I’m always nervous before a Stranger Dinner. Who will show up? Who won’t? It has been a trial and error process to see what method of invitation/confirmation will turn up the most guests, and I think I’ve got it down because there are seven women seated at my table by 7:30. I have to scramble for chairs, so accustomed to a couple no shows that I always overbook, and can barely squeeze 8 people around the little table in my kitchen.

We are nervous and making small talk interspersed with small puddles of silence that threaten to suck us in. There is one bottle of wine and I pour it carefully into each glass, making sure we all get some. Wine is a key ingredient at a stranger dinner, not only because it gives us something to do at the very beginning of the meal, but because of the important role it plays in loosening our lips. But today I am broke, and the couple bottles I usually try to ply on people isn’t around to save us from nervous shyness. We are making it along but I see something deeper here.

I turn to the questions written in by the guests that I keep as conversation starters when words get a little hitch in their giddy-up. I invite these women to ask their questions, or a new one if they want.

We start with an exercise. One younger guest wants to explore our first impressions of each other. We are all too hesitant to say them out loud, so we write a different name on the top of 8 sheets of paper, folding the page up as we write our observations and pass them along.

This breaks the ice, and we continue thinking of questions, topics, experiences we want to talk about and opinions we have to share. We kill the wine. We eat food enthusiastically, exclaiming over all the delicious array of tastes we have managed to gather into one place. I can never stifle the amazement at the way dinner always seems to turn out balanced and delicious.

Three hours later, fully stuffed and connected, we write a different set of impressions, marking the end of the dinner. Each guest leaves one by one, trading recipes, hair stylists, getting rides, and saying goodbye. One guest is left.

“So is it really over? I can’t believe I’ll never see these women again, after how sharing such intimate things with each other. I feel so connected.”

“The possibility is always there.” I say. “Maybe you will see them again, but at least we had tonight.”

“Are all dinners like that?”

“Each in their own way.” I say. And as she leaves, I sit there, amazed myself that it could be true. These evenings with strangers are magical in a way that is new and surprising every time.

I think I have it.

I don’t know what it is, but there is something lighting a fire under my butt and making me feel like my old self again.

It has been super nice and warm for the past couple weeks, and it smells like spring outside. It’s that wet, flowery, earthy smell that comes across the breeze at twilight and drives me crazy. When I get a whiff of it, I’m immediately free, driving in a car, windows rolled down, no shoes, listening to some wicked tunes, with all my best friends. It seriously gets me high. I feel a euphoric rush and it makes me feel like a strong fierce lady. Powerful. Like I can do anything. Like life is amazing and wonderful and everything is happy. And pretty much, it is.

Maybe it’s the infusions. I found this amazing crazy hippie herbalist lady who makes these nourishing infusions from nettle, red clover, oatstraw, and comfrey. I started drinking them, mixing up the herbs in glass jars and steeping them overnight.

T and I stopped smoking cigs. Not like we were super heavy smokers, but every bit counts! It has been almost two weeks and not a puff. Feeling pretty happy about that. You hear a lot less sneezing and coughing out of both of us.. and I know we’re saving money!

We’ve started eating much better. More fresh vegetables, less white powders. It takes a little more time, but I enjoy the whole cooking and eating process a lot more. And I know I’m getting better nutrition out of it.

I don’t know why this all happened. It seemed to just happen naturally. Like a switch got flipped in my head and I am now ready to all the things I used to think were impossible. I feel so motivated to work towards something, to have goals and try to attain them, to better my circumstances and do things that I really love. To get our lives organized so we don’t have to worry so much.

It’s like suddenly, the window opened. Suddenly everything seems a little easier. Suddenly. Suddenly, I’m capable of more. And so I am actively requiring more from myself.

I’m ironing out my life.

I guess this is why spring brings so much renewal and growth and resolutions and cleaning and stuff. It must be instinct. Something in the air tells me, it’s time to get things started.

There is a lot to do, and it’s overwhelming, but I’m trying to make baby steps, keep my head down, focus on what’s right in front of me, and just let things happen.

So there. Blog update. More stranger dinners coming soon. Join the list.

I don’t know why I started the Stranger Dinners. Maybe it was out of loneliness. I was living in a new town with my two best friends. I had just graduated college, an environment where hundreds of familiar and interesting faces greeted me as soon as I walked out my door. I had been so excited to finally be free of the isolated bubble of school. I thought it was holding me back, with its assignments and requirements and obligatory hoops to jump through. I was ready to be set free so I could finally do what I wanted: make art.

I often likened concentrating in sculpture to majoring in possibilities. As I learned more and more about contemporary art practice and theory, my definition of what art was and what it could be expanded until there were no limits. A sculpture could be anything from an idea to an action, a crafted situation, a social experiment, a conspiracy, a business venture, an anecdote told at a party. I spent my last semester trying to walk on the edge of what art could be. I planned field trips, elaborate parties, chance meetings, experiential devices, and rumors. I was a little misunderstood, but I was very happy, and I was excited for the day that I would graduate and have the freedom to do even more.

It soon hit me that school hadn’t prepared me for the reality that lay beyond. In the real world, people didn’t have time to make art. Work that actually earned money took over life. I longed for the creative collaboration between people who had time to philosophize, to create, to experiment, to discuss, to learn and to teach. In school, I had been isolated, but at least I was with hundreds of fellow students and faculty. In the real world, I felt, everyone lives in their own little world, working to pay their rent and provide for themselves.

Working part time in a frame shop, and spending my free time working on projects alone at my house, I felt a very basic, almost laughable question begin to surface.

What is everyone doing?

I felt like I missed something. Is this it? You have a few friends, you wake up, go to work, pay rent, and get some fun in when you can? I would make a painting and look at it, thinking “what is this for?” I wondered how people were spending their time. How were people figuring out how to balance their obligations with their pleasures? How did they make decisions? How do we all decide what is right for us–what to sacrifice and what to invest? What city to live in? What jobs to apply for? What to do with our lives?

