Stricken Part 4C

C. Upside |Context| Downside

BREAKING NEWS: [Bronx, NYC]. ICE shoots man picking up 5 year-old while child is in the car.

4D Time + Pattern, digital file/print, 42” x 42”

Not everything’s crap!

Indigo festival (@indigo.festival.ljubljana) Ljubljana tomorrow with NEW MODELS (@newmodels_io), Mat Dryhurst (@matdryhurst), David Rudnick, Brandon Rosenbluth (@skeptic_mystic), and experimental practice 700x100 (@700x100) by Vittorio Maria dal Maso. — from Dean Kissick’s Instagram

This weekend, if you happen to be in Ljubljana, Slovenia, don’t miss the Indigo Festival. A banger of a conference panel is on the slate, featuring New Models, Dryhurst, Kissick and others with whom I’m less familiar. The discussion will cover timely content of the sort contained or referenced in Stricken. Hopefully, the program will be properly documented, shared and accessible online. I love the hook line: “Slop Till You Drop!” Organizer/moderator/curator [?] Brandon Rosenbluth (self-identified “Chimeric cultural engineer currently operating out of Ljubljana“) gushes on his IG post:

I couldn’t be more excited to bring this illustrious group together to present the bleeding edge of art practice and criticism in the wake of algorithmic aesthetics and vaporized norms, and to speculate on the future of communication, art and society with me for Indigo Festival on Wednesday, Oct.7 from 17:00-20:00 at Cukrarna in Ljubljana!

[Hmmm. That date kinda rings a bell.]

Not gonna lie, I get tingly about this kind of buzzy, artsy PR chatter. In my former life, I would hi-speed churn out gobs of multi-platform 411 to attract culturati attention and traffic to whatever AFH dispersion/Live Art Events needed hyping. Who knew I could ever feel FOMO over the Slovenian art scene!

Another not-crap bright spot from that part of the globe is Croatian polymath Krunoslav Bedi. He Liked one of my posts on the socials, and I tracked back to his profile. Expecting the typical porn spam IG account I’ve been blocking daily for the past several weeks, I was pleasantly surprised to discover his prolific AI/computer-generated art practice. I found Bedi’s images to be oddly reminiscent of Mark Kostabi’s surreal analog work in oils. I hadn’t thought of Kostabi for years. He was maverick influencer, unabashed commercialist and art world whistleblower, years before it was aura. He was the proud owner/operator of an art mill, before that became artist elite mainstream, thanks to /koons, Hitsch, Murikami, et al..

Mark Kostabi, Making a Difference, 2023 (Martin Lawrence Galleries)

The association resurrected memories of what I consider Artnet’s golden era for online art criticism. Their roster included Walter Robinson, Charlie Finch, Jerry Saltz, Donald Kuspit and others. I periodically emailed them with mostly positive feedback, and often received thoughtful and prompt replies. In fact, one such exchange — with art-tech pioneer, writer and thinker Joseph Nechvatal — sparked a friendship and correspondence which continues to this day! The internet was so different then. It shortened the distance between minds. Extremists hadn’t yet poisoned comments sections. The spirit of exploration persisted from the web ring phase. Predation, perversion, infiltration and co-optation hadn’t subsumed the digital commons with festering paranoia. Murdoch hadn’t killed MySpace. Andreesen hadn’t murdered Ning. Apple versus MS rumbles could still raise a ruckus, before Jobs’ competition-smashing and Gates’ IP/anti-open source lawfare, before Dubya’s DOJ quashed the anti-monopoly investigation/suit, before they joined Big 5 in partnership with neo-con/lib DC to build TIA (Total Information Awareness), which policy St. Ed Snowden shined light on…

Curious, I googled Bedi and scanned his bios and artist statements, which reminded me why the web can have such a profound and positive impact for aspiring creatives who live far from the world’s cultural centers or don’t speak the language.. Kuroslav Bedi cobbled together a very respectable career, balancing technologic expertise, digital Humanities/academia, compu-art/multimedia and poetry in his native tongue. Maybe for the first time ever, I actually read Google’s AI sloppy summary of Bedi’s identity and achievements, and realized it was perfect for our purposes. G’s AI Mode provides a tidy bio-blurb it scooped from his gallery (uncompensated I’m sure), then crisply breaks down his info into two sections, one focused on occupational pursuits, the second on his aesthetic avocations. The practical description (also scraped) for the latter is brilliant, if clumsy:

His artistic method starts with writing original prose and poetry, which he then translates or "paints" into visual works of art using an interdisciplinary approach and artificial intelligence.

