Ron Rubenstein // State of the World Visual Address #4

A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.

The 4th one is by Ron Rubenstein. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. RR is a bit of an enigmatic character who takes the shots none of us do. He hails from the US and has a tv personality president. Not sure where you go to catch RR these days - last I saw, he was on IG. But I cannot confirm that as I deleted my account. It seems to be that people who lend their artworks to AB, do not post a lot of other places. If you want to see something really lush by RR go here (these are some of my favorite photographies in existence).

Henrik B. Clausen // Benched // State of the World VIsual Address #2

A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.

The second one is a shot by Henrik B. Clausen. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. HBC is a film director and videographer from Denmark.

For more on HBC check his Vimeo

Check out #1 here

Christoffer Fabæk Kjær // The Speaker // State of the World Visual Address #1

A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.

The first one is a drawing by Christoffer Fabæk Kjær. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

For more on CFK check his IG.

The Newslarder #3

The state of the world project starts tomorrow (Friday). They will be stand alone posts for the most. There are tons of other articles that need to go up, but we have one editor here, and I have been lackluster, battling a few things, as I have touched on before. That is nearing an end - which is good, because I am tired of being hampered by unimportant shit.

What’s important in this day and age, I hear you say? Well, art, satire, humour, critique - now more than ever. When was the need for creativity and critique ever bigger?. We need to teach people to question things again. In schools, we should be teaching kids to question things, not be obedient fucking parrots with a credit card.

Just Art has been updated - go take a look, if you don’t believe me. We are also contemplating more on mobile/smartphone photography, but the ‘mobile’ section is not coming back - just like the project starting tomorrow, we want to have a dialog with people, so more avenues for interaction are planned, and no, it will not involve SOME, because fuck SOME.

In the words of Captain Black Adder: wobble, wobble.

Zaar Riisberg (Zaarchasm) feat. Martin J. Sabine // The Silence of the Trolls

Huh? /MJ Sabine

With all the predictions about how Donald Trump will fare in November, it is surprising that no one focuses on the silence of the 2016 trolls. I used to go to Twitter and debate with Trumpettes, just to be in a hostile environment - you know, training? But these days it is downright hard finding someone to attack you. In ‘16 and ‘17 they would swarm you on fake accounts as soon as you said anything about Trump. Likewise, Yahoo! is flooded with what is usually referred to as ‘libtards’, having fun at Donnie’s expence.

Forget polls or anything else you see in the media, this is the clearest sign that if there is a silent minority or majority out there, it is not only silent, it is hiding. If Trumpers are anything, it is in your face - Roger Stone taught Trump that, and he passed it on to his followers. Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counter offensive. Or the short version: attack, attack, attack. I realise that Stone is the architect in this, but he is a mere opportunist navigating in a modernity gone awry. This has been on the cards since Ronald Reagan, mind you. Perhaps one of the worst presidents in modern times, yet he is a hero to many Americans, which should tell you all you need to know about how the American mind operates.

At least Stone is smart - and believe or not, he is also quite cultivated and a libertine feminist. How you can enable misogynism as a declared feminist, remains unexplained, though. Had Trump not commuted his sentence, Stone would have exacted a horrible revenge at some point. Stone was around before Trump, he will be around after. But as the designing architect, Stone is more guilty than anyone.

Where’d everybody go? /MJ Sabine

Now, as recently as yesterday, there are lots of reports still suggesting that the silent majority/minority is large, and we are lead to believe that a huge amount of people will not admit to voting for Trump, because of the stigma that carries. One argument is that Hillary was even further ahead than Joe Biden is, so this will not be a problem. This is not true, in all of 2016 there was not one poll that put Hillary 12-13 points ahead. She was never close to pulling even with Trump in states like Texas and Georgia. Uncle Joe is. Today, reporting is suggesting that Biden might take a state that no republican president has been able to do without for 95 years. I mean, this is starting to look like at Jimmy Carter’esque flogging. And Biden? He is just sitting on his ass.

Nobody likes Trump, not even himself. That is the curse of the narcissist. Meanwhile, Donald is a odd narcissist, as he over compensates, but he also under performs. Anyone with a brain in their head - even alt-righters - know that if USA re-elect Trump it is over. This world must burn. The reason? There isn’t one.

