#endless repeating

Intomybloodysoul ✔️

Gimme a second to get me a breath and a pic of this moment to show

I'm an omen of death, and I'm blessing the one and the eight and the seven

'Til nobody left, see that Grey, the inventor of madness a bitch in the back of my whip

And it's crashing inside of my cabin, I'm planning, attacking a pack of some crack

And I'm playing, I go for the bottle instead of my nostril my genie the devil

He keeping me level, I wishing for better, he got me a shovel to bury me under

And I don't give fuck about dying at all

I can't live sober

Got in over my head

No one can tell me

I'm not misnomered

Not looked over

So underrated

So slept on that

I woke up with a god-damn pillow for a head

Smoking all day, take a pill and then I bed

Riding with Zed, got Water to my left

Odiato boutta whip us off a god-damn bridge, I'm gone

Ay, yo, let me call you back

I'm listening to this Saliva shit

Boy, this shit going tough!

Bust yo motherfuckin head

With a motherfuckin sledge

I'ma eat yo fucking soul

With the fork up in my hand

I got big hoes, no simp though

You follow the trail of my weed smoke

And my pistol make six holes

Too sick, though my mental

Don't like me, don't like you

Solo 'til I bloom

I no sober, roll over

Froze over my tomb and I

Ascend to the sky

Soaking up rain 'til the world is on fire

Fuck all this rapping, I'm 'bout to retire

All of y'all copy shit like an imposter

And I'm on my lava shit, world an apocalypse

So I be cocky and flaming humanity

I don't want nobody visit my grave or my tomb when rot and I soak into death, uh

Kill it the villain, the murder, I feel it

And I am the ceiling, I'm high, I'm acidic

I pull up with the motherfucker zed

I pull up and a motherfucker dead

I don't really want no fame, no cash, no sane

I'ma get it and get it and I'ma go Cobain

I'ma zip it and zip it 'cause I done upped my weight

I got everything I want and I'ma cut my vein, yeah, uh

I don't like talking that shit

Walking that bitch like a bark on my wrist

187, that murderous shit

And I know you ain't heard of us yet, we impeccable

Next to nobody, we puffin the chemicals

Scraping residual, loving the fear I form

I am the final formation of drooling depression, I turned into grey, uh

@len0r @frenchpsychiatrymuderedmycnut @seanisnothing

Gimme a Second by Saliva Grey #genius

Endlessly Repeating: On Nana Mandl's work

Over the last decades, the use of digital media led to an increasing acceptance of virtual, non-physical manifestations. We’re entirely used to “having” things that only exist in virtual form. In addition, today's digital paradigms treat the pre-manifested (what used to be understood as “unfinished”) as of manifest character (as if finished): typing letters into search engines immediately shows impromptu-results, without there being the need for an explicit command to express data entry finalization (by pressing “Enter”). The same happens in incremental search algorithms available in most contemporary software: expressing one’s intention no longer requires explicit actions – today’s software extrapolates semantics implicitly. The same happens with unsent mails (saved on external databases), and a variety of non-surveillance hardware that’s listening to its surrounding 24/7 (Smart TVs, phones and watches, Amazon Echo, etc.): they all treat premanifested, unfinished data as “information”: ready for data-mining, used to extrapolate individual and collective alleged intentions, in an unusual acceptance of prejudgment not usually the idea of analog democracies.

***

Within a workflow embracing digital mechanics, Nana Mandl seems to extend traditional painting by implementing a very contemporary reflection of self-referential media techniques and dynamics. Blending found image material with photos shot herself, she then creates specific angles through screenshots, prints parts onto paper, or sends files off for printing onto canvas. These then either constitute material for further use, or finished works – forming the basis for a visual process that seems to treat all visual experience equally, and doesn’t differentiate between temporary steps towards finished works, and these finished works themselves. Ignoring transitions from digital (screen) to analog (printed paper or canvas), Mandl’s artistic process feels analog (independent of the work’s aesthetics): it manifests and references without limitation in what feels to be a strongly self-feeding approach, somewhat similar to how Big Data operates: repeating forever, transcending the idea of source and destination.

Through this, her work strongly reflects the contemporary dissolution of manifestations. Her process doesn’t explicitly document itself, but rather creates work that seems to incidentally carry documentational semantics.

An overall theme in Mandl’s work might be appropriation: collage cutout-techniques are used independent of medium, and of that medium’s position on an imagined analog-digital scale. Does this represent the post-Internet generation? Mandl inserts other artist’s works without concern about visual tangibility or referencability, creating a lightweight approach to ownership that can feel very contemporary, very imgur (it makes sense then that her gallery representation so far is Vienna's One Work Gallery, whose exclusive internet presence is an Instagram account).

Mandl creates work that could well be described as visually eclectic, but upon closer inspection turns out to mostly include digital media and fine arts references. She expands the language she uses in a self-feeding way – firmly positioning her base in the chosen material’s reference system. Seemingly unlimited layers, interferences, pixelations, frequency changes, color gradients – if the term ‘analog‘ denotes an unlimited, endlessly divisible way of operating, then (independent of all digitally used tools) Mandl’s workflow must be understood as being purely analog.

Interestingly enough, the materials printed and shot by Mandl create an atmospheric, painterly moiré effect hard to create with brushes, but quite common in (and natural to) digital media (and maybe even more so in moving images). While we know visual frequency layerings by now, we still don't really expect them in paintings. In Mandl's work though they are shown without receiving center stage focus, instead feeling incidental, not overstating their being part of a variety of visual ciphers. Her digital canvas prints constitute the basis for painterly atmospheres in a way that contemporary brush paintings might no longer be able to reach. Her work feels both committed and detached, but sidesteps painting’s potential pathos – maybe due to her formal choices not having been canonized yet. How to rival this with traditional brush work? Mandl’s formal choices result in an unfairly seeming advantage that could end up opportunistic; in her case, they rather feel to be the result of a clever understanding of one’s tools, while never forgetting what initially led one to develop them.

Once working on the physical material, Mandl mostly uses monochromatic brush strokes (instead of gradients), which feels to reference digital painting – the monochromatic use of the digital brush can't easily be reached with analog brushes. As a smart universe, it’s obviously self-confident enough not be pushy. Instead, there’s space to find room for feeling my way into what drives (or could drive) these works. In the end, they make me believe in a future of painting. For there to be a way, a space, a place for pigments on medium, without the pathos of nostalgia. They open up a space apart from pathos, yet still are hopeful works to me. They matter because of it.