July + Summertime has thus far been a frenzy of family and life-things. @howdiz and I are in the process of buying a house. It takes up a lot of time, so I haven’t spent much on thought and art lately, though there are a few things I’d like to mention:
Theoretically + New Asshole Meetup
Last month Libby & Roberta made an email introduction between Rick Banister, myself, and Manya Scheps of New Asshole – the thought was that we might have some things to talk about as concerns theory around art in Philadelphia. I proposed a meet-up and then ordered a copy of my own New Asshole. The zine came to the haus well before the meet-up came together, giving me plenty of time to traverse, digest, and become thoroughly enamored with the endeavor beforehand.
Mid-July the meet-up happened – Myself, Rick, Manya, John Vick, and also Mike Flemming spent a couple hours getting to know each other’s thoughts and ideas around theory in Philly. One thing that Rick said that I still haven’t been able to shake was something to the point of ‘to what end’? In other words, why would we do this, who would it serve, what intention would it have? I hadn’t thought of that before…probably because just wanting to was enough reason for me to do it. It struck me as important to think more about that, it keeps coming back to mind.
The one thing that really stood out for me from this initial meeting (aside from the whole range of interesting ideas and thoughts about theory) is the fact of the city-loathing Philly Art|Dwellers. I have been head-over-heels in love with this city for almost three years now, and its simply not a part of my mentality to think little or less, or doubt or dwell on what Philly is and what it isn’t – for me its simply everything, my everyday, and something that will be that way for the long-term. I guess you could call me over-committed. Oh well. I’m pretty damn satisfied with being on the ‘optimistic’ side of something for the first time in my life.
So this has changed a lot of what i’ve been thinking about lately. I perceived some level of dissatisfaction in Philly from everyone else at the table, from the mild discontent of Vick that yeah, its not quite New York – to the pretty strong statement from Rick that there are only one or two things he sees here each year that are even worth writing about – to the utter shock from Manya that I love this place so goddamn much. In summary, its served to displace me just enough to have a bit of new food for thought to accompany the juicy morsels of thought that are coming up lately.
One thing I think i’d like to write about is ‘Philadelphia in Theory’ – Part of me wants to say we have been doing it, just maybe not writing it? Another part of me wants to say FUCK THAT, Philly doesn’t need theory proper, in fact it is probably an impossibility. Instead, a whole new vocabulary, a new way of talking about work is needed – a new way of imbuing thought and aesthetic opinion and value into the ether around art here. The only thing is…i’m not quite sure what that is quite yet. It’s coming, though.
PIFAS Place
Immediately following the meet-up I had my first encounter with the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study. They were having an art movie night of sorts. The space had serious potential, but it wasn’t quite working for me. I’ve been to a fair share of raw industrial art spaces in the city, but something about PIFAS struck me as dirty – maybe it was just the heat, but I wished they would clean the damn place a bit.
The space aside, there is undeniably something important happening there. I am still curious how I never heard about this place – the first issue of New Asshole was my first introduction to PIFAS, except for a link I came across some time ago from K-fai Steele’s name in the author list on theArtBlog. The website is a joke you don’t get if you don’t know that PIFAS is an artist space, which you would never know from the name alone. Once you do have that info though, the joke is rather accessible, and I do quite enjoy the cheekiness of this web-facade. That being said, i’m not sure they really pull it off…
Okay, so the space AND the website aside…the people at PIFAS are exciting and nice and I’m looking forward to having a whole lot more exposure to them. There is a rather strange and crazy guy I met who runs the Richard Rorty school of Philosophy, awesome. K-fai is sweet and interesting, she has good energy, and its neet to finally put a face with that name. Plus Manya, who is one of my new personal favs. I am going to help her make a powerhouse-website for New Asshole, ’cause I’m super fucking pumped on its future.
That’s all I have to say about PIFAS for now.
ArtBlogLabs
Beta version of Maps is up and running as of this week. We’re planning to launch the idea for First Friday in September, though i’ll be camping. I’m pretty damn excited about my role in this, and can’t wait to see how its received. I also am eager to extend the idea beyond my own personal obsession with mapping to create other ways to interactivize the rich data that is the ArtBlog. More to come on that front too.
