We’re back bitches

Holla at cho boys

 

I was going to

make another blog post about something that I think is cool.  But last time i got yelled at.

” what’s with all skateboarders these days being lame, art? Come on!”

That was a quote I read yesterday by a buddy of mine, Casey Ross.  Casey is a good dude, and a really good skateboarder.  That quote however caught me a little off guard.  It seems weird to me to be a skateboarder, and be adamantly opposed to liking “art”.

When I think of skateboarding, I like to think of it in regards to art.  I know many people could make the argument that it’s not art, that it’s sport or what ever, but hear me out.  This debate has been going on for quite some time now.  I believe since skateboarding first took stage on national television.  Otherwise known as the beginning of time.

It is around this time where the whole “badassness” that skateboarding presented it self as in the past started to disappear.

But that was just the very beginning.  In today’s skateboarding the spectrum from jock to artist is extremely wide.  We now have pro skaters who look like this; who do all the contests and win all the money

to so called “artist” skaters who are “using the streets as their canvasses”

But what really makes one type of skateboard an “art form” where the other type of skateboarding is nothing more then ” Jocko competition”?  I believe the answer lies in where the skateboarding is taking place.

When people are skateboarding in a contest, they really are doing nothing more then provideing entertainment to the spectators.  They are the cliched “gladiators of our generation”

These guys are put in a specific location and told that if they do “cool” tricks they will get money.  They are risking life and limb for the benefit of a paying customer who most of the time has no clue as to what they are watching.  It is a mentality like that which can cause someone who stumbled upon skateboarding because it was an anti-team sport to view it like a jock.  Money can make people do  very strange things

Now I’m not saying money is bad, or it is wrong for someone to desire money.  No, not at all.  All I am saying is that when money becomes involved, especially in something like skateboarding, it’s going to change it.  I’m sure Greg Lutzka has the same passion and love for skateboarding that Nate Boussard has, but one is considered a jock, while the other isn’t.  It is the nature of skateboard competition that is the problem here.

It would be as if you put Picasso, and Rembrandt in a room together and told them that who ever made the hardest painting wins money.  It’s just not possible.  There are different styles and techniques to consider.  It’s the same exact thing with skateboarding.  How are you going to be able to judge two completely different skateboarders who skate nothing alike?  It’s just not possible.  It’ takes away the art aspect completely.  That aspect that is art in skateboarding is the ability to be completely abstract.  If you focuse how you have to skate, then really what’s the point anymore besides money?

Art? You Call That Art?

The other day I was surfing the internet, bored, and I came across this New York City performance art piece known as ” Bodies in Urban Spaces”.  These pictures are really cool and were taken by Bryan Derballa.  I am just borrowing them here for this blog post.

I have always been a big fan of performance art.  To me, it is really exciting seeing the art being created in the present moment, rather than seeing the finalized product.

Now I know that art is sometimes considered totally subjective, and that one persons view of art often times is different then another persons view.  But is art one hundred percent objective?  and should it be?  Should kitsch art such as:

Jeff Koons sculpture “Michael Jackson and Bubbles”

be in the same museum or gallery’s as non kitsch art, quality art such as Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 extremely famous piece “The Fountain”

What makes Duchamp’s urinal “high art”, while Koons sculpture of Michal Jackson and his pet monkey “Kitsch”? Well I believe the answer is that it is the substance of the art that gives it its quality.  While Koons’s piece may be more visually appealing, it is in fact saying nothing.  “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” is nothing more than a glorified lawn ornament.  On the other hand Duchamps’ piece may look terrible as it is nothing more than an old french urinal, but it’s saying something.   Just like this urinal would, if it could talk…

Duchamps’ Fountain is making a social point about art in the early twentieth century.  The piece is talking about how, by calling an object something other than it really is, it changes that object entirely.  Because think about it, what really differentiates a fountain from a urinal?  They both drip water.  By calling a Urinal a fountain, Duchamp has changed the object from something people pee in, into something look at in terms of beauty.

It is a play off of famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and his concept of Semiotics.

