Disclaimer: I am not qualified to do this.

Friday, I stepped out and got a taste of the arts at the Netmares/Netdreams exhibit at The Current Gallery, 30 S. Calvert St. I just needed a break from cigarette smoke. Anyhoo, I’ve taken two art appreciation classes, so bear with me, gang. I probably shouldn’t even be allowed to do this, but on behalf of all the Homer Simpsons out there, like myself, I will try and hash this all out.

We have a right to discuss anything, as long as we strive to transcend into a better understanding. Even if we fail to understand, it is noble for us to try. That is, I feel that you do not have to go to MICA to talk about art (full disclosure: I used to make sandwiches there for $6.75 an hour), but that is the extent of my rub with enlightenment. You have eyes, don’t you? Well, let’s talk about art, shall we? Feel free to rip me apart – it’s what makes this country great.

Anyway, while making my way around the exhibit, I was most particularly struck by the work of Kari Altmann, and I wanted to take this opportunity to focus on her contribution to the show. I want to talk about the piece that I feel encapsulates the show and Altmann’s aesthetic philosophy.

1. Untitled: (Spinning Beach ball) Kari Altmann, 2008

Altmann offers us this particular piece of Western social observation that is simply an animation of a beach ball on a mini, digital flat screen. The ball is spinning slowly in isolation, surrounded by white. OK, now before you “x” out on me, allow me to propose that this piece is emphasizing something about Americans on vacation and the manipulation of joy for commercial pursuits.

The ball is centered on the screen as if by some unseen force. Why can’t it move freely? Why isn’t it bouncing? Aren’t beach balls supposed to be bouncing? As if raised by Darth Vader’s hand to a state of permanent stagnancy — with the exception of the slow mechanized spinning, something we’ll get to in a moment — the beach ball is being regimented to an existence that is in ill proportion with what we as people have come to expect of beach balls.

Take the act of tossing the ol’ pig skin around for kicks. Now, slap on some sponsors, ticket sales and fat-pocketed investors, and you have something quite different, don’t you? I feel like Altmann is touching on this distortion of joy with her visual metaphor.

What do you have after you take a fishing pole and put in place a “pay-as-you-reel program” where the fisherman pays $1 for each casting of his pole (ex. 23 casts = $23) and earns $5 for each catch he makes (ex. Two catches = $10)? Answer: You have a fisherman who has been charged $13 for the “joy” of fishing. (Yes, these really do exist.) He (especially if we are speaking locally) throws the fish back in the lake, as the fish are not safe to eat – or sell. What is he getting for his $13? How much are we willing to pay for joy, and how far will we let it be segmented into menacing surcharges?

The fisherman is being contorted and manipulated by some mad set of principles that he himself cannot understand or see, much as the force that isolates the beach ball is invisible to us as we stand in The Current Gallery. The only movement is that which is regulated. Like the regulation of the pole movement, Altmann’s beach ball only moves at the cold whim of the creator and with the permission of specifications.

The joy inherent in the act of fishing, or bouncing a beach ball, has now become an entirely different entity from that of the joy that Andy Griffith experienced while playing hooky, or Annette Funicello while bouncing around the beach with Frankie Avalon, (Beach Blanket Bingo 1965). The resulting beast is neither organic fun nor the stock market; it is a “call and response” relationship, in which we entrust our joy to a manager, a being made from dispassionate post-it notes and arthritic paper clips.

The manipulation of joy

Ever go to the U.S. Open? Well, unless you’re of the brownstone set, you will enjoy paying $50 to get scolded and held at bay by plastic white chains and snippy rules. You cannot talk or move for a greater part of the viewing, and will stand in about 80 lines throughout the day. Heaven forbid you bring a bag weighing more than 2 ounces — you’ll be sent to yet another line to have your goods put in the care of an outsourced third-party company that doesn’t even know who signs their pay checks. Thus it is comedically moot for them to care, unless they are damn fine souls. This construct alienates and isolates each party involved, breaking joy into multiple bland ceremonies with little to no reverence for joy.

People seem to enjoy diving into vacations that are of the same nature: getaways booked by strangers, for resorts they’ve never seen, run by people who do not own the land, or the resort people who have to constantly witness the sad, highly processed output of packaged bliss.

The beach ball as a symbol for vacation

What is interesting about vacations is that we almost seem to live by the example of our previously mentioned recreational oppressors, going to a different place and doing the same old stuff we do at home, thus controlling the exotic by forcing it to be predictable and safe. I have a friend whose parents work hard all year at their low-paying jobs just to have a crumby couple of weeks in Hawaii once a year. Hawaii is not the crumby, but avoiding it completely while you’re there for two weeks is tragically crumby. It would seem that this family would take advantage of a situation that offered a temporary escape form middle-class hell. But wouldn’t ya know it? They spend the greater part of the vacation surrounding themselves with familiarity.:They eat dinner at McDonald’s and TGIFridays, hang out at the mall most of the week, and golf — all things that they do over the course of any humdrum week. They isolate themselves in a prison of familiar surroundings, never allowing themselves to be penetrated by an “alien” culture, much like the beach ball isolated in permanent dead white.

Good stuff, Altmann.

Netmares/Netdreams, instigated by Kari Altmann and Mark Brown, continues through Sept. 19 at the Current Gallery, 30 S. Calvert St. Go to www.currentspace.com or www.myspace.com/currentspace, or e-mail currentspace@gmail.com.

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