Joseph Cornell – Navigating the Imagination

2.
Echoes the imagined memories that time eclipses

III.
Like the ballerina as the snow angel
on a field of blue glass
caught in the pipe of a dream(scape)
A moment captured in dioramatic solitude
the word (or is it the world) recedes into the floating space between
the ice cube footlights of the stars

Prologue.
When my old (and lost) friend, Stephen Bickford, introduced me to Surrealism, Dada and the art of collage in college, it opened up a whole new vista of art for me. I had really only been to Europe once at that point in my life and had only just begun to discover and explore the whole universe of art. Now, this was something new and more mysterious than almost anything I had ever encountered. Europe at nineteen had been a novice at the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Sistine Chapel, the David at the Accademia, the National Gallery in London, Westminster Abbey – in other words, the old world of classics and masters. A great beginning and a great education which I would never trade, but to discover the avant-garde, the absurd and the sublime, well, this was something that I have never stopped exploring and being fascinated with.

1.
A museum is a box of found objects
the ephemera of curiosity
like a rose as spider web as the sail of a schooner

Four.
has Andromeda risen to the sun
bathed in the stars of 50,000 years ago
or frozen in a dovecote
are the stars the same 50,000 years from now

Prologue Too.
The world is an ever evolving continuum of time, space, memory, objects that are interrelated and have no relationship to one another except as how they are re-imagined and reconfigured by the artist.

Art as isolated engagement with the world, where the world produces and the artist reduces and re-uses. The artist as environmentalist, concerned with nature, but also as scientist, preacher, stenographer, historian – a recorder of humanity with an eye to exploring what is old with what is new.

Dream One.
The man with the old valise, like a steam locomotive, carries his gentlemen’s cabinet of belongings along a parakeet-lined road. The barn owl in his cave, illuminated by the ancient moon, watches, ponders, watches the slow unfolding of steps across the meadow gathers in the shadows of black and white, all color subsumed into a constructed world of peripheral lines receding into a perspective distance. Giorgio di Chirico dances in a shadowless corner.

Epilogue
Joseph Cornell at SF MOMA returns to the box(es) January 6, 2008.

The Years Are Rolling By (But There's Some Awfully Long Days)

Thanks to Nan Parker for the title to today's post.

I'm pretty much a curmudgeon about "Christmas". I actually like the holidays, the turning of autumn to winter with the winter solstice, and this year the full clear moon and the nip to the air (yes, even in SF, it gets a little cold, but I won't claim to experience the bitter chill of other areas of the world). I love the rain, the snow (though we don't get any here), the warmth of the fire (though it's now no longer eco-friendly to burn wood in your fireplace). I love the lights and the greenery and the decor. I love giving small gifts to people I love and donating money to people that are doing good and important things.

I like (won't always claim love) seeing family and friends.

This year Karen and I were blessed to have a visit from my daughter, Gracia, and two wonderful granddaughters, Kelsey and Hailey (the sleepyheads in the photo). It's so impossible to believe that Gracia is 36 and Kelsey and Hailey are 16 and 13, respectively. The years truly are rolling by.

It's Becoming Clearer (for me anyway)

I have really been thinking (now that voting starts in a few weeks) about which direction to go in the presidential race. Black man (historic)?, white woman (also historic)?, fiercely partisan (white man)?, non front runner (a few interesting choices)?

Today's column by David Brooks in the NY Times may have finally clarified it for me - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/opinion/18brooks.html?ref=opinion.

The country, I think, is sick of partisanship, foot-dragging and failure of leadership on big problems, parsing of the political winds, politicians guided by divine faith more than reasoned discourse and facts, and the potential for political dynasties controlling the landscape and perpetually caving to limited interests over the common good.

So, ok, I'll throw it out there - the ideal ticket for me might be:
Obama/Biden (though I also think that Biden would make a great secretary of state).

Let the voting begin.

Is Global Warming Like Vietnam?

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing."
-Jack Kerouac

I just signed an emergency petition to try and stop President Bush from blocking crucial UN climate negotiations in Bali. The rest of the world has agreed on a schedule for carbon emissions cuts to stop catastrophic climate change, but with only 48 hours left Bush is blocking the agreement!

The petition is from Americans to world leaders at Bali, saying that Bush doesn't represent us -- it's going to be delivered directly to summit negotiators as well as in an ad campaign and demonstrations by activists there. It will help other countries to refuse to give in to the Bush team by showing they don't have the support of Americans.

There's just 48 hours to turn this around - sign up at this link! -
http://www.avaaz.org/en/please_ignore_bush/98.php?cl_tf_sign=1

So, how does all this relate to the title of this post?

There always has to be a grassroot start to fighting a war - and that is what is being waged right now - a war against the earth, a war against the future, a war against the generations that will need to live in a diminshed world if change doesn't happen soon.

