Atomic Elroy

It seems I’ve had a reprieve from the arts gods and my production of Franz Kafka’s AMERIKA will see the light of stage, as a one man multi-media performance. Opening on, wait for it… April 1st.
I re wrote the treatment to be much more post modern story telling and less of a literal adaptation. The book itself is dysfunctional on so many levels I decided it was important to include the dysfunction in the work itself. I will have a Kafka character in the work played by a ventriloquist dummy, for whilst I like most of Kafka’s work he is held too much a god in literary academia.
So while soul searching and channeling Art Angst to come to grips with how to proceed on the AMERIKA project I tried to revisit some core art theory that I believe in…


1. Artist themselves are quite irrelevant, they are just a conduit of the universe, here only to communicate the golden secrets of understanding and wonder the everyday bloke seems to miss.
2. Always use personal taste, i.e. make the kind of art you like. If you love German Expressionist Theatre don’t make Musical Comedy.
3. Have a theory on everything … or 10! I’ve based most of my esoteric tastes on one simple maxim, a quote from Oscar Wilde
“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” It has always seemed to me that the most trite art is the most heart felt in the eyes of its maker. I sometimes call it precious art. All weepy art seems a bit forced and not elegant enough for me.
4. Have in your work what Frank Zappa called Conceptual Continuity, the reuse of universal concepts, things etc. that help communicate your concept and make all make up one large conceptual thing ( actors call this a super objective).
5. NEVER take the audience/viewer into consideration while you are creating the work. i.e. never “play to the stalls”. Because your here to do the work of the universe, listen to the voices in your head that tell you to tap dance naked on a block of ice, instead of reading a poem at open mike night so you can express your inner feelings, no one of importance cares about your inner feeling other than your Mom. If you want to express your feelings, get a shrink don’t bore us by doing it onstage.
6. DON’T soften or make your work more accessible… if you want to bite off bat heads on stage… go for it Ozzie. If you want to paint ‘Leda and the Swan’ in full pornographic detail, do it! Trust your instincts and let the censors do their job, hell if you don’t make work that calls taste into question the censors would be out of a job.
7. Always be willing to change, media, style, theory, etc. Another smart thing Mr. Wilde said was “Consistency is the refuge of the unimaginative”

LUCY THE SLUT FOR COLORADO SPRINGS MAYOR… Could not be worse than the puppet we already have in office!

here’s why

join

This is Arty, he’s a clown, he’s the darkest little art clown in town. Arty never ever will frown. As an art clown, he must always takes his fleshy pound, of something from the town. Not one thing is sacred to arty the clown! everything is fair game.
Poor little Arty needs your help, how can an art clown keep up to date on new techniques and technologiesthat an art clown should know, without funding from some not profitable organization that is more interested in self preservation than actually changing the cultural conscience of a community?
That not profitable is SCAM/Southern Colorado Alternative Media. And we need YOUR help and we’re begging for it… PLEASE send money, cash only ( nothing traceable), to SCAM 802 N. Weber St. COS, CO. 80903 so poor little arty can be all the artist he can be and make the world a better place to live in.
GIVE NOW…

UPDATE: I think I’ve rediscovered my conceptual art humorist persona

It looks like a re-envisioning is progress, after a failed attempt to get myself involved in theatre again, which very well could be a blessing in disguise, I’m taking a step back and examining how to proceed.

For the immediate future i’ve decided to rebrand STUDIO 802 into SCAM ( Southern Colorado Alternative Media). With the intention of  creating work to go outside the 719, and perhaps have an occasional show there. Zelda will use Watch This Space as a venue for her new Our Community Dance Co. project.

This has truly give me time to pause and re-evaluate my presence in COS as an artistic novelty. The amount of complacency here is stifling, if it’s not Blues, Beer, or Baseball caps it don’t go! I have in the past came to the realization that what I do is of no real interest to the community either  artistic or in general. I feel I came to believe something existed that did not, an open minded well educated art consumer. Which I think most likely only exists in a few urban areas in the USA.

I think what the problem I have with HOMETOWN is I won’t lie to myself. I won’t live in that smurfy denial that passes as optimism today. The reality is that even the young people here, artistic or other wise, are quite conservative. Which could very well just be a sign of the times, but does not bode well for the future being any more liberally minded. Their idea of something “far out” has been qualified by the artistic complacency locally and permeated by mass media culture from which they get their ideas and inspirations. It goes back to my joke 20 years ago about COS, we were doing Beckett at the Open Egg Theatre and I told a reporter ” we can do work that’s 30 years old and be called avant garde here”
This is why this place won’t change, no deveation is allowed, and we know as Mr. Frank Zappa ( regardless if you like his music or not, he was one of the smartest social commentators in the last 40 years) so wisely said: “Without deveation from the norm progress is not possible”.
I realize that postmodernism has killed the concept of an Avant Garde, or originality as a desired practice. Which is kind of the framework under which I do my work. I guess like most artists I need to step back look at the canvas and either finish the god damn painting or throw it out, or paint over it and start again.

Southern Colorado Alternative Media/SCAM, is like the phoenix rising from the ashes, coming to a “Your Screen” soon!