B Bortin's Art 109 Term Paper Supporting Materials

Final Post

2005-05-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, Glen. Here's some material in support of my term paper.

As this document takes the form of a weblog, certain irritating conventions are, of necessity, observed. Chief among these is that the page is read from the bottom up. This has become a standard of weblog design, and I lack anything like the skills to circumvent it. So please scroll down to the bottom of the page and read the entry titled "First Post" and then work your way up to the top of the page. Thanks.

Before Completion

2005-05-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

Cathy just wrote back.

Re: Ever Feel Exploited?

I don't mind at all....
I added some comments to your blog.

C

NB: You should check out Cathy's comments. They're really funny.

This is the end of this weblog. And I promise, the final exam that I turn in will be my own.
But before I conclude:

____________________________________________

Hexegram 64: Wei Chi - Before Completion

Fire

Water

The Judgement

Before Completion. Success.
But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing,
Gets his tail in the water,
There is nothing that would further.

The Image

Fire over water:
The image of the condition before transition.
Thus the superior man is careful
In the differentiation of things,
So that each finds its place.

Hexagram? Where'd that come from? I haven't dealt with the I Ching in years and years. Just popped into my head to use the "Before Conclusion" hexagram to tie up this little package.

The Judgement indicates that I could get my tail dunked. Oh well. I'm too far into this now to turn back. We'll give that a big "come what may..." and thanks for putting up with this unorthodox approach.

And here's a stretch: the Image seems to be in agreement with how VS Ramachandran thinks about art. He calls art "visual foreplay before the climax of recognition." His concept of what art is is somewhat limited, but as he's a neuroscientist, I think we can cut him some slack. Here's a link a recent radio interview.
______________________________

Here's another pretty good squib for the art experience:

"Today, too, I experienced something I hope to understand in a few days."
---From the film The Perfect Human by Jørgen Leth, 1967

Uh-O...

2005-05-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

Come to think of it, Cathy's a lawyer. She could totally sue my ass.

Sherrie Levine stole from doddering (or dead) old white guys.
Cathy, on the other hand, has teeth.
OMG! OMG! OMG!!* What have I done?

_______________________________
*OMG! is webspeak for "Oh My God!"

Subject: Ever Feel Exploited?

2005-05-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

Email to Cathy, Thursday May 12, 2005

Dear Cathy

I'm afraid I'm doing something harsh and unforgivable. I couldn't make up my mind what to write about for the Art 109 term paper. I finally decided, fuck it, I'm going meta.

I've appropriated your paper and turning it in as mine. How heinous is that?

As supporting material for this outrageous stunt, I've created a weblog that'll be turned in with "my" paper. You can see it, in progress, here:

http://109moriwaki.blogspot.com/

**Being a weblog, it starts at the bottom of the page and works its way up.**

I hope you understand that I mean you no harm or insult by doing this. Looking at it one way, it's a pretty sleazy thing to do. But from another perspective, it's kind of funny, and something of a compliment to you. I mean, Sherry Levine didn't rip off just *anybody*.

Anyway, you know how I am. Really poorly self-censored. Once the idea came into my head, there wasn't much that I could do to stop it from coming out.

Hope things are going well in Bismark. Give my best to Wade & your mom.

xxBB

Cathy's Out of Town Right Now...

2005-05-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

...but she'll be home eventually. I don't know how she'll feel about all of this, and it concerns me.

Did Sherrie ever meet up with Edward Weston or Marcel Duchamp? Did she give one hell of a damn what they might think about her work?

Quoting from Media Art Net | Levine, Sherrie:Biography:

Levine’s concept of appropriation allows itself to be understood as a feminist strategy: values such as expressiveness, originality and creativity, traditionally ascribed to male artists, are deconstructed at the same time as their great authors are ‹used›.

I'm pretty sure that I won't be able skate past Cathy on that ice..