The same was true of Vietnam. It took a grassroots effort, unpopular at the time, to start a mass movement to oppose the war and force the change that eventually brought millions of people to the streets to protest the actions of those that were waging a war that made no sense.

I often wonder what it will take to get that same level of commitment to forcing change to bring massive amounts of people into the streets to protest short-sighted governments that exhibit a failure of leadership.

Am I in the streets? No, but if I was in Bali right now, I would be out there with the activists, doing what I could to activate some kind of change.

Where the Ideas Are

One of the interesting things about watching this presidential race is to note where the good ideas are hiding (hint - it's not usually with the "frontrunners".)

This interview with Dennis Kucinicich http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/11/kucinich_qa/ is one example. People may laugh at him and call him kooky, and may even see some of the ideas in this interview as pretty out there, but what is of note is the bigness of some of the ideas, and the willingness to think in new paradigms as a way out of monumental problems.

An alternative view in this op-ed in the NY Times today - http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/real-action-on-climate-change/index.html?ref=opinion, is a reflection that we can think both big and small about monumental issues like global warming and sustainability of the planet, but that without real vision and leadership, as much as we would all like to do individually, it will likely always be a drop in the bucket without some big thinking and big change.

I've been trying to follow the discussion going on in Bali, as well as watching what our Congress has been (not) doing on this issue and it never fails to amaze me the failure of leadership that comes out of these consensus bodies.

There were public declarations that the recent energy bill (that stalled in the Senate) was some kind of major "breakthrough" on the energy front, as if merely raising fuel standards over a 20 year period to a level that still don't even match much of Europe or current hybrid technology was some kind of great accomplishment, or that moving tax dollars from oil based industries to subsidizing ethanol and biodiesels that have severe implications for food supplies and still contribute massively to carbon emissions through their transport to market is such a great idea.

As we begin a period of history where we may find wars starting over other scarce resources, like water, ideas like Kucinicich are putting forward may be the only way out of the trap we keep falling into as a species, where self-interest and corporate interest almost always trumps the common good.

Politics of Rehearsal

Karen and I were in Los Angeles this past weekend for her Uncle Abby's 90th birthday and on Sunday we had some time to go the Armand Hammer Museum to see a show by an artist I had never heard of, but who is apparently (according to the show brochure), one of the most important artists working today - Francis Alys - a Belgian now living and working in Mexico.

Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal was a small show, but with some big ideas, focused on concepts of rehearsals and repetition, failure and success, storytelling and performance.

I was particularly drawn to the idea of rehearsals and repetitions as a metaphor for how to stay open to the possibilities of change, how change and the constant practice of preparing for and executing against ideas by using repetitive actions created both spaces of efficiency and an interesting counterbalance to the notions of efficiency and productivity in the clash of modern worlds and traditional worlds.

Alys uses some simple devices - a man pushing a block of ice through the streets while it slowly melts to nothing more than a puddle of water; a car driving up a hill to the music of a band rehearsing, and every time the band interrupts their playing, having the car roll back down the hill and start again and repeating this over and over; a stripper in a nightclub going through the process of undressing as a singer and piano player rehearse, and much like the car scenario, every time the singer and pianist interrupt their rehearsal, the stripper re-dresses herself and starts over again as well with varying amounts of success at the re-dressing until she finally gets through her act and is completely undressed. All of these scenes are videotaped, and video is the primary vehicle used in the show to communicate the art.

All of these different "rehearsals" were interesting investigations of time schemes, concepts of efficiency/inefficiency, productivity, the idea of development and modernity, and in many ways brought into mind things like the mechanics, poetics, politics and vocabulary of rehearsal as a form unto itself.

The video of the man pushing the block of ice through the streets, a piece called Paradox of Praxis, 1997, was fascinating to watch for both the idea of action and inaction - the concept of "sometimes making something leads to nothing" - another interesting take on the role of rehearsal in performance and life.

The other interesting piece in the show was When Faith Moves Mountains. Five hundred volunteers with shovels moved a giant sand dune outside of Lima, Peru, over the course of a day, but of course, only moved it somewhat figuratively and only an inch or so - kind of a massive collective effort for a minimal return on that effort where by the next day no one would even notice that this action had taken place. Alys called it a kind of social allegory where the piece is a true rehearsal for events that still remain potential, things that may or may not happen in the future.

Alys is interested in exploring and producing work that has a certain resistance to imposition of modernity on traditional cultures, especially in Latin America, but at the same time using the fluidity of rehearsals as a means of exploring the potential for change by addition, deletion, improvement, simplification - all doors to further exploration.

While I'm not sure that the execution of the pieces was all that interesting, the ideas conveyed were, and that made it a show worth my time.

The Religion Debate

My previous post was responded to thus:

Paul: I respect your views and do totally believe in the separation of Church and State. Religion has done many terrible things and I wouldn't ever condone what they have done. But regretfully many wars have been started by men who wanted power. Religion serves a purpose for many. Regretfully, many think their faith is the best. I don't agree with that at all. Each have much good and I would never criticize nor judge another's faith. John Kennedy spoke in front of Baptists and made it very clear that he separated his faith from what he would do governing.

