Taryn

What a topic to tackle! This reading was so interesting. I feel the topic of cool is too large to take on because it means so much and has so many different definitions by different people. Although many of the points were interesting - I did not agree with some of them. I feel that cool is being redefined all the time - mainly because if everyone becomes a rebel - then no one is a rebel - because it is then not only the norm, but it's not cool.

I did not agree with the part about how cool is not political - and politics can never be cool - I keep thinking of Micheal moore, and Bono - and even Paris Hilton with Sean John saying VOTE OR DIE - and if I recall correctly that was the year that paris forgot to vote even after her back up with VOTE OR DIE - and it was so lame that INSPIRED me to be more interested and involved in politics.

I feel that power is cool. People taking interest and doing something and that is the opposite of "cool enabling people to live with uncertainty and lowered expectations". Power is connected with high expectations and responsibility - the authors example of Christof from the Truman show shows that power and responsibility are cool - HE CUES THE SUN!

Maybe I just have a very skewed definition of cool - but toil and sacrifice are awesome if they enable you to live abroad, on nothing but hard work for years - I understand the idea of escaping the daily grind of hard work and discipline as being cool - but many time it is just for an alternative version of hard work and discipline. - hiking everest is not easy or cool from laziness.
oh, also i think there are a lot of other cool presidents - and I am sure it is not just me.
AND - baby boomers are going to rule the world for a while rather than the young.
mark my works!

As I read this article I kept thinking about fashion. I was thinking how fashion designers are constantly using "preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble" (I was not lead to this idea because of the word ensemble!). As I continued and read how "detournement is a game made possible by the capacity of devaluation" I started thinking about this idea of art and culture making its way to our clothes and how this everyday use is, in a way, a devaluation of something that was once precious - (art, color, form, etc) - now made common (through everyday wear). This became more clear to me as the article states about the expression of "our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original and concern itself with rendering a certain sublimity" . Fashion is the perfect example of something that is "a combination of parody and seriousness [that] reflects the contradictions of an era in which we find ourselves confronted with both the urgent necessity an the near impossibility of initiating and carrying out a totally innovative collective action". All the time now fashion is attempting to make a difference - like the GAP's adds to help research of AIDS through it's "innovative" red campain (of course the GAP invented red!). Fashion is a means of expression weather it is simply the words you wear (like TWCDC) or a blatent screaming of status (like GUCCI).

I think that people today are so inundated with consumerism that they start to redefine art as what they buy. We have all become collectors of things and these things are defining culture and taste and history. There is such a shift of what is important that it is changing our thoughts on the everyday. As we looked through advertisements during class it just validated my thoughts about Detournement and what Berger wrote about advertising and art history. Our adds are mimicking art and comprising different elements to create a parody that devalues each of the different aspects - creating a new scope and effect. That said it seems apparent that Advertising is an example of Detournment - I feel that fashion is the extension of these adds to a new level of reality - we become the living Detournement.

TARYN'S PRESS PASS

I found Berger's perspective on publicity very engaging but also limited. I feel it true of most types of publicity that it is a medium that acts upon anxiety and people's feelings of inadequacy. I feel he takes this a bit to the extreme when he writes things like publicity thrives off of an idea that through having nothing you are nothing. Fortunately not all of the masses buy into this, AND not all companies/ organizations are publicizing the pursuits of false happinesses. I start thinking about public service ads and how they promote giving back the community or publicity that brings awareness to under known plights (like world hunger, alternative fuel, global warming, bikes).

I agree that on the whole, society conditions us with this idea that the pursuit of happiness is an individual right, and that we can become powerless living in limbo between what we are and what we want to be. I find it funny that as American's we seek out individuality and covet a sense of "different", but when it really comes down to it - people who dance to this different beat are outcasts and ridiculed unless they are able to receive some sort of "approval" and then it's okay to like them and really they are then not longer different because they have been mass accepted.

I feel that fear is a major motivator in life. I think that publicity is effective because it plays more on people's fear of acceptance rather than envy. It is fear that creates stereotypes and allows us to understand others in their most striped down model - void of individuality. I think these ways of understanding are enculturated because of fear. If you look at different countries and historys they do not portray innocence, nostalgia or materials indicating luxury the same way as America. There are different roles of women and men and myth, there are different ways of publicity. As for painting and the direct connections, I feel that art is a way of understanding and people are always going to exercise this way of seeing the world.

Take the toilet paper cozies from the previous blog.
Throw them into the toilet.
Do your business -

flush and accent with some strong obscenities!
@$#%&*^&$#!@#$*&&*^%

Crochet toilet-paper cozies.
Enhance these little home-spun crafties with scenes depicting our current war.
These scenes should include soldiers and guns and blood and dead figures.
They should also show civilians dieing for no apparent reason.
We can even do some with Petraeus - betray us.
Embellish a few with Bush and the non-witty things he is so good at saying.

These cozies become a piece of poetic terrorism because every time someone goes to use a square of toilet paper to wipe his or her ass, she is reminded of how the majority of the world views America as a shit country. We can have a bit of a shocker that as we sit on the pot doing our daily deeds, going about our business, and then realize that numerous amounts of people are dieing for no good reason except that we are trying (in vain) to rid this world of terrorism. Good luck, and wipe.

I thought the billboard art was a neat topic to check out in class. I have a friend who is active in a lot of different public art projects and here is a link to some billboards from his site. I thought others might want to have a look -

http://centennialsociety.com/durham.html

He has a lot of work and I think it is worth checking out. His name is Packard Jennings - he's local in Oakland.

This is a display of my first working with googleearth.com. This map and the images are examples of my DERIVE and here is the documentation of the event.

To see my derive, save this to the desktop and open in googleearth.com.
- you can not see this unless you have googleearth downloaded to your computer.

Download file

Sit alone in a place where no one will disturb you. Allow yourself to cry.
Cry a good cry - the kind that makes you breathe better when you are finally finished. When you are done crying go and get an old sock. Burn this sock. Go and scatter the ashes.