Will The Real Karissa Please Stand Up

Returning to the place of my birth has begged me to ask many questions of myself, namely, "Who am I?" Who am I really — the 'me', distinct from the me that has been socialized to be as such. I am at this very interesting impasse in my life, perhaps a quarter-life crisis, perhaps a little ephiphany, but whatever the case may be, I feel that I may be on to something — though, I have no idea how to describe it with the vocabulary I've acquired in these short twenty-four years.

Being "home" with my mother, around my family, around the characters and institutions I've grown up around and in, when I myself who I am, in relation to them and apart from them, I realize that I have no idea what the answer is. The idiosyncrasies I thought unique to my person, are actually not unique at all, and are merely things I've picked up along the way, like a big ball in Katamari Damacy.

Quick example: I have this obsessive compulsive tendency with my handwriting. When I write by hand, I often do not get past a sentence before I ball the piece of paper up and start again on a new piece. I will do this over and over again, until I give up and stop. But one thing I can successfully write by hand, is my name, over and over and over again. I style myself as an artist, or I once did, yet I never was a doodler. But I always did and still do write my name over and over again or the names of others or certain words.

At my mother's house, recently, I came across a legal pad that once belonged to my sister. I opened it up, and her name was written in it a couple of times, in addition to other names, in the margins and in between various notes. Here is something that I thought was my very own, and though I knew, somewhere in my mind, that this was something that my sister did. But I had somehow blocked it out as the source of my own habit, which has apparently spiraled into some sort of obsession and dissatisfaction with my own hand.

When I look back at my behavior and reactions and beliefs and ideas, I find that I can connect them all to something outside of myself, some circumstance or some word that has impressed itself upon my psychology.

If I cataloged all of these instances, and brushed them all aside, what would be left?

Would that be the real me?

Or would it be nothing?

And if it's nothing, what does that mean?

Wed, Nov 4, 2009  Permanent link

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Post Postmodernism: Putting It Back Together

If you are so inclined . . .

Excerpt from this: http://karissalang.com/postpostmodernism.html


“The overall purpose of reconstructivism is to reawaken a sense of the Real in a world where everything has been demonstrated to be an illusion.” (Christopher Sunami)

There’s one thing I’ve retained from my imperfect, orthodox Christian upbringing, and it’s what my mother calls biblical “life application,” taking sacred concepts and actualizing them in your daily existence; And it is this approach that has illuminated the daunting task of grasping the amorphous conceptions of modernism and postmodernism, and the great beyond thereafter. Art history classes, philosophy books, nor Wikipedia could clarify this, but an existential crisis most definitely would...

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF MYSELF

When you're a little kid you're a bit of everything; Scientist, Philosopher, Artist. Sometimes it seems like growing up is the process of giving those things up. One by one. I guess we all have one thing we regret giving up. One thing we really miss. That we gave up because we were too lazy or, we couldn't stick it out or, because we were afraid. (Kevin from Wonder Years)

I came into this world drawing and it was always understood that I would be drawing forever, in some capacity. The trajectory went as followed: artist, video game designer, car designer, fashion designer, painter. It’s just what I did. Draw. Came as natural as drinking an ice cold glass of water. It went down smooth and quenched my thirst to record the world around me. When asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, the answer remained the same. Though I eventually had to bite the bullet of a harsh Kevin Arnoldian insight.

In high school, I had a brain warp of sorts, when I attended a month long high school residency at the Kansas City Art Institute. There, I was introduced to an interaction with art-making that went beyond my ability to draw a tree really really well. I was acquainted with the history of art and subsequently made well aware of my place within that history . . .

The epoch of the experience was the painting of my first self-portrait. Beforehand, looking at myself as my own artistic subject had never even occurred to me. It forced me to breathe life more deeply than I ever had before, to re-examine every aspect of my existence, the one far beyond the confines of Marshall, Texas, far beyond any technique of drawing faces like a pro. I wanted to know what was behind those faces now. And why. For the first time, I felt that I possessed the power to leave some mark on the world and I worked tirelessly towards this goal.

