The more I think about it, the less I like curation. In arty-art, this seems to be an expanding sector of the art-as-business clergy: middle-men and women who grub for attention, control, or credit by inserting themselves between art and audience. I guess they are a product, a necessity, of the mix of hierarchy and profligation; which is the real problem with art, and everything else about us humans. Why did we have to profligately propagate? Why do we continue to propagate?
I don't like myself in the role of curator. It's one part of the process of these Weekly Rites that doesn't feel right yet: that I consciously choose the clip of footage to put online. I'm trying to wean myself off of it, but I'm having a hard time making that behavioral adjustment. So far I'm down to selecting a short list of clips that I then draw out of a TWA Getaway Vacations bag.
What came out of the bag this week I notated as "Being Birthed out of the Bathtub." I am, with some longing, sticking to it. I'll just tell you what you are not seeing: "Butt Waving Back and Forth with Head in Bathtub," "Crawl to Camera/Closeup on Animal Eyes," "Giving Birth/Picking up Goo Baby," and "Masturbation."
This is the first paragraph of the liner notes for Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (which you hear in this Rite), written by Bill Evans:
"There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a certain kind of discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere."
