Tag Archives: Matthew Ryan Smith

Art

What Is The Mystery Phenomenon Of Shoe Tossing?

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Shoe tossing and shoe posting are seen in most Canadian cities and rural motorways.

Its history and its symbolism are remarkably complex.

Shoe tossing is when shoelaces are tied and tossed over telephone or power lines so that the shoes hang loosely above the ground. Yet shoe tossing does not accurately describe shoes that are affixed to telephone poles or other inanimate objects using nails and staples. It seems that “shoe posting” would be a more appropriate terms for such occurrences. Nevertheless, each tossed or posted shoe represents either personal or cultural meaning.

There is a cultural meaning to each and every ‘tossed’ shoe- but what is it?

It may come as some surprise that shoe tossing holds a distressing history.

For example, many have noted that tossed shoes indicate the specific location where drugs like crack and heroin are used or sold. Moreover, others have mentioned that tossed shoes signify the physical boundaries of gang territory. For this reason the mayor of Los Angeles, California launched a campaign to remove tossed shoes from the city altogether. Further still, shoe tossing may be the product of bullying, theft and other forms of civil disobedience.

Is it safe to say that shoe tossing is primarily a form of civil disobedience or is there more to it?

On the other hand, there are some positive aspects of this mysterious phenomenon.

Shoe tossing, for instance, has been known to represent a rite of passage associated with graduation from an educational institution or a discharge from military service. While tossed and posted shoes mark our social environment in negative and positive ways they also call to mind images from the not so distant past.

Could there be a deep rooted collective unconscious meaning to shoe posting/nailing? H Joie Crockett Photos – Near the entrance to Rangeley Lake State Park you will find this oddity of a telephone pole with shoes nailed to it. The question is “Why?”

The pilfering of clothing and other possessions in extermination camps by Nazi forces during World War II included the shoes of men, women and children. These shoes were generally thrown on top of each other one by one. The result is a dense heap of shoes that were once filled with Jewish feet. Now, these shoes piles exist in Holocaust museums around the world as evidential markers of Nazi atrocity.

Holocaust shoes

Can tossed or posted shoes be thought of without considering the indelible Nazi shoe piles?

This is an idea that has not been explored and deserves further attention in visual culture discourse.
It is difficult to deny that the formal appearance of tossed and posted shoes in contemporary society reference past images of Nazi piles of Jewish shoes during the Holocaust. This may arguably be a far stretch for some; but for others, the sight of tossed and posted shoes may trigger the painful memories and agonizing reminders.
Shoe tossing is at once close to life but never far from death. The meaning one subscribes to these curious objects is, like most things, one’s own. However that does not suggest that particular objects seen in everyday life, like tossed or posted shoes, cannot allude to the images of history. For the Silo, Dr.Matthew Ryan Smith. 

Art

Award Winning Doc The Devil And Daniel Johnston

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Daniel Johnston is not a secret anymore. Thirteen years ago, in 2005, director Jeff Feuerzeig released the Sundance award-winning documentary on Johnston’s life “The Devil and Daniel Johnston,” his songs have been covered by renowned artists like Beck, Tom Waits and The Flaming Lips and he has also been featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial of American Art. It seems that over the past few years the enigma that was Johnston has mutated into a proverbial “cult figure.” However this cliché is an inaccurate description. Where is the line between cult figure and pop culture icon drawn? The common theme found in essays and reviews on Johnston’s work is the examination of his mythology rather than the examination of his work. This type of analysis tends to do more harm than good: the myth swells while the work rusts.

The lack of critical texts on Johnston’s artwork is alarming considering that he has exhibited internationally and in his home country of the United States. Moreover, his work resides in numerous public and private art collections (including my own). Anyone even remotely familiar with Johnston’s work can recognize his assorted cast of unusual characters, symbols and motifs like Jeremiah the Frog (refer to images above and below), Vile Corrupt  and the Dead Dog’s Eyeball. The latter image surfaces in Johnston’s early work as a result of a traumatic encounter with exactly that, a dead dog’s eyeball. In the book The Life, Art, and Music of Daniel Johnston, Johnston himself describes a childhood incident where he witnessed a dead dog hanging from a swing set: “He got himself caught on the rope and got hanged. I asked this girl where was her dog and she pointed over at him and said right there.” As the authors of the book point out, the same incident was addressed in lyrics from Johnston’s song “Catie” on the album Fun (1994):

I saw the dog hanging on the swing set
I asked the girl
Where was your doggie at?
I walked on down to see my grandpa yeah!

