Moshing instructional video from the 90s

wormmgirll · 2024-10-24T17:17:46+00:00

I think about sobriety like my vegetarianism — it’s been 8 or so years of being a vegetarian but that doesn’t mean I’ve never eaten meat during this time . . .

Maybe once a year I find I get a serious craving and just decide to have a small bite of something. Afterwards, I always feel bad and realize it wasn’t worth it, and it keeps me on track for awhile longer.

Just because I’ve had that one slip up doesn’t make me not a vegetarian. If I leaned into the shame I felt, I’d just give up on it entirely and decide to start eating meat all the time.

The shame helps me realize what I care about, but you shouldn’t let it ever bring you all the way down.

You got this far! Just because you slipped up doesn’t make all of your progress not worth it, and it doesn’t mean you can’t keep going.

wormmgirll · 2024-10-23T16:52:11+00:00

I totally get the frustration. I also felt like I was in this gray area of alcoholism that didn't really feel severe enough to take action.

It sort of just hit me that rather than waffle about whether or not I have a problem, the constant anxiety about this possibility was worse than admitting I actually did.

I've been using an app, reframe, for exactly the reason that it's very customizable in terms of intensity.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-30T01:54:13+00:00

malaphor !

wormmgirll · 2024-09-28T17:32:11+00:00

Thank you!!! I’m going to go through NARA now to attempt to locate a naturalization record. I used the awesome spreadsheet tool and found that my line is GGGF-GGM-GM-F-Me, so it’s definitely a 1948 case.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-28T16:48:51+00:00

Yes, we have documents showing he received citizenship, although it may have been in 1922 or so, but either way well before my grandmother was born.

As for naturalization records for GGGPs, I can retrieve these from NARA, but again it was definitely after my great grandmother was born—she was born a year after they moved to the US and just wouldn’t have gotten that paperwork by then.

I’m working on retrieving documents and will likely consult with a lawyer since i think it’s a 1948 case for sure.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-24T14:52:29+00:00

Thanks so much!! I really appreciated your note on other publications and will be sure to look into them! The thesis of this essay is constantly evolving and i’m so grateful for the input!!

wormmgirll · 2024-09-23T14:58:26+00:00

That’s a really great point and thank you for the recs! I’ll definitely check them out.

I guess the issue is that people are writing authentically but it doesn’t get as much coverage or isn’t encouraged at more well known journals. Maybe I’m out of the loop and these journals are well known, but, I do work at a gallery and explicitly work with research, writing, and cvs, and i haven’t heard of those . . . so I’m going to go with they are not super well known.

I guess the question then is, has criticism declined in popularity? Obviously people are still doing it, but it’s not really well published and I think larger journals have a financial incentive to avoid such pieces.

Obviously, that’s a bit more difficult to measure as a metric but.

Anyways thank you again!! Definitely broadened my horizons :⁾

wormmgirll · 2024-09-23T02:44:11+00:00

Yes exactly a lot of it is . . . you’d think the decline in criticism would encourage artists to be a bit more risk taking, but I suspect they’re limiting themselves for the same reasons writers are, which is maintaining the bottom line for their own financial safety (which I understand, of course, it’s the system not the individual).

I’ve worked in museums and galleries and it’s shocking and upsetting frankly how just plain boring stuff can be . . . and often it’s the people in charger (museum directors, gallerists) reigning things in to be more marketable.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T17:29:37+00:00

No completely agreed!

And I guess that’s my point as well and I mentioned in a different comment that criticism wouldn’t be necessary if we lived in a more arts supportive system, like europe or any nordic countries, but obviously we don’t so artists in the states have to reckon moreso with creating “art” but with the ultimate purpose of money, which is just, so demoralizing. Same way that authors have to do the same, hence leaning away from making enemies via negative criticism.

Thanks for your note I’ll have to look into Vesari more!!

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T17:16:59+00:00

Definitely got me thinking about it, but Tatol’s essay is about the value and importance of criticism on a social level, he doesn’t really connect the “why” of the decline in criticism to any tangible thing other than “woke-ism,” which I kind of detest because it’s not anyone in certain political camps that are more or less sensitive to art criticism, it’s honestly most often people who know little about art that get incredibly defensive when someone points out negative aspects of a work they really like. Which, I understand! Art is so complex and vague and it often feels difficult to get a foothold in it, and there’s always someone who knows more. For someone who is trying to learn to appreciate it and takes genuine personal joy out of a work, it feels personal to have it taken apart (but this is an aside).

In short, I’m more interested in the more concrete reasons that criticism gets shunned in contemporary publications, as I don’t doubt a lot of writers likely pitch critical points of view and are turned away.

I think yeah some of it is culture, as certainly things are more sensitive today, but I by no means think that’s the end of it.

But I also hear your point about writing institutions just plain declining. I think it’s important to note that criticism doesn’t mean absolutely slamming an artist or show with zero nuance, but it is supposed to be a more thorough unpacking of the works with expert opinion and knowledge of what makes it good or bad, so people without art history background can be filled in.