I confess to never having lost my twitchy objections to the de-/redefinition of “painting” and the rest of the traditional art glossary. It would have made more sense for institutional art and culture to adopt an additive approach to all the new media, to build dedicated facilities/architecture/academies/storage and presentation facilities. The primary reason for this advance not materializing universally can be attributed to lack of imagination in the institutional classes and the utter banal idiocy of the philanthropic elites, not to mention the art-illiterate techie plutocrats, who prefer spending billions on elections and rocket ships. Instead we got a spate of vanity/private galleries/museums/foundations/etc., funded by superrich collectors, for all the wrong reasons. Like the Davos crowd, this is a regressive global trend [Beg your pardon, Waltons; Crystal Bridges is a fine simulacra in the hallucinatory age of MAGA, a worthy monument to American visionary artificial personhood Wal*Mart]. For years I have strenuously advocated or decried these issues in manifold arenas and forums, and eventually concluded Upton Sinclair’s assessment to be correct:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Google AI Overview [scraped from I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked (1934)]

My third not-crap affirmation of febrile creativity arrived in the sympathetic film Late Fame, starring Willem Defoe as a rediscovered poet. His performance is fantastic and the story was a moving one for me, because it tapped several emotionally charged themes with which i could identify: the 20-21C Poetry milieu; the old/young dynamic in a small creative collective; gritty beat survivalist/sparkly post-Bloomberg playground NYC; the impermanence of art/acclaim; the magical, precious moments with the art tribe and its audience; performance, the dream, the sexiness, ups and downs, entanglements, soaring highs, devastating despair, the mind fucks and ego trips, the margin of error between success and oblivion, the Game, the Bag…*

The cast of "Late Fame." [Magnolia Pictures]

[ * Timely/related content: Recommend Once Upon a Time in Harlem, a documentary film to be released this month (October 2026). I found out about it via a BBC/Talking Movies segment today. This is an IRL correlate to the fictionalized material in Late Fame, which explicitly addresses the key issues we are raising in this text.]

Upon reflection, the idealistic cyclic nature of art mirrors that of natural life itself. A healthy society’s art and people will demonstrate virtuosity in the proper prioritization of care/respect for the young and aged, without neglecting those in their prime to do so. The benefits to all of this prioritization are evident, and the costs of not doing so are, too. Late Fame handles this OS thematic kernel very gently, because 2026 America on the whole in an abject failure on this account, although, certainly, vestigial exceptions survive. The movie avoids preachiness, while doing enough to humanize the predicament, evenhandedly cluing the viewer in both thorny and (bitter-) sweet bits. After all, it’s not quite as bad as Dickens yet, is it?

The “old/young dynamic” is exceedingly prominent in my autobiography. I cannot overstate the essential role played by my first real artist mentor, Don Vogl, recently passed. In my evolution as an artist so often the most valuable and meaningful interchanges involve some element of [non-sexual LOL] gift-giving/receiving that hinges on generational/experiential insight. The same is true in nat-life, as a matter generally rooted in survival, and beyond that, living well. It was impressed upon me early on that one ought to cultivate a mature appreciation of the entwined cyclical (spiral, parallax, yin-yang, ouroboros) models of humanity. Elders insisted I behave respectfully, show common sense, manners, an’a’at. The drone of sharp encouragement was consistent, cross-cultural, and contradicted a load of propagandistic rubbish foisted on my generation by cynical opportunists brazenly and destructively pursuing power, wealth and prestige. The scumbags pushed pro-con tradition only and always as a means to their nefarious ends. Rot IH Rush…

In Stricken I have tried to sketch the Drift, my term for the flow of memory and dreams through the topology of current events, as they appear via networked, streaming media. A movie like Late Fame activates impressions of my lived experience, sometimes pleasurable, other times not. I am remembering with great fondness the memorable sessions and excursions of Reading Group Number One, an illustrated literary compilation of which would make a terrific book, and excellent name-dropping. Same goes for Occupy with Art/Occupenial, though that period of radical creativity was marred by much difficulty, disappointment and darkness. My formative years in Santa Fe, Nashville Art Star phase LOL, SoCal Masters run, Austin, EGS/NYC confab, Astoria… If I can sustain the Drift sufficiently to attain a feeling/state of gratitude, satisfaction and inspiration will surely follow. A nod to Max Holloway: Blessed, bruh; (shaka). I miss my art tribes. For now, we reconvene mostly in dreamtime.

