Herd and Scene

To begin my Thursday night, early a.m. cogitations: I did a Google search, to find the Angela Hanley Gallery’s “Drink Fight F***” exhibition (please pardon the censorship, but remember that at the moment I am getting some academic credit for this blog- at a school where an event involving baccanalian pursuits such as imbibing in the alcohols must occur without any institutional affiliation and f***ing doesn’t bare even mentioning), because I met the director, Allison Spellacy, when she was a panellist at Triangle (please pardon the long long sentence and possible misspellings of names and “baccanalian” (?)). Anyway- I ended up on an Artforum page called Herd and Scene which leads one to believe that art-openings are really like raves with celebrities and porn stars. As much as I wish I had that experience myself, apart from a couple of experiences with strippers in Savannah my own art-life is comparatively boring. Which got me thinking about the cross currents of pop-culture and high-art. Now, I’m not very old- just turned 28- and not entirely out of it (I listen to current music, but don’t own a t.v. and rarely make it to movies), and I’ve definitely got a crazier side when I’m not listening to talk radio, but I see some art and whether or not I admire it or am jealous of where it gets its creators I think- damn, I’m not painting sailboats, but why am I so traditional and conservative? (again sorry for the long sentence- the point here is for me to make the point before it disappears into the Everglades of my brain). SO…. I realize two things- the first being what kind of work I feel I need to do (not for art-world reasons, but for myself), the second being with regard to the confluence of pop-culture and art. The first thing is that even if I’ve got a very clever idea that I can “do” without making anything I still need to make other stuff that will last a little while and have some kind of noble savage’s instinctive urge to be intimately, physically involved in the creative process. They may not last forever in their physical form or be very sale-able, but yes, they are objects. And I don’t really appreciate seeing one clever idea (or talented action) constantly repeated, but that’s besides the point- I need to make things- not a certain thing, but usually something that does not conform to a formula and hence poses the allure of leading me to something new each time, a surprise.
Now, Pop-culture. It’s pretty great, it’s entertaining, it’s a spectacle, you might get something out of it that’s more than what one group of self-interested people is trying to feed you if you’re critical and “stay tuned.” I have stopped staying tuned. I just can’t slog through 20 minutes of commercials for one hour of t.v. (even if one in ten might be very clever). I’m not much of a consumer- I have no money. I also tend to be skeptical- of the situations I’m presented in commercials, of the basic premise of “Friends,” even of the circumstances in which our hero escapes the explosion in the latest action movie. And I think a lot of people realize these things with me, but the difference is that I stopped feeling entertained and started feeling annoyed. So,maybe I’m being long--winded, but I just don't feel inclined to incorporate tactics of pop media. Even to expose it for what it is often seems like a cliché to me. Capturing Zeitgeist is one thing, but cherrypicking off cheap media at the most embarasses/caters to pop-audiences (implicating oneself), and rarely ackowledges the cynical creative power under which a lot of the crap was originally marketed. So… getting back to Artforum’s society pages… it seems a little like high school, with the insiders referring to how "small" the art-world is and the rest of us feeling left out.