Get Up For the Get Down

Time flies.  We are closing in on a new exhibition of work.  Improbably perpetual in its drive the cesium atoms keep vibrating.  The Japan Event has come and gone and reflection and work has been the word of the past days.  Its been fascinating to deal with the great build up before traveling to Japan (the anticipation of something special), then the reality of the experience, and now the reflection and skewed memory of place and people.   Linda Matney Gallery will be hosting the exhibition Substrata this mid March (so you people that live in the state for lovers. . . come on out to the coast!).

If you’ve read my blog then you know what I’ve been up to. . .

If you haven’t here is some fancy speech:

The work of Substrata seeks investigations into the root (or rhizome) of identity and shares a philosophy of mimetic transfer through not only cultural phenomena but also direct and horizontal gene transfer in both a literal and metaphysical sense.

I visited all eight of the “Eight Views of Omi” as made popular by Hiroshige and am now creating work based on that experience and questions of identity through place, the reciprocal, and a multitude of subtleties to set my work place dancing.

I’ll try to keep things going on here from time to time but it will be brief, I’ve a 15 hour review coming up numerous tests, papers, and obligations to the patrons of the project as made possible through

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tyrus/send-an-artist-to-japan

with out which my investigations would not be possible.  For those of you out there that helped me out and have not received your backer awards, they are in the works and you will be as thrilled as I am  seeing them turn out!!!

Karasaki's View of the Earth Turning Toward the Sun copyright Tyrus Lytton 2011

 

roxanneritchi: ACTA is dangerous and devastating legislation essentially proposed and funded by corporations that can and will end the internet as many of us know it as well as limit or even outright ban generic medications and severely hinder agricultural development and the helpfulness of…

Nothing is True.: We need to talk about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Captain’s Log.  Re-post.

Heidegger, Hide a grrr, Hi da girl, ugh can’t twist free of Heidegger

The past few weeks of movement from Philadelphia to Georgia, starting graduate school, learning egos, and finding new avenues for myself. . . I keep thinking about escaping the effects of WWII, and the philosophies of the early 20th century.   As the baby boomer generation is peaking like maple leaves in fall, I find myself suddenly surrounded by the aftermath of their experiences and continuing experience.  Even the later half of the boomers born in the 50′s exude the opportunity/loss dichotomy of a world built on large scale war.  Even, and for a third time even, even now I hear beating drums for war, while the same drum beaters scream we are in a moral crisis, a down trodden economy, and its because we are losing wars.  Crisis.  Crisis. Crisis.  And this all goes back to some penis in a vagina.  But who knows besides me what I’m ranting on about.  I am waiting for a power shift.  I am bidding my time.  There are many of us that are. 

I imagine death, the reasoning of it, evolutionarily speaking, (because cells split on indefinitely down the animal tree) is for the benefit of the young.  We have a limited opportunity to learn from our elders, but are also limited in the world of their psychosis.  And for the later part, I don’t mind that one day down the road, (hopefully a long time from now for my own sake), I’ll leave the younger generations in peace.  The most moral thing to do is end morality?  Think about that.  No one with any morality.  Don’t let your own get in the way of you thinking about it. 

It seems at time that as we go through the centuries, people seemed happier, we have their histories, things we think horrible.  But, each generation had tools that the other did not.  Buckminster Fuller was quoted as saying,(with out footnote) “you can’t change people, only the tools that they use.”  Can we only hope to do worse to ourselves as our access to tools increases?

102% One hundred percent

Having cleared the fund raising goal in my quest to reach Japan, I owe my backers my sincerest gratitude!  Their efforts and patronage will extend for years in my own life and I hope to be able to act as a magnifying glass, exponentially distributing their contribution through this project.  My expectations of funding this project have been exceeded through a long three months.  I am trying not to have any expectations for the end result and hope that it leads to new roads and avenues of learning.  I have had a fair share of dissenters an naysayers concerning my intentions but it is to be expected. 
Its interesting how unwanted conflict can create beneficial results.

Within symptoms of disease and sickness silver linings may be found and exploited.  As a result of the myriad mines laid out during the Vietnam War, tracts of land have become re-forested and species near extinction are thriving.  It is a game of loaded dice: countless human limbs and lives lost, genetic traits wiped out and new ones formed, and the animals filling in the niche pried open by killing do so on a razors edge.  Philanthropic organizations have sprouted to deal with the ordinances still killing after a third of a century, their goals are to plant trees where mines are removed, but as they do so they may disturb agent orange and other herbicides that destroy foliage and poison the population once again.  I am not against a tree being planted nor am I for armed conflict, I aim to only illustrate that our actions have weight and we can only do the best we can and learn from past decisions.

Ideas don’t always bring what we think they will bring and there is always the danger of them being turned back onto themselves in ways we can’t imagine.   In educating myself about view points of place and landscape I’ve started to read about Heidegger and topology.  Its a task I didn’t see myself in  at the start of my project with Japan.  His view points on being and place can lead to an overblown sense of nationalism; the Nazi Party used it as rationalization to dehumanize Romani, “Gypsy”,  and other nomadic people viewing them as less than human as they saw them with no physical place to create an identity. 

http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/

 We must be aware that what we do has outcomes we can’t predict.  I believe that Heidegger’s philosophy on place and being can be beneficial in creating a localized/familial identity that strengthens and shares within a larger world community.  I believe that through a philosophy of place and being we can bring together ideas peacefully that would otherwise only be exchanged through conflict as Macedonia or The Huns exemplified in our pasts.   I believe that our myths, legends, and folklore are our entry ways into a more understanding future.  It all may end up being wrong, but not as wrong as before.  Its still a process.  I’m looking forward to investigating; I thank you backers for helping me reach this critical step in achieving my goal.

On a different note, If you are in Philadelphia b/n this posting and August 28th, please visit Rodger LaPelle Galleries as a few of my pieces are on the walls.

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Southbound

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Southbound