this whole internets business can still be mindboggling at times. it’s not often i relive the feeling of sending my first emails in terms of wowiness, but i just got of video skyping with mom and her boyfriend in tokyo, and i had a wowish moment – mom holding up a pair of tabi shoes she got me, and then pointing the laptop towards the skyline.
i got so staggeringly drunk this past saturday that i might have had my first memory loss. last thing i recall (more or less) after getting out of the cab at 0300 is hanna breaking a plate, and that’s it.
according to sources slightly more reliable than i, we were actually up for half an hours, during which i not only was fondling petters abs and encouriging others to do the same, but also promised to make breakfast. in fact, i had promised to “get up, go to the store, and cook breakfast before any of you wake up”. i must have been the drunkest because it’s a ridiculous thing for me to promise.
i was held to my promise though, and six hours later they tear my door down, someone takes my cellphone for some reason, and then yell feed us! feeeeeeed us! like so many gollum zombies until i mooch to the store to buy baked beans. i’m drunk all day and only get the hangover in the evening. then blissful sleep. sunday more or less down the drain, when i should have been doing, i don’t know, something soberlish.
emma came by and kept my miserable self company. and i now have a bike that goes “schuech schuech” on every rotation. yay for bikes!
i don’t know if it’s related, but i stumbled upon edward bernays book “propaganda” while searching for people to interview regarding the lockpicking presentation that’s due in a weeks time. i’m not going to read it right now, but i did watch a short clip about his successful attempt to get more women smoking in the 20s:
the book is available here: www.historyisaweapon.com, and it’s prolly a good read. if nothing else it’s a classic in pr and advertising.
oh, i think that what connects the two above stories might be a flashback to the party – a sea of amused faces when i with much bravado describe the priciple of how i’m going to take over gothenburg. it’s a sound principle, but my eagerness to inform these poor people about its genious might have been overly enthusiastic.
before falling asleep yesterday i was dreaming of dragons. and when i woke up the download of eragon had finished with a ping curtesy of transmission. watched half of it blearyeyed over two cups of coffee this morning after four hours of sleep. wonderful weather outdoors, and thanks to my genious money-saving scheme (i’m skimping on the tram fair and walk the hour it takes me to get to uni) i got exposed to the sun for the first time in two days (i shit you not. this is also a result of me saving money, since everyone knows that you cannot walk out the door without someone trying to tax you for needing to take a piss).
my semi-voluntary seclusion from civil society did bring a good thing or two. the forever vaporware that is a new, brilliant, shining-like-a-radiant-star, homepage got a few tentative first drafts in photoshop (after which i despared at all the css i don’t know but need to learn), some doodles have been doodled on a web-service involving video in an original way (i’ll let you know when that project is available up on cambrianhouse.com), i’ve baked bread three times in a short time, and i have with all my blackened little heart avoided thinking about the examination in 14 days on masters degree.
or rather, i haven’t stopped thinking about it for a moment, but i have this worrying feeling that “everything is going to be fine”. i am not certain if i am convinced about this myself, or if the correct image associated with that thought is one where i sit on the ground, rocking back and forth and gently weeping into the crumpled up pages of “Ten steps to a more organized you!”
this is the drawback of trying to focus on a process oriented artistic practice. i’ve been mulling this over, and it’s hard to distinguish purely process-ish driven work from general slackery or lazyness. i was talking this over with anna, and she wholeheartely agreed with the sentiment: if what you are doing is not driven by an actual presentation of an artistic work, you will more likely than not come over as full of hot air and methane gasses rather than the spunk and vigour you’d like to be associated with.
this blog and talking about my ideas are the closest thing to a presentation that i get to something that is of artistic interest to me. whenever i’m told to do any particular work i freeze up. this might make me a poor artist (in both senses of the word), but still. truth to be told though, i have this same block whenever i feel pressured to perform (erectile dysfuntion jokes aside). this pressure is of course of my own making – people in general don’t give a toss if you can perform to your standards or not, they just want to know if you’re interesting to them and their interests. i’m always doing the don kitzott thingy where every position i take has to be defended against every imaginable foe, and where this defense becomes the thing that you are defending.
