May 2 – June 1, 2019
HS: Wrong way, wrong way! Camera 1 – Action: The TV-host is telling lies. The boy falls asleep, head in his neck. On purpose? Camera 2: maniac applause from the powerful lady. Wrong way, wrong way! I called Roland Emmerich yesterday to praise him for his first Netflix sequel of Independence day, the set up was brilliant. How did you like the stage design? Any approvals? Costumes were great I think, the fuck-you-clap outstanding.
JR: I’ll be honest, the sequel was unimpressive. I saw the original in the theater in ’96; great year for action films. To this day Bill Pullman’s Independence day speech on the tarmac still gives me goosebumps, that was fucking presidential. The sleeping kid, the sarcastic clapping – we all connected to that, we are that.
HS: Well up to you, we seem to be a lot! What about this: I saw a guy with a straight Kim Jong Un haircut in the train last week. I wondered if this is a new thing, taking over visual trademarks of despots. Pretty funny: sports activities in the manner of Putin, haircut like Kim, orange seems fashionable as a skin tone recently…
JR: There’s something inherently fascist about that haircut. It’s everywhere. I mean, are you a dictator or the modern gentleman? Is it possible to go for a shave and haircut without looking like Gavin McInnis? I don’t know who owns “the look.” Everything is loaded, reduced to cultural signifiers out of our control. Maybe that haircut is edgy, maybe it’s problematic. Orange, on the other hand, is more clearly problematic. Cheetos are the official color of Trump; it was funny at first but then became triggering. With painting, orange has always felt problematic, but visually, not culturally. It’s abrasive and feels unresolved, maybe that’s why I’ve been using it more often lately – forcing myself to deal with something uncomfortable.
HS: Uah just let me shout: Plastic Plastic! Weren’t it the Bauhaus folks who already knew: there is no better color for plastic than orange. And now we connect it with Kim’s haircut. Strange world. Btw: Did you see the last pictures ever made by the Kepler telescope? Parts! The telescope never took pictures as a whole image, but always in parts, and the gaps became bigger the longer it was in outer space. Creepy. Because now, there is no connection between the stars for mankind, all these gaps!
JR: Plastic was great until it created a new island of trash floating around the ocean. But here we are, someone has to figure out how to deal with it. Adidas made some great shoes out of ocean plastic but does that change anything or is it capitalism riding the green wave? I’ve never considered Kim’s haircut as plastic, but it makes sense, it does seem molded and cheap, and tacky. Also very inorganic, maybe that’s why it rubs me the wrong way. The Kepler photographs are great, it looks like good art – great composition. It seems natural for there to be gaps; it’s like perception in general, there are always gaps. The first time I ever understood Gestalt, before I had ever heard the word, was with this book I had as a child. There were two dots, one per page and you were supposed to look at one with your face 6-12 inches from the book and the other would disappear. You could see the edge of the book in your peripheral but not the dot; so there are gaps in our perception light years away but also from 6 inches. Like with the second dot, I think we can assume that the gap exists in our perception, not in reality.
HS: Well, with reality it is such a thing. For example in Europe, we have an island. Once a Sea Power, now… not so important anymore. Just for the money. They still believe they are the greatest Empire, the rest is laughing. The fun thing is, next month they won’t be Europe anymore. And “we” have lost an island. Good picture right, to lose an island, with all its kings and queens, criquet and rain and tea? It will be there but gone at the same time.
JR: Everyone thinks their culture is permanent, but even the longest lasting cultures, States, kingdoms or empires have always dissolved or evolved into something else. It’s only a positive or negative occurrence depending on your relative place in it. On a macro level, cultural change or evolution is inevitable. Both England and the US are in a similar place, cultures on the decline pretending they aren’t when all evidence seems to disagree. Hooked on a feelin’ and high on believin’. It’s out of the control of most individuals, which brings anxiety which brings poor decision making which accelerates the entropy. What can you do when you’re losing an island? Maybe tragedy and humor aren’t that different; different feelings for sure but they always seem so closely tied to each other. I suppose that’s what the comedian and the artist are for: to attempt to make some sense of it, to fill in the gaps.
HS: I think you are right. And as an artist, you can fill the gaps in a bizarre way, no? Just as you said “Hooked on a feelin’,” I remembered the range between the original song, the “Ooga Chakka“ cover version and the tremendously super bad/great version of my all-time favorite David Hasselhoff! As long as this is possible in art, the world is still turning!
JR: Wow, I forgot Hasselhoff covered that song! The Blue Swede version is great, but it always felt like two different songs – perhaps because the “ooga chakka” part of the song always triggers memories of the classic dancing baby video. Hasselhoff took it somewhere else though, that music video is high art. Fantastically bad! I’m rewatching that right now and considering how the song and the video are connected to decades of cultural moments internationally, early internet memes, low budget video production turned contemporary and cool (adult swim). I think that’s the goal with art, at least personally, to create something that connects seemingly disparate elements and cultural references into something outside of itself, outside of your control. Damn. I think we had a real breakthrough here.