I-ing, I-me

[sic]

Thanks for looking at murmurists blog, *. The I question ... well, we are we. But existential burdens are part of being human and being humane. We, though, are laughing like drains - having fun. Perhaps our blogged 'items' series gave you surface indications... Fair enough. In order to decode the blog's cacophony of messages is, by now, a full-time job; and we would not expect anyone coming into it in mid-2007 to aclimatise to the extent that the nature of the work was immediately understandable as new pieces are posted. The items series is, in essence, a clamour of voices, a crowd of I-ing I-me's. The items stem from a form of practical research, curiosity in fact - using the formal qualities of 'personals' and taking their methodologies to, what we feel are, logic extents - of ego-advertising, expressions of wants and needs, desires, admissions of guilt, personal asides, etc. The items series works in and around the endless portraits we produce - as disembodied captions. We feel personals are themselves disembodied captions. The less-corporeal environment of cyberspace adds to their available surrealism, in our view. Like you suggest in your header - maybe mankind is somewhat asleep, too preoccupied with entertainment, somewhat passive in being so. We do not disagree with your polemic at all. We, though, are trying to look at such things in a different way - without, as far as possible, having intellectual negativity. We feel Marxist about such things, yes; but we feel Gilbert & George, Paul McCarthy, Chris Morris, and Max Ernst about them, also. These devices of communication - texting etc. - and the attitudes of consumerism itself ... Well, we only marginally take part, and we see the critiques, for sure. But such things are nonetheless part of evolution itself - if one takes the line that man's technologies partly but importantly shape man's being, which we do. So - artistically and intellectually - we seek to make our modest investigations; and to offer our findings in the wider clamour of voices - indeed, as another form of personals. We feel positive about myspace and blogging. Such things are capable of good things and are not intrinsically passifying, in our view. Like the printing-press, they are just a technology. The self-same determinations apply: good use, bad use. Best wishes.