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On an unrelated note I went to an art show a week ago.  It entitled "Don't Die Horny" by Kristofferson SanPablo.  Everyone who went is still talking about it.  Cops shut it down and everyone had to go inside.  Every art show I go to gets shut down by the cops.  Maybe I just know the right kind of artists.

There were a lot of Simpsons references, such as a nude painting of Mr. Burns.

My favorite part was a piece called "Zombie Defense Mechanism."  It was essentially a giant black box with a pitchfork sticking out of it.  There was a peephole that you could use to look inside, or you could strip naked or into your underwear and the artist would let you inside.  On the inside there was all of these things that the artist found embarrassing to show, such as child photos and old artwork and just various embarrassing drawings that he did.

I saw this as letting the audience experience the artist's experience.  I'll explain.  As an audience member you get an obstructed view of who the artist is.  You'll never see the whole picture through the art.  You may even get a warped or distorted picture since an artist's work might be ironic, satiric, or simply a work created from empathy.  So this is created by peephole into the secret box.

When you're inside the box, naked, you are no longer just a voyeur looking in.  You're also an exhibitionist.  You're presenting your naked self to the voyeurs (the audience) looking through the peephole.  But you also get to look at all of this embarrassing things that the artist made.  You're looking deeper into the artist's experience.  You get to also look through photo albums.  I think that's part of what an artist is.  You're a voyeur looking at other people's experiences while also offering yourself to the judgment of the voyeuristic audience.

Although, I didn't take off my clothes.  A lot of people were ignoring the requirements to go inside and I wasn't going to just get naked in front of these people.  I was actually very eager to experience the art properly though.

Anyway, when in there someone I knew said, "This is it?  This isn't very embarrassing."  I think that might be a more realistic view of why the artist wanted people to take off their clothes.  The pictures didn't seem embarrassing to us because they weren't associated with us.  So in order for us to get inside the artist's mind and feel what he feels with the revelation of these pictures and drawings, he causes us to feel embarrassed from our own sources of shame.

I talked to the artist himself and he said very quickly (since he had to deal with issues from the police) that the point is that he's giving up something to the audience.  He wants the audience to give something back.

I spent most of the time talking with an artist named Conrad Ruiz.  We talked mostly about how to survive being an artist.  He gave me advice that really helped me survive this last week.

Copyright 2009