…it flows on & on & on & on. The work is continuous. The studio is always (a)live: a reflection, perhaps a mirror of the non-stop nature of the Mediascape, that switched on electrical current circulating through the multitude of devices & network of thing of things: everything connected, wired, coupled to our nervous system so that we carefully & strategically avoid missing ANYthing. The Broadcast Never Stops.
And yes, I have found a way, a reason, perhaps even a mission!, to engage with the outgoing transmission of the space in my everyday studio work_FLOW. I find it soothing (believe it or not), even contemplative, to keep the cameras rolling. Instead of only *Watching*, like Chauncey Gardener in Jerzy Kosiński’s Being There, who pathetically could only live his life vicariously through the continuous glare of the tv image, I prefer to reverse my relationship to the screen and experience the broadcast in the opposite direction.
What is the point of it all? (To borrow from the title of Charles Krauthammer’s new book.) Like Krauthammer, who attempted to cut through the noise in his political commentary (whether you agree with his Fox News bias or not), I too have staged my studio life as an open source work-medium to digest, dissect, transmit, and in effect cut through, the 24/7 MEDIA TORRENT by embedding myself deep within its incessance: that is, to be inseparable from the incessant nature of today’s relentless mediation and fixation on the screen.
I refer to this methodology (if you want to call it that) as the performance of critique through ingestion (and I add to that idea, regurgitation). For how can anyone understand the phenomena of their study without direct, lived experience? Like Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and Aldus Huxley, who among others plunged headfirst into the remote reaches of the imaginary otherworld via drug-induced experimentation in order to understand the inner workings of their own personal mindspace.
And so, with cameras rolling, I carry out my studio actions, whether I am present or not. In fact, since I am physically situated more outside than inside the studio, the broadcast continues on & on just fine without me. As such, it never stops. I would go so far as to say the broadcast doesn’t really require me: it is the studio, the mis-en-scene of artistic experimentation, which is a truly mind-expanding environment, where my notebook sits wide open, peacefully, ready and waiting for the next scratchings that signal whatever it is I have to say at any given moment in time.
So who cares whether or not the transmission is alive? I do, so long as The Broadcast Never Stops.