I’ve hiked my shorts up over my belly button to write this, but I’ve got a gripe with these young artists and their “on campus art opening” music. I’ve been to two on campus openings lately, a pack of BA/MFA openings at CSULB and an Open House at El Camino College, and I’ve found that no matter how much you’re spending to buy your way into the art club (that’s the primary purpose of art school, right?), you can’t buy taste in music.
I’m getting to be an old fart now, I’ve got very little ideas to what the cool bands are - I can’t tell an Arcade Fire from an Interpol, unless we’re talking about a video arcade on fire or a European police agency (an aside - the best reading in art is and always will be Interpol art theft reports). So when I go to an opening, I expect to be bombarded by the sounds of new music, music that’s alien, and hurts my soon-to-be-hairy ears. But no, what am I hearing? The sounds of the 80’s.
The DJ at the CSULB opening, was some poor little girl, who while crafting some of the worst musical transitions I’ve ever heard coming off of a turntable, seemed hired to play nothing but mid-late 80’s house party music. Songs like “It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right”. Sure, I’ve got a sticky sweet part of my musical soul that grew up on Power 106 bump and grind music, but watching two women in “slut uniforms” dancing badly to the booming sounds of 1987 was too much. I immediately figured it was some kind of performance art - only to be told that one of the sluts had hired the DJ and was herself having an opening.
At El Camino, we were at least spared the vinyl abuse. Another young girl, equipped with her laptop and iTunes, was busily appropriating the KROQ flashback lunch playlist, presumably from some point of irony. Great, the pop music of my youth is the ironic fodder for the generation younger than myself, much as the strutting guitar ballads of the 1970’s are to me. I didn’t get much irony, only the further frustration that a) no one apparently can do a sound check or work a mixing board, even a virtual one, for shit these days, and b) the music of today must really suck if the kids of today aren’t strutting it about at any public opportunity.
I’ve long been a musical outsider, my tastes tend to run independent of my own era, and I’ve walked through many a room playing the latest sounds, blissfully unaware of the identity or even genre of the artists. So I’m disappointed with today’s young artists - shouldn’t you guys be in a noise band, or some tight-pants outfit? Aren’t you supposed to be enmeshed in the creative whirlpool of your generation? I guess I’ve gone on enough here, and I’ve gotten my little lint-ball of frustration out. Now I feel better.
May 25th, 2007 at
In 1994, I took a introduction to ART class at El Camino College in Torrance. We walked around the other classes and people would tell us what they were doing……and watch Picasso videos. Towards the end of the class our assignment was to present some form of art with a demonstration (video, hands on demo, whatever else). Alot of students relied on video documentaries about water painting and rice paper. I chose a slightly different route with my friend from Texas; Gen Kirby….otherwise known as Dr. Mabusa. I did show a short 15 min. sample of some Survival Research Lab. short experimental film as a preperation and then our show began.
With the generosity of the upstairs printing class I borrowed a silkscreen rack to play as a metal percussion insturment which was amped with contact mics. I dressed as a pregnant nurse with a giant umbilical cord. Kirby and I decided that this class needed to know about Hospitals and Safeway (the store). Kirby made a great video collage of some rather unpleasant operations that tranvestites get and some eye surgery too….because that is important in the world of medicine. Liberally sprinkled throughout was commercial footage of Safeway shoppers, produce being rinsed and happy Down Syndrome people laughing and smiling. By accident, the video seemed to imply that Safeway has surgical operations going on at all hours and that happy Down Syndrome children and clean produce was the result.
kirby read his Hospital America conspiracy poetry as if he was a great politician giving the Gettysburg Address. He was dressed up as a surgeon with all the talltale signs of having just performed some operation in a meat packing plant. He also had too much echo so it was as if he was addressing his students in a large drainage pipe. I just sounded like a garbage truck filled with glass repeatedly crashing into a bridge abutment. There was also an opera record playing at the wrong speed for some reason. We ended when campus security came because of the fire alarm. The fire alarm was set off by the industrial strength fog machine. Alot of fog poured into the hallways. this was by accident and not planned. When we were done, the three nuns in our class got up and left and everyone else just kind of sat there …..in fog. The campus police were relieved that no fire was used and the students got a five minute break to let the fog clear. No one seemed to know what the hell to think (which was a fine response) and the teacher- a small Asian lady- remarked that she liked it but was afraid that the rest of the class may not have understood (again, fine….we didn’t really know what we were doing either). To this day, I still wonder what the three nuns might have been thinking. I would have liked to have used them for future shows.
My second great moment at El Camino College was when I was given a medium sized room to show some silkscreens that glowed in the dark. This was for some Open House for the small art department there.
I had a friend who had a self titled job called “Under the House”….yes, dead animal removal. I helped him sometimes on busy days. One perk of his job was that I was able to get a small collection of dead possums and cats that had become naturally mummified overtime….as cold dry basements will do after awhile. I couldn’t let these go to waste so I hung them up from the ceiling at face level after spraying and painting them with glow paint. This made them glow like Holy relics. Most of the glow in the dark silkscreen posters were in some way related with the Dominator shipwreck (1961, Rocky point in Palos Verdes) and alien abductions, implants, and impregnations (species cross breeding). Alot of time and trouble and blacklights went into this because I just became obsessed with making the space as unlike a spare room as possible and it was fun….too damned fun for some of the teachers who became alarmed about “trouble”. When I asked about this “trouble” they claimed that because of the recent(?) controversy of teenage Satanic killings that this might trigger something. This was from the art department. It wasn’t till I I had Madora W. the printmaking teacher on my side that I could continue. They were esp. alarmed about the hanging glow pet display. I got away with it after telling evryone that I was a Bhuddist and that I was sending out a social message about missing pets and invasion of privacy (I do like Bhuddism but none of the rest was true). For atmousphere I lit the most musky incense I could find, cheaply, and played some tapes of Mormon choir music and some Morroccon stuff.
I was ready and prepared. I think that I had about maybe thirty people at most come in and take a look rather quickly. The older people seemed more intriqued because they thought that it was “trippy” while the younger people didn’t seem to like it much at all esp. when I wouldn’t explain things in anyway that would make any rational sense to them. After an hour and a half of random visitors I closed and locked the door and kept the room to myself for a couple of hours before I went home.
The trouble i find with art and art students and all that is the constant need for an explanation. No mystery or personal interaction….it must preach or make sense on a large universal scale otherwise people feel that they are being deceived. I like things that I don’t understand whether they be absurd or frightening. Am I alone in this? Not at all unless I’m trapped in a basement with politicians, cops, and art students.
………….End Of Rant_________ Rich P.60 (5/25/07)
May 28th, 2007 at
Thanks for the tale, Rich. That was probably the last really interesting project done by a student at ElCo.