Studio Critical interview and David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace on Charlie Rose, 1997.

I know I don't write posts anymore. And I find it gross to use this only as a tool to promote my own doings. As if I were the only one. But I really liked doing an interview for Studio Critical. Check it out here.

On another subject: I've been thinking about self-consciousness. There's a good review of David Foster Wallace's newly released non-fiction writings in the current issue of BookForum. The gist is  how he struggled with the fact that writing is something you do to gain approval from someone, some body. You pose with someone looking in mind. The antidote is impulse - something like tennis, where you can't really think, you do - or acting violently, in order to beat out the urge to please. I summarize. And maybe incorrectly.

This got me thinking about why there's a whole mass of artists in Brooklyn doing naive-like abstraction and narratives. I think it's a way to present yourself as un-self-conscious. It shows you can be free of deliberate-ness. As if you were outside the ugly side of the art world.

I use this escape valve myself. But as of right now, I'm aware of it.