LINKS

That is this page... well, obviously! In addition to providing these links, the intention is to make easy links to posts in consecutive order that they were posted, the most recent post first. When the older posts get too bulky, I move the older ones to the POSTS page...

The contents of this website gradually develops through the addition of individual posts as I attempt new collaborations with different artists and other interactive projects that involve stimulating others to be creative with me. Using these posts as a basis, individual projects and collaborative projects are fleshed out.

The precursor to this site as a FACEBOOK page, and this link opens in a separate window the page itself. The intention is to eventually render the mere existence of that page irrelevant as I transfer projects to this website (and anyway, there weren't many posts made to this page before I decided to start making a website so that my work would be accessible to anyone and not just people with a FACEBOOK profile. For the time being, however, a link is included for those interested in finding out about previous projects.

This is where you can see a complete lits of "Getting Got" interactive art projects which anyone could basically participate in. ...I mean, even YOU! Yes, YOU!!! This page provides links to each of the projects and specifies which of them are still running; each of the projects pages themselves contains links, descriptions and the posts associated with that project. This also includes WHO participated in those projects... or how YOU could take part YOURSELF!

Each of the creative artists I work with get an individual page here. Note, when I'm saying "artist" I may well have a broader definition of this word that you do. A creative artist is basically anyone who has an irrepressible urge to express themselves creativily, and I believe that everyone has the potential to do this. When you turn to creativity for any reasons, you are the type of artist who deserves my attention. And the intention of this project is to bring out your creativity - and these pages show both how I inspired YOU to be creative... but also how YOU inspired me to be creative with your interactions with my work. I celebrate this type of experience as they are the most rewarding of them all. It's after all, why I create art.

Structure of Entries:

TITLE

XX Month 202x

[Post Content here...]

TAGS:

#gettinggot

MARJAN ZARRABI GOT GOT
...on 29 March 2025...

30 March 2025

MARJAN SAMIE GOT GOT

Yesterday, Fatemeh Samie - known affectionately by friends and family as Marjan - got got.  If you've been following my interactive art projects you'll already know what this implies, and if you haven't then I'm sure you'll work it out by reading further.

She is an Iranian artist who I have been collaborating with on a number of different projects, and who did me the additional privelege of allowing me to send her one of my "GOT-O-GRAMS" with printed and impressed art incorporated in it as part of an interactive art project I call "GETTING GOT". So do you get it? People who "get got" in the narrow sense of my interactive art, it means you successfully "got" a "got-o-gram"... which in turn results in not only you "getting" (understanding) me, but also you yourself getting gotted when and if you react to the GOT-O-GRAM.  The very essence of interactive art summarized into two short but profoundly meaningful syllables with all sorts of shades of interpretation.

Fatemeh "Marian" Samie lives in the Homozgran province of Iran, in a county known as Bandar Abbas. Surely you've heard of it? Being as it is a hub of international trade EVERYONE knows that all the trendiest Iranians live there...

Wondering why I'm mentioning the arrival of this post so late seeing that it was the 2024-2025 New Year's GOT-O-GRAM and we are already almost April?

Well, my envelopes are experimental and throwing all caution to the wind everytime I send one, there is always the chance that it doesn't arrive...

And with Marjan I had to face the fact that my package being lost could well have further implications than I initially intended...

I mean, I could just say: "oh well, that's all a part of the 'Getting Got' experience which includes the risk of it not arriving" and leave it at that. Case closed. Unfortunately, especially in the case of Marjan Samie - a quite remarkable artist who has already sent me the most amazing set of photos you could imagine for the fictional universe of my (entirely imaginary) "Zaquarium" horror films - I really, really wanted her to get it...

If truth be told, this is is actually the first confirmation that a GOT-O-GRAM didn't arrive. As time passed Marjan gradually became more worried that she had done something wrong or that her postal system was at fault. All this shows is that she had to undergo unnecessary distress because of my insistence on retaining the absolute right to promise people a package and then send off glueless envelopes that breaks all the rules (in that it doesn't appear to be openable - and is glueless). Causing distress, however, was not at all my intention. If more of them are confirmed lost, I may consider making a concession to the great tradition of, like, um, envelopes (?) and ensure that it won't just fall open if the tabs curiously become loose. It is about as likely that the tabs will come loose as it is that someone will spontaneously throw a hedgehog at it, which is extremely unlikely indeed! Nonetheless in all my grace I may consider adding an extra tab or actual glue, but fingers crossed...

...While writing this article a second GOT-O-GRAM was confirmed missing and so I will begrudgingly ascede to adding an extra tab.

Anyway, the second package I sent came with assurances from me that it would arrive. The day before yesterday I started getting twitchy that it still hadn't arrived, so I went and contacted her, telling her about the fact that it was registered when I sent it and so we had additional protection to ensure this one didn't, like, get lost... Look at how that turned out :

It would've been hard to have this one get lost! I put it in an enormous envelope with the address typed out in incredibly large letters and included her phone number at the bottom (as intructed). As you can see from this exchange, I really ratched up the tension about the package not arriving by trying to ensure her that it was arriving. I mean, she was already dreaming about descending upon the post office in rage as to where the package was. When it finally DID arrive, she was ever so glad to actually get it in her hands... You see? All part of my wicked plan to make my GOT-O-GRAM's arrival feel even more devastatingly effective by, like, getting the Iranian postal service to purposefully lose the first package and then sorta accidently making her even feel more stressed by telling her all about registration numbers...

