Kris Kuksi: Unceasingly Byzantine

It is the unending duty of every human to sort out his relationship to, and place in, the byzantine catacombs of human history. It is up to each generation to discover what complacent part they play in the historical injustices of their world, and act appropriately. For after accepting our world contingent lives we must also accept the truth of the worlds condition. Here, in the early 21st century, we find ourselves more challenged than any generation before, with seemingly unceasing, inexhaustible, digital access to the details of our history we are constantly learning, re-learning, readjusting, and taking responsibility for the world. This is the aesthetic knowledge that is imbued in the multimedia assemblages of artist Kris Kuksi. His assemblages of mass-produced cultural and pop-cultural items into singular, amalgamated visions of humanity in metaphor, offer us a chance to view the task laid before us as humans: to try to create a coherent narrative from the fragmented, complex fields, nooks, and halls of our collected histories. His works remind us that our actions in life, our choices will ultimately determine what place in these piles of statues that we will take, if any at all.

Feed The Animals - Girl Talk

I'm late to the party here, but I just want to talk about Girl Talk's 2008 Album Feed The Animals. The copyfight issues behind the work of this sampling artist, have been bandied about by plenty of others, including in the documentary RiP! A Remix Manifesto. The aspect of sampling artistry that catches my interest is that it seems to fit my own aesthetic sense of media overload. For the last few decades of the post-modern artists have lamented the way that the information spheres constantly bombard us with unceasing message. They have depicted the media as being this omnipresent malevolent force in our lives seeking to manipulate and control us. The work of sampling artists like Girl Talk reverse the tables, here the artist takes in the unceasing message flood, remixes, reinterprets, and redirects the flows into a medium in itself. While using the media as the medium is not a new idea, I think that we have reached a point where some artists have regained control over the explosion of media and no longer feel overwhelmed.

You can download and enjoy this highly illegal art form here, on a pay what you want basis.