Writing and Text

( Short Essay )

Real art is fake 

by Nietzsche Drager

ART IS NOT REAL. ART IS FAKE. A positive fake – THE FRAME OF ART ALLOWS IT’S CONTENT TO BE FAKE, AND AS SUCH, FREE FROM ANY DEFINITIVE MEANING OR JUDGMENT OF IT OR ANY ONE INTERPRETATION. AS SUCH, ART CAN BE AUTONOMOUS- FREE, LIBERATE, UNIVERSAL, BECAUSE ART’S FAKE FRAME PERMITS ART THE AGENCY TO RE-REPRESENT ANYTHING FROM ANY VIEW FOR ANY REASON in ANY WAY. THIS IS WHY ART INCLUDES THE IMAGINARY, FANTASY, FICTION, MYTH – BEYOND THE REAL. IF ART WHERE REAL, IT WOULD BE CONTAINED AND DELIMITED like politics, religion, and the social where people discuss what is right and wrong, good and bad, etc. ART HAS no such function. ART , like TAO, can never force. ART, like the TAO, is beyond morality, ethics, power, and control, and bias, in that it is free from such things. TO ACCEPT ART IS NOT REAL, IS ONE OF THE SUBLIME AND CHALLENGING QUALITIES and NATURES of art. An artist’s vocation is too learn from art how to judge without bias and subjectivity. AND TO ENTER THE sublime objectivity and universality of things and ideas. AND to grasp that the PROCESS of making art, which is real, is in a frame which contextualizes the real art process as fake. This knowledge is one of the artist’s most beautiful enterprise. ART’s unique structure where the real permits the fake, – a fake which is substantial and not ordinary fake, gives ART it’s sublime beauty. Also, this allows art it’s artistic licence and it’s BEAUTY to be beyond judgement and morality and politically correct fascist dogmas, of any type or kind. IT IS ART’S real FRAME, MAKING IT’S CONTENT FAKE, WHICH ALLOWS ART TO DISCUSS ANYTHING on the real, if art is inclined, TO PRESENT ANYTHING on the real, if art is inclined, TO ARTICULATE ANYTHING on the real, if art is inclined, WITHOUT being real, and without being a real OFFENCE, AS the fake can never offend, but only perhaps create fake emotions which may seem like real offence, since FAKENESS IS NOT about ACCURACY NOR TRUTH NOR QUALITY, rather about not being real. THIS IS WHY many artists say THERE ARE NO RULES IN MAKING ART. MAYBE THERE ARE RULES IN SELLING ART? MAYBE THERE ARE RULES IN PRESENTING ART? MAYBE THEIR ARE rules in art communities? Maybe their are rules for some ism’s like feminism or post-colonialism? YET THERE ARE NO RULES IN MAKING ART. JUST ASK ANY FIVE YEAR OLD making a drawing with a crayon if there are any rules they have to follow. THEY WILL look at you as though you are naive and a child. AND Since, ART CAN BE ANYTHING AND ANYTHING GOES, ART IS FREE FROM THE WEAK CONFINES OF SOCIAL NORMS, from the fascism of CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS, free from art theory, feminism, post-colonialism, post-modernism, and all the leftist fascists and righist fascists who strive to correct society with their art, and concepts, precepts, emotions, and notions. ART is EVEN free from being GOOD COMMUNICATION, as THERE is not point in trying to understand art, rather simply experience it, and consume its fakeness without any reason or motive, other than experiencing. There is no need even to learn from art. Nor like it. Nor approach it as real in that it has a value or effect. AS art’s NON- REALNESS, IT’S FAKENESS, novas, stretches, expands, releases, morphs, abstracts, cocoons, envelopes, arcs, dances, BEYOND DE- LIMITATIONS and suppositions SET IN…. POLITICS, ECONOMICS, RELIGION, THE SOCIAL BODY, LOVE, gender politics, community, relations, isms, etc, these corrupted enterprises of power, where there needs to understanding and meaning and function. IN this, art’s “ARTIFICE FAKENESS” IS OUTSIDE OF REASON and EMOTION, OUTSIDE OF CORRECTNESS, OUTSIDE OF ANY HUMAN or Cosmic CONSTRUCTS, outside of discourse, outside of all rules, where outside is also non, or of the Tao, WHICH IS WHY ART INCLUDES THINGS SUCH AS FOLLY, ABSURDITY, AND PLAY, natural to universal freedom, natural to human-ness freedom , natural to natural, natural to love. AND IF A PERSON OR VIEWER IS OFFENDED BY ART, THEY ARE OFFENDED BY art’s FAKENESS AND SOMETHING NOT REAL. OR THEY consume the FAKENESS OF ART AS REAL. Yet, art can offend, but it is a fake offence. Art can only truly offend when it becomes real and forgoes it’s fakeness. ONCE ART BECOMES REAL, IT BECOMES THAT REAL THING and not art. Art often looses its artifice and fakeness when it becomes real as ADVERTISING, or PROPAGANDA, or DOGMA or ISMS, especially conceptual art with a political agenda. And performance art flirts so close with the real. Yet, even Marina Abramovic knows, when performance art becomes real, it is not art, but that real, or is too real to be art. In this, when one is OFFENDED by art, ONE IS either mistakenly or erroneously, seeing or experiencing the fake as real, or ONE IS CONSUMING SOMETHING REAL, and no longer art. The real obviously can be offensive (including exhibiting a real dog in a gallery to truly physically suffer which is no longer art, but real animal cruelty. Thus when art is no longer fake, it is no longer art. Huang Yong Ping’s ‘Theatre of the World’, a sculpture which included living insects and living reptiles in a cage like sculpture, where the insects and reptiles would probably eat each other, is not real cruelty, as in real life we can not be cruel to insects and reptiles, thus his work remains fake and art.) Because ART IS FAKE, ALL ART IS AUTHORLESS, AS THE AUTHOR IS REAL, WHICH IS INCOMPATIBLE, or contradictory TO ART, WHICH IS FAKE. THUS, MICHEL FOUCAULT IS INCORRECT ( “what is an author” essay, 1968 ) AND ROLAND BARTHE ( “the author is dead” essay, 1967 ) IS MORE apt or revealing or accurate, AS THE AUTHOR OF an ART work is second or peripheral to the art work in every sense of meaning and importance and interest and objective; SINCE THE ART WORK LIVES BEYOND THE ARTIST; SINCE ART’S FAKENESS PERMITS UNIVERSAL FREEDOM and most artists’ realness being social beings can not permit universal freedom as social beings are slaves to each other’s emotions, politics, morality, and order; since art’s fakeness CAN BE MORE HONEST THAN THE ARTIST’s realness; since the artist is often too subjective and too tainted with correctness and governance; since consuming the author/artist “more than the art” is ironic and pointless as the artist without their art is nothing, but the art without the artist is something; and since a viewer looks at the art first and the artist second (or in between), even when the artist is the art work. YES OF COURSE, an art work requires a maker, an artist, however, everything needs reality to exist, so this is a mute point. FURTHER, the notion of art’s FAKENESS- a liberating fake, an ideal fake, a sublime fake, a nuanced fake, a romantic fake, allows art’s content to be FAKE but also be relevent and meaningful, as a stage for freedom, expression, and universality, which CAN NOT LIE, SINCE art is already a lie – fake. AN ARTIST can never be art fakeness as they are always real, which is why the artist is not as great as the art work. Even when, the fake from art comes from the artist real, an art work is delinked from the artist; no matter how many Beuys lectures they give, no matter how many Damian Hirst interviews they give, no matter how many Cindy Sherman self portraits they do, THE fake ART IS ALWAYS more brilliant, than the unfake human artist. Because art is fake, the artist can simply make art, with no idea why, with no reason, with no explanation, with no point, and let go of their realness- an artist’s flaw. When let go, art can be art. AND NOT THE PERSONAL POLITICS OF THE ARTIST. YET, art because it is universal, can even have a bias or agenda or personal politic, like it’s maker, but its all fake. Idealistically, romantically, greatly, The real in art returns to the autonomy position in the fake. In this, the fake is the constant in art. And the real is the constant in the artist. IN THIS, the fakeness of an art work permits the artist to let go of social responsibility of art, or any responsibility to art, art needs no moral nor ethic, simply existence. ART NEEDS NO social. AS SUCH, the fake art work also permits the artist to let go of their control of art, or oppression of art, or parcelling of art, or delimiting of art, or countering of art, or obscurification of art, or labelling of art, or genealogy of art, or defining of art, and simply be expressing art. ART does not need an artist. ART does not need a maker. WITH such notions, THE judgemental artist and the judgmental viewer can simply enjoy the immense real beauty of art within a context of loving art’s fakeness. Even when the viewer and artist and curator and art critic and art collector wants to add their biases, experiences, judgment, subjectivity, theory, onto the art, ART keeps its fakeness Culture, an umbrella of types of art, is fake also. Every movie, every television show, every book, every song, every magazine, etc, which is art, is fake and not real, thus can not have a real effect on a person’s mind or social. Individuals who read art or culture as real, are misunderstanding art. Thus, there can be no “cultural appropriation”, as such interprets art as having a real quality, like religion, politics, economics, etc in that cultural appropriation suggests there is a right and wrong of an art work. ART is never right or wrong, rather, simply something to like or not like, or something to consume or not consumer, but never something which can be censored under the rubric of correct or incorrect. WHEN ART is censored, we loose art to rapists of history and rapists of freedom and rapists of art. We only need to correct politics and the social, not art. This is why Museum curators who ban or control any art on any reason of racism or sexism are 100 % incorrect, because if it is art, it is not real. Only propaganda or marketing or life can be edited under such pretense and power notions of fear or sensitivity or fascism. Yet, if movies and television are consumed as real, it is because they are convincing visual images, and some viewers mistakenly confuse these visual images as “real”, or feel such visual images have, or may have, a direct empirical casual effect or psychological influence on real people. Yes, fake art can have a real effect. Yet, only if fake art is made literal or consumed literally. If art is consumed as literal, it is not art’s fault, it is the fault of the consumer, and their lack of knowledge that art is fake. And if art has a literal direct social of psychological quantifiable effect, it is not art, it is real brain washing or marketing or propaganda or hypnotizing chickens. In other words, if Art’s context has changed, into something real, it is no longer ART. Also, the viewer must learn to not read art as real and diminish art of it’s freedom, Or ask the viewer, the consumer, the feminist, the post-colonialist, the capitalist, the marxist, the religious, the masses, the animals, the Gods and Goddesses, to not interpret art as real, and only interpret the real as real. And to love art’s fakeness. Even a not- art or non art thing, which looks like art but is seemingly real or interpreted as real, can still be real art and be fake, if such is the function of the art work or context. But it is fake not-art and not real not- art. REAL ART is always FAKE.

