Posting remains light over here while I wrangle with legal, publicity, and staffing infrastructure stuff over at Code Z, but I did manage to get out to Eyedrum's 1906 Race Riots show, which features strong work by Tony Bingham (above), K. Tauches and others. The trap with a show dealing with such an emotional hot button is that you see the work you expect to see--easy manipulations of the same symbols that decry everything you expect to be decried in exactly the way you expect it to be decried. This show, by in large, avoids that trap with fresh, oblique perspectives on memory, race, and history.




Meanwhile, Audiologo and I finally got over the massive aquarium that's been the subject of emotial jeremiads both for and against. It's beautiful, frankly, and I could feel my blood pressure dropping as I watched the slow-motion choreography of the fish and sea mammals.

As it so happens, Audiologo is leaving town, too, on her way up north for further education, leaving yet another hole in the Atlanta fringe journalism/blogging scene. So this was a farewell of sorts. She will be greatly missed.

Erik S. has decamped for Portland, leaving a pretty big gap in the fringe arts journalism culture here in Atlanta. We famously disagreed on some things, but his voice will, I think, be missed.

Code Z has been a baptism by fire. By that I mean it's been a huge amount of work, sometimes lonely work (sometimes not), and work that has no guaranteed payoff. A gamble. No, an investment that carries a significant risk of failure. There's always a chance that the ad space won't sell or that traffic to the site won't recover from the initial "curiosity" spike. The site is--I'm sure--a valuable addition to the web and to the general art community, but that only matters if a critical mass of other people agree with me.

Jason Johnson recently asked if I'd speak to a group of his high school kids about blogging before they go to Italy on an art exchange program he's been working on for several months. Many of them probably already engage in that practice, so it's not likely I'll tell them anything they don't already know at some level.

I suppose it makes me think of all the hazards of making your opinion public on a nearly daily basis. You get called on things--a lot. And that changed me. As I've said here before, over the past couple of years I've become more of a purist about art, but less of an extremist. Meaning, my ideas are clearer than they've ever been about what I value in art, how it affects me, and about how art functions. At the same time, I'm more tolerant about art that does other things, even things I find ultimately useless. And maybe most importantly, I've learned to be easier on art that fails to achieve even the claims it makes for itself. In other words, I don't take bad art personally anymore.

Writing my opinions down every day has meant that I've heard my words echoed back to me constantly. It's a great feedback mechanism that keeps me intellectually honest. There's less room to fudge, less room to reverse an opinion without explaining it.

It's also easy to get trapped by the feedback loop as an art blogger. Because if daily writing makes it easy to track your opinions, it also makes it all too easy to write yourself into a certain character, to become known as the person who has this particular opinion about art or who speaks with that particular voice, because moving away from that would look like a contradiction or worse: hypocrisy. This is no doubt the reason Anonymous Female Artist burned out so fast and so spectacularly. You can't be angry all the time. That's too hard. At some point you have to write your way out of that role or be consumed by it.

I'm convinced that lots of art bloggers stop partly because they can't maintain the consistency of opinion that their characters insist on. Life is more complicated and art is too messy for that. Things--art objects--always enter the picture that I'm supposed to hate, but inexplicably I love, and vice versa of course.

For now, Code Z is functioning as a little bit of a release valve. It's a way of being able to consider lots of different concepts, objects, and practices without necessarily having to assess them on a value scale. I'm not sure how long that will go on, but it's true for now as the publication is still finding its voice.

Breathing a little more, watching the DVD from Netflix that's been unwatched for 3 months, sleeping a lot. Just a few of the benefits to having launched the big ship... Regular posting will resume next week.

We have liftoff.

Whew!

I know I've been quiet for a minute here, but it's all been in the interest of working on our little web zine. Still due to launch August 8. In the meantime check out this relatively new Austin art blogger.

current music: Talib Kweli, Quality

After more code wresting, frustrating phone calls, and many, many, many crossed wires Code Z is almost ready to get off the ground: now launching Tuesday, August 8!