Artist & Author
Lyrics from the Sonic Youth song “Hallowe’en” by Kim Gordon
“What I Did/Do, On the Clock, Now/Then/Forever In the Eternal Return of Work”
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“What I Did/Do, On the Clock, Now/Then/Forever In the Eternal Return of Work”
Order This
“What I Did/Do, On the Clock, Now/Then/Forever In the Eternal Return of Work”
Order This
One direction MAAAM could take would be a series of performances, including sitting on the street with a cardboard sign (above); synthesizer busking at a BART train station; and roaming around with a sandwich board. All of these options would create varying levels of discomfort for me, and others, and I might not be the ideal person to execute them. (A healthy white hetero male basically panhandling to solve his art problem?) They could also represent an admission of the project's failure by not finding a compelling argument for someone donating (other than "Why not? $1 is such a small sum."). For this reason, executing them would merely be skirting the issue. This is where an idea for reconfiguring MAAAM came in: instead of trying to collect a million dollars for me, I would make another artist a millionaire with the proceeds. The original project arguably becomes something entirely different, and leeches it of much of its substance. Once the project's focus (though still not the goal) becomes generosity, it once again casts the recipient artist as a helpless, inept victim without effective personal agency. And as the agent of generosity, it puts me on the other side of the same old coin.
"Graffiti" (2010) was issue #8 of Clearinghouse Publishers and was accompanied by a letter that stated (in part): "This issue requires two tools for its use: an Xacto knife and a can of beige spray paint. ‘Graffiti’ is the tag of Clearinghouse Publishers and its affiliates, who have moved beyond self-expression and self-promotion. Those who perform and document the use of this issue will continue to receive future issues, one for each tag applied."
Collection of Obi Kaufmann. Blaise Pascal: "283. The six ages, the six fathers of the six ages, the six wonders at the beginning of the six ages, the six orients at the beginning of the six ages."
Blaise Pascal: "423. The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing…"
Blaise Pascal: "232/233/234. We can understand nothing of God’s works unless we accept the principle that he wished to blind some and enlighten others. Jesus does not deny he is from Nazareth, nor that he is Joseph’s son, so as to leave the wicked in their blindness. God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will. Humble their pride."
Blaise Pascal: "412. Men are so inevitably mad that not to be mad would be to give a mad twist to madness."
Blaise Pascal: "202. Be comforted; it is not from yourself that you must expect it, but on the contrary you must expect it by expecting nothing from yourself."
Blaise Pascal: "185. Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them."
Blaise Pascal: "248. Figures. The prophets prophesied in figures, like a girdle, beard, burned hair, etc."
Blaise Pascal: "41. How many kingdoms know nothing of us!"
Blaise Pascal: "108. What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial."
30. We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.
Blaise Pascal: "56. We are so unhappy that we can only enjoy something which we should be annoyed to see go wrong, and that can and does happen constantly to thousands of things. Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when things go badly would have found the point. It is perpetual motion."
Blaise Pascal: "61. Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is."
Blaise Pascal: "284. The only religion which is against nature, against common sense and against our pleasures is the only one which has always existed. 425. The only knowledge which is contrary alike to common sense and human nature is the only one always to have existed among men."
Blaise Pascal: "230. Everything that is incomprehensible does not cease to exist."
Blaise Pascal: "156. Pity the atheists who seek, for are they not unhappy enough? Inveigh against those who boast about it."
Blaise Pascal: "73. What causes inconstancy is the realization that present pleasures are false, together with the failure to realize that absent pleasures are vain."
Blaise Pascal: 418. The Wager. I: Unity added to infinity does not increase it at all. II: There is not so great a disproportion between our justice and God’s as between unity and infinity. III: We know the existence of the infinite without knowing its nature, because it too has extension, but unlike us no limits. IV: If there be a god, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, being indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us. We are therefore incapable of knowing what he is or whether he is. V: …let us say: “Either God is or he is not.” But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong. VI: Yes, but you must wager."
Blaise Pascal: "113. Thinking reed. It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it."
Blaise Pascal: "43. A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us."
Blaise Pascal: "130. If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him until he understands that he is a monster that passes all human understanding."
Blaise Pascal: "201. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread."
Blaise Pascal: "40. How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals!"
Blaise Pascal: "38. Too much and too little wine. Do not give him any, he cannot find the truth. Give him too much: the same thing."
Blaise Pascal: "98. How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping."
Blaise Pascal: "283. The six ages, the six fathers of the six ages, the six wonders at the beginning of the six ages, the six orients at the beginning of the six ages."
Blaise Pascal: "283. The six ages, the six fathers of the six ages, the six wonders at the beginning of the six ages, the six orients at the beginning of the six ages."
Blaise Pascal: "136. Diversion. Sometimes, when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and the troubles which they face at Court, or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and passions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on, I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."
Blaise Pascal: "115. Immateriality of the Soul. When the philosophers have subdued their passions, what material substance has managed to achieve this?"
Blaise Pascal: "102. Either Jews or Christians must be wicked."
Blaise Pascal: "169. I should not be Christian but for the miracles, says St. Augustine."
Blaise Pascal: "165. The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is done forever."
Blaise Pascal: "283. The six ages, the six fathers of the six ages, the six wonders at the beginning of the six ages, the six orients at the beginning of the six ages."
Blaise Pascal: "70. If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it."
Blaise Pascal: "318. Apparent discrepancies of the Gospels."
Blaise Pascal: "199. Disproportion of Man. For, after all, what is man in nature? A nothing compared to the infinite, a whole compared to the infinite, a middle point between all and nothing, infinitely remote from an understanding of the extremes; the end of all things and their principles are unattainably hidden from him in impenetrable secrecy. Equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."
Examples of “$2 Art” (2009-2010), which was the third phase of “Make an Artist a Millionaire”.
