she sees [red]

caveat #1
i can't stand bono. i think he's a nauseating, self-seeking, aggrandizing superstar with a distorted sense of his own importance.

caveat #2
i can't stand the charity [RED]. it perpetuates the need for consumption, under the guise of helping others, rather than seeking to change behaviours. i know that you can't change self-centered people and this is utilising the fact that people are selfish, and turning it into money for people who need it, but i still don't like it. it leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

having said that, i'm finding myself siding with bono and his grandstanding do-gooders, in relation to this amazing financial vortex that is encompassing the western world at the moment.

how is it, that 8 years ago, when bono asked the american government, and other G8 governments (those same G-peeps who are putting together a bail-out plan as we speak) to contribute $20 billion dollars to wipe third-world debt and make a huge chunk in the weight of world hunger, that it was impossible. that 'economics just doesn't work that way', that it would not help them help themselves, that that kind of money wasn't available to just 'give away', etc, etc, etc.

yet in the last fortnight, we've seen $700 billion dollars being given to private banks, the responsibility of the most-privileged and affecting the least-privileged, in order to 'save' them and the economies of the countries whose econoomies they support. surely this isn't how economics works? surely that kind of money isn't available to just 'give away', surely it doesn't hold them accountable and help them to help themselves?

you know what i really hope? that the US becomes a banana republic and that the rand and the zimbabwean dollar become the strongest in world currency, giving those in abject poverty access to decent food, shelter and medication as they deserve.

As long as Im walking,
Im not:
Choosing
Smoking
Losing
Making
Knowing
Falling
Painting
Hiding
Counting
Adding
Crying
Believing
Fucking
Drinking
Closing
Stealing
Mocking
Facing
Crossing
Cheating
Talking
Reaching
...
...
...
I will not repeat
I will not remember

Francis Alÿs, from The Walker

[thanks to eddy for sending it to me, not once, but twice AND posting it on her blog - just in case]


Here's my list from my occupation at Knox.

When i'm in the toilet i will not:
Shop
Buy stuff
Think about buying stuff

Worry about money

Worry about whether I’ve bought something I shouldn’t have

Wonder if my husband/mother/friend/child will like what I’ve bought

Feel bad about myself because the jeans I wanted to buy were too small, even though they were a size 12

Support sweatshops and slave labour by getting those Nikes.

Drive around for 30 minutes trying to get a park nearest the door, then forget where I parked my car.

Shoot up smack. I’m not a heroin addict.

Smoke. I gave up smoking years ago.

See sunshine for a couple of hours.

I will:
Read

Draw

Write
Think
Day dream
Make myself comfortable
Have some time to myself



Interestingly, i'm writing about the role of occupation in public art/art in the public space and it seems that in any kind of occupation, what's not being done is just as important as what is being done - that the negative space of action (inaction) supports and equally defines the positive. Who would have thought that such formalist ideals as postive/negative space and form could translate so beautifully to post-modern manifestos about process.

oh, and take this as a warning - there'll probably be a post about occupation soon. tune out either tomorrow or wednesday if you can't be arsed reading more art/political rhetoric.

warning: a blog post about blogging

i know.. it's so 2007 to write a blog post about the nature of blogging, but i promise i'll be quick. i recently listened to the most excellent interview with the lovely marcus and faris (both well-spoken and slightly mad brit expats) about all kinds of things, including the vortex of the US/global economic 'downturn' and the changing 'volume' of blogging.

marcus and faris both agreed that all the hoo-har about blogging has died down quite a bit. and the general chit-chat, back'n'forth - conversation - has died down a bit. [so much for the Age of Conversation]. there's theory that RSS feeds may have killed a bit of that comment action - to which i'd probably agree - given that i now read from about 30 feeds every day or two, extending to 100 on a weekly basis, leaving not much time for banter.

however, i've noticed that there are still a small number that i continue to check manually, still comment regularly on and consider a huge influence on my day.

last year, a couple of memes went around and we all had to pick our top 5 blogs ever. what i'm finding fascinating is that 18 months later, after the hundreds of most excellent blogs that i have discovered and discarded, my top 5 remains largely unchanged.

for a while there, marcus wasn't blogging, so NP stole his spot, then colman wasn't blogging and seb stole his spot, now seb is hardly blogging and colman is back, so it's all back to, pretty much back to square 1:

1. rob
2. age
3. marcus
4. ben
5. colman

plus seb, northern planner, dan hill, stan and swiss miss making up the top 10 of must-reads

this isn't to say that i don't have a slew of other awesome blogs that i read, or that i'm not constantly finding new stuff, but i've just realised that consistency matters. those 5 are the ones where i usually have something (lame) to say, where i make sure i check in and the volume is high. the others i keep an eye and get excited when there's new content, but the volume just isn't as high - either they're quieter or i don't have anything to say really. and i find it infinitely interesting that, despite a few more artists blogging more regularly, it's still the ad/comms/design blogs that i engage with. opinionated bunch maybe?

many have mentioned that blogging has merely returned to the influence of friendship and not into some greater über democracy that was being predicted. not sure whether that's the case, but i'll be interested to see who my top 5 are in another 18 months. i have a sneaky suspicion it will be much the same...

oh. my. god.

ok, so today one of the weirdest and coolest things ever happened to me.

as you know, my bike got nicked last week. i was a devastated and changed person and faced the idea of looking for a replacement with dread and a touch of adolescent sulk.

well, tonight, on my way back from the pool (yes, that's right kids, carlton baths are open again. lauren has a season pass and she's not afraid to use it), i stopped off in rathdowne village to get catfood and toy with the idea of getting a nocciola gelato, when i spied a bike that looked like mine, tied to a bike rack. i looked again, and it was the same make, it had crappy handle covers, chewing gum on the brake casing and two types of locks.

yes, kids, it was my bike!!

i asked the people dining al fresco if it was their bike, no one owned it. i could have stuck around to see who put it there, but i had a sneaky suspicion that i wasn't going to find them - they'd tied the bike up with my lock and left it. for me to find.

*gasp!*

while i have my cynical moments, i still genuinely believe in the goodness of human beings and this whole thing reiterated it to me. i can imagine our little pissed thief woke up with a rogue bike in his yard, wondered where the fuck he nicked it from, couldn't remember and decided to return it to the main street closest to where he imagined nicking it from*. i think this is what is called comeuppence. i'm sure that our petite thief is carrying around enough guilt, which i hope will be part of a lesson learned. and i'm sure that, once he sees the bike is gone, he'll feel a whole lot better. i might go back and leave a sticker note, just to let him know:

dear lovely bike thief,
you really upset me by nicking my bike,
but thank you for returning it as best you could.
i hope you get the help you need.
lawrencia.




* i say 'he' because my flatmate's boyfriend remembered hearing some dudes hangin' outside the house hella early in the morning, thinking nothing of it, until my bike disappeared.

apologies to ms patti smith

dear ms smith,

i know that you probably don't have expectations when you walk into a room - it seems that you take each moment on face value, but i wouldn't be surprised if you left the post-doco Q&A wondering what godforsaken country den you had walked into. and i would like to apologise for us.

i'm sure in every Q&A session, there's someone gushing, quivering 'oh, i'm your greatest fan, thank you so much!', but i want to apologise for our lack of stoicism.

i'm sure you've been asked much more offensive questions about your appearance and your gender, but i want to apologise for words like androgony, mess and 'interesting'. perhaps what we wanted to know was about the role of appearance in your art and music. you've managed to glide through all manner of 'fashions' and 'trends' by sidestepping them.

i'd like to apologise for our lack of ability to think before we speak, when we ask for song requests at an evening about a documentary made by an artist, with another artist. although i loved the live performance of blakean year.

i'm sure you've met many more self-serving directors, but i'd like to apologise for our waffling, aimless and self-seeking artistic director. she's done a great job on the festival so far, but we really should have had a better MC - one with a little more control over the audience and a little less control over her own mike.

and i'm sure you've been part of worse-organised festivals, but i want to apologise for someone not letting you know that in 2 days' time you'll be playing in front of about 800 people, for two nights in a row, in an amazing concert hall with fantastic accoustics.

i'm sure you won't be able to answer this question, but i also wanted to ask both you and steven something. a lot of artists are multi-disciplinary, but quite often they run one after the other, or there are gaps in between: you paint when you're not writing and you write when you're having a break from lugging a camera around, or you take photos when you're not editing. but what's it like to be on for all aspects of your creative practice while you're here: writer, poet, singer, painter, photographer and muse? can they exist simultaneously, or is space-between a pre-requisite of multi-disciplinary practice?

kind regards,

lauren

ceci n'est pas mariage

funny how a prank can become an interesting piece of social insight.