Aging is not simply physical or mechanical. It is fundamental, essential in human experience and indelibly linked to the formation of identity. Wisdom is its production, which is objectified as art. Our ur-/ouro-expression is the circularity of human nature, which is ubiquitously demonstrative in the Natural. When one realizes this, that realization allows one to access and extrapolate the past through the stories and images charting man’s journey through time. Our interpretations of texts/monuments/pictures/et al. fuel a vital concourse, a hybrid, an epistemological-technical synthesis that, over time, synchronizes politics, economics and the sciences with humanism, establishing linkage between perception, perspective and representation as a systematic thing, Das Ding. In a democracy this construct is a counterbalance to negativity — to war, to violence, to hate, prejudice, oppression, domination, extraction, exploitation… Sadly, also human nature, it would seem

We are suffering the societal consequences of unleashed, systematic evil, greed, “the dark side” that weaponizes fear, chaos and deprivation to subjugate the many to the benefit of the few. The phenomenon is as intrinsically real-human as it is inhumane. The struggle between good v. bad is signified, abstracted in Drama, via media, and sets us apart as a species. The idea of civilization orbits this root conceptual binary. Objectively, one must admit this configuration is not universal or inevitable, despite the virtual totality of the command and control by force and scarcity matrix. The erasure machine is designed to obviate resistance to the dimensional power platforms, and hide the apparatus from scrutiny and accountability. The displacement machine destroys connections between bodies and places. The disruption machine interrupts chronological continuity critical for the formation of personhood and community. When these and other “machines” are coordinated dimensionally they constitute an effective apparatus for genocide, as in Gaza.

One chilling dystopian prospect is that Gaza serves as a test of concept lab or proving ground for the international genocide industrial complex. The same apprehension applies to the US anti-immigrant project under Trump, the Russia-Ukraine War and many other geopolitical conflagrations unfolding outside the scope of Western news programming. These are not overnight developments. They are diversely complicated scenarios with respect to systematically fungible principles of autonomy and management, with each microcosmos also possessing unique characteristics and distinctive factors. The world is entering truly post-contemporary/4D hyperreality. Baudrillard is current, and the orgy has metastasized. Post-9/11 there was a vast, meteoric rise in euphemistically described public-private partnerships across sectors related to security, communications, finance and information. The shift, post-Y2K was preponderantly network technology driven. This paradigmatic turn coincided with: a massive redistribution of wealth; the passage of Citizens United; the Great Recession; a drastic assault on civil liberties; corporate deregulation; blatant defiance toward transparency or governance in local to global business and politics; media consolidation and the neutering of the free press; the Pandemic; the formalization of American fascism, with integrated techno-/pluto-/bureaucracy. One can grok without straining the imagination why the Players are banking on AI to be the game changer that tips the scales in their favor.

PLATES

These photos were selected impulsively from several AFH Flickr sets documenting artsy life in Bush/Manhattan/ NYC, including my birthday dinner loft party, Reading Group #1 exccursions to art fairs [I spy Mihai, and a tiny PJM Matterhorn], Read/Write at 319 Scholes, and Bard, where several in our crew had attended undergrad school, plus studio visits with Marta Stockwell and Patrick Meagher.

Woodsman

The Woodsman
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Thicket 3

Thicket 3
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Lefty Quartet

Boy in Hat
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

In the Storm, a Maiden Cradles the Goose
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Boy Shepherd Returns with Lamb
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Young Widow
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Stricken Part 4B

B. Thickets

[I wholeheartedly recommend Pope Leo’s Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, which outlines in depth the Church’s positions on the new technologies and their impacts. I thought overall the transmission’s spiritual approach and emphasis was powerful and refreshing, and was impressed by the acuity and range of its analysis. — PJM]

Aaaaaaaand just like THAT, Trumpo the Magnificent hosts the Titans of Tech at the White House and grants them impunity, pronouncing that.we will trust them to self-regulate AI. Next day, Department of War dude Pete Hegseth assigns immigrant Top Doge Elon the mission of futurizing the American martial machine, during a macho rant that platformed the collapse of church-state-industry separation in our democratic OS. Meanwhile, POTUS defies a court order granting press access to the administration, amidst s scandal breaking over the illegal allocation of millions in public funds to a pro-Trump ad buy. The rigging of November’s midterm elections appears to be falling short for a GOP hoping to maintain congressional majorities. Vague and/or explicit threats of interventions in the upcoming elections, veiled as hypotheticals, are being floated by the White House. Will Trump/Markwayne Mullin/Homan/Patel deploy ICE and other DHS/Fed agents to polling centers? Will the Insurrection Act/Martial Law be invoked? Chaos, corruption and complicity are the In-Name-Only (INO) American republic’s status quo. Health care costs are skyrocketing. Homeless encampments abound. The USA is mired in the seventh month of the war with Iran (and Israel), with no end in sight. Household costs (food, gas, etc.) are through the roof. Climate-affected disasters, grid and network disruption abound. Weirdness and the macabre proliferate, exacerbated by an immense profusion of AI-enabled slop and real fake news. Today I happened across a documentary on Freud’s double nephew Bernays and the phenomenal ascension of propaganda in the 20th Century (Hedges and Chomsky were among the commenters). After 100+ years of manufacturing falsehood, using the most advanced technology/science on our collective psyche, the liar elite themselves are confounded, unhinged, demented, adrift in a sea of untruth.