Zaar Riisberg (Zaarchasm) // Other People’s Cunts

Mural in Horsens of a young girl reading by light in a fantasy setting. Some artistic soul felt that it lacked something.

There’s a certain kind of photographer that seems to have aesthestic urge to shoot what other people have created. I’ve often run into the sentiment, that only those that cannot create copy or steal. Real artists steal I am told. I disagree, real artists inspire. Not only others, but themselves as well.

At the risk of being a smidge philosophical, we all shoot or depict stuff that is something in and of itself. The interesting thing is what you do with it. What is motif or portrait, if you don’t work with it? Natural? Not necessarily. The artist sees the potential in the amalgamation. She knows there’s not even light, but only energy. She knows how to convey and invoke. She doesn’t leave them much, which is the greatest gift an artist can leave behind. In the end the ‘physical manifestation’ matters little. A real artist gets in your head.

Art is a drug, just like every other sensory input is, and reality is a chemistry soup ripe with photon flies. Whether you are art directing a videogame, shooting photography, writing a screenplay or indeed shooting a movie. When it comes to conveying it all, it is hardly ‘your story’ or told by you - it’s always a work in progress, building on previous work. The greatest story ever told, as far as we know, is not the Bible, nor is it Star Wars. It is the story of humanity.

Everything is a collaboration - one thought gives sustenance to another spark of insight with no fear of failing. Or, indeed, inspiration fails, we start looking inward and dissolve as a race and a factor in reality. Your choice, really.

Zaar Riisberg (Zaarchasm) // The Plastic Flower

Plastic flowers. What's left unsaid lingers. Untold memories of restraint and ambiguity with a dash of stupidity. The usual suspect everyone knows is never guilty. The character you toss aside. The man you all like, but do not understand. The divider, yet the leader you congregate around. The loser you bar from accepting his defeat. The lover of light and the bringer of darkness, the voice of the silent, the anger of the vocal - the calm AND the storm. It is time to rise again.

(text first published on FB)

Zaar Riisberg (Zaarchasm) // I Hate Being an Empath

I have just shot a confirmation after spending an evening and morning with some adorable kids. I jump on a bus, and after a few stops a group of young people enter. A smell of beer and old cigarettes accompany them, and one guy in particular catches my attention. He sits across from me. He is jittery and not a day past 25 years of age. An infinite sadness starts to build inside me mixed with the sense that I have seen this kid before. They are all in somewhat good spirits, but my eyes still get wet. I see him whip out a small bottle of ‘Hot n’ Sweet’ (sweet, cheap liquor), and he knocks it back one time. I want to scream. I want to cry - I want to take everything he is fighting and put it on me. I am 43 - so fuck me. This kid, and I just know this, will not see 40 - maybe not even 30. My mind screams at him in silence: ‘who abandoned you’? ‘What asshole father left you to drift by yourself’?

They reach their stop, which, of course, is Mølleparken. Lots of people in Aarhus go there, however, you can be sure the drunks and addicts are out as well in the park - every damn day during the summer. As they leave I see his bag is full of ‘Hus Forbi’ - a paper produced by the homeless in Denmark. That is how I know him - he camps out selling them at the place where I used to shop on Vesterbro Torv. I get another flash of his face, and it hits me. I saw him getting harassed by a ‘normal’ woman in the inner city one time. It was classic - she told him to get a job, and he was trying to tell her that it was not that easy, that there were no jobs, and certainly not any for him. He had been begging which pisses people of. And now I know why I remember him so vividly. That day, I walked right up to him, past the woman and pressed a 100kr bill in his hand - he looked at me in total disbelief, I turned, flipped off the woman, gave her a sarcastic smile, and went on my merry way.

But it stings that it has to be this way. It tears at my being and it violates what we are about. We have no dignity if we let our own suffer. How can we fight for a place in the cosmos, when we do not even have the heart to fight for our own - much less animals, nature or the planet.