Real Art is Fake  (c) Nietzsche Drager, 2018 ( second edition )

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Rodney Graham

Exhibition: ‘Props and other Paintings’

Charles H. Scott Gallery

curated : Cate Rimmer

Essay, “ Will the real Rodney Graham please stand up ? ”

By Nietzsche Drager

The exhibition starts with a large 4 by 6 foot white text panel on the wall with four photos of Rodney Graham posing as four different Modernist painters or tropes – namely, 1.Music ‘informing’ action painting ; 2. The artist visiting New York and becoming inspired; 3. Emotional personal subject matter from one’s life experience informing one’s art; 4. The studio as a Zen spiritual sanctuary or spirituality in art. With each photo is an “ironic” descriptive text/story/narrative. The installation has been introduced.

Walking beyond this text panel (which could have been made by Rodney Graham and not the curator), I entered into one large gallery room with nine groupings of colored object(s) – props, or paintings, posing as a different “dominant” Modern Art painting movements ie, Cubism, Action Painting, Futurism, etc. Each grouping of props (or paintings), displayed in “clean” Modernist designed curatorial arrangements, pose questions: is this room of props posing as paintings, or are these actually paintings posing as props? Are these props paintings new types of real fake paintings? Is the conceptual idea of a room of props posing as art, art? Is the art not about aesthetics, but posing? In some ways, Graham presents a Duchamp urinal ( R. Mutt ) question of how “non art objects” may function as art if declared art and in an art gallery context. However, Graham adds a twist to this question; let’s say either movie prop or theater prop is often “handmade”, thus like an art work in being made or crafted. A Duchamp urinal is not hand made: it is machine made. Also, one can not pee in Dutch amp’s urinal while it is on display in an art gallery – it does not flush. So Duchamp’s urinal is a fake urinal – not functioning, and art. at the same time. Graham’s prop paintings are real props- functioning, and art at the same time. This detail makes it harder to distinguish in Graham’s work, where the real and fake begin and end. To begin to sift or wade in this transpace, I look at what both colored props and colored paintings share. A painted surface.

