6pm
23 May – 23 June, 2012
55 Sandyford Street
Sydenham
Christchurch
In our case we are using our knowledge and experience of past parties and our solid psychic connections with C.G Jung to make current parties in the present totally pop :
One of the outcomes will be an Elixir of Eternal Parties in word form.
In our case we are using our knowledge and experience of past parties and our solid psychic connections with C.G Jung to make current parties in the present totally pop :
One of the outcomes will be an Elixir of Eternal Parties in word form.
Friday, May 18, 2012
WAKE UP AND SMELL OUR ART SHOW
Today
is a momentous day in the field of Party Artistry. A collection of
collectives have pooled their skills to transform Westspace on Bourke St
into a HIVE OF STARTLING ACTIVITY in an art show about NEW BEGINNINGS as part of Melbourne's NEXT WAVE festival. I am writing from a peach office in the heart of Carol Brown's brain on set of Becoming Carol Brown by Tape Projects ... a live mini-series featuring interactive new episodes daily between NOW and May 27th.
Carol is going to receive an abundance of information and needs your help to file it in a TRULY OUTRAGEOUS FASHION !
Here's the trailer :
Here's the trailer :
Thanks to SECRETS of CRYSTAL MAGIC for the theme song !
Carols consciousness streams live from 6 - 10pm nightly, with reruns the following day between 12 and 4.
Season premiere ANTICIPATING ANTICIPATION starts tonight ...
Level 1, 225 Bourke Street
Melbourne, Vic, 3000
(press the buzzer to get up here)
NOT only that though, there are BRAIN ANGELS wandering round in white jeans getting ready to show us their inventions, and invent some more ...
PLUS an indoor BUSH DOOF TRANCE PARTY, with theme DJs nightly ...
AS WELL as SPACE PEOPLE LETTING US MAKE NEW CONSTELLATIONS every 2 hours ...
and if all those elements aren't intriguing enough, here is the cherry on top ...
we also have ENGLISH PEOPLE in the house! teaching us how to connect GLOBALLY
PATAPHYSICS TURNED TANGIBLE , THIS IS PARTY PHYSICS IN THE MAKING ! and in the BREAKING ... (it down)
Please come and break it down with us,
We'll pretend the opening is tonight !
But if you miss that it keeps opening every night !
with a PARTY on WEDNESDAY and XXX-MAS SPECIAL on Friday,
with presents and everything.
Whoa, heaps isn't it ?
Carols consciousness streams live from 6 - 10pm nightly, with reruns the following day between 12 and 4.
Season premiere ANTICIPATING ANTICIPATION starts tonight ...
Level 1, 225 Bourke Street
Melbourne, Vic, 3000
(press the buzzer to get up here)
NOT only that though, there are BRAIN ANGELS wandering round in white jeans getting ready to show us their inventions, and invent some more ...
PLUS an indoor BUSH DOOF TRANCE PARTY, with theme DJs nightly ...
AS WELL as SPACE PEOPLE LETTING US MAKE NEW CONSTELLATIONS every 2 hours ...
and if all those elements aren't intriguing enough, here is the cherry on top ...
we also have ENGLISH PEOPLE in the house! teaching us how to connect GLOBALLY
PATAPHYSICS TURNED TANGIBLE , THIS IS PARTY PHYSICS IN THE MAKING ! and in the BREAKING ... (it down)
Please come and break it down with us,
We'll pretend the opening is tonight !
But if you miss that it keeps opening every night !
with a PARTY on WEDNESDAY and XXX-MAS SPECIAL on Friday,
with presents and everything.
Whoa, heaps isn't it ?
Friday, May 4, 2012
OFF THE CHAIN LETTER
Hello friends,
I am currently taking part in a party art residency in the Next Wave festival as part of TAPE PROJECTS. It's called Wake Up And Wait For The Sun To Rise : 500 Methods For A New Beginning. It is a one month residency that we are 3 weeks into, followed by a 9 day show at Westspace. The festival has a focus on GENEROSITY and URGENCY. Read artistic director Emily Sexton's opening letter here : http://nextwave.org.au/about/.
Our group is making an installation that functions as a live mini-series in the gallery. It is called BECOMING CAROL BROWN and is loosely based on a new beginning someone had once, when they discovered a party within themselves. The set will roughly represent the interior of my brain, a universal brain, as a venue for realising, reading, partying, decoding cryptic puzzles, communicating, experiencing and observing chemical reactions. Each day features a new episode ... which brings me to a request...
