BFO_037

Dearest Tony Conrad,
I am writing you to tell you what I need to focus on in media production class. I seem to be intrigued by the notion of acting the fool, consciously embarrassed, yet containing my anxiety so that it does not dam creation. I told myself a little motto a few days BEFORE meeting you in Linz via Skype. I wrote it on my door and posted it on my anonymous blog "Do not let REASON or JUDGMENT get in the way of ACTION!" A few days later YOU told us "It's BETTER to do EVERYTHING about NOTHING, than it is to do NOTHING about EVERYTHING." Despite (or to spite?) the guidance of many well meaning educators at "fine art" educational institutions, I don't like to think in language as I create, I like to "space out" to open all potential, ONLY to be "intelligently" analyzed AFTER the act. ...and I'll be damned, NOTHING I make seems like ART in any traditional sense. A few years back, for one of my earliest videos projects in undergrad, I videoed myself ripping apart a computer, then I multi-color-hot-glitter-glued it together into what some call a "bird". My first reaction to "editing" was that nothing of the performance should be LOST (cut out), so I sped up the video to whisp through the mundane and slow for interesting content (mapping entertainment priority to varying speeds). I've now been developing this speed technique for years. For my undergrad thesis, I built my home studio AT the Cleveland Institute of Art public thesis show. From within, it was indistinguishable enough that I could suspend disbelief to feel like I was home alone. I made all kind of art-messes like I regularly do, yet this time strangers might be looking in peepholes or watching the projected live-feed in the adjacent theater (side-by-side next to videos shot in the actual home theater). I'm here in one of them "privileged" TA positions in Visual Studies. In my cover letter, I convinced them that my obsession with Carl Jung has lead me into forced multiple-personalty experiments. My "Emerging Practices" focus will bounce between psychological analysis and "art" creation. I will literally alternate between two personas, one a creative "madman"and one the analyst. I told them I am going to video everything, speed-optimize it, create abstract visualizations, and format it into television episodes. I am now building a ghetto television-sound-stage version of my art studio across the atrium in the Visual Studies Dept (Sarah Paul's old place). Hopefully I won't really "lose" my mind, but if I get kicked to the curb, at least I'll fit right in in Buffalo NY. Tony, I am SO happy to meet you and like you a whole lot already. I am very excited about working with you! Also, I'm ALL ABOUT doing communal class productions as well as my personal stuff.