ok I take back what I’ve said about contemporary art. This is amazing.
THIS is what art is about. I bitch about modern art a lot but the problem I have is that most of it (and I’ve worked in a museum and been an art student) is bullshitting. It is only sometimes you get shit like this, that is 0% bullshit and 100% raw screaming emotion that is demanding you LISTEN and FEEL and CONFRONT. This is art. This is what art is about. Are you mad? Are you horrified? Are you uncomfortable? GOOD.
[Image description: a photo of the exhibit and the description.
The exhibit shows a plugged in white box fan enclosed in a clear box.
It is by John Boskovich (1956-2006) and titled “Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers); Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate, 1997.” It is made from an electric fan encased in Plexiglas with vinyl faux etching and Plexiglas base with casters. It was a gift of the artist in memory of Stephen Earabino, 2000.12. The description says “Soon after the death of his lover Stephen Earabino from AIDS, Los Angeles conceptual artist Boskovich discovered that Earabino’s family had completely cleared out his apartment, including the artist’s possessions, save for the electric box fan in this work. An entire person, existence, and relationship had been erased, like so many were during the AIDS crisis. Boskovich encased the fan in Plexiglas as a kind of evidence and added cutouts to allow its circulated air to escape and be felt by the viewer, almost like an exhalation. In a sense restoring Earabino’s breath, at least as a facsimile in memoriam, Boskovich makes a tender and brokenhearted gesture toward some form of eternal life.”
End image description]
Not to nitpick, but I feel like I need to clarify something here:
Modern art refers to art created between the 1860s and the 1970s, roughly. It’s not a type of art; it’s a era of art.
Contemporary art is any art being made in the current era (roughly 1970 to today). It’s also an era, not a type or style.
Conceptual art is a type of art where the idea is more important than the aesthetic. That’s the type of art a lot of people dislike, or struggle with, because it doesn’t make sense out of context.
So the installation here is both conceptual and contemporary, but not modern art (though conceptual art does span both eras, so not all conceptual art is contemporary).
A lot of AIDS related art falls into the category of conceptual art, because that was a big trend in the art world at the same time as the AIDS epidemic in America.
But conceptual art isn’t supposed to be nice to look at, because if it is, it fails as conceptual art. It’s supposed to be a statement, or pose a question (usually about current society). So even the stuff that seems like bullshit, really isn’t, because if someone can purposely bullshit an art piece, and have it installed in a museum or sell it for a huge amount of money, it definitely raises questions and/or says something about society, so it still serves its purpose in the end.
I think a lot of people would appreciate art more if they realized that it’s almost never meant to be pretty. It’s a visual language, and to understand it, you just need to know something about it. With conceptual art, it’s usually accompanied by a statement, like this one, that gives you the context. You can’t really look at conceptual art out of context and “get” it.
But if you ignore the statement, it’s just a fan, and you might think, “that’s stupid. Art makes no sense.” Or you can read the statement, glance at the fan, and keep walking. But if you read it, and and stop to experience the fan, that’s when you gain insight. Most of us didn’t experience the AIDS epidemic in that way, but most of us know what it’s like to lose someone, and we can all understand what would have been meant by the family getting rid of everything… you have the context that he was a gay man who died of AIDS in a very conservative era, so you can imagine the family was probably ashamed, and wanted to erase his existence. And you can imagine the absolute devastation his lover felt when he discovered everything that meant anything to the person he loved was now gone. Most people have the experience of wanting to keep something after someone dies, to hold on to that connection and keep their memory fresh, so we can imagine how devastating it would be to have that taken away, and be left with nothing but a worthless box fan.
And you can stand there, and stare at a box fan, and feel the air blowing on you, and be hit with the absolute gravity of the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. And if you’re queer, it will hit you 10 times as hard, because that could have been you, or someone you loved. You could have been erased from existence, save for one meaningless, generic item that says nothing about you, in any other setting.
