The First Bomb at Bikini, Charles Bittinger, 1946 - "Captured at the peak of formation, this painting illustrates the classic mushroom cloud shape. The pink color of the cloud is due to the oxidation of nitrogen caused by high heat and radiation from the explosion. The rapidly cooling fireball is the cause of the red glow seen deep within the cloud. The blast wave created the massive waves and steam that engulfed the target fleet at the bottom." From the Naval Historical Center Art Collection

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"The spectacle cannot be abstractly contrasted to concrete social activity" -Guy DeBord, Society of the Spectacle

What do Lil' Romeo, Kim Kardashian, Bruce Nauman, and Walter Mercado have in common? 

They are popular mystics hailing from different sub-cultures who capitalize on our precarious understanding of American authenticity.  Whether by cashing in on the frailty of our emotional contracts (as in the case of Kim Kardashian's marriage business), the disnification of hip-hop (the mousketeer Lil Romeo), our dazzlingly desperate obsession with bodily commodification in the name of gender spectacle (performance artists/ fortune tellers Walter Mercado & Bruce Nauman), they pour the influential foundation of our cultural identity.  

How have their empires built precendents in our consciousness? What concrete form have their ideas taken? How are we affected as viewers? As a result, what kind of citizens are we?

Bruce Nauman "Self-Portrait as a Fountain" (1966) Whitney Museum 

The Artist as Cultural Translator

Bruce Nauman interprets a classical Italian Boroque Fountain with garish lighting. Rather than evoking the historic treasure of the Trevi, his gesture, nudity, green and red lights, belong on a well-manicured lawn of a suburban mansion in New Jersey.  Borromini and Bernini (the merry baroque prankster sculptors), labored to distort our perspectives towards the heavens.  Nauman performs to spout off an aesthetic of post-modernism that directs us back at the body- away from the clouds.  Is his abstraction the pinnacle of performance art? Everything Aftern Nauman is a Historic Fiction.  According to the old boys club driving the slurry truck of the art world, Bruce Nauman's sachrin aura is equivalent to the world's sparkliest fortune teller.  Nauman and Mercado's popularity may draw shock and awe, but when does their social activity expire? If criticism is in the details, then the voids they leave behind in their practice leave no room for the ladies.  Are we to occupy the cracks in the sidewalk? While Mercado worships the sexcellency of the female body, and Nauman commodifies the male, there is little hope left for a new audience of identity prototypes.  Perhaps a little critical celebration is in order? 

  Meanwhile, a fresh, dulcet generation of consumers rise to the surface of viral aesthetics- growing from the cracks of the sidewalk.  They drink from the aura of Disney/Hollywood to renovate our consumer values, and teach us, not only how to drink from the same water fountain, but how to celebrate our kool-aid spouting ghetto-fabulous history. Kim Kardashian's cyclical wedding equally distracts us from the nuances of a coming-out celebration in the form of a Doble Quinceanera. 

"Kool-Aid in the water fountain, cost about three thousand THOUSANDS"-Lil Romeo"U Can't Shine Like Me" Featuring Young V & C-Los

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Michel De Certeau insinuates in Walking the City (The Practice of Every Day Life), that buildings are logos for culture.  He must have tripped over Jane Jacobs' sidewalk crack.  

An artist/architect, (sculptor) and cultural translator, I am an Identity Prototype :: A Model Citizen who critically filters our contemporary historic fiction into the absurd/didactic, grotesque/sublime, disorganized body (political framework of our convulsing capitalism).  After studying Nazi Utopian Architecture in Berlin at the UDK, I grew gruesomely aware of our global cultural/idealogical position as purveyors for pop culture. While our economy violently spit Hollywood guilded koolaid, I renovate this void/refuse into refuge for political action and distopian humor. What is Citizenship? I am searching for answers on sidewalks, nametags, occupations, advertising, architecture, and ourselves. 

City of Today, Historic Fiction for Feminine Urbanism (Investor Pitch Proposal)

Performed in the Voorhees Conference Room at Hunter College, Times Square NYC 2011

Members in attendance (potential investors for the urban development project including economists, philosophers, artists, architects, landscape architects, urban designers, financiers, and MILFs) were asked to critically invest in the city by eating the 1in: 10000 scale model of the edible city with chocolate building tampon. 

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City of Today, Historic Fiction for Feminine Urbanism (Construction Redline)

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City of Today, Historic Fiction for Feminine Urbanism (Model Citizens)

Inhabit, Occupy, Emerge, Tag Up, Spit Out, our identity prototypes to understand the limits of the self, and citizenship.  If in the age of dispersion, we are only making poor images or lossy copies of post-modernism, where's the room for corporeal habitat in the corporate beurocrazy of skyscrapers? Perhaps the answers are in the commodification/deflowering of our political, beurocratic and social rituals? Identity Prototypes are our Mystics. 

Model Citizens: Seperate But Equal (After Nauman Fountain)  

Model Citizens: Doble Quince (After Christina Freeman)

Model Citizens: Toxic Shock Syndrome (After Now!)

