About The Jist is an online and printed zine which features articles on art, poetry, philosophy and culture. The goal for the zine is to connect groups of people to inspire and be inspired. The Jist is a place for the thoughtful to think and the thoughtless to reconnect. We are always looking for new content to put in the zine so reach us through our website:
Features
thejist.org
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ALSO INSIDE Street Art: 4 Critical Ingredients
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Various Poetry II
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Now Playing on Jist.tv
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G Clef G Note
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Intellectual Sollipcism
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Commercial Series
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June 2008, Issue 7 Wow, June already. I know what your thinking, “Is this thing still really around?” Well, yes it is, and I plan on keeping it that way. Last month I didn’t print any issues (black and white can’t do an art issue justice) but feel free to check out all of our previous content online at the new site thejist.org. Also, if you’re interested in seeing an issue come to life check out The Loop (readtheloop.com) a site I will be writing for under the editorial blog section. As far as this month’s issue goes, we have a variety of new contributers as well as jist veterans. If you like the art in this issue, let us know online. We are also giving away a dvd which features some of the content found on Jist.tv. Look out next month for a short follow-up to the music issue and (if possible) a free cd with local musicians. - Mason Balistreri Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial -No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Street art, 4 critical ing
by Régine Debatty
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com
MESSAGE It’s a statement on how you see the world, the best pieces do not necessarily make a strong political statement but they will make you see the city under a different light. Artists let passersby make their own interpretation of the work.
SUPRISE The works tap into our emotions and we get that WTF ??? moment. The web cannot recreate that experience but it’s still important to document the works on the internet because not everybody gets the opportunity to see one of Banksy’s works. Besides, half of the passersby might walk by the work and totally ignore it. Creating surprise and delight doesn’t require a particular skill or training, it’s more a matter of ingenuity and brillance.
LOCATION
It has to be illegal. A work of street art reclaims the public space and the best street art has a context, builds a relationship with its environment, dialogs with the city. Most of the artists document their work on the web. It doesn’t mean that street art is meant to be seen on the web. The art has to be left in the street where it might stay for months or just half an hour. Most of the pieces are one-off. For two days in October, 2005, a group of Belarusians and Germans took a trip to Pripyat, an abandonned city that used
to be home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers. Since Chernobylinterinform was under-staffed that day, the group was accompanied by an inexperienced zone worker. When it was time for lunch, they said they weren’t hungry but told their escort that she could go back to the town of Chernobyl to eat. Unaccompanied, they were free to populate the ghost city with their graffiti. The style of the works totally fits the eeriness of the abandonned city. These works are not about vandalism but about beauty.
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gredients
PERSONALITY It takes time, commitment and money to craft works that might disappear nearly as soon as they have been left in public space, street art can therefore hardly be regarded as vandalism. Once you leave a piece in the streets, you don’t own it any more and have no control over it, it belongs to the street. Besides all the pieces change over time, because of the elements and the weather. It’s best do create something personal that people can identify with.
Dude, Shut Up #5
by Dan Gerhardstein
Illustration
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A New Dawn
by Magnus Blomster
Illustration
Various Poetry II
See issue 3 for v.P I
Cook For a Stranger by Aaron Carr The boy in the living room he was so inviting, eating griddle cakes and hash browns. He cut his food in squares and sipped milk after every few bites. The warm meal melted his face and nose red because his heart told the blood where to go.
Find A Book in French by Aaron Carr
Find a book in French and understand it better. I want you to wake up in a pool of saliva and learn that all the talking you’ve talked was just prolonged babble in your sleep. You will then drop the bouquet of flowers for your fiancé, gather them, and soon stand back up face to face with the prettiest young gal you’ve ever seen.
Entropy by Dan Piotrowski
I work on puzzle On a day of bad weather In the old abandoned house By the dried up lake I stare at two pieces That don’t fit together I enjoy the image The imperfect union makes I realize that it won’t last forever But I do what I can I do what it takes The pressure applied doesn’t make it any better Eventually entropy makes everything Fall out of place
I lie down on the cold cement Remembering all the time I spent Failing at every attempt At listening to the words you spit My eyes cross The world has changed Slightly altered and rearranged Colors faded, sky’s turned gray Now the darkest pain has come to stay I’m trying to dream But thoughts of black come over me Shadowing all that seems So clear and obviously Wrong
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Widow’s Window
by Mason Balistreri
Vector illustration
Hands
by Dan Piotrowski You mold and pressed me into something beautiful. Something powerful. In your vision you couldn’t see who I would be. By your hands what I will become. What will I become by your hands?
You Molded and pressed me into something powerful. Something Horrible. And now you plead come back to me. And you scream: Look at what I have done with my hands. No time, no place for what I’ve done, with my hands. Destroy all those evil hands! But they cannot be beat because all the evil of the world will learn to use their feet.