Art, however, proposes a different truth, one that is inherent, recognizable, like a color to the eye or frequency to the ear [Recommend Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy.]. Art exposes truth as truth. My favorite treatise on the subject is Hegel’s breakdown of the stakes in the introduction to the Phenomenology of the Mind/Spirit. Falsifying art is called forgery, and as a subject fake art has longevity. [Recommend Soderburgh’s recent film fable The Christophers.] To what can we attribute the popular fascination with the confidence grift in the art world? Forgery is only one flavor of scam, among many. Is it the same level of interest we see for similar con games elsewhere? I think so. The key ingredients seem to be snobbery, fuck-you money, glam-sexy characters and luxe locations — never the banal stuff of mega-wealth accumulation or the incendiary taboo of its confiscation and redistribution. Art’s relation to truth is special, on par with science and law, as both a philosophical and practical matter. Philosophically, the concern is ethical. Practically, the issue is authenticity, which connects a maker to a specific outcome. Both highlight the socially desirable quality of accountability, and, in turn, both allude to the cultivation of virtuosity inherent in aesthetic attribution. Understanding the mechanics of the constructive process, we can see how over time — absent war, plague, tyranny, and so on — the craft of art, the artistry, improves. Also, we can see how the Enlightenment notion of genius is rehabilitated. The lens of comparison is not necessarily a front for Social Darwinism. One who stands out among those represented in a sample set also does not out of hand deserve to be a target of bile from a mediocre mob. Improvisation and innovation are associated with genius, a term which has fallen to disfavor since the 60s. “Creativity” has supplanted the assignation of super-talented/-gifted/-intelligent/etc. Artist has been replaced with “maker,” studio with “lab” or “space,” and so on. The Redefinition of art coincides with the reorientation or -assignment of genius to the “Super Intelligent” machine, which is, for now, composed of hardware, software and wetware (us). A global referendum is taking shape, on the existential risks to humanity created by AI. Trump’s non-interventionist stance evokes “full steam ahead” or “drill baby drill” positions typical of weak-government/pro-business extremists.

Are we at last seeing the result of a determined effort to subjugate and sublimate art to the will and whims of the latest iteration of the ruling class? They undoubtedly entertain astonishingly presumptuous fabulist pretensions foe their enterprise. Thiel’s antichrist fixation, for instance. Extra-national/state-subordinate smart cities. Techn-enabled immortality or serial corporeal mind implants, ad infinitum. There have to be dangerous blind spots in their meddling with the god/nature/mankind/universe continuum, right? What if a genius/sentient computer determines the protocols of art-making apply to a systematic campaign of anthrocide? The robo-pocalypse haunts futurism. The Singularity is the post-contemporary bogeyman. For us geezer-nerds, the-end-of-man/rise-of-machines is a commonplace sci-fi theme. War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Blade Runner, Terminator, Matrix, Megan… Ok, that last one is a stretch. I just adore her killer dance. But you get the picture. Doomsday arrives and it manifests as a mechanized humanoid. Aside: did you know that Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot? The “training” of AI in art has proved controversial, due to the rebellion of artists objecting to the harvesting of vast quantities of digitized artworks by the teams of AI engineers, academics, industrialists, etc., for use in their various projects. For a little background, I’ve been studying the study of creativity for twenty years, and how the industry-driven research manifests throughout the attention economy. To summarize, my goal initially was to be an informed citizen, simply put. Beyond this, in the pursuit of excellence in the burgeoning field of multimedia in the 90s and 2000s, I had become aware of a cultural dimension or seam that hummed with energy. Through collective art production I discovered ways to tap into that power. It was so exciting! Integrating 2D and 3D (traditional) art with music, photography, installation, digital design, ceramics, fabrics, film and video, animation became possible, when the composition of all the elements conformed to concept that was broadly appealing on a basic human level. Together, we found that the most challenging material yielded the best results, and that the well of content was limitless. We also learned the limits of limitlessness.

