What's a Journalism Casualty?
A visual "micro blog", that is part virtual artist studio, part RSS feed of news and/or trending topics, part triage & emergency "treatment" of the wounded, & part blind date. A nice way for me to start the day by following the right brain, while the left brain's still waiting for the caffeine to kick in.
A work of art, resulting from the assembly of two or more disparate images, in whole or in part. (for reference, see also "exquisite corpse") The composite image is then embedded with "clickable links" so as to render it a multi-part "mini-portal" (see also "image map") to articles of interest or other sources of information. [Journalism Casualties usually are made of 3 sections, linking to 3 items, but occasionally there may be more.]
Prepping these things is a kind of triage. I surf the web, looking at current items, news stories, trending topics, etc. I take note of imagery, like symptoms. I make the piece, which often feels like stitching up the wounded in some field hospital somewhere. The combination of items I use is based solely on the aesthetics, but the juxtaposition afterward has become why I continue to do them. I am intrigued by their encapsulation of time as well. Human existence is measured in thought. One of those thoughts is time, measured in days, and other units. Looking at these weeks or days later, I get a sense of that feeling one gets looking at old newspapers/magazines years after their original publication, a sense that is linked to one's mortality somehow, culling through quotidian "markers" of forgotten portions of a trip. Thus enters "memento mori", a latin phrase that translates as "remember you will die". Increasingly, this work as a whole, a series, "identifies" itself to me as "memento mori". Strangely, in my adopted daily language of italian, one would think as close to latin as it gets, they do not, as we do in english, use the word "memento" as any synonym for souvenir, keepsake, etc. But, since we do in english, and the images serve well as porters of little "valigette", I cannot think of them without the phrase.
Why the name, "Journalism Casualty"? Who is the "Casualty", and why? Well, it's complicated, but in general, the "casualty" can be any one or combination of:
- a story or item buried by the news cycle;
- a story or item that is helping bury the news cycle, exhausting itself of any validity in the process;
- the readers/viewers, made a casualty by a brutal, vaccuous or otherwise annoying news cycle;
- the image I make as a whole when it is finished, like a little frankenstein's monster or a victim of war, all stitched up and limping along... and, returning again to "memento mori", what better, if unnerving at times, reminder of our mortality than the unexpected meeting with someone with obvious and serious wounds...
Note that the links embedded in these images were to current news items at the time they were initially published, and may no longer be appropriately correlated to their original destination.
©All rights reserved.
may 30, 2011
may 29, 2011
may 26, 2011
may 25, 2011
may 24, 2011
may 20, 2011
may 19, 2011
may 18, 2011
Please note that here there is a 4th clickable part, sending birthday greets to the folks at The Urban Times.
may 17, 2011
may 16, 2011
may 15, 2011 [Special Sunday edition
previously only published at The Urban Times
may 13, 2011
may 12, 2011
may 11, 2011
may 10, 2011
may 09, 2011
may 06, 2011
may 05, 2011
may 04, 2011
may 03, 2011
may 02, 2011
Please note that the image for Monday May 02, 2011 is a "Special Edition" - for various reasons, including:
1) ...it breaks with the traditional "3-piece" construction -- That is, in addition to the 3 regular clickable portions (head, body, legs), there is an additional, 4th clickable element (that I'm hoping will be obvious and easy enough to locate);
2) ...I've constructed it drawing on items from the weekend, rather than just that day.
Enjoy... but as always, mind the sharp edges...
april 29, 2011
april 28, 2011
april 27, 2011
april 26, 2011
april 25, 2011
april 22, 2011
april 21, 2011
april 20, 2011
april 19, 2011
april 18, 2011
april 15, 2011
april 14, 2011
april 13, 2011
april 12, 2011
april 11, 2011
march 31, 2011
march 30, 2011
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march 27, 2011
march 26, 2011
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march 15, 2011
march 11, 2011
march 10, 2011
march 9, 2011