For our Christmas episode, A Christmas Carol, we are making a giant pass the parcel full of presents for whoever opens that layer. It will start in the gallery and be passed on and on and on until all the layers are shed and we find out what's in the middle. We are requesting donations of gifts. Anything that you have gleaned all the joules you need out of and would like to pass on. Music, books, drawings, yummy snacks (preferably not ones you've gleaned the joules out of), art, a thought you just jotted down. Paper matter and light things are good.
Please send or deliver any contributions you care to donate to ...
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
TAPE PROJECTS
PO Box 24091
Melbourne, Vic, 3001
or (if delivering) ...
WESTSPACE
Level 1, 225 Bourke Street
Melbourne, Vic, 3000
before Friday the 18th of May or soon after, for wrapping in time for our (XX)X-MAS PARTY, Friday May 25th.
Please pass this on to any genius friends who have the x-mas spirit !
HO HO HO,
Caroline
Friday, March 9, 2012
FANS SHOULD BE BANNED
Today I cut my finger on a fan in the fridge at work. Last week my friend Psychic Dolphin cut his thumb on a fan too.
We reckon fans should be banned. (Too dangerous). Then we can all be hot losers. No one would be the slightest bit cooler than anyone else. You would be just as hot as the next guy. Imagine that !
Also last week my other psychic dolphin counterpart Dan cut his thumb on a can.
Do you think we should ban cans too ?
We reckon fans should be banned. (Too dangerous). Then we can all be hot losers. No one would be the slightest bit cooler than anyone else. You would be just as hot as the next guy. Imagine that !
Also last week my other psychic dolphin counterpart Dan cut his thumb on a can.
Do you think we should ban cans too ?
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
THE MYSTERIOUS GIFT OF THE PROCESS THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
So begins the slow retroprospective unpacking of ideas surrounding the Enjoy Chinese Horoscope hyprophetical rat art show that is happening at the moment, and what it means for the future of Party Artistry. (The words in yellow are ones I've coined especially for this project, as far as I know).
Let's start (again) with a quote from The Way Of Zen by Alan W. Watts :
The reason why Taoism and Zen present, at first sight, such a puzzle to the western mind is that we have taken a restricted view of the human knowledge. For us, almost all knowledge is what a Taoist would call conventional knowledge, because we do not feel that we really know anything unless we can represent it to ourselves in words, or in some other conventional signs such as the notations of mathematics and music. Such matter is called conventional because it is a matter of social agreement to the codes of communication. Just as people speaking the same language have tacit agreements as to what words stand for what things, so the members of every society and every culture are united by bonds of communication resting upon all kinds of agreement as to the classification of action and things.
Thus the task of education is to make children fit to live in a society by persuading them to learn and accept its codes - the rules and conventions of communication whereby the society holds itself together. There is first the spoken language. The child is taught to accept 'tree' and not 'boojum' as the agreed sign for that (pointing to the object). We have no difficulty in understanding that the word 'tree' is a matter of convention. What is much less obvious is that the convention also governs the delineation of the thing to which the word is assigned. For the child has to be taught not only what words are to stand for what things, but also the way in which his culture has tacitly agreed to divide things from each other, to mark out the boundaries within our daily experience. Thus scientific convention decides whether an eel shall be a fish or a snake and grammatical convention determines what experiences shall be called objects and what shall be called events or actions.
How arbitrary such conventions may be can be seen from the question, 'What happens to my fist [noun-object] when I open my hand?' The object miraculously vanishes because an action was disguised by a part of speech usually assigned to a thing! In English the differences between things and actions are clearly, if not always logically, distinguished, but a great number of Chinese words do duty for both nouns and verbs - so that one who thinks in Chinese has little difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a collection of processes rather than entities.
Monday, February 27, 2012
ESSENTIALIZATION
A good way to streamline your life and maximise productivity is to essentialize your friend base. Probably the fastest way to do this is to create a palpable aura of 'crazy' around you. You won't need to fake it though, just openly and artfully channel everything that is inside you as it arises. Do that for a couple of years then FLIP IT! and start being impossibly sane all of a sudden. This will weed out the babes from the losers and show up the people who claimed to be losers for the stellar babes they really are.
Funnily enough, the first step to becoming an absolute babe is admitting you are a total loser!
Sucking and ruling go hand in hand.
Funnily enough, the first step to becoming an absolute babe is admitting you are a total loser!
Sucking and ruling go hand in hand.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
RATS NEST
The making of Too Much Information, a rats nest compiled by Bek Coogan, Maiangi Waitai, Kristen Wineera and I with what we had on hand at the opening.
For the Enjoy Chinese Horoscope Show.
Photos by Erica Van Zon
Since the opening gravity has begun to curate it, let's see how refined it gets ....