“What I want to know is where all the people are, and where they go / and what I wouldn’t give to know where everybody gets together, where it is that they really live” — “The Sky Opens Wide like the Tide” by The Blow

I asked everyone I came across what their life was like. Did they like what they were doing? How did they do it? Why did they like it? How did they get to that point? What did they do before? What were the obstacles? What were the perks? What were the downfalls?

I felt like I was lost in this big labyrinth and the whole world was at a party in the center of it.

Slowly it dawned on me: no one had the answer. There was no right path. Everyone stumbles their way through. Some people get lucky breaks, some people have lower expectations, some people are unhappy, some people are happy. It is always changing and evolving. Everyone just works with what they have, and from their own perspective.

So what if we all started collaborating? What if we shared our perspectives? Not just with our family and friends, but with everyone? I wanted to know what a real life was like, and movies weren’t really helping.

The internet has been a huge tool for doing just this. We can share the most intimate details of our lives with strangers, from vacations pictures to opinions, to skin infections and the latest fashions. People type out their greatest fears, aspirations, confessions, and successes for the vast unknown sea of people to read and comment on. This gives access to a seemingly infinite amount of information without having to even get out of bed.

But there’s something so isolating about the internet. This screen we use as a portal to connect ourselves to each other creates an invisible barrier between ourselves an others. The voyeuristic nature of Facebook allows us to keep up with our acquaintances and friends without them even knowing, and without the exchange that let’s them know we care, and without actually having any kind of relationship with these people.

I just clicked over to someone’s twitter page. I don’t know this girl, but I’ve been following her life for almost a year. The background on her twitter page says, “I thought I was a narcissist. That is, until I met the rest of the internet.” It’s true, we are all broadcasting the stories of our lives (some more than others). We are posturing as ourselves in order to make superficial connections with as many people as possible. Social capital is suffering from inflation. It’s not enough to have 50 people in real life you really care about, you have to have 500 facebook friends too. What? You don’t have 1,000 followers on twitter? You might as well be shouting into the void, because no one hears what you say.

Communication has been one sided too long. We are starting to learn how to make all this technology work for us. It’s starting to occur to people that these amazing networks we are building can help us improve the communities where we actually exist. With the internet, I can now find all the garage sales in my neighborhood, order takeout, find a date, join a pillow fight, and locate my favorite food cart when I get that special craving.

In response to all these ideas and questions, I started inviting strangers to my house for a potluck. With the Stranger Dinners, I seek to bridge the gap between personal and impersonal, between the mass communication and face to face interaction. I want to bring what is good about the internet and relocate it from the ephemeral everywhere and nowhere plane and bring it closer. I want to create the opportunity for people to find something they might not think to look for. I want to take the idea of StumbleUpon and bring it to the dinner table. Let us cultivate an open flow of information without the anonymity. That way, the value placed on the information or opportunities we come across are tied to real people who live in our physical communities. I want the humanity back. Instead of going to the library and researching on the internet, I want to stroll through the stacks, smell the pages of old books, pick a random book off the shelf, and let some serendipity into my life.

Most of all, I want to keep myself open to the physical world around me, and all the people who live there. I want us to act as though we have the world in common. If we’re all in this together, we’ll have all the support we need to get us through. Through my art practice, I seek to create situations outside of our everyday expectations of the world. I strive to actively create what I find lacking from my everyday experience. And I want to explore the possibilities that can come from encouraging people to talk to each other without reason, motivation, agenda, self-selection, or presumption. They’re no telling what we will find if we look just outside of our everyday experience.

nataliedee.com

Today, I found myself floundering a little in my bed, trying to think of reasons to get up. It was one of those days I was going to need coffee and a To Do list.

To Do:
-That really important thing you get paid for
-That second most important thing you get paid for
-Dishes
-Laundry
-Money making scheming
-Start a salon/art movement (not the hair kind)
-Write blog

So here I am sitting in my robe drinking coffee once again, except now my robe is really wet because all my towels are dirty, and my coffee is black because I’m too lazy to walk to the store I live directly above to get milk.

Last week, I had some great dinner experiences. Friends came over, and we ended up spending hours drinking and talking and cooking and eating. The first dinner, after running downstairs to purchase the second bottle of vodka, we came up with this really amazing idea for a salon. A SALON. Okay, so remember when you used to take that white liquid Elmer’s glue and rub it on your hand and let it dry so you could peel it off? Yeah, that was kick ass and sounded like a really good after-dinner activity. My hands, dry and flakey from doing dishes and cooking, were as tender as meat cutlets after the glue did it’s magic. It’s also really satisfying to peel off your hand from your hand.

We started to have visions… visions of slathering hot rich trophy wives with glue, putting them under heat lamps, and then making them shed skin like snakes. People would love it and I bet it would be fun for those skin peeling enthusiasts (I know you’re out there!).

The next dinner was full of hardheaded discussion of the nature of the world and political agendas and missed opportunities and isolation and selfish mentalities and community organizing and lots of good stuff. And I thought to myself, wow, if we could all get together like this more often, like, everyone in the world on rotate, I bet we could really figure some things out. My own pessimistic view of the world grew hopeful, and I could see dear old motivation rearing her head for the first time in a while.

I thought about how lovely my stranger dinner potlucks were.. People coming together for the sole purpose of sharing a meal, without any strings or futures or drama. People presented themselves how they wanted, spoke about their passions, grew less isolated, and more connected to humanity.

That is when I realized…. the universe is telling me something! I should start a salon! But not an Elmer’s Glue Salon, a social exchange salon. We need a place to invite people that isn’t a bar or restaurant. Somewhere we can be for cheap and spend hours talking and listening to music and sharing stories and hanging out. Intimate, cheap, fun, interesting, always changing. It would be a great way to meet new people, develop ideas, create community, etc.

