The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Francisco de Goya

During one of his interminable cadenas, Hugo Chavez loses power - verbal propaganda clashes with actual conditions in Venezuela. Ironic. Of course, one of the few things I share with him is my distaste for former President Bush. But for me , allegedly left-wing dictators and right-wing leaders with dictatorial aspirations are equally to be condemned.

Separated at Birth?

Lovely and beautifully styled Chinese Crested at the Westminster Dog Show and Tamra from Real Housewives of Orange County

Iconic Fashion Editor Gets an Alex Katz Portrait (Thanks M.)

"Anna Wintour", 2009, by Alex Katz. ©Alex Katz. Courtesy: Timothy Taylor Gallery.

Pierre Menard Author of the Hot Tub

cultural melting bath: project for the 20th century 1997.
18 taihu rocks, hot tub with hydrotherapy jets, bathwater infused with herbs, and pine trees
collection of fonds national d'art contemporain
photo by hiro ihara courtesy cai studio

This goes to show that Borges as always was right. I have this hobby that entails making up fake artworks by known artists. As we know, those that cannot make art, teach art history. This is part of the explanation. When my genius recovering art historian friend read my recent description of my fantasy Tino Seghal intervention to create a hybrid relational aesthetics slash CAA panel he reminded me that the relational aesthetics work involving people chatting in a hot tub had already been done! Above, documentation of Chinese art star Cai Guo Quiang's Cultural Melting Bath.

My panel proposal abstract reads like this:

Tino Seghal: Relational Aesthetics in the Hot Tub.Abstract: Envisioned as a space of sociability, the hot tub is a classic locus of exchange. In this panel, we invite artists, art historians, and museum workers to submit topics for conversation in this platform for experimental thought.

Originality is dead! Did I not read Benjamin, or Robbe-Grillet? Woe is me. Always arriving to the hot tub. Too late. And anyway, if we are going to keep to art historical chronology, we have Cai and then The Jersey Shore as relational art works employing the hot tub....

A creative way to disavow catastrophic fashion choices

J WOWW from Jersey Shore explains the reasons why she dressed the way she did on the show.

MTV Shows

I assume they are Ph.D.s in the Humanities

Relational Aesthetics and Speed Dating

Perhaps the trendiest of contemporary art movements/modalities and one of the more hackneyed means of meeting potential partners seem like an odd combination, maybe not as weird as Lautremont's chance encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine and an operating table...but there it is. During my recent pilgrimage to the naked ramps of the Guggenheim to experience/participate/ in Tino Seghal's works, it seemed to me that there were aspects of the interaction that resembled the dynamic that I have been told exists in speed dating situations. (Spoiler Alert do not read on, those two of you readers out there) When you arrive at the bottom of the ramps, you are approached by a child who asks you "What is your definition of Progress?" From there you embark on an upwards rumination with a series of partners. On the one hand, a cheesy or maybe parodic reenactment of what we imagine life was like for old Greek or Roman philosophers (but where is my poisoned chalice at the end?) and maybe this is what it's like at the APA. But I digress. On the other hand, the allegorical aspects are quite heavy handed: young child progresses in age to older person at the end of your upwards journey through the ramp, from more abstractedly philosophical to more and more detailed and personal (although the latter might be due to my particular responses to the questions, the issue of agency fascinates me, but more on that later), from below to the top, etc.

Apparently, Seghal trains the participants to ask a series of questions, but from there they can riff on your answers and are not supposed to lie when offering personal information. In some ways, the circumscribed dynamic reminded me of job interviews, teaching, or visiting the shrink's office because psychologically you are "trapped" in a situation with another person or persons where there is a time limit and boundaries on what you do or not reveal , or what you may ask. But when I reached the section where I encountered someone of my own age group, it began to take on another cast. Maybe it was because this guy claimed to be an Ivy League philosophy grad student from Central America and we immediately began to deconstruct the notion of progress politically and philosophically while bonding on what it's like to be a model minority in academia and the implications for our own academic production. Out of nowhere I gave the guy my card, something which I would never do in the real world. This is when I thought that the rigid rules of the game: we are randomly assigned a partner, we don't really know anything besides what we tell each other, there is a temporal cut off point and so only a brief window to let them know if one wants to continue talking, truly resemble this social game of speed-dating. You get the picture. Pretty obvious. One thing that may facilitate the exchanges is that unlike speed dating, or so I am told, here there is a clear indication of what the players in the game are there to do, perhaps someone is temporarily in control in so far as they launch the first question but then presumably it develops according to what you say to them. In some ways it also reminded me of what happens when you are at a shrink in the sense that they are reacting to your version of the story and you never know anything about their lives. And it also shares similarities with the dynamic when you visit a psychic or card reader, you try to tell them as little as possible, they use the cards or other prompts to suggest issues that might concern you, then ask you leading questions. However, if they are truly gifted you are telling them nothing and they are seeing the issues facing you.

The Seghal interactions were unsettling insofar as they were not clear as to the rules of the game. Were the performers working from a script, if so, how did they change it based on your responses? It was odd to get personal information from strangers and then abruptly be handed off to the next performer like a baton at a relay race. Although I am pretty much ignorant of philosophy, I happened to be looking up a definition of game theory for an article I want to write and became fascinated by a term they use, a "mixed strategy" that I understood as a factor having to do with speculation about the other player's strategy. In a way, that is what is happening here, and in dating too! In any event, the idea of speed dating had never appealed to me, but now I see why people do this. Later on, while speaking to a museum worker I learned that there have been quite a few phone numbers exchanged as an unintended outcome of the piece. So Seghal is not only hewing to the artworld's feel-good relational aesthetics orthodoxy and boosting the Guggenheim's street cred and attendance, he is performing a public service!