Next stop: The University of North Texas’ School of the Visual Arts, where I began to apply conceptual and abstract concepts to drawing and painting. Eventually my desire to amp brain power exceeded my desire to amp hand powers, creating a schism between my thoughts and my talent. I never found a successful means of resolving the struggle between my ideas and the two dimensional plane. My process was thus: I began with a potential-filled composition, then grew dissatisfied with it and placed it within a never-ending cycle of destroying and re-building, painting over and over and over it until I found myself weary, disgusted and destructive, banishing it to the trash with my lunch. Perfectly good paintings, so I was told, made me sick to my stomach. I could no longer make sense of the necessity for anyone to make objects. If you wanted to “say” something why not just say it? I began to see painting as an unneeded step in walking from point A to point B, as a distraction, a detour from reaching the final destination, a ego-filled act not fully encompassing the complexity of the big picture. The end of the means being a spot on a white wall, specially lighted, for people to walk by on a whim, exclusive people with enough cultural capital to condescend the other, became a huge problem for myself. So I took up writing and acquired the mantra, Museums are Landfills, Art Objects are Obsolete! What commenced as a hate for the process snowballed into a hate for the institutionalization of art: the writing of artist statements, the lectures, the insipid critique jargon and the predictable motions being taught in a setting I felt was indelibly false, all made me feel dirty. And it saddened me to admit to myself that the one thing I’d loved since childhood was now a stranger trying to lure me to its unmarked van, from my walk to school, to learn. I’d dissected it so until it was nothing but a hackneyed little bug, caught in a jar, pinned to a styrofoam board, to turn in as my shitty science fair project.

This disillusion was an evasive one that diffused throughout every aspect of my world: religion, politics, social issues, people, you name it. Everything smelled like doom. Nothing, and I mean, nothing, was what I once thought it to be. “Reality” as I knew it had been shattered into pieces and what remained was my nihilistic zombie self, scouring the land for more brains instead of the beauty. Everything was wrong and it couldn’t be fixed, and I developed a nasty pride in incessantly pointing out failure.

The words of the Teacher, [a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

Ecclesiastes 1:2

And this is where I found myself. At this dismal Bible verse. But I’d misread it, I believe. I don’t think I had much perspective on what it was identifying as meaningless. And though the postmodernist in you and myself knows that everything in that book is fair game for destroying, humor me. What is meaningless is found in an illusory context in the games we find ourselves playing that no longer look like games. But there is something real, somewhere, that you can place your faith in . . .

So I picked up those few pieces that were left, the ones I intuitively believed to be true, and they spoke to me. They said put me back together and reclaim the purity and authenticity that you once knew . . .

PUZZLE PIECES

I was recently informed, by my very good friend Derek V. Stewart, that ever since The Watchmen, which deconstructed superheroes, writer Alan Moore has been “creating very pure, straightforward comic stories, still well written, but not meta or postmodern.” Then Derek forwarded me a Alan Moore quote that slayed me:

“With reference to my interest over the last 10 years in magic, one of the most useful formulas in alchemy, specifically, is "solve et coagula," where "solve" is the act of dissolving something, where we take something apart and study how it works — what in our modern terms would be called analysis. In a scientific framework, it would be called reductionism. The other part of the formula is "coagula," which is synthesis rather than analysis, holism rather than reductionism, the act of putting something back together in a hopefully improved form. Once you take the watch to pieces and see what was making it run slow, you put it back together and hopefully it works better. I'd say that we've had an awful lot of "solve" in our culture, but far too little "coagula." "There are people who seem daunted by the complexity of our culture to the point that they'll shy away from it rather than try to put those thousands of jigsaw pieces together into some sort of useful, coherent picture.”

What Alan Moore describes as Solve et Coagula, Christopher Sunami calls, Reconstructivism, Raoul Eshelman calls Performatism, The Stuckists call, Remodernism, Paul Virilio calls, Hypermodernism, Roy Bhaskar calls, Critical Realism, Lars von Trier calls Dogme 95 and I, for the sake of this discussion will begin calling, Post Postmodernism. Later, something else . . .

“Modernism is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology or practical experimentation with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end [1].” Postmodernism destroys the grand narratives found in modernism (Lyotard would say) and claims we can’t discern truth but we can mess about within the murkiness of nonsense. Postmodernity is meant to describe a condition of total emergence from Modernity and a lack of faith in progress and improvement in empowering the individual.