MUTO: A WALL PAINTED ANIMATION
Muto is a short animated film featuring the graffiti art of Blu, an ambiguos artist from Buenos Aires. Animation is created by painting and repainting walls (which only ads tot the surreal nature of the film). Muto is a must for anyone interested in street art.
FILLING A VACANT SPACE
Filling A Vacant Space is a documentary by John Shields detailing the Bowling Green music scene. By using only interviews and raw footage, Sheilds lets BG tell its own story.
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GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB SEASON 1
From their origins at non-profit in Manhattan to their emergence as the instigators of an international art movement, GRL documents the adventures of an two men who quit their day jobs to develop high-tech tools for the art underground.
THE MACHINE IS US/ING US
Short film created by professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, Michael Wesch. The machine is using us explains what is actually going on with web 2..0 and the implications of new technology.
G Clef G Note
by Quentin Kilpatrick
Interview with Mark Miller Why do you call yourself G Clef G Note? G Clef G Note was my name way back in the day when we first started Group Home (ex-rap group). What started the Do-It-Yourself shoe design idea? Actually it was my girlfriend Bri’s idea. She really loved my drawings so she went out to Wal-Mart and bought some piece-of-shit white shoes. I bought some markers and that’s how it started. All her idea. For the very detailed [shoes] you’ve done, how do you start? Is it stencil-work?
I do stencil, pencil everything on the shoe before I start it. The first pair I mostly did freehand but everything else has been laid out before. I haven’t found a better way yet. Is there a specific type of marker you use? I’ve been getting the thin-line fabric markers and they’re perfect. When they’re fresh I can get some of the finest detail and that’s perfect. I’m all about the detail and I love the intricacy. How will you spend your summer? Working. For these arts and crafts-type stuff we’re spreading into other areas, not just shoes. She had an idea for a lamp
Absolutely everything is a medium. Anything blank is a canvas and every item you own can be customized if you want it to be. shade and I thought that’d be sweet. We can do anything. How about this table? Absolutely. I love to paint. I love any medium of art, anything I can throw some color on and design. Sh*t, I’d paint your stove if I could. Everything in my house will be loaded like a canvas. Are there any boundaries?
No, there really isn’t. It’s right along the lines of what a lot of kids in town are thinking, especially downtown. Absolutely everything is a medium. Anything blank is a canvas and every item you own can be customized if you want it to be. It’s definitely the age that we’re in, an independent/everybody’s gotta have there own thing … Everybody needs to have that artistic connection, whether you’re wearing it or putting it on something. It’s the Black Swamp and we need to have that.
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Wicked
by Angel Perez Guzman
Digital ILLUSTRATION
A Gun For Hire
by Zach Wilson
Self-titled ep, Track 2
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Intellectual Sollipcism by Simon Mysak
The idealist movement specifically describes the philosophical view that what we perceive of reality ultimately consists of the mind. However, in it’s grand sense, the term can also be seen as describing the trend of philosophy and thought since the enlightenment. It sparked dialogue and discourse which ushered humanity into a new age of thought and expression. It is out of concern with the current progression (or rather, regression) of society that I write this paper, looking back on the early stages of modern idealism, and attempt to establish new discussion about some implications of their ideas, and of thought and mind itself. The claims of the idealist movement, especially the views of Berkeley and Kant, ultimately lead to a form of solipsism, which I will term “Intellectual Solipsism”. In the same way that we can never perceive the neumena [atomic particles] which produce phenomena [what we see] in perceivable reality, we can never perceive another human being’s mind. I must be cautious in how I present the term “Intellectual Solipsism”, for I do not intend to suppose the lonely and ultimately implausible view that reality, in it’s entirety (including people) exists solely in the mind of the perceiver. Rather, I posit the claim that all of perceivable reality exists solely in the mind of the perceiver. Just as we can never perceive (in the grand sense of the term) an atom, we can never perceive others’ thought. We can only perceive the qualities of both. I am confident that this is absolutely true and I will attempt to explain my claim with a short allegory: Imagine a village in a desert where the
inhabitants are forced to re-use their water over and over again, which has become polluted and stale. A bright young man sets out one day, and after a while of searching, he comes upon a glistening lake, full to the brim with crystal clear water. The man gathers an amount of it to bring back to the village, and as he does so, dust and salt from his hands mix with the water, putting his mark upon it. As the man heads back, he encounters another traveler. They exchange words, some water is spilt, and the traveler marvels at the man’s discovery, putting his mark upon it as well. The two part ways, and the man returns to the village, presenting his find to them. The villagers marvel at the clear water, although the man sees now that it is not the same clear, sparkling mass as when he first encountered it. Dust and salt had altered it, he had put his mark upon it, as too did the traveler. The people of the desert city dump away their old water with glee, and use the man’s new water, adding to it, spilling it, putting their marks upon it in scores, and polluting it with every use. Others are enthralled with the find, stimulated by it, and set out to find the source themselves, but foolishly mistake the puddles spilt by the man as he returned as their goal. We see how the water becomes inevitably changed by everything it comes in contact with. The same process affects thought: Any attempt to rationalize and potentially externalize thought will inevitably bestow linguistic elements, and other categories of understanding upon it, altering it at it’s core. Similarly, as we listen to an ‘Other’ attempt to convey a thought, we are putting our mark upon it, rationalizing it with our own catego-
