o hand in hand

i'm reading slavoj zizek's the plague of fantasies, and the other day i stumbled across a bit i thought was worth placing in this context:

(from page 130 of the verso edition in the link)

One should adopt towards cyberspace a 'conservative' attitude, like that of Chaplin vis-á-vis sound in cinema: Chaplin was far more than usually aware of the traumatic impact of the voice as a foreign intruder on our perception of cinema. In the same way, today's process of transition allows us to perceive what we are losing and what we are gaining - this perception will become impossible the moment we fully embrace, and feel fully at home in, the new technologies. In short, we have the privilege of occupying the place of 'vanishing mediators'.

i'm not neccessarily in complete agreement with this, but i thought the idea of "vanishing mediators" is a good one, and worth considering in relation to a weblog. for a more optimistic-- and equally engaging-- assessment of what it means to be doing what i'm doing as i type this, i urge you to read this.

for the past few days, i've been trying to think of artists that have stirred enthusiasm within me recently... and i'm not coming up with much (at least not in the "fine arts"... there are plenty of filmmakers, musicians, authors, etc.). so i've been trying to re-cap, in my brain, things that have impressed me, semi-recently.

one such event was the kiki smith show at the fabric workshop about a year back. it's funny how smith went from being someone to which i was basically indifferent (she always seemed a bit too archetypal or something), to being increasingly exciting and informative. and she seems to have gained this momentum in the wake of her initial hype (perhaps an underrated moment for an artist). what i like about her recent work, in addition to simply being a sucker for anything evoking a storybook, is that it seems deeply personal while remaining extremely light. at the show, the atmosphere was certainly akin to that of a diary, only without the voyeurism and transgression that such a thing might imply. unlike the violent and polemical surrealists of years past, smith's pictorial unconscious (if that is indeed what we're given access to) is both generous and welcoming. there is great freedom in her iconography, and one apprehends it with an ease akin to looking at a matisse, perhaps (possibly the antithesis of the experience of reading a diary).

it's rare to find an artist that can articulate a specific iconography without the heavy hand of an oppressive agenda. if this work tells a story, it is through hints and suggestions. at her best, smith can draw inward without brooding, and come up with something sweet instead of sentimental.

out of boredom, i began searching myself/this blog on google. i was reading about how yahoo is charging for listings (???) and i guess i got a little narcissistic...

first, i found the walt whitman poem i took the name of the blog from:

here's the exact portion:

O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.
O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph--and you shall also;
O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!
O to haste firm holding--to haste, haste on with me.

...i love the old walt-whitman style language...

also, looks like project green, an occasional gallery run partially by my friend aaron wexler, has some old, old work of mine up again, if anyone's interested. figured there's a few people who might check this site that haven't seen it...

pardon the fact that i named something ground zero, it was, of course, early 2000 when i made that one (and it's the suckiest of the bunch anyway).