Clement Greenburg presented a type of discursive method to analyze, respond to, look at, Modern painting – specifically, a painting’s aesthetics, qualitative notions, empirical characteristics and elements, which articulate one way to suggest, define, discuss, what is a “good” and “bad” painting, and if one can temporarily or partially agree with some of Greenburg’s approach or concepts, the following statement can be seen as less of a biased subjective opinion – or a feeling, and more of a rational analytical observation – a dialectical discourse, which is that most of Graham’s colored “prop/paintings”, are“bad” paintings. They are poorly made paintings or props as paintings. Ironically or necessarily, in fact, in this, most of Graham’s prop/paintings seem “intentionally” “unprofessionally” made (not sloppy nor completely inept, yet simply “bad” painting ). ‘ My Late Early Styles, Part 1: The middle Period’,2007, are prop/paintings “miming” Picasso/Braque/Miro, yet, lack thick oil paint texture, complex layer relations, vibrant color contrasts, composition complexity, of ‘real’ Picasso paintings; as such, Graham’s prop/paintings look like “clumsy, unresolved, flat, dull,” Cubism, and even for Picassoesque paintings, too “silly” in form and shape. In ‘Gong 3’,2006, Graham makes “fake” paintings that seemingly mock/ debunk/ mimes, Claude Tousignant – type- circle- abstract paintings, however, by making “ Gong 3” too painterly, and not flat, it’s a misrepresentational fake of this style. They are “badly” made paintings but maybe “great” props. This is more than a Po/mo strategy to deconstruct, critique, reframe painting by making “bad paintings” ( it is not the academy of the bad, see essay, “ The Academy of the Bad”, Art in America, ( November 1981, Peter Plagens ). Rather, Graham’s “bad” painting is a necessary “intentional” technique/method/approach because he must refrain from creating a “real” paintings, with real interest in the “real” “beauty” of “good”- well crafted and made, painting- it’s seductive layers, it’s salacious colors, it’s engaging and moving spatial compositions, etc . Graham could only “succeed” in his postmodern critique, reframe, deconstruction, contextualization of his subject- Modern Painting and Modern Artist, ( if he is critiquing, reframing, deconstructing ), by making “bad” paintings, because if he made “good” paintings, he would become what he “seemingly” is critiquing, – a “real” Modern painter. Second, there would be no irony here. Third, the viewer would be interested more in looking at beautiful objects more than thinking of ideas transmitted by the objects. Fourth, the exhibition would become real, and not like its title, props, or fake. It is being in this transpace between real and fake, which is the immediate question. Also, It is the mediation of fake, which may be the art, and not the conceptual idea.

In this, we have, 1. real art, 2. real props 3. props imitating art, or 4. art imitating props. The problematic from these four combinations is multiplicitious. For example, is this an art exhibition or is this a movie set or theater stage in a gallery? Is the gallery or art viewer an “actor in a play ” or audience watching a play”, and not a viewer looking at art. This is why Graham has set a discursive trap. The stage. Or is this a not to the staged photograph? Rodney Graham and Jeff Wall are buddies. They come from the same school- the Vancouver School of Photography. Jeff Wall , in his conceptual art photography, incorporates the use of “movie or theatre sets” in his research. In a youtube video, “Jeff Wall Interview: We are all actors” published, 31 Mar 2015, Jeff Wall speaks with Thierry de Duve at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Hublebaek.

Jeff Wall : “ i don’t make sets…. a set comes from cinema…. [ a set are ] things made to resemble

a place up to a point in so as far as necessary. [ the set is a term which ] resonates with

falseness…. [ Jeff discusses his “staged” photographs as not sets but replicas] …..places I

construct are replicas…..[ which ] goes beyond the boundary of set…..[ Jeff discusses

beauty and introduces Marleme ] Mallarme …. the art work never really gives us the

thing, but the sense of the thing…..”

Theirry de Duve :” Mallarme’s definition of beauty [ is ] the absence of the bouquet, the flower

that is not there…..”

Because Grahams’s prop paintings do not have any art work titles, it is just a room with colored objects, the exhibition could literally be a theatre stage. I could see this exhibition at the Western Front Artist Run Center, Vancouver, Canada, as a performance set or this exhibition at the Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, Canada, as a play set. The viewer in this sense exists in an ideological nebulous transspace between an art gallery posing as a set in a play or a play posing as an art gallery. Being in this transpace, makes one pause. I found I was pausing a lot in this show; asking the question, am I looking at this or am I looking at that. It was an enjoyable transpace because we could feel Graham’s humor ever prescient, laughing at us. Mocking us. Or is he mocking Modern Art. Or is he mocking Postmodern Art. Like art itself, like a Modern masterpiece, the question is unanswerable.

Already we see, like Duchamp, Graham’s work is dialectical, posing questions, many questions, unanswerable questions and odd questions. What is posing. What is the act of posing. What is a prop. How can something be fake. To pose or to pretend, is a culturally, socially, politically significant act. It is even a psychologically and sociologically question at times. Can a person even pose. Is there an art to poising. All of these questions I will avoid answering. Instead, I will simple do what Graham’s work keeps motivating me to do, is move on to the next problematic or dialectic. So I will look at this question of prop from an art angle, with the following questions about what is fake in the Art World, in Art History, in the Art Community, such as; is the art dealer a prop, because the paintings they sell are theoretically spirituality and beauty with a price tag, thus, in the view of idealist artists, hypocritical tropes – romanticism marketed, or the economic commodity quotient conveniently ignored, when in fact most art objects, if not all art objects, are clearly integrated into and co-dependent with economic systems of power and social politics and to deny this is part of our capitalist apathy?; is Art History a prop- a fake gesture to “neutrally” document and share and present Art, which ironically has links to “bias” and “ prejudice” and “ agendas” of power in that the authors of art review, documents, critique are career making, star artist making, Canon making, – a collective of dominating, defining, legitimizing, socializing, hierarchical, politicized, images, text, and ideas condensing culture and history and avant gardism into demagogic plays of power ( Foucault ) ?; is the curator a “ gate keeper”, who subjectively categorizes art into predetermined preset normative social political statements collected, contained, ordained by dominant academic political tropes of ‘isms’, theory, rhetoric, political correctness, agendas, programs, ideologies …. etc, and so on, for power and editing the flow of art in the art market? The answer to the above questions, is, yes and no, or maybe. In some ways, these questions may be part of Graham’s work, or maybe they are fake questions. They are cliche questions. Yet, when one starts to exist in the transpace between real and fake, it becomes instinctual to not answer any questions. To stay in between. Perhaps, these above questions are props. And generally, we use props but don’t take props seriously because they are not real. They are a veil. A fake surface read. In fact, Graham may have no subject matter. Since these are props, Graham may be a prop too. It is here one begins to think the exhibition is fucking with us. Or is it? Is it real fucking or fake fucking?

