allen:
The green sculpture/self portrait was pretty major for me.  I can’t help but picture Allen looking down at his fabricated self, looking down at the fabricated shadow of his fabricated self.
His person becomes a thing to explore in the same way objects and the shadows they cast and his relationship to seeing the objects and shadows have been subjects for Allen to explore in past and present work. He has always been the link to these objects in past works that I’ve seen, via the connection of the shadow sculptures to his eyes, but never as clearly as this.  I appreciate the boldness of Allen’s direct insertion of himself into a body of work that had previously not necessarily denied his presence, but hadn’t highlighted it either.

paint spills/black thought bubbles—feels really dark to me…thought bubbles on the floor rather than in the air, pouring out of a plastic cup, almost as a mistake…but there’s also humor in this.  the chair shadow made up of broken bulbs—crushed ideas on the floor—stripped of their function, unable to cast light.  Taking the cartoon symbols of our thoughts, and ideas, and bringing them into our space, while at the same time breaking them,  giving them weight. Objects sinking into their own shadows/thought bubbles.  Broken—the objects become useless—chair and cup cut in half.

I’m serious, and don’t call me surely…
Leslie Nielsen says this line deadpan in airplane.  Here’s this distinguished looking guy in some position of authority telling someone not to call him Shirley—-to him it’s Shirley, not surely.  The way he says the line implies that a million people have called him Shirley before, and he just won’t stand for it.  But, really the audience knows that he is being asked if he is “surely serious,” which leads us to imagine that when anyone asks him to be sure of himself, he only pictures that they’re calling him Shirley.  It seems like Allen is in someway is allowing himself to be put in this role…he is in danger of taking a position that could be considered “surely serious” when putting a body of work into a gallery space…but the title of the show and the nature of the work also hint to a sort of levity that is also in the work, or maybe a self conscious denial of the seriousness of the work.  Maybe we’re saying to allen, “surely you can’t be serious” and he’s replying “I’m serious, and don’t call me Shirley.” Or is he saying “surely”??? I’m not sure!!!  shirley and surely seem like two different forms of denial.





Nathan:
I keep thinking of an image from Nathan’s slide show: “See you in Chicago on Sunday.”  I’ve seen this slideshow twice now, and I have a hard time remembering whether or not this image is brought up in the text Nathan reads, or if I’ve only thought about it in relation to the read text.  This is maybe similar to the experience I had when watching the images repeat their rotation.  I was sometimes unsure if I’d seen a particular image before—had I missed it the first time, or is this the first time I’ve seen it? 

What does the space in between do to our understanding of a thing?  I missed “See you in Chicago on Sunday” the first time around.  What does that phrase mean to me now? this is similar to Nathan’s “war is over” sign.  I missed “war is over if you want it” the first time around. What does it mean to me now when I hear it in a song, see it on a sign in a gallery, or out in the snow? 

And when was the first time around?  Is this something possible to nail down?  What was the meaning of “See you in Chicago on Sunday” before the sign was made, or photographed? 

When did the Beatles become the Beatles—the Beach Boys, the Beach Boys?

I’m sure I first heard the Beach Boys on the radio or on a tape or something as a kid—probably California Girls. Do the Beach Boys change over the years as I learn about them, or do they continue to exist as they always did, unaffected by the fact that kids in the 80s, kids in the 90s, kids and the 2000s listened to them for the first time somewhere on the radio, a record, a tape, a cd, or an mp3?

I’m always pretty interested in hearing what ends up being played on oldies radio stations…or also TV programming, like nick at night, which is supposed to play “classic” tv shows.  It seems like the categories of oldies and classics keep moving their boundaries forward into our more recently recorded histories.  How big will this category have to be as our archives become greater and greater.  Will they have to be subdivided and how? 

intermission is the in between until something is given another context—an audience? a combination of words that become a famous thing—  song lyrics, an album.  the original context for the beatles and beach boys albums can not be replicated or even really understood.  they can only be interpreted through now, now, now, now.  the intermission is the time between then and now, now and now and now and now and now and now and now.