An old portrait/study of Tom Otterness’ work meets a collaboration started by Jade Peggler.Jade from the The Library Project.

In an era when Pakistan and North Korea have the bomb, how do you argue against a Persian bomb?
Discuss:

There is no reason to believe that the Swiss don’t have an atom bomb. They, like Israel, have a surplus of physicists and metalurgists, as well as a long running and U.N. supported civilian atomic energy program. The kind of stuff America ships it’s subsidized Utah mined Uranium to and that gives a nice waste product: Plutonnium. Yes that kind of Plutonium. The stuff of the Nagasaki bomb. The question is: givien Switzerland’s stated Neutrailty and Defense Policy of “Cost of Admission”… a defensive strategy. Would they feel the need for retalitory (MAD stryle ICBMs)nukes, or more likely Tacticle nukes? The later could be used to detonate mountains and damns to make the alps a sort of monumental Midevil type defensive fortress… with burning water in place of hot oil and walls and parapets the size and comprised of literal mountains. It is widely known that Israel has had the A-bomb and possibly the H-bomb since the sixties. It has always denied it for the purposes of appearing to be living up to various treaties regarding atomic energy and nuclear proliferation. The U.S. China, France, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union all looked the other way. What is lest discussed, is the Legend of the Neutral/ Swiss and possibly Swedish bombs. Let us not forget that the Swiss and Swedes make an awful lot of first rate weaponry. The Swedes having the Saab aerospace industry, infact make one of the world’s most sophisticated and lethal fighterjets, the Griffin, etc. The Swiss also have one of the fiercest airforce’s in the world, flying figheters from all the major compainies with the theory that they can use the parts from and repair anything they shoot down, or capture. If you are going to build the worlds most elaborate warren of bomb shelters and you believe you can survive an Atomic War in Europe? Would you still want to have your own bomb? I think you might just to wave the stick, but you wouldn’t want to show the stick.. just leave it under your coat like a sheleighlei (sp?)

The idea occured to me as I watched a documentary on the British strategy at Yrpes. The British held an ugly little bulge for two years. The bulge provided three positions (front side and side) from which the German artillary and snipers could fire at the British. On the surface, it seemd like a tactical disaster, but the whole time, the British were using the world’s best coal miners to dig mine shafts under the German trenches (high on a strategically key ridge along the Somme) then taking six weeks to fill the tunnels with high explosive and then at three in the morning on June 6th 1916, detonating the entier ridge at Ypres - creating the world’s largest man made explosion on earth up untill that point and maybe untill Hiroshima. It killed 25,000 German Soldiers in seconds (burrying many with their heads sticking out of what had been trenches… the earth squeezing in on them like a vice). The British rushed in and took 3,000 yards of terrain, including a third of the ridge. It seems like peanuts in a post Blitzkrieg world, but was a monumental shift in the theater of WWI…

a truley demented act of human Folley… the war to end all Wars… and the Gods Shrugged: “HA”.
The books here are finishes of starts by postrme1962 for the Library.

I thought I’d reshow Remmy’s
Moby Bop video in honor of it making the daily reel top ten. It fits in nicely with some recent Library work from:
1 godalwayshungry and Tony Van Den Boomen 2
gundunasu u zeneize 3 potsrme1962 4 Neuk

ITIN ‘97.

This photo collage is from a portrait series I did of Richard Serra, when he was Installing Torqued Elipses at Go Go’s in 1997? I think…. I photographed him with an old bakelite Argus camera that I bought for five dollars and a draing in some junk shop in the East Village, drinking while drawing and drinking beer with Richard Heinson and Greg Heines kid (The sculptor not the tap dancer, though they lived in the same building at that West SIde modernnist arits residency that no one ever moves out of, so it has become full of sixties and seventies heavies). They were two guys who Allan Stone had bought and showed in the New Talent shows. Long story short, you could snap the shutter on the arcus without advancing the roll of film. This made for a pleasant insect sound as I shot three to fifity exposures. I t made for beautiful multiple exposures. The video is from a later show in 2001, or 2 from Ali Vs. Frazer elipse. I was meeting with Dave Conrad to discuss doing Arc Aong the Watchtower and get a litttle rough footage. It must have been a couple of weeks after 911, if I’m not nuts.

A Tom Waits track (from Sonja) tops some Asian Library Scrolls? from Neuk in Japan and Tan Jun in China. The vlog shows the Brooklyn Bridge lit up along with the Verizon (read ATT BELL) building, the Manhattan Bridge… along with various fills on clouds and buildings. It was my Arc set lit large by some Action movie staring Will Smith (aka The Fresh Prince)… Parents just don’t understand…. also some Royal Wylds stuff including the shoes of guitarist who just got off touring with the Misfits. This guy used to play with Richard Hell who I was just watching about in some BBC documentary on the history of Rock and Roll. It’s showing on VH1 two…. I hightly recommend it.

