Belinda listened to the Tom Verlaine Miller's Tale CD she purchased at 7th Heaven on 8th & Metcalf, when she was teenager—his association becoming permanently enfleshed with the brimming direct desire for her stacked as balustrade schoolmate mascara eyes'd Sophie, a quarter a life ago at Appenzell.
But now you know Kaitin certainly fancied herself eclectic now like Belinda too, just because she was into whatever intermediate middling New England haute pâte bourgeois sentimentality, close but not quite network actor sensibility Kaitlin actually had possessed, and there was no place really for Belinda to ever really say this out loud (Well, at least nowhere she could say this out loud at work.)
At Appenzell, the early evening winter sky and landscape would sometimes trawl hyperreal in a way Belinda may have never quite seen where she was from, sonorous skies could too commonly degenerate too quickly to become mired in grey and appear glitched, as if run through radiator digital crochet. Other days, the wind currents would shape clouds into slashy 3-MCC chemtrail track lines far from above, criss crossing in X's before eventually dissipating into pouring down pollution all but saying no, as all clouds eventually always say no.
Belinda may have even pointed this out in the back seat, but it didn't seem to register with anyone. When Belinda was late teen, she might have fantasized some kind of new or maybe some yet to be seen, yet to be known to the public consciousness Poet, maybe someone articulating some soon to hopefully be redeemed heart break surely there, and it may have been imagined by Belinda the making of some idealized, romanticized music video where they're driving and you can tell the camera man is just sitting shotgun filming her or them or whoever, the Poet casually looking like talk driving singing the small town quadrangle in some lousy snowville winter. Belinda didn't have to want to be them necessarily—she didn't have to imagine herself as that imaginary Poet, as they—the Poet, actually existing would have probably just about been well enough for Belinda. But now, beyond persuasion is just too much Sophie driving dropping them off, provisionally pulled them into driveway, as all three the others climbed out. The problem with desire though, is that in all statements, or maybe that in all moves, it all becomes a bit overly on the spot all too self determined, or way too premeditated maybe—to which girls, and even with girls on girls, if you think about it, can still well tell also. Belinda sidled around back of the raincoat yellow Saab, feigning casual in some cloven cadence of dignity in approaching S. But by then, when Belinda was just about to brood in front of S's driver's seat window, you know S was already on her runty obsolete prepaid cell phone, pulling out in reverse like some gluttonous taxi driver.
It was not that Belinda was necessarily ever really particularly charmed by such spare direct interactions with Sophie though—Sophie's conversation between them was most always certainly dire so narrow, but not narrow in some most optimistic sense, like, say, how the classical collegiate mind would probably be set narrow, no—especially when, or considering when, comparing it to some bearing down meandering discursiveness of some conventional notion of modern thought—Sophie was just humorless as a handrail, was like a cat that would eat off their owner's face right away when they died on the floor in your apartment. Barbed wire between legs Sophie, still though, may have, or might have, or certainly very well could have occupied in Belinda's mind some tangle of intangible imaginary, symbolic and also very real dimension or significance, like all simultaneously, like all at once, and not to mention, probably so spectacularly, in all the grand consistent confusion Sophie so consciously and or so unconsciously cultivated. But crazy Sophie was like tibby that always must be kept indoors, because once she got let outside, surely one could be quite certain she'd murder just about any bird, or anything for that matter, that she ever came across, if only out of boredom, or especially out of boredom. And besides, it was some kind of real perversion of actuality, if considering just how much Belinda may have felt so very wretched just thinking about it all with Sophie anyways. If when she thought about it for too long, it was how Sophie pretty much always went along with allowing herself to get pulled everywhere and anywhere, or with whatever, or with practically anything, or especially with anything, that was going on with the other people she surrounded herself with on campus—and to think about if there may have been something unconsciously macho and brusque about it all with her, how she was, but there was definitely something there, though quite never enough about it not to really ever notice in time, times when Sophie may have wielded her otherwise hipnotic feminine allure when she was around them all—like, as if, she could maybe do it both ways; as pixie or Sam. It was just fine though really, if that's how she wanted to be as far as Belinda was concerned, or even as much as Belinda could have cared by that point. And it's not like Belinda could even broach the issue anyways, her behaviour practically betrayed her everytime in front of Sophie—young Belinda feeling paranoid guilty just from making such private observation silently to herself, as is somehow Sophie could on some level pick up on it. There was that one song Belinda listened to all the time then even, because really there could probably hardly ever seem to be any worse social conditions Belinda could ever quite have imagined herself under now.
Belinda could see something indescribably similar in the limply engineered gift at Sophie's stars hide fires hand, that one one time Sophie was puzzling together some big deal care package in the commons in Mac Greggor Hall, right there in the living room just for practically everyone there to very well see on like splayed display there. Sophie had come back to town with an ornament, a t-shirt, and a something else, which she was sending to a forced now poor bastard plutonic ex-boyfriend she was still from great distance holding hostage onto this semester (the trinkets she sent, that otherwise a sex foreclosed male would never well want on their own or very well ever ask for, but items nonetheless that would still be used to mark and advertise herself from a far)—and even in whatever ostensible frivolity the in reality self obsessed fuckist Sophie was then now operating under, how it still bared so some similar same cheap gestural weight, like a wife who worked as a Dominatrix then coming home to her husband and absolving herself by putting on overalls and tying a WPA gypsy mop woman bandanna around her head; I mean think about it—Sophie in quite her feral early twenties phase didn't seem to be that too terribly even invested much in the emotional lives of any of these friends even really.
Kaitlin and Belinda encountered Helen Frankenthaler, Silent Wish, from '73, on the impossibly pristine white wall of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. There was always something calming and reassuring about the white cube jail cell wall for Belinda, more so than any of the colored works that could ever possibly be put on display. All the best things in life are white Belinda always thought, white lies, white noise, white rage, white wedding (well, maybe not a white wedding), but as such, it would certainly still be hard to prove Belinda's attitude untrue.
With defacto contempt, Belinda silently appraised the large scale Frankenthaler hanging there like ostentatious blush carcass dead on hook—Frankenthaler, also from family of means (though not real wealth like Belinda), Frankenthaler, basically Motherwell's wet nurse, and certainly not as good as any of the men painters of the time (and Frankenthaler, not to mention, unequivocally outfoxed conceptually by Morris Louis later).
Belinda and Kaitlin now came upon a Ferdinad Léger, The Baluster, 1925, oil on canvas, Belinda immediately thought back about old Sophie now after all this time.
Ah, look this Léger, Kaitlin, the unwanted baby sister Belinda wanted to drown in the babysitter pool. Kaitlin used such folsom positivistic terms, and that Kaitlin's seemingly naturalistic, optimistic, and quite frankly, nubie reaction to something, which such predictable choice otherwise only could remind and signal to Belinda that something in the world, meaning something of the world, which essentially means ultimately the world en toto, was always very well going against Belinda's private desires and best interior sensibilities, and it was all so ludicrous now even, how annoyingly expressed through Kaitlin's all to do predictable accepted general consensus comment, which immediately bristled Belinda, and it was through the expression of such pedestrian attitude is how people exactly like Kaitlin got so far in this life, taking slots from others who were the real thing, because the world was built for crashing bores.
Kaitlin was probably the kind of person who referred to inanimate objects as she. Her slim eyebrows made her look perpetually angry like the United States of America eagle, which made her seem more attractive than she maybe actually was. But in that perpetual cold stare, if you looked close enough, you could see a colonist's entitlement that she rightfully thought she deserved such aspirational position, because she probably assumed she had carte blanche practically, of her natural right to whatever she wanted, despite being unaware she maybe possessed no real passion or talent or heart even, as if from watching Sex on the City or some Romcom movie, just one day it giving her the splendid idea that would ultimately take the vocation from someone, or someone else otherwise more talented or more appropriate, that which no amount of how good Kaitlin was at going to school, or no amount of Kaitlin taking an unnecessary amount of notes in meetings could never quite justify.
Catching Belinda's tooth deadened by novacaine non-reaction, was indicative of something of Belinda assumed outlandish by Kaitlin, What, Belinda, come on, don't tell me, you don't like this.
Not particularly,
Oh, your just an impossible one now aren't you now . . .
No, no, it's just all too quite predicable. I could have called it out before even stepping foot into this drafty oneiric space of old building. No, no there's the Léger Le rythme de la vie modern thing going on in cooperation with Kunstmuseum Basel in Wolfsburgh right now—no, it's just that I simply despise administrators being cute, that's all.
But wasn't it not enough that the upcoming Absolute Film, Abstract Medium in an Abstract World exhibition of an historical experimental film works from Europe around 1913 to 1929ish was a cakewalk to organize (with the usual bores Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, Dziga Vertov), which Belinda could very well have put together over the phone in her apartment on Lafayette all on her own with a couple of old catalogues and a pack of cigarettes (Belinda lived on the same block as Rauschenberg's old studio), and wasn't it enough that the director David Ross so insisted upon Kaitlin assigned unnecessarily to co-organize it with Belinda on what is essentially a nothing-new-here-to-discover-here historic softball pitch safety of a show only but to condescend to the squalor of the 300 or so people in the city really paying attention, but that the very limit to Belinda's now taken to task patience was that now, think about it, taken total advantage of, when David actually now sent Belinda and Kaitlin both together to Berlin to present themselves in person in short order to physically buttress the securing of final loan agreements to what was essentially going to be the exhibition's largest lender.
Kaitlin commented on some relational Vaseline, cotton, contact glue, cocoons, and needles on the floor, in meaningful takeaway, like what she had just said had been repeated numerous times already by others very recently.
Belinda went into another gallery without Kaitlin, but then turned around, exited promptly when she saw the only thing inhabiting the shadow black cube was one of those ghastly mall art Louise Bourgeois loomed and looming giant spiders.
What's in there?
Nothing.
Nothing?
