Featured Artist Dean Wenick
Is
Lost in Time...

Photographs by Dean Wenick

Lost in Time but Always Relevant
 Pete Milosovich © 2011

  Mother nature represents the macrocosm of incredible activity and unquenchable might, battered and bruised from years of abuse, yet she remains forever unwilling to hide behind the veil of ideological deception that conceals the true nature of our existence. Humanity remains completely dependent on her indifferent often hostile embrace, yet in many quarters she remains humiliated, and degraded.  If only the prick from a thorny rose stem could forever remind us of the true meaning of love, beauty, and pain. How we choose to exist in this world of lighting fast information depends on what we are willing to believe, while truth remains ever elusive.

Can we ever truly achieve a state of equilibrium?

This measure of how we could live, when our existence transforms into interchangeable avenues of discourse and commerce, fulfilling the needs of the next revolution to become fully interdependent with our dear earth mother, but without the wickedness our father continues to wield…genocide. Even in the seemingly balanced world of careful negotiations, when articulation of meaning emerges from the masterful images captured by Dean Wenick, our world remains a complicated paradox. We become forced through our inherent nature to interpret and reinterpret what it all means over and over again. Yet in giving our lives meaning we can still enter a dream that captures a reality once removed from the urban maze that reduces so many of us to insignificance.

In “My Side of the Canal” Mr. Wenick seeks to define time and place with an approach that remains all-inclusive. Living and breathing, existing on the canal populated by the intersection of the mundane and mother nature creates divergent paths that define a place encroached on all sides by human history. The carefully orchestrated images shot by Mr. Wenick exemplify a broader need to articulate where we live, but in a unique microcosm where streams of life along with hardened cracks of artifice converge. Industry, wildlife, and the human occupants that depend on the canal facilitate something vibrant indeed, perhaps the song of the human race as it seeks to strike a balance for future histories to come.

We may become compelled by an incident, or the moment when something unusual takes place, but without the ability to recreate, everything becomes filed as a memory that dissipates in time. The record becomes irretrievably lost in the maelstrom of so many minds, or stored away in digital streams of make believe egos…like my own. Without the vital image to validate our existence all is lost. The masterful can push an image, seeking a balance like Mr. Wenick as he softens the blow from so much ‘clutter’ that demands transformation in our current era. Arguments that have been made since the birth of civilization only to become multiplied in complexity as humanity develops new methods to exploit the world we live in. Mr. Wenick’s inscrutable documentation points to measures few will undertake, but so many of us rely on to articulate; breathing life into the broader significance of our disparate communities…

as extensions of ourselves.

Mr. Wenick needs your support 
-For more information click the link-
http://www.wenick-photo.com/msoc

Upcoming display at Fremont Coffee Company...
Opening October 7th

SeattleArtBloc 
Presents 
Deconstructing the 'Real'


The Fantastic Science Fiction 
of
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

The Philosophical Pulse of a Defiant Cinematic Tradition
  “World on a Wire”
  Pete Milosovich © 2011

1973 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder shocks the world with a sardonic examination of the corporate elite forced through a technological sieve of human deceit; where everything is as ‘real’ as it seems, in particular the need for human nature to articulate perfection without a millisecond of hesitation. To hesitate would represent a brief instance of humanity, the possibility of a miscalculation, whereas the dominant mode of survival for the power driven class that maintains the computer system resides in the power to control it. World on a Wire concerns the development of sentience, and hence self awareness, within a computer construct that resembles the ‘real’ world above, both compelling and illusory Fassbinder maintains a level of social commentary that far exceeds most films today.

The relentless search for truth made by company man Fred Stiller ( Klaus Lowitsch), in a brilliant enigmatic performance, begins with the mysterious death of Professor Vollmer on the verge of divulging an incredible secret. This event in turn is followed by the literal disappearance of the security chief before he can utter the late professor’s discovery. The state, press, and company personal completely loss track of these occurrences through the substitution of false memories and disinformation circulated through the newspaper. Nothing must remain but the security of the simulacrum in order to maintain the illusion of reality, and hence order, but this of course contradicts the emergence of Fred Stiller as the sentient component that resists.