Interestingly, and perhaps thankfully, Graham could not reframe or deconstruct or mock one type or genre of Modern Art or Modern painting – Monochromes. The monochrome painting in the exhibition, ‘ Black Tapestry, 2014’ was the only prop painting which was “real” and not a “prop”. A monochrome art work is impossible to deconstrcut or mock or negate or critique by making a “fake” of it, because the monochrome is a “non” as art. A “non” can not be empirically visually mocked/deconstructed/reversed since it is impossible to “make nothing”. In other words, how can one visually mock “nothingness” by making something: or it is impossible to present a discursive critique on “nothingness” in a visual way. Thus, there can be no “fake” Monochromes in the rubric of Graham’s exhibition thematic of props and art. Graham had to paint a “real” Monochrome. Modernism’s beauty beat postmodernism’s wit.

In this way, the Monochrome painting signifies a visual and conceptual and theory resistance to theoried and discursive reversal. That pure Modern art- it’s poetry, beauty, romantic, ideal, it’s captivating visceral emotion in aesthetic color, it’s dominating psychological imagination in design, it’s challenging experimental conceptual ideation in subject, and it’s stimulating powerful Eros in mastery of materials and technique, are uncooptable or un- deconstructable by Postmodern theory and discourse. In this sense, Poetry wins. Modernism wins. Beauty wins. Romanticism wins. All of which is romantic and ideal. And this makes sense, as the poetry in Modern Art history is immense. To talk poetry in Modern Art ( and its related fragments in Postmodern Art), all one has to say is….. ‘Robert Barry’, Inert Gas Series 1969, … Yves Klein, every blue paintings,…. and Donald Judd – the Chinati Foundation. Then, … Van Gogh , Picasso, Salvador Dali, Agnes Martin, Manet, Anslem Kiefer, Bridget Rilly, Helen Frankenthaler, Turner, and of course, Rothko, De Still, Ad Rienhardt, Jackson Pollack, Claude Tousignant, Guido Monlinari, Robert Motherwell, Yves Gauche, etc…..and then with sculpture, Robert Smithson, De Christo. We can also include the Poetic and Moderns in terms of writers, musicians, architects,…. Sylvia Plath, William S Bourhoughs, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerhals, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe,…. ( perhaps any person can list 20 poetic modern artists/writers/poets/architects without a google.)…and then to say, if we are talking poetry, we can present all history- Shakespeare, Mozart, Byron, Shelly, and so on. Which all function beyond Graham’s deconstruction in that these poetic masters are not fake, they are real, they are not props. Or are they? Is Graham’s installation taking on all of this? If so, he is attempting to deconstruct not just the Canon of Modern Art, but the Canon of Modern beauty. Or, is Graham asking, rather, why so many Postmodern Artists use strategies of polemical discourses to attempt a negation of Modernism, Modern Art, Modern Artists, and Poetry. Or, Is Graham asking is the critique of Modern Art by some Postmoderns a misuse of money, time, energy, and thought? Or has Graham created a new type of poetry. A Postmodern Poetry- a poetry which is rooted in fakeness or the discussion of fake or a poetry in the transpace or a poetry which poses as fake, but not real fake art.

With the question of “real fake art” or “fake real art”, since the question keeps folding and condensing into something philosophical, existential, or cognitively exhausting, the presentation of the question seems to become more important because we can always return to this presentation being propped by an entire room of dedicated props. In other words, the 10 to 15 thousand dollars to present an exhibition where one is looking at fake art asking if it is real, makes one ask, why spend so much time and money to intentionally present fake anything. In this sense, with “Props and other Paintings”, the mediation of art is the art, because we can not find the art up front with the objects, since they may be visually fake, simply colorful objects. And we can’t find the art with the concept, because the concept of art is lost in the transpace between real and fake questions. Mediation, in this exhibit, is the most consistent and tangible thing or the thing many things point too. I am speaking of the term ‘mediation’ in the Marshel Machluhen sense of the word- ‘ the medium is the message’. With Graham’s exhibition, the medium of paint could be the message – the subject, yet since the paintings could be fake, the message could be the questions around the medium, yet since the questions could be possibly fake since the artist, Graham, is posing in the exhibition – see the text panel in the beginning of the exhibition. So if the objects could be fake, and the questions fake, and the artist fake, then perhaps it is the mediation which is real, and thus the art. Yet there are many Machluhen layers in this exhibition; the following Mchulan sentence almost summarizes Graham’s exhibition…. “ Machluhen describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.” Graham’s exhibition is also without any content, props, fake art, and creates an environment like light from a light bulb, not in its conceptual questions, but in the posing of questions, where posing is mediation. Is posing and is mediating the same thing?

I wish to take on the question of whether or not these painted objects are art; whether or not these semi beautiful colored objects are props or art. To answer this question, ask Graham, did you sell these prop/ paintings to an art collector? or did you sign the back of these props with your artist name, Rodney Graham, ( or whatever fake artist name)? or did you write a title of props on the back of these props? All of the these questions bring realness to these fake prop paintings. In this, Graham can not sell these prop paintings, nor sign or title them, otherwise risks making them real, which stops the dialectic between real and fake, which negates the exhibition title, which allows the viewer to then criticize Rodney for being an average real Modern painter as his props are not great real paintings, they are great fakes. However, Yves Klein offers a way out for Rodney Graham in demonstrating how an art work can be outside of the economic system, or how to not ratify a non art object as art while declaring it art:

Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility) is an artist’s book and performance by the French artist Yves Klein. The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine.[1] The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.[1]

Thus, there may be a way Graham can sell his “props” or “fake paintings” turning them into “real” paintings by the sale, and still uphold the concept of fake in his exhibition title. Looking at Yves Klein, if Graham sells his fake prop paintings making them “real” paintings, then declares the process of selling his fake prop paintings as an intentional way to contradict his exhibition and title – ‘ Props and other Paintings’, where the actual fake is himself, the postmodern artist who creates fake art but not to the extent of not selling it to keep the fakeness. In other words, Graham can reverse the fake. Instead of exhibiting fake Modern paintings, he creates a show of fake conceptual intentions, which turns him into a real Modern artist- a.k.a. Dadist or Fluxus artist who deconstructs the current legitimate dominate authoritative art episteme – postmodernism. Ironically, this reversal, not necessarily deconstruction, would then critique the Art Gallery, Curator, Postmodern Art World, Art Market, etc, and not the Modern Artist, his obvious textual critique in the show. It is here again, we can question, is Graham really mocking Postmodernism and heroing Modernism? Is Rodney Graham a Modern Artist? Because even though Postmodern art can be seen as birthed in the 1960s . The 1960s conceptual art had some early 20^th century Modernist qualities. Such as Dadaism. Such as revolutionary acts. Such as avant guardism. In other words, the will to critique.