Luckily, I’ve been reading a lot of books about art/literary movements, and Gertrude Stein, so I’ve been able to outline some steps to initiating a forum like this. Here’s what I have come up with so far:

1. Find a venue.

This place has to be a private home. It must be intimate, so it makes people feel at home, and it must not be money driven, like a bar or restaurant, so people can relax and not worry about whether they paid enough or too much, or if they can afford it, etc.. It has to be a place people are welcome to stay for hours, and which has a spot people can go to remove his/herself from the festivities with one or two other people. (Those moments where you find respite from the group creates intimate moments where a real connection can be made.)

2. Pick an active day for the salon.

I knew someone who had potlucks every week at her house in Seattle. Different people would show up all the time. Also, Gertrude Stein seemed to have a constant flow of people who would just show up at her door around dinner or tea time or whatever, which I think is awesome. In order for a salon to be established, there should be a time and place that it always exists. That way, there can be a community of people who always feel like they could be invited.

3. Get people to come.

With the Stranger Dinner, I would make invitations monthly and get people I knew to invite people they knew. In this way, we kept it pretty safe, but always had new people come and participate. I think this time I’ll do the same kind of thing, but also reach out to some pre-established communities. I think making up some cards that I could give out when I meet new people would also be a good way to invite.

The only snag I envision is that my apartment can at most accommodate six people. More than that and the connective, intimate nature of the event may be lost. I will have to include an RSVP on the invitation, and accept the first six who RSVP for a particular week. I wonder how that will go!

If you live in the Bay Area, and would like to participate, leave a comment or email me: arianna [dot] davalos [at] gmail [dot] com . I promise you will have a time, and good or bad, you’ll meet some new people, exchange some new ideas, and maybe even find some inspiration!

Where are you now and what have you been doing today?

Right now I’m in a class at the University of Tokyo. I got up today, took it easy for too long, made some breakfast, then looked at the clock and then ran out the door to get to class. But, I’m really happy because I washed my hair for the first time in a while and now it feels really soft again.

UPDATE: Now I’m sitting outside a convenience store drinking a whiskey high ball and finishing this up before going to watch the first World Cup match.

What are you wearing?

In my first look at this I was wearing a big baggy t-shirt and that’s about it, sitting on my stoop, drinking the first coffee and cigarette that I cherish every morning. I can feel it slowly waking up every molecule in my brain.

Now I’m in a seminar about the history of the seminar. Very meta. And I’m back to basics in a 70s kind of way going all brown and blue, not in a bruised kind of way.

What have you been listening to lately (musicwise)?

A friend of a friend has got this great mellow music (you could maybe call it chillwave) that he is producing on his own just using his computer. HIs name is Constantin, and the album is called dream show I think. Also Toro y Moi, and since its summer, gotta break out the T.Rex. Oh yah, can’t forget Caribou and the new LCD Soundsystem album. If you’re looking for some Japanese music, check out Fishmans, or more recently my friends Trippple Nippples, and Immi.

What made you decide to pursue becoming a curator?

I think it was part of a process of self-discovery made possible by those around me at the time. I was in my first job after college in a global health thinktank in Seattle, Washington. I was sitting in front of a computer all day long punching buttons, crunching numbers, and generally doing the bidding of those around me. Of course it was all for a good cause, but in general it felt very mechanical. This dissatisfaction led me to re-examine my self and try to distill some goals. I realized that I loved helping people and working with information but I needed to have a little bit more of a creative input in my projects.

Through this very technical work I came to understand some of the ways in which technology was influencing our world. Part of the research at this thinktank was using simulations that took data from studies and interviews/questionnaires and created virtual worlds in which different public health scenarios were tested. At the same time I was spending most of my time researching the creative efforts of net artists, digital artists, and media artists etc… It was also at this time that Second Life and Twitter were born. I saw more similarities than differences between the scientific goals of this data-based research and the social and creative research that artists were producing in the form of media art works.

In the end, a number of experiences working with wonderful, intelligent, creative, and dedicated people in galleries and museums led me to realize that these were ‘my people.’ My brother gave me very good advice once (well probably more than once, but this is the one I remember most often). He said that the way to discover your passion is to be rewarded and inspired by the people around you. I think this is a very good maxim for having a moral compass in life.

I guess the other influence that pulled/pushed me in this direction was my passion for the contemporary. I’ve always been fascinated by our ability as modern humans to assimilate massive amounts of information and synthesize this information into meaningful elements. I think ultimately I view the role of a curator as sort of a synthesizer of information. Its up to the curator to make links and connections between sometimes disparate works of art and demonstrate the interconnectedness of different elements of society.

What projects have you been involved with recently?

Living in Tokyo would seem to be a fantastic opportunity to work with media art, but it has differed in many ways from my expectations. I don’t want to be too extreme because there are some absolutely fantastic artists working in Tokyo, but I think at this point in time, Tokyo is really a fashion and food city.

That being said, I’ve discovered a very vibrant culture of people working to expand the boundaries of what is possible with technology. This has been especially true in terms of the creative potential of VJs(video jockeys) and live media art performers.

Last year I was able to help out with the International Festival for Arts and Moving Images in Yokohama. This was a very large media art festival bringing a wide selection of media artists from all over the world including Pipilotti Rist and her immersive environments, and Evan Roth of Graffiti Research Lab (to name but a few) together for a monthlong exhibition.

More recently I’ve been working as an independent curator organizing an event series of live media art performances. Much of this work focuses on taking artists who often work in nightclubs and large parties as VJs and showcasing their work in a gallery setting. Often VJs are seen as background or embellishments to the nightlife, but in my opinion their work deserves attention in its own right. Often VJs are actually capable of much more complex audioreactive and architectural installation work that doesn’t have a place in the normal nightclub. Essentially my work in Japan right now is focusing on live elements of media art such as live programming and performance artists.

What excites you about New Media?