Let's catch a breath, can you walk faster. Do you have a Kleenex—
Belinda was stricken by staggering spell of dulled but persistent twitch withdrawal symptoms from her daily Kratom tea dose, though never mind she used Kratom to get off black. Now that she was off the Hippo sweats, she still never had quite gotten around to quitting Kratom—a needlessly prohibited substance in some states and was bewilderingly becoming banned in an increasing amount of countries now (Kratom now banned in France, and it was a good thing Belinda detested Impressionism, never was charmed by the clunky dolls in attic glorified illustrations of a dusty Surrealism).
Since Kaitlin was now shadoboxing right along and right next to Belinda practically ever since they got to Newark, Belinda couldn't exactly go straight into the street right upon arriving in Lichterfeld West, in order to procure some street shrapnel to ease the Kratom withdrawal now, no—Kratom withdrawals, which are more protracted prolonged than the even the best Kitsch. Belinda's refrain became mantra on this trip now: what would Walter Hopps do now?
A colorful old specialty Volkswagen with different Bauhaus color panels and missing a hubcap slis down the motorway, disappearing past like sightless courier of air, and even Berlin's behind the times cold oxygen blasting off the strand street between the old architecture, was wind that wasn't blown but was actually sucked out, and could certainly do nothing to quell or give relief to the bad spell twitches, restless arm, jutting leg syndrome which befell Belinda now.
If religion was the opiate of the masses, and art was Belinda's religion, then that it certainly would explain why Belinda felt the ever more so much more junk sick passing gallery window with the dreadful Antony Gormley lawn ornament solo exhibition on view.
Berlin's problem, Berlinda though, or Berlin's problem, was was Berlin perpetually so suffered from what Harold Bloom quite deftly characterized as the Anxiety of Influence, though Belinda made her own addendum, which most certainly seemed a bit more salient, and especially here, and especially now in Berlin today: Anxiety of the Uninfluenced (or Uninspired to be more exact). Sure, Berlin was more advanced than the States in some sorry little ways, expressed in say, this unsaid overt Rosemarie Trockel general secular reification of all those cute crochet graphic repetition symbol scarves, sweaters, smitten mittens, pre-Twee coffee cup holders everywhere. Belinda didn't really mind that, well that's not true, she steadfastly detested it quite, but at least she was being a least bit self imposed requisite charitable somewhere, and with something, at least something by now, but who knows how long that would last.
It's catastrophically foolish and naive to trust artists anyways, Belinda thinking to herself jones walking, wishing she could just lose Kaitlin feigned accidental, it's even disgusting to condescend to them. Artists are worse than chlamydia, they are like these little unwelcome colonizers, so intent to impose their will in poisoning the well. The real people, the real important people that is, the real people that really matter anyways now are the curators, the dealer, the dealer's alliance, the directors, the admins, the critics, or no, especially, especially the critics—critics are the most important anyways, but hey, try explaining that to the perpetually unscrubbed hoi polloi.
Belinda lighting up Gitnes in entrance portico, shielded from the wind, completes her private thought out loud to Kaitlin, Besides, I simply hate Berlin, I much prefer Munich anyways—now that's an art town, a sort of Athens on the Isar, if you think about it . . .
By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling: namely, the strange.They walked past a bar, Suicide's Ghostrider was oscillating on the sidewalk from out the small sleek hallway bar inside. A drink would quell the twitches a tiny bit surely, maybe the bartender can even find Bae-lin quick candy cane lane in for perhaps some quality or cheap minor.
Belinda flinching in impulse, I need to, ta make a pit stop—
You want to go to a bar now??
No, no, I just need to use, use the washroom . . .
That's fine, I'll just wait out here.
Kaitlin—the bar—you are coming—in. As your superior, as your better, you well better come in now now, or you will be very sorry, sorry when we get back to New York—I can, shall make your life very difficult . . .
Hearing the John Maus now made Belinda kind of want to immediately get unsatisfyingly drunk off Vodka at the small minimalist bar, as the clear clean liquid was an extension of Modernism tout court, it's the death in ferment that makes us sentimental and its field of effects very reassuring Barragánian flat planes of supple dark burgundy monochromes high modernist color backdrop of spare simplicity, where one is transported into timeless future. Maus was behind the times trendy sure, but it actually kind of worked in such post facto manner that, always-to-be-behind-the-times-for-evermore-Berlin was actually kind of good at in it's facility for characteristic thoughtful dispatch and catch between cracks retro application.
Belinda went to the Lady's powder room while Kaitlin sat at empty elevated bar table like mother taking child to toy store, dispassionately and impatiently just waiting for the kid to pick out a black Cabbage Patch doll so they can quickly leave.
Belinda takes her time getting back, Kaitlin stands up while Belinda sits down on the sharp bar chair.
This place is cute! Don't you think this place is cute! You know I think I might want to maybe actually have a little noontime rocktail after all dear! Okay?
No, I want to go. I don't or do not feel comfortable here.
What you mean you don't feel comfortable here—this is certainly a safe space. I don't see any commoners here or any old peo—
I don't feel comfortable because I don't' drink alcohol.
That shouldn't be an issue dear, it looks like they serve, no look, they do serve beer—look they got taps!
No, I don't drink as in, oh Jesus Christ Belinda—
We are here. Here we are. I am ordering a little drinky okay??, and I am simply not having little you sit there like a moldy lythop on log jam watching me drink, only to make me feel all rushed . . .
I told you Belinda—I don't drink.
Dear god what—your not one of those little people who goes to those little drinking meetings now are ya.
Belinda.
Oh, no no no dear—it's no wonder you are the way you are. Poor child. I very well should have known.
Well, thanks Belinda, thanks a lot, for so casually, just for so casually getting me, or no, no compromising my anonymity.
Oh, please bitch, give me a break—I very well knew you were in AA. AA people radiate such a specific narcissistic energy anyways, they simply have to just remind everyone and everyone their sobriety anniversary like every bone dry year, like some glutinous child who always gets too many presents—no, demands two birthdays a year. Well, congratufuckinglations there Charley, I say.
Kaitlin still stands lamely at the table, visibly neutered expressed by her gait.
You know Kaitlin, it's not alcohol's fault. No, it's not. It's you. It's you'rs dearie. You're problem is is that you—you, well . . . are afraid . . . your afraid of yourself. So like child you just quit and pack it up and pack it in and run run run away and go to AA—you're secret not so secret meetings. And besides, going to meetings is simply an excuse to give up on yourself—I mean think about it—your actually enabling yourself, dear. Why, why then don't you take responsibility, just take some control of yourself now man!—learn to drink like a grown woman will ya. Your a grown woman. And besides, besides, what's, what's even the point of even being in the arts if you don't imbibe???
A bar servant, who looked like he on his off hours moonlighted as pro-am street puppeteer broomsweep busker, handed Belinda and Kaitlin slim menus, minimalist lists which where with care printed on heavy paper stock at a small locally owned copy shop, where there was a corkboard where customers were free to pin freshly printed flyer.
Was werden zwei Kliene Nutten wie Sie zum Trinken in den Mund nehen?
Hi hello, sweets . . .
Belinda took out her reading spectacles, put them on, visibly comfortable in herself now sitting back travel pragmatic, looking at the menu self satisfied in motherly sense of enjoyment of contented moment, taking it all in.
For starters, a 12-1 martini for me, and 8-1 martini for this little teetotaler here, and, and, bring us, bring us that—the flat fillet anchovies, with the oil, rolled in capers and pimentos yes—yum yum.
The service worker chamberlain leaves, comes back to re-ask the order again fumbling, leaves again and then comes back with two drinks on tray and with hieratic air placed both very gently tall upon bar table.
Belinda picked up booth long stems, intrepidly handed the 8-1 in manner of stewardship to Kaitlin, with a conservatorship that Kaitlin has yet to have ever seen from Lin.
You know what your problem is, your problem is is you suffer from a crisis of confidence, Belinda holding out the glass, to which Kaitlin makes but no attempt to reach for.
Kaitlin, if you do not take this and drink it, have no doubts I shall kick you off my team . . .
Not your show to row, Belinda. David appointed my assignment afterall—he has final say, quite. That make you break this enterprise with me? You can't just kick me off.
Oh, what sorry little you know, sweetie, if you don't take this, take this and drink the poison up right chop, chop I will, I shall well make thick marks upon my own blood, do my very best in getting both of us dismissed, show delayed, if not aborted. You know I hate this show anyways, besides I'd just as rather quite prefer torching an entire Breuer wing if that should happen, especially if what it but all comes down to . . .
I just recently celebrated five years, five years, five years sober.
Belinda took a sharp pull from glass, wincing, and then pointedly pulling up into her full power, It's like Dean Martin says Honey, what is it he says? I feel, no, I feel sorry for people, I feel sorry for people who don't drink, because when they wake in morning—that's as good as they ever gonna feel!
Kaitlin gave futile pause, surely she not beyond realizing when she finds herself only all but to be out foxxed.
Well, you are celebrating your first ever exhibition with moi, which indeed now should both doth we esteem elixir ornament of life. Congratulations, dear.
The Sun had vanished possibly somewhere deep into outer space, it was dark outside and the bar was cosily playing predictably behind the times Goo Goo Dolls inside, as Belinda and Kaitlin were buoyed by eternal alcohol spirit. Getting sauced was cheating life, drinking was about becoming immortal—reward in advance (There's a reason why the church compromised with token communion paultry little sip of wine, while god hoarded all the life apple whiskies.) Later the impiety of toll will inevitably be collected eventually though, and sooner rather than later, Angel of Death.
Belinda high off the fresh shift of Ph levels, not letting Kaitlin get away with any of her stated assertions (and assumptions) on figuration.
No, no, no the retail image subsumed all optical work anyways, rendering it all but mere image text, compromising the possibility of affective response, Belinda regaling while expertly grabbing for anchovy.
