FOMO and Collage Criticism 3

I have a bottomless well of FOMO.  Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO, is a concept I immediately knew applied to me the second I learned about it.  Before I knew the term, I created a “list of shame” of art places and general New York places that I had not visited.  In the course of this process I realized that the nature of the NY art world is to cover it’s FOMO with lies.  We can only make it to some tiny percentage of the shit we want to see, we can only make it so far afield unless we are the freewheeling trust-funderati.  So I haven’t been to Marfa, or the Spiral Jetty, The Hermitage or the 798 District in Beijing.

I missed Kara Walker’s sugary Sphinx and I waited in line for the rain room and missed that too.  Just this Spring I missed Fischli and Weiss and Marcel Broodthaers; only a 30 and 5 block walk (respectively) would have taken me to each. I pass through so many things, making tiny notes, forming minor opinions and rocketing off to my next duty or rest from it.

Admitting failure is the same as being honest I realize, but just recently and not always.  My goal is to be honest about these missed opportunities as well as ideas for exhibitions and, in general terms, to lay bare the mechanisms of what I do.

Recently I read Joel Mesler’s“True Confessions” series, a coke fueled origin story of LA’s Chinatown before it was hip and NY’s LES before it was an art destination. I make no objection to his sensational account, but I will offer mine.  Mine is much less punk rock.  I’ll share it next week.

And Now, Collage Criticism: Round 3

(previous installments: Collage Crit 1 and Collage Crit 2)

Rather than monetary or investment value, I felt I had a personal responsibility to take care of this masterpiece and preserve it for the next generation.

Desperate companies will resort, if they can, to selling the detailed data they’ve meticulously collected about their users—whether it’s personally identifiable information, data about preferences, habits, and hobbies, or national-security files.

There’s a flash of white as their palms meet. Folded paper. Junkie origami.

We often felt sick. Dazed. Bloated. Vulgar. Yet never quite ashamed.

While on her sickbed, she folded more than 1,300 paper cranes out of medicine wrappers and other papers, pinning her hopes on a traditional Japanese saying that a wish will be granted if 1,000 cranes are made.  Despite her wish to overcome her disease, she died in 1955.

But even her darkest visions exude ebullient panache.

The best we can do is respect and appreciate that which we (whoever “we” are) might never fully comprehend.

Thoughts are just lawyers for our feelings. Memory is a pile of stories determined by feelings and constantly revised to fit new feelings.

-Jeff Bergman
   June 2016