A summary read of “Props and other Paintings”, (if a summary read is possible in the dialectical transpace between fake and real); the curator is present … since the gallery is present: The art is irrelevant as a prop or art in this curatorial context is not the question rather a lure or muse, and the real the question is about the numerous subtexts, such as questions on the artist, the artist role, art history, art viewer, and the wasteland of industrial postmodern art being mass produced by millennial art slaves and their art teachers indoctrinated by a 1970s fear of everything Modernist since it was birthed as a revolution vaguely near fascism in politics and societal norms of control and order: the conceptual artist is present, I believe, but not as a Postmodern artist, rather a Modern artist creating Postmodern Poetry – poetry not rooted in romanticism, but posing or irony.

Will the real Rodney Graham please stand up ? (c) 2014, Nietzsche Drager

Rodney Graham (Artist Website) : http://www.artnet.com/artists/rodney-graham/

2.  ( Artist) Bernd Fuchs : ( Art Work Title) Augenweider, 14 cm, come to mind and made in 2010, wood of lime-tree, eye: obsidian,apatit,chalk, leaving the plain reality of: concrete

Art Review: ” Bernd Fuchs + Augenweider + The philosophy of Looking”

by Nietzsche Drager

“Augenweider”: the old german word AUGENWEIDER means something astonishingly

beautifull..a meadow for the eyes..I think about the process of optical reception being very

intensive and making you forget about everything outside the meadow..so an optical

attraction can be a single point (..mathematically endless small)..as soon as you RECEIVE it, it

really starts to be really endless (wow,mindblowing)..and its feeding you(r

brain)..nourishing.makes you go.. the AUGENWEIDER is a word that doesn`t exist

(yet).grammatically it is a being that is augenweiding..(haha is that correct?)..the things he

sees make him go..leave reality..he is jumping..attraction reaction. looking for more. the

socle is square, concrete-plane reality

– Bernd Fuchs , Artist Statement/Description

The above statement was submitted by the artist: from here I will begin a dialogue with the work, in a literal sense because this entity is approachable; which is of great importance, as it seems the eye is looking into our eye, into us, speaking to us. A conversations happen between two consciousness or two objects or two ideas, willing to be a sender and receiver ; I will return to this. I would like focus on the focus of the work- the eye. And in this, develop a series of notes in the form of paragraphs.

I. Immediate readings- and from popular culture,…. Animation,…. in the sense of being a character for children, …a toy…. anthropomorphizing the eye, ….its animation however, to look at this one point, invites our relations with the work, and then subsides, relinguishes, evokes to philosophy, German Philosophy, French Philosophy, and Taoist Philosophy, which is then, although not necessarily sequential, overturned by, the central detail of the eye- its primary realist identifier of color, blue,a retina and pupil; and this accent of realism fragments the reading into a complexity out of its jouance play, because it takes us out of the fantasy into the real, into the philosophical reference to Augenweider, ( the works title) which deepens the fantasy into a reasoned irrational experience of self criticality or social criticality/question/discourse/dialectic of, on , for Beauty.

II. Eye- if in a subjective gaze on objective beauty, a meadow, a place, or a feeling, of Ultimate Beauty, there seems to be a hint of foreboding, in the unreal shape of the eye, the diagonal, sharp, dramatic, which in an informal reading of body language, I deduce, is partial fear, concern. However, blurring this question of fear, hesitation, concern, seems to be also, and this is the impossibility of truly knowing or grasping non verbal communication so in this my suggestion, compassion, that positions the beauty in a shroud of dualist emotions,- fear and compassion. Or obsession, as the eye is intently focused on a or the beauty not necessarily Sublime- pain and pleasure, yet intertwined emotions, so not conflictual, but emotions meeting each other in the midst of Beauty. And in this trans-sublime moment, ( my articulation of this moment where trans is not only between but with ) as the sculpture seems to freeze a moment, something astonishingly beautiful….a meadow for the eye…..the eye is the meadow…”.in ” the eye is the meadow of all, total, feeling, all, total, emotion, all, total, the essences of the universe or self ( or something Immense), that we can partially link to…. When eyes or I’s meet….unified …in this moment is….. Augenweider, yet also preceding this moment. One is presented layers of how beauty can happen.

III. The eye is full, the blue of the eye is deep and in a reverse interpretation, this could be the meadow often blue is an expanse, sky, ocean, where one is, to reference nature, lost and found in the Sublime…or mused in the Sublime, feeling ones presence in the Sublime. Yet, within the structure of the eye, is unreal exaggeration, as the lower lid for any eye cannot present itself as such: its not concretely possible. And its exaggeration brings the work to a fricative relations with the realist depiction of the human eye. When fiction and the real, fuse, clash, meet, relate, the moment is ungrounded; I sense this may also be an important quality of Augenweider: it is moving and possibly fleeting, both monumentally and intimately. Beauty can not be controlled or defined, in this sense, and in Bernds depiction of the Augenweider.

IV. Important in understanding Augenweider, is a type of connecting; and in most situations, people connect first with either vision or smell or sound, then touch, etc, however primarily vision seems to be the confirmation that binds or organizes the other senses. Or introduces us to the beauty. The body understands its environment with cognitive reason first with sight. The impact of sight usually is the sense that will give the individual a primary reading, which then can suggest to the other senses, or the other senses can then confirm the sense of sight. In this, what I receive from Bernds work, is possibly a question of the value of sight: do we trust our sight: do we know our sight. In a sense, phenomenological questions on what is sight and its function in terms of how we know Beauty. Can there be Augenweider without sight. Or without senses. Is Augenwieder in our senses. As I expand on probably obvious philosophical questions in the History of philosophy. When I look at Bernds, piece, the eye is walking off the edge of its platform. So the eye may be walking off the edge, while it is in a trance of looking at beauty. Again, a suggestion in philosophical inquiry, does Augenweider spellbound us. Does Beauty destroy us. Again, sublime, pain and pleasure, or destruction and pleasure construction. Does Beauty tame us into unknown experiences or release us into unknown experiences. What I sense from Bernd’s piece, is that these, and perhaps already asked and greatly discussed questions in Continental and Traditional Philosophy, are posed to us in the form of Art; posed to us visually to see these philosophical musings.

