Thursday, March 5, 2009

Am I


thinking about language in spatial categories? ja!
words in spatial settings? ja!
stories to tell? nein.
fiction? vielleicht.
modes of narration? ja.
masquerade? auch.
mockery? definitely.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

this is not an album cover

as this is not facebook!
Within the past two weeks I got the third request on facebook about creating something. In fact it already started months ago with the aufforderung: grab the book that is nearest to you, go on page 52 and pick the fifth sentence, this is your status and now, go and post these instructions (oder so..). The next one was about telling 25 random things about you and then tagging friends who should do the same, followed by: put your i-pod on shuffle and answer the following questions with song-titles and finally the album art experiment: again follow this link to wikipedia, that one to flickr, photoshop and voilĂ  your album! Not to mention the tagging of your friends in all of these cases/experiments(??)/(chance) operations. One might say these are all (not so) silly games to create content, content and content on facebook, checking out people who share (or do not) the same tools, programs, music preferences, etc... but what made my little thinking motor going in this respect is this:
Randomness. what does that mean? there's no such thing as 25 (or whatever) random things about you because as soon as you think about them and tell them, they loose their randomness. Why does anyone want to tell "random" things about herself ? Is it the urge to share something secret with your friends? on facebook? what an idea? But isn't facebook linked in a weird way to a level of authenticity that e.g. chat-rooms never attained? So it is a way of self-classification, of making it easier for others to grasp a level of your personality that they probably would never get in a simple conversation. Am I being sarcastic again? Creating your very own, very personal narrative that is ironically detached from you as it is mediated and as it is freed from all possible lapses, wrong gestures, default speeches etc... that could occur otherwise. As if a consistent characterization through classification is still possible.
Second: the creative operation and the question who does not cheat? Is it different to painting by numbers (Malen nach Zahlen). The creative process of selecting is delegated to a machine -though there are some parameters left for design- this is nothing new beziehungsweise this maybe used as strategy to erase the personal gesture of an author. however this case is slightly different as the author remains present in the "game". these false chance operations remind me much more of tarot, numerology or ancient practices of fortune-telling where every detail becomes of significant importance and the order/classification reveals a whole, a truth finally!
The temptation lies within the fact that it can be easily done during the morning coffee, a coffee-break, afternoon-tea-time etc... It is as if we were prone to consume our own creative practices.
Anyway, I would call this album: planes of golden particles. Schlicht.