Working pagination tonight/morning. Doing it with mini prints of each page spread. So it's kinda like playing with a 1/8 scale RR set or a 1/8 scale of a TAS book.
Talked a bit with my buddy and great designer/artist Matt Lane Harris about the initial state of my thoughts & layouts; to which he had a bunch of really good points to make regarding introduction and overall tone. His main point for me on that conversation was that the pagination would dictate the over-all feel for the work as a whole. He expressed Pop... I want "Process Pop Povera"... so we'll see If I can eliminate items and re-work the page structure. I've already eliminated (3) spreads again. The first output of this book had 56 pages and I have been killing (refining) pages ever since.
With a little over 2 weeks before I have to fly to NYC and present my work, I've started the basic structural layouts of the presentation book I'm putting together for use in my casting interview process. It's going to be a horizontal 11x17 format. While some people might just have simple photos of work on white walls, I'm taking the approach that the graphical presentation of the work can lend itself favorably to the work as well. So I'm working on a base grid structure that I'll be working my layouts in. Pages will vary in format. Some will be heavily loaded with multiples of certain pieces (Donuts, Correspondences, 365 Pixel Project, etc), while others will be more light and only feature one piece in the layout. Other aspects that I want to interject into the layouts are details of the works and also possible photos of the works in progress, since the process for me is very important to the end product.
I have a good portion of the work already photographed, but last night I was pulling a large amount of work aside that I haven't shot or know whose photos are not that great if I need to print them in a 300dpi format. I also have some large sculptural pieces that have never been fully assembled that I need to shot in some environment as well.
Still not sure how I'm going to bind everything together, but I'll figure out something clean. I'm excited about the layouts. I think it's gonna be a real nice presentation of my body of work. The plan is to break everything out into sets and collections and then weave the work together in the pagination. I'll also be including small typographical info bits as well.
I got my casting information from BRAVO last night for their Work of Art program. Had the option of traveling to Chicago, LA or NYC to interview (nothing near at all). So I jumped online and forced myself to purchase a round trip ticket for NYC that I'll be using end of this month. It was my best option given location and timing and people I know in the city.
So over the next 2 weeks plus, I need to bust ass and get all my work collected into a book I can present live and also port to DVD in jpeg format. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of studio photos to put together a reasonable ensemble of my different bodies of work. A good portion of the work has been photographed but there are some things that haven't. There will probably be 6-8 main bodies I'll focus on and then I'll see which ones I'll present finally. My motto is the more the better. You can always get cut short while presenting work, but I've never run into the problem of running out of work to show. It's just how I do things. I'm also trying to find a kind soul to put me up for a few nights while I'm in NYC too... we'll see which Facebook friends step up. I'm frantic now... I never thought this casting call would come down so damned quick.
So... Barker was taking photos of his scrambled television the other day. Very much akin to how I've been tracking down and looking at degraded encoded video files. I really liked this one that he pulled so I wanted to play with it a bit.
I got Barker on the phone last night for a number of reasons, but one reason was to ask him about the logistics of his TV set-up to achieve these effects. He informed me that he was using a rabbit ear digital tuner, but that his living space is in such a place that doesn't receive the best signals. So he ends up with this scrambled view of things. What was most interesting is that he said the picture would get stuck with an image like this on it for a few minutes. I had figured it was a moving pattern of distortion but it's static and changes every so often. Pretty rad television I think. He mentioned he was watch women's swimming or something to that affect.
Some postcard action happened this weekend. Setting up some methods that I'm taking over to a few different paintings to round out this season.
I have one show coming up quick that I'm putting work in which I need to knock out. I haven't listed it on the homepage yet either, but it's a silly little show about summer vacation at MINT Gallery here in town. Guess I should refresh myself with the theme since I'm building the piece (whatever it may be) this weekend. So lets see it's actually called - "What I Did On My Summer Vacation...". Fun little group show vibe... so I'll have to make something that is rather electric I suppose. Something about summer vacation huh... well lets see... what did I do? Well, I drank and goofed off for the most part. This is gonna be tuff.