It's only going to get worse, nothing multidisciplinarity, not new media, not over population of art school students, can ever temper.
Do you think of Anna Weyent, Belinda?
Uh, what. Ah, nothing. She's nothing. No, she's less than nothing, some Wicks and Sticks Hallmark card image text illustration fabulist fairy tale princess mentality dilettantist rappel à l'ordre. She don't know a Giacomo Puccini from Giacomo Balla probably, David Rabinowitch from David Wojnarowicz . . .
Belinda interrupts herself with a gulp, as the hypocritically bombastic and satisfying beat vindicates everyone who hears it, sets bar like pacemaker—a soundtrack saying I will win and you will lose, It's just quite a pity you don't see that, non?, Kaitlin.
You know your, you are a strange one Belinda. But I mean I do believe, do believe, you know what I believe, I believe people, people are put in people's lives, well, they are put into each other's for a reason.
Right you were put in my life to toil as my assistant.
You know what I mean . . .
The direction this is headed, has no interest to me whatsoever, Kaitlin. Let me remind you I am not your friend.
Yeah, yeah, well you sound a lot like my thesis advisor. I had a hard time making friends as graduate student.
Well, I myself was smoking chewies alone mostly too by myself undergrad, listening to Lydia Lunch 'Under The Covers' . . .
You could tell Kait was drunk because her thoughts were misfiring random darts. You know Belinda, your just like, like this, this, like some Nietzschean Romanticist—you're critiques or rather, should I say you're bulldozing of everything upon which passes you're tongue though, is dismantled by argument of the same strictures or status quo you indeed seem to also hold high contempt for the same. You know that?
What can I say babe, life—is rife—in contradiction.
Well tell me, what do you think of Katherine Bowling?
Uh, umm, nothing. Greeting card illustration, mere image text by this point—I'd much prefer Frank Bowling anyways.
Doris Salcedo?
Ed Keinholtz after the fact, over studied over deterministic object sites who cares posturing.
Vanessa Beecroft?
Not enough Tn'A. State school studio masters level aping.
Ban Jas Alder?
Photography, need I say more?
Kazuo Shiraga.
Zombie formalism tout court, grist for curators, artist as occasion to give them a sense of discovery, some curator's self perception of eclecticism.
Sophie Calle.
Ah,
You don't like Sophie Calle, I suppose then . . .
No, yes and no. I don't know.
There's no magic in city traffic Belinda silently took a distanced appraisal stock of Kaitlin, or more so now at least, half realizing into fully realizing, that she really didn't quite really appreciate such manner of interrogation, no—and people were always doing this. Never even once in her entire goddammed, god forsaken life, did Belinda ever have such rooftop assassin audacity to ever interrogate someone with succession of pointed questions, deployed in order to find gap in their reasoning, questions bombarded to use to unravel some perceived as unsound string of logic of the other in questioning (well, that's actually not exactly true, she actually has, but that's not the point). And regardless, still regardless of this, or actually maybe because of this, Belinda spoke frankly now, with measure of some self perceived and outwardly projected ernest non-reactionary maturity.
Well, if you must know, the reason, the reason David, the board, or the board, whatever, appointed me . . . unsaid it was because I'm Brit, or I'm a Brit, my lily white Palmolive skin you know, but what I have, or but also, also I, or I just, just like HAVE had a well known, well this, just some well known expressed distaste for, very specific, or a very specific loathing for just . . . European production, just in general—so the board just fancied I was perhaps, maybe, perhaps, maybe not— I don't know—was, is, or am, you know . . . best of worlds.
Kaitlin and Belinda at bar were rudely interrupted by some blustery American rustbelt wigger dad bod, self inserting himself into their convo on the occasion he was in some festive cosmopolitan mood and why the hell wouldn't these two foxy females who where now sitting at the bar enmeshed in their own conversation not want to give way to the spirit of frivolity, that he so felt just to self reflexively go out of his way to so foist upon everyone and anyone so handily around, and everyone so automatically assumed by him to but be so intrigued by his beaming blustering Coors suds zeal.
Butting into their conversation, with some immediate general observation, something maybe about the indentured servant behind bar, floated by excitement, as the spot, this haven of unaccountability, was now popping lively somewhat as it got darker.
Geez, thanks Joe Blaze, you just interrupted us, Belinda was used to being interrupted at the museum (and especially by men ((and with other women it was especially worse))), as the commons in any museum is just landing point for perpetual interruption—but now even as pseudo civilian here at the bar, little patience now had did she.
Hey your British, Brits! What brings you to these parts.
Nothing, now move along now, Biz Markie.
Kaitlin's more sunny temperament (read general misguidedly naive predisposition) led her maybe out of courtesy, maybe out of slight festive general out and about curiosity, to entertain such horse swilling boondoggle, We're curators, here on business.
Curators?! Like, like artists. You do artists, or like work for artists?
No, we are city case workers who sponsor a breakdancing troupe at the local YMCA, Belinda spitting it back, as if throwing dead body into icey cold river.
Hey your fiesty! Let me buy you two ladies drinks . . .
No Ponce!
Sure Belinda detested Eurocentrism and Europe in general quite plenty, but Americans, with Americans, it never ceased to flabbergast her concerning the audacity with which they carried with themselves and were on hair's notice to so readily dispatch themselves onto the greater world so unsolicited. White people really were deluded enough to think they can do anything—as if they had the power to take rap music away from blacks (which they don't, so they can't), but you know they very well would take rap away (all along with everything else), because how could it ever be otherwise? Belinda thought no ungrown or grown white man has any business whatsoever rapping.
Well no, back to me, I'm an artist! I'm an artist too!
Intriguing. Astounding. What do you do. Belinda winning an Emmy for best concealment of immediate revulsion (Well, that's not true, she quite spoke to him in a ceaseless, adamant acid icy revulsion.)
Everything, basically. I'm a rapper, but lately, lately I've been getting more into the production side of things, as one could hardly but notice such self satisfaction of him gobbling on about his favorite topic: himself.
They were at the trail of tears end of art. The historic, mostly sub-mediocre Poets were replaced by glorified events administrators—master of ceremony facilitators. Culture had advanced to where emotional, drawn out expressions were in most situations just seemingly most of the time now wholly inappropriate (and to be fair, perhaps felt as a bit histrionic and corny ernest), and what was needed was economical, punchy, low depth of field postmodern portions and samples that have no time for as much singing. There was nothing necessarily originally wrong with the new non-art anti-aesthetic, and in fact, it was indeed a miracle when it ever emerged, and it was surely a welcomed fracture of fresh gale to suit and appropriately adapt itself to a no time to sit, advanced ultra economic metropol psychological pacing—inoculating itself from an attention span needed for Sinatra. Crooning poetic discoveries and flourishes of the human voice was backing itself away, for jargon read radio slogan non-sequiturs, it's very beginnings Belinda imagined was like being accosted on the streets in New York in 1978 and someone pulling you aside to give you the read on the streets, Hey man, let me give you the rap about the jive that's really going down on the next block. The problem was was it became all too reified and then subsumed everything, advancing itself into painted into corner reduction to absurd. Belinda thought about Jurgen Habernas saying Modernism is dominant but dead. Even decades later even DIY wouldn't be safe, one day everything later to become subsumed in user generated everyone in the phone book DIY Auto Zone equivalent production, an unromantic this-is-how-it-works-and-how-you-can-fix-it enlightenment spirit, which although sounds potentially liberating, is really in practice catastrophically destructive, as it lampooned and misdirected all standards of innovation, into a sort of bathos multiplied and self multiplying, as hard to inoculate anti-intellectual, postcritical genital crabs. It was precisely that same absurdity now at the bar, trying 2 rap at Kaitlin and Lin with drinks.
But ya know, style is style. And a dope style, a real dope style you know? is is not something you can buy, is not something you can fake, is not something you can steal, you know what I mean, or is, is not something you can learn. And the way I run it is, is, or the way I flex my styles is, is I flip and bounce it, with the help of the lord, I flip and bounce it again, and then, you know what? I flip and bounce it one more time. How many times is that flipped and bounced??
I don't know. Belinda rasping wit's end.
What Belinda is trying to say is, that sounds like a very inventive formal solution. Kaitlin now displaying her skill as being a programmatic mediator.
No, what I really did mean —
Kaitlin cutting Lin off, Look, I didn't catch you're name—
Spencer.
Well, look—Spencer, if you could please oblige to let us resume our conversation, that would be very much appreciated.
Yeah, beat it Tubbs! Go back to Philly or West Chester or wherever your from. Belinda rasping away countering out at the diplomatic comportment Kaitlin had dispatched.
Big Punn walked away mumbling something outwardly defensively incendiary to himself, as if self scripted towards the girls, self quipping like he was still the protagonist in the Player's Paradise movie of his life, unconsciously aware that his ramped up narcissism bared a steady stream of self talk deluded enough into functioning, as if his self perception inner voice was actually the weight of attention of chorus of audience of crowds of fans and followers just waiting for what ever possibly could be such the mystery of whatever next thing he will happen to say to himself.
Ominously, the song Religion II from the first P.I.L. record comes on, as if activating itself and cleansing the psycho-social interior space.
Kaitlin accepted another round of drinks, as if she had never stopped drinking for five years, maybe this bitch should be in AA, Belinda noticed.
I can most certainly take it all for given though, especially all those times I was moving from small college to small college, and for the longest time I hadn't received my M.A. yet. But I just wasn't interested or like interested frankly, in getting the same accreditation as the rest of all these college snips, Kaitlin shifting her hair for no apparent reason.
Kaitlin turned looking out the window purposefully, as if there were something she had to check back on, but then she realized she was somewhere else. You didn't want or expect to be a curator didn't you?, you weren't even trained as one, from what I know, right?