By accident, more or less, I was made privy to the unbelievably powerful movement to confiscate civilization, which of course entailed neutering democracy, co-opting art, thoroughly obliterating dissent, etc.,etc., etc. I’ve done my best to be on the side of right throughout. It’s difficult, since the conflict is 4 DIMENSIONAL+, and “side” is an obsolete framing, a binary/2D reduction of a hopelessly complicated and convoluted problem set. Hindsight adds perspective to experience. My spirit animal is John Henry, a legendary figure in the Appalachia of my youth. At critical junctures, my collaborators and I achieved the artistic equivalent of the pilot soaring above the clouds, glimpsing heaven/the stars, the curvature of the earth. In the process of rising and falling in a vertical hierarchy, one develops an appreciation that encompasses horizontality, the people, places and things that comprise the experiential plane. To revisit those elements via memory is to acknowledge the once-off nature of events, how we reassemble the past as a montage, mosaic or quilt, according to our biases or preferences. I realized in the post-contemporary era, it behooved one to juxtapose human or creative memory with both the computer and corporate versions. We can skip past the computer sort, which in the technical aspect is fairly perfunctory, after noting the ease with which it can be erased, permanently, and how much human knowledge has been converted to some form of digitized version, stored metaphorically in a database or virtual archive. In the Cloud, LOL. And how fragile these increasingly enormous and grandiose databanks and libraries of silicon, 0s and1s are, actually, how impermanent they are, how vulnerable they are to hacks, attacks, censorship, gatekeeping… How the consolidation of the world’s information under the auspices of a few mega-corporations, acting as a supra-consortium or -syndicate, is omnivorously impoverishing and immiserating 99% of us, to frame it in OWS terminology. Right now, we are witness to the most comprehensive assault on memory in human history. Without memory, art ceases to exist. Memory creates meaning, which creates one form of value, and currency, which is time-based, an event, both personal and collective. Which brings us at length to the juxtaposition of our (human) memory to the artificial personhood’s. The corporation’s memory has one purpose, and one purpose only: to serve the interest of the shareholder; and to oppose (suppress, undermine, contradict…) any actual memory that puts the corporation and the people it protects at risk for liability. The corruption of memory by no means began with modern corporations (1825) — that practice is ancient, traceable to the Church and kingdoms — they ((corporations) have undertaken its (the corruption/confiscation/commodification/weaponization of memory) optimization, and unfortunately for us all, have by now, in 2026, largely succeeded.

[The images and video were taken during the installation and opening reception for my MFA thesis exhibition “CONTENT” at Claremont Graduate University in 2008. On the walls are adhesive cut vinyl art. The show also included a portfolio of 11” x 17” Pattern prints, an Op-Feek (optical feedback) array, videos, animations and surveillance equipment displayed on monitors or projected. The CONTENT series was presented at CGU, in two parts at Art For Humans Gallery Chinatown and at Yarger|Strauss Contemporary Art in Beverly Hills. You can review more documentation at AFH Flickr and YouTube.]

thicket 2

THICKET #2
12”x 9”
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
2026
$250

companion

COMPANION
9” x 12”
Watercolor on paper
2026
$250

thicket

THICKET
12” x 9“
Ink on paper
2026
$250

NOTES

The cinematic backdrop for today’s second painting session was Goddard’s Film Socialisme.

passenger

THE PASSENGER
12” x 9“
Ink on paper
2026
$250

NOTES

The backdrop for today’s first painting session was Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, which stars Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. What a remarkable film!

Boy with Guitar

BOY WITH GUITAR (Frankie)
12” x 9”
Watercolor on paper
2026
$250

Before Sunrise

in the wee hours
before sunrise —
skin on skin
spooning, breathing
we are stirring —
first me, then her
under a blanket
of bones
on a mossy, solitary
riverbank, not far
beyond the city walls
the night of inky blue
moon risen & gone
— in the frosty air
she and I clinging
to one another, close
drifting through
the fleeting magic
enjoining dreaming
with this new day
telling secrets
in hushed tones
being entwined
& silly, in love
black waters bubbling,
splashing over rounded
stone — in due time
behold! the dawn chorus

Stricken Part 4A

Dreams
by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

A. Void Visitor

[Recap] When I started writing Stricken, I envisioned an account of stroke survival. Things, as they are wont to do, veered sidewise. In the closing sections of Part 3, “stricken” assumes a variant referential meaning. The shift in focus initiates a dimensional reflection on erasure, stuff being stricken from the record, as it were. The subject, an existential one, can be approached from any number of directions. Death and memory, absence or impermanence, temporality and transition, states of being, ideal form… Philosophy, broadly, poses and and seeks to answer questions we have about the residue of action, in tandem with ethics, presumably to incentivize generally desirable behavior. The imagination becomes a means for the modeling of reality, by prioritizing and directing our engagements in life, honing the mind to govern doing. Where we are picking up the thread is beyond these foundational concerns. Stricken addresses aggression against the archive, against historical accuracy, representation, the real, authenticity… Forceful negation being exerted on the pressure points through which consciousness flows toward movement, activity that effects change.

