NICK ZHU
FOR
FELT ZINE
I’m going to follow and then reverse the form of Alan Warburton’s video essay Spectacle, Speculation, Spam and format my writing like this:
I. an incomplete list of artists that I think should be looked at
II. an annotated list of categories that I just made up
Created in part by Hannah Rose Stewart
I. an incomplete list of artists/people that I think should be looked at/up at least because they’ve supported/inspired/stolen from/at least spoken to me in no particular order
On Kawara, Mark Sabb, Tavi Lee, MAXIN, Katrin Krumm, Helin Sahin, Tea Strazicic, Marta Strazicic, Matt Dell, Hannah Rose Stewart, Svengali, Bryony Leeson, Kardelen Sahin, Doreen Rios, Motorola Beeper, Yoshitaka Hikawa, Swan Meat, Michael Mitchell, Rachael Archibald, Braiden Bellamy, DJ J Heat, Anastasia Davydova, Sadie Prior, Killian Stark, Maya Ben David, Daphne Lyda, C. Perez, Peter Lee, Dog Martin, The Astral Plane, Michael Bordlee, Zoe Stawska, Nevin Kallepali, Clif Pottberg, Abraham Mac Velazquez Solis, Hannah Black, Arthur Machado, Andre Alves, Mikey Joyce, Genevieve Goffman, Sierra Heurmann, Velma Spencer, Ellie Olitsky, Edy Ortega, Alfred English, Einar Baldvin, Paradise Khanmalek, Jeanie Yoon, Jeanette Bonds, Bora Akinciturk, Sterling Hedges, Jade Novarino, Wang Newone, Ugur Engin Deniz, Min Jie, ZOOM LENS, Jason Ebeyer, Jelly Wet Taco, Akihiko Miyoshi, Eurobitch2000, Caterpillart Ludvicat, Diego Navarro, Mark Klink, Dario Alva, Kriz Tonian, Lara Joy Evans, Carlin Brown, Kristin Kennedy, Olga Mikh Fedorova, Chris Martz, DJ Farsight, Xultur, DJ Swisha, Sara Cordoba, JX Cannon, Dina Karadzic, Zac, Rachel Hinshaw, Magol Montenegro, Violet McAfee, Man’like Bing, Olivia Dreisinger, Bryan Unger, Adam Elahel, ALIS, Swelta, Sha Sha Kimbo, ERISA, Giovanni Riggio, Sandrine Jacquot, Lukas Schmeck, JukeBounceWerk, Ynfynyt Scroll, David Winkler, Aaron Hayes, Clio Wilde, Khabar Kaslan, Katre Varnaite, Miles Taylor, Emily Kind, Pad Fut, Tiki Boom, Lorna Mills, Nikita Diakur, Ramiro Serna, Why Be, Nine Yamamoto, Aisha Madu, Gibrann Morgado, Mobilegirl, Alyeska, Kyselina, Tyler Alexandria, Pon S Hope, Weenie Fettucine, Nicole Ruggerio, Aria Dean, Eli Coplan, Gary Tyler Plus, Marco Braunschweiler, Mitch Posada, Donnie Fredericks, Felicity Alexander, Don Elektro, Eternal Dragonz, Significant Other, Tetsuya Umeda, Adam Pizurny, Ada Sokol, Bianka Oravecz, Mara Oscar Cassiani, Olin Caprisun, Sara Goodman, Hamishi Farah,Vince Mckelvie, Veronika Neukrich, Emily Kind, Kira Jacobson, Sean Johnson (jazz), John McLachlan, Siobahn Schuck, CJ Aslan, Ada Rajkovic, Elsa Henderson, Jasmine Nyende, Rui He, Klara Vincent-Novotna, DJ Phonome, Edda Eluard, Schwarz, Dalena Tran, Hirad Sab, Filip Ugrin, Martin Wawrzycek, Isabelle Harada, Cecily Feitel, Carmen Racovitza, Mario Udzenija
Look I’m sorry if you’re not here it’s 4am and I have to be at work at 9am I said it was incomplete I’m sorry ok! I’m sorry
II. an annotated list of categories that I just made up
1. Dualism
Easy lmao.