last night, out of a warped sense of humour and blatant cheekiness, i changed my facebook relationship status to married. it's pretty easy to get married on facebook - just a drop-down menu really. nothing to really take all that seriously. in fact, when friends who had been going out for ages went from 'being in a relationship' to 'x is now engaged to y', i doubted it and texted, just to make sure, even though it was the reflection of fact.

i kind of knew a few people would look at it and laugh, but i didn't expect anyone to take it seriously. in fact, i was genuinely surprised at the responses i got! thankfully a couple of friends went along with the gag - congratulating me on my marriage to doddsy - the guy with a great art guide to NYC and a complete lack of tact.

interestingly though, what surprised me the most, was the number of shocked reactions! some people i haven't heard from in a while, some reasonably close friends, some who've become strangers - but still, lots of reactions. like getting married still rates as a vital point in a radar for these (mostly) women (ahem, ben?). i have posted all kinds of weird and wonderful messages on facebook over the year that i've been part of the cool kids, but it weirds me out that the one that gets the most reaction is marriage.

it throws up a couple of questions, doesn't it? like what does that say about us as modern women? what does that say about me, as a person? what does that say about my friends? i'm not going to generalise really, but i will say that getting married is still, far and away, obviously a BFD - big fucking deal for people. even on facebook.

and then, what does it say about reality? and ceremony? and truth? is it enough to change your facebook status to signify marriage - will this be the new marriage rite? is this a sacred status that should only be changed with proof of a marriage certificate (seeing as people treat it as gospel). what does this say about belief? how much are we still willing to believe in what we read on the internet? these friends of mine are not stupid, i'll have you know...

can you imagine if magritte had a facebook profile? i'd be his friend, that's for sure.

some c**t stole my bike

as many of you regular readers will know (all 3 of you), i spend a lot of time on my bike - it's the way that i traverse the city - on wheels with music on in my headphones.. it is the one activity that brings me joy, regardless of what else is going on. even arsehole drivers don't phase me that much.

i always said that if my bike got stolen, i'd be devastated, so i always make sure it was chained up good and proper. and i kept the mudguards, the chain guard and the bell rusty so it would look like a pile of crap that no-one would want. little did i think that my dear lawrencia got stolen from my OWN HOUSE! it was on the front yard, with 2 other bikes, belonging to my flatmate and the cunts stole mine.

it's probably some drunk fuckbags who couldn't be arsed walking home (because the only value is sentimental - it was my best friend's mum's bike). and they probably woke up this morning and wondered what the fuck a bike is doing dumped on the lawn. which is even more crushing.. lazy fuckers.

it sounds dramatic, but today i felt like my legs have been cut off. i rode everywhere! even when i was accompanying friends on their long walks home, i was riding at walking pace. and my bike was like my pack-horse! i carried a roll of underlay and carpet from a dumpster mission home on that thing! boo hoo!

and while this is mostly just a whinge, it has proven to me my point about psychogeography (through movement) - that my environment, locale, place, space is actually different, based on my bike-riding. insofar as, in not riding, i have a completely different experience of life. sounds like a given, really, but i'm surprised at how palpable the change is.

we make money, not art

wow. i'm kind of in shock that it has finally happened, really. it's been such a long time coming - NAVA were lobbying for close to 20 years for this and all that work has paid off! 5%..

ok, for those who have no idea what i'm talking about, australia has been severely lacking in a royalty-style on-sell scheme for artists. as a recording artist, if you sell your work, and somebody profits from the playing/on-selling of that work, you get a cut. if you're a literary artist, you get on-sell royalty when your work is reproduced for educational or commercial purposes.

up until now, if you're an artist and someone buys your work at your grad show, you make it big-ish, the work sells at auction later-on and your $250 work now sells for $25,000 (thanks to all the hard work you've put in by having a gazillion other shows and hauling your arse around the place), you don't see squat. ok, so in theory, you get a slight flow-on from increased prices, but the reality is that the conniving investor/dealer pockets the $24,750 profit. and then some.

now, after 20 years of lobbying and lobbying and lobbying - developing models based on the successful UK/European Droite du Suite system, and more lobbying, it seems that the government has finally had the sense to pass the legislation, despite all the fussing from the auction houses.

given that they make most of their money from this kind of on-selling, the auction-houses have been the biggest and loudest opponents to the system, as they suggest that it shouldn't be the poor collectors, with their thousands of dollars to spare, to forfeit the cost of a thriving arts industry. actually, we all know that this is just a smoke-screen for avoiding the kind of auditing which has already started to expose the dodgy dealings of some of the big guns like menzies. allegedly menzies would buy, sell, buy and sell works all by himself, upping the price each time and generating a huge market! [wow - that'll get the prices up... err... sure.]

anyway, thankfully all that ridiculousness has passed and we can now have a little extra fairness going around. And to be fair, it's not perfect and not going to suddenly transform artists' bank balances into bulging cofferes. in fact, as a generalisation there are really two types of artists it will benefit the most: indigenous and superstars. And you know what? I'm OK with that.