Well I’ve had a lot of horrors
And I’ve had a lot of fears
But the worst of horror
Is when there’s nothing here

What is fascinating about the reproduction of the dead dog’s eyeball in lyrics and illustrations is that it may be connected to the trauma Johnston experienced when first encountering the dead dog on the swing set. Trauma is characterized by an affective shock that has the capacity to wound the body and the psyche, which in turn causes anxiety, stress and other forms of neurosis. Seeing the dead dog’s eyeball during childhood might have registered trauma in Johnston that affects him well into his adult life and it could have taken the form of an obsession (fig. 4). In one particular drawing from his early work Johnston asks himself in bold text, “WHY DO I KEEP DRAWINGS [sic] THESE SILLY LITTLE EYEBALLS?” Here and elsewhere, the artist is consumed by flashbacks of the dead dog’s eyeball to the extent of being overwhelmed.

While Johnston’s manic depression and schizophrenia have been well-documented—and largely contribute to his mythic status—his encounters with trauma and its relation to his artwork have not. Keeping this idea in mind will help to better understand and appreciate the construction and trajectory of his characters, symbols and motifs. It may be time for writers, critics and scholars to take a step back, allow Johnston’s myth to rust and the impact of his work to swell. He is not a secret anymore. For the Silo, Matthew Ryan Smith, P.H.D. 

Tarssa Yazdani and Don Goede, The Life, Art, and Music of Daniel Johnston (San Francisco and Colorado Springs: Smokemuse and Last Gasp, 2006). 33-34.

Click to view on I-tunes
Click to view on I-tunes

 

Culture

Roadside Memorials Of Loss Are On The Rise

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One of Toronto based photographer Erin Riley’s series of photographs depicting roadside memorials in and around the GTA

Indeed, the prevalence of roadside memorials has increased significantly over the past several decades and there is little doubt that each of us has encountered them at some point. Roadside memorials are essentially visual manifestations of profound suffering and loss. They mark the site where a motor vehicle accident has occurred and the death that resulted from it (however , many memorials, especially in major cities, have little to do with motor vehicle accidents and more to do with cycling accidents, innocent bystanders or anything else that faithfully marks the site of passing).

In areas where large gravestones or plaques cannot be placed, for a variety of reasons, makeshift memorials take their place. These sites grow with each flower, ribbon or object and deplete with the wind, rain or snow; they are in a continuous state of flux. The organic quality of roadside memorials may directly reference the very epehemerality of life itself. Moreover, in their various forms and inclinations, they challenge Western society’s visual seperation of the living from the dead; therefore, as they subsist, roadside memorials carry the spectre of mortality into the public sphere, a space where even speaking of death remains taboo.

Post-mortem/momento mori photography during the Victorian age is a fascinating though dark and unsettling movement.

Roadside markers are a rural and urban feature- this marker is located on Front Road, near St. Williams, Ontario, Canada image: www.thesilo.ca

Encountering the idea of death may be one of the reasons why people take issue with the appearance of roadside memorials. For them, they represent a veritable “distraction” while driving, are considered “unsightly” or a “vandalism of public property”. For the families of the deceased, roadside memorials allow the opportunity to mourn their loved one(s) at the very place of their passing. The level of emotion generated by being near the actual site where a loved one has died is different from standing beside their final resting place in segregated communities of loss that are the modern cemetery.

Not only are roadside memorials, as markers of loss, important to the families and groups that maintained a relationship to the deceased, but they powerfully address the living by acting as memento mori (reminders of death). It is through them that one may better appreciate the present.

Toronto-based photographer Erin Riley’s series of photographs depicting roadside memorials in and around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) specifically engages the publicization of loss and its visual manifestation. Riley’s images are strikingly beautiful and skillfully composed, yet they raise ethical questions precisely because they aestheticize markers of death sites by transforming them into visual objects to behold.  This theme was explored  in Jarrod Barker’s April 2010’s  Umwelt at the Norfolk Arts Center with a central piece depicting a virtual gallery memorial in conjunction with projected audio/video loop of a recently deceased Deer- struck down by a motorist, the piece becoming essentially a rural memento mori.

Happening upon a recently struck deer- Artist Jarrod Barker aestheticized the site by placing a white linen ‘shroud’ over the victim. This would later become a central piece in the installation of Umwelt April 2010 photo: J. Barker

Another question concerns the identification of deceased individuals and whether or not their names should be made public through the vehicle of art. That being said, Riley’s photographs do provide an eloquent record of roadside memorials within the GTA and speak to their social and cultural value. Ask yourself: where do you stand on this issue?

It would seem that, for the families of the deceased, roadside memorials serve the purpose of exactly that: the memorializatin of a life. [ “even” an animal life CP ] They also serve a function for the living, reminding us that life is fleeting and that the dangers of the road are real. Ultimately, rather than causing drivers to collide, roadside memorials may force drivers to more aware of the consequences of speed, negligence and drunk driving. May roadside memorials continue to stand where lives have fallen. For the Silo, Matthew Ryan Smith. 

Supplemental– http://www.rideofsilence.org/memoriam.php