It's getting cold out...

Wish we were closer to the sun.

They're getting better

BREAKTHROUGH!

WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS?!

And soon life begins...

Beginning to have a Point

I am an anxious person; very critical and pessimistic. I am frustrated with the cyclical nature of history and society. I see patterns repeating themselves under new guises and newer executions. Technology and language have changed, but have not (up until now) brought progress within a social context. Rather, technology and language (the way we call things) have only worked to exaggerate exponentially innate and instinctual human characteristics. We are a tribal species that seeks to compete and dominate for the sake of genetic isolation and specific species propagation. We have broken humanity into a blocking of biological sub-categories (races), but even more disquieting is our creation of species based on the arbitrary construct of economics (upper, middle, and lower class. Aka, The rich, The merchants, and the poor/ slaves). We live in a world that says, “If you can gain wealth, your kind will continue. If can not gain wealth, your life is expendable and your genes don’t matter.” The opportunity for wealth is promised to us, but those who are already in that 2% species protect their kind from the threat of watered down genetics by constructing social and political barricades around their territories. It is this 2% that I fear and at once accept. It is human function to be subservient. We function like a virus or bee colony, in that, all our life’s toil (or not) is done for the sake of propagating the wealthy. These are the issues I’m concerned with. This is an emotional and intellectual duality that has plagued me since I first noticed that something wasn’t right. My heart tells me that we should fight and storm the institutions with rifles. Yet my brain reminds me that that has happened all too many times before and that the end result is never any different than the way it all started before. So rather than take a stand, or have an opinion, I do what I have always done… isolate myself, work alone, and reject institutions; yet I do know how to exploit them. My work is intended to be open ended and at the same time point at the audience and say “Your misery is your own fault, if your aren’t happy, than fucking change it!” My only concrete opinion is that things should always be talked about, never repressed and never censored.

Militant Documentary

"For those who call for a new militant documentary practice cognizant of both representation of politics and the politics of representation, a thorough awareness of what traditional documentary modes put in place is a prerequisite to any practice that attempts to go beyond it" (Solomon-Godeau), Who Is Speaking Thus?

Bored over Holiday

Must See!

http://www.sarahmaple.com/artpage.htm

classic

REMAIN CALM!

So the show is officially over! It went amazingly, and just want to thank everyone and anyone that helped make this happen, special props to Chris Lawrence, Hersh Singh, Joe Ovelman, and of course, Gabe Martinez.
Oh and just as a reminder, as the new year approaches, and the new world changes, for better or for worse, just.... Remain Calm!

Exit Strategy

More Collage

Just trying to work as fast as possible and as instinctually as possible on these. Hopefully they'll become more than just New Yorker cover illustrations.

Deadpan? Not so much

Photographer Unknown

Here's a twist on a Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone portrait I just did.

Cautiously Optimistic Leaning Towards Pessimistic

I'm feeling mixed emotions about what happened today, that is, Barrack Obama wining the presidency. I walked out of my studio at 1 am and was escorted home by the sounds of jubilant Obama fan blasting their car horns. I passed high fives and cheers amongst african-americans who didn't even know each-other. I even saw heard conversations between the static residents of West Philadelphia and the transient students of U Penn and Drexel; something that never happens. It was beautiful to see how meaningful this event was for the African American community. I overheard a girl crying with joy, and a security guard say that for the first time he was voting for someone and not against someone. What Obama has done is an obvious milestone in African-American, American, and 21st Century History.
I got home to find my living room and kitchen filled with the remnants of a fraternity-esque party conducted by my other college age roommates. Even the upper-middle class white people were happy to see a milestone of their own. For the first time they felt their vote count, like a child who has spent his whole life not getting any attention or being given any familial role has all of a sudden been asked to choose this year's family vacation. Not only that, but young people have begun to realize just how much of an impact what happens in DC affects them. Who knew that the collapse of an economy, the threat of war or the upset of a world order would actually have any bearing on my life?
Some other nice things happened today, like republicans voting outside the party line or the elderly and middle aged being in sync with the youth. Thats all well and fine.
I'm concerned though with a fundamental flaw that Americans (and perhaps humans in general) seem to inherent generation after generation. We are at once short-sighted and forgetful. Our perception of the world only exceeds a year or so in to the future and a year or two in to the past. We jump on big ideas which don't bode very well for the future. Industrialization is a great example. But what happened after the first cities were ransacked with ebola and children were losing their hands to giant mechanical monsters by the hour didn't teach us much, only, if you were going to keep up such a tribal existence, you were going to need more slaves aka, the poor.
It is this principle of humanity, the doubly lacking foresight and hindsight, that has us so worked up about Obama. He may ver well be the man for the job, but i've yet to see him action. Sure he may have tossed around a few votes in a couple senate meetings, but who hasn't these days? Although he was bred for greatness in halls covered with ivy vines, but then again, I can't remember the last president who wasn't. So how this different from anything we've seen before? Because he's black? That may be so, but he's also a man, not a God. We've gotten so caught up in this year-long mythological chronicle of the best warriors battling their way to the top wielding money for spears and slogans for flags that we've forgotten about the real powers; the cosmos.
I'm keeping one eyebrow cocked and an ear to the ground this year, lest the cosmos reign down their wrath on our new warrior-king.

