Aphorism 3

artwork by Idiots

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.” - Lester Bangs

Terra Aqua

Maya Lin is certainly one of the greatest American artists. Her lastest? Wave Field at Storm King which opens next spring. Here she deals with some of my favorite topics, water and land. Reminds me of a large scale realization of a Hiroshi Sugimoto: oceanic landscapes, undulating meditations, and the disorientation of losing oneself.

Video

A New Dawn

It’s shocking isn’t it?
It’s shocking to feel like the person who is steering the ship shares your values and your concerns, is thoughtful and heart-full.


It feels different doesn’t it?
Did you notice how in NYC on the 4th of November and every day since, people are looking you in the eye…like they did after 9/11?


I keep catching myself smiling. I keep realizing I still care…that it hasn’t worn off. This is my country and my president. For real.


I love this video, the spontaneous outbreak into a song that never held much meaning for me, until now. Heartbreaking it didn’t matter before. But this is a new dawn, a new day.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGq0sUBRkU


***********************
So, astrologers have been throwing in their 2 cents about this election. Did you know that on November 4th (you can decide if it’s a coincidence) Saturn and Uranus moved into opposition, something that happens about every 40 years. What does this mean, you ask? Well…the previous two times Saturn and Uranus opposed each other was 1918-20 and 1964-67, two period that saw big cultural changes.

At the end of World War 1 distinct class privilege began to be eroded, a flu epidemic killed more people than had died in the war, women in the US agitated for the right to vote, Wall Street was bombed, there were massive strikes in major industries like steel, race riots occurred, the Russian revolution had just happened and socialist ideology was spreading. The 1960s saw immense social upheaval: riots, strikes, race struggles in Africa, and a US Presidential assassination. “In the mid-’60s the counterculture emerged as an articulate alternative to the blind pursuit of the American dream and automatic support for the overt hegemony of the military-industrial complex. For the first time in history, young people all over the world voiced their social criticism en masse.”

Currently, we’re seeing sweeping changes to our financial systems and an erosion of the complacent sense of material security we’ve had. We’re also witnessing an environmental crisis on a global scale unseen before. Check out the 'American history' article on Wikipedia.

It's conveniently divided into historical periods. One begins in 1918, at a Saturn-Uranus opposition. Another begins in 1964, at the next Saturn-Uranus opposition. Could 2009 mark another major epochal break? What else might Saturn/Uranus have in store for us? And where does Obama fit in all of this?

Well let’s look closer at Saturn and Uranus…
“Saturn is experience earned the hard way, through a trial-by-fire history of achievements and mistakes, which bestows a real-world wisdom one cannot learn through books or theories or sudden flashes of genius. Uranus is radical freshness, the electrifying pulse of innovation born from the need to try something different, once it appears those with experience have become blinded by the perspectives they've held for years. Saturn signifies tradition, a conservative approach that respects the sanctity of institutions upon which many folks' sense of stability rests. Uranus brings the change and, along with it, increased liberation for those who felt oppressed by such traditions… and what surely seems like anarchistic end-times to those plenty content with how things have always been.”

While typically Saturn is seen as restrictive while Uranus is exciting, this is a big simplification. Uranus can be destructive and cynical, and Saturn can bring calm by being containing, realistic, and stable.

What is remarkable is how Obama seems to naturally balance these opposing forces. Neither Saturn’s strict adherence to order, nor Uranus’ rebelliousness should “be allowed to unilaterally triumph at the expense of the other. Their opposition reveals the obvious pitfalls of both extremes to our immediate consciousness. The touchy challenge here is to balance between a reining-in and tightening-up of government's traditional role (Saturn) and an abrupt, dramatic reinvention of its practices to better support the needs of a changing populace (Uranus).”

If Barack Obama can pull this off this will be the shiniest new dawn of them all.

Thanks to the following sites for illuminating me
http://astrobarry.com/2008/sep2908.php
http://planetaryenergies.net/2008/10/29/the-saturn-uranus-opposition-2008-to-2010/
All pictures are courtesy of the fabulous http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Wonder in Wanderlust

Bjork's new stereoscopic 3-D video "Wanderlust" screened yesterday at FIT because a couple of FIT graduates worked on the imaging. This video is awesome!! Okay, well, we can also say...Bjork is awesome.

Dressed in mash-up fantasy Tibetan costume, Bjork communes with Himalayan yaks, traverses a raging river, struggles with her alter ego Pain-Body, and finally cascades over a waterfall, plummeting into the awaiting hands of Rivergod. This is no subtle journey of self-discover. Bjork and her dual self are fighting (or dancing as if in a pas de deux) upon the backs of these wooly mammoths as the river carries them, rushes them, towards the arms of fate.

It is magical to see a river play such a key role - here, vivid blue, ever changing, whirring and churring. And get this....made from hair.

Here's a link to the 2-d video. Slightly disappointing now I've seen it in 3-d.

Here is a link to the video in 3-d and a making-of short.

I learned from a couple of the animators, that they originally thought this video would only take a few weeks to make. Well, duh, it took them nine months and a team of volunteers to complete this labor of love. The video was created using a blend of puppetry, live action and CG, and was a collaboration between producers Ghost Robot, directors Encyclopedia Pictura (Isaiah Saxon and Sean Hellfrich) and New York-based animation house UVPhactory.

Wander in Wonder

"Katwijk-Bomen" by Ellen Kooi

"Celebration ... is self-restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder -- the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know this."
- Martin Heidegger

Sunday

"Clearing" by Tamsen Ellen

"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it."

Marilynne Robinson ~ Gilead

Park(ing) Day

I bet y'all didn't know that this past Friday was national Park(ing) Day. Walking up Sixth Avenue, lo and behold, I encountered green grass and flowers!! What a delight! I'd remembered this event from last year and so quickly was able to assess what was going on. This is no eco-hippie sit-in. No people, NYC offered up 5o prime parking spots to let ordinary citizens (or rather architects and motivated artists) turn them into mini parks for the day.

But don't miss Park(ing) Day REDUX, taking place on October 18th. "This capstone exhibit will feature a rebuild of selected parking spots on a closed street in front of EYEBEAM Art and Technology Center on 21st Street, a mixer with the city's most imaginative public space interventionists, and photos."

http://parkingdaynyc.org/
and
Trust for Public Land