No, no, no, but my sense of what some curator's role is or should be is pretty much the same as before I became one. We do the same things critics do in a sense, which is use the information we've collected and our sensibility, or with our sensibility, to try, to try to like consider the widest range of work possible, put out the things we find interesting, in a way where it can become crystal clear why they may perhaps be interesting. I mean, I think, I really think, it is dangerous or just bad or whatever, when curators no longer follow their instincts, and begin to think primarily in terms of status—which I do quite sometimes find myself mired in, pressured to maintain.
Like what.
Like what? Like, like this whole damn Absolute Film, Abstract Medium in an Abstract World nonsense we're working on that's what! Educational, or no, shows done from a primarily educational point of view, for whatever reasons, be it for proving, reinforcing teleology, often removes complexities, or naturally extinguishes more important though subtle significant conclusions I feel. Or no, no, or it takes something banal and situates it to where its importance just may very well be misrepresented. The best shows are maybe or could maybe be possible, when, when the work is close to those organizing it—regardless of whatever flaws or holes it may or may not have, and if anything, if an exhibition is organized with these intentions, then those flaws would mean less or be like besides, or like besides the point, or even appealing—but what for would otherwise maybe even add another layer of complexity.
By such point, Belinda didn't catch herself eyeing at Kaitlin's mint condition jet black Acne jeans at her hips, but Kaitlin certainly may have. Lin's leg kept grazing on Kaitlin, Kaitlin's perfect snow driven white skin was also now in the vods light radiating a masteress of universe paleness, a courtly paleness quite accentuated by Kaitlin's not wearing lipstick. White skin really is the best skin, thought Belinda drunkenly to herself.
Belinda had been increasingly looking Kaitlin in the eyes now too, which Belinda never looked anyone in the eyes.
Though now Kaitlin didn't quite feel the need to prole for linguistic meaning for whatever soupçon of suspicion that may have been right there blinking at her, she went on, I mean let's face it, I can't paint, I'm not an artist, what am I to become, just some wife of some junior partner? You know my sister actually, my sister is—
You know Kaitlin, has anyone ever told you you have just the most gorgeous hazel eyes?
Oh, ok, well thanks Belinda. That's very, um, thoughtful of you to say.
I don't think stating something about your fantastic physical features makes me particularly quote un-quote 'thoughtful' necessarily. No, I just don't know how I've never noticed before, maybe I've just been distracted by your conventional style of dress . . .
Boy Belinda—you sure do know what to say to a girl. I'd imagine you've never noticed before because you were never sheets under influence of eight twelve to one's. It really is time, must go now—
The night lurched ripe with hallucinatory perfume of violence, a wrist watchful worth of worry now set into Kaitlin's clomping brain gallop, and even drunk relapsed, she reverted to her old sober ways still now, still always striving to maintain the order of control and all the illusions that come with it.
Belin thought though, it was precisely this same not so original premium placed by administration class, the characteristic of controlled organization and measured accreditation prefered over say for instance, actual talent or mercurial enigmatic practitioners (which are rare and never really available anyways) —and have you seen microscopic footage of cell multiplying?—the replicants generate from out of nowhere.
Kaitlin and Baelin passed front window of display on the sidewalk. Playing on heavy black institutional grade monitor, looped video of woman sitting against stark white wall in black tights, her leg folded towards her mouth sucking on her own big toe—a sop to Bruce Nauman obviously, as if such gradschool breakout video work would or could ever cascade this late in history into some major career, a major career which well actually won't ever happen because culture had advanced too far where we were now (this isn't the 60's). There were more artists in this world than all the living insects counted together now, but at least insects eventually died thought Belinda.
Belinda tripped on a jutting out seam from rectangle of sidewalk pavement—which was no big deal, and with BLin, such could have very well so easily have happened sober. Of course Kaitlin over playing her established hand as pragmatic onlooker and slightly undermining rivalrous co-worker exaggerates its effect.
Hey you okay there . . .
I'm ok, it's ok, I'm fine . . .
I'm kind of convinced.
It's close to midnight, I feel too exaggerated . . .
But in a state of wild awake delight, and in the long arm of coincidence, what are the odds now that they should bump into familiar face to such tempest tossed, oiled up Belinda now.
Ubo my flower, this is Kaitlin my secretary from the temp agency, Kaitlin this Udo.
Like a rattling latch Kaitlin buddied out at Udo in the ripe moment of introduction, in a way Belinda could see how girls situationally automatically embraced to exploit to full extent an immediate instant friendliness and rapport to which they could make advances in trying to gain equal footing with the friend actually introducing them to their own damn circle, or worse, the introduced even aiming for undermining total subversion into flexing themselves possibly into future dominator role, possibly unseating the making introduction giving friend, only to advance a complete reversal of roles upon the social dynamic. Belinda noticed how Kaitlin wasn't, may have, or not even been conscious she seemed to be doing this, but she most certainly was. Belinda thought she was acting exactly just like Sophie now.
Udo blankly looked at Kaitlin, said nothing in rebuff as if railroaded. It was in such way kind of signaling he was homosexual, but also demonstrating to Belinda, and god bless Udo, how ever so without missing a skip, Udo so externalizing instinctually, and still after all these years, just immediately able to still tell, how he knows exactly how luxury taxing a woman like Katilin really could be. It was in how so he wasted very little no time in instantly accessing and vibing out Kaitlin naturally like that, proving so beautifully again that the true miracle of friendship in this world can somehow still exist.
Kaitlin addressing the charismatic Udo like she already knows him, We were having drinks at this Modern dive bar and—
Ah, Balinda, Balinda, she no so much order drinks, as she commands ratios, you see . . .
No, no, no, but Udo, Udo, there's just simply no one I'd rather bump into this very exact second sweetie, and I do mean that . . .
Belinda left off listening to Kailin and Udo in polite chatter, impatiently lit a cigarette, letting Udo and Kaitlin's conversational turn of focus proceed without her but then interrupts after a strand of her hair got in her mouth when she pulled it out innocently.
Um, Udo Sweetheart, Dear, you know where one may obtain black dots perhaps?
You in Berlin with Udo now and do you even have to do ask Udo such a that question?
Kaitlin catches, Black dots.
I'm just on my way to an appointment in Wansee, but first I must go back to my flat to get my briefcase. But if you want to like, you can come with me out to the villa. There's a party and you could come as my guests. It's very exclusive, very decadent you might may say, like . . .
Sounds Wonderful, shall I ride with you to your apartment?
Udo in the shadow of physiognomy of the classical evil face (an evil face physiognomy, which no doubt caused a life of great deal undo harm and grief to Udo), though in reality Udo was such the sweetheart, And Kaitlin, you are welcome may to join us if much you like . . .
I'm not sure, I mean Belinda, we do have to still meet with Henrich tomorrow-day . . .
No, no, that's fine, you see, see Udo, Kaitlin don't wanna go . . .
Are you sure dear, you sure you do not want make to join us . . .
No, okay I'll go . . .
As sixteen hangover January months later still, each cord opens perspective,
As a child, Belinda a few times got attacked in her sleep by some sort of supernatural demonic presence, and the city sat there now ominously knowing and aware of this, reminding her now—as if supernaturally, taunting Belinda now of the psyche shattering shadow reality dream world afterlife that she had completely slip off from her mind over and over again. The catastrophically menacing haunting dream that one would be baffled to think the universe naturally though, so unseemingly and so otherwise would so unlikely go out of its way to generate all on its own. Not like the maddeningly banal purgatory dreams where the scene is barely legible, where one's actions and one own's thoughts are barely rendering, only to be senselessly treading illegible blubbering blots of actions and abstract blots of thoughts that babble barely formed. Or not like all the other too abstract to articulate, dreamt just right before waking, as if it somehow knew occuring before waking was for some reason the best time, and those hallucinations too sometimes cannot be remembered upon the very second upon opening one's eyes. There is a version of dreaming that is the closest thing to land of the dead, but now the eternally obvious all but to be forgotten again and again. To live a life walking around fully aware of land of the dead, nulls life itself and would render this game all pointless here, so the universe makes us forget enough for there to be just a tiny reminder remainder remaining. But it was like, it was as if, Berlin was very well audaciously frightfully going out of its way letting Belinda know now that it knew the score.
Being stricken under Berlin's haunted sky, like a sunk cost cloud resting on the ground during upsidedown rain storm, a walking half dead sun now, slash memory trigger unscrubbing itself back, maybe it was the memory of hearing Sophie say too many years ago about Belinda—She's a real loser, just good enough for the carnival.
And oh, Sophie you've humiliated me so bad, I wished the earth had swallowed me up. And to Belinda, that's the worse thing someone has ever said about her. Berlinda's turrets like refrain from then to evermore, but was the very first poetry that came from her dashed to smithereens teenage self, only to be preposterously repeated knee jerk now as an irresponsible adult, whenever some random stimulus, or random thought may have summoned it.
Udo was sat back in back seat of cab with Berlin-da and Kaitling, and vociferous Udo is already way too serious already, as if continuing previous conversation with Balinda from past, pointing, wagging his spindly finger now, talking passionately, But Balinda, Balinda, you cannot, you cannot never make no between art and the life, you see that I mean? You have to work in space between, space between which has been be identified—which always must be de identified!
I act in the gap between the two Udo, and believe you me!
Kaitlin wrinkled her nose at their insular convo, Taxi cab driver, car man, you can just let me out on the next corner, I think I'd rather walk.
Don't listen to this little tease here!—she really doesn't mean it—she never does mean it—keep driving! And why is Belinda visibly kind of trying to pull double reverse psychology all out in the open on Kaitlin and using the taxi driver in going out of her way to establish an atmosphere of consensus, predicated solely on Belinda's panty hamper hound subjectivity, as Berlinda is harping on something, something which Belinda should have probably well put to rest already?
Not only are artists completely useless, but they cause problems, and not like problems that point to new progressive horizons or models of thinking, which is what most naively assume or project, Belinda rasping, looking out the window impatiently, Kratom spike jonze squinting at oncoming headlights from opposite side of morray motorway.
