don't hide
the snake can see you


Julia Fullerton-Batten, Beach Houses, 2005

* Charlie Finch on Work of Art, and reality shows in general, concludes:

The common threads running through all these minor media spectacles include a joy in the desperation of others ("that's not me!"), now including the choice and elitist "desperation" of bad artists and the identification with the bullying behavior of those standing in judgment after a series of arbitrary and idiotic contests. Needless to say, these are the basest of human responses and, when translated into the larger political realm, become simply the seeds of fascism. The art world, supposedly a haven of eccentric exceptionalism, proved just as subservient to the debased conformity of turning art-making into one more crappy relay race.

Nowadays you can dance, seduce, eat worms, make a dress, double date and, now, paint and sculpt, in the realm of cheap competition. For culture at large in our dumbdowned society the laurels of the Greeks have become not a crown of thorns, but one of candy wrappers and rusted tin cans. Nothing good can come of it.

* Pavement tour diaries.

* "Someone came up to me after a show & told me I sound quite a bit like Jad Fair. I told him I sound exactly like Jad Fair" --Jad Fair