Archive for February, 2008
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008I’ve spent the better part of this morning sifting through folders of old papers – a necessary task because I had materials from classes going back to my Bard days intermingled with articles and things I intend to read in the near-ish future. After a substantial reorganizing effort, much has been disposed of, the old is hidden away from sight, and more recent print-outs filed where I can get to them easily.
However, it also has unearthed some curiosities that I’ve been holding on to all these years. And so I bring you back to Vienna, 2004, where on one of my museum trips I thought to transcribe the inscriptions accompanying two installations. One was a manifesto by Lebbeus Woods, which thankfully is included in that Wikipedia article (which saves me the trouble of typing it up). The other is the statement by artist Donald Judd accompanying his installation of the Dubsky room. This installation was part of a series of items from the decorative arts (carpets, furniture, etc.) in collections curated by contemporary artists. Curiously, the Wikipedia article on Judd informs me he died a decade before I ever saw the room, but I suppose that’s the art world for you. Without further ado, here are his thoughts on the Dubsky room.
I was doubtful about the idea of artists making installations of earlier objects; I am still doubtful. This should be the responsibility of the curators of the objects, despite my continuous criticism of the generally artificial way in which objects are installed. To have artists make such installations is a likely way to continue devious installation. I accepted the problem as a favor to the museums and accepted as a premise for myself that I would not contradict the judgment of the curator responsible, Christian Witt-Döring. I think we did our best.
The museum’s premise, the installation’s fact, was that the Dubsky room, originally a room in a palace, had to be reconstructed in a much larger room of the museum. I was told there was no alternative. This room could be remade either in one of the corners of the exhibition room, leaving an awkward right angle for the other furniture, or it could be remade in the center of the room, leaving a symmetrical space and possibly establishing the good idea of a room within a room. I asked that this be done.
The Dubsky room is too large and awkward but placed it in the center was the right decision. This room and most of the other furniture were made in the 18th Century, for the aristocracy. Its grandeur is uncertain and therefore excessive. It’s uneasy; Chardin is not uneasy. All architecture and most installations are now uneasy. Why is Chardin simple, strong and easy?
The separate pieces of furniture are placed symmetrically, usually in pairs, usually opposite each other. A rectangular space usually determines this. The positions of the furniture were also carefully decided in regard to size, color and kind. I asked that the moulding under the ceiling of the large room be repeated around the exterior of the Dubsky room to further incorporate it into the 16th Century space made in the 19th Century and to reduce the excessive generality of its exterior. This is a small, uneasy room planted in a large, doubly uneasy room. I think it should be in the basement. But Witt-Döring and I did our best, uneasily.
A shout out to all of homies back in Massachusetts:
(We the Robots is a pretty good web comic I discovered through Google Reader’s recommendations system. Which is handy little thing, by the way.)
This is a post of supreme geekiness. I’m putting it up in case someone is out there Googling the same terms I did, all day today. Everyone else is welcome to ignore it.
I finally got around to acquiring the January update for my iPod touch this week. In general, this probably isn’t blog-worthy, but I was really impressed by the new Google Maps tool. On the iPhone, this application tries to locate you by triangulating your position based on cell phone signals. On the touch, that information isn’t available, so it uses wireless networks to approximate your location.
Here’s what happens when I use this tool from my apartment:
Depending upon how you look at it, the result is is either completely wrong (off by 2,975 miles), or exactly right (but dated by 18 months). Going with the latter, I think that’s quite a feat.
This is perhaps the best meta-joke I’ve come across in a while. First, read the following xkcd comic. Now go and google “died in a blogging accident“. Get it?
Via Neil Gaiman: a blog devoted entirely to pictures of misused quotation marks. Just yesterday we find gems such as alleged candy and what are they scooping. Good stuff.
While I’m using friends from Bard as excuses to link to Neil Gaiman’s blog, here are a couple of bits for Adrianne. It seems that no matter how long you’ve been writing for a living, or how long the lines are at your book signings, some chapters:
There’s an odd point in writing, when you reach a bit that you’ve known was going to happen for years. Years and years. And then it doesn’t happen like you thought it would…
It’s as if there’s a ghost-story behind the text and nobody knows it’s there but me.
Still on Chapter Seven of The Graveyard Book, but I’m well into the last half of the chapter, and it no longer feels like I’m walking towards the horizon, with the horizon retreating as I advance… I’ve written about eleven easy pages today, and cannot wait to get back to it. If I’m still awake and writing I may pull an all-nighter.
It barely feels like I’m writing it. Mostly it feels like I’m the first one reading it.
are better than others:
The Graveyard Book is back on track, I think, and the thorny and evil thicket that was Chapter Six has been traversed and, I am told, does not sound like I was making it up as I went along, but sounds as if I knew what it was about the whole time. This makes me happy, because it was miserable writing it.