DIY Counter Culture Lecture / Waking Life Observations

-A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness
-Comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market
-To interrupt the continuum of everyday experience and all the normal expectations that go with it
-Doubt is an exam for our vitality
etc.

///Todays Group Crit///

Have bike will cycle - Personal Revolution - Prolonging adolecence - Exploring the city late at night - Taking left turns - etc

Art In The Making Talks Series

///PARTY WOUNDS/// (an update in C minor..thats the depressed/uplifting chord right?)

(insert disclaimer justifying ambiguous and autodiographical nature of the following content as a means of therapy for the author - fuck diary vs blog politics :) )

Recently life has shown me something I haven't seen before and I've realised just how the combination of 'growing up' and overthinking the concept of 'eternity' can really fuck with ones head. I didn't know it was possible to feel certain ways. I always thought my blind idealist optimism made me immune to such things. What has felt like the worlds longest, scaggiest comedown has also been a time of enormous education for me... Mother fucking, goat raping, fuck witting, jack the raper, get out of my head existenial personal dilemma!!! Anyway...where was I...

///ROLO TOMASSI///


w/ Eva Spence and rest of the Rollo Tomassi outside Auntie Annies Befast

A week long Irish tour with Rolo Tomassi and a week long Scottish tour on our (We Come In Pieces) own has been amazing. Being in a touring DIY 'band' is a really privaledged position to be in. Its whole culture is like a bunch of people all united by a disregard for 'getting real' e.g. Getting a mortgage or even growing up. Belfast and Scottish people are lovely and helpful and we even got an interview with BBC radio Northern Ireland :)

///SCOTLAND///


above:Trying to hide the fact I am holding McDonalds in Edinborough/Middle Earth
below:Coastline of Scotland on the way to Glasgow

Been trying to appreciate it as much as possible, and even saw some feint glimmers of sheer happyness and security. But it has been rediculously hard to shake certain things going on in my head. Now if that bleak white elephant in the attic of my skull would gladly fuck off, I could get on with things.

...and yes 'Opium' is the biggest dive bar in Scotland.

///A PRIORI 2///

In other news I am fin-a-fucking-ly putting together, the second compilation of my zine 'a priori'. Expect some art, some interviews (ASIWYFA and possibly a very special Guest- wink wink nudge nudge), some existential introspective moaning (assuming I haven't loosened the knots in my head by then) and loadsa other shtuff... Till then, Adios!



Oh and True Grit is great.
...now where did I put that Zanex.

DIY MANIFESTO (1st DRAFT)

Manifesto of DIY counter culture as relevant to the artist/musician Shane Harrington.

Background of DIY counter culture.

DIY is a contemporary countercultural movement whose roots can be traced back to the Dadaist, Situationist and Punk movements. DIY can be practiced, both in a wider community and politics based sense, as well as on a personal level as a means of bypassing existing dominant ideologies within society. DIY has been facilitated by the advent of creative technology (e.g. editing and recording software, video camera and digital communication) becoming more widely available to the general public. As a result the means of distribution has been returned to the worker or creative.

What DIY is for the artist/musician Shane Harrington.

DIY is non-prescriptive by its very nature. As a result any attempt to construct a DIY manifesto might be viewed as paradoxical. However, this manifesto caters solely to my views and what DIY means to me. This, in itself may be viewed as an act of DIY.

1. DIY is a clever escape mechanism, social parachute and common sense injection that should be administered when there is a waft of oppression in the air.
2. DIY doesn’t think outside the box. The box isn’t an issue for DIY.
3. Do-It-Yourself.
4. ‘Don’t waste time doing things you hate.’
5. I think therefore I think I am: nothing is a given.
6. Fuck Health and Safety. The future is a concept we use to avoid being alive today.
7. DIY is trying to become lucid within the dream.
8. DIY is not a set of clothes.
9. DIY would like to associate itself with such ventures as ‘non-prescriptive suggestion’, ‘attempting to live in the moment’ and ‘the pursuit of a value system which places direct experience over money and societal responsibility e.g. getting a mortgage, owning a television etc.’
10. No one should feel obligated to jump on the DIY bandwagon. DIY is not Jesus.
11. DIY acknowledges Robert M. Pirsig’s theory of the Metaphysics of Quality. ‘For every fact there is infinity of hypotheses.’
12. DIY acknowledges eastern philosophy and ‘letting go’ just as it does John N. Greys theory of the illusion of progress i.e. ‘No political system will deliver man from that which binds him.’
13. DIY is a self-referential analytical framework situated in the determinist aesthetic criteria. This is present within the domain centralizing the permutative paradigm shifts in social interstice via epistemological praxis… No wait, its not.
14. So many definitions runs the risk of making the term do-it-yourself arbitrary.
15. Write-Your-Own-Manifesto

Artist Statement

Utilising the tools and philosophy of DIY, my work is a personal reaction to the world around me. Images, thoughts and emotions stemming from subjects such as music, peer community and relationships manifest themselves in the medium of art.

Having established my own aesthetic I work with a wide range of media including drawing, 3d work and video.

Alan vs. Giraffe

"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time or any length of time you wanted to have, and you would naturaly as you began on this adventure of dreams you would fulfil all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive and after serveral nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say 'wow that was pretty great'. Now let's have a dream which isn't under control where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would do that and come out of that and say 'wow that was a close shave wasn't it' and then you would get more and more adventureous and you would make further and further gambles as to what your dream, and finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usSHBgeE_ks