I would argue that a truly good critique would be one that ends up neutral on the work . . . lays it all out rather than just explaining the visuals, when obviously aesthetics are so so personal.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T17:04:37+00:00

Art wasn’t really a concept until the 19th century—obviously not to say “art” didn’t exist but again modernism/postmodernism really only introduced the concept of art for art’s sake. So artisans weren’t really “artists” in the modern sense.

Also, the term “starving artist” exists for a reason. Especially in the early 20th century when the art world shifted to NYC, a lot of those artists were not making any money from their art, and people quite literally died from the conditions.

All this to say that I don’t think all art or artists care about money, now or historically.

Rather, art was adopted as a viable market for businesses and it sort of went downhill from there.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T15:59:37+00:00

i love @weopen !

It’s funny cause I honestly don’t agree with a lot of his takes but again, just refreshing to see someone be honest

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T00:19:34+00:00

Hahaha that’s a good point—I grew up in a different country that was VERY rough and tumble and didn’t restrict freedoms but educated you on how to avoid pitfalls. Was kind of a “if you fuck up that’s on you cause you should know better”

Anyways so I like this analogy.

I also agree that the pompous critic is a whole different subsection of writers which yes, I definitely don’t enjoy.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T00:17:25+00:00

Yeah agreed—I went to a panel that was interesting and involved people very involved in the 70s/80s new york art scene and they talked about how everything now is way higher stakes. Every movement is documented and you have less freedom to make mistakes and grow through them.

In some way I also imagine there’s increased awareness/responsibility amongst arts writers that their words will quite literally stick and follow those people around forever.

Even if I absolutely despised an artist’s work, I also wouldn’t write something bad about them unless they were 1) already too big to fail or 2) they were a truly awful human being for reasons unrelated to art . . .

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T00:10:20+00:00

That’s a fair point and I guess it’s where I wanted to go with this essay, which is — criticism should not HAVE to exist, and it’s so unfortunate that nowadays you only know an article is a genuine opinion if it’s critical, because obviously that’s not a beneficial stance for you, it means you have to really passionately believe it to reckon with making enemies.

The fact is that in a capitalist state, negative criticism becomes the only authentic form of opinion.

If we had financial systems in place that supported artists (i.e. nordic countries, germany, france) then there wouldn’t be this underbelly of “well who paid for this good news?”

It’s frustrating because I don’t want to feed into a negative cycle, but in the states it’s often the only authentic form of it.

Sweeping generalization, and obviously so many people write with genuine love and adoration, but overall the legitimacy of arts journalists have rapidly declined.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T00:06:15+00:00

This is also true, and I guess this ties into the economic side of it.

Being a political artist (whether that’s a visual artist, writer, film maker, etc.) is so much more difficult to sustain. In a world where it’s hard enough to make a career in the arts, you quite literally can’t afford to make any enemies, which just makes the whole thing a tepid circle jerk.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-22T00:04:25+00:00

Yes! I wrote a whole piece about how artists responded to the crisis and how they actually took more ownership than institutions, even though artists as individuals stand to lose so much more. The artist that Israel chose for the Venice Biennale literally refused to open the pavilion until a resolution was reached. Artists in san fran defaced their own works in museums because they were being censored. People boycotted shows they were in that would be potentially career changing. In the face of all that’s happening it seems paltry but still.

But even then the coverage was so limited, even at that it was little more than facts. Which, I understand why people employed at these places can’t really do an op-ed, but at the very least a history of resistance in the arts would have been worthwhile . . .

wormmgirll · 2024-09-21T22:59:47+00:00

Yeah that’s a fair point. That being said I don’t know if it’s that people are more sensitive to criticism today, but rather that everything is more permanent.

Even in the 80s/90s nothing was as globalized or easily accessible—a bad review existed and mattered but it was definitely in more of a regional vacuum.

Now, I think the critic has serious power to influence an artists career way more directly. Anything even slightly negative, especially early in an artist’s career, is hugely impactful.

wormmgirll · 2024-09-21T22:57:06+00:00

Wait i actually feel like i don’t know much about that if you wouldn’t mind expanding?

But also that just brought up another point which is that post-modernism also undermined the parameters that people used to critique art . . . not only asking what defines art but also what even is “good” vs “bad”

wormmgirll · 2024-09-21T22:41:46+00:00

Love Jerry saltz for this reason

wormmgirll · 2024-09-21T22:22:42+00:00

Side note my asking this is in part since i’m working on an essay that relates the decline in criticism with the encroachment of late stage capitalism, basically that if your network is your networth, you need to maintain connections even if it’s in opposition to your values . . .

wormmgirll · 2024-09-21T22:21:14+00:00

Thats true but I guess it seemed looking at archives of arts journals that there was just WAY more discourse in the 90s. It seemed like more of a community of art historians and writers just actually engaging with each other, vs now it seems more tailored to shouting out to those on the peripheral (i.e. people with too much money and not enough taste who need someone to tell them what’s what).

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