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.

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 ....

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