tame tot of tint

this is a post i started and abandoned weeks ago during artistanbul 2006, istanbul's yearly art "fair" organized by the metropolitan municipality, art gallery owners association and the dream design factory.

oh, how i hate this twisting and wringing of letters into fartsy fantasy nonexistent abracadabra words! playing installation with langauge, making words, the cornerstones of meaning into scrap junkets of that crap-artsy postmodernist handicraft-ism! just like crashing a semi truck head on with a ferrari and obtaining a vehicle that can supposedly haul things at 1000 mph if only it can move to go anywhere!

while language in the form of words devolves or degenerates into communication by sights, motions and raw sounds, similar to what it was 80 million years ago, such diarrheac verbal creativity is becoming more and more faddish. and what to call this fad? it is not hybridization, it is not even bastardization. it certainly is an abomination and can be called awkwardization, though hardly insulting enough to emphasize the inherent abhorrence.

hear that now: art fair? the word "fair" evokes a crowded marketplace with lots of fun going about - the bearded lady, sword swallowers, fire eaters, pickpockets, midgets and happy harlots where craftsmen display their handy skills and spawn. it calls to mind times when art existed not, or rather when it was not differentiated from the crafts. that is a greek tradition where the shoemaker and the sculptor were both dealing with techne, i.e., art - that is, when the shoemaker worked to produce all answers neatly packed and gift wrapped in his product wrought with the mastery that marked his life. art that did not end with a question mark!

for that, in the end, is what art does: ask questions.

touring artistanbul, i was dispirited and bored from observing works that acquiesced so obviously. no questions hung on the walls, to pull you awake, throw all your lights on, incitre you to probe your mind, squirm with the desire to know and the frustration of not knowing whether what you surmised is the right question to the answer you've already discarded! all the gentle and genteel colored canvas on the walls inspired was shushed reverie, deferent and thankful to exist; silent to the complacency of that existence. yet, that is the last thing art should convey - supplicant existence; that is the last thing colors should paint, hypnosis into gratitude.

tots of tame tint, celebrating what is with no revolt, no rebellion, no surge of uprising and no question to start the avalanche. almost as mangled as newfangled word-ishes like artistanbul...

wonder what it would be called is somebody passed the wind while walking those corridors of colored compliance.