I’m actually very skeptical of technology’s impact on society. What I mean is that I feel like our technological world has been dominated by a small number of corporations developing the software and hardware that we increasingly rely on daily. This concerns me greatly. I think one of the excellent results of practicing media artists is to expose this and rip it apart. We all tend to use technology in a prescribed way determined by the limitations of the software and hardware. In other words, this technology has a homogenizing effect on our social interactions with technology. Creators, artists, and alter-techno-subcultures are reacting to this. Hacktivism, open source, liberal piracy, and culture jamming are very direct examples of this, but even with installation and net art we can see the potential of technology to be used in yet undiscovered ways.

How do you decide if you like a piece?

It’s less of a decision and more of a gut reaction. It’s actually very hard for me to intellectualize this reaction, but that is something I find the most beautiful about art. It’s this challenge of explaining your visceral reaction as a curator, and the rewards of being able to give opportunities for others to see and experience works you enjoy in this way.

For some curators this might be sacrilege, but to be honest, when I first get to an exhibition I walk through it as fast as possible glancing every which way until I get through it all and back to the beginning. Then I see what is left in my brain and what draws me back for a second look. I’ll go look at those pieces and see who they are by and what they are about and spend some time reflecting on why they impressed me so. Then its time to look at the exhibition as a whole and try and get a glimpse into the overall impression that is left.

Are there any recent or forthcoming shows or artists you are excited about?

I’m going to focus here on artists working in Japan because I would love to expose them to a new international audience.

There is going to be a show on June 27th by one of my favorite groups Exonemo at Gallery Vacant in Harajuku. Wada Ei or Crabfeet will also be performing there on June 26th as part of the Interferenze Seeds 2010 Tokyo two-day exhibition.

I don’t know when his next show is, but Oonishi San or HeHeWho took part in the live media art performance night I curated in April and his work is incredible, a perfect blend of creative applications of technology with a tongue-in-cheek criticism of our currently media-saturated society. 

Also, probably the most prominent media artists working in Japan right now, Shimura Bros. are having a show at Taka Ishii Gallery in Kyoto right now, and I believe they will have a solo show in September at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo.

My favorite recent show was the exhibition/open studios of artists-in-residence program at Bank Art in Yokohama.

Plus I have to throw in a plug for my crew at the LAB in San Francisco (16th and Capp) and invite everyone to check out this lovely artspace. They always have great events and will have the second annual art.tech festival in September.

How has the Internet influenced artist communities? Has the importance of geographical location changed?

I think this question is huge and could probably take pages and pages to expound upon. The short answer is that artists are incredibly influenced by the Internet. The second short answer is that the importance of geographical location both has and hasn’t changed.

Today the Internet is both a muse/source for artists to use in inspiring works, and a medium or context in which to present their work. I think that access to boundless amounts of information is great for artists working today, but it can also be confusing.

Some ways in which artists actually use the Internet in work include net artists who actually present their work on the Internet and use the Internet as their main medium of expression.

Telepresence is another way in which the Internet is used by artists today. The networked aspect of the Internet is utilized to be present and create art in a location other than where you are physically present.

Whether or not geographical proximity is as important as before, I think we still need to see things in person and meet people face-to-face to experience the full impact of many works (of course excluding those that are expressly intended to be experienced virtually such as net art). I think this is one instance in which Walter Benjamin’s “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” is still incredibly relevant today. Published in 1936, this text examines the ways in which art and artists will change as a result of the industrial revolution and the infinite replicability of art. Without going too far into this dense text, he describes the original work as containing an ‘aura’ that is lost in reproduction. This aura represents the actual work, time, effort, labor, skill, etc… that went into creating the work in the first place. In a media art context I think this can often be difficult to see or for a less technical person to understand. How this influences our impression of the work is a very pressing question I think.

That being said, I am not in complete agreement with Walter Benjamin (who is?). I think that some of the most successful works of art are actually very technically simple, but conceptually sophisticated. They can involve taking something we interact with in our lives and tweaking or adjusting it slightly to invite the viewer to have a perceptual shift and to see the world around him/her in a new way.

Let’s take a look at one of Cory Arcangel’s work Super Mario Clouds. In this work, Cory takes the clouds that float in the background of the NES video game Super Mario Bros. and excises them from their context within the game to create a beatuiful serene digital projection. Taking these clouds out of their original context of a background in gameplay provides them new life almost twenty years after their original creation. It also asks us clearly to take another look at the aesthetics of gaming and specifically a certain nostalgia for 8 and 16-bit videogames.

I seem to be getting a little bit off-topic, but to try to tie at all together, there are many youtube uploads of this installation work by Arcangel from its installation at the Whitney Musuem of American Art, but viewing the work in these contexts, it may just look like a bunch of 8-bit clouds floating across your screen. To see it in person, however, you see the technique that Cory used to make the project, physically hacking the NES cartridge and replacing it with his own program. This process, as much as the result, is what becomes apparent when you visit the installation.

Another example, and something I’ve been working on recently, is the presentation of VJs and live performances including many live coders. To see this VJ work in a club you are only seeing the result and while it may be visually compelling, how can we expose the process? This is one of the benefits of live coding in which a technically masterful visualizer will project the visual output of his programming alongside his coding process. For me, this is one way to emphasize the aura of the piece and re-emphasize the role of the artist in creating art.

Social medias are changing the way our culture disseminates information. How are artists using social medias in new ways in their work?

I think the best way to answer this question is to point you towards an example of artists using social media networks to conduct their work.

