Failed in my first experiment with the Epilog Fusion M2 32 CO2 laser cutter. Burned the material I was working with. Planning to retry it later this week.
20190616
A lengthy article which offers an approach to the conservative and nationalistic agendas of some European countries. Explaining Eastern Europe (2019) Stephen Holmes & Ivan Krastev. Interestingly a the amount of immigration from Romania to the west (from 2007 onwards) is larger in volume then the amount of refugees arriving to Europe from Syria (from 2015 onwards).
For two decades after 1989, the political philosophy of post-communist central and eastern Europe could be summarized in a single imperative: imitate the West! The process was called by different names – democratization, liberalization, enlargement, convergence, integration, Europeanization – but the goal pursued by post-communist reformers was simple. They wished their countries to become ‘normal’, which meant like the West.
In 1989, central and eastern Europeans were not dreaming of some perfect world that had never existed. They were longing for a ‘normal life’ in a ‘normal country.’ […] What they meant by ‘normality’ was the West.
The ultimate revenge of the central and eastern European populists against western liberalism is not merely to reject the ‘imitation imperative’, but to invert it. We are the real Europeans, Orbán and Kaczyński claim, and if the West wants to save itself, it will have to imitate the East.
A very spesific collection of articles on toxins and sex. Queering chemicals (EDCs): A bibliography (2019) Alex Zahara. The collection has texts by familiar names such as Heather Davis and links to interesting concepts such as eco-normativity. Serpil Oppermanns Toxic Bodies and Alien Agencies – Ecocritical perspectives on ecological others (2017) seems interesting.
20190614
Made a cute faceplate for my Kassutronic ASR Envelope. Added it on modular grid too. Assembled a DC 5-24v to Dual Power 12v -12v 5v -5v 3.3v Linear Regulator Module kit and build a 16 pin power rail for it (4 sockets). I now have 300mA for a second rack which I can use primarily for testing my builds. It also runs on usb, which means I now the start of a battery driven eurorack system.
Bought a Singer 320k. Seems to be in good condition. It has over twenty stitching pattern disks and I managed to modify the bobbing case (following this guide) so that it accepts 15X1 needles. I can finally fix my pants and make a leather patch to my jeans.
20190613
Updated my mac operating system. Rebuild my mail archives and sorted out old FCPX libraries.
Preparing sample batches of hop-water, cannabis-water and various mineral waters. What would a mineral water from sweat taste like?
Edited a soft-feel-core cluster-project video (featuring myself).
Saw kallio manninen at the Madhouse house warming party. It was fun. Reminded me of Antti Manninen barbecue piece from 2012. This version of the hangout esthetics was more cynical thou.
20190610
The reason there are so many cameras at performance events and festivals is that the cameras situate the act to a temporal plane. Every time the shutter strikes the performance is locked tighter to a specific past. Unfortunately when performance art is designed as a set of tasks which the artist completes, this advocates the ideologies of causality and linear progress. The shutter clicks set milestones, looking back at which the audience is tasked to asses the performances current state: “Aha! The previous gestures led to this specific moment – We have witnessed progress, we have arrived”. Cameras compost performances by pinning them to exact moments. They also help in distributing authorship of the happening.
Performance art needs to be constantly documented so that it is demystified. If no photos would be taken, the performance would be eternal and possibly confront the future head on, which is a bad strategy (this taints a future, pollutes it with biases). Good art, makes for good compost #ॐ
Luckily designed tastes, smells and noises offer a route for collective speculation. These are not acts or gestures, they are themselves temporal planes, which the audience is then invited to navigate and explore. This allows the audience to make their own time. Instead of arriving, they are departing. Interestingly a taste never lasts long. They most often feel like first impressions, which are then collectively analyzed and assessed (aftertaste). As people explore a new tastes together, they make sense (trough a mood which the first impression sets!).
I think that this is the way to escape the institutional horizon. I think this is why I’m working with mineral waters (and noise). I guess this is why artist run art spaces are converting into travel agencies: Departure is more important then arrival. Oddly I think the majority of Finnish art is about departure and travel. The travels artist are taking are sometimes more celebrated then the work they have made.