Existence in this monotonous technological bubble stems from what science fiction does best when it examines how broad sweeping transformations in society turn us into something that only resembles human.  This key aspect represents a major component in films like Blade Runner, and the superficial Matrix trilogy. But in sharp contrast to these films Fassbinder utilizes techniques such as jump cuts, elliptical shots, and slow tracks while filling the screen with vast spaces, mirrors and screens. This hard edged expressionism concerning a vast dehumanized emptiness emerges from the cold world of geometric, and glass modernity Fassbinder exploits throughout.

Stylistic similarities to the French New Wave, and in particular Jean Luc Godard establishes a complex direction concerned with how we see, while deconstructing conventional modes of representation. The notion of either literal and/or linear narrative construction becomes subverted through the use of distorted images, and multiple reflections that compel us to look beyond the literal meaning of any particular scene. Regardless of any notion concerning a greater scheme, such as the creation of a seemingly perfect world capable of predicting  manufacturing needs, the computer program represents a paradox. The system liquidates imperfection in order to maintain control, effectively strengthening the illusion of reality. Metaphorically, The deletion of a person or event which invariably threatens that system creates a symbolic relationship to real world events, in particular the systemic and efficient disposal of human lives, most notably under Nazism. 

The most poignant examples of symbolic allusions occur with the recreation of dance numbers born right out of the ashes of the Weimar Republic, scrutinized and edited by scientist constructs, or the recreation of  Marlene Dietrich in the context of ‘soldiering’ and German cabaret. The resurgence of propaganda seemingly created for entertainment creates a world of symbolic reference that effectively denies the realities of a brutal German past. Pure sentiment, or in this case the ability to completely alter the past reveals shocking implications for the true nature of human society, more than an aberration and regardless of the literal interpretation that the simulation is a fantasy created by power driven madmen.

The act of watching reinforces the symbolic reality of a sinister world where atrocities have become erased in favor of the pursuit of perfection. What in fact has been selected and emphasized represents the ideological archetype, the foundation for power and privilege in a corporate world that represents a distorted reflection of our own, softened and distorted without the realities of bloodshed, murder, and genocide. 

“World on a Wire” illustrates how history can become wiped from memory through the systematic purging of all relevant information. Awareness and the struggle to survive become the only two universal qualities worth fighting for, especially if the ideological pursuit of universal perfection threatens the survival of the free thinking individual. Paradoxically, within the apparent perfect system, humanity becomes reduced to brutal animals in the service of brutal animal masters in pursuit of perfection, by eradicating all blemishes, like Stiller, in his search to solve a crime only to discover the true nature of his horrific existence.

At the fundamental center of the matter concerning existence lies who we are, and what we are capable of becoming; this age old pursuit that truth must somehow become revealed through relentless inquiry, in this case revealing the nature of a purely simulated existence. Fassbinder effectively obliterates humanism with a sterile power driven image of mankind; simulated abominations that function like automatons in the superficial corporate world of hard inquiries, unquestionable loyalty, and foremost the intricate deceptions used to protect and serve that image. Fassbinder creates a dark metaphor for a humanity hell bent on total social control. This microcosm of what takes place illustrates the perverse nature of humanity to relentlessly pursue the notion of order through an examination very near to the systematic Nazi atrocities of the past. 

In Fassbinder’s brilliant oeuvre all of these allusions to the nature of humanity invariably  point to position, rank, and privilege at the top of the human pyramid. While in the broader scheme of things the rest of humanity exits either completely in the dark, or as empty servants of the machine; fulfilling necessary ‘corporate’ functions that keep the wheels of the machinery well lubricated. Always guessing from inside the iron grip of an ideological shell game based on complete devotion to the organism that must continue to function at all costs…the corporation. This techno culture- managerial and technical exist in a world of fast cars, superficial sexual relations, and manipulation…

much like our own.