Oh, come on Belinda—don't you think your being a tad ostentatious. Kaitlin, ever the naive self satisfied supposed sane voice of reason.
If you can't see this, if you won't see this, you have no reason to be here—your now part of the problem, Kaitlin.
No, Balinda right. It's like, like the committee of intellectuals and artists, persecuted anti-Franco artists in Spain, in early seventies, nineteen seventy four—Antonio Saura, Valeriano Bozal, Eduardo Arroyo, Antoni Tàpies. Their way was vehemently, justifiably anti-Franco, but that the thing is, is even after Franco's death they continued still to think about him, emphasis—what's the word emphasis, emphasis.
Placed emphasis upon—
No, yes, that correct. They still . . . place emphasis on Franco now dead. They could just not or never let it be go. It appeared that they could not see, could not be recognize that Spain, that Spain had indeed changed and that that their place now in late 70's, 80's had now becamed changed, and was different from their role in 50,' 60's. I mean who was it—fucking, the group or that one group, Equipo Crónica, Tomás Llorens the curator and historian. Those generation of anti-Franco modernist artists who worked from fifties to seventies defended, cemented their traditional disciplines, like painting as paradigms of then supposed avant-garde, and then even dismissed recent conceptual practices to be mere academicism, or 'literary'. What's more es, es that they too considered these burgeoning conceptual practices as a threat to their own work even and their position in the art sphere.
Yeah, exactly, exactly—it wasn't enough they got their day in the sun, Spain given the main hall of the Venice Biennale in '74. Never mind that they were even promoted by Franco himself, used as false tokens to symbolize some contrived Franconian notion of freedom of expression! As if that has no semiotic effect whatsoever on what their work may come to kind of represent! No, no— they wanted more forever. Belinda concluding.
More forever, at the cost of a stagnation they were unaware they now embodied, Udo forlornly.
They arrived on the sop sodden mice sewage spider and spit street in the district Udo lived. I'll go up with you, and we'll be right back. Belinda with ever so the pragmatic lilt in her voice for once.
Udo's apartment smelled pleasantly like new paper, the living room wasn't a living room, was stacked with plastic and cardboard wrapped furniture all the way to the ceiling, boxes upon boxes, packing supplies, old leather bound books, manuscripts, a wastebasket with a spun out video tape outside of its housing, frames stacked leaning on each other against the wall, baubles and trinkets, rows of wine bottles lined up like they may be used for something else in the future.
I usually try to organize exhibitions relating to work that is in states or like countries that I have to travel to where Kratom has not been outlawed, but with this dumb, this stupid major international loan show we are here for, that has been foisted upon me, I'm afraid I had no choice.
Udo looking through a stack of sumptuous papers on the rum table stops, turns around like he's at a parent teacher conference, But Balinda, Kratom, Kratom be still legal in Berlin, my dear.
What, what are you sure. I could have sword I saw . . .
Would you like to just go to the junkstore, get some loose leaf?
Oh, my goodness, I should have known, and my body has been going absolutely frightfully haywire the last sixteen hours.
There one junk store not too terribly far from here, we go there, can on way.
No, no, no that's fine. No, besides, I was already prepared to get stoned tonite anyways, now. My body thinks it is, and now if I don't I'm afr—
You no need esplain to Udo, Balinda. You're body expects life juice and now needs the life juice it know it going to give to it . . .
Udo gave Belinda use of a very efficient antique opium pipe, black dots gummed in foil. Berlin now opened itself up to Belinda, Belinda floated into the beak of a nightingale's gigantic head the size of moon inside the earth's atmosphere—only when stoned in the serenity of black, could such inner plush crushy crush velvet resolve give Belinda the illusion of freedom that she could even very well give this habit up.
Belinda opens the idling taxi ride door, Your still here, you . . .
Kaitlin got a phone call which she had no time zone choice but to take. Small details of Kaitlin's personal life trickled through the air like cloudless drizzling rain, like the scene in Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman drew a cartoon square but now this is white cartoon graphic rain flurry shapes misting. Udo and Belinda enjoyed talking amongst themselves, visibly enjoying each other's company.
Kaitlin finished call, placed phone in purse with a coin purse button snapping economical sense of self importance.
Who's that, Belinda dryly, even though she knew who it was.
That's Jake, my husband.
What does your husband did?? Udo genuinely curious, in a way that makes the impression of him being ever the thoughtful chaperone.
Well, now, now he mostly just organizes his own media—he was burgeoning, the golden age of video tape production and all.
That sound intriguing Kaitlin, I'm quite sure he was involved in some interesting projects quite surely. Udo giving Kaitlin his underserved regard.
Yes, quite, he, well, he was lucky, he was just real lucky, to be in—involved, to have gotten in in a time that will never really like ever happen again.
Why will never happen again?? Udo over-concerned.
The new means of production, or subsuming all that what was once interesting about such projects, I mean new dissemination technologies helped unravel an already tenuous but once revolutionary aesthetic field, into, into enabling like just it's worst instincts, decimating like standards that were innovative, or standards that once set his field apart and held quite firm in distinction.
The Marxist critique never go away now don't it? Autonomous aesthetics compromised by distribution channels has been going on since the beginning of time! Udo supportively.
No, totally. But Jake's weary, he's just worn down. He's just having a real tough time right now. Giving the same information, saying the same thing in interviews about his once prodigious roommate ad nausea—his roommate when he was a teenager, who was—was also an important practitioner of the field. Just having to say the same thing over and over about him, even though they never talk, they never talk, I mean they have both completely changed—and his roommate is basically a complete schizophrenic by now, but Jake, Jake my husband—he always has to answer questions in this same canned PR vein.
Like dollar on a platter, Belinda stirred irritably crossing and recrossing her legs, How much further until we get to our destination?
The castle was up above a pleasant seat, the taxi cab brought them across in the dead teeth of winter, dark green of trees sprawling there before an actual great big stone cut castle, some jutty frieze. Buttress, nor coin of vantage, a second floor porch without shutters, a balcony high above. There was a lasciviously large garden, and then some kind of livery stable with fleet of old carriages lined up inside towards the back.
Inside, withering heights tapestry of ancient family line adorned billboard high mid-evil walls, pendulous chandeliers, an historic interiors announced that it was trainspotting in time everyone who entered castle. Though such hardly ever had much impression upon Belinda, as she had grown up in, as she had had well been raised in places just like this, and was all too maddingly familiar with this class of scene, as if saying the castle could only be interesting to her, if only for noticing variations or differences from observing against what she had been well bored into and all too used to growing up.
Immediately Belinda noticed they were pumping out some in-the-now globo homo Dubai Lamborghini muska cologne post techno that was as insipid as it was miserably now normative decadent, music for and by nouveau riche normies with gelled quiff audacity hand tattoos, who were with expensive cheap rectangle eyebrow monster women who were vastly overrated by virtue of just having straight hair, who wore European Vacation II Griswald shopping spree outfits, photographed over and over and over again so that then such their suburbs plastic surgery disaster hippopotamus beyond pornograpgy hips sensibility were reified into degenerating into some broad consensus zenith of what contemporary high beauty standards supposedly were.
Besides, the last good music Europe produced was in '89, black dots Belinda told herself. Maybe if they would have been playing Erasure, Belinda could have very well taken whoever was putting this on at least somewhat seriously. But crumbling standards of wealth, as evinced here by such democratically given and accepted vapid kunstwollen of insipid post-indy-now-every-normie-EDM, was afterall actually indeed a very European thing now, and this non-music was everywhere. And even if the estate was flourishing, or especially if it was flourishing (which it certainly seemed not), they could and did succumb to this post pop populist user generated bars of braying sequenced sound effects. Saudi Arabia Fendi yacht techno, Turkey techno, Spanish techno, aural tinsel decoration that spoke nothing of the plight or condition of man. It was a very not-distinct non-European EDM also, where you had the feeling, you got the feeling, was never bothered to even the slightest bit be questioned now by virtually anyone and was just accepted, as if Factory Records or the Hacienda never but existed. Parties everywhere where all alike. Belinda was not impressed.
The Chancellor's let love age attitude was certainly nothing new to Belinda either, not something she hadn't already seen before from the double origins of her father's side scores ago, experienced by Belinda as a somewhat innocent teeming teenage girl then.
This exact type of estate matron was another thing completely though, not exactly un-familiar to Belinda, but was something nonetheless she had only heard about, a very certain estate managerial style, that for the most part never really survived into the modern age.
The townies were quite striking though, actually they were bewilderingly stomach pitching—it said something considerable about the whole operation. Normally, specimen townies could be allowed to find themselves among this set—if they knew someone, they were free to intermingle among the class.
The past middle age estate matron whore-in-retirement had now changed into solid grey undecorated Himmler uniform, like she was some kind of officer. Her jodhpurs pants, baggy exaggerated at the thighs, a nod to horse riding, took on different gravity now.
Belinda, Kait, and Udo were requested to adjourn into the music parlor room with others. The two townie girls were grade A provincial fuckists no doubt (just like "all-my-crushes-are-strangers" Sophie was a fuckist, thought Belinda)—each a walking cracking solar system plexus, each with them set at their own center, with which they terrorized and wielded themselves in any and all social situation like liquid sword. The fact that they were to even wander into a place like this, only outwardly confirmed their own evil dreams instincts, and the seemingly now cruel Chancellor quite well knew this, as it was their own little pretty girl bloody dagger prepared burial graves business they so otherwise on daily basis conducted outside the estate, seemed to well inform the Chancellor now.