The video below is an old portrait of Mathew Barney from his Guggenheim opening a few years back. I had him sort of fill in for M. Tristan during one of his rants about the coming doom as sung by Roxy Music doing Dylan.

Dusting off some of the early first draft videos from OMegg. The footage here was shot around October of 2001 during some of my scouting for Arc Along The Watchtower. This Was Dylan’s latest single, which really echoed in the months after the Trade Center Fell.

Library Project artists in a scroll format: gundunasuafter Crumb andNeuk, all the way from Japan.

Here is Library start from me and a finish in progress of my start from Linda Scharf. Theme of sea and sea monsters and arches.
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Here are some portrait themed altered books from The Library. From top to bottom: dou_ble_you,Bellah, Anne Grgich, Snailbooty,

Another painting I’ve been working on for several weeks. It’s made of cardboard boxeds mounted on a wooden frame. It will probably change again, but it seemed like a nice stage to have a record of.

A painting I’ve been working on for a while and may work on again. Thought I’d back up and look at it though.

After weeks of software trouble (trying to update my OS) I’ve moved onto hardwaqre trouble. Screen back light seems to have burnt out and so is illegable. So I’m over at the Institute to borrow and computer and I’m letting the power book charge so that the calander won’t revert to 1969. Ben tells me this is the year the computer started counting… it may infact, be a nice joke by the programmers to quote the birthday of HAL in Kubrick’s 2001. Seems to echo nicely with these finishes of my starts for The Library. The butterfly wold map is from Amanda and John&Yoko and the text are from Sonja.

pulling the old bow string back to shoot the arrow forward. Here is a documentary on the opening night of IT IN space way back in 2003, or so. Mark Schwartzbaard shot this and the library collage fromSonja’s
start.

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Drawings here are my finishes of Brian Raszka starts from The Library
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They sit in a triangle around the table, sipping the wine. They are skirting the inevitable European conversation when there are Americans around: The War. Somehow, M. Tristan gets on tangential rant:

“The Jew, you see, is the equal sign in the equasion of Empire, you see? He is enslaved by physics… snatched by the great empire of physics: Egypt. There he helps to build the pyramids. He is the mason for the Egyptions and so learns the mathematics and the physics and when the jew escapes back to Zion, he builds his temple with this knowledge, but then the next empire of engineers, Rome, snatches Zion from him. The first great victory arch in Rome commemorates the taking of Israel from the jews. The arch, the very symbol of Roman technology and physics, you see and the the Jew? He is sent wandering the empire… not a slave, but a free agent… with his own mathematics and morality… able to lend money and invent the merchant class in Europe… untill in a final chess move here in Switzerland, the jew snatches the fire from the gods… Einstein.. the superior physics and he gives it like a gift to the Americans and so the Americans in turn give him back Israel and thus the Americans become the next great Empire. That is the equation and it balances on the fate of the jew…. or the fate of physics, but this seems the same thing almost… knowledge built from laying stones of pyramids and reaching towards the stars.”

She says, “It’s vaguely disturbing to hear anyone with a German accent refer to The Jew, but I can’t quite tell if what you’re saying is actually Zionist, or anit-semetic, or both…”

“None, really,” M. Tristan said. “Just an observation on the fate of man as it connects to physics… I am interested in history and books, you see and the first and greatest book is nothing, but a history of the Jews. So it always seems a good place to start a discussion of history… though in reality, like all humanity, the story starts in Africa, but the people who wrote books forgot how to read hieroglyphics for so long… untill the Rosetta stone.”

“The wine is delicious,” Pat says. “Such good wine. I guess I CAN taste the difference now with the new bottle.”

“Now if we want to talk about wine we have to talk about Persia and….”

“The Jew,” she said finishing the sentence.

“Certainly they were involved in the trade and after all it is Jesus’ first miracle…”

“LeChaim,” Pat said raising his glass.

I was terrifyingly sick all yesterday (and still not great today). I had countless fever dreams that I was painting a great picture and then I’d wake up all excited that I’d gotten some work done even with this stomach virus… only to realize I hadn’t painted a thing. So anyway here is a Hendrix start from Sonja and a finish by her of my start for the Library.

Well it’s goin past New Years and they’re chippin up trees, finishing up the parties and week in the knees, I whish I had a river, I could skate away on… but the ice would melt.

The steeple video is from our man in France, Remy. He was commenting on the spit take that he would love to taste such a wine together some day (of course in the spit take it’s actually flat diet coke… half of the reason I chose black and white). It got me thinking about the scene. I came up with the spit take over the boozy hollidays when we opened a nice bottle of Burgundy. As I was airating it (sucking air through it, not smelling) I actually inhaled some… the better half laughed with disdainful glee.
“Pretentious moron,” quoth she, or some such.
So I tried to recreate that moment, but all the spit takes were off camera into a bucket and sounded fake as I wasn’t perpared to actually inhale “wine”. However, as a true method actor, or moron, I ended up snorting the “wine” on the last take. In other words, the spit take is real, but not how I’d planned it.

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