Installation Images from Now! exhibition at the Kunstlerhaus Brethanien, curated by Hito Steyerl & Kino Arsenale. 

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City of Today for Feminine Urbanism: Doble Quinceanera Performance 2/18/2012

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Open Letter to Comrades:

Dear Friends, I'm coming out for my 30th Birthday!

While on a date earlier this Summer, with a rather handsome, intelligent, financier; I was confronted (after I mistakenly revealed my age) by his exclamation "Wow! The big 3-0! You're going to expire soon!".  Although I had considered this cultural crisis we're experiencing before, I had never personally tasted milk that sour.  Needless to say, I quickly realized I should be dating different kinds of people, but I caught myself momentarily considering implants.  However, I realized celebrations last longer in our memories than silicone.  So, in response to this recent appauling commodification of women's sagging mortality (and our obsession with the perfect body), I will instead Come Out for my 30th birthday.  Rather than hide behind the onslaught of ritual/bodily commodification, wrinkles and the impending doom of planned obselecense when I hit 40, I will bask momentarily in the cultural customs that formed my personality, and the friends/family who make me who I am.  After all, I am a ghettofabulous redneck spic, and I take pride in my variegated history, no matter how alienating it may be to myself and others. That is why I love New York City, and all its diverse inhabitants- residents or aliens.  If our cultural customs make us who we are, then what better way to celebrate than with a Quinceanera /Southern Bell Debutante Ball? Luckily, I have the support of pop-culture who shares my viewpoint. February snow could use a little booty shaking. 

Please join me on Saturday, February 18, 2012 for a night of sensory exploits in the form of a doble Quince 15+15=30 :

Quinceanera Southern Debutante Ball Saturday February 18, 2012

@ Cubana Social 70 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (L Train to Bedford)  Google Map

Featuring: Thousand Islands DJs, La Flor de Toaloche (female mariachi band), Comida Cubana  The Dukes of Brooklyn

My brother, Walter Meyer on the timbales, congas accompanying Lambastic & BlanksNYC DJs 

*Special Guests Jen & Paul Outlaw

Get Inspired! 

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(Generational Response) 

My grandmother, a witty writer and educator, also has alzheimers. While her geographical and memorial distance widens our generational void, she manages to bridge 2 states of mind with lambastic questions. 

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Ladies in Waiting (After Soulmate)

After Christina Freeman's "Soulmate" performance from 2009, I've collaborated with her exchange project to transform a well-worn wedding dress into a tag station for racist/chauvinist banter.  What is Citizenship? Reclaiming the wasted refuse of contemporary culture for celebratory criticism. 

  During the my 30th Birthday/ Doble Quinceanera, I announced my engagement to NYC.  The celebration was marked by guests in attendance who answered their support  by writing the most flagrant racist, chauvenist insults they had ever heard directly onto my wedding dress.  We then danced the night away to sign the occasion into memory. 

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What is Citizenship?

An urban reclaimation project that transforms void spaces from social refuse into political refuge, the NYC Citizen project incorporates formal and informal tagging, social media soapboxes to explore the limits of our citizenship.  

NYC Citizen Government

Open letter to US Copyright Office

What is Citizenship? Sharing ideas? What about when advertising steals artist's ideas to sell their products?  Is Hollywood a giant advertisement? Where should the lines be drawn? Since artists are the Research & Development department for culture, our citizenship is founded in social practice or open sharing.  Where is authenticity and authorship?  

I decided to ask the experts at the US Copyright Office with an image title registration and letter.

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Is it art, architecture, planning, melancholy or opposable thumbs? It is clear that we enjoy making things in our likeness. Are humans capable of abstract thought or is everything anthropomorphic? If images reveal truths, then let inanimate objects speak.

Food: We are what we eat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arcimboldo,_Giuseppe_Summer.jpg 

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Farm: Heaven and Hell are bipolar

Hieronymous Bosch, "The Garden of Earthly Delights"  1490-1510 El Museo del Prado

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights

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Architecture: Like dancing, it is the vertical expression of our horizontal desires*

Sarah Silverman with Sir Norman Foster, "Swiss Re Building" 2003 London

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_St_Mary_Axe

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Art: The sensible image of the infinate** possibilities (after Duchamp)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nauman

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Religion: Like many religions (Greek Gods, Christian Jesus is the son of God,etc) we sculpt the unknown into simply doubt

Caravaggio, "The Incredulity of St.Thomas" 1601-1602 Sanssouci of Potsdam, Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubting_Thomas

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Beauty: Suspended Animation

Inka Essenhigh, "Beauty Contest" 1999

http://www.inka-essenhigh.com/ 

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Nature: From the grotesque to the transcendental 

Ana Mendieta, "Siloetas" 1970s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Mendieta 

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Science: The powers of Ten

 Paul W.K. Rothemund, "Scaffolded DNA Origami" 2008 Caltech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_origami

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In the wake of recent history, I'm withdrawing my investment in pickled sharks, and depositing it in Roneriness. Maybe Damien Hirst can learn a thing or two about anthropomorphism from one of the great performance artists of the past half century?