Even when Belinda was a teenager she knew with girls there was absolutely nothing you could ever do to make them like you. Boys were stupid enough to actually believe if you somehow found a way to make yourself cool enough, you would attract and command a particular woman's interest. Maybe you could concoct a fashion forward, well put together band that embodied some future-is-now-we-are-into-shit-you-don't-even-know-about sensibility, and maybe you could have a girl come to your show—but it could be just the same old SOS, only the general situation really most likely predicating their attraction to you, that nexus of activity that is really more appealing to them than any well designed album cover could ever be, than any well selected understated instruments that look sexy on stage could ever play, than any rarely witnessed sensible shoe and pant selection of all the band members could ever rep, or than any once in a universe never been expressed lyric poetry discovery could ever transmit, or than even any psychological atmosphere your songs embody and project could ever make so silently weep. The bulldozer "pragmatist" woman mind modus most likely is attracted to just the economy around the activity, and it didn't matter what you ever did—you could be, might as well be ska band wearing all matching plaid liederhousen—it really didn't matter. You could be the lead singer star of show, and that woman you invited may very well not even be attracted to you now, because you are getting all the attention and she needs all the attention after all, so she will bewilderingly flip the script and hooks up with your tubbs keyboardist and in your face instead now, so she can be attached to the band and lord cool one also (or think she is the cool one) over your keyboardist. Or you could have a real cool girl hook up with you, but then of course you get no credit for being even cooler than her, and she just vamps off your thing, only to end up marrying some trumpet playing ogre in ankle socks. And if anything, being cool doesn't even matter anymore, women were gods and today they just needed a non-threatening partner to buttress and support them and lavish them with attention, and it wasn't any more complicated than that. The fat kid with all the toys always wins.
The estate matron clinically pulled thick rubbery almost patent leather gloves extending out to forearm over her hangman's hands. These proceedings cut off from the rest of party scene were vague, even though Belinda could follow this weird strain of German, there was an uncertainty in the scattershot statements which were still hard to parse, though it will all eventually be very certain about what's soon to brew.
They were all sat in the merchant guild chamber on the rococo couches and one of the townies were called to long mordant petrified wood dining table that looked as if from fourteenth century. A knell in the room incidentally sounded, untimed to chime as she came when called so fourth. She was barked to strip, handed a tunic. Belinda studied the girl brainsickly, full of contempt, as if those who were called to witness with her there most certainly wanted to feel but the same vindicated evil eye.
From where Belinda sat, she could not hear what the mistress was saying now, though their verbal exchange was most certainly meant for all those to hear.
The matron signaled the townie to make shift to cast herself laying on back, and stirring now onto the old haunted table. The night becomes unruly in the cold exactitude of the matron pulling back the cloth, the imprint of lechery at the matron's own elbow, the girl got up as if passing tick check physical, the other, signaled to duly repeat the process.
The logic of the Music in the Tuileries like atmosphere in the parlour room, is as if the only way to reconcile the heartbreak of the world is with perverse bad faith titillation, as if some symbolic ceremonial purging nexus of embodiment, as the consequence to those well-willing-to-show-up-on-their-own townie beauties, and as such, seemed to be but only but occasion for toll they should pay for carrying with themselves the audacity to even think to attempt to socialize with social class their better. And to think the endless stream of flirting with modest means boys of township, the perpetual alluding-to though never once ever amounting to anything through siren's casual statements, the ceaseless tease, all but bears upon a fate to all the poor townie boys when the girls then go they to play their hand forward at the magistrate estate in social climbing flirting with abandoning their origins of their own sweet township. The Chancellor knew this, the Chancellor must have well known this, for nothing on this land is at all easy, except for those for which it is very easy.
After the girl's dismissed and the heap of living creatures scene broke away, the Chancellor wryly called Udo over on, chatted with him in broken German. The Chancellor's laugh echoed high in the now empty chamber.
Ah, that drudgeful prat! Balls to that bastard Monty! Stand aside right you fucker, there I say!
Udo escorted the Chancellor over to Belinda and Kaitlin lingering before a large wall shelved of foxed rows of rawhide mesh of volumes. The Chancellor's suave hauter and easy naturalism trailed along with him as he smiled to show he was indeed enjoying himself.
Sir, these two are my friend, Balinda Mulgrave of the Derbyshire Mulgraves and this her associate Kaitlin. Girls, I am please to introduce to you Sir Thomas Harewood.
Very pleased to make your acquaintance. I don't suppose you've ever engaged in, or been privy to such . . . theatrics of that which has thus transpired in the parlour room tonite, no? Well, well, well, I myself quite certainly wasn't too entirely, shall I say, too terribly prepared to host such woefully thatched, peculiar ritual of activity, and if such should be so off putting to you, I do offer my sincerest apologies.
That was quite a peculiar 'thatch' of spectacle, Kaitlin casually quipping, in otherwise her unsurprising Kaitlin conventional cynicism and her 'rational' way, casually demonstrating she was probably more naturally inclined, more well better suited to be barrister or a homemaker, than art prophet.
Ah, that was or could be quite dreadful, yes quite, as I am normally not so much inclined.
Seems like an activity not for those free to afford it, Kaitlin leaning into bad faith so uptightly. Kaitlin may have thought herself so clever, but she was only all but really advertising her ordinariness so convincingly to the otherwise generous regard of the Chancellor now.
Oh, no, no no, that's Janet and Nelda, those two, those two are both as madd as two hornbill loons caught stuck in the pantry are they—it was they who came to me, in proposition to such, well, umm marvelous pageantry, as dare I should say, some favour to them actually, anyways. Surely, I declined what they so outrageously, originally outlined, and then relegated such the scene they so wanted to make, to all but be administered instead by Grenwelda, Welda who manages the grounds of the estate, and which as you could very well see, she certainly didn't so seem to mind.
Anything that the Chancellor just said seemed to have no noticeable stated effect on Kaitlin or her reactionary attitude or smug ignorance.
No longer to Belinda did the Chancellor seem that ridiculous in the powdered curly magistrate wig he so insisted upon still wearing, his Sargent Pepper regalia and white stockings, his gloomy eye patch, his eye liner, his dangling earring. But she could now notice he was reassuringly raffish somehow, mostly just some old fat Berlin Hipster—though a bourgeois hipster of colossal land grabbing wealth patrilineage, who certainly enjoyed a bit of drink, certainly enjoyed the company of women.
I must be off my rocker to accommodate such request, such, how should one say this—this, an exercise of testing of one's resolve? Ah, the requests I get, the requests I —or no, somone, either they or either I, or especially they and or especially I, should all but go out to perhaps, get our sorry heads examined, now quite surely.
Belinda, baffled and mystified, I imagined it was some sort of hazing, some classist vetting ritual . . .
Closer to a very peculiar, a most peculiar form of marriage counseling I should say, as Nelda and Janet's husbands were among the onlookers there . . .
The Chancellor suddenly gets a reaching serious, goes into diatribe that seems somewhat rehearsed.
But you see, but you see, there's just, there's just no hope, no hope for redemption really, if you think about it, I mean, no hope, no escape from shame. Pride leads to a disturbed, ambivalent relationship, to all that threatens man's autonomy—nature, the body, sex, and, or, well, especially the other sex. Somehow, such theatrics you just witnessed are a coming to terms directly with death, that brings to boil life to something that which is otherwise stagnant or that was dead also. Death brings life to death. Dead's woeful ends create new openings. Of course, it could all very easily go the other way my love, and that may be why some quite find it exciting. But I am just that of host, providing whatever it is I can for the people of the township. Can you imagine that?
Udo and the Chancellor made aims to leave the room to convene somewhere else, though they promised they would be right back.
Please make yourselves at home ladies, I shall return shortly, it appears I forgot to wrap a gift . . .
Belinda mentioned something casually to Kaitlin, but uncharacteristically Kaitlin said nothing, as if her brain was overstimulated or distracted by something enough to not feel compelled to respond back like she usually would. It was as if Kaitlin considered now they were on neutral equal ground being at the villa, which was not true, because Udo was Belinda's friend, and such outing would never have happened if it was not for Belinda.
Also, Kaitlin seemed to not like the host at all, drunk in her own resolve, half drunk now in her relapse. When the Chancellor and Udo returned, Kaitlin cloyingly joined Udo in exploring the rest of the party downstairs.
It felt unexpectedly refreshing to now be alone with the Chancellor.
So what you drinking Mulgrave . . .
I'm drinking what you're drinking . . .
Well godbless ya, what I'm drinking is Promesa Muscatel . . .
The Chancellor took a bottle frozen in a robust block of ice from a small fridge in the station and slathered two glasses.
And yes, what finds you here in these parts Belinda Mulgrave?
We're Nationalgalerie, me and Kaitlin, here for my survey . . .
Ah, is Kaitlin, she's organizing this with you . . .
No, no, she's just my translator or errands person . . .
Well, Kaitlin, Kaitlin is quite effortless on the eye. I might say, . . .
No, quite she is. Get in line with her husband though Bucko—she has that diamond sharp backside that's spent its entire life serving affidavit to every one who ever beheld—though she's frigid, and she's most certainly a total bore actually.
Kaitlin surprises from behind, she had heard just enough from ear shot, for earful of what Belinda had just spat.
Black dots makes Belinda wiser, but no one is so wise as to to mitigate direct damage by one's very own tongue so upfrontly, so starkly.
Oh hey Hun, I knew that had to be you—where you been? The Chancellor and I are about to go look through his archives.
By this point in the night Belinda looked high as Pluto, and then the unbridled state the Chancellor was also in, certainly did offer very little benefit of doubt.
It's late—I'm going to go.
The Chancellor brazenly intervenes, in a way that could only illustrate to confirm Kaitlin's most faithless, worst, and not really accurate face value attitude take about him.
No, no, no—no, my dear, the partee is well underway! Let's make our own party! We just need to feed you another sherry or something else if you like. I've been just telling Derbyshire, I gotta a collection of drawings and prints and other detritus that you may quite be interested to see . . .
Kaitlin in characteristic Kaitlin non-response, just looks at the Chancellor for a second, says nothing and with no emotion turns away.