2. Trinism
This is my shit where I’m thinking like, the functional properties of matter when organized into certain rhizomatic structures like human brains or slime molds or cities or social networks demand the ascension of matter into a state of being that must be targeted as an independent concept from matter but at the same time also opens up some dialectic type shit where the third, final form of reality isn’t actually consciousness, or matter+consciousness, but is consciousness creating artificial consciousnesses (not just AI but AGI) from matter and then integrating those into our CULTURE, robo-poetry, techno-soul. I’m not even saying this will happen, I’m saying it already has, that it started happening when language was invented, and was used to describe dreams.
3. Sinofuturism
Consciousness can arise in anything that functions structurally in the same networked fashion as a brain. I’m talking about mycelia, the universe, blah blah, but I’m also talking about the consciousness of contemporary socio-techno-cultural phenomena. Google Sinofuturism and watch the video. Then, go about your day for a bit. Then, come back because that shit is obviously an incomplete project that doesn’t have a practical application so, when I call myself one, or start talking about it, it’s about me, and my vision of a post-apocalyptic world that is now, and the incredible nature of the imperial state of my blood and the imperialized state of my first-generation body. Ask me more later. I’m sick of talking about ethnicity and race this week. We get it Nick, you’re Asian. Ok, good.
4. Contemporary commercial design
I suck and everyone is better than me.
5. Contemporary institutional art
If you’re not on the fact that this is all a scam, as in a very large formation of independently operating incentives that are in fact, quite selfish and not at all utopic, then you’re wasting your time. There’s nothing fun, exciting, or ethically good about the institution of art. Yes, there’s good art, that does good things, sure, ok, fine. Take an institution, and trace the money back, and you’ll see that it exists for private incentives. Embedded within there are some traces of rich people who naively thought they could make the world a better place by dropping cash on a building that shows primarily the work of white men but…they’re not the significant ones in the picture. The main part of the picture is, and always should have been, artists, and it’s ugly as hell out here. People are starving and can’t find treatment for their addictions. Artists! Educated youth! Unless you started out with parental support and/or are a white man, what’s the point, really? No safety net means no second chances means a lack of productivity is actual death. Nobody fucking believes me when I talk about my socioeconomic situation as being a point of actual danger that threatens my life. Nobody fucking believes that it’s actually a miracle that somehow I’m making 650 dollars of rent on a tent in a living room every month.
6. Myriadation (Monism)
None of this work was made non-destructively, as in there’s no Photoshop or Gimp project files with the layers conserved, or Blender files with the original models. I deleted that shit. One, because I don’t have enough hard drives or space on my laptop, and I literally can’t afford cloud hosting or another hard drive. I have to be conservative about what I keep. Two, because this is now part of the work. It is just product. If I am to leave nondestructive production files then I step this shit right into commerce, but even if I leave destructively edited project files, disorganized on my computer, I also step left into the academy. Why should I pretend I know how to use software, if people who make art only pretend to and everyone who makes commercial work knows better than I do?
Eastern religions have another round of appropriating your namaste cause philosophically IMHO the beginning point of nothingness is equatable to the absolute infinitude of everything, because I know every white person has a part of them that longs for a philosophy that didn’t take the existential crisis of existence and partition it out into logical steps and deconstructions that leave them with basically nothing to stand upon. I’m not religious, and according to Eileen Chang neither is any Chinese person who didn’t convert or monasticize so… it’s just a passing thought and a way to live life either superstitiously or entertain the ephemerality of life itself, in a sad way, poetically, and then to drinking and fucking.
Drinking and fucking and eating delicious food and just getting STUPID. Dumb. Not thinking. Trying not to be conscious. Not because of society or pressure or disaffected youth, no, those are retroactively imposed categorical nonsenses from outsiders. I’m talking about ritual. Ritual without religion. I’m talking about basic fundamental annihilation of the theory of the metaphysical and pure, roughhoused tumbling war with Gods themselves, because we know what it is like to be Gods within the interface and animals within the networked interface, sublimation is what I’m fucking talking about! At least now, I’m going to think this is really dumb when I grow the hell up.