in the end i’m left standing on a small hill, waving a stick around and shouting “i have a right to defend my right to defend whatever i’d like to defend!” and since offence is best defence i might as well attack my own position since that will show ’em how it’s done, that’ll show ’em good.
basically it breaks down into meta more than it creates anything intelligible. (neither does it easily allow the activity itself to be understood as proper artistic practice)
a while ago i wrote an artist statement: the fun of failing. what the title implies is that everything you do ends up being a failure in the most strict sense that wherever you end up is not where you thought you were going. it’s all learning, it’s all experience, it’s all last-minute judgement calls on what your work is about, what you are about and how you think you fit in; “whatever you do, you fail to do”. i’m sure there’s a zen koan on the subject.
plus, “fun of failing” sounds good – the alliteration slides gently off your tounge and into the bucket labelled “aren’t you clever”.
here’s a link to the essay: The Fun of Failing [1.2 MB pdf]
I just spend ten minutes googling Piers Steel, a researcher who has published a formula of procrastination. meta-procrastination.
Had a brief chat with a guy from Pinstorm in Mumbay about some marketing things my dad is thinking about. First time I have a live conversation with someone in india I think. Neat.
I’m moving to a new host: mswmedia.com which is run by Matthew Selznik, who besides has the same first name as I (sort of) also has a “s” and “z” in his last name. How can that be not good? In no way, that’s how. Also, he’s written brave men run and podcasted the whole thing on podiobooks.com which I recommend you to check out.
Anyway, expect some downtime in a week or so when I try to move over this blog and all other content to another server and fuck things up horribly and beyond repair. Don’t know how well email is going to work in the meantime, so use mateusz.pozar@valand.gu.se why don’t you.
Got up early this morning in practice for the coming next four weeks when I’ll be joining the ranks of the proleratiat in getting up fucking 04:30 to haul ass to work. Not certain what it is I’ll be doing, but as far as I can make out I’ll be carrying things and perhaps stacking things as well.
The store in which I used to work during weekends or whenever one of the regulars was hung over sick moved, and will no longer have use of my services. As boring as that job could be at times, it was kinda sad to pick up my junk that’s collected there over the years. Like the nametag that I only used the first week or so.
I got a new haircut that isn’t supposed to look as fluffy as it does in the image. I like it. Nazi but in a good way. The barber that made it appearently cuts most rockabilly and such head in Gothenburg, although I’m sure it’s an exaggeration considering how many rockers and the like we saw just at the new years party at Krete.
Yet another test:
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I am:
His best known works are dystopias — vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid. |
Christmas and New Years eve, from the top:
1: The circle of life among christmas tree ornaments.
2: Traditional: the untangling of lights
3: Barszcz: Red beet soup
4: Skype to relatives in Poland
5: In order of apperance
… Que to a club in stockholm 25/12
… Improvised drunk sparring
… Like bombardment but with less death
… The sleep of unpredictable guests
6: Glitter that got in everywhere
7: Tabletop performance
8: Tormented, murdered, mutilated, fried and baked dinner
6: Rebel? Copyright notice
instead of making funny remarks about how cold it was or somesuch
a) you will not freak out about being naked in front of ten attentive people nearly as much as you think you will.
b) no matter which position you choose (standing, sitting, leaning or laying) you will start to shake uncontrolably within minutes.
c) if your position includes a bend joint under stress, that’s the one that will hurt. everything else will hurt as well though.
d) you will be surprised at the amount of sex you try not to think of that you actually will be thinking of.
e) if you go pee in the break, really make sure you shake and wipe well enough afterwards. seriously.
f) it’s ok to smile slightly when the tutor says “see how the lower buttcheek is squashed out to almost double the size of the other”.
g) you do not move unless you’re told to. nor do you scratch or sneeze or caugh or try to sneak into another position because the current one is horribly painful. you will take pride in the pain.
h) the people drawing are at this point more vain than you are. even if you’re not qualified to give opinion on their artistic technique it’s fun to do so because somehow you’re perceived as having an interest in how you are represented.