When you take an object out of its environment, and place it in a museum, you are attributing meaning to it, and that’s the fundamental basis of conceptual art. That fan could have just as easily ended up in a garbage dump, and no one would have known or cared. But it didn’t. It ended up in a museum, and that alone imparts a specific meaning onto it that no other box fan in existence has.
This man’s family didn’t see any point in removing this fan from the apartment, but now this post alone has 82k notes, and who knows how many more people have experienced this installation in person, and felt something about the death of a person they never knew. How many people sat with it and thought about the AIDS epidemic, and left with a new insight into the very real, devastating impact it had on people? How many people are still seeing this and thinking about this in 2021, 24 years after the man who owned the fan died, and 15 years after the artist who installed it died? He could have drawn a portrait of his deceased lover, and unless he was very famous, it would be long forgotten by now. But this installation is still here, because the concept behind it still matters.
get out your metal bowl. get out your mixer, your whipping attachment, your spatula, all those little cute prep bowls you got for mise en place and never used. your kitchen scale, your baking sheets, your silicone mats, your piping bag and tip.
here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to make them forget. every fat that has ever touched them, you’ll wipe away. of course, they’re clean, but this is the trick- they can be cleaner. using white vinegar and a rag or paper towel, give the surface of all your implements a quick wipe. a common pitfall avoided, simple as that.
don’t you wish you knew how to do that for yourself? don’t you wish it was that simple? i wish it was that simple.
PART TWO: MEASURING.
your kitchen scale is your best friend! it’s so much easier to be precise with a friend like this. certainly, you can succeed with volume measurement, but don’t you want to be careful?
here is what you need-
one hundred five grams of almond flour. one hundred five grams of powdered sugar. one hundred grams egg white. one hundred grams granulated sugar. if you have difficulty with dependably whipping egg whites to stiff peaks, one fourth teaspoon cream of tartar.
for this recipe, i’ll be making lavender macarons. isn’t that nice? my mother is allergic. to follow along, measure out one tablespoon of culinary grade lavender.
now we turn to our secret helper, the food processor. for a macaron of the right texture, you’ll want the finest ground almond flour you can get, but it’s so hard to find the fineness you truly need. the easiest solution is to toss that almond flour into a food processor for a minute, and then it will be as fine as you need it to be.
add the powdered sugar to the food processor, too, why don’t you, and get them mixed together while you’re at it. if you’re using lavender, pulse that lavender to a fine dust in a spice grinder or separate in the food processor, then add that to the mix as well.
when i was younger, my best friend lived down the road. we loved each other so much. i’ve met him again now that i’m older. terribly allergic to nuts, now, developed suddenly. i missed him so much. i still miss him. i always will.
sift the almond flour, powdered sugar and lavender mixture through a fine mesh to remove any large fragments. discard the chaff. set aside.
PART THREE: PREPARING THE BATTER.
the technique used in this recipe is called a swiss meringue. it can be used in all kinds of applications, and it’s a handy technique to learn. my mother taught me to cook and to bake; not professionally, just at a basic level. she taught myself and my sister so well that we both had fractions mastered before beginning school! i wish she had taught me more. i wish she had never sent me to school. i wish i had never grown up. to start, add about an inch of water to a small saucepan and bring it to just a simmer on your stovetop.
put your egg whites and granulated sugar into a clean glass or metal bowl, one that rests nicely on the small saucepan without touching the water below. if it suits well and won’t touch the water, you can use the bowl from your stand mixer. as soon as you set it on the pan, start whisking, and don’t stop! your goal is simply for the sugar to dissolve. you can check this by touching the mixture with your fingertips and rubbing them together- do you still feel grains of sugar? i always hate this step. i hate the stickiness of the syrup and the perceived uncleanliness of the raw egg. it makes my skin crawl to touch it, and i keep a towel nearby to wipe my fingers on as soon as i can.