V. If then, we are the beauty being gazed upon; our beauty is mixed with this gaze upon us – an interchange between two loci of different beauties or similar beauties or beauty and unbeauty: the beauty courses in numerous variations of self-reflexive and selfdeflecting; the beauty is also between the I and the other; and perhaps this is the, as the artist says, “ intense “, on the edge of the edges of the middle, of beauty or unbeauty….or.nonbeauty….or prebeauty…..or transbeauty….or ( one can add numerous types of states of beauty).which can’t be defined, yet neither can beauty itself, in ourselves, or in the meadow. Yet we are imbibed by beauty,- the great size of the eye gazing at Augenweider, and like the expression of this walking eye, we trance walk into it, dazed and confuses, even it will take us to the edge, an edge, to fall into either an abyss of beauty or non beauty.

VI. We can’t truly know: such is a fundamental question in philosophy, especially in Kant, Hiedegger, Hegel, because this act of knowing is either suspect, cannot be located, or diffused with uncertainty, yet with Bernd’s eye we seem to know that Beauty is gripping, it fully takes hold of one; and this is where art can describe in physical language the undescribed in experience, or feeling. However, art is also limited in this as well. The size of the eye can be interpreted also as simply metaphor, large, and not a signifier of emotion to grip is a charged moment or feeling. Yet, to know whether the beauty we perceive is in us, this walking eye, or outside of us, may be less of a question and more of an dynamic representation of how Beauty functions. Paradoxically, beauty is not known through seeing, our experiences, rather, post- experience, after the moment, in reflection, in looking at the residue of beauty inside ourselves, the affect, the effect, the residue of beauty, the impact of beauty: which can tear us apart and/or tear us together.

VII. In my writing, the word “we” appears frequently, I believe Bernd’s work is about a we, that this Eye, an I, is not in itself, rather is linked with something, perhaps another I, or Eye, or you, and I: so this seems to not be an isolated figure, even as it is isolated physically, it is part of something mentally, emotively, consciously, or metaphysically, or iconically, metaphorically, symbolically. Do all of these merge, in Augenweider.

VIII. To return to the animation of the Eye, it is in the act of play, where there may be the greatest, most, hyper, freedom to experience Beauty; that the work describes the beauty of play, and in play- its Freedom, expression, chance, openness, one’s Identity forms. This may be why the figure’s body is overtly an eye- Beauty, its Identity is made by its perceiving, linking, to inner or external Beauty through Play. children’s play generates Knowledge, Identity, Social complexities. Because of play’s openness, its freedom, ideas and thoughts and actions, can break formality, into new knowledges for one’s Identity or experience. I see Bernds piece as presenting an exploration of a philosophical inquiry via play: yet not of play, and also not dependant on the play in this socio-pshycological philosophical exploration.

VIIII. The following statement is one we must be prepared to also address In the eye, is the meadow of beauty. Conceptualizing this to its complete meaning, suggests that all of the beauty of time, space, or any ephemeral measurement, exists in ourselves, and perhaps to be known by external confirmations; thus, through experiences we see ourselves in a deep social psychological spiritual sense, and that the confirmation becomes a key unlocking our Beauty.Hegel and Heidegger, in the question of being,- There-being and here-being, in a totality reaches its form in beauty-being.

X. Intimacy. The sculpture is very small, approachable. With intimacy, there is an opprotunity for engagement and to share in the experience Bernd’s Sculpture presents and represents. Often, and this may be a leap, many ancient societies sculpted small figures- tribes in Africa, pre Egyptians, Egyptians, and Eskimos, to name only a few. The small figurines carved were essential in telling stories about such things that language, and words may not impart to the younger generations. If Bernd is continuing this process, sharing through intimate sculptural forms, such is something that stands as an iconic art tradition. The artist as story teller on notions, ideas, of spiritual philosophical relevance as individuals in most societies obsess with the practical, work and survival. Societies who physically represent philosophy or theology or spirituality or metaphysics in art, have Cultural depth. This is the second time I have mentioned the word ” deep(th)”; because Bernd’s sculpture is a vehicle for thought in this sense of one’s thinking relations to experiencing Beauty.

XI. Conversation. The dialogue between myself and the Eye opens my eyes to dialogue. What do I see in seeing. What do I feel about being overwhelmed by Beauty. Can I converse with Beauty. Is a conversation with Beauty how one knows Beauty. Do I have a relationship with Beauty. Can I control this relationship ( control meaning creative the moments of Augenwieder. Power is in Beauty. Opening oneself to see Beauty opens power. For Beauty, perhaps. Then the self. Then others. It is quite curious, infact, that Brends, walking eye is alone on the stage, platform, experiencing Beauty, or about to, or engaged to. This may be a German notion of the Sublime where one is often alone in nature Casper Friedrich’s painting of the monk by the seaside, where Beauty, like the Cosmos, like Epiphany, appears to us when we are beautifully alone. Or, alone with Beauty. Just us two. Not interfered by others. Beauty is our soul mate. Perhaps, too, when we find a lover, and can gaze deeply, like Brend’s sculpture, we are alone with Beauty, our lover. To think Beauty needs a mate, us, is also quite an interesting concept. Beauty can’t live without our seeing it. I would like this. Beauty needs a lover, you, or I or they or we, or eyes: open eyes, eyes prepared to be consumed and in the threshold of engagement, a conversation in the Beautiful moment with Beauty that takes us to edges.

Bernd Fuchs + Augenweider (c) Nietzsche Drager, 2010

1.    “Tree Walker”, Christoph Both-Asmus, 2010,  Sandberg Institute ( Holland ) M.F.A Graduation Open House. and a proposal for Proposal Kunstvlaai 2010 )

Sublime Origin: A Short Essay on Christoph Both- Asmus’s Tree Walker

by Nietzsche Drager

” The Idea of this project is that I would stand, in some sort of performance

high and on the edge of a treetop in the last ends of the brunches, the borderline

between earth and sky. My plan is to make expeditions into remote wild nature in

order to perform in places like a snowed in conifer forest in <!–?alaska or in the 100

meter high treetops of the jungle. in between those major expeditions, I plan to

explore this performance in a total of 100 X in many different places under all

thinkable weather conditions and all day and night times. About the process of this

100 performances I am making a documentary film.”

