At least he’s getting outta the house…
So, sure, I have been known to use this site to do a little shit-talking every now and then. It is all in good fun. Especially the photos. No one’s feelings should be getting hurt, not that I would apologize. They should toughen up. And I am definitely not one who embraces ad hominen attacks on those whose work is being shit-talked. But Michael Fallon must be about as tall as a stump, because the ideas behind ‘Millions of Innocent Accidents‘ have just flown over his narrow-minded, quasi-academic, all washed up and only useful for a good chuckle head. Chuckle head.
So what is the deal, anyway? Why so obsessed with the youth culture? Why so determined to drag the kids down, not to mention hardland/heartland? Isn’t this the second time you have given it a shot? Is one of them dating your daughter? Plus, you portend to have some cute little crush on the wacky kids and their wacky ways, yet merely use that as a bottle opener to spill your true feelings. Have you any idea how ridiculous you sound? Do you realize what you are defending? Who is your audience, Mary Abbe and Katherine Kersten?
The most joyous part of reading your critique of hardland/heartland’s exhibition in the MAEP gallery is not that you only reach the surface and misunderstand it so well; it is not that you pull a punch like a pansy when you use disparaging phrases such as ‘poorly conceived, dolefully hopeless’ in the same sentence as ‘well-meaning’; and it is not that you are appalled at finding the work unattractive or ‘ugly’ (Are you serious, who walked you through art theory? R.G. Collingwood?). No, the most excruciatingly fun part, upon reading your tiresome and wasted thoughts, are the deep, guttural, side-splitting, beer-spilling belly laughs that h/h and their collaborators will be having at your expense after they get through with your drivel. You feel so confident in being ‘hip’ to their angst and frustration and whatnot, surely you can understand their exhilaration and glee upon reading the ranting of what sounds like an exhausted cop who has taken a couple art history classes in a vain and failing attempt to comprehend the ‘criminal’ mind of ‘the graffiti artist.’
Where does the drollery begin? First of all, where do you get off calling h/h ‘well-meaning?’ What does that even suggest? That they ‘meant well’ to Art? It’s the thought that counts? That their hearts were in it for the sake of the audience? For the sake of themselves? There is nothing well-meaning about their work. They are not trying to make friends or to offer sympathy and they most certainly aren’t looking for visitors to the Institution to empathize with them. Far fucking from it. How on earth do you read their picture ‘ABOR TION SUCKS DICK‘ as seeking sympathy or empathy? Why would that ask such of a viewer? Harsh and blunt yes, crass, oh hell yes! But the last thing it makes you think is about the Issue in the terms that it has so redundantly and narrowly been defined and debated. You don’t want any part with the art works’ anti-social elements, fine, but don’t go spewing ‘off-putting and uninspiring’ with all the moralist implications that follow, not to mention do your own damned inspiring of yourself, not to mention that ‘being inspired’ is a horrible expectation of art in the first place. Toughen the hell up before you lose all your credibility, and seriously, torch the Kant.
Hey, and let’s not forget the difference between ‘inspiring’ and ’symbolic’ 35mm snapshots by journalists and the inspired actions made by the individuals documented in those snapshots and subsequently packaged and sold on the front pages of newspapers and magazines. Standing down a line of People’s Liberation Army tanks in the middle of Tiananmen Square in 1989 was certainly not a very symbolic moment for that student, that was very real desperation, not to mention balls. If you would like to co-opt his image, though, as some sort of pro-democracy emblem, or David vs. Goliath allegory, or even worse, as some sort of ‘we did it better back in the day’ tripe, as the West’s mainstream media has so gladly done, super for you. Your social security check is in the mail. Or, as h/h has collaboratively done (yet another key conceptual component of the work that has escaped you), annihilate those symbols that have been manipulated and manufactured for the marketplace, and expose them as meaningless frauds by re-repackaging them with undecipherable expletives and single finger salutes.
In the end, whenever it comes, there will probably not be any understanding any way. Look as we will, it isn’t going to happen. No matter, the whole point is that if you don’t want to get below the surface, if you refuse to consider sacrificing your precious Time/Life photo reproductions, and if you are going to live in the past with its pre-conceived notions of art’s duty, you are never going to get anywhere close. You are spinning your wheels, my friend, fast and furious. And we are having a good chuckle, because we understand that the hill you are trying to climb only goes down and everybody winds up there one way or another. Now, how about a beer?