once your sugar is dissolved, you’ll pour the mixture into the bowl of your stand mixer and begin to whip the egg whites. start by mixing on low for half a minute or so; then, if desired, add your cream of tartar, and increase to medium for a minute or two. once it’s white and beginning to promise fluffiness, raise to medium-high or high and whisk until stiff peaks are formed. the best way to know is to watch. the whites will become glossy, the whisk will form streaks. some advise that the middle of the whisk will seem to start to fill. go slowly, at first- it hurts nothing to stop and check every so often. once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll just be able to tell, kind of, when you’re getting there.
i was never good at understanding that, the idea that “you’ll just know”. how could i know unless i knew the signs? how obvious should the change be? will it come to me easily, or will i be left behind?
the ideal stiff peak, when you lift your whisk from the whites, will shoot straight up, possibly with a slight bend to the tip.
remember those dry ingredients we sifted together earlier? now you’ll sift through that fine mesh again, this time directly into the whipped whites. you can do this in your mixer bowl or a different bowl, whichever works best for you. some people find it easiest to add their dry ingredients in two or three batches, mixing in between; i add mine all at once, and it seems to work fine.
to start, you’ll fold your dry ingredients into the egg whites. using a
J-shaped gesture, bring your spatula slowly through the center and turn,
then turn your bowl (as much as ninety degrees, as little as twenty- up to you!)
and repeat. once everything is evenly incorporated, it’s time for the
macaronage.
for me, this is the most effort that goes into making macarons. my arm aches by the time i’m done. don’t worry, it’s unlikely yours will! it’s also the step i love most, because it’s home to a display of unusual tenderness.
i work slowly. i work very slowly, in fact, intentionally, a sort of moving meditation that pains me somewhat to perform.
to macaronage, you will very gently and slowly press the batter up against the side of the bowl in deliberate strokes, turning the bowl as you work, so that once you’ve completed a rotation you’ve formed a flower pattern, each petal the width of your spatula. after each macaronage repetition, tenderly gather all of your batter back to the center of the bowl and start anew.
slowly, so slowly, your batter will become looser and looser, shinier and sleeker. it will fall from the spatula in flowing ribbons. when pulled up the side of the bowl, it will relax faster each time, easing back down more quickly. test often; don’t overmix! when your batter is ready, you’ll let the batter fall from your spatula in a smooth stream, leisurely and without interruption, effortless, forming several figure eights before it breaks.
it’s like a massage. i wish someone would macaronage me. i wish someone would treat me with tenderness and care.
pour your batter into a piping bag fitted with a half-inch round tip.
PART FOUR: PIPING.
you may use templates to pipe your macarons, or you may freehand them. i’ve tried both and i’m never happy. i’m never happy with anything. to pipe, place your piping bag ninety degrees half an inch or so over the center of the template and softly squeeze for about three to five seconds, then release and swiftly pull the bag up with a slight twist. it takes time to master this! your just-piped macaron shell should be well within the borders of the template if you intend for the finished product to be the size of the marked circle.
once you’ve piped as many as will be on the tray, set your piping bag aside and firmly bang the trays against the counter, a few times each. you’ll notice your macarons expand to fill the circles.
here is what i always forget: now you’ll walk away. by this time, typically i’ll be thinking i should preheat the oven, but it’s unnecessary. you have to wait. you have to be good. you have to be patient. set the trays aside. depending on the humidity, you’ll need to let them sit anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour.
i don’t know what to do with myself in this time. i should, by now. i should be able to fill time, i should remember how the recipe goes, but i’m always startled and dismayed to remember my distraction comes with a built-in lull. sometimes i work on other things, like a filling. sometimes i just sit. sometimes i just sit and think. sometimes i sit and think about things i shouldn’t. sometimes i think about things i shouldn’t.
when your macarons are ready, they’ll have a “skin” of sorts. when you gingerly touch the top of one, it should feel dry and not at all tacky. at this point, preheat your oven to 300º F.