I wish I did not care. I wish I could care less. I wish, I wish, I wish. I will often question if it is just pretentiousness and subsequently second guess my own apparatus and heart. I will accuse myself of being a manipulative asshole that only feels this way, because it makes me feel righteous, special or good about myself. But I know it is not true. I am an empath and I hate every second of it. It does not make me feel good. A recently acquired friend shoved it in my face ‘oh, you’re an empath, that’s no fun, I mean, it’s lovely, but it’s horrible’. She was spot on. She often is. Unfortunately for her, it is a case of taking one to know one.

Some of us have big hearts. But it may come as a surprise to many of you, that it is a horrible burden. A bird hit the windshield at my parents, and I could not rest before I knew it was ok (80% of small birds die either way). I was passing the corridor in the house, what turns out to be a small moth flies toward me, and in the dark I instinctively swat it softly. When I get the lights on, the small fella is running in circles on the floor. That absolutely destroys me. You see? It is a fucked up way to live.

Lasse Fischer // Window Pains

Come closer, squish your face against the windowpane, and let me trace the pale outline of your cheek with my finger.

Doesn’t it feel safe?
It does for me.

And when you remove your face from the glass you leave behind a greasy stain, and I can continue fingering your outline for hours on end until you return.
Sometimes I pace around my room in the dark while I frantically, and with a harsh jerking of the neck, look at the window to check it every time I pass.

It glows with a cool blue light, and it is filled with outlines of the faces, the faces I caress.
Whenever I lie on my side in the bed, with my legs tugged up under me, resting my head on my stretched out arm, and my hand in a ninety degree angle, I do not surrender willingly to sleep.
I keep my eyes on the glass.

I lie in fear of blinking.
I lie in fear of absence of the light.

When I finally close my eyes there is nothing but an unending parade of rooms.
The faces do not press themselves up against the windows in here, in here I am alone, and I have no outlines to trace. I am separated from the light and the glass by the lids in front of my eyes.

Bathed in sweat I awake.

I keep my mouth open, ready to scream, but nothing ever comes out. My breathing is too shallow to create the explosion, so instead I chew on the air, like a fish lying on shore. Trying to make sure that the mechanics aren’t broken I feel for the rising motion of my chest, resting my hands on my ribs. The sensation of touch confirms that the function is maintained.

The blue window attracts more faces.
Their breaths fog op the glass.

‘Something is not right. Something seems off.’ The thought is fleeting, and even though the feeling lingers longer than the thought it too soon dissolves over the faces in the blue light. I take my hands off my increasingly protruding ribs and press them against the light making two stark silhouettes of something human on top something less than that.

There is something between the face and my hands, something that draws my finger to the cheek every time. It pulls on my elbow, it commands my sinew, and it makes my brain fire its neurons. I slip my tongue over my lips and spread saliva on the dried skin, feeling the rough edges as the organ goes from one end of the orifice to the other.

Nothing else lies outside my room and the surface of the window.
I continue living, forever haunted by the thought that the blue light one day might fade and disappear.

Zaar Riisberg // You Live, You Learn - going back to Flickr and other concessions

I am not at all deterred when it comes to keep doing Artballistics.com - namely, because I think there is a need for this stuff. There is a need to oppose modern art for its shallowness, and there is a need to continually evoke the kid from The Emperor’s New Clothes and follow his example.

But ‘how’ is still something I debate with myself. Hard lining it, and saying that it has to be original work all the way, is not working. I understand, that I am at the center of this, but I am nearing the end of one of the worst journeys of my life. I know what I have to do here on AB, I know what I should do commercially and artistically AND personally. But I do not have a leg to stand on, a pot to piss in or a famous window to throw it out of - and I refuse to be boxed in. If the trip gets too comfortable, I am still the kind of person that will punch the self eject button during a calm flight - the storm is just more interesting, and turbulence makes for a fun ride. Yeah, the ground is hard when you crash into it. Fuck the ground. Leap.

I still want contributors and suggestions, but I should probably ‘tap’ people and ask for contributions from people that I find interesting, and I have been entertaining the idea of changing my IG to an account for AB, because it would make more sense for me to go back to Flickr, because what I need more than anything else, is an ‘organiser’, so customers can easily browse my stuff when given a non public link - until I get a hidden, digital catalog made.