I come to the project primarily through art, but my perspective is colored by an appreciation for oral tradition, and a primitive regard for the conductive properties of dreaming. Art talk and dreams play a substantial role in my art life, which is true for many others, expressing themselves through a tremendous variety of genres and eras, all over the place. I’m coy above, to call dreaming “conductive.” The implication is that dreams deliver something from somewhere to here. What do I know? It’s true that for decades, since my early 20s, I have sought to satisfy my curiosity on the topic. What conclusions have I reached? Why, none at all! And I’m not alone in my ambivalence. No consensus exists on the phenomenon of dreaming, what it means or does. Dream analysis is ancient, and new theories about its meaning, function and value sprout up all the time, to this day. Oneirology is a fascinating field of study, associating the unconscious (Jung, Freud) with symptomatic physiology (e.g., REM). Whether or not dreaming conforms to any logic or causality, or evades the proof rationality demands, we (humans) refuse to fully marginalize it in an increasingly mechanized and secular world. Collectively, we do wonder about the latest technologies, however. Because we’re alternately thrilled and terrified by the prospects of enlightened, sentient robots, we ask if the advanced systems are self-aware, and moreover, are these thing-beings dreaming? This bizarre transference, shifting our age-old fascination with dreams to humanoid contraptions, I think is exceedingly weird. Art, strangely enough, makes the conundrum of machine dreaming preposterous. Plenty of people appear to accept AI-generated content as art. This is also baffling to me. Dreams and art share an intractable commonality with respect to origination, which evades definition in the formality of language. The poetic and technical aspects of both are fodder for perpetual discourse and innovation, yes, but ultimately wordplay does not meet the challenge. The symbolic is a by-product of their convergence, but a painting cannot only be a symbol of some other thing. Art persists as itself.

In 2026, the pressure on our creative faculties is astounding and disturbing. Authoritarianism decides what is permissible to dream, create and discuss. In the maximally complex post-contemporary society, there are an infinite number of ways to impinge on expression. Power/wealth asymmetry and the organized surveillance/enforcement networks unleash an increasingly robust apparatus for interrupting the conceptual-expressive process. It’s a hybridized, dimensional phenomenon, that can yet be traced and apprehended by a normal citizen, with a rudimentary education and limited access to information. The Net in America for the moment allows a user to obtain a working historical knowledge of what’s what quickly, though malevolent misinformation and fakery abound. The most recent celebrated case of outright censorship involves billionaire Robert Kraft and a cabal of stadium owners, the media (all), and a handful of international pop music performers. The central issues of infringement on Constitutionally protected free speech are in play. This is an important opportunity to correct course on the degradation of American democracy. Already clear is the incredibly potent rapid-response of the key players, including massive cross-sector corporate damage control operations, implicating a foreign government (Israel). The timing is critical. American midterm elections are barely two months away. Public backlash against the Zionist lobby for Israel is accelerating. Trump and Netanyahu (the Israeli PM) are controversially speaking at the United Nations, while thousands protest outside. Social media platforms are pushing narratives that diverge wildly from messaging on legacy or “mainstream” platforms, and the former is moving the needle more than the latter. M-/Billions of dollars are at stake. The consumer creative industrial complex is exposed, and its ugliness is linkable to the contingent domains of pro sports, government subsidies, talent agencies and Wall St.

The entertainment sector intermixes the business and pleasure of the luxe and popular classes, as none other can. “Entertainment” is becoming fungible, like speech and money. Hollywood’s Dream Machine has metastasized, consuming practically all aspects of human life, our culture, private lives, community rituals, even our reproduction. Baudrillard’s analysis of hyperreality is a perfunctory vision, in the rearview mirror. The profuse radicalism of the Continental Theorists, Frankfurt School and ‘68ers seems quaintly decrepit in 2026. Stardom itself has spawned a perspectival deluge, a mimetic pandemic , a state of dramatic becoming being performed 24/7/365 all over the world by any- and everyone with a fast internet/social media connection, a camera, microphone and idea. The fourth wall has dissolved, and the formula life=art has manifested. The fleeting sensation of euphoria has evaporated, exposing the vast panopticon constructed to contain billions of lives and dreams to facilitate the wholesale suck of value and meaning from them. Parallel to this plantation model, an artificial and symbolic idealization of society is erected, a projection of impossible, irrational promise. The multimedia spectacle competition-lottery, promulgating the myths of talent, meritocracy, heroes and villains, in a miasma of sex and sparkling fashion.

Take the extreme financialization of youth sports in the USA, From this phenomenon, we can access an emergent networked global pro athletics schema linked by money/media/power to industrial gambling consortia, apparel giants and syndicated education, etc. The extraordinary concentration and integration of existence into an omni-market is revolutionary. The professionalization and/or privatization of culture coincides with the general trend of monopolization/absorption across all sectors in society since the eighties at least. Elitism has been rehabilitated through effective aspirational marketing. The top 1% — musicians, artists, athletes — are fabulously compensated, and in turn are expected to conform to the rapacious program of K-shaped post-capitalistic economy. Failure to do so can result in immediate cancellation by owners, consortiums, compliant press etc.