PART FIVE: BAKING.
it may take slight trial and error to find the exact perfect cooking time for your oven. mine takes thirteen minutes; yours may take ten, or fifteen. if you try to move a macaron, it should feel neither jiggly nor crisp, merely stand firm, if delicate. a well-baked macaron will separate satisfyingly easily from silicone or parchment once cooled. i am not like a well-baked macaron as far as separation goes.
let your macaron shells cool fully before proceeding with any filling. they’ll keep for a few days in airtight containers at room temperature, longer in the fridge, and wonderfully for months in the freezer.
PART SIX: FILLING.
fillings are the difficult part for me.
you’d think, certainly, that the strenuously detailed work of the macaron shells would be the thing, but it’s not. i’m nearly always successful in the difficult work of preparing delicate, demanding shells, and then when i make ganache i have a breakdown.
maybe i’m just tired, by that point. i’m tired now. i’m tired all the time.
today, i’m making white chocolate and lavender ganache to go with my lavender shells.
you will need two hundred fifty grams of white chocolate (very nice white chocolate, not cheap stuff), two tablespoons of lavender, and ninety milliliters of heavy cream.
i have made this filling far more times than the lavender shells to accompany. it seems like every time i try, the chocolate curdles, or i add food coloring badly and it turns an unsightly brownish gray, or i oversteep the lavender and make it bitter. why is this the part where i stumble? why do i fail at the easiest parts? why am i better at something demanding and unforgiving than the part that should be simple?
add the heavy cream and lavender to a pot, and heat to just barely a simmer. let it sit for a minute, but not too long. pour the heavy cream through a strainer into the chocolate, and let sit for two to five minutes. with a whisk, gently stir the mixture until smooth. if the chocolate isn’t quite melted, microwave for ten seconds at a time, mixing in between, until the ganache is fully smooth.
set aside to cool. it should be ready in about an hour.
why do i make macarons? why is this the work i can do? why does it make me feel like i want to cry, but never actually make me cry? why can’t i cry?
pipe your ganache onto one shell, top with another, and you’re done! i like to use a fluted piping tip- it’s an easy way to make them look fancy. macarons are actually at their best in texture and flavor when they’ve sat in the fridge for a day or so. with age comes beauty!
the finished macarons are always beautiful, delicious, and technically impressive. i never feel like i’ve actually done something worthy of praise. there’s a hollowness in me that swallows up compliments and makes them disappear. i am lonely and looking for something in my kitchen. i don’t know what it is. i dream about being in the kitchen, barefoot, cracking eggs and letting yolks fall to the floor. our chickens have nearly stopped laying. what will i do when they die? when i fail them, and they die? i’ll have to buy my eggs at the store. i’ll have to go out to the store, with all the strangers around me, and grab my carton from the big cold hollow fridge in the big cold hollow store filled with people i don’t know. all looking at me. all knowing what is wrong with me. all knowing about the big cold hollow thing in me. they know that i’m not taking very good care of the chickens. they know that i’m too tired to clean as much as i should.
the best thing about macarons is that they freeze great and thaw quickly. my favorite way to store and serve macarons is to keep them in the freezer and put out what i’ll serve on the counter about a half an hour to an hour before they’ll be served.
i don’t like to go out and have those strangers look at me. i like to stay at home, in my kitchen, making macarons. i like to whip my egg whites to perfect, shiny peaks. i like to be barefoot on my kitchen floor, which is clean, mostly, or in my yard, on the grass, the plush grass, and i cannot be barefoot in the store.
i wish i could always stay at home. i wish i could just make macarons. i wish that was all i had to do, all day forever. i wish i was still learning to bake with my mother. i wish somebody would teach me to bake again. i wish i could stop.
I dont know how they could squeeze civil war in at this point, when the focus in cap3 should be finishing the Winter Solider arc.
