distant opening...

I'm sitting here in my room in Berkeley while in NY Chet and my parents and a few friends are on their way to this opening that I've been talking everyone's ear about for the past however long.

Chet has been a huge help setting things up for me, and Carla --- I can't even describe how helpful she has been. Wow-o wow-o...

It's kind of funny not being able to be around during the opening. Openings are a big thing not only for the fact that they are fun parties (often with free booze), a chance to meet interesting people, or an opportunity to do the networking that is unfortunately the engine of the art world, but because they are a capstone to a process that can be very long and emotional. Both the frustrations and joys of creating a work of art kind of find a sort of emotional resolution when the work is finished. It's sometimes to see a work as finished until many people see it in a certain kind of formal setting - it's a kind of ceremony.

I've been thinking a lot about finishing work lately. A lot of recent art stresses that art is a process of the exchange of signs between people that unfolds over time - this de-emphasizes the role of the artifact that records this process, the finished work of art that is supposed to last FOREVER... Of course things aren't going to last forever, but there is an interesting state of mind that accompanies the illusion that something is a permenant record, that something is immutable, that it is somehow removed from everyday processes of social relations, of practical concerns, of the exchange of capital, of entropy. This illusion seems to enable a kind of critical thought... If something is constantly moving, how can it be observed (parallels to quantum mechanics)? If the content is in a state of flux, how can it stand up for itself? How can it be criticized? As you see, it is a tough problem - why cling to an illusion, right? What kind of thinking can be done based on a false premise? Could this kind of thinking be unproductive or even destructive?

Anyway, these thoughts have little to do with the project being shown tonight, and more to do with the overwhelming thought pattern energy being focused on me by all the readings and converstations I have been having here at school. Overwhelming is a word that I've been using a lot - I have to be careful that I don't really get overwhelmed. I'm not built for lots of input.

Anyway - lots of energy tonight. Really miss my friends. Really wish I could be at the show. But my mind is elsewhere. Er... actually, ALL of me is somewhere else.

I hope that everything goes well.