– Christoph Both- Asmus, 2010

The word “origin”, of which I selectively refer to this word from Christoph- Both Asmus’s in a skype discussion on his work; commenced this writing where in only one google search on this word, origin, I found- “ August Wilhelm von Schlegel A.W. Schlegel (Sept. 8, 1767, Hanover – May 12, 1845, Bonn) was a German essayist, translator and poet. Although the philosophical dimension and profundity of his writings remain underrated, … origin language must have been purely sensual, i.e. a mere form of expression of emotions through sounds.” ( 1 ), begins to open questions of emotions, a quality in Both-Asmus’s piece, yet also emotion in relation to existence, reality, self, meaning, Truth, knowing, perception, these core philosophical precepts, which function in Both- Asmus’s work in an actualizing or presence/ing of such philosophy in the work’s subtext, and metaphorically coexists with his materials and process in the work’s text: like a painting being made more real; made as life. ” the origin was three years ago flying back from <?Japan flying over Russia, looking out the window and seeing rivers…(to paraphrase)…in the landscape like tree branches, weaving in between the mountians, these patterns and similarities……..” Christoph Both- Asmus) This moment, presents first, the pinnacle of how an idea moves through the artist,- called inspiration, towards a physical making of something, or physical act. Like Plato’s notion, “According to this theory the artist, perhaps by divine inspiration, makes a better copy of the True than may be found in ordinary experience.” ( 2 ), that exemplifies one relationship to our ideas with our body with our environment, as cohesive and turbulent and sublime, as one type of description of mind/ body /space relations with three words. Second, looking at these three words, particularly sublime, the everyday experience as art is sublime with a History, in Both Asmus’s work like the work from the Futurists to Tzara to Apollinaire to Marcunis to Guy Dubourd to Cage to Beuys to Kaprow ( to view the art/life from a contemporary viewpoint, as the connectedness to art and life may be sourced to ancient traditions as well) More so, life and art merge: life and art speak on and under each other: life and art make love to each other, fuck each other, kiss: this interrelating, this collaboration, in one aspect, is, in order to see a life experience remaking the life’s apparent order into a dialectic ( a dialectic of; with; for self, (or) of; with; for other, (or) of; with; for being- and potentially, Hiedeggers’s There-being and Here- Being becoming Transbeing, my assertion) into life experience being only art. To quote Both- Asmus “ everyday….exciting…unknown…abstraction….beuaty” Aesthetic in this sense, is a way of being located in all notions of being. Both- Asmus articulates his work as engaging the “borderline” between the tree’s edge meeting the sky’s edge, and one can see this as either a question of media, space/line/space- from Both Asmus’s history- informel / Tasche / abstraction painting, an encompasing approach,- the integrated body as the process + objectness iconalization defining the mind – synthesized in transformation of the self. Or a philosophical question of borderline- limits, energy, dualistic forces, ying + yang,…( and to poetically further this).. Idealism versus Reality, or Idealism versus Romanticism, ( and also Idealism meeting Reality, and, Idealism sharing Romanticism, [ and also numerous variations of other polemics, dualities, dichotomies]) In this sense, the philosophical precepts become multivalent multiplicities that act as (Trans). Yet, a key address of the structure and function of this borderline is power in these notions of Art, Self, Life, that in and outside of Both Asmus’s work one can enter by realizing his words ( which I read as an axiom of a personal imperative for, the viewer, Both- Asmus, the other, History) ,.,.,,” Beauty of Reality”: or to seek to be in this with conviction and ( t )ruth ( I refrain, only in writing and momentarily, from a capital “T” to sensitize the force of my critique of contemporary discourses delimiting universals) It is here we make “visible + sensible” ( 3 ) the nuance of power in of with universals, yet power not about control, domination or ego, rather as Foucault expresses on the concept of Thought, which I see as elaborating a complexity of power “ What distinguishes thought is that it is something quite different from the set of representations that underlies a certain behavior: it is also something quite different from the domain of attitudes that can determine this behavior. Thought is not what inhabits a certain conduct and gives it its meaning: rather, it is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and to question it as to its meaning, its conditions, and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem.” ( 4 ) Philosophical thought is on the edge of moments and history and self. Both Asmus is making this Freedom of Thought experienced. Standing on the edge of branches.

1.)http://www.rowan.edu/open/philosop/clowney/Aesthetics/philos_artists_onart/ Plato.htm / Aesthetics – Plato’s Aesthetics Plato didn’t take the “art by divine inspiration” theory very seriously. But many ancient, medieval, and modern artists and aestheticians have found it … http://www.rowan.edu/philosop/clowney/Aesthetics/…/plato.htm – Cached – Similar Feb 9 2010

(2) http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?page=2&query=origin, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe SEP gratefully acknowledges founding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, The American Philosophical…plato.stanford.edu/ – Cached – Similar

( 3.) TBA

( 4.) Paul Rabinow editor, Translated by Robert Hurley and Others, Michel Foucault: Ethics/ Subjectivity and Truth: Essential works of Foucault 1954- 1984 Volume I,: The New York Press, © 1984 USA, from the essay, Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault. Pp 117,

Sublime Origin: A Short Essay on Christoph Both- Asmus’s Tree Walker (c) Nietzsche Drager, 2010

( Short essay written for Both-Asmus’s Sandberg Institute ( Holland ) M.F.A Graduation Open House. and a proposal for Proposal Kunstvlaai 2010 )

TREEWALKER VIDEO :  http://www.thetreewalker.com/

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Art Work Review: Sylvia Grace Borda

photographs (c) sylviagraceborda 2016

THE ANALOG CAMERA’S NEW SIMULACRA

by Nietzsche Drager

“The ‘Developing Processes’ exhibition and to CSA Space tonight! For those who asked a
few more sample images below from the series ‘Cameras and Watercolour sunsets’ The
works are digital montages of both watercolour paintings juxtaposed with amateur
snaps of cameras available online for sale.”