Any attempt to rationalize and potentially externalize thought will inevitably alter it at it’s core. ries of understanding, and altering it further. By this process, we will never truly perceive what the Other’s mind intended. Do not mistake this claim I have made as a declaration of defeat, that we can never know our fellow man. On the contrary, I posit that to constantly fight against the state of intellectual solipsism is to participate in reality. I believe that this claim is what all modern philosophy has been attempting to grasp, with varying degrees of accuracy. We fight against the state of intellectual solipsism in many ways (as Heidegger attempted to convey in his philosophy), but they can be summed up simply and generally as discourse. It is inherently wrong to take an idea at face value, and treasure it as your own since it is inherently flawed upon perception. We must debate the phenomena, the idea, synthesize theses and strive to create unique ideas of our own. Only a select few thinkers have this ability (as is illustrated in the allegory above), since the vast majority of the populace are fixated on simply understanding ideas and claims already posited, and seem to be solely fixated on exploring the implications of those ideas in the narrow form their mind has presented to them. It would seem that they lack the ability to understand that they have already understood what they will of the claim itself, and the next step is to seek out it’s source, the meaning, the neumena behind the phenomena of the idea. The point that most miss is that
‘claims’ are different from ‘thought’. One cannot speak thought, as when thought is rationalized, it becomes ‘claim’. The few who truly understand this appear throughout history as the great minds which have moved our society. The source of ideas must be thought itself, and therefore, discourse which promotes thought, coupled with meditation on ideas is the only way to actively participate in reality. Not to do so would mean that one’s existence is meaningless. Expressing thought subjectively (as Sartre attempted to convey in his philosophy) as opposed to objectively is the only means of participating in the ongoing dialectic of life, for subjectivity openly embraces argument and dialogue – to present a thought objectively, rejecting dialogue is heresy to thought itself. The Greek philosopher Socrates understood the concepts described above, and presented the claim that there was a realm of the intellect, and a realm of the material. Meditation on the implications of his Metaphysical dualism show striking similarities to the claims posited by myself in this essay. It is said that an enlightenment occurs whenever a people discover the Greek classics. I believe that this is because, due to their age, the classic works of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato (among others) are inherently viewed subjectively by society. Indeed, as our modern society
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progresses, works more and more modern are naturally viewed more and more objectively by students and are taken (incorrectly) for truth at face value. This is the natural way that society progresses, and so it is only though the study of history that we can attempt to trace the idea back to it’s source, and in turn produce crisp, clear thought of our own. According to the model and views expressed above, society can only progress by process of ‘looking back to move forward’. However, we as a society are in danger of losing this dialectic process and entering upon another dark age. We are discouraged to look back, and echo phrases like “history is boring” or “ancient civilization is irrelevant and backward”, but it is insensible to agree that this is the case. We are constantly encouraged to distract ourselves from pure thought with materialist values imposed upon us by our consumer society. If this trend continues, as a society we will loose touch with the classics, and regress into a new age of ignorance. Unlike the dark ages of past, we will not worship deities of gold and stone, but of plastic and electronic. The old estates of religion will not rule us, but marketing and technology will be the guides we blindly follow. Do not mistake me for belittling any religious view or ideology, for religion, spirituality, and the material object can be wonderful subjects for thought. I am merely stating blindly following an idea is inherently wrong. We as a society have already started down this road and it is up to us, the thinkers of this era to turn the tide. If you disagree with me, dear reader, I am pleased. I invite you to debate the contents of this essay and create your own synthesis of it’s content.
Part of Red
by stenDUC
stenduc.deviantart.com
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Commercial Series
by Andrew Spiess These poems are a critique on the civilized world and human organization and all the complications that come with it. Their aesthetic quality is important in conveying their themes with cynicism and disgust. The capital letters are intended to scream without mouths. They have a pessimistic flavor. I wanted them to subtly resemble advertisements. Many of the images are disconnected and follow each other much like the ads in a commercial break or the act of channel surfing. I
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started writing them three years ago and when I started, I wanted them to feel scary, despairing, paranoid and real to an extent. Our media-driven society can be very alienating and isolating to an individual. I wanted to make a point of how sick and trivial money and materialism makes me feel. These poems were inspired by an overwhelming bombardment of worthless information, credit cards, loneliness, alcohol, expenses, chain smoking, horror movies, boredom, and my empty wallet.
ES THE WHITE, UNMARKED VAN. CORRECT UNSUCCESSFULLY.
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Stroke of luck
by Martin Nowicki
ILLUSTRATION
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21st CEntury Digital Boys
by Alex Cherry
Digital
for the thoughtful to think and thoughtless to reconnect ART - PHILOSOPHY - CULTURE
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