* "Dancing is the vertical expression of our horizontal desires"-George Bernard Shaw

** Francis Bacon

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My friends are rubbing

off on me.  Their habits are shards of persuasion which I may sometimes shave off, or mask on.  I wonder how their news is good news, and why I vapidly follow their likeness, but don't touch? It is my 98 lb frail gaze.  If friends are the family you choose, why not take their genetic characteristics as well as their networks?

 They are all my "partners", as I cannot maintain relations with just one. I am polyamicous, but as most social networks prove- love alone won't pay the bills.  I wish I was a little bit taller, or a baller, or a manner, or a painter. Short of an Acquaintance Commune, I must search for something beyond those chance digital trysts, and paint the town skype-colored or small and brown.  Meanwhile, I Meme...

What Memes Are

Memes are identity prototypes.

Memes are distopian realities. 

Memes are one-trick ponies.

Memes are two-dimensional. 

Memes are punchlines.

What Memes Do

Memes can be political couch potatoes.

Memes marry absurd humor with pixelated reality.

What Memes Have

Power and Influence 

What Artists Are

Artists are the R&D department for consumer culture.

Artists are society's identity prototypes. 

What Artists Do

Artists ask questions of society.

What This Is

An edition of portrait paintings available for installation as a spatial apparatus to the internet.

Poppelgangers

See the full gallery on Posterous

ErSaltz

See the full gallery on Posterous

Being Brian

See the full gallery on Posterous

Wiley Ways

See the full gallery on Posterous

Orlan Magic

See the full gallery on Posterous

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[1] Rosemarie Trockel "Less Sauvage than Others" Sculpture Project Munster Aaseeufer Lake, 2007 (art net image)

[2] "Gewohnheitstier 5 (creature of habit)", 1996, bronze 90x120x16cm 

Rubix Cubes of video, leaves, and yarn

The well-oiled creature of habit may view Rosemarie Trockel's work as simply the white cube industrial process of political, psychological, and sexually gendered narratives, but serendipity is in the joy of the twisted, color-pixelations of her multi-faceted Rubix Cube.  

The Garden Problem

 My own twists and turns lead me to her work by way of the viewer's activity, and how we may develop critical positions of our consumptive environment depending on the grids of natural, woven existence.  Whether they be the perspective of the exploding cookie cutter house, the reconfigured white or black box, or the industrial, digitized loom. We (the audience) are participating from the confined corners of our roles- whether gendered, disaffected passersby, hedge-trimmers/stone masons of our built landscape, hair models, or fashion slaves to the mundane.  Our exhausted exuberance is mediated by the return to (the) work of watching.  

What is our current state of Mind?    

If, according to Christine Ross [3], we (culture) are emerging from a sleep-altered state of depression from the turn of the late teens (late 20th ac.e.) into our early twenties (00's) [4,5], have we now awakened to a melancholic resistance that will oust us from our tweed comforters, or will we explode into a frantic, emotional insurrection beyond the tenacious mundane? How can an activated viewer reclaim the repetitive industrial political loom for our own formal living or organized aesthetic protest? Perhaps by breaking apart the toy and figuring out how it turns. 

[3] Christine Ross "Vision and Insufficiency at the Turn of the Millennium: Rosemarie Trockel's Distracted Eye" October, Spring 2001

[4] Rosemarie Trockel (film still from Sleepingpill) "Eye, Sleepingpill, Kinderspielplatz" 1999 Venice Biennale Installation 

[5] Thomas Schmitt film still on Rosemarie Trockel's 2000 video "I Don't Kehr"

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Macho Modernism cleansed the rubble of war with tabula raza detergent. Hausman, Moses, Disney, Speer, cleaned their shirts, and polished their model citroens from the oppression of minorities, the obliteration of civil rights, and the desecration of nature. Momentarily, utopian paradigms attempted socio-political equilibrium, and at least the right to bear opinions a generation after global hostility.  However, post-modern pudding slurped these object-driven ideas from the explosions early-century to don a familiar patriarchial old boys club-lead Ayn Randian capitalism. Upon which, a suburban social contract was built in response to equal rights with white flight on the golf-courses of McCarthyism.  The enlightenment became armchair activism. Globalism made exotic buildings logos for culture: we comfortably gazed immobilized by smoke-stained towers who confused cement dust with body ashes.  The epitome of the war on urbanism, the family, main-street, and anyone else standing colonially.  But the web bleached communication barriers, and plasticity turfed over Leaves of Grass. Sustainability trans-gendered Green Man into Mother Nature, and their still-born turquoise 3^rd Nature was oiled by their corporate divorce.  Institutional marriage to architecture dies.  Culture is reborn as social practice, because there are no identities, objects, or politics left in the post-apocolyptic contemporary.  After a reign of patriarchial power, it is now time for a feminine urbanism.   

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