raw writing on last night

art criticism that used to be so lacking in phila as self determined by the artists themselves is on the rise by those same artists. we now have the art blahg (oh no they didn't), new asshole and machete. and probably more in the works. will this help raise the bar of art making in philadelphia? how will it affect change? what view points are these new art criticism writers offering? will it increase an activist message in any of the work we see? are not art and activism important co-conspirators? is making art a political gesture enough?

first friday left me thinking about few themes i noticed i the stops i made. outer space cropped up three times, once in a description of a show - it is called "heaven" and opens tomorrow. at one stop we watched a video of outer space and it felt like our vantage point was on top of the clouds - there were three bigg fluffy white objects in a black room with projections on the back wall. i knew if i stayed i could be sucked in for at least 15 minutes and we had other destinations to get to before closing. yes i am not using names ha ha. it was great though and the title of the movie theater that was in the gallery was called "dead of the living night" and it was written in big neon letters. then like outer space we went all the way to china, the yunan province, and that was like being in outerspace too because it's probably some place i will never go. the photos were so clear and life like, the colors of the costume of the festivals popped out at you and there were pop up books as well as the photography on the walls accompanying each set of photos. and they literally popped up at you. the craft at both shows was extremely well done. with the photos i found myself looking at the details. and then in the room a woman was dressed in one of these bright pink and yellow costumes bringing the whole experience to life literally. and with that i go back to the first show i was at where a man stood in a bed of dirt in the middle of the gallery and covered himself in mud. to the earth we return.

there was another show that was about looking into outerspace but from your studio to the next studio using a telescope. i don't know. the video showed similar images of outer space as the other space. strange coincidence? collaboration? synergy? or just plain old post modernism theory at work in a few like minded folks... by this i mean is it the artists' suggestion to the viewer that we should remove ourselves from our current context as far away as outer space, rituals in rural China, or back to the dirt? By imagining these places, we can reflect and analyze our everyday from a distance and remove ourselves from the immediacy of daily life.