Introducing the art collective ‘Jogging’ comprised of artists Brad Troemel and Laura Chirstiansen. They write in an essay on “Redefining Exhibition in the Digital Age,”

“Art cannot exist without an audience, as it relies on media for its existence as art. With today’s burgeoning potential for digital mass viewership, transmission becomes as important as creation. Contemporary online artists are aware of this fact and seek to actively make use of its potential. Dematerialization is not an oppressive suffocation of art but a possibility for art to flourish in disparate and progressive discourses. The web offers infinite room for expansion and participation unlimited by the more severe constraints of space and finance.”   –via Rhizome

These artists use the blogging platform Tumblr as an incubator for ideas and also a platform for their work to spread around the blogosphere. The socially networked aspect allows their work to be accessed by an audience much larger than the tradition audience of gallery-goers.

Similarly, the collective created an online presence in the form of a facebook account Perfor Manceart. Using this account as a platform for interventions and interruptions in the online world of facebook the collective was able to involve the power of the hive (its friends and fans) to expose some of the limitations of online presence:

“Perfo Rmanceart is a Facebook avatar that acts directly on the public interfaces of other profiles. Using the company Facebook as a medium for artistic intervention is an extension of Jogging, a blog that uses the company Tumblr to spread images through the internet at a viral pace. Like Jogging, Perfo Rmanceart uses the passage of information through media as its final output. If Jogging forfeits the artist’s ability to control meaning online, Perfo Rmanceart investigates the power users have in shaping their perception of one another on social networking sites. By using communication with other Facebook profiles as its subject, the avatar is dependent on viewer interaction. Documentation of the avatar’s interactions is presented in its own Profile Pictures section, making Perfo Rmanceart an autonomous archive as well.” –Via Jogging on Tumblr

Jogging: http://thejogging.tumblr.com

For other net artists working with social media platforms such as second life see:

Eva and Franco Mattes

http://0100101110101101.org/

Interview with them:

http://blog.art21.org/2010/05/28/life-after-death-an-interview-with-eva-and-franco-mattes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Art21Blog+%28Art21+Blog%29

Also, a brilliant interview from Chicago art blog Bad at Sports (http://badatsports.com/) between Nicholas O’brien and Jon Rafman about life as an avatar and art on the virtual reality platform Second Life: http://rhizome.org/editorial/3549

How is the art world similar to the fashion world? How do they intersect? It seems club culture, fashion and art are intimately linked. How are the lines between them becoming blurred?

I don’t know how similar they are, but they definitely inspire each other. Designers are incredibly influenced by artwork from cinema history to performance art. I think both fashion designers and artists are trying to comment and reflect on contemporary society and perhaps open our eyes to new possibilities and directions.

I think that recently I can identify two directions in which fashion and especially media art are becoming: wearable technology and fashion shows.

The first is pretty self-explanatory; there are a number of artists working today to find new ways to hybridize fashion and technology. Will the products of this creative output be considered fashion or art or both?

Take a look at some of the work by Kristin Niedlinger for example: http://slimavocado.com/blog/2010/ger-galvanic-extimacy-responder/

The second way in which fashion and especially media art are becoming blended is in the presentation of fashion. As designers and organizers are looking for ways to make their collections stand out on the crowded runways, some are involving media artists in runway design and shop design. While it could concern me that some of these attempts are devaluing the media art, or simply gimmicks to boost sales or add that ‘wow-factor,’ a recent experience at the Louis Vuitton gallery (Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton) in Paris proved to me otherwise.

The Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton is in an adjunct space next to the flagship Louis Vuitton location on the Champs-Elysees. I suppose this cultural space is partly an attempt by the traditional luxury brand to infuse a sense of contemporaneity in its brand image. For artists, it allows them to develop what I’m sure is a profitable relationship with the brand. However, for me, the audience and the sometimes critic, it was an opportunity to see a diverse temporary exhibition of top artists from a variety of fields for free. And I didn’t even have to go into the glistening store overflowing with its monogrammed goods made out of cows.

Also, there is the simple matter of economics that media artists, because of the fact that their choice of digital medium is in many cases infinitely electronically replicable, often struggle to find funding outside of academic or national grant funding systems. My perspective is that these non-commercial funds for media artists should be expanded rather than forcing artists to seek out commercial applications for their work, but if it pays the bills and introduces a wider audience to art its hard to complain too vociferously (another manifestation of pragmatic anti-capitalism?).

Why is fashion important?

Is fashion important? Sometime I wonder this myself as I get more and more drawn into this world living in Tokyo. Of course there are many arguments for the cultural importance of fashion: the artistry of designers, the self-expression of fashionistas, the creative potential of using the body as a canvas. On the other hand, are these just excuses used by the fashion industry to legitimize the prices they charge and the industries capitalistic ambitions? As an anti-capitalist living pragmatically (some may say hypocritically) in a fashion-based world I struggle with these contradictions on a daily basis. But I think the fact that fashion makes me, and hopefully others, address these inconsistencies justifies its importance!

How do you decide what to wear?

It is basically a very quick statistical compilation in my head that I perform on the spot every morning. It is about 20% based on how clean the object that I intend to wear is. This includes its location in my room (floor/closet/hanger). 30% weather. 50% wow factor. It’s all about dressing to impress, but for me that means the details. I know I will only have a good day if my underwear matches my mood and my socks somehow reflect my personality.

Describe the perfect day in Tokyo.

I’m going to describe a day in Tokyo that I’ve never had because in the summer I can never get up early enough. One of the things that never fails to amaze me is how early the sunrise is in Japan in the summer. They don’t have daylight savings time here, so around this time of year it gets light at 3:30am. I would love to wake up at 3:30am and have a completely diurnal day following the light around.

Anyways, I would wake up and make a big breakfast with lots of coffee and probably a croque monsieur. Then I would sit on my balcony with my favorite magazine Cabinet. After this analog morning I would spend an hour or so catching up on the latest from the blogosphere, reading my favorite blog I Made This For You, and reblogging the highlights.

Then, off on my bike for a leisurely tour around my neighborhood of Nakameguro in Tokyo. Hopefully later on there would be a gallery opening with free alcohol where I could gather with my friends to start the night, then we would continue to dinner and drinks at Combine, a cute little riverside café by my house, then to bar ‘M’ for some banging tunes late into the night until we make our way back home (probably right around when its getting light again!).