POTUS last week banned several major journalistic outfits from White House access, then promptly launched a state media channel for disseminating curated content, Trump’s “greatest hits.” One of the clever obscurations in the affair involves the blurring of distinctions among domains of public interest and exchange, all of which rely on trust, reciprocation and fulfillment on promise. These “spaces” include speech, commerce, politics and entertainment, all of which the President considers himself to be a master of, an all-time great. America elected this man to its highest office not once, but twice. To understand how and why requires a massive and thorough, dimensional and historical examination of the phenomenal/manufactured perfect storm that brought DJT to Amerca’s highest office…two times… This cringey project is worthwhile, in my estimation, only if it results in immediate corrective action. I recognize that he proposition frankly is absurd, a fool’s errand, Quixotic, because, as we know, the resources to mount such an effort no longer are democratically available. Furthermore, a devastatingly efficient campaign is underway to replace humanity’s ability to pursue an understanding of itself, and exercise that comprehension kinetically. So, what’s the point, man?

As an artist, I don’t have to have one, LOL. Art has been categorically dismissed on the basis of utility for centuries on semantic grounds. Let’s lean into that sentiment. The proponents of uselessness for art unsurprisingly have served at the discretion of monarchs, religions and states for command and control of the many by the few. There’s a fine line dividing the non-essential/utile thing and its complicity in a post-imperial/colonial/feudal revival. Art emerged over time as a vital indicator of the health of a society’s free speech ecosystem. The superiority posture of the wordist over the artist dates to Plato at least — an oddity, since the former’s contingency on the latter’s autonomy is elemental to functional democracy. The computer reduces both to zeroes and ones, which themselves are key to arithmetic and algebra, and — need it be said? —the forging of civilization from whatever preceded it. Now, the big question in the back of everyone’s mind is What survives civilization’s collapse? Bezos, Musk, et al., as we noted, are building rocket ships, space stations and bunkers. Meantime, superciliously, Trump wants a rebrand for AI, which has hit a rough patch with the hoi poloi. He would rather we say “super intelligence,” when describing the commodification of metadata, machine learning, killing drones, large language models, ETFs, Flock camera arrays and other mass surveillance tools, and so on and on. The trick is to link the fiction of artificial personhood with speech with money under the pretense and pretext that that specific tri-partheid configuration constitutes the embodiment of fact, which naturally is truthful, or tantamount to it. Belief and all that goes into it dissolves into this sentient non-entity like sugar in coffee. This is the Beast, the golem, of the post-contemporary drift towards planetary cataclysm. The scheming crazies all fantasize a happy ending for only them and theirs, but the disastrous fix is in, and it’s an alchemical/metaphysical double-cross. The rot of excess gobbles the mirage of future returns, even as the fires, floods, hurricanes, pestilences, etc., decimate the beneficiary class, their properties and delicate, idealized Self-hood, which they wish to perpetuate indefinitely… [POOF] Suckers! I hate to be gloating and pessimistic simultaneously. Talking about those Masters of the Universe/War: They’re gonna get us all killed, and they apparently couldn’t care less, because in their addled brains they will live forever, as futuristic Pharaohs, sporting smart glasses and riding self-driving magic carpets to art fairs in Valhalla or Timbuktu, a hot babe cyborg on each regenerated haptic arm, flexing!

PLATES

The Pattern Series was created for the CONTENT Cycle, which I launched while an MFA student at Claremont Graduate University and continued to develop for a solo exhibition at Yarger|Strauss Contemporary in Beverly Hills in the late 2000s.

Autumn Returns

Poème d’Automne
by Langston Hughes
The autumn leaves
Are too heavy with color.
The slender trees
On the Vulcan Road
Are dressed in scarlet and gold
Like young courtesans
Waiting for their lovers.
But soon
The winter winds
Will strip their bodies bare
And then
The sharp, sleet-stung
Caresses of cold
Will be their only
Love.

Lula 44

Today is my beautiful wife Lauren’s birthday, and I painted this, inspired by her. I’m so grateful and fortunate to have a love like hers. We’ve shared a lot of years, joy and tears, traveled many miles and been blessed with a wonderful son. Here’s to another loop around the sun, to dear friends and family, and, God willing, one more day! — PJM

Orchard

The Orchard
9” x 12”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

[This (I believe) is my 9th post-stroke “Lefty” painting. Thanks to all of you who have shown support, which includes donations for art supplies, art purchases, encouraging messages and likes/clicks. So grateful! TBH, the arthritis makes the whole operation tough, but your love and positivity helps tremendously!]