For the Enjoy Chinese Horoscope Show.
Photos by Erica Van Zon
Since the opening gravity has begun to curate it, let's see how refined it gets ....
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
STARTIN SOMETHIN'
Greetings all,
this is a warm invitation to the official launch of the Party Art Movement, which is a movement that has been happening inside me for some time now, and is now ripe and ready to be shared with fellow revelers.
It will emerge from the opening for The Chinese Horoscope Show curated by Erica Van Zon.
6pm
Wednesday 15th Feb
Enjoy Gallery
Level 1/147 Cuba St
Wellington
I am representing the rat and will be showcasing the hard-out behind the scenes dynamically responsive intricacy associated with this gutter dwelling yet quick witted sign. At the opening some fellow rats and I will be opening a series of Prophetic Pass The Parcels, which hold densely packed layers of symbolic clues and keys to my vision for how this most extraordinarily super natural art movement might play out in the public arena.
The performance, What's Going To Happen... will start at 6.15 when Dad blows the whistle and Mum plies my fellow rats and I with tequila.
Within that performance there are 5 sections, although only a very keen eye will be able to deduce when one ends and another begins.
They are :
1. Everything for Nothing (A-Hole)
2. Tools and Arty Facts
3. Examination and Mock-Up
4. Mystery Achievement
and finally ...
5. Building a Rats Nest
although it could appear that we are just getting drunk and making a lovely mess, there will be much much more to it than that !
Come down for a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the hyprophesis for a mythical science experiment played out on the floor of an art gallery in the form of an esoteric party game !!
It sounds ABSOLUTELY NUTS doesn't it !?
Come and marvel about how something SO NUTS can at the same time be SO LOGICAL on very close inspection.
Could it be that being COMPLETELY NUTS is the only true form of sanity we have left ???
and that art is the safest umbrella word to be OPENLY NUTS under ?
If you miss the opening you can still pop down to the gallery to view :
Too Much Information
the physical installation that this rat party will result in. Until March 10.
Also, stay tuned for Canary In A Goldmine, a companion article to the show to feature in the next issue of Kerry Ann Lee's Dunedin based magazine, Permanent Vacation.
Til next time,
peace and puzzle parties,
Caroline
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
RATS @ PLAY
Getting excited folks as the date of the rat game show leans backwards from the future towards us .... This passage is also out of The Book Of Symbols, Reflections on Archetypal Imagery (Taschen). From fire dragon Matt Dooley. Who has kindly agreed to lend me a third eye recording device (helmet cam) for the show.
PLAY
Who knows what makes us play? The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation. Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains. But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play. An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall. Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air. Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate (Brown, 2ff). Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favourite toys. Dolphins invite play with human swimmers. Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another.
Human games are often formalizations of play, framed by fixed rules, while allowing for individual strategies. Many of our most familiar games can be traced back to archaic rituals and myths the cosmology of which is embodied in the structure of the contest. Hopscotch, for example, derives from myths of the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth. Chess employs the hierarchy of medieval kingdoms. Games of chance are probably descended from divination rituals, and invoke the mythic forces of fate. In Hindu mythology, the spirit of lila or divine play, is behind the infinite manifestations of the gods and their maya, or power of illusion. "The divine mother is always sportive. This universe is her play ... her pleasure is in continuing the game." said Ramakrishna of the goddess Kali.
Artifacts of cultures thousands of years old reveal toy conveyances, miniature weapons, pull animals and human figures. Toys come alive through imagination and unconscious projection, reflecting in children the still-tenuous boundaries between inner and outer realities. Like the religious fetishes of antiquity, stuffed animals and dolls in particular reflect numinous facets of their possessors unknown identity. They embody threshold guardians in developmental transitions. They are potent objects of comfort and companionship, expressed affects, urges and compulsions, protection, aggression and role-playing.
Natural forces outside their ken made ancestors imagine they were themselves playthings of the gods. Contemporary computer-simulated games of sports, war, intergalactic conquest, evolution, urban planning and interactive doll-playing and the hands on making of models into a virtual experience in which enthusiasts play and are "played" by the unexpected components of the game. Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact each other in all kinds of play. The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification. Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding. Jung played childrens games of drawing , modeling with clay and meditatio, the dialogue with an unseen partner, as a means of engaging the unconscious aspects of psyche and bringing its contents into consciousness. Dreams often utilize images of play. They reveal the stuff that supports or subverts our capacity for creative play. They illuminate a process related to contending in life, stepping up to the plate, going the distance, winning, losing, excelling. They invite play.
