Atomic Elroy

…and He is US!”, Pogo. We’ve all heard that we are our own dilemma, change comes from within, we make our own problems, etc. in My case this is more than evident. Had a bit of an ongoing epiphany lately that I”m trying to combine incompatible elements. I’ve always liked the way, in the 1960’s,unconventional that unconventional and iconoclastic people had legitimacy. The era of the anti-hero. Being an impressionable youth at the time I aspired to mimic the behavior to gain the same results. But like any experiment, the conditions must be duplicated to achieve the same results. Oops. Our fickle friend time with it’s constant march forward is constantly changing the rules of the game. Trying to embrace an accepted anti-hero persona has caused unattainable goals, and I’ve created an unachievable objective.
I’m not talking about the romanticism involved in dreaming an impossible dream, I’m talking psychology. I need to stop self censoring, to not worry about how I appear, or wether the work I create will be acceptable in the art world. I need to focus on just making it ( like I said a few posts back).
My honest dilemma revolves around not having a role model, It’s much easier to be an early adopter than a trail blazer. I tend to be a alter-mimic, I mimic something but just tweak it a bit and make it my own. Which is counter intuitive to my basic belief in authenticity, how can I be authentic if I’m in essence copying someone. The artistic equivalent to a cover band. I know of two artists who do so, one just flat out steals the style the other apprenticed and is under influence of the alleged master. I’ve found this may work on a local or regional scale, but knowledgeable gallerists ( art dealer), and curators tend to turn their noses up at such work. Then I’m making an assumption here. I’m assuming that these artists are trying to be original. Maybe they are not, maybe they are finding artistic solace in expression of imitation of technique. Which is OK, for they are not the first nor the last to do so.
The choice is obvious, I’ll be the unlikable anti-hero, the scathing social commentator, the art curmudgeon. I feel my path leads to the city of Authenticity. No matter how difficult or frustrating the path. Perhaps that should be the subject the Authentic City. If you find where it is please let me know, oh wait look it’s right here, I just had my thumb on the map covering it!

Amerika aint gonna happen. At least not this spring, I came up with a workable set, concept, text, etc. yet this piece is not a one man show, so it’s going on the back burner until I figure out other things. Here’s a drop I was going to make for the Theatre OK (Great Theatre of Oklahama) segment.
I really want to work on creating a solo electronic performance apparatus and removing the pressure of trying to mount Amerika will help that come to fruition in a more concise manner.
I’d like to pop a VIP Lounge into the slot. Most likely revive Art Angst and the Neo-Bohemian Collective.
I also want to focus more on SCAM, maybe even try to develop 802 into some kind of video art gallery. STAY TUNED!

THEATRE OK

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.

OK, OK, I know, a Manifesto? Well it helps me organize my thoughts and spell out what my intentions are, and I’ll try to rise above the art school sophomore rant, or not!

Theatre, has not been able to compete with the TV, Film, and Broadway style of recreation of reality for some time now. Almost 20 years ago I wrote a quite serious manifesto titled THEATRE ABSTRACT MANIFESTO. IT dealt with Theatre’s inability to compete with TV, Film, and Broadway in the recreation of reality. So what was needed from an audience was a more severe sense of “suspension of disbelief”. The Theatre Abstract manifesto called for a deliberate eschewing of reality in Theatre and development of a style that was highly abstract. A creating of a subjective reality in that empty space! Thanks Peter Brook! At the time I blamed the technology and money that was available to TV, Film, and Broadway Theatre, that was unavailable to small Theatre. I used that basic theory for a majority of my productions since 1990. Most of those production were produced in the manner of Fringe Theatre, which comes from a European term for what we’d call Black Box Theatre. I also detested what we used to call “Icting” or overly emotional hand wringing acting style prevalent in most small theatres, you know, yell if you’re mad, cry if you’re sad. I feel the way to avoid that was to not “pretend” because unless one is extremely well trained and extremely talented, it’s gonna fall short.
So my theory developed from that previous manifesto into the one I most recently used on “The Hamletmachine” a few years ago, Just honestly say the line as an actor in the theatre space you occupy NOW! Don’t try to use forced inflection or tricks to manipulate the audience into feeling the emotion you think the author wants to convey.
Overall as a production theory LOCAL THEATRE will simply not be tied down to any preconceived rule or notion of theatre. 4th walls will be broken only to be immediately rebuilt, linear time lines will be thrown out and then re-established, actors will break character in mid sentence. Technology such as video, audio, lighting, sets, etc. will be used as an additional character or theatrical device not just to augment the action but to convey it. If a character needs to speak, it may be a disembodied voice or a talking head on a screen, or Hamlet will be portrayed by a chair, Juliet by a dust mop. Develop a hybrid of audience acknowledgement and participation and the Brechtian über fourth wall. The infusion of conceptual art technique lends me to call this Conceptual Theatre. The audience will be required to embrace the concept as opposed to the reality of the storytelling. As Tom Waits once said: “It aint theatre if you don’t fuck with time.”
I hope my ranting has either confused you or intrigued you, to the point you’ll be compelled to come view the future works of LOCAL THEATRE

(IMAGE:muybridge modified close up 1)
(IMAGE:muybridge modified close up 2)

…I know an oxymoron. However, if an artist could exploit an artist’s OCD nature, in the business/organization end of stuff, then success would most likely occur no matter how much self sabotage one used. HA! Well I’m just bipolar bear enough to attempt it! The file organization happens for me in the creation, and mostly by the software itself. I then but finished work on one HD and access that for DVD burning, web uploads, etc. My issue at present is more entries and PR. I’ll see a great video art call for entry and save the email. but then by the time I get back to it… the deadline has passed. oops! My slash artist ( I know how last century) nature causes a lot of scattered focus. I’ll be working on several projects simultaneously and end up dropping a couple just to keep my sanity ( HMMM perhaps that ship has sailed?).
Mostly the issue for all artists os the studio discipline. For me it’s not just going to the studio, It’s actually working when I’m there. I have an amazing multitude of distractions most of which are necessary tools for the creation of the work, i.e. audio recording equipment, musical instruments, projectors, monitors, cameras, DVD players, lights, computers, etc. I work best on deadline, which worked great for the performance end of things but not so much for just being creative and manipulating electrons and calling it art.
So I’ll get back to work now and stop being distracted by my blog and allow my creative neurosis powers to be “used for good”, and be come the super hero I long to be..

I AM ARTISTMAN! and no I don’t have a secret costume under my street clothes, my street clothes are my costume!

Ciao baby!
(IMAGE: art is… installation view)

(IMAGE:muybridge modified installation view)

NOTE: Health Care Bill must include ban on Ads of prescription drugs on TV. The only person making a decission on what drugs you should take is your Doctor. You shouldn’t go in to your Dr. and ask for insulin cause you “feel kinda diabetic”.
The pot dealers of the 60’s have turned into the Big Pharma CEOs of the 10’s. They just want to sell you the “stuff”.
DON”T FALL FOR IT!