Week 7 - Air Guitar
I thoroughly enjoyed Air Guitar. It was insightful and well written without being a complete literary mess.(i.e. you could read it!) The intro definitely hooked me and I kept coming back to his thoughts on academia and art or learning saturation. He explored the fact that everyday interactions, and everyday people, the little shops, and honest intellectual discourse were what kept him going, vital and vibrant... always exploring and never complete. Whereas in the University those who owned stores, or took or gave money were the enemy academically and societally speaking without actually considering the HUMAN aspect of the PEOPLE. It seems VERY ironic. However, I am in complete agreement. So often in academic institutions reality is blurred for this strange academic world, vocabulary, and stunted truth. I appreciate studying history, and THEORY.....but when reality and experiences, and the truth are ignored in favor of theres theories and one is not allowed to apply theories to LIFE I wonder what is the point? When I am not allowed into dialogue about my life, or my reality, or my people because I lack a prerequisite or the academic mush of language I wonder who is losing more. Should I succumb and be a part of this academic aspect of things, or should academia try to live out their theories in the world. ANYWAYS this got me thinking about ART and ritual and membership in certain communities.
This again tied in around pg 98 when the author is speaking about films. Here he had sat through many many films all of which were in that quota... they were in that brilliant category, because they followed to recipe to brilliant indie films. They were supposed to be evocative, provocative... but they just plain weren't and although no one mentioned it it was very openly yawned at. THE SAME WITH ART. Someone is tagged as brilliant and suddenly all of their art is brilliant. fool one person and the world is fooled. There is a certain membership who decides what art is good, valid...to be valued. People dismiss things not in the code, yet when Andy Warhol created his haircut film with none of those pretexts, not following rules...it was ANNOYING.It rattled the audience. and suddently when there was one hint of movement the audience cheered. They were uncomfortable and shocked and confused. The y couldn't expect it , know about it. The context of the action and the video was completely new. I LIKE THIS!
How oten is art and the art community staid and boring, Unopen not to new art, but to new REALMS and POSSIBILITIES of art. How can one stay alive, and out of the university, out of the printed, dialogued Categorized... WE"VE BEEN THERE art? Who makes these rules and decides these things?
ROSLYN KAGY!!