Lack of play, or abnormal play - sadistic, bullying, teasing play - is associated with abuse, abandonment, depression or sociopathy. Play is frivolous, serious, consequential. There are sexual games, political games, war games. Game theory mathematically describes the seemingly unpredictable convergence of competing parties. Physicists lay speculative "god-games" with giant particle colliders. Out of play emerges evolutionary change, self awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions. "The game's afoot," the legendary Sherlock Holmes would say when he had a lead to the mystery.
PLAY
Who knows what makes us play? The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation. Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains. But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play. An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall. Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air. Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate (Brown, 2ff). Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favourite toys. Dolphins invite play with human swimmers. Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another.
Human games are often formalizations of play, framed by fixed rules, while allowing for individual strategies. Many of our most familiar games can be traced back to archaic rituals and myths the cosmology of which is embodied in the structure of the contest. Hopscotch, for example, derives from myths of the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth. Chess employs the hierarchy of medieval kingdoms. Games of chance are probably descended from divination rituals, and invoke the mythic forces of fate. In Hindu mythology, the spirit of lila or divine play, is behind the infinite manifestations of the gods and their maya, or power of illusion. "The divine mother is always sportive. This universe is her play ... her pleasure is in continuing the game." said Ramakrishna of the goddess Kali.
Artifacts of cultures thousands of years old reveal toy conveyances, miniature weapons, pull animals and human figures. Toys come alive through imagination and unconscious projection, reflecting in children the still-tenuous boundaries between inner and outer realities. Like the religious fetishes of antiquity, stuffed animals and dolls in particular reflect numinous facets of their possessors unknown identity. They embody threshold guardians in developmental transitions. They are potent objects of comfort and companionship, expressed affects, urges and compulsions, protection, aggression and role-playing.
Natural forces outside their ken made ancestors imagine they were themselves playthings of the gods. Contemporary computer-simulated games of sports, war, intergalactic conquest, evolution, urban planning and interactive doll-playing and the hands on making of models into a virtual experience in which enthusiasts play and are "played" by the unexpected components of the game. Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact each other in all kinds of play. The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification. Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding. Jung played childrens games of drawing , modeling with clay and meditatio, the dialogue with an unseen partner, as a means of engaging the unconscious aspects of psyche and bringing its contents into consciousness. Dreams often utilize images of play. They reveal the stuff that supports or subverts our capacity for creative play. They illuminate a process related to contending in life, stepping up to the plate, going the distance, winning, losing, excelling. They invite play.
Lack of play, or abnormal play - sadistic, bullying, teasing play - is associated with abuse, abandonment, depression or sociopathy. Play is frivolous, serious, consequential. There are sexual games, political games, war games. Game theory mathematically describes the seemingly unpredictable convergence of competing parties. Physicists lay speculative "god-games" with giant particle colliders. Out of play emerges evolutionary change, self awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions. "The game's afoot," the legendary Sherlock Holmes would say when he had a lead to the mystery.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
LATEST RAT MAIL-OUT
| 7:03 PM (19 hours ago) | | ||
| ||||
I am delighted to have you all on board with the unveiling of a few of my pretty psycho yet strangely logical behind the scenes activities at the Chinese Horoscope Art Show. (Enjoy Gallery, Feb 15th, 6pm)
I have titled the performance piece :
What's Going To Happen ...
(with this catchphrase :)
NZ's forerunning PASS THE PARCEL PROPHET, Caroline Anderson officially wonders : which came first?
THE FUTURE OR THE PRESENT?? in the context of a rat art opening.
Then the physical show which we install on site during the opening will be known as :
Too Much Information
I am especially pleased to have you on the team seeing as my performance history ranges from being Small Fox number 2 in Fantastic Mr Fox in standard 2 and Tina Turner in a miming Stars In Their Eyes the same year ('93). As well as being understudy for Gaunt in the Wanganui Intermediate production of Monsters ('97). That is all.
But a new era is dawning !!
And I am glad I have some mates to help ease me into it.
Til next mail-out,
Caroline
* * * * *
I received this response from Erica Van Zon :
| |||
Hey Caroline - coolio - thanks for sending through, I have forwarded to Bopha - sounds good - the opening part we get now...all will be revealed..time traveling parcel, sort of like a time capsule..to your future self!
talk soon
XE
and this one from Michael Prior :
This notice has been magneted to the fridge door of my mind with a pineapple wearing sunglasses magnet that isn't very strong so it's sliding down the door just a bit.
and this one from Michael Prior :
This notice has been magneted to the fridge door of my mind with a pineapple wearing sunglasses magnet that isn't very strong so it's sliding down the door just a bit.
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