Actually it kind of sounds like today.

So I guess my best day in Tokyo would actually be a full 24 hour affair!!

Who are your biggest influences? Who do you look to for inspiration?

Art: Barbara London, media curator at the MOMA. She is one of the biggest reasons I’m in Japan. In 1999 Barbara toured around Japan making a digital diary of sorts of the latest trends in Japanese media art for here dot.japan project for the MOMA. She is sort of like a foremother to me.

Another reason I came to Japan is because of my immense respect for the performance art group from Kyoto called Dumb Type. Founded in the late 1980s and most active during the 1990s, this group blended technology, dance and theater in new ways and also used their artistic practice to expose some of the social issues of the day, most notable HIV/AIDS. The most notable artist to emerge internationally from this hub is the sound artists Ryoji Ikeda.

I’m also eternally grateful to Richard Rinehart of the Berkeley Art Museum for giving allowing naïve me to TA for a class on digital culture with him in 2008. I will never forget sitting on his floor and picking his brain on topics running the gamut from Bay Area queer politics to the sometimes bifurcated world of media art and the role of technologists vis-à-vis artists.

Actually too many to list, but I’m not giving an Oscar speech (yet).

Fashion: Gareth Pugh, Henrik Vibskov, Petar Petrov. All for different reasons.

Gareth Pugh for his groundbreaking and avant-garde ideas. Henrik Vibskov for his playful challenge to what we take for fashion, and Petar Petrov for his refined sense of style, creative use of fabrics and colors.

What do you see on the horizon for art and fashion?

I’ve noticed over the past year or so a trend in both art and fashion toward geometric shapes and patterns. I find this kind of algorithmic art and fashion beautiful and intriguing, but I foresee a reaction taking place to these overanalyzed patterns. My fashion friends tell me that the 70s are coming back into fashion, and although I’m not overjoyed by this prospect, I do think that there is room for some more chaos and entropy in visuals. I’ve been interested for a long time now in a movement called glitch art, and I’ve noticed a few shows and editorials popping up recently about this topic.

—Penelope Umbrico

What is the ideal path of an artist from your perspective? (If you had an artist fantasy life, what would happen in it? What is the artists’ path?)

I don’t think that’s up to me to answer. That’s the great thing about artists; they come from all walks of life and strut through life in all sorts of walks.

drawing by Dylan Taylor

Sometimes I’m unreasonable. I don’t think it’s anything to apologize for, until I feel like an asshole and I didn’t mean it. I’m just existing in my universe and you in yours and they sometimes clash. Like when I buy you coffee that I’m going to drink half of and then I show up and you’re not there and I have to wait like, two whole minutes for you to get there. Don’t you know you’re ruining my whole day? And I’m so angelic I brought you coffee. And where were you? Getting coffee? Oh I see how it is. No, now you can’t have the coffee I brought you, even though it tastes more delicious and I’ll never be able to take these 4 espresso shots.

When I get like this I try to step back. Maybe it’s not as big a deal as I feel it should be.

Maybe I do this a lot and don’t even know it. Like everyday, almost every time I’m annoyed.

I hate waking up. I don’t think I was built for it. I was meant to snuggle in bed until the warm sun and a light breeze gently rouse me from consciousness and I jump out of bed singing and laughing. This hardly ever happens because I live in a basement, and so each morning I have to pry myself out of bed with the motivational fear that if I don’t get up right at this second, my world will collapse and I’ll be late and get fired and ugh I’m such a horrible lazy person and I’ll never hold down a job. Then I start making up excuses for why I was late… I was sick, it’s too much for me. How do people do this whole getting up and working thing? I’m really bad at it. Oh I’m such a lazy incompetent person, all I want to do is frolic all day and be independently wealthy (read: rich enough to not work and do whatever I want all the time).

It’s not a good way to start the morning.

When I was in high school I had to get up at 6:45am every day to go to school. Did I like it? Of course not. Would I have rather slept in? Hell yes. But I had to go to school, and I didn’t blame it on society or the way the world worked or the country I was unfortunate enough to live in; it was just the way it was and I had to get my ass out of bed, no matter how late I stayed up.

But now it turns into a mental tirade about how I’m just not cut out for this life and there must be another way, but oh I’m a lazy piece of shit and I’ll never amount to anything. Back and forth between self-righteousness and self-hatred. That’s where I seem to live.

To have expectations is to have disappointment. I always all into this trap. Can I be ambitious if my ambition is to be ambitionless? Am I the problem with kids these days? I can’t do anything but I could do anything, given the perfect circumstances. Are my constant existential crises a sign of my overwhelming intelligence and superiority over 90% of the normals, or just the stubborn spoiled sensibility of an over educated wannabe artist who isn’t ready do give up her dream of a perfect life where she can do whatever she wants all the time?

Why do we have to do stuff we don’t want to all the time? Why is it so hard to just survive?

Why do I argue myself out of every plan I make? Everything is impossible or not good enough. Am I alone in this thinking? Or are there others like me too? If you are like this, don’t tell me. I probably wouldn’t like you, and if we had a conversation I’d try to get you to see the error of your ways, convince you to be more optimistic and less whiny, work harder and stop being so wishy-washy, and then avoid your calls and emails because I don’t want to talk to you.

Life may be a whole lot better if I just sucked it all up and didn’t complain or turn everything into a basic question of existence. But then what kind of person would I be?

I am sitting in bed and eating ice cream that makes me teeth hurt. Last night I saw Charlene Yi perform. She’s a young comic/musician/performer who wrote Paper Heart, a sweet fictional documentary about whether love exists. She dropped out of school and lived in her car to get to LA and follow her dream. Her work is funny and honest and seems to come from her gooey chocolatey center.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it is I want to do. A lot of the time I think about what I don’t want to do, or what’s stopping me from doing what I want, or how I can’t do anything and have no talent or passion, or how the whole world is fucked up and I just want to run away and live in a cave and eat berries like the guy in the book Hatchet I read when I was 10.

