Criptic Critic Conscience and Known for it

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Despite a life time of articulating a specific cultural, political, economic context, My work continues to be treated like it's wrong.

 

"A sock stretched over a badly made wooden frame, it’s a smart conceptualist riposte to modernism’s pretensions."

Badly made? I made it perfectly. It is perfect. It's not a plane it's not suppose to fly. How can my work be badly made? Compared to what? A 'normal' work of art? These I guess are some the questions I wish were asked about my work. The craft of the capitalist commodity, where do these airs come from? Riposte? Modernist pretensions? Since when, in what era ever is effortlessness bad? Machine like grace is our highest ideal, effortlessness and endlessness happens to be it, look around at Capitalists efforts to attain this. Isn't mine actually closer, closer to a 'human' version?

Since when is perfect economic and physical exertion retaliation? How is it not leadership and an existing modelling of the ideal? Recycled found materials, tacked effortlessly together to find significant/ undenied form is something, still everything that capitalist art and it's total domination of all art psyche rejects, deeply, instinctively.

Art market, where the 'craft' is to separate and destroy the history of it's making, the politics of its economic material phenomenon, creating the uber important 'glamour' (as in without genitalia), positing my efforts of a new path into the subversive and forever titillating 'bad' other; that will never be visited for it pulls down the 'wrong path". But "that's what we love about you Tao!"

No, you don't know me at all. Strange how my work is not seen in the context I have so publicly made, yet I'm constantly criticized for standing in front of the work! You've just shoved the work shoddily into conveniently provided roles that maintain a certain lid on the too hard to ask basket of questions. That basket of capitalist status quo, I am not a part of, (but you are Tao you are! Yeah Like Cuba is to the US).

Even today welfarians are considered a threat to capitalism, yet we heroically controlled inflation, now you'r gonna pay. To bridge over this, is to smother it, to deny it exists. Let's say the bad are smart, but wrong. Let's clap their critique of our silly pretensions, while we return to worshiping at the alter of silly pretensions. It's convenient. Not badly made, but perfect. A frame that re-frames ALL the other art. Forever.

Hey Mark Amery, thanks so much for daring to touch the hot spot. Sincerely thank you, I do love to respond. Much love. T

    14 Comments


    Wells Tao
    Stretched ankle sock, retired. Over kindling.
    No photo description available.
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    • 3w
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    • Ross Forbes
    The wierd, wierd thing is that I recognised Megan's work .She painted it 25 years back when we lived together in a warehouse in Grey Lynn. We were together 8 years and then one day she was gone. No disrespect Tao...your work is great...

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    • 3w

    Wells Tao
    Far out so sorry to hear that.
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    • 3w
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    • Wells Tao
    No disrespect felt at all, I remember seeing her work and feeling it at Mark's place, probably what made me want to give him one of my works, to be cared for the way he cared for her work... thanks for the compliment.
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    • 3w

    • Mark Amery
    Love to you Ross!!!
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      • 3w






    • Mark Amery
    Tao this is exactly why I love it. Wy would it hang there for 10 years if it was "badly made" in quote marks. I think my word is wrong - though wrongly made might be worse - beautifully badly made better. So here's the point - it's difficult to describe because it doesn't conform. I'll give up again now. (PS I want to know what's happening anon with your good film)
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    • 3w

    Murtle Presence
    Makes me think of the term 'Mis-competence', defined by Bruce Russell as “the ability to do something both deliberately wrongly, and well”. https://soundbleedjournal.wordpress.com/.../antique-bird.../
    ‘Antique bird-like chatter’: mis-competence in New Zealand electronic music – Bruce Russell
    SOUNDBLEEDJOURNAL.WORDPRESS.COM
    ‘Antique bird-like chatter’: mis-competence in New Zealand electronic music – Bruce Russell
    ‘Antique bird-like chatter’: mis-competence in New Zealand electronic music – Bruce Russell
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    • 3w

    • Wells Tao
    Cheers Mark! Yeah nice Murtle, technically better, but still doesn't suggest to me a ring of confidence, which is what I think it has. Assemblage isn't looked at like a mistake, the mistake is intentional, there is no mistake. It's a dialectical or dichotomy that the status quo uses to dominate and profit from. it's no small thing.

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    • 3w

    • Wells Tao
    How it was made was chosen and executed perfectly. It's something of a mystery to me why the viewer wouldn't accept that. Embrace that. Promote that. But as I said above, there are many reasons.
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    • 3w

    • Wells Tao
    From my limited vocab, I would say that it is "brutalist /assemblage/ art povera"
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    • 3w
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    • Andrew Clifford
    This reminds me of a conversation with Chris Knox, who once corrected me that his music is not lo-fi - it is low-tech. Lo-fi suggests it's badly recorded. There's nothing wrong with the way it is recorded, which perfectly captures the low-tech instruments that he uses. Or maybe my memory has merged some of Bruce's writing and Chris's comments - different arguments, same conclusion
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    • 3w

    • Mark Amery
    Murtle Presence totally!!!!!!!!!

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    • 2w

    • Mark Amery
    Andrew Clifford and again correct. Its clear I didn't find the right words for what was meant as a compliment
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    • 2w

    • Wells Tao
    Andrew Clifford there is a kin kind of correlation for sure, but again it doesn't speak to the degree of economic segregation/ oppression that is an intimate part of the mode. It doesn't talk about the threat it represents. How convenient
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  • 2w
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