With Kaitlin gone and away, Belinda took justifiably paranoid pause, Belinda in now unnecessary, pointless whisper hush, Do you think, do you think that, that Kaitlin had heard what I said.
Just said what.
What I was saying, what I was saying, right when she snuck up on me!
Chancellor's non response certainly did nothing to dispel the notion he was quite an unreliable go-to for any kind of account, but that which also the same seemed associated with the appeal of what made him so compelling and fun to be around. And it was such quality that quelled Belinda enough to kind of let it go.
She's terrific for a person who almost has a fresh perspective. You fancy another sherry there, dear.
Yes, give me 'nother.
The Chancellor went to the carved into wall massive holodeck drink station and with leisurely self satisfaction, prepared two boulders of sherries. With all the activity going on on the estate right now, such in the small act of making drinks for he and Belinda, one could see he reveled in a global thinking taskmaster self sense of silent satisfaction that everything was going smoothly and according to some grand party planning design of his.
Chancellor with drinks in both hands, saunters with the music in what you get the feeling was his very characteristic dissociative glee, floats over to Belinda.
Here Derbyshire, have this, drink up—it's good for you. Will put some peach fuzz above yer lip.
No, but back to Kaitlin, Chancellor, do you think, do you think—
You know what the problem with the so called landscape is Derbyshire? I'll tell you what the problem is—
The discursive relation of visual culture to other academic disciplines?
Well, yeas that—that too—I think—but, no, no what it is is no one has, you know what no one has?—there's no, there's no guts, no imperative, there's just no more how do you say, primo pensiero pentimenti.
Well, if your an artist and you didn't go to Yale, I wouldn't quite ever want to be you.
Ah precisely! Well, my other daughter's an artist, she's a Yale, well, she went to Andover, then transferred to Yale, majored in what was it did she?—non objective post performative problematised asymmetrical neo-gender lesbian dance unalive activism. She's very talented! We're very proud of her!
Solid. Actually, that's—not a bad, and not a bad milieu to be in right now, Belinda in an all encouraging, reassured now comfortable in her professional expertise, self satisfied sucking on the flavour in her mouth.
Belinda pauses taking hefty wallop, I mean really, if you aren't working in PoNon-bina, you basically just don't matter at all. And surely they aren't teaching that to the quarry at state schools, ha ha . . .
No, no, that's precisely what I was telling Penelope! That's what I said. It's a good place! It's just a good place, a really good solid grounding to be situated in . . .
No no no, yeah, totally—You know, I know I don't even have to see her work. You know, you have to be sure to give me her contact info before I leave please do so, and I do mean it. See what I can do for her . . .
Belinda was talking and the Chancellor, moved to the console, puts on Train in Vain by the Clash, activating the chamber, signaling some impression that here, here with the Chancellor in this inner sanctum, was saying in this moment here was where the real party was.
Belinda yammering on and the Chancellor moves his portly self towards the center of the vast stretch of rug on floor. It' seems now that he's not closely listening to Belinda, but is too caught up grooving, languishing with elbows to sides, arms bent with hands pumping and chugging delicately in the air like he's holding silk scarves in his clenched hands.
Chancellor let's Belinda keep doing the talking, interrupts her, I Love this song . . .
Oh, no it's good, quite. You know I must say, I must say, I was a bit weary coming in when I heard what was playing downstairs . . .
Oh, that's my nephew Brant, he's an idiot, I love him, but he's an idiot. He desperately needed a gig, well that, amongst other things. . .
But I have to say Chancellor, it's heartening to hear your support of your daughter for a life in the arts. I mean, I was basically excommunicated from my family, very early on.
And that's the thing with mine, my generation, we, well I'm OG, OG Mod—and actually, and I actually know more, know more about music, even new music—more so than all these stupid college kids . . .
No, totally. I can very well see that, Sir . . . most people under forty today wouldn't know a counter culture, if you spiked rig into their arm, strapped headphones on them playing Merseybeat.
I agree. Hey, have you ever heard of Gravediggaz??
Oh, no, no I haven't actually.
Oh, they have some solid tunes. They're real good.
Allright, allright, come to my drawing room, Derbyshire, I have some some sheets, or I'd like to get your opinion some about.
The Chancellor was no doubt not exactly a stuffed man, though he came from a long line descending from five centuries all the way back to Charles I, and with face to go with it. He was a stoppage in the order not gobbled up for the most part by the New World (culturally, though not financially), as he seemed indeed very well engaged, certainly seemed well kept up to au courant with the continuing catastrophe that was or is a beaten up and broken down contemporaneous Modernism, and curiously enough, he held some sense of probably keeping up with an ever advancing globalised neoliberal order contemporary culture.
Would you like another drink, my Dear?
Give me another of the sherrys your having. Mind if I hit my pipe.
Chancellor lampin' like Spanish playboy, Chancellor the hip not to be square drake, waved his hand nonchalantly, as if ever such question was superfluous.
There's a sherry for you, Ms. Mulgrave, a sherry for you, yes, chin chin now there, dear . . .
The Chancellor did not seem to mind bringing drinks into the drawing room, however there was a hip little Memphis style vibey small side table next to what looked like an ancient spectrophotometer on the counter, he signaled to Lin where their drinks should be set.
The Chancellor opened a drawer specially built into wall, took out disposable latex gloves from dispenser box, wrapped around his ears spectacles over eye patch, as if he was some sort of dentist. He opened a larger cabinet, pulled a shelf out that had a bale of glycine screwed into the roll out. He pulled enough out to slice, as if the procedure was the only thing that could ever have a sobering effect of the Chancellor. He placed the paper squarely on the table, procured a rack viewing frame and lined the backing with the glicine by carefully creasing it into the edges with a flat wooden tool. He placed the viewing frame horizontally onto the top metal surface of the flat file, and carefully placed the sheet into the cage and with his palms and tips of his fingers slowly closed the frame into a muffled snap, securing its housing.
They were looking at a small format drawing on some kind of wilting rag paper, that was vectored by oil stick stencil words scrubbed into the substrate raster.
Chancellor concentrating on the drawing like he's never looked at it before, This drawing here has an, an almost contingent medium specificity, I should say . . .
Too Greenbergian an analysis. No, or maybe, not so much a medium specificity, Chancellor, as a truth to materials. As if it's almost a readymade. I don't know—I've seen plenty of this before though, Shasta Bhabha. It's work like this, that could easily be over talked about, over discussed at the danger of discounting its impressively inventive repertoire of forms, if by this point in time, it is still even considered fresh and inventive, probably not though.
Yes, but, but, it's its ethnographic approach, reduces language to rebus, your typical critique of postcolonial representation, linguistics.
Yes, yes that's all very well Chancellor, but we are so way passed that post minimalist materialist regard even, don't you think?
The Chancellor took off his spectacles soberly and repaired to grab his drink from the side table, looking a bit stressed.
I wish my boy Scotty, Scotty was here. I'd set you up, no— I really wish he was here for you to meet him. He's founding team manager for Balenciaga, Balenciaga skate team he started couple of years ago with Demna.
Belinda nodded in agreement because it sounded right, though she had never heard about it.
Well Belinda, you speak, you speak of subcultures becoming self bastardizing, centers not holding up and skateboarding was certainly not immune to suffering such fate. You need two discursive authors in a field, that create, that dictate a dialectical dynamic for which practitioners can then take sides, for which to focus the direction of their activity. In skateboarding, street skateboarding in the eighties, the discursive authors of street were Mark Gonzalez and Natas. Skateboarding is different, distinguishes itself as art or an art activity, precisely because these two discursive artist authors and especially Mark Gonzalez. Without these two, skateboarding would only be another rote robotic quasi gymnastics practice practiced in one's garage or libertarian tool shed, when otherwise, Natas and Gonz were able to open an expanded field in breaking street skateboarding open to self expressive possibility, like Picasso fractured forward then conventional modes of representation in the late nineteenth century. So, but what happened was was, was the discoveries they made—Natas and Gonz—were adopted by new practitioners, but their discoveries became stream lined and hemmed into a quickly advancing methodology—but so by then the seminal Gonz looseness and plasticity of his movement, became cauterized and advanced into a rapidly reified and then pervasive stark formalism. Gonz was too artsy for young skaters to directly identify with, skaters who were trying to keep up with au courant skateboarding, and practitioners mostly became wedded to a staunch formalism of either technical direction or pyrotechnic stuntism. Even when Gonz started his own companies, even those practitioners he recruited for his team, even they did not exhibit the loose and free plastic anti-formalism to Gonz's full extent, that which Gonz made skate skart. Sure, people developed proprietary styles, but it was still in limited advances—it just goes to show Gonz was a true freak, a true wierdo. But no, my son, my son, this team, the team he started with the fashion house Balenciaga, is a new shift in line with Gonzism, that skateboarding could never quite conjure on its own and, what my son is doing now is precisely in tandem, with the already established Balenciaga dysfunctional design, the humorous and playful and doomer precarity that the Balenciaga products are known to articulate and embody. My son has picked out an actual photogenic team from coastal Western cities and designed products for them to skateboard in, that articulate a certain willfully awkward but humorous bathos—giant clown impossible 3XL skateboard shoes that make the skateboarding come out awkward cool and wonky, women's pants for boys that are too tight but look cool awkward if you can manage to land something in them, but also very new and very surprisingly, unexpectedly compelling. The gamble my son took in kookmaxxing the direction with nonfunctional unobtainable luxury products for skateboarding, was buoyed by picking just the right intriguing models, picking the right photographers to help conceptualize their entire program, just the right cities—the look, the projected vibe of atmosphere. So, my son worked with Dema into producing thematic lines of unobtainable expensive ready to wear that restrict and inhibit the body movements of street skateboarding, but produce unexpected flourishing effects and strange new bizzare repercussions, that enliven the vanguard activity of what had otherwise become, descended into a populist Olympic family friendly lamer sport activity that had well decimated standards and prior distinctive innovations. What's brilliant is these unfunctional garments that cause one to skate awkward in a new intriguing but stylish way, are very limited, very rare and for now at least, only sought out by those in the know. The photographs are incredible though, the team is compelling, the video enigmatic and advanced and never been seen before, in a way that connects Balenciaga with OG ZOO, OG Supreme, Palace, OG Stereo, even OG Spike Jones Girlblind. So it's in a sense, that through Balenciaga, the brand has revivified the subculture and the direction of it's activity and soon I suspect, other companies are going to try to catch up. But essentially, my son has fashioned a now seen as essential infinitely more fascinating Gonz 2.0 quality, that skateboarding was unable to develop for itself by the coterie of exhausted now zombie brands centers that couldn't quite hold.
