Nuclear fission as waste last longer than most art.

Permanence is an issue for me in that archival is a term often used to imply that something may last a long time. Nothing last forever and the things you don't expect to last may be the ones that last the longest. I spend my time working on objects that I can make permanent because most of the things I have made in the past have been destroyed with a slight exposure to the elements over long periods of time. Par example, a print I made of my wife, before she was my wife, on canvas of her body, painted of course, as she rolled around on canvas has not survived well in our basement and when I attempted to stretch it out some 20 years later it was stinky with mildew and fell apart in chunks. Not so good from an archival standpoint.

My respect for work that has lasted for extended periods of time comes simply from the point that it may have outlived the other works from those same periods, regardless of the artistic quality of the works themselves. This implies that the better engineer is the better artist. Now that I am comfortable with my basic materials that I am working with as being "permanent", as compared to the other materials in common use for decorative pieces these days, I am forced to think of something that is relevant that I should make.

Nothing is permanent and especially if nobody keeps an objet d' art around for other generations to see and enjoy. There are several ways to gain permanence with a crafted thing. One way is to make an item so popular that everyone has one of the "things" during an era that it becomes ubiquitous for the period of time and therefore collectible and synonomous with the times, such as vintage lunchboxes or popular slogans. The second way is that create something so unique and special, like a giant ball of twine or piece of toast with the image of Jesus on it that it is preserved by the elite and documented as a special object to the culture itself. The third way an object can be made permanent is by the luck of the enviroment it is left in; some things are "found" as remnants once a society has been gone for a long time and then the object is analyzed by future generations as having been representative of the times that it was made in, without being judged on it's unknown artistic values. This third archeological method is my method of choice in that the oldest art we can find is cave drawings.

A cave wall is but a wall, a or was it a part of a home/gallery/meeting place that was displaying the imagery of the times, that was forced upon the inhabitants to view. Was it communication or historical documentation? Was it art or publication? Did it remind people there of the past or of the artist him/herself that made the drawings? I don't know that we really car one way or the other as historical viewers of archeological art, we just feel lucky to have found the work itself. The only thing that is important to me about cave drawings is that they are still there to be seen today. With the right materials and the proper environmnet the perfect "archival" environment can be created on a wall, as proven, inside a cave, with nothing more than colored dirt. Why then is "archival" such a big deal when it comes to modern art and the materials that are made to make art?

Personally I understand the problems that are associated with the harsh realities of "archival" and this is why I cannot put a lot of stock into a single piece of work to survive. The materials and the methods must be cohesive and compliment each other, as well as, represent the time of their creation. My data suggest against the probability of a single piece surviving, or being admired enough to be "kept" by the museums of the world, if only because of the simple fact that warehousing and storage is a problem even for the most well-intending collectors. My opinion is that you just can't count on one thing being special enough to last. Sad but true.

Assume Nothing - Get Everything

Is there a general assumption in life that it all works out in the end? The great equalizer is death, but is there any suggestion that somehow all of the struggles in life will somehow be actualized through death? I must say that there is this sense of death-actualization that isn't necessarily religous false hope. It may simply be the fact that you don't have to deal with life's day to day bullshit once you are gone and that somehow all the things you did mean more once you are dead and can't do anything else anyway.

I am fitting in this sense of false hope that surrounds me with the environment we live in and with my own efforts to make money and create things. Underlying each new project I sense a value towards reaching a goal that is not clearly defined. There is no guarantee that these things fit together, but there is a sense that one thing will prove another and that I must continue my work. I am surprised at how each project has ended up fitting with each other, but that may simply be my own projections and rationalizations of my efforts. The same false hope I see in the economy is what I feel in my work, that somehow it will make sense and achieve a goal that will make sense in the end. Why I should believe this or allow this to be my motivation is the question as I am begining to feel like it is a trap.

Much in the same way that we are trapped in our economic realiities I may be trapped in my own manufacturing cycle of doom. My investments are always in the next piece, but I never quite achieve what I am after. Before I complete any project a new twist or turn makes the last project seem immature and pointless, except that it was a stepping stone to my current project. I have reached a new level in my work, but I am without a sense of completion in that I have not pushed this work out of the incubator that it was created in. I must do that next, but I don't want to fixate on finalizing a task when I am not sure of the relevance of the techniques.

Let me assume that the economist and predictors of our well being no more than we do about the future of our prosperity. I have a dark understanding and feeling that our culture of consumption has been and is being exploited, but our exploiters are also in trouble now that we have reached a peak of consumption and productivity. Basically if our keepers are competing for a reduced amount of consumption, then by taking what they can from us before their competitors can is the only way to find closure for themselves. What this means is that we, the consumers, will be pushed to the brink of destruction while being fed delusions of false hope. Eventually, as the sages of the economy know, the system will no longer be able to support the weight of itself without significant growth.

We are witnessing the collapse of one government after the other in the Middle East and don't be misled to think that Democracy is the goal or the result of the events that are unfolding. Economic disparity is stoking the fire and change is only happening because the people en-masse have nothing left to lose. I do not feel that we will be that far behind in the United States. I don't want to complete my own work as it seems to beg for a new rationalization on how things are good, when they are not. I feel the oppression and it is not as obvious as a government tyrant, but more like a socially acceptable medical condition that has us all wishing for better times. The symptoms are the sickness and only defiance is the cure.