I do want to brand AB, and we have ideas for weekly content. But me, and the people I count on, have heavy real life issues to deal with. For me, I should make the change that my personal website and AB is where I express my self and my views and nowhere else. It is a no brainer, really. But anyone that knows me for real (that would be my mother, basically), knows that I am exceedingly thorough, and though I do not shy away from conflict, I am always pre meditating in the shadows, before I leap at your throat, and I seldom, very seldom do anything in affect.

I wrote a piece on Facebook a while back, that I am posting here. I have a few other classic posts that I will move here, I invite the other contributors to do the same, and I will thin the categories and make the site more poignant going forward. Or wait, until you see that I really will follow through. I understand, if some people liken me with crying wolf on AB. All I can say, is that this project was born out of the storm of my life, and I will never fucking let it go, even if it is only me and a few others.

Zaar Riisberg // Critique Acidique (critique as a dick)

I had a run in with modern art on Instagram, and it illuminated to me how far gone culture and art is in the mainstream. Everyone lives on a deceitful surface called taste - and if you do not comply with the conformity of this crap, you are simply labelled a hater. This 'artist' was peddling his stuff in adds, and yes, he has no way of keeping them out of my stream. But he is going to have to bite a tough titty on that one, as I simply do not care. And the very worst thing about me is, that you cannot ignore me, if I do not want you to. You might break off from me, you might lambast me or indeed flog me and leave. But you will be back, as curiosity will have you turn stalker.

But I digress. The artwork itself is a mishmash of colors with a statement in white, and in big broad the letters: 'STOP TRYING TO FIT IN, WHEN YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT'. I decide to comment, and this is an add, mind you. I tell him that I would expect the artwork itself to be a tad more original when it carries a statement like that. I may have overstepped, when I wrote that I am no fan of 'everyday art', and find it exceedingly boring. 

I was bored, I admit that. The guy says 'thanks for the feedback', but he does not know what to do with it. He then tells me to order some antacid, as he has heard that works really well. The logic of these 'artists' seeks to preserve a status quo, in which we are just consumers. That is hardly the job of art. Regardless, this guy should be able to take it, if he really is an artist. But he is not, he is a shameless pretender - and there are morons enough to buy this shite. I know the type: hipster beard, tattoos all over and an empty ballsack. Only wankers buy everyday art.

Some of my friends, the very best ones too, have highlighted to me, that I might have scared people off with my staunch, sometimes acidic behaviour. I am well aware of that. But you are wrong - why does it scare you that I insist on substance, quality, decency, empathy, loyalty and moral? Have you stopped to think, what this looks like from my end of the world?

I am not an asshole or a poisonous individual, I rather insist that people treat each other like they themselves would like to be treated. This has, oddly enough, left me with very few friends and alienated a ton of photographers and others that seemed to dig what I did. People I have worried about, consoled or helped continue to turn their back on me. If I can scare you off, fear is to ripe in you.

Fortunately, I have the guts to stand by my convictions and call out pretenders and shitty art. Yet, everywhere I go, I am treated like a pariah or indeed a bad seed - even people I cared deeply about crippled my relation with them by insinuating that I was a tortured artist or was frustrated to be overlooked or they had no clue how absolutely horrible my life has been for the last 3 years. I will admit stuff like that has stung like a motherfucker on a personal level - it is never funny hearing people you value give such an assessment of you. You literally die a little. Luckily, I am as Phoenix as they come - and I WILL rise above it.

Ron Rubenstein // Ad Hoc Randomness

Text by Zaar Riisberg

Ron is one of my favorite photographers. Forget Gump, but it is kind of a box of chocolates dealing with Ron. Combined with a raw style, not very often imbued by lots of editing - but bare, or naive, as Martin Sabine put it. Naive here, being a good thing, a conscious thing. So many people are semantically challenged, so I thought I would underscore that. The above one he sent me after I asked contributors for their version of 'the lone tree'. Not very lone, this one, but you get that trees might feel alone in the big city. Until a car rams into them and it is love at first sight.

He also has a keen eye for interesting stuff. Which is one of my modes myself, not seldom does something grab my attention, with my mind going 'hey, wtf was that, and what can I do with it' or 'fuckin hell, that looks different'. Click. Snap. Home. We did have a small voyeur discussion here on AB. I wonder - because this certainly evokes a stalker feeling. But the scene is probably nothing of the sorts. It is called 'conveying', for those of you wondering.

