View allAll Photos Tagged existential
Oh my God!!! (An existential moment).
It looks isolated here, but it is actually mid-morning and there were cabins and houses all over the place. About a dozen people drove by and ignored me. lol
I am sorry that I did not think to take a picture of myself in the scene- I guess I have not matured that much.
I really wanted to buy the cat. The look of ennui on its face is perfect. Like it's wondering where it all went wrong and if it was a bad decision to settle down with Weird Pink Dog Type Thing.
Early 21st century angst is troubling Olly's consciousness. Deep in his Trauffaut phase, Olly contemplates sparse minimalism and his own debilitating self-awareness of rejection. What is good in the world? Rawhide? A soft bed? Cat shit on a city sidewalk? Nothing, nothing.
Thank you, Liz! Our beautiful cranes came finally -- truly snail mail. sometimes it takes a little longer for things to get to certain parts of Montana. I love them both. it was difficult to tell which one was for me and which was Tim's -- but we settled on the orange for me, the red for Tim.
Here, my crane is contemplating the idea of Peace ... contemplating how peace might have manifested in it's own life, now that it has landed in Montana ... in the Rocky Mountains, where snow muffles loud jarring sounds, even in March .... contemplating how peace might show up in the near future, now that it has landed right smack dab in the middle of the migratory flyway - amidst snow geese, sandhill cranes, raptors and songbirds -- a huge highway of song, lust, deep color and wide, ribbon-like peace.
She -- this orange creature of angles and flexibility -- believes in peace. Believes peace is possible. Very possible. Even likely. Maybe that makes her an idealist. Maybe that makes her a dreamer. She has heard of dreams coming true ...
This series of paper crane images are for Liz's (Eshu's) amazing Paper Crane Project. Please check it out -- it's going to be something even more wonderful as more and more people receive their cranes, made by Liz, and share what their cranes are doing once out of the package!
IT EQUALS LIGHT AND THE UNKNOWN
**
a solo exhibition of video works by *Stephanie Dodes*
March 4th/ 8PM opening reception
Bertolt Brecht once said famously, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality,
but a hammer with which to shape it.” In *It Equals Light and the Unknown*,
Stephanie Dodes refracts the world through dream logic and poetic imagery,
resulting in two narratives that are as shattered as they are prismatic.
Defying binaries, her multi-channel video installations instead explore the
interstices of the inner and outer life, and how they inform each other. In
other words, they are both the mirror and the hammer.
Dodes presents two speculative fictions in this exhibition, the expansive
three-channel projection *Everything for Nothing *and the claustrophobic
nine-channel *Veiled Shadows. *Both are staged in a hyper-stylized
“non-space”, hearkening to Barney and Jodorowsky. However, her surreal
worlds are populated almost solely with female archetypes and their
existential angst, manifested through recurring and referential sense
memories and gestures. A bourgeois coolness exists alongside almost
retro-earnest delivery, some of the many uneasy bedfellows that characterize
her work. A catalog with drawings, poetry, and writings that flesh out the
universes of *It Equals Light and the Unknown* will be available for
purchase at the gallery.
Puscifer
at The Greek Theatre
Los Angeles, CA
June 12, 2022
All photos © Kaley Nelson Photography - www.KaleyNelson.com
When I am in a bad mood, all I see is crap... what is this??
How could that ever be even remotely funny?
Or is it all in my head? ;p
East 4th and Lafayette (old Tower Records building)
existential paranoid question of the day: is he taking a picture of someone taking a picture of me???
Lifehacker had a post commenting on the minimalist lifestyle. The post suggested that such a life, avoiding owning too many physical things had advantages, but shouldn’t be oversold. Many responses ensued that raised existential questions aplenty. One post was this one:
I live in the real world.
In the real world, I am judged to a certain extent by my possessions.
What I have is a reflection of how well I’ve done. My ability to have nice things is concrete proof that I am a person of some means.
I live in the real world.
Women judge me to a certain extent by what I have to determine if I can be a good provider. They may not admit it to me. They may not admit it to themselves.
I live in the real world.
My peers judge me to a certain extent by the manner in which I present myself. My ability to have nice things in varied formats allows me to present myself in a manner that suits the occasion. My ability to do this conveys the message that I have some degree of taste and that my opinion should be respected.
I live in the real world.
While I may like minimalism or whatever “zen”-type adjective I choose to use, I also know that as soon as I start trying to evangelize about minimalism, I immediately put myself in a certain category and marginalize my ability to persuade.
The response seems like a suggestion that life’s purpose was established by evolution as:
survive and procreate.
At least that’s what I read into it. Each paragraph basically says have more stuff because that will:
impress women (allowing you to reproduce);
make your opinions more respected (give you power, ensure your
survival);
impress peers including those who can give you the opportunity to
acquire opportunities to acquire still more stuff; and
in general to follow an imperative of competition promote your own
success and to know that you have “been successful”.
Owning and acquiring things usually does do all these things. Realistically that’s true, and hence the chorus of “I live in the real world”. The responses bottom line seems to be: “he who dies with the most toys wins”. I find this sentiment (that I think is pretty common), kind of sad and depressing, and I hope it’s not all there is.
Aren’t we at the point of being self aware enough to think we have purposes other than just success in the sense that living long enough to pass our genes along defined it. Aren’t we aware that we are part of a larger whole? I think God gives this awareness. I’d like to hope that my life and existence will have ultimately contributed some things that will make the world better for others better in some way.
Bill Gate and Warren Buffet with their philanthropic activity I think realize this. They don’t want their legacies to be just a bunch of stuff they accumulated for themselves, and none of which likely will prevent their dying like the rest of us. Most of us won’t have the opportunity to have such a potential positive impact, I certainly won’t.
I hope that things I’ve acquired or produced may in a very few cases be of use to people I’ve never met. Things that I’ve accumulated but given away. Photos or writing that can be copied for other may stimulate an interesting thought or make someone’s day a little brighter. That part of why I’ve been putting a lot of stuff on the web of late hoping something useful for others will survive me.
In any case, case I hope their a better answer to the “why do we exist?” question than to accumulate stuff to:
survive and procreate.
Also found here at my blog.
One of my existential walks through White Clay Creek State Park in Delaware. A gloomy, overcast, December day. Wet rotting leaves cushioning my steps, surrounded by moss and fungus.
Walking on foot brings you down to the very stark, naked core of existence. We travel too much in airplanes and cars. It’s an existential quality that we are losing. It’s almost like a credo of religion that we should walk.
There is, of course, something inherently romantic—if not heroic—about the extreme solitary explorer enveloped by nature. The very image of Herzog on foot recalls the iconic 19th-century paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, especially his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with its lone figure staring out at the wide vista above the clouds.
'Truth itself wanders through the forests,' Herzog writes near the end. Yet here he embroiders his memories for effect: The vast swath of geography between Munich and Paris is littered with industrial towns and cities.
Once he comes out on the other end, traversing the deforested Champs-Élysées (“We were close to what they call the breath of danger”), Herzog emerges victorious.
― Of Walking in Ice: (Munich-Paris, 23 November–14 December 1974)
by Werner Herzog