general

Just a quick note that there is a panel discussion tomorrow (Sat, July 25) at 4 pm in connection with the "Control Panel" show at Honey Ramka gallery in Bushwick.
The moderator is Veronika Szkudlarek, who teaches digital painting at Ontario College of Art and Design. I and several other show participants will be on the panel, talking about the questions posed by Szkudlarek below. Please come! The location is: Honey Ramka, Brooklyn, 56 Bogart Street, 1st floor (across from the Morgan L stop).

The show, in part, generalizes your work as exhibiting a “machine aesthetic.” Do you see your artwork as (or is your practice) conversant with machines or mechanization?

What are your thoughts on another artwork in the show?

If we think of Twitter as a Borg or hive mind, it would have to be described as self-lobotomizing. The 140-character limit and imperfect threading make it difficult to express complex thoughts or have rational discussions. Yet this diseased organism is increasingly harvested for sound bites by journalists.
Writers who express their thoughts well in long form sound like dolts in clipped twitter-speech. Critic Katha Pollitt, discussing who deserved to be on the 10 dollar bill, writes "Hamilton by far the better man," which sounds vaguely Cro-Magnon. (I forget what the rest of the 140 characters said, possibly "me no like Jackson.")
My point, difficult to shoehorn into a single tweet, is that what happens in the hive mind mainly makes sense in the context of the hive mind. To pluck out a single "neuron" often requires grabbing four or five surrounding neurons, and quoting this mess as a series of screenshots is an inelegant and ugly form of writing. Yet so many writers are being forced to do this to stay relevant.

A local park had a "Freedom & Fireworks Festival" on July 4. Many food trucks were allowed to park on the grass. Near the bandshell a portable LED sign announced in blinking capitals:
BAGS COOLERS SUBJECT TO POLICE SEARCH.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution says that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Missing is the part about cops being able to rifle through your cooler whenever they feel like it. The July 4th event should have been called "Police State & Fireworks Festival." So I celebrated freedom (the part that includes the Fourth Amendment) -- elsewhere.

I have some work in a show opening this Friday, at Honey Ramka gallery in Brooklyn. Here is the press announcement:

Honey Ramka is pleased to present Control Panel, an exhibition featuring work by James Clark, Linda Francis, Micah Ganske, Ben Garthus, Tom Moody, and Yael Rechter. Control Panel opens Friday, June 19th from 6-9pm, and runs through Sunday, August 2nd.

Formally diverse, Control Panel highlights works that channel a distinctive machine aesthetic, and are also iterations of various technological types, processes, and modes. Together, they stage the gallery as an anxious chamber quickened by patterns, programs, and other visual/aural tics, rhythms, and effects.

Also opening in the project space is Salman Toor: Drawings from 'The Electrician'. Illustrated by Toor and co-written by Toor and Alexandra Atiya, The Electrician is an in-progress graphic novel that, while steeped in the strangeness of the supernatural, highlights themes and social conflicts of contemporary Pakistani life. Following the life of one family, The Electrician explores the vulnerabilities of aesthetic minds within a corrupt tyranny. A sensitive register of lived experience, Toor’s drawings address the toll of anxiety and the need for fantasy in a collapsing world.

Honey Ramka is located at 56 Bogart Street (1st floor), in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. Hours are 1-6pm on Fri-Sun and by appointment.