Ilja Karilampi
16 Jan - 23 Feb 2014
ILJA KARILAMPI
Big Bird
16 January - 23 February 2014
I will always admire an artist who turns into a musician; but will never forgive a musician who turns into an artist. I am not afraid of sounding trenchant writing that music owns directness, and can be gentle and can be grandiose, and never conceals arrogance; while art is always arrogant, in the pretense of intellectually commenting on the visual environment, offering no answers, no laughs, but only the conceit of being able to walk in the streets, head held high, due to a certain ambition leading one's thoughts and moves — don't you feel pitiful walking in the street with your head held high? Chasing godliness, which will never hit you 'cause you are living at the periphery of things? I watch my friend Jacopo while I write: He's buttering toasted bread and — Jesus Christ, this guy is a mess — using so much cutlery, and dishes, and I do not have a dishwasher, and so I feel allowed to live among dirty dishes. Is this a lifestyle? Jacopo and I, and a guy named Jim, are putting up some parties, and are calling them PROGRESSO, 'cause at the moment our streets are occupied by protesters waving pitchforks, and Jacopo and I, and Jim, want to seize the arty people, and make them sweat, and exhaust them like long-distance runners at the finish line. Ilja is designing logos for PROGRESSO; and the reason why I had commissioned them to him is not just the fact that he's an outrageous graphic designer, but the memory that when I smashed the window of that kebab shop, unaccountably I haven't been hurt, but Ilja's leg started bleeding... Life at the periphery of things should hurt. And yet one persists in pursuing a side view; mixing up circles with spirals; no clue of how to draw a diagram out of your business. “What made you happy in the past that can no longer make you happy?” Jacopo reads on the screen and asks; artpop, I say. “What makes you happy now that you are afraid will not make you happy in the future?” Lento-violento, oh yeah, that clear-cut blend of gentleness and grandioseness. PROGRESSO plays lento-violento; early 00s, peripheral and anti-diagrammatic sound. Is lento-violento the avant-garde? Certainly it's the melancholia due to not inhabiting any evident position, the incapability of shaping consensus, of being a God. “What up Yeezus?” I've just notified that I haven't been awarded an art-writing prize. My essay was discussing the incapability of my artists friends of shaping consensus around their art; and I understand the fact that my essay was dismissed in terms of being incapable myself of shaping consensus around my art writing about my friends' art... One could summon empathy, a communion of failures — or just jerk off. “Jarek! Bring some coke and some joints! We're gonna work all night! I'm gonna smoke joints, you can do coke!” I am working all day, and am working all night: PROGRESSO is progressing; chasing deities; establishing a pivot. Does not need pitchforks. Does not even need the avant-garde. Jarek knocks at the door. Jacopo is washing dishes. Jim, you mofo, are you still sleeping? “What up Yeezus?” Ilja, my dear, where the fuck are the logos?
Michele D’Aurizio
Big Bird
16 January - 23 February 2014
I will always admire an artist who turns into a musician; but will never forgive a musician who turns into an artist. I am not afraid of sounding trenchant writing that music owns directness, and can be gentle and can be grandiose, and never conceals arrogance; while art is always arrogant, in the pretense of intellectually commenting on the visual environment, offering no answers, no laughs, but only the conceit of being able to walk in the streets, head held high, due to a certain ambition leading one's thoughts and moves — don't you feel pitiful walking in the street with your head held high? Chasing godliness, which will never hit you 'cause you are living at the periphery of things? I watch my friend Jacopo while I write: He's buttering toasted bread and — Jesus Christ, this guy is a mess — using so much cutlery, and dishes, and I do not have a dishwasher, and so I feel allowed to live among dirty dishes. Is this a lifestyle? Jacopo and I, and a guy named Jim, are putting up some parties, and are calling them PROGRESSO, 'cause at the moment our streets are occupied by protesters waving pitchforks, and Jacopo and I, and Jim, want to seize the arty people, and make them sweat, and exhaust them like long-distance runners at the finish line. Ilja is designing logos for PROGRESSO; and the reason why I had commissioned them to him is not just the fact that he's an outrageous graphic designer, but the memory that when I smashed the window of that kebab shop, unaccountably I haven't been hurt, but Ilja's leg started bleeding... Life at the periphery of things should hurt. And yet one persists in pursuing a side view; mixing up circles with spirals; no clue of how to draw a diagram out of your business. “What made you happy in the past that can no longer make you happy?” Jacopo reads on the screen and asks; artpop, I say. “What makes you happy now that you are afraid will not make you happy in the future?” Lento-violento, oh yeah, that clear-cut blend of gentleness and grandioseness. PROGRESSO plays lento-violento; early 00s, peripheral and anti-diagrammatic sound. Is lento-violento the avant-garde? Certainly it's the melancholia due to not inhabiting any evident position, the incapability of shaping consensus, of being a God. “What up Yeezus?” I've just notified that I haven't been awarded an art-writing prize. My essay was discussing the incapability of my artists friends of shaping consensus around their art; and I understand the fact that my essay was dismissed in terms of being incapable myself of shaping consensus around my art writing about my friends' art... One could summon empathy, a communion of failures — or just jerk off. “Jarek! Bring some coke and some joints! We're gonna work all night! I'm gonna smoke joints, you can do coke!” I am working all day, and am working all night: PROGRESSO is progressing; chasing deities; establishing a pivot. Does not need pitchforks. Does not even need the avant-garde. Jarek knocks at the door. Jacopo is washing dishes. Jim, you mofo, are you still sleeping? “What up Yeezus?” Ilja, my dear, where the fuck are the logos?
Michele D’Aurizio