There is a shocking, shocking industry in this country of buying indigenous artworks for a pittance (if they bother using cash at all, instead of a tin of petrol or a slab of beer) by taking advantage of either their ignorance, their addiction or their remoteness, and selling the works for huge amounts. hopefully with a new code of conduct, the lecherous aspects of the indigenous art industry will be reduced. and this legislation will provide for those same artists and their communities to continue getting funds from their works. considering the size of the indigenous art industry here, this is not just a boon for artists, but for indigenous rights and conditions. now, hopefully the systems developed to outlay the law will stay true.

And of the superstars? Well, we all know that the Nolans, the Streetons, the Olsens and the Whiteleys (or their estates) already get stacks of money from the sale of artworks. And, to be honest, this will increase the stacks. However, what i expect to happen (expect, do you see that estate managers/families?) is that a tradition which has already begun will continue - using (dead or über rich) artists' extra money, to support younger, up and coming artists. The Whiteley estate and the Olsens already plug money back into the development of younger artists. The Henry Moore foundation, surely supported by the UK's resale royalty scheme, supports up and coming artists. This new legislation will enable the big superstars to use the money to support the future artists, who will in turn use their resale royalty coffers to support others, etc, etc, etc - a trickle-down economy.

Well, at least when i'm a rich and famous artist, earning brazillians from the resale of my early work, that's what i'll be doing :)

For more (professional) info about resale royalty for australian artists:
the age
nava

google goodness update

i know i promised to not keep going on about them, but of course, the more i'm researching, the more cool stuff i'm finding. and, it's their 10th birthday, so there's a lot of cool stuff happening..

here are a couple of things worth checkin':


back to the future





10 to the power of 100 [actually this last one helped me lift myself a little out of my the-world-is-so-crap-and-nobody's-ever-going-to-make-a-difference morbidity.]

WHY

over the last couple of weeks, i've had the fantastic opportunity to hang out for a few days at my parents' place. it's an amazing place, overlooking the victorian coastline and just oozes calm and rejuvenation. especially when my folks are away. heh. having recharged on some good, old-fashioned fresh air, cups of tea and a whole lot of doing nothing, the payback is a grating against the futility of contemporary urban life again. that old question WHY? has started hanging around again*.

*the artnews blog also mentioned it tonight, which i'm glad about, 'cos the last couple of days have been particularly murky.

on the way into town this morning, i noticed the enormity and quantity of truck-based freight zooming in and out of melbourne and felt the weight of modern consumerism sitting at my throat. yesterday i was enjoying a quiet coffee in my favourite cafe and noticed the overbearing amount of ignorant, oversized-car-driving, middle-aged, aspirational mothers kicking around the seaside town, when there are people starving for food on the other side of the planet. i've been feeling the futility of being a fucking conceptual installation artist working on projects about cities, imagination and mapping technology when there are so many people whose daily life is focused on important things like eating, earning enough to support a family and love.


"with great power comes great responsibility"
Spider Man - Stan Lee (Uncle Ben to Peter Parker)... although i thought it was a more politically motivated statement.


"And yes, I recognize the irony.
The system I oppose affords me the luxury
Of biting the hand that feeds.
That's exactly why privileged fucks like me
Should feel obliged to whine and kick and scream,
Until everyone has everything they need."
Resisting Tyrannical Government, Propagandhi.


these quotes have always been important to me, and never more than at times like this. not that i have a whole lot of power. and not that i'm especially privileged (i never had a horse growing up, that's for sure). but i'm from a white middle-class background in a pretty wealthy country, with a good education and the desire to make a difference.

and sometimes it's still not enough. sometimes the weight of 'there's so much shit to sort out' gets to me. i'm sure it will pass. i'm sure i will meet someone/read something/work on something that will right the balance of my world. but for a while, please bear with the grouchy old woman with the ideals.