An evolution of Friday rantings to art

I loved my birthday, and more so the people who made it really special. Thanks for the cards, especially. Every year I come back, flip through my diaries and realize the extent of change I am undergoing as a teenage girl, and with it, growing pains. I realize this birthday that I really want to be someone I can live with. This birthday had many childhood themes and it is fitting that reconciliation is taking place (my polar identities) Practical and thrifty me would never get items like Precious Thoughts Porcelain figurines and Where the Wild Things Are (Hardcover!), but it just shows that you need loved ones around you to make you irrationally happy.

I have actually settled into a comfortable pace for the term and there are things that make me happy, mainly:
Breaks where we hang out at the usual tables and do work in comfortable silences
Debate: Not debating but the fact that there are so many people I can relate to (and to think I planned on quitting). I know I wouldn't fit in anywhere else.
The grinning Totoro that greets me when I return home

Sure, there are things I may not like too much but they have been there all the while so I guess they're just side irritations I got to tolerate and sidestep.
Mainly, I think it's sad that the Victorian culture clashes head-on with our motto. It's sad that projects like 10 Journals have so much potential to be insightful but people deface the journals with rantings and vandalism. Such projects rest on the assumption of depth, and time again, the student population keeps proving the assumption wrong.

I have been accused of being elitist, I admit. Or know-it-all by Yunita. I vehemently object to the latter, but to no avail. I shouldn't be elitist I know, will try to work on that.
Ha, I was not a procrastinator- I went to the Cai Guo Qiang exhibition!

Head on
Cai Guo Qiang

"Head On is created by Cai Guo –Qiang for his solo exhibition of the same name at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. Although the Berlin Wall is long gone, and the former East Germany and West Germany have reunified, there remain deep and intractable historical issues between the two sides. The 99 life-sized wolves are leaping en masse towards an unseen wall, with those at the front falling from striking the wall while those bringing up the rear continuing surging forward, undeterred. Seen from afar, the leaping wolf pack forms an arc full of force and power, their fierce courage and spirit of warrior camaraderie seemingly serving as a reminder to people: humanity is easily blinded by a kind of collective mentality and action, and is destined to repeat such error to an almost unbelievable degree. The crux of this installation lies just before the glass wall, as the artist reminds people: invisible walls are the hardest to dismantle. The second and third parts of this colossal installation - Illusion II and Vortex - will also be exhibited."
-National Museum of Singapore

And to animal lovers out there, don't worry the wolves are NOT stuffed thorugh taxidermy, but rather, made of gauze resin and painted sheepskins, not much better I admit. (This strangely reminds me of Disgrace) The interesting thing is that this is the first time it is exhibited in a black room. It travelled to Guggenheim (even the wolves got to see the Guggenheim hrmph) and I heard the exhibition was fantastic as the wolves circled with the famous spiral structure (Frank Gehry), utilizing the setting.
Here:

With so much effort being put into the project, I can't help but be in awe. Evidently, he had assistants (and even then they still took about half-a-year to complete the project), but still...juxtapose this against Damien Hirst who conceives the idea and leaves the work to his assistants. Art can't just be the idea, even though that component requires time and a fair bit of intelligence. The messages conveyed from Head On an What Goes Up Must Come Down may both be fairly complex but I can't help but get a more sincere feel from the former.
(Actually in my honest opinion, What Goes Up Must Come Down was lame, as a statement on the fluctuating prices in the arts industry.)

What Goes Up Must Come Down
Damien Hirst
Parkett
Singapore Tyler Print Institute

Iza Genzken

I forgot the title urgh, but it's a statement made by Iza Genzken on our consumption of food till the point of extinction of species. I quite agree with her view that art has to be created and this is reflected in her above work where she made everything right down to the dinosaurs she could have easily gotten from Toys' R Us.