Here's my response:

No doubt that religion serves some purpose for many, and has contributed to many people leading moral lives. I do often wonder though whether what is served is often an escape from living in and engaging with this world, and indeed a denial of this world, in search of some other world that may or may not exist.

I don't want to debate the purpose religion may serve for some people. What I do want to debate is the hypocrisy and intolerance I see from would-be leaders that have put forth a litmus test of faith and proclamations that this must be a religious nation to lead the fight for liberty and freedom, both here and around the world.

What I want to debate is whether we are a nation of human beings that have values that transcend religion and are based on the morality, ethics and need for cooperation and what that means in terms of the political life of the country.

Unfortunately, times have changed radically since JFK. He needed to convince a nation that the role of church and state were distinct and that his personal church (religion) had nothing to do with the functioning of the state. Now, we're faced with people that bring their religion into the running of the state, make claims that there is no state and no freedom without religion, use their religion to guide public policy for the state and have visions of a one religion state in this country.

This is what I find reprehensible and unacceptable and worthy of debate.

Do You Need Religion to Have Freedom?

From a piece in Salon online today - "We can begin with Romney's speech Thursday, in which he declared, as Joan Walsh noted with alarm, that there can be no liberty without faith. "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom ... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Wow, that's a pretty amazing statement, given that religion has been one of the most intolerant practices ever devised by human beings - think Inquistion, radical Islam, Holocaust(s), the subjugation of Native Americans by Spanish missionaries and on and on - all designed to deprive groups of people of liberty and freedom.

Personally, as an atheist/agnostic, I feel pretty free (especially from the dogmatic thinking of religion), thank you very much.

This whole conversation is really worrisome, that somehow we can't make public or political policy in this country without it being informed or guided by some kind of supreme being? That we can't promote liberty and freedom without the context of some tie to religion? And then, whos religion? The implication and underlying context of this discussion, of course, is that freedom doesn't exist without Christianity, which is ludicrous on its face.

One can only hope that this whole pandering to the Christian evangelical right by Romney, Huckabee, McCain, etc., completely backfires and that this narrow thinking leaves whomever the Repubs decide to put up for election with some very hard questions about their beliefs in freedom and the proper role of separation of church and state.

It's time to fight back in this war against rationality and secularism in public life.

On "The Race" (Being on that is)

My friend Tom Bestor, who has an excellent blog of his own, http://www.rationalfeast.blogspot.com/, has I fear fallen into the same trap as the horse race obesessed mainstream media and has written with great glee about the pending primary races that will now command our attention, at least through February 5th, and perhaps beyond, depending on outcomes.

But, here's the problem. The longer we continue to focus on polls, and races, and candidates jibes at one another, both intra-party and across parties, the less we focus on what is really important. And that is, do any of these people running for President have a vision, a plan, the right character to propel this country forward into recovering from what (in January of 2009), will be possibly the most disastrous administration of the country in our history - one that has damaged our standing in the world, possibly made us the most fearful nation in the world with less civil liberties than when (this administration) started, and on and on?

And, does the country really care about solving big problems like global warming, healthcare, imbalances of trade and the declining dollar; restoring our image and integrity in the world (and getting us out of Iraq without it devolving into a complete disaster)? Is there anyone that can articulate what the right balance of government services vs. private sector involvement should be in any areas of our lives? Is there anyone that can articulate how to raise the necessary levels of our education system to keep this country the leader, economically and innovatively in this century - and that is willing to have a bold vision for the country, akin to going to the moon, to drive new, clean technologies that will deliver us from giving more and more petrodollars to people that hate us, not to mention saving humanity from itself with a bold plan on making us all more green?

I know I live in a bubble of liberalism here in the Bay Area, but it feels more and more to me that some kind of a national dialogue is needed about what kind of a country we want to be and how we should be organizing ourselves to both continue to lead globally as well as how to prepare ourselves for both the ongoing war of secularism vs. fundamentalism (from all religions), and the emergence of developing countries like India and China? What do we want our relationships to be to these various sectors of the world and how will we engage with them?

Instead we have useless arguments about whether Obama has enough experience, whether Hillary is too politically motivated and poll driven, whether Rudy is conservative enough for the guns and abortion crowd, whether Mitt flip-flops on everything, who's tougher on immigrants, who was against the war before they were for it before they were against it and a host of petty character jabs that have nothing to do with actually running the country - blah, blah, blah.

I suppose we'll have to endure more of the same of all of this until they decide who should run against whom and then we can see if we can try and discern whether anyone really cares about the actual differences between the two candidates, or whether in the end it will, once again, just come down to the apathetic American voter and who they would rather have a beer with.

Depressing.