Sherrie Levine

2005-05-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

This might be a picture of Sherrie Levine

It's from this website:

http://www.jca-online.com/slevine.html

If you click on the above link, you'll see that the photo of Sherrie is the only picture on the entire page that's not (implicitly) credited.

Hmmm.

Enough with the Yiddish, Already

2005-05-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I'm doing that. I'll occasionally use Yiddish in conversation, but why would it be insinuating itself into this megillah?* oI have a feeling that it ties in with the piece's relationship to the works of Sherrie Levine, and our shared cultural identity as Ashkenazi Jews, a people tradiionally demonized and oppre...bla bla bla.

I have had it quite up to here with identity politics, thanks. Which makes my making such a point of it here all the more puzzling. To me, anyways.

______________________________
*A megillah ois a long, convoluted, tedious, seemingly endless piece of writing

Recontextualize

2005-05-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

I recontextualized Cathy's paper in three ways:

Cathy wrote the paper to turn in for herself. I've taken it out of the context of being something done for Cathy's grade, and placed it into the context of something for my grade.
I placed the copy of Cathy's paper into a plastic sleeve. To get the copy, I had to flatter Cathy and tell her that I'd really like to see what she wrote. When the paper wouldn't quite fit in the plastic sleve, I had to slice off an eighth of an inch from the right edge. Then I had to make an asthetic decision about what to do with the cut-off strips of paper, which I resolved by slipping them in there, just-so, partially concealing yet also revealing the "original author's" title page. The plastic sleve functions as a framing device, which calls into question the paper's context. Is it still a term paper, or is it now one of the elements which comprise the work After Mosbrucker #1?
Then there's the matter of all this drivel that you're (hopefully) reading now. Cathy's paper didn't require all this mishegas* o The fact that my project includes and necessitates a trip to the (freakin') world wide web takes it out of the context of the text that I ripped off.

____________________
*mishegas ois Yiddish for "foolishness" or "insanity"

Can I Tie That In?

2005-05-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Well, it's really the same thing, isn't it? Is this James Turrell's piece, or, having subverted his entire schtick by photograhping his magic, have I appropriated (and fairly thoroughly recontextualized) his work as my own?

Speaking of stunts...

2005-05-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is a flash photo that I took of the James Turrell installation in September of 2003 at the Haines Gallery in SF.





Ooh, transgressive!

Deconstruction Repudiated -or- (Theory/Schmeery)

2005-05-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

I think that last post may have written me into some kind of intellectual cul-de-sac. What I think I'm trying to get at here is that a lot of Postmodernism could quite conceivably be bunk.

Which leads us to my submission: After Mosbrucker #1

Oh, Jesus, how am I gonna defend this stunt?

On the Other Hand...

2005-05-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

On the other hand, where does appropriation stop? When Perelman wrote (or didn't write) "Captain Synchronicity, Block That Kick!" wasn't he in fact just appropriating "words" that were already in the dictionary? And weren't those words merely rearrangements of previously-extant "letters"?

Couldn't the same thing be said of the writings of, say, Levi-Strauss?

Or Is It?

2005-05-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

A quick google search for "Perelman" + "Synchronicity" turned up bupkis *ofor "Captain Synchronicity, Block That Kick!". Perhaps I didn't appropriate it, but made it up myself through a process of addlepated mismnemonics.

_____________________
*bupkis ois Yiddish for "nothing"

Postmodernist Confession Mode

2005-05-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

The title of the last post: "Captain Synchronicity, Block That Kick!" wasn't mine. It's the title of an S. J. Perelman piece from the 1940's.

Captain Synchronicity, Block That Kick!

2005-05-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, guesswhat!

The spellchecker here at blogspot.com wanted to correct "Mosbrucker's" to "misperceives." I don't think that any great significance needs to be attached to that, do you?

First Post

2005-05-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Hi, Glen. Here's some material in support of my shameless appropriation of Cathy Mosbrucker's term paper as my final project in your Contemporary Art class at SFCC.

Chutzpah ois a Yiddish word meaning utter nerve: effrontery