that’s it. now go practice standing still. pretend that you’re avoiding a very sensitive motion detector. like mission impossible or something, whatever floats your boat.
winter arrived officially in gothenburg yesterday. it’s now really fucking cold™ and i should start wearing longjohns and a big thermo-coverall and not leave the house unless there’s a lifethreatening situation.
so. past couple of days using images:
uno) i’m fiddling with the layout of the “what i’ve learned…” poster, and might go for a more gender neutral title to allow both sexes to enjoy the bitterness.
dos) i woke up yesterday and this was the view outside the window
quarter) some sassy sources claim that my hair is now quite close in appearance to “brandon” in beverly hills.
zink) i drink a lot of coffee. too much to bother washing the cup in between refills days months, and this is how it looks sideways (for example, if you’re laying with your head on the desk while gently hyperventilating, this image is a fair representation).
i’m modelling later today. in two hours in fact. i’m getting slightly freaked. only ever so slightly.
Brilliant party at HFF this weekend. Haven’t bunnyhopped that much in a long time (I was shouting “woooooo-o” as well, which doesn’t happen often) (Although I was drunk, which happens quite a bit) and my legs are still sore.
Re: Sore legs: I entertained the workout habit this morning, and ended up going failure on my legs. Especially the inner thighs are hurting, and a thought struck me: If I keep on working out I’ll be able to get off just by squeezing my legs together. Is that the reason why there are so many guys at the gym? But what’s in it for the women then? A muscular labia?
I don’t recall properly, but I seemed to get rejected by someone, and hit on by someone else. Now, if I could only have somehow combined the two occurrences, I’m quite certain that they would negate each other, resulting in something interesting. The rejection was “Sorry, but i have better judgement than that“, but I cannot for the life of me recall what prompted it.
Half an hour before the speakers were turned off, I ran around using the horrible video function on my mobile. Try as i may I can’t make something out of nothing, so most of it is just a blur and a horrendous screeching sound. (Although the sound is more or less realistic – the volume was above average)
I generally dance like a god; Perhaps a god of destruction rather than a graceful being full of love, but either way I kept the carnage up until eight in the morning and slept until 21:00 Sunday.
i blow donkey at keeping in touch with old friends. take albrecht for example: i’ve known him for twenty years and if we ever meet these days it’s cause he’s coming around. ok, fair enough, i’m way more broke than he is, but still. it leaves me with a tad bit of a guilty conscience.
the other week he got his doctorate (doctors hat?) in physics, or rather quantum mechanics, or rather in string theory, or rather, a two dimentional analysys of string theory? seriously, for two hours i sat giggling at the examination – these people use scientific theorems as adjectives fer crying out loud. i understood the language, i understood the seperate words, but i could not under any circumstance (except when they talked semantics) understand what they were talking about.
in short, it was awesome to watch and i’m way impressed by whatever-the-hell ali has been doing these past years. in my head, it’s rewarding to know that there are so many things still to learn, and that there’s no chance in hell i’ll ever learn even a smidgen of that.
my ambition has always been to know a little about a lot of things,
after two hours (ok, two hours was the upper limit of even my chuckling) i left the university and plodded around town for a bit. my date had fucked off on a train, leaving me with a crushed heart, so i proceded to the dinner thingy ali had gotten together. 20-odd people were at the bar/restaurant and to compensate for my mood i used what little i know of physics and made chatty with the people from alis’ university.
once you don’t live close to each other, it’s an odd sensation when you meet your old friends’ new friends. they have a different take on the person you think you know so well, and it’s disconcerning. on the other hand, they were all nice people and i ended up talking politics, radical activism and medical implantations until the bar closed. plopped down on a couch at alis and his girlfriends house (which was more tempting than my original plan of wandering the streets for six hours, wallowing in hate and self-pity and maybe getting into a fight) and was frightened the night through by their two cats that played “tag” on me.
next day: bought a ticket, went to the library and read up on futurist photography, saw a jenny holtz exhibition, sat on a train, then got slightly drunk in the company of friends. all in all, an enlightening trip.