Introduction
At the time when I read newspaper reports of the California libel trial of a magazine that published lurid material about the sex-life of movie stars, my train of thoughts ran to memories of Vienna of my youth. I realized only later on that I must have compared the mental attitude of my native town to sexuality with that of Hollywood because a scene from one of Arthur Schnitzler's plays came to mind. A young man about town encounters a lady of his acquaintanceship: "I have heard many bad things about you, madame," he says. "Let me hope that they are true."
There was as much interest in and gossip about the affairs of heart and plain affairs of celebrities in Vienna as in Hollywood. The satirist Karl Kraus stated that a man taking a walk with a woman on the Ringstrasse was, so to speak, automatically considered her lover. When he was seen walking with a male friend he was considered a homosexual and when he walked alone, the Viennese were convinced that he was a masturbator.
There was enough gossip, mostly allusive and often witty, but there was, of course, no magazine-publicity nor scandal-gathering agency. There was not that lip-smacking, self-conscious and impudent vicarious enjoyment, not that hypocritical moral indignation. There was not that atmosphere of latent puritanism that sees sex as something sinful and rejoices in discovering that other people have sexual functions and desires.
Rumors were not taken with a grain of salt, but of sugar and sexual matters were treated casually, if not jokingly. The Viennese shared the conviction of old, wise Anatole France who then wrote that of all sexual aberrations chastity is the strangest.
This little book deals with the universal interest the Anglo-Saxons had and have in all aspects of sex in a surprising manner. It shows the powerful under-current of pornography that runs faithfully with the great stream of literature. It follows the erotic trend that moves under the surface of literature from its beginning of the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book until the pornographic works of our time. The author will readily admit that his book about the erotica in England and America is fragmentary and incomplete, but who can register all the waves of that unending stream?
It is certainly unnecessary in this age of psycho-analysis to state that this book has great scientific value. It shows which components of sexuality and which disavowed impulses strive for satisfaction and which appeal to the appetite of the average man (and woman) of America and England. The excerpts from erotic literature and the data here collected present valuable contributions not only to sexology, but also to the exploration of the life of unconscious emotions. The material here presented will be of great interest to the psychologist and psychiatrist, to the sociologist and historian of civilization and last, but not least, to the connoisseur of literature. Also the bibliophile will find many data, unknown to all, about publications and collections of erotica.
The attentive and thoughtful reader of this book will find that it touches serious problems between its lines, problems intimately connected with the situation of our civilization. If erotica exercises such a passionate spell and awakens such general interest, can we still say "ugly as sin"? It seems sin is very attractive to most, if not to all of us. If it were as repulsive and ugly as they say, why should so many and forceful prohibitions be necessary?
The author justifiably includes the scatological interest in the area of erotica. The discoveries of psychoanalysis and of analytic child-psychology leave no doubt that the functions of evacuation are not only biologically but also psychologically intimately connected with those of sexuality. Yes, in early childhood they cannot be differentiated. Also in the neuroses and psychoses they can replace those of genital trends.
John Wesley's saying that cleanliness is next to godliness becomes very debatable when we find that dirt often functions as excellent protection of virtue that is endangered. Freud told us, his Viennese circle, a telling epigram of Brouardet whose lectures he attended in 1885 when he was a student of Charcot in Paris. Brouardet demonstrated at the Morgue on corpses many parts of neglected evidence, interesting to the physician. He discussed the clues by which one could conjecture the social position and character of unknown persons found dead. Freud heard him once say: "Les genoux sales sont les signes d'une fille honnête." Dirty knees are characteristics of a "nice" girl! Should cleanliness thus be more akin to vice than to virtue? No doubt, the godliness of some saints smelled to high heaven.
We welcome this courageous book that presents a valuable piece of conscientious research.
THEODOR REIK
New York, September, 1957
