Wednesday, May 05, 2004

One thing I have found interesting in Andy's way of thinking is his ideas on originals and fakes. This obviously becomes evident on the corresponding posting to this entry in the diary archives. Oh yes, let's talk about originality now that I find myself referring to the very material I use to surf the web and to comment on my own masturbatory obsessions from the past and present, excusedly in relation to the coy media star's comments of his everyday stellar life alongside stars from diverse walks of life.

Fakes is what we are dealing with today, are we not? And so the question arises in Andy's decision to give John Powers a real flowers print vs. signing a fake. Why would Andy not want to sign a "fake" work of his own? After all, his whole work aims to question the very idea of authenticity. Hmmm. Something to think about. Or about one must think of this. Flowers, how about we paint them on the web?

"There is no thinking involved in my choreography [...] When I dance it means that this is what I am doing." This is the introductory statement on the Merce Cunningham website. One would say that it is reminicent of the deconstructivists trying to (un)define the relationship between the signifier and the signified. But Cunningham's quote is rather allegorical of a certain spirituality that the arts have swept under the carpet. Aside from this esoteric comment I am also compelled to comment on the actual website, by saying that it is simply quaint. Bad Flash animations with text that flickers and moves from left to right is exactly what any mainstream book on design will instruct its readers not to do.

But all this leads up to Merce, the great Merce. How great he is at this point can only be experienced through documentation. Dance is that way, it is ephemeral and extremely elitist, even its modern stance of dancing with no shoes came about as a reaction to the status quo. Too bad it stopped in the rhetorical position...

The United States has changed quite drastically since the days of Jackie O. and her late husband John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy was in office there were rumors that he had affairs with beautiful women, including Marilyn Monroe. JFK and Jackie O. were treated like royalty. They were respected for exuding glamour. Such glamour has not been part of the White House since then, although some people did compare the Clintons to the Kennedys for their sophistication. During his term in office, at it is well known, Bill Clinton had an affair as well, and instead of keeping the rumor at bay, as politics would have it, this one turned into a scandal, which most recently was once again highlighted, one could even say celebrated, in Bill Clinton's autobigraphy, My Life. I don't remember Hillary's book getting as much attention.

That a presidential private affair turned into a political scandal at the end of the twentieth century only reaffirms the level of transparency that the U.S. appears to function in. Only, this is really a well disguised theater that is best exposed through the many reality TV shows produced in the last three years. Since then, we have had a little man dating fully grown women to eventually choose a little woman, not to mention all the numerous shows trailing the Bachelor; even the rich and not so famous have joined the reality line up, while having an amateur porn movie on the market selling thousands of copies.