Karissa’s Poetics is basically this: a Modernist sense of belief and a Postmodern awareness of limitation via exploration of the tension between contact with the otherworldly and contact with artifice. And because the line between life and art for me, is terribly blurry, or non-existent at this point, I seek to make connections between this complexity and all things be it poetry, politics, history, religion, or walking down the street.

Sat, Oct 17, 2009  Permanent link

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Carl Sagan 'Glorious Dawn Awaits' Ft. Stephen Hawkins

Can't stop listening to this. Composed by this guy: http://www.colorpulsemusic.com/

Sun, Oct 4, 2009  Permanent link

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One Square Inch

One Square Inch of Silence is the quietest place in the United States. Located in the Hoh Rain Forest at Olympic National Park, it is 3.2 miles from the Visitor’s Center above Mt. Tom Creek Meadows on the Hoh River Trail. Hiking time from the parking lot at the Visitor’s Center to the site is approximately two hours along a gentle path lined by ancient trees and ferns. The exact location is marked by a small red-colored stone placed on top of a moss-covered log at 47° 51.959N, 123° 52.221W, 678 feet above sea level.



One Square Inch of Silence was designated on Earth Day 2005 (April 22, 2005) to protect and manage the natural soundscape in Olympic Park’s backcountry wilderness. The logic is simple; if a loud noise, such as the passing of an aircraft, can impact many square miles, then a natural place, if maintained in a 100% noise-free condition, will also impact many square miles around it. It is predicted that protecting a single square inch of land from noise pollution will benefit large areas of the park.

Source: One Square Inch

Mon, Jun 1, 2009  Permanent link

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God is a Verb, not a Noun

R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER + OLAFUR ELIASSON @ MCA in Chicago

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson is the first comprehensive survey in the United States of works by Olafur Eliasson, whose immersive environments, sculptures, and photographs elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Scandinavia. Drawn from collections worldwide, the presentation spans over fifteen years of Eliasson's career. His constructions, at once eccentric and highly geometric, use multicolored washes, focused projections of light, mirrors, and natural elements such as water, stone, and moss to shift the viewer's perception of place and self, foregrounding the sensory experience of each work. By transforming the gallery into a hybrid space of nature and culture, Eliasson prompts an intense engagement with the world and offers a fresh consideration of everyday life.

Mon, Jun 1, 2009  Permanent link

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Body Politics

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Throbbing Gristle in concert and it heightened my fascination with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. . .

Genesis moved to Brooklyn, New York and married, Lady Jaye, née Jacqueline Breyer (who recently died of heart failure), and began an ongoing experiment in body modification aimed at creating one pandrogynous being named "Genesis Breyer P-Orridge". Genesis P-Orridge received breast implants and began referring to himself as s/he.

The two (Genesis and Jaye) had previously embarked on a years-long pursuit of pandrogyny, undergoing painful plastic surgery procedures in order to become gender-neutral human beings that looked like each other.

"We started out, because we were so crazy in love, just wanting to eat each other up, to become each other and become one. And as we did that, we started to see that it was affecting us in ways that we didn't expect. Really, we were just two parts of one whole; the pandrogyne was the whole and we were each other's other half."

Memento Mori is a term in Latin meaning we’re all mortal. You never know when your time is up. Gorgeous, warm, talented, funny, 38-year-old Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge departed planet earth October 9th. S/he passed away from heart failure as a result of an undiagnosed complication in her two-year struggle with stomach cancer. But Lady Jaye lives in perpetuity inside her “other half,” cult figure, musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

In 1999, they created an art project called pandrogyny inspired by the “cut up” method developed by Beat writers Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. Calling themselves Breyer P-Orridge, to transcend limitations of self, body and gender, they cut themselves up into a “third being” resembling each other thanks to surgery and other body modification techniques. In keeping with pandrogyny, both Genesis and Jaye used the pronouns “s/he” and” her.” Hardly your typical couple, they celebrated Valentine’s Day 2003 with matching breast-implant operations.