Some people make Bucket Lists of things they want to do before they die. Some people have lofty goals and ambitions that motivates them to do things like go to Law School, or climb a ladder of business hierarchy, or work 12 hours a day making food for people for very little money.

I don’t know what it is I want to do. When I was a kid I had these vague ideas of travel and adventure, being a poor hobo and relying on the kindness of strangers to get me where I need to be, and letting life carry me through good times in bad.

I haven’t gone for this lifestyle because it’s full of worried relatives and sketchy situations and being homeless and not getting what I need to eat, poop, and sleep safely. It’s not ambitious enough in the “I’m gonna be somebody” kind of sense, and there is no end goal except for exploring and seeing what is out there for me to see. I don’t know when a trip like this will end, or what I should do when I’m done. I always thought something would just happen.

The other thing, is money. I don’t want to have to rely on people for money, but I don’t want to work 40 hours a week for a paycheck, either. I wish I didn’t have to have money to live. Right now I’ve been working a lot at a temporary job where I get paid $23.50 an hour, but I’m always disappointed. I calculate pay during work and then am horrified when $200 gets deducted each week for taxes. When I didn’t have a job a month ago, I was always worried, but it seemed like I went out to eat a lot more, made more art, read more books, and wasn’t so angry. I seem to have a very short fuse and money lights it all the time.

The thing about this vague traveling trip I keep/kept thinking about what this: I don’t have any other plans. I seriously don’t think I ever imagined myself as old as I am now, and my plans were never definite enough to seem like something I should actually make a plan to do.

So I’m trying to make a list of things that I would like to do. People always say we never make time to just do the things that mean so much to us because we’re too busy with jobs and kids and things. Well, my job is temporary, and I’m not very fond of money and I don’t want kids until I’m done fooling around, so I thought I might as well make a list of things that I want to have happen at some point in my life and then just go from there. I hope I can think of something. I hope they aren’t impossible.

1. Have a studio that is all mine.

I want a place to go with big windows and tall ceilings that is my place. I want to be able to go there and be alone and work or dance or sing or record things or draw or paint of make prints. I want a big counter with a sink and an electric kettle and a hot plate and a refrigerator and I want to be the only one with a key. I like company, but this is a place I can go if I want to be completely alone. I work best when I’m completely alone and I never quite feel like that. Sometimes I would like a whole week of just being alone so I could get into it and get the voices out of my head. I want time to do whatever I want and I want to take all the pressure off of myself so that I don’t have to worry about how what I will do will impress people or how it will effect my future. And I don’t want this to be in a place where I am scared of getting shot walking out of my building, but I don’t want this place to be in the middle of nowhere either.

2. I want to work part time at a mindless job.

When I was in Seattle I worked at this frame shop/gift shop. I worked from 11-5pm four days a week, I got foodstamps, my work was two blocks away, and mostly I put price tags on things, made stuff pretty, and kept it all dust-free. It left me a lot of brain space to thing about things like what I was going to do or make outside of it. Sometimes I wish I had never left Seattle. The weather was bad, but that’s all I can think of that was bad. My best friend and I had our own radio show, I lived in an awesome house, I met really cool people who were doing amazing things, and I got to go see live music and eat for practically nothing all the time. I couldn’t afford cheese or meat or wine, but I was really healthy and cooked all my meals from scratch and spent like $100 on groceries for two people every month. I want to live somewhere where that’s possible. I’m tired of being cramped into one room. But I can’t think of anywhere I want to move either, not even Seattle. I like the sun too much.

3. I want summer in the country.

Freshwater creeks to live in, gardening to do, bonfires, learning to play an instrument. I want to do all these things. I was thinking about the ukulele or maybe making stuff electronically. But I want to make songs and sing them at night on the back porch after a day of baking chocolate cake and swimming and drinking minted lemonade.

So those are three things for now. Maybe I’ll think of some other things later. I wonder if the place in my head that I want to exist is real or if it’s just the amalgam of everything I like about all the places I’ve been so far. Either way, I feel compelled to travel until I find it.

I’ve been trying to make friends lately, but I don’t know how. I don’t think I’m doing this social media thing right, and I’m not sure how to pick up friends at bars. Or if that even happens. I’ve been posting ads on craigslist, but it always seems like a dead end for some reason. I think it might have to do with the fact that I’m not looking to sleep with anyone, and the virtual world and reality are so far removed from each other in my brain that I forget people on the internet are actually real. And I’ve been practicing being shy for so long that thinking about talking to people makes me want to get in my bed and watch movies for hours instead.

I did make a friend last week though. I was in training for the Census and we bonded over how we would rather be sipping cocktails than waiting for 50 people to get fingerprinted at the alarming rate of 1 every 15 minutes. We went bowling on Sunday. $20 for unlimited pizza and three hours of bowling (OMG bowling is so expensive and that didn’t even include all the booze). It was super fun.

*sidenote: Do you ever just hate someone automatically? Hate at first sight? Not that I really harbor lots of hatred, maybe irritation is a better word, but sometimes the way people talk and move their hands is just so aggravating that it makes me want to pull my teeth out with pliers. Sometimes I’m in a cafe writing with my headphones on but I’m secretly HATING YOU and everything you say and stand for. Get a chin, chicken neck.

Ahem. If you are going to be my new friend, this is what I would do to take you out and show you a good time.

1. Go to Ocean Beach and build a fire in their big Sea Star fire pits.

I’m currently working as the assistant for the artist who made these. Maybe you will be impressed by this. My boo, T, will help us build I gigantic fire and we can cook things over it on sticks and make s’mores and likely there would be a couple bottles of something and we could sit and sip and talk about all the things that are close to our heart and maybe make some music if we were so inclined until the fire died and it got cold and we started wondering how we were going to get home again and omg the train stop is so far away we’ll never make it let’s just sleep on the beach.

