Top 30, 30 under 30, Top 100 most influential
Fuck, Im 30. I didn’t make many of the lists, I can’t say that I expected to make any of the lists. Yet another year goes past where I see these awards come out and feign happiness for the people I “know of” or people who the people I know know whom made these lists. Im not here downplaying Nan Goldin making no. 1 of the top 100 on ArtReview, her work with PAIN no doubt deserves it, I just kind of also want to vomit at the constant influx of studio portraits. Hot artist, clothes that make no sense for the studio (I get it, its a staged photo), dilapidated chair, blank stare, (don’t go look through my Instagram and dox me for doing the same, I obvs would never). Put a table full of half squeezed tubes of paint on it, maybe a selectively open book, some pastels strewn across the floor *starts ascending*.
I’ve really been bumming people out when I mention that Im reading Dave Cullen’s book Columbine. It is beautifully and centrically written, withholding no detail, no matter how small nor gruesome. It is also upsetting to read the now defunct tense of the tragedy, the book was published in 2009, retelling the story of what was once one of the most gruesome and unbelievable acts of terroristic domestic violence in the modern US, with the knowledge of what is yet to come. Cullen wrote another book, which I am hesitant to read, about the Parkland shooting. “I swore I would never go back,” Cullen says in the intro to Parkland, in reference to his hesitancy to return to such a subject after the PTSD he went through post Columbine release. That was only in the sample of the book, also it was where I rethought my ability to take in another tragedy of an anthology (god its gross to think of a series of tellings of school shootings as an anthology).
Not that there is much escape from tragedy at the moment. There is a genocidal massacre of currently tens of thousands of innocent people happening, probably soon to unfortunately be hundreds of thousands, hidden under the guise of a “right to defend themselves”. Is an information war the next chapter in the evolution of war practices. I remember as a child and teen obsessed with the stories around WWII and WWI, I would read whatever I could on war, of any sort. I remember being confused learning of terms like guerrilla warfare, or trench warfare, being newer more widely adopted forms of battle, shifting from more “traditional” forms of warfare before. Learning about trench warfare I would think back to images and stories of the American Revolution or the Civil War, how dumb people were to stand in a line, facing another army, often even announcing their different stages of attack, siege, or defense with song and drum. Of course it is not as if this evolution happened over night, but we tend to be taught things in this cliff-noted version of events by the centuries and decades. Now we see this information war playing out every day on every possible platform, this sort of he said she said back and forth of blame, cause and effect. And often with an information war, or a war of words if we are going to boil it down to it’s core, the loudest voice comes out on top. However one voice that has had it’s internet, electricity, water, food, health, medicine, safe passage, connection to the outside world, sense of peace and safety (if there ever was one) cut off. It would be foolish to call any of this an even playing field.
It’s confusing and upsetting and enraging to live through the next evolution of warfare, a tactic that seeks to spread hate and misinformation faster than our ability to disprove it, just as it was difficult for previous generations to live through previous versions of the same. It is hard not to be reactionary, it is difficult not to jump to conclusions, and it is difficult not to generalize my feelings. It’s also difficult to feel like my voice matters. But I am reading and learning and educating myself however I can. (that sentence sounds like it was pulled from a YouTube blogger apology script lol, has David Dobrik made a public comment on Israel/Palestine?). Some recommendations below on topics and readings which I have enjoyed, if anyone has gotten this far in reading this post.
Fariha Roisin’s Substack, How to Cure a Ghost
In the meantime, I am occupying my brain by looking through the artists of the Top Whatever lists, trying to justify an uneven playing field by scouring for any nepo-baby, grew up rich, brown nosing hints I can find and privately doxing them in my mind. I will also continue to ride the subway to work with the Columbine book pressed firmly down to my thighs, craning my tech-neck down too avoid some stranger on the train seeing the bold black word COLUMBINE on the cover and think something weird of me. Because obviously the worst thing someone could face on the train is me reading a book about school shooters.