I had put the very last (A6 size) GOT-O-GRAM in a much larger envelope and was able include two of the recent posters I have made for interactive projects I have going with her. There is so much to say about these projects. Each of the posters has her work absolutely inextricably tied up with me and my work. Like the work of an artist whose work stimulates me, it gets in my brain and it is basically there for life and it will change the way I look at the world and interpret my work. AND I LOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS! It is only natural that I will so completely subsume the work of another artist within my own. So if you agree to collaborate with me, please accept this as a given; in no way is my radical deconstruction and interpretation intended as a reduction - it just may be communicating a different message than you initially intended. I actually celebrate this, and it is the whole idea of "Eel Emulation" in the collaboration with Diana Coppens. 

In the "Decrepit Dolls 2" poster I've started on a poster series and a set of imaginary film posters and GIFs concerning the photos she sent me of the quite astounding one-eyed doll she made herself and that she calls Miranda. These photos were, like, astounding to me; I was truly spellbound. ...But then again, how could I NOT be?! The poetic punch of a defiantly proud one-eyed doll who stares out at the world with a wide grin is almost too touching to bear. The fact that she didn't even know I had one eye (I mean, like, obviously, because she'd made the doll long before she'd ever heard of me) caused the room to go silent and the time to stop, if only for a second. Still it's the synchronous  moments like this that sometimes affect me the most: I've made a number of GIFs in the series "Synchronous Thinking" which document and celebrate moments like this, i.e. although you KNOW it's a happy coincidence, wow it feels nice when it happens. How I've related this to the second film in the Decrepit Dolls series of (imaginary) films has been discussed already in previous posts now readable on Facebook and Instagram (but which I'll be transferring here soon).

The second poster is, however, the original reason I requested that Marjan would send me and in the case of the Zaquarium - an actual etching project as well. It is all spun into a narrative of illusions that reflects both our work but comments also more broadly on themes I find significant and that constantly recur. For example, Zaquarium is both an imaginary horror movie about an evil scientist performing an evil resurrection in an electrified aquarium in which no fish would dare swim (a "Zap Aquarium", get it?)... but it's also about an actual invention I made, the seventh in a series of upright etching tanks I designed last year in an urgent flurry of activity as I continually experimented with ever better designs. More broadly, it comments on the danger of attempting to reproduce art without understanding it - a theme that arises in "eel emulation". Professor Wise (played by the late great Lez K. Whisky, singly the world's most hilarious emulation of my name) has MURDERED the art of the heroine by first drowning it (to death) and then electrifying it Dr. Frankenstein-style to either draw its vital essence out or to attempt to resurrect it...

...And yet at the same time I did actually etch her art (included at the back of the poster) on a metal plate by transferring an inverted version of one of her designs onto the plate, inserting it into my upright electrolysis etching bath and then applying a constant stream of 12 Volts of current through it. I literally drowned it and then brought it back to life by electroshocking it!

This little film is therefore a celebration of her having received this little package in her home in Iran. This first reflection on her "completion" of the GOT-O-GRAM in that it confirms that Marjan Samie indeed has successfully received the package I sent. I really get the impression that it surprised her and that she was genuinely thrilled by the package of artefacts I sent - a GOT-O-GRAM as well as the two posters. I will be recording each of these encounters on the "collaborations" page of my website, and the address you can find information about Marjan Samie, her work, and our collaboration whichever form that takes.

In any case, I already have, like, a lot of points of inspiration and artworks she has already made or sent in even more that I've made out of the truly remarkable things she's sent me. So this is most certainly a work in progress and even if we our collaboration stops, it would take me many months to keep up with what's already been created.

Interactive Art is truly wonderful!

TAGS:

#makinganimpression

CHELIPHOBIA - an irrational fear of being emulated

16 March
2025

 

CHELIPHOBIA

The first post to the OUTRAGEOUS TRAVESTIES webpage was actually a poster I designed as part of the GETTING GOT interactive art project I have been realizing over the last couple of years with the amazing Belgian artist Diana Coppens.

You may well be wondering why I involved eels in my collaboration with Diana Coppens? I'm only asking this because I actually have no idea what you people wonder about. In any case, whether or not you want to know about it, I'm going to tell you anyway.

It all has to do with the irrational fear of being emulated. Or maybe of eels. Or being emulated by an eel? Oh, I can't remember alright! It's all so confusing and how can anyone be actually sure of anything these days!?

So don't go and blame me for you not knowing about the meaning of Cheliphobia. Apparently, however, it has a number of different meanings at least since I have made up the verb "emulate eels" to describe the difficult and complex task of emulating another artist, and I will be discussing this issue in considerable more detail in my film on the artistic collaboration with Diana Coppens which will be called "The Eel Emulator Chronicles".  This artwork I created during the early days of ... me spreading gossip about Diana Coppens spreading rumours about me emulating eels...

Like, really! It actually developed from the interactive part to an intensive process of collaboration and reflection on my creations to come to these conclusions. This is the first artistic representation of this exploration and it is a demonstration of one of the first artworks I posted as part of the interactive project where I demonstrated the work of Diana I had "emulated". Note that I had at that time NO IDEA about the connection between things which seemed at the time completely absurd.

In retrospect, my brain seems to have been busy making its own connections long before I knew about it!

TAGS:

#makinganimpression #gettinggot #eelemulation #cheliphobia