Anarchy in the USA

Dirty Job

Two interesting Banksy-esque artists who work with the unnatural canvas that mankind has stretched over the world.

Party Games

"Party Games" isn't an act of hate or malevolence. Its about the choices made for the sake of winning the 2008 presidential campaign.




Party Games
Dartboard, Dart, Appropriated Photo
Matthew Thomas Cianfrani
2008

Bored Again

I was at once inspired by a photo of a friend's dad and bored. My grandfather was in the military, but I think he got out on the old "bad-heart" card...
p.s. I know this isnt very good, but if you squint your eyes it works.

Trauma

Let's talk about yesterday. Aside from a few structural errors, all went splendidly. Around 8:00 am I had finished the final details on the last of four dummies, designed to look like terrorists who were a little down on their luck. I started installing them in their destined locations (a sidewalk on
36th and walnut street) around 8:15; first with an oil drum I'd appropriated from behind an Indian restaurant. For the last month my studio has been smelling like samosas. While I was carrying these life size figures out on to the street, the construction workers from the building next door were shouting out things like, "hey, he works for me" and "get him back to work". After I placed the second figure down, a police officer from across the street called me over and asked me what was going on. His point, and he was right, is that they looked a little "suspicious". I gave him my ID and my cell phone, told him they needed to be up at least until my professor saw them. The officer contacted his Lieutenant, who showed up and was incredibly amicable, cooperative, and as open to the idea of Freedom of Speech that this nation so proudly boasts. He called his superior, and ensured me that everything would be fine, and that there should not be any serious issues.
So after the last piece was installed, I sit back, and let the day unfold. The amount of traffic on the sidewalk varied through out the day, but consistently had a onlookers responding to the pieces, from either across the street or through the portal that these forms created. There was generally a positive reaction the men, people walked away saying how "cool" they were, and wondering where they came from. A gang of MFA students came to inspect them thoroughly as if they were critiquing something in a Chelsea gallery, yet the gallery was really the street. People filled the man with the Dunkin Donuts coffee cup with coins and someone even slipped a dollar in there, as if to express their enjoyment or approval of the works. The American mindset of having to pay for something that causes you joy is so well ingrained that people felt compelled to pay without even being asked to. And what does it say about society when a privileged upper middle class art student with nothing at stake but his pride can compel people to give him money on the street without even intending to?
I think what shook me the most, were the people who didn't even acknowledge or engage the piece. Either they were too caught in their own fears of the urban setting, or they were completely oblivious to the pieces existence (maybe the alarming abundance of destitution in Philadelphia rendered them desensitized, or maybe their own needs consume 100% of their attention 100% of the time ). Either way, the point was truly made for me in those moments. Are we too afraid for our own selfish reasons to pursue change? Or are we not even aware that change needs to happen?
The day wore on, responses stayed positive, people kept stopping to take photos with their camera-phones. All seemed well and yet I was also asking myself, so what now? Well the universe responded in the form of motorcycle officer Pugliese (nice South Philly name to accompany a nice South Philly attitude). As I was coming back from a class, I noticed him snooping around, and questioning civilians who stopped to check out the piece. I blew it off, took some photos, and went inside. Passing through the hall on my way to my studio I noticed there were more cops gathering around. He must have called in backup. I found myself a nice perch in one of the architecture studios that looked over the street, and watched as Julie (the head of my department) diploma-sized with the officers. Right then Donna, Julie's assistant, called me to tell me that Julie was talking to the cops, and that I needed to go outside. I took a deep breathe and made my way outside.
Officer Pugliese was a short man, and seemed to have a McCain complex. He claimed a complaint had been filed against the piece, and that he had seen a woman get startled and cross the street. I won't go into the fact that people are spooked by homeless people everyday, but I am more concerned with the legitimacy of this "anonymous complaint" about a piece of work that seemed to truly offend no one but this power tripping biker cop. I told him to ask his superiors about the situation, but he refused and told me that a garbage truck was on its way to dispose of the work. I didn't see the point in fighting any longer, and I didn't see getting arrested being an important part of what I set out to do. It had a good run, and this ending seemed like an appropriate one.
So its the now the day after, the piece got some coverage in a news paper, that as always, got the facts all wrong, and the photo was pretty terrible too. I am grateful for the attention though, and I accomplished what I set out to in the first place; re-spark the life of overpassed issues.



