Jeremy Beaudry
Projects, Research & Texts

Knit and Spin

Posted on January 30th, 2006 in of interest and

Meredith has posted a spot-on critique of leisure-class craftwork on her blog. A recent New York Times article featuring these nouveau spinsters seems to have gotten her a bit riled up–as she is apt to be, and for good reason. Here she weaves together (sorry) issues of gender, labor, DIY, privilege, and late-capital embroiled in post-industrial textile production.

Mind in Matter at OPENSOURCE Art

Posted on November 17th, 2005 in of interest and

Many kudos go out to my good friends at OPENSOURCE in Champaign, IL on the success of their most recent project / exhibition: Mind in Matter.

Check out some photos of the show as well as a great feature article in one of Champaign’s alternative weekly papers.

Mama MoMA

Posted on November 28th, 2004 in of interest and

In a stroll around the blogosphere I came upon a well-formed opinion about why the MoMA’s inflated admission fees aren’t that big of a deal. The author notes that, 1) there are actually many affordable membership opportunities for seniors, artists, students, and those living outside the NYC metro area which benefit anyone who might visit the museum more than 3-4 times a year, 2) Friday afternoons are still free from 4 – 8pm, and 3) museums and serious musuem goers would be better served by weeding out those casual visitors merely in search of something to do to kill an afternoon (shopping mall or museum). Of course, the last point is certainly problematic. Should not the wonder, the transformative power of those art objects be available to all? Maybe. But this is the MoMA–the Modern Art Institution, the Center. Has modern art ever really been accessible to all? Not much is free anymore–almost everything has some degree of opportunity cost attached to it. The price of a night out, two tickets to the movies, an afternoon at the art museum. You make a choice.

On a related note, I feel stirring some ideas for writing about establishment Modernism–its attempt to purge real difference, its formal purity, its whiteness, its insidious appeal to me, personally–instigated by the new MoMA building and a recent documentary about Los Angeles. Modernism seems to present a myth of the void as systemic order as plenitude, and by “myth” I’m thinking “mythic story.” Modernism is complicated and multi-faceted and it has been debunked countless times, but it’s still so damn seductive (to designers, architects, artists). But it’s still so false in so many ways.

Searching for Baudelaire…

Posted on October 10th, 2004 in of interest and

I came across this very fine website devoted to the work of the poet: fleursdumal.org. For anyone interested in Baudelaire, poetry, and language in general, this site offers the original French poems contained in Les Fleurs du Mal as well as several subsequent English translations. Another very cool feature of the site is a comprehensive search function which allows you to easily located specific poems, key words, motifs, etc. This evening, I’m particularly fond of La Fontaine de Sang (The Fountain of Blood).

It seems to me at times my blood flows out in waves
Like a fountain that gushes in rhythmical sobs.
I hear it clearly, escaping with long murmurs,
But I feel my body in vain to find the wound.

Across the city, as in a tournament field,
It courses, making islands of the paving stones,
Satisfying the thirst of every creature
And turning the color of all nature to red.

I have often asked insidious wines
To lull to sleep for a day my wasting terror;
Wine makes the eye sharper, the ear more sensitive!

I have sought in love a forgetful sleep;
But love is to me only a bed of needles
Made to slake the thirst of those cruel prostitutes!

— from William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Sub-urbanism and the Art of Memory

Posted on September 21st, 2004 in of interest and

Sub-urbanism and the Art of Memory by Sebastien Marot weaves together four distinct threads—Frances Yates’ research into the ancient art of memory, Freud’s theorizing about the city, Peter Smithson’s writing and art, and a wonderful work of landscape architecture by Georges Descombes—in order to flesh out at strategy of design which he has termed Sub-urbanism. Marot lists four attitudes that characterize this approach:

an active regard for the memory of the site; a vision of site and design as processes rather than products; an in-depth rather than merely planar reading of open spaces; and a conception of site and design as fields of relations rather than as arrangements of objects.

Given that my thesis work and current interests follow a similar trajectory, I must recommend Marot’s book, especially to those of us speculating upon possible interventions into the vastness of the ‘burbs.