Betta Under The Radar
A broken on-line papier machine
Friday, July 14, 2006
Who needs A drink?
Above: Boat Bath by Antonia Pesenti
¶ 8:22 PM 0 comments
8pm - Phew. I do. Looking at this drawing is almost as good as having one. Almost... mmm.. I can taste it on my lips. Bring me to my pub!
Above: Boat Bath by Antonia Pesenti
¶ 8:22 PM 0 comments
Art Notation
Exhausted.
The equivalent of roadkill - body squashed but head still juicy.
Football field and bubbles... floating bubbles. That's an installation, room-sized. Astroturf the whole gallery, lit only by a green neon border. Floating bubbles from some unknown source. Surrounded by photographs of players, but the football is photoshopped out, replaced with a bubble...
Ok this idea I'm very happy with. Ia datang pagi ni seperti manna dari syurga, heheh. Sebuah alat permainan 'Newton's Cradle', tapi berganda besar and bola besinya diganti oleh bola sepak. Kalau dapat funding, keseluruhannya dibuat daripada stainless steel. Mungkin untuk RD WWF show bulan Sept akan datang - sempatkah? Hmm.
The equivalent of roadkill - body squashed but head still juicy.
Football field and bubbles... floating bubbles. That's an installation, room-sized. Astroturf the whole gallery, lit only by a green neon border. Floating bubbles from some unknown source. Surrounded by photographs of players, but the football is photoshopped out, replaced with a bubble...
Ok this idea I'm very happy with. Ia datang pagi ni seperti manna dari syurga, heheh. Sebuah alat permainan 'Newton's Cradle', tapi berganda besar and bola besinya diganti oleh bola sepak. Kalau dapat funding, keseluruhannya dibuat daripada stainless steel. Mungkin untuk RD WWF show bulan Sept akan datang - sempatkah? Hmm.
Labels: art
¶ 4:47 PM 0 comments
Close watch
Yes, I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.
Lying in bed, thinking of another time, you come up to meet me alone at night. In my room you sit in a corner watching and watching until I fall asleep.
Lying in bed, thinking of another time, you come up to meet me alone at night. In my room you sit in a corner watching and watching until I fall asleep.
Labels: sweet misery
¶ 4:28 PM 1 comments
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Working and Dreaming
As they say: put your secret down a well. So this blog is no longer what it used to be - not that that changes much in , I still have no idea who comes to read, who does not.
Strange, this compulsion to reveal and conceal, as if telling is a kind of redemption.
I noticed that as the posts went on, I used 'I' less and less, or I got to play with constructing different versions - Arty Betta, Politically Informed Betta, Sensitive Vulnerable Fragile Betta, Secretly Smart and Sexy Librarian Betta, etc. (Mmm, yes, I like the last version too - throw in some silk shirts and lacy panties, why doncha)
Today I feel very tired. In terms of being artist, it is the same long cry that probably haunts every part-time waitress in the quiet night... I wish all I could do is work at what I do best.
In order to keep income coming in, work has piled up, work that seems so far from what I want to do. Like climbing uphill, or using languages you can never get your head around. As I chip away as this little mountain of work, thoughts and ideas spring up for future art - a concrete reflexology pad for migrant workers, projected text messages of a couple trying to break up with each other on different sides of the world...
Art is like running downhill (even when you have to run uphill!) - everything seems to increase exponentially: expertise, quality, depth, complexity, elegance - with each effort. The more I make work the more I understand the nature of work, labour, effort.
And this other work, the uphill work, I also see through that lens. The different ways in which people work, or are forced (I used this terms loosely) to work - to create effects or to create actions on the world and in people. I do this so that I can make art. To find a way to get from hand to mouth is part of making art and is not divorced from it. So the hill is one and the same... I try to remember this.
Work is what gives life purpose. War takes away work, takes away living. We work because of a dream. A footballer works for a dream.
I wonder... is it about how hard we work, or how hard we dream?
Strange, this compulsion to reveal and conceal, as if telling is a kind of redemption.
I noticed that as the posts went on, I used 'I' less and less, or I got to play with constructing different versions - Arty Betta, Politically Informed Betta, Sensitive Vulnerable Fragile Betta, Secretly Smart and Sexy Librarian Betta, etc. (Mmm, yes, I like the last version too - throw in some silk shirts and lacy panties, why doncha)
Today I feel very tired. In terms of being artist, it is the same long cry that probably haunts every part-time waitress in the quiet night... I wish all I could do is work at what I do best.
In order to keep income coming in, work has piled up, work that seems so far from what I want to do. Like climbing uphill, or using languages you can never get your head around. As I chip away as this little mountain of work, thoughts and ideas spring up for future art - a concrete reflexology pad for migrant workers, projected text messages of a couple trying to break up with each other on different sides of the world...
Art is like running downhill (even when you have to run uphill!) - everything seems to increase exponentially: expertise, quality, depth, complexity, elegance - with each effort. The more I make work the more I understand the nature of work, labour, effort.
And this other work, the uphill work, I also see through that lens. The different ways in which people work, or are forced (I used this terms loosely) to work - to create effects or to create actions on the world and in people. I do this so that I can make art. To find a way to get from hand to mouth is part of making art and is not divorced from it. So the hill is one and the same... I try to remember this.
Work is what gives life purpose. War takes away work, takes away living. We work because of a dream. A footballer works for a dream.
I wonder... is it about how hard we work, or how hard we dream?
Labels: sweet misery
¶ 8:44 PM 0 comments