*here's a film! Its long, and meant to be on a gallery wall along with the pieces themselves. I'm trying more and more these days to give away the process, and make my work more transparent....
**i ended up not using the dynamite in the public context, but they will be there in the gallery

BIG JOHN!

So I just came across this thanks to my roommate M Ro. I still can't grasp that this is real; its so well done, and over the top that it seems like a satire.....but its not!

Post Trauma

For about three weeks now, I've been working on an installation piece that deals with a some what provocative subject. The idea surfaced as a response to a resultant shift of interest in given topics of discourse thanks to a shift in media (media being the various "news" outlets) interests. We as a culture seem to be most interested in sensational events that capture our over saturated short attention spans with predictions, or at least insinuations, of apocalyptic doom. Issues are treated as a flavor of the month, and get passed over before they are resolved. China is the new Middle East, Cancer is the new AIDs, Georgia is the new Darfur is the new Tibet, Gay Rights is the new Immigrant Rights is the new Women Rights is the new Black Rights is the new Native American Rights, and Wall Street is the new National Security/ Iraq/ Afghanistan. Okay, so that is a gross generalization for explanation purposes, but let me present it this way;

Gay Equality (not resolved)
Immigrant Equality (not resolved)
Woman Equality (not resolved)
Black Equality (not resolved)
Economic Equality (not resolved)
Health Care Equality (not resolved)
China's Economic/ Military Threat (not resolved)
Russia's Economic/ Military Threat (not resolved)
Darfur (not resolved)
Israel/ Palestinian Equality (not resolved)
Korean War (turned cold, but not resolved)
Terrorism/ National Security/ America Having Enemies (not resolved)
Economy (not resolved)
AIDS (not resolved)
Cancer(not resolved)

All of these topics have been "front page" issues at one time or another, yet none of them have been truly settled, rather passed over for something more sensational and new.

I've chosen the topic of Wall Street and juxtaposed it with the issue of National Security because of how influential they were and are in prevalance in presidential election dialogue, and the their coverage in American media outlets.
Wall Street > National Security.
Why do we no longer see statistics of dead soldiers on the nightly news? And progress of government reform and "terrorist hunting" in Afghanistan. Whatever happened to the Shiite/Sunni conflict that had the fruition of Iraqi sovereignty paralyzed?
It was all replaced by the Sub prime Mortgage Crisis, the Short Selling tactics of Wall street, the fall of Lehman Brothers, the closing down of small town banks, etc...

This is the thinking that led me to "Post Trauma"



(not my photo)

I'm excited

Fear is becoming the backbone of my thesis.

Some ideas about an upcoming body of work... please comment and criticize

In a world where an abandoned bag warrants a bomb squad locking down a train station, a drop in the Dow Jones compelling me to take my life saving out of the bank and stuffing them in my mattress, a planet that is flooding, burning and suffocating to death, a and a shifting of military and political dominance, there is a sense of omnipresent doom that permeates all facets of my life. On the surface, this apocalyptic ethos can be contributed to the news and commercial media’s grip on my mind at all times. Yet these media based influences are the byproducts of something bigger at hand. News and commercials propaganda are tools of established institutions to generate revenue via the exploitation of a market. They simply supply a demand. The demand is psychological, and based on fear. Fear is the core of humanity as an entity, and has influenced our development as a species from day one.
I’d like to explore contemporary American “human fears” and trace them back from a given point. Since it is my belief that cosmic history is cyclical and repeated in varying formats, it is not important where I begin my exploration. Therefore I will start with the historical event that is most relevant to my own fear; 9/11. From there I will examine the other historical events that have led me to feel the way I do about American’s role in the world, as both individuals making personnel decisions, to larger scale government and corporate policies (that are in fact a result of our combined personnel decisions). To conclude this body of work, I will create an image that will presuppose the fruition of the most relevant American fear.
In terms of execution, I would like to work in a constructionist mode, building and photographing sets. The images will be aestheticized frozen moments of time that are, slightly abstracted in composition, yet very realistic.

My biggest point is to address the fact that human beings have always been and will always be in state of apocalyptic-fear, and that it is an inherent part of the human condition. By aestheticizing this fact, I will hopefully make the situation easier to address for an already uneasy audience.

Waiting for tape

I just made this whilst sitting in my studio waiting for the CVS to open so I can buy more plastic tape.

1st

An Empty post from M.T.