At 11:30 AM -0400 6/13/00, allen bukoff wrote:
>The Mundane Seeks Equal Time With the Weird and the Deviant
>New York Times, Saturday, May 20, 2000
>"Thank Tank" column in Arts & Ideas section, page A19
>by Emily Eakin
>Rather than studying pornography stars or doomsday cults, they say,
>why not examine office workers or a suburban Sunday school?
>Imagine a Martian anthropologist coming to Earth, reading the
>tabloids, watching a couple of talk shows and taking in a few
>movies. He might well return to his planet persuaded that humans
>beings are a freak race beset by murder, rape, incest, kinky sex and
>the like.
> "Although there are many deviance journals to explicitly analyze
>socially unusual behavior," he lamented, "there is no Journal of
>Mundane Behavior to explicitly analyze conformity."
This sounds like the thoughts of my college art professor, Norman
Daly, creator of the Civilization of Llhuros.
Daly, Norman and Beauvais Lyons. "The Civilization of
Llhuros: The First Multimedia Exhibition in the Genre of
Archaeological Fiction." Leonardo. 24.3 (1991): 265-271.
(Does anyone have this??)
A man way before, or just plain out of his time, Norman created
artifacts of this imaginary civilization, then asked us to somehow
put them in context. He also talked of the mundane nature of some of
the best art, saying to aspire to be good was better than to want to
be great. To be as good as can be. But part of the mundane, not to
push it in contorted ways; in support he cited Matisse and Cezanne.
Norman, the most good teacher there was, ...though spooky at times.
Oh no. Maybe it was Friedl Dzubas who spoke of the mundane. Or
perhaps they both did. Does anyone else know this? I'd say nothing at
this point but I think it was Norman, but am just hedging my bets.
Anyway, my point is that the mundane does not necessarily embrace
conformity. And in accord with a brilliant statement by ann klefstad
5/21/00:
>What force is causing people--kids and
>adults--to be bored with the infinite range of sensory and abstract experience
>that their embodiment offers? The world is large, large as it's ever
>been. Only
>the obedient, I think, are ever bored
One can be everyday (ah the existential connection at last) without
being obedient.
Kathy F.
