Matthew Goulish, "39 Microlectures, in Promixity of performance"
A staple book on my desk. Studying with Matthew next semester at SAIC.
Australian Musician, Nick Cave's book. Must read.
One of my old time favorite books on Hannah Hoch. Cut with the kitchen knife.Maud Lavin. Taking her class next semester at SAIC.
Thank you. School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Pause.
Stop.
Leave the field. XMas. New Year.
Trip to LA planned.
End of Semester 3. One more long Breath to go. One more.
And perhaps? Qualified? Finally? Terminally?Perhaps? A black hole?
To not fall. To not disappear. To keep enquiring.
Anxiety levels and confidence levels. Up. Simultaneously.
Critiqued to exhaustion. Mental meltdown. I am full. Thank you. For a little while.
Where am I? Chicago.The optimism, the disasters, the tragedies and crime, brothels and World's biggest world's first and world's finest, Modernism, architecture, Bauhaus, Ferris Wheel, The Wizard of Oz. The cold city in all respects, I still love you. The lonely nights, freezing mornings, damp summers, beautiful city I am alone , charmed, exhausted, alternatively tired and excited. What shall we do in the future, Chicago? Dance to the end of The Navy Pier? Twirl in the Halls of the Art Institute, a nod to Degas, ballerinas/ prostitutes, here is Caravaggio, I must bid you respect. Marvel at Chagall windows, I am saddened by the fact that I am not from here. From nowhere, I waltz around, shuffling into the destiny of my own ideas.
Reflecting on my own reflection in the Chicago windows, Louis Sullivan's ornamental voyages and Modernism's Utopian failures, I marvel at the American West. Watching snow falling onto the windows of my large studio, I catch myself crying silently and in mourning. Where shall I find my home?
A movie trailer on my street, a large broken tree branch, slightly hanging, dangerously dangling over the street as aftermath of the recent snowstorm. Walking in the cold, covered in the warmest clothes I have worn since my childhood in Ukraine, I wait for my gourmet bagel with Salmon, cream cheese. I make my Illy coffee espresso and position myself in bed, with the laptop on my lap.
It is the first day of the winter break and I am emptied out.
Hundreds of books to read, hundreds of thoughts to sort out. Conceptual, performative, ephemeral, theories fly around me, swirling around my heart. What am I to plan? Hundreds of applications for teaching positions and exhibitions and residencies.
The pang of travels, unconquered lands...The howl of the journeys, awakens in me, slightly pinching at my guts. Go, go? where? have I not found something to hang onto?
Suddenly, feeling my own foreignness.
Friends, leaving.
Degas, Lautrec.
Invisible labor, class, gender, race.
How far to go? How far to push?
What am I doing what am I saying?
Where do I stand and what do I believe in? Audience.
Where is my stance?
I do not make objects, do I have something to sell to you? I said SELL. This is after all, America.
Sell it damn it.
How about, as suggested, put a price on the clipped finger nail. My cut hair perhaps? Package it nicely?
For your pleasure?
Sell it.
The success.