No, totally . . . It's surprising that most people think skateboarding it cool, when really quite obvious it is no more, I wonder why . . .
I'll tell you why, or no Dear, shall I say, Fredrick Jameson, Jameson argued, argued that that, modern anxiety gave way to postmodern intensity. Metropolitan centers, that level of habitus, whatever, designed for the lifestyles of the rich and oblivious like me, far more, ever increasingly so, I'm afraid, than to accommodate the musings of the flâneur.
But Chancellor, you are a flâneur in your own rite!
The true goal of art is to disappoint expectation and I'll creep upon those sons of law and kill, kill, kill, kill . . .
It wasn't Saturday, but it felt purgatorial like how Saturdays feel purgatorial, the zenith of week, but how Saturdays are all actually a mirage sullied by a perpetual looming in the background impending and inevitable banal utility of errands. So far into the future now was Belinda, that the retro-futura crumbling postmodern pavillion they passed comprising of only now blanched and stained tinted grid of one way window squares as its structure, was relic of an already wilted advanced ultra economic—useless paper shuffling activity inside engineering the shell company building, all in it's preposterous energy inefficient greenhouse design D.O.A. obsoletism.
Off the reeking morning streets from the hotel they had escaped into the cab, the morning city seemed to function in a smug productive working morning pragmatism, that could have typically isolated Belinda in a ship wrecked late night existential guilt and self reproach usually bearing down so mercilessly. But then she reminded herself about last night, charmed by the coupe de foudre aria, a new vein, and it seemed wide open, that was the real work, Belinda felt lucky, privileged with new information and knowledge.
Even a camera lense is subjective, and how could it not be?—people were so stupid to assume the automatic 'objectivity' of an appliance built for one specific purpose, Belinda thinking to herself as she looked out the window at the city as if it was a giant stinking braying locust.
Belinda turned to Kaitlin in her confidence and optimistic mood, in a way she could use such energy to shift the sullen and detached dynamic Kaitlin had now advanced, And what about you, how did you fare getting back . . .
Kaitlin didn't respond, and Belinda knew what this meant. There was simply no way Belinda could even take Kaitlin's feelings seriously and that was a good thing.
Oh, the silent treatment now little you? Your not talking now are you, you gonna pout in the corner are you.
Kaitlin shifted in the cab, continuing looking out the window.
Well, if you ever decide to put on your big girl panties and come to the adult's table, maybe I won't by then have completely lost my patience with you or my interest, sweetie.
The Chancellor? Heinrich's assistant, who happens to be placing 90's Benetton clear plastic folder on his desk interrupts, giving one the sense impression Heinrich runs a casual departmental office.
Heinrich answering the young girl with peer like comportment. Yes, the Chancellor is a rather—colorful local character. They call him Montecarlo Splits in certain circles? Was it, was it not but a few years ago he was giving unofficial programmatic guided tours to his entourage and 'acolytes' in our galleries. He may have approached the board years ago . . .
The audacity of this young assistant thought Belinda. There were reasons rank and division of labor boundaries were necessary, and it was in such delicate matters which could be compromised by outsiders, non players, Belinda couldn't tell if such administrative style was progressive or regressive. The assistant wore shoes to make herself look taller, but was too stupid to realize taller people wear the exact same shoes to the sum of net zero, thought Belinda.
The assistant not having any real accreditation or any helpful contacts that can do anything for her and over compensates by dressing over postmodern like the receptionist in Ghostbusters II, leaves the office suite, signaling Heinrich free into now voicing more practical concerns.
But to the matter at hand, I mean, has provenance even been established with these um, recently unearthed historic working source materials.
No, no, but I have a colleague at Wildenstein. I'd imagine I can get her to take a look at it—them, right away. I'm sure it could be as simple as back dating the substrate sheets. Belinda's competence on full display now.
Heinrich gave Belinda an administrative silent shock of look, as if indeed Belinda had fatally said the wrong thing.
Something like that is perhaps difficult to say, or difficult to say and I'm afraid I'm by no means qualified to even speculate.
These sheets, the actual original source ink, er, water color drawings of Survage's Rythme Colore'!, it's how such abstract shapes are coded as a pre-language. In dreams you cannot read words because your subconscious was, is, too occupied building up the dream land, that it didn't have time to detail words. Your mind does not have time to name stamp bricks of the buildings in your dreams. The source material to these avant-guarde cinema films, have an unexpected always already indexical quality—it's like reading those blank words in dreams. The dreams being these early Hans Richters, those synaptic Survage watercolors for the unrealized films. Upon encountering these, these quite staggering working materials I have just last night come across, I'm afraid this changes the entire direction of the exhibition.
Nothing Belinda said seemed to register with Heinrich, Belinda could now see the illusion of a casual office, masked and really just reinforced a farrago of group think Heinrich carried in his authoritatively balding head.
Maybe you perhaps grasped too much, we might have to re-access our commitment to what has otherwise been a very generous loan agreement to your institution.
What difference does it make Heinrich? If anything, we may no longer even have to rely on so many objects from your institution afterall! How can less now mean none?
Ms. Mulgrave, I'm quite afraid we shall have to hold firm with this decision, as you are aware I am acting within the interests which I have pledged commitment to uphold my best judgement in any such case. That your institution should want to reconvene at a later date, we would still welcome . . .
Oh, I'm quite sure you would. I'm sure you'd quite prefer the turn key transaction exhibition, to an open ended research initiative that may actually help close epistemological gaps, give us a new model, way of thinking for reimagination of the illogic of the unconscious. . .
Belinda and Kaitlin exited the building, Belinda digging through her purse, Ah, I'm so glad to get out of that decorated shed of space.
Kaitlin said nothing as if watching back from a distance.
Did ya hear what that bugger Heinrich says, if your institution should want to reconvene at a later date, we would still welcome it. We would still welcome it. I sure bet he goddamn would, Bucko. Him terminating the loan agreement was a big mistake, and he will not come up smiling.
Belinda removed water bottle and thick plastic commercial zip bag, poured water on the pavement and sprinkled Kratom into the bottle incidentally dusting the ground. The bottle slips from her delicate hand spilling more onto the already puddles and green dust.
Ah, it keeps me out of trouble, Belinda feeling need to justify.
Apparently not! Kaitlin in kind of lame, misguided sense of self assurance staring from above, of course never missing the just opportunity for her little sound bite last word, self regarded as some punctum of the moment.
Where the blob dreams taking place in barely formed dream settings with barely registering illegible dream thoughts and endless nothing underwater treading actions of purgatory, is it a taste of being deactivated back towards final port of death? Belinda had dreams where her consciousness was sucked away from her body and her thoughts and point of view became ascended and morphed into a broader collective universal third person phenomenology of thought. When Belinda was a small child she had recurring abstract dreams of being maddeningly uncomfortable, almost fully abstract network of forming throbbing blips, as if the dream led her to her first recorded though inside her mother, a body and mind memory not usually accessible from the womb.
Relationships are more like traffic, more impersonal and predicated more on blind circumstance rather than on the selective criteria than which women were not capable of realizing or even admitting was actually mostly the case. Bad everywhere decisions ruled the land, and it was never ever never going to change. When adjustments finally realized were necessary to be made for a problem, they couldn't even get the ill served adjustments right, and then it justified people to believe the adjustments were a bad idea or not even necessary in the first place. Belinda was a spy in the world of nothingness. And when there was some miracle overlooked, some extraordinary spellbinding rare thing to be found in this world, she could be one of the first to see it and no one would understand and years later, when they finally came around, Belinda would never get credit. Belinda was called to resign from her appointment promptly upon arriving back to New York, only months later to come upon the press release about Kaitlin.
We are pleased to announce Kaitlin Baylor Ralston's appointment as the Mike Jeppesen associate curator of mixed media and new technology. In an incredibly active time for emerging and experimental media forms, Kaitlin's role overseeing a continued focus of new critical acquisitions, as well as sustaining a rigorous framing of our historical collections, comingles an epoch when artist praxis and artist designations become increasingly heterogeneous, multidisciplinary and redefined. Ralston has been involved in an upcoming exhibition which includes Hans Richter, Dziga Vertov, Viking Eggeling and Pablo Motsi. "I cannot express just how honored and excited I am to have this opportunity to help write the next chapter for my New York institution that I love so much. The museum has a unique role in New York. We are not simply for artists – we are about the community of New York. Our artists will work with us to realize exciting artivism, which they vision to empower those in our ever increasingly rhizomatic community who have, for one reason or another, lost their own power or agency of self-expression. We need artists more now than ever! We must trust our artists! We leave no artists behind! What we do is challenge with thought-provoking, affectively enriching, and fun (and yes, sometimes a little whacky) exhibitions, Instagram initiatives, user generated programming, and provisional community outreach programs, which means it is New York to its very core. I am also very excited on organizing my first exhibition, post postmodernist, Mitchell Johnson: Capecod Landscapes, who reimagines the traditional practice of painting and reconfigures and resituates it into a heterogeneous media fluxed landscape, and which is opening later this year.