-Sylvia Grace Borda, Artist Statement for exhibition, “Developing Processes”, CSA Space. 2009

 ‘ Developing Processes’ is an exhibition of watercolored painted beaches with collaged images of an analog camera replacing a person on beach in the sunset. This works presents several layers, one , a question of how the media- camera is now the subject, thus subjectivization, two, a playful question of the traditional polemic between the art tradition of painting and photography, ( or the question of the best media or greatest media or whatever media can be more real ), third, the postcolonial politcs of dominant societies exploiting other societies for their wealth or culture, or in this case, pleasure principle, or pleasure economy, fourth, Technology versus or in dynamic critical relations to Nature, fith, the desire to represent or capature or re-see our experiences, sixth, how technology may or may not mediate- influence, direct, inform, define, our social experiences, seventh, the history of the mechanisitic developments of the camera, from analog to digital, and eight, a question of the Simularca and repetition. I choose the easiest to discuss in a short diatribe; what is the postcolonial vaction, aka. Dead Kennidey’s, “Holliday in Cambodia”, or The Sex Pistols,” Holliday”. These diatriaves of anit- capitalist discourse from socialists? or environmentalists? while in Pop Culture or Mass Culture, from soft capitalists in the Tourist industiry, the opposite diatrives, the marketing of party colonizing the beaches promoting a tech work based lifestyle. Essentially, our Western cliche vacations did not reach cliche status economically. They were not overused economically. They were not overused politically. They were overused in images. The advertising of vacation getaways is a substantial consistent sourse of magazine ad themes. Especially if one includes the semi nude or semi naked models. The sunsets, however, may have become meta cliche or hyper cliche. Especially wiht the invention of 1000 photographs of a digital camera to 36 photos of an analog. Sonehow, thought, regardless of digital or analog, one could guestimate that the sunset, nest to roses, and semit naked or semit nude models, is the most quantified documented subject in the history of the camera. To photograph the sunset, gives both the toursit and suset and exploited beach community, a quantum physics proof of existence and economic value, in relations. The sun brings the Tourist and beach together. However, if intimacy is a question, why not paint the sunset instead of photograph the sunset? Why not use a different medium? The simple answer is it is easier to photograph a subject than use paint. One click. And the result is a perfect image. It is a mini realistic painting. A Rembrant. Yet not just any masterpiece, it is a mass produced image. Billions of Rembrant sunsets. Each with it’s own narrative. Globaly, since the invention of the camera by Kodak, in 1888, there must bebillions of photographs of sunsets. Interchangable photographs? Do we need even millions of photos of sunsets? Are these different or the same sunsets? Is the sunset being over documented, like oversharing on the internet?  What does one billion photos of the same thing socially and politically mean? About the person and about Societies?  However, a;so, do we need millions of mass produced paintings of the sunsets? We have millions of landscape paintings? But landsapces have differences. The sunset, are the iconic similar. Is this a question of our facination with the subject or the medium? Does our photographed sunset confirm, define, categorize, archive, corelates our environment to our experience of the sunset? Or is a photograph of our environment now part of a lexicon of a dialectical Global Environmentalism and the politics of the future?  And existentially only in the camera is the sunset real. It seems the camera is the Mona Lisa here. There is something romantic about these watercolors. It is the camera. It is special. The analog camera experience. In fact, carrying the heavy blulky analog camera, loading the plastic film, fixing the F- stop, taking the photo and having to wait to see if its a good photo, places one in the moment. Pausing in the moment. This pause is the media. To notice or have an awareness is a media. Our media, our technology, permits us, and negates, many types of experiences and reflections. The technology we make is human: it is our identity.

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Similarily, our nature makes us human.   In terms of traditional analog film, much has become technologically extinct- ‘ Techno-extinction”- a socio-political economic construct of the market and institutions. Can we view technology like living species and ecological environments. Interestingly, and generally speaking, in the current global production of 35mm analog film and other traditional film, Polaroid camera film to date, is only being produced in one factory in the world, in Germany- near Enschede, Netherlands, in Munster, Germany. ‘Technological availability’- which perhaps is a fetish myth or romantic myth, however minute a myth and delimited production, currently exists in niches, probably because of artist interest or hobby enthusiasts: it is currently possible,2014, in Vancouver, Canada,  to buy Hi- 8 analog cassette tapes and mini D V analog cassette tapes also. Perhaps, these niche markets- like traditional Japanese ink drawings or Indigenous Native Hiada or Nootka wood carving, keep enthusiasm and manifest for analog film’, manual 35mm cameras, and dark rooms ( I view this as ‘media intimacy’- the spiritual interest in ” imperfect” – Derrida, and Marshall Mcluhans- cold media ( Mcluhan suggests video is hot media, so detailed their is less to imagine, and cold media, like drawing and painting, permitting more imagination)- both such Derridean and Mcluhanesque notions countering the “perfection” and “fascism” of pixel perfection in photography; the grain of the photograph being an earth element- grains of sand.  ‘Older photography approaches’ – pre digital, ie. pre 1990’s approximately, in their grainy, or black and white, or less digitally “exact” re-representations and rendering and reportage, afford more imagination. I love young artists for this interest because the media gives art essence- discursivity in visual form.

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A question for the Camera industry and humanity; one semi- coalesced with photography machines now, is how to maintain a gesture towards a ‘permanent presence of selected previous technology’- meaning to continue a small production and circulation past technological soft ware- film, and some hardware compatibility functions in newer cameras, facilitating a parallel stream with the “new camera technologies”- new digital, to keep a Mediated Diversity and plurality in Culture agency and a nuanced mediated Social Body. Yet, even with such a possible ‘preservationist’ idea, we could see a counter position (with most theory and philosophy) that there can be no Machine Utopia, or Machine Difference. However, a subtext of these key issues- availability and diversity of past camera technology for every subsequent generation, are discourses towards a question of having a continued dialectical engagement with the thought of the machine, or images of us composed by the machine; and our use of machines being also the machine dialectic, this inter-connectivity, the relations, between social function, machine function, self functions within and outside ‘Differance’- the realm of complex non market decisions and facilitation. Because our machines are directly, often, co-related and woven to our everyday life moments, determining how we represent our poetic moments, a question of market forces defining technological availiblity may include a space for idealism of technology defining availability. And in understanding, exploring, expressing, documenting, our poetic moments via technology- cameras and other media, we are poised in a societal and cultural and political polemic, simply by our use of Media; that we, as consumers of technology and producers of images, seem to be releasing our poetry to the control of our technology, not our ideals or creativity, thereby instituting mass moments over the agency and individuality of the poetry of our moments. In this, one can suggest, that the simulacra, perhaps, is shifting or morphing or navigating from things and objects, to moments.

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THE ANALOG CAMERA’S NEW SIMULACRA (c)  Nietzsche Drager,  2011

Sylvia Grace Borda ( Artist Website)  http://www.sylviagborda.com/ 

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