IDK, they could make Civil War about Bucky – Tony sent by SHIELD to bring him in, versus Steve who wants to get him help, the other Avengers taking sides. Or Bucky could be the catalyst. Here’s a clearly dangerous person who has assassinated people for decades, being allowed to run free because Captain America covered for him – if a child gets caught in a crossfire, even with the best of intentions, Bucky becomes public enemy number one, and a long, hard look is taken at these new heroes and what the parameters of their duties are.
I posted this in October 2014 in response to rumors about Captain America 3, which was released in 2016, being based on the Civil War arc.
ok, sure, i guess theres nothing wrong with “hating your oppressors,” but if hating your oppressors means treating 50% of the people around you like human garbage cuz of something they cant help, then youre being kind of an asshole
like, being guarded or gruff around certain people is one thing. im not asking you to get on your knees and roll around like a dog for everyone who says hi to you. put up your walls, protect yourself, dont put yourself in dangerous situations.
but if you start calling people names at no provocation, or going around harrassing people, or sending death threats or suicide baits, youre not, like, being an activist. youre just being a bully, and youve decided the acceptable targets are the one for whom your ire is “justified”
you are in fact doing the opposite of activism. change is made through relationships; it’s about people and community. it’s about the power of connections with, and connecting with, those people.
you don’t have to connect with everyone like that- and in fact sometimes it is anywhere from useless (they won’t listen to someone like you) to dangerous (they will hurt someone like you)- but actively ostracizing every single person you come across who isn’t just like you is in fact working against the formation of communities and power that can be used to enact positive change.
and you don’t have to be an activist! it’s okay if you aren’t there, and it’s okay if you need time to unpack your emotions and your trauma before you can do that kind of work, or even just get past that kind of unhealthy paranoia. just understand where you’re at for what it is. accept that what you’re dealing with is not good, it’s not okay, and it’s not the way you or anyone else should have to live.
you don’t need to be paranoid all the time, yes, even if things are sometimes legit dangerous for you. you are not hated by the entire world. there are more people who care than you know.
that’s hard to hear when you’re struggling, I know and I’ve been there, but it’s an important truth to hold: you are not the only safe, good person in the world. you are not uniquely correct. other people have good ideas, and good intentions, and they’re worth listening to.
take care of yourself. seek out the help & support you need. heal. grow. change. do it at your own pace, and do what you need to get there the right way and the healthy way. but do it.
it is too early for me to be rotating this much over 3zun
nvm i am fully eating dirt over the fact that lan xichen could have died at guanyin temple and killed himself when jin guangyao asked, like he was going to do, and it. it would have given a sense of very cathartic satisfaction because 3zun would have come their full circle and all of their deaths would have been so interconnected they would be impossible to separate and instead. instead! lan xichen is forced to live! whether it be because jin guangyao didn’t actually want lan xichen to die for him and just wanted the confirmation that he would, or jin guangyao realized that up until the end lan xichen remained the only loyal person in his life, or jin guangyao wanted to cement himself in lan xichen’s mind as the one who saved him despite everything, or a little bit of it all etc etc etc… lan xichen is forced to live when he resigned himself to death. nie mingjue is dead and desecrated, jin guangyao is the public enemy and dying, and lan xichen was at the center of it all and willingly accepts his death. for all intents and purposes, 3zun would have stuck it out together from the beginning to the bloody end. and then! lan xichen is forced to live! and he does it as a ghost in seclusion, probably feeling that he does not deserve to be grieving either of his best friends, his closest confidants, but if he doesn’t this grief feels like it will kill him, but if he does this guilt might do the same, not to mention the way he would look at the rest of the cultivation world and see bloody handprints all over it- and it is not often that i say death is the kinder option for a character, but sometimes. sometimes,,,,,
i know this is very lan xichen centric, and if i got into nie mingjue and jin guangyao we’d be here forever, but each of 3zun has their own tragedy about them, and lan xichen’s is a pathway to hell paved in good intentions
