(no subject)
It's clear that all the employees at the American Visionary Art Museum are proud to work there. The guy who admitted us on our free pass (for being with the free health care vision) wanted to make sure we would turn the cranks of mechanical exhibits & push the buttons of the electrical ones, like he was a host in his home. One employee said "This isn't work. If I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I come to work."
Earlier, in New York, I had a dream that people could message each other in dreams, which in this case manifested as brushing arms with a missing person sitting side by side in wooden school desks, looking up non-existent words in a dictionary.
A few pieces in the museum caught me emotionally. One was a Rube-Goldbergesque robotized study scene where a figure with a glowing brain cooled by propeller/fan, foot-operated back scratcher, dangling computer mouse batted by a mechanical cat, sat at a verité desk and with laser-beam eyes scanned cliff notes on various philosophies to a jazzy sound track. The figure starts to droop, the music sags, and the mechanism strikes a gong signaling the quick substitution of a manufactured heartthrob photo while Duke Ellington's classic bass clarinet of longing fades in. Another gong snaps the scene back to the cliff notes and the original tune & operation. Another, deeper sinking into the alternate state & text/photo switch occurs before the whole sequence grinds to a halt. It took me several times through before I realized this clockwork was depicting a dream! I'm not even going to link to the youtube of this piece, it so misrepresents my encounter with the installation (an interesting instance of an artwork's significance exceeding the artist's intentions). Downstairs at I thereminized the Ellington tune, theremin jouissance.
Another piece that got me was a mosaic/painting/story - the tessera of the mosaic being large shards of intricate blue and white china framing a rough depiction of a girl and woman leaning to each other and the story in unsteady hand of the girl having broken her grandmother's fine dishes, expecting reprimand, and instead receiving love and welcome.
A politically engaged psychiatrist at the hostel describes the history of his reflection on over-confidence and hampering anger: "you can't make your patients do your own work" ...
Earlier, in New York, I had a dream that people could message each other in dreams, which in this case manifested as brushing arms with a missing person sitting side by side in wooden school desks, looking up non-existent words in a dictionary.
A few pieces in the museum caught me emotionally. One was a Rube-Goldbergesque robotized study scene where a figure with a glowing brain cooled by propeller/fan, foot-operated back scratcher, dangling computer mouse batted by a mechanical cat, sat at a verité desk and with laser-beam eyes scanned cliff notes on various philosophies to a jazzy sound track. The figure starts to droop, the music sags, and the mechanism strikes a gong signaling the quick substitution of a manufactured heartthrob photo while Duke Ellington's classic bass clarinet of longing fades in. Another gong snaps the scene back to the cliff notes and the original tune & operation. Another, deeper sinking into the alternate state & text/photo switch occurs before the whole sequence grinds to a halt. It took me several times through before I realized this clockwork was depicting a dream! I'm not even going to link to the youtube of this piece, it so misrepresents my encounter with the installation (an interesting instance of an artwork's significance exceeding the artist's intentions). Downstairs at I thereminized the Ellington tune, theremin jouissance.
Another piece that got me was a mosaic/painting/story - the tessera of the mosaic being large shards of intricate blue and white china framing a rough depiction of a girl and woman leaning to each other and the story in unsteady hand of the girl having broken her grandmother's fine dishes, expecting reprimand, and instead receiving love and welcome.
A politically engaged psychiatrist at the hostel describes the history of his reflection on over-confidence and hampering anger: "you can't make your patients do your own work" ...