That happened to me once, but not exactly. We arrived at this beach park 5 minutes before it closed and got our car locked into the parking lot. We build a big smokey fire from some wet wood we found and stayed up all night shivering and watching the trains go by. We eventually ended up in the car which is where the park guy found us at 6am. It was awesome, like we were stranded on some cold island in the northwest and would sooner or later have to resort to cannibalism, or trapping squirrels, and build shelters out of stuff that washes up on the shore.

2. 50 cent Beer night at Bar on Church

We are broke artists, so we live a romantic trashy existence. On Saturday afternoon, we are going drinking at the place that most closely resembles a frat party at a gay club. We will scoff at the beer pong players, but would secretly play if they were friendly and asked us to. There are available poles and ropes hanging from the ceiling in case you had the hankering for suggestive gyrating, but I must warn you that if you are a girl you will be almost immediately be thought of as a slutty attention whore. The way to avoid this is to wait until you are pretty tipsy and then do it to get people to dance to this song because OMG IT IS SO GOOD!!! Extra points if you are hot and fun and get people to dance. If you are a cute gay guy, go forth with no reservations, but if you run off to have sex somewhere and ditch us, that is lame.

3. Monday Night Movie at Roxie Cinema

I love to watch movies, especially if they’re arty and independent and funny or heartbreaking or pretty and make me feel hip and smart. Enter Roxie Cinema. They always have something offbeat or interesting playing, so it doesn’t even really matter what’s playing. Especially because on Mondays the movies are $5 (cash pls). Before the movie, we can go get pupusas down the street at Panchitas #2 where you can have a feast for 2 for like, $12, I kid you not. This is a fun thing to do esp. when we’re just getting to know each other because there’s a little conversation time mixed with silent movie time that will give us something to talk about if we don’t really know what to say otherwise.

4. An Afternoon on Hippie Hill

On sunny days in the spring, there’s no better place to be than on Hippie Hill. All kinds of people come out. There are tons of hippies and weirdos and freaks to talk to that make great stories. Last time I was there, I watched this guy dressed in all black going crazy on this big empty trash can. He was covered in body armor and training himself to kill people. He came over and said his name was Ash and started throwing knives into the grass. He was awesome, and I feel sorry for any authority figure that runs into him when he’s in a bad mood. His pipe was given to him by an native american who made it out of the horn of an elk he shot with a bow and arrow.

Anyway, I’d pack a picnic with some food to spare, bring a little cash for homemade baked goodness we will inevitably be invited to try, and maybe even something to bang on. There we can spend all afternoon people watching and talking to whoever rolls up. We will share some food, lay in the sun, read, dance at the drum circle, hula hoop and generally chill out until we are so chill we are ready to find a rainbow gathering or go live in a van down by the river with all our new friends.

5. Pho

At this point in hanging out, it is likely that you will have encountered a hangover. Never fear! I would not leave you to somehow vanquish Yesterday’s Cheap Beer Dragon alone. I have found that the best way to fully and quickly cure something like this is through a big bowl of goodness in your mouth. Pho is like a day at the spa. It’s like a sauna, but better because it won’t make you want to throw up when you’re hungover. Delicious broth. Meat or veggies if you want. Noodles. Bean sprouts. Add in some hot sauce and I swear your pain will be gone and you’ll feel so much better.

Maybe after Pho we can go home and make something awesome or think of cool posters to hang all over the neighborhood or work on some sticker tags to slap on newpaper boxes and fire hydrants.

So now that you’re all impressed at how much fun I can be, and are wishing you could be my friend and hang out all the time, comment! I have no idea who reads this thing, but I know someone does because I HAVE VISITORS. Tell me if you’d like to hang out, or what you’d rather do that’s more fun. Or even better, tell me what you’re ideas are for fun things to do and give me some good ideas for fun cheap things to do. Or just say hi! You can also include a link to your blog if you want to be blog buds.

OH YEAH THAT’S RIGHT! HOLLA BACK!

I’m planning an awesome giveaway that will be a secret surprise care package full of such amazing wondrous items it will satisfy the void in your heart and fulfill your life completely. Get on my good side now and maybe you will be the winner!!

Last night I decided to check out ChatRoulette. I had heard about it as some new popular thing to do to waste time, but I had no idea what it actually was so I googled it and read the wikipedia entry. It sounded kind of scary, like speed dating, but for the whole world. I felt like I should get dressed up for it, but it was late, and nothing and no one was going to get me out of my bed and pjs. Maybe some other time.

But then I found this awesome video.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

I’m kind of excited. I used to throw potlucks for strangers to meet, and now you can talk to strangers face to face all over the world in your pajamas. How thrilling! I was convinced. I had to try it.

ChatRoulette is kind of like the multiverse, except that half of the multiverse is just perverts. You press Next and show up in a new world, with no idea what will happen, or what the rules are, or what kind of penis you’re going to see. One guy looked like a totally nice normal middle aged man wearing a Cosby sweater for two seconds, before he stood up to take off his pants. There were a couple “show me your tits. I’m having a contest” signs. Most people were like me, sitting in bed or at a desk, and just fishing the multiverse.

Then we met Chewbacca. He grunted, groaned, smoked a spliff, and overall seemed pretty mellow and nice.

We told the guy in Shanghai we talked to after about it, and he thought it was pretty funny…

We even happened on this Super ChatRoulette party, were some guy had 8 people on the screen, all hanging out.

After a while, my polar bear, William wanted to play, so we set him up to see what he could see.

He met a very nice kitty, but ended up getting splooged on.

Overall, I would say ChatRoulette is fascinating. A place where all social norms are slightly skewed, and people do strange things they would only do on the internet. I’m excited to get a costume and really freak some people out.