Treiops Treyfid Personal Art Vlog #01

I thought I'd finally put together a true vlog about my "art life". You know, just set a camera up and start talking. Here's the introductory vlog. I'm mostly talking about my art space. The later ones will have info on events, projects, process. That sort of thing.

Crawling All Over Myself

Hello fine friends! Treiops Treyfid here. You of course have noticed with much alarm the demise of this here blog in recent months. Such a shame as it was gaining steam over the years collecting dozens of hits and subscribers into the double digits. Well, the deal was, me not being much of a writer it became difficult to sustain the energy to update it with new and exciting journalistic content. It became a chore. So, it died a quiet, unremarkable death.

But, now it's back! I've decided to repurpose this "blogorpse" (sure to be the next new meme) with my own content. I'm going to populate TTINLA with tales, video, and photos documenting what I've been doing lately. And it's been a lot. I'm now the new official vlogger for Ink Pen Mutations Press. Over the past few months I've been documenting the shenanigans of the IPM crew with my Rubber Band Cam (my home made steady cam). The results have been wondrous and majestic. Take a look at this triad of vlogs from our trip to Comic Con.







Pretty crazy huh? These people are true rock stars. Expect many more fun vlogs and blogs in the future. TTINLA is back, alive and cold-kickin' it once more.

http://www.youtube.com/inkpenmutations
http://www.youtube.com/rubberbandcam

MOCA Versus Yves Klein Butoh

I was fortunate enough to be invited to vlog a Butoh Protest Performance at the MOCA Art in the Streets opening last Saturday. Jeffrey Deitch and friends at MOCA decided to whitewash an anti-war mural painted on the Geffen Contemporary by Italian artist Blu causing a huge controversy. The Butoh performers were protesting that act of censorship. Their performance was fantastic. Check it out!

Bughouse at Peepshow Gallery in Hollywood - VLOG

Hey Kids, I caught the Bughouse clan during their opening at Peepshow in Hollywood last week. The Bughouses are a fantastic artsy husband and wife due who have been a force in the Los Angeles art scene for many years. I'll stop writing now so you can look at the video.

http://www.bughouse.com

Five at The Hive (gallery)

Howdy, here is my first attempt (who knows maybe the last) at doing a video blog. I went down to the Hive Gallery in downtown Los Angeles yesterday (Saturday, February 5th, 2011) with my new Flip Mino HD. I interviewed 5 of the most manly creatives who inhabit the place. Randy Wall, Sensei, Greg Gould, Nathan Cartwright, and Patrick Haemmerlien are well represented. Playboy centerfold model Laya Bella was in da house. She apparently brought her own magazine and was showing interested patrons her fine work.

Emptiness is not an Option

So, I went to see some gallery shows this afternoon as I sometimes do. I wasn't in the greatest of moods but, I wasn't figuring on becoming intensely depressed and confused about art in general as well as my own art life. I went to this place which had a show by a performance artist. The show contained almost nothing. There were a couple extremely dull and non-changing videos showing, and a piece of paper with writing on it on the wall. There was also a small painting made with one color of paint and no content, on a wall painted with the exact same color. I went downstairs and there was a large empty room. There was a ceiling light on in the opposite corner showing a small piece of wood leaning against the wall. There was another piece of paper with writing on it by the door. I read the first paragraph which started "I wanted to create a piece about nothing". And that's when I got really worked up.

Not only is this sort of thing mediocre but, it's been done countless times. Now is not the time to make art about nothing. There's a lot happening in the world. The way we communicate has completely shifted in the past 10 years. We're in the midst of a revolution in technology. Humans are putting stresses on our natural world that will change the way we live in the very near future. Robotics, plastic surgery, DNA synthesis, video games, autism, so many things to think about. I could go on and on. This is really probably one of the most exciting times in the history of humanity. A lot of good and bad but, lots of stuff is going on.

After seeing this insult to the eyes I became very upset and depressed. I started to think about my own "life" as a performance artist and to question what I was really doing. What am I doing and why am I doing it? I don't even know! What IS a performance artist? What is my goal? I make so much effort to do something different and new. I spend loads of money, I organize people, I do large and small productions involving movement, technology, humor, strange visuals. Who am I doing this for and who am I trying to impress? Is it the gallery owners and directors? Am I trying to impress the same people who curated this show I just saw? Am I trying to impress those art intellectuals who can justify curating a show about absolutely nothing? If so, what I'm doing is futile because they will never understand me. My art is about something.

The only real answer I have is that I cannot stop doing art. An artist is what I am. I'm a creative thinker and idea man. THE IDEAS HAVE TO LIVE! I don't know why exactly, but, they just do. They are burning inside of me and they must come out.

The artist's roll is to inspire, is it not? Our role is to express ourselves and to make people feel or see something differently. We give meaning to other people's lives. We are important. It's mind-boggling how this artist failed so miserably in this instance to be inspirational. Having an idea is not enough. It needs to be developed. It's called "art". That means there's an ART to doing it. A lot of contemporary art these days is so very similar. So very empty, undeveloped, pointless and lost.