This celebration of Lady Jaye’s life, will be held at PARTICIPANT INC. in their new quarters on the Lower East Side and is free and open to all. The gallery, known for showing unconventional artworks, featured the art project and performance series of Genesis and Jaye in 2005. Expect the unexpected, including a room filled with their friends: creative and outrageous performers, musicians and artists.

Not an entertainment event per se, there will be lot of surprise performances including the music and go go burlesque of The Candy Cabaret, comprised of avant-garde guitarist Bryin Dall, Miss Marti, Lady Jaye’s close friend and vocalist of Beaut, performer, dancer and burlesque extraordinaire Julie Atlas Muz, drag performer and personality Hattie Hathaway (AKA Brian Butterick) and controversial performance artist and rock musician Kembra Pfahler, the lead singer of the cult glam-punk band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. The evening will showcase documentary video and film footage of Lady Jaye’s performances created by Marie Losier and Laura Parnes; a slide show created by Laure Leber, and other installations.

Along with Genesis, Lady Jaye was a band-member of Psychic TV/PTV3 and Thee Majesty. Known as Miss Jacky and Shecky Domination, back in the 1980s and early 1990s, s/he was an actress and model who performed in the original House Of Domination at Jackie 60. S/he appeared in Off-Off Broadway theater productions and experimental films and was a member of BlackLips Theatre Cult with Antony of the Johnsons and the so-called “lunatic” Dueling Bankheads. Scott Ewalt met Jaye when they both were in the go-go dance troupe at Jackie 60 and recalled her as “always considerate and always so extremely elegant.”

Genesis and Jaye met each other in 1993 on West 23rd Street in the dungeon of a mutual friend, writer Terence Sellers. “I’d crashed on the floor and woke up the next morning and saw through the doorway a tall slim and beautiful woman in a Brian Jones haircut and 1960s style jeans, smoking a cigarette.” Although friends warned her Genesis was “bad news,” it was love at first sight for both.

An underground legend and worshiped by her fans, Genesis P-Orridge has always lived life on the edge, although living with Lady Jaye transformed her into a mellower being. Once labeled the “Wrecker of Civilization” by the British tabloids, Genesis’s goal has always been to shake up complacency and the status quo. In 1976, s/he co-founded Throbbing Gristle, one of the first industrial bands, coining the term “industrial music.” Psychic TV3 blends psychedelic, punk, electronic, and experimental music. P-Orridge has released more than 200 CD’s to date and has shown her art in numerous galleries and museums. A noted pagan and practitioner of magick, in the early 1980s s/he founded the Temple ov Psychick Youth, a group propounding non-mysticism and channeling sexuality for the creative process. Genesis has always used her body as a canvas and laboratory. In 1989, s/he was profiled in Modern Primitives, the bible for tattoo acolytes, and was a pioneer of tattoos, piercings, scars, cuttings, and other body modifications. S/he spent 18 months removing his teeth and replacing them with gold implants. S/he continues to dress like his late wife and s/he still feels her presence in her house, which is filled with Jaye’s image.

I myself met Genesis and Lady Jaye during an interview at their home in August, observing first-hand the couple’s close bond but was shocked to hear of her death only two months later. On October 9th, they were at their home in Brooklyn taking it easy before resuming Psychic TV3’s world-wide fall tour. A bit fatigued, Lady Jaye suddenly felt ill and died in Genesis’s arms. Her last image recorded is of her giving the finger into her camera phone. Although she never made it to 2008, she’d told her other half her slogan for the upcoming year was “Fuck ‘em all!”

Tue, Apr 28, 2009  Permanent link

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after postmodernism may look like...

Hypermodernity (in some cases synonymous to supermodernity) is a type, mode, or stage of society that reflects a deepening or intensification of modernity. Characteristics include a deep faith in humanity's ability to understand, control, and manipulate every aspect of human experience. This typically is manifested in a forward-looking commitment to science and knowledge, particularly with regard to the convergence of technology and biology. The emphasis on the value of new technology to overcome natural limitations lends itself a diminution or outright repudiation of the past, since yesterday's knowledge is always less than today's.

Wed, Apr 8, 2009  Permanent link

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