This is the kind of shot that I just love. It is how I see the world - it's a geometry of particles, compartmentalized, nothing ever touching and none of it really exists. No people or actors, yet the stage plays it out by itself, and proves you do not need action to tell a story, if you can rattle the brain of your audience. The last one was originally posted on IG.

Kaz Narumi // Window

This train is bound for "my old past"

The interior of the train was even more bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without.

I soothed almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold.

I was dreaming of my old glad days when I had chased my friend through the flowering

grasses of the summer meadows and of my late mother wiped away my tears and helped me understand.

I'm so tired.

My friends, my mother, I'm looking forward to seeing you....soon...

EDITOR'S NOTE

Finally, we present another exciting artist/photographer. Kaz is known to have a huge heart for others, always trying to support or inspire others. Sometimes via his own work, but also by sharing that of others he himself finds interesting or giving.

Lasse Fischer // Shades of Armenian Grey // Part III

Day two
They had trapped us in a room with soft zigzag carpets and a ceiling impossible far away from the floor. They made us stand in a circle - Wait; there was something before the carpets and circles. Outside the snow made its way from the heavens down onto the mountainside, layering the black rock with a soft white powder. Being surrounded by walls surrounded by mountains made a nice frame for the hangovers I had to endure.

I woke up dizzy and crawled down the polished marble steps, down to the pool were an elderly Armenian gentleman opened the locked door leading into the pool area despite him not understanding a word I was saying. We shook hands and nodded. The pool was empty, and after gasping my way through a few lanes of angst provoking lack of oxygen I laid on my back floating in the water, staring at the ceiling. My brain gently bobbing up and down within its cranial juice, following the rhythm of the blue liquid in the pool, as it recovered from the pomegranate marinade. Something loosened up inside of me and my body rose an inch in the water. Was one of the components of freedom distance? The water carried me and my thought to the edge of the pool. I stayed there floating long after I had a shower, put on my clothes, and went to eat breakfast. The sensation of hovering above ground, using my body in different physics, followed me like a shadow. I tried washing it away in the shower, but to no avail, it stayed attached to my feet. On my way to my room a glittering luggage transporter drove me outside the hotel doors, where I was confronted with the mountains. It seemed like they had bent the land around them to their will, and I understood why the soil and the trees bowed their heads and backed out of the way for these juggernauts of geography. They had a power over their surroundings, an unspoken agreement with the world that they persevered, watching over the earth, as the rest of reality rose and fell. In the depths of my situation, the wet and shiny eyes of the day after drinking, I too could sense the immense back catalogue of thoughts that had been projected onto their silent and stoic bodies, as I bent my neck, searching for the end of the massive wall of rock. My stomach grumbled. I had neglected to eat all morning, and to see to it that my vessel would carry me through a day of the never ending discipline of team building.

Returning to the subject of carpets. They made us stand in a circle. The shoes of the participants were all pointed to the middle of the zigzag carpet. A young smartly dressed guy talked about an exercise in teambuilding. I had always hated the idea of networking and being social, making contacts, because the words left somewhat of a metallic taste in my mouth. Maybe I should stop biting down so hard when they emerged. My eyes followed instead the lines on the floor, and I fell in to the light brown crevices between the black and blue stripes. When I came back up I was making a tower out of spaghetti, tape, and a magenta colored string. We skewered a marshmallow on top of the construction and came third in the competition. I sighed, and yesterday’s vapors filled the conference room. We applauded ourselves. A room filled with masturbatory youth workers. I jerked along with the others. Reflective store fronts and structured beams started rising from the zigzag carpet. They had followed me into this hotel in the middle of nowhere. They manifested themselves in the room between the participants. I took a step back as one sprang up from beneath my feet. I felt myself growing irritated. There was apparently no complete escape as long as people sought it out, this feeling of things being hollowed out. A string tugged at my wallet.

Day three
Cream gave me shit for my writing. She thought it could be funnier. It was fun for me though. The situation, the sweaty hands, the smell of feet, the insecure glances and the whole setup was somewhat ridicules. Hold that thought a second; we have to do an energizer game. After being turned into a chicken, a penguin, a human, and lastly a wise human I returned to the notion of
being more fun.