Peace & Beauty

From Petaluma

PJM

Milan Miracle 1951

Milan Miracle [1951]
12” x 9”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Lefty 8

Left Hand Painting, Monday Morning
9” x 12”
Ink on Paper
2026
$250

Posithetica Plus Five

Occupy 2021: POSITHETICA: The Final Art for Humans MEGAzine by Paul McLean

Five years ago [September 2021] I posted Posithetica on the Art for Humans nexus site, which was called Mystic Novad. In America alone, the Covid-19 pandemic had surpassed 47 million cases and claimed 700,000 lives. It was the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, in which I participated, as the co-organizer of Occupy with Art. It was also the 20th Anniversary of 9/11. I had devoted much of the decade [2011-21] to doctoral studies at the European Graduate School, a course I would finally abandon, for several reasons. In the studio, I was focused on the VyNIL Cycle of paintings. Concurrently, I was publishing a series of virtual exhibits and essays online, using several Web 2.0 platforms and the AFH constellation of sites.
The MEGAzine format evolved over two decades of distributing content on the Net, starting in the mid-90s. It became my preferred mode of multimedia exchange, often serving as a complement to IRL creative projects and a vehicle for critical writing on art, culture and much more. By the early 2020s the capture of the World Wide Web by Big Tech, its pervasive enshittification (Doctorow), reduced the online experience to addictive anti-social/-democratic doomscrolling, hot-takes, and the grotesquerie of the influencer phenomenon. Relentless and consumptive commercialization, part of a neo-fascist program of exploitation and extraction, attached directly to the industrial surveillance state, had basically strangled the early promise of a globally integrated Internet society. Posithetica is a bittersweet, book-length reflection on this era.
To revisit this material today is more poignant, as a stroke survivor, because it accentuates the realization that creative production is finite. I doubt I’ll ever be able again to devote the energy and resources such a massive project demands. Furthermore, my perspective on Occupy 2021/Posithetica is colored significantly by the accelerated unraveling of my beloved country’s democratic experiment, since the MEGAzine’s publication. In 2021, I remained hopeful that an effort like mine could reach a sufficient audience, gain traction and have positive impact. I suppose even today that still is true, because I follow the good works of New Models, Angelicism and Joshua Citarella/Do.Not.Research and others. It is my fervent appeal to you to take the time to read and explore Posithetica, though you might find it challenging — noting that I would be disappointed, if you weren’t challenged by it. After all, that was its purpose! And be so kind as to share it, because that is in keeping with the spirit in which it was composed.
Love,
PJM
September 2026

SELECTED PLATES

[For image info, follow the link to Occupy 2021/Posithetica, by clicking the cover illustration at top ^]

Gregor

GREGOR'S QUALITATIVE LEAP

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It wasn’t a dream.

— Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka [Translated by David Wyllie]

I think of the many occasions in life less important but by no means indifferent to me, when it was a question of making a choice. For although there is only one situation in which either/or has absolute significance, namely, when truth, righteousness and holiness are lined up on one side, and lust and base propensities and obscure passions and perdition on the other; yet, it is always important to choose rightly, even as between things which one may innocently choose, 'it is important to test oneself, lest some day one might have to beat a retreat to the point from which one started, and might have reason to thank God if one had to reproach oneself for nothing worse than a waste of time.

— “Equilibrium Between the Aesthetical and the Ethical in the Commposition of Personality;” from Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard [Translated by Walter Lowrie]

Gregor straddles the Edge
at the Abyss, trembling
pebbles & shale shards "underfoot"
on the verge of leaping
or crawling back to the ledge
humiliated & forlorn
villagers below mocking his hump
bellowing "jump, jump!"
Gregor notices a tightrope
spanning the Void to cross --
obscured to those hecklers hurling
potatoes, thorny twigs & acorns
he spies his new body
on the other side, hanging
from a pine tree limb
"THIS IS A DREAM!" Gregor
shouts "ONLY DREAMING!"
& waves his thin insect limbs

Marjorie

MARJORIE
the tassel on your red beret
is almost the color of the sky,
the all blue of your eyes
like a newborns. your worn
overcoat loose on you, comfy.
I am straining to resurrect
the intricate details
of our encounter
with twin peaks: the return
streaming on the flatscreen
in the living room
was it El Capitan or Matterhorn?
were you English or French, or
Swiss? the jade broach, the bracelet
gold & rubies, a pearl necklace
& earrings — yes, I’m sure that’s right!
theres no secrets anymore, Marjorie
we have scrapbooks of captioned photos
instead, which is why we know
we shared rosti at a square table
in Zermatt at Alphitta… no — at Allalin
by the fireplace, in Saas-Fee, no —
chocolate cake in Oxford’s Grand Cafe…
we met was on the train from Prince,
clattering through tunnels, around bends
in the New River, en route to DC, Philly
NYC. Upon arrival, we disembarked,
never again to meet, except in my dream
on Labor Day eve, 2026, at 4:38 AM