In very general terms, what Saussure describes in “Course in General linguistics is that people can understand words because they understand concepts.  Saussure called the concepts signified and the words signifier.  Because a person can understand what the signified is, they will understand the signifier.    An example of this is when someone says the word tree, you can identify what the word tree is.  You would identify with that signified.  But if you were asked to draw a tree, your tree  would look very different then what the person next to you, who was asked to draw a tree would look like.  You would each draw different signs, because your signs would be different in each of your heads. Here’s an example

This concept gets a lot more confusing later in the 20th century when  Jacques Derrida and his famous essay “Differance” come into play.  But there’s no reason to get into that right now.

Looking at Saussure, you can see that Duchamp was on to something with his piece, “The Fountain”. But what about the pictures at the top of the page? What about “Bodies in Urban Spaces”. Are these street performers who are doing nothing but wearing colors and posing in weird positions considered art?  I think the answer is somewhat obvious, but I’ll explain nonetheless. The location of where their performance took place is almost as important to the piece as the actual performance.  If you look, you will see that they performed their piece on Wall St, and at the New York Stock Exchange.  What ” Bodies in Urban Spaces” are saying is look around.  They are conveying to everyone that art is all around, and if people keep acting like robots, then they will miss it.

As far as performance pieces go, i think that one is cool.  But my very favorite performance artist has to be the Australian artist named “Stelarc”.  The whole concept behind Stelarcs art is that the “body is obsolete” .  Stelarc, he uses his body as the canvass.  Watch here

 

something i’ve been working on

Here’s something I’ve been working on while I have been endlessly bored at work.  It’s just a snippet.

 

Where ever I May Roam:

The very first album I ever bought.  A growing boy can only listen to so much of his father’s music before he must explore on his own.  Spread his wings as the saying goes.  Fly around, and then come back to the nest.  Kind of what the Amish do.  And that’s exactly what I did.  There will always be a place in my heard for The Moody Blues, and Phil Collins, but when I was 10 I was over that stuff.  I needed guitars, needed yelling.

I really had no idea what I liked in terms of music when I was a child.  In fact, even now, as a 24 year old “adult” I am constantly changing my opinion on what I like.  But I do know that when I was 10 years old Metallica spoke to me like no one else did.  The vocals of James Hatfield then felt like they were the sonnets of Ted Berrigan today.  They had a certain familiarity that I just didn’t get from Dad’s music.  I couldn’t relate to Tracy Chapman when she sang “give me one reason to stay here”, but I cold relate when James Hatfield sang “sleep with one eye open, gripping your pillow tight”.

When ever I wanted to play my Metallica CD I had to make sure dad wasn’t around. His NEC CD played only liked to play the likes of KD Lang, or The Traveling Willberrys.  Which now looking back really isn’t such a bad thing because the Willberrys rule, but being 10 that really pissed me off.  For the life of me I could not figure out why my dad didn’t like Metallica.  “Jay, what CD should we listen to now?”, my Dad would always ask.  I would always reply “Metallica, Metallica!  I promise Dad if you just listen you will like it!”  But he never gave it a shot, never one listen.    But that’s ok, I found other ways to listen to it.  I figured out that the CD player was pretty easy to use and would just play it when my dad wasn’t around.

It was pure beauty to little old pre teen me.  To be in fifth grade and to here the angst that is “Unforgiven” is something that I think every 5th grade boy needs to hear in their life.  It is pure bliss.  It transformed me into somebody who felt like they knew the meaning of life, and that meaning was to do nothing but rock out.  That was it, nothing more, no stress, and just pure rock.  When I think back on it though, it really does make sense.  When you are 10 years old, should you really have any stress anyways?   Life should just be one big rock song, not so much the women or the drugs or any of that, but just the excitement of living that rock and roll produces, that should be your only feeling, and I was lucky enough to be able to realize that.

So Bored!!!

New blog coming at you!!  Sitting at Brick and Mortar every single day can make a person super crazy.  Unfortunately for me I can blog my shit away, and now post pictures and funny things for everyone to look at.  Like this

Man that’s a funny elephant trying to ride the bus.  Ok See ya later