For the past couple of years I have consciously not made any new year’s resolutions because I don’t actually follow them… and even if I complete some, they are only about 25% of the full list. So this year, I have GOALS THAT NEED TO BE ACCOMPLISHED.

1. Travel! Hoop on an airplane heading anywhere far from where I’m at right now. And no, this isn’t as superficial as it sounds. It’s more like: RUN FOR MY OWN LIFE AND MY OWN SANITY! I want to start over somewhere where nobody knows me… even if I can only stay for a couple months.
2. Turn the super-pile of important documents into digital format. I cannot continue to put this off. I HAVE TO STOP PROCRASTINATING IMPORTANT SHIT!
3. Re-launch my career as an artist by exhibiting at least twice this year OR re-launch myself as an independent curator/director of a non-profit organization I used to run dedicated to fine art photography. I NEED TO BE DOING SOMETHING WITH MY LIFE!

This year hasn’t exactly started as I expected it would have. I bought this year’s agenda last week, so try to imagine how far I am from catching up to the times…  Besides that, I’m battling myself more than ever. My head is a mess and definitely needs some organization. I don’t even know what I want anymore… and that scares me shitless.

And, yes,  I know anyone who reads this won’t give a damn about it. It’s personal. But I promise the long-overdue continuation essay on Adolf Hitler and his art will be posted this month, along with more religious ranting…

I huge amount of people already know this. I will contribute my little “grain of sand” and post this up in here. The figure of Jesus of Nazareth (A.K.A. ‘Christ’/ ‘Christos‘) was NOT born of December 25 as some people still think. If you’re one of those who still believes that, you need a reality check...Go have fun on Google or some other search engine and find more about the topic. I will give you some hints & keywords to check out:

•  • Pagan winter festivals • Roman winter solstice • April 17, 6BC • Star of Bethlehem theories • Christmas = “Christ’s mass” • Yule • rebirth of the Great horned hunter god • Cernunnos • Pan • Dies Natalis Solis Invicti • Sun God • (Sol Invictus) = birth of the “invincible sun” • Yule singing = caroling •  •

One of the most important things is that the ‘Christ’s mass’ was scheduled at the same time as pagan winter festivals to keep church members from going to pagan festivities. This date was also chosen to help pagans asimilate and convert to Christianity in an easier way, thus celebrations like Yule and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti were a equated and absorbed into the Christian liturgical calendar.

I personally dislike the holiday season. Apart from all that I’ve mentioned above and it’s fake meaning (Yes, I absolutely hate when people say that Jesus the true meaning of Christmas), it’s disgusting how people relate it to material gifts. I hate giving gifts as much as I hate receiving them.

Anyways, I hope that anyone who is ignorant of this be motivated at least a tiny bit to find the actual truth.

- Adrianne Katzen

• Make Art • Exhibit my Art • Learn photography darkroom techniques • Finish my bachelor’s degree • Get a master’s degree • Write a book or two or more • Read more than 100 books • Organize or Curate an art exhibition • Skydiving! • Bungee jump! • Do yoga • Learn how to shoot a gun • Tattoo! • Get more tattoos • Become fluent in Français • Learn Deutsch • • Go to a stripclub • Learn Pole Dance inversions & tricks • Be a better dancer • Go on a road trip with no predetermined destination • Learn to tattoo (well enough so I can ink on  myself and others’ skin) • Design custom tattoos for myself • Design tattoo flash or custom art that is actually used on others • Learn how to pick a lock • Sing at a Kareoke • Be a groupie for a rock band I like • Learn to play the electric guitar • Go to a rave party and candyflip! • Eat escargot in France • Live in New York City, Paris, and Los Angeles, CA • Visit Paris, France • Visit Germany • Visit London, England • Do a ritual at Stonehenge • Visit Morocco • Visit India • Visit Moscow, Russia • Visit Thailand • Visit Egypt • Travel the Mediterranean in a sailboat • See an aurora borealis • Publish an article in an important national magazine or newspaper • Create a website or blog • Go nude sunbathing at a naturist/nude beach • Buy myself a corset • Buy a nice pair of stripper shoes • Get my driver’s license • Win the lottery (even if it’s $1) • Get some permanent make-up done (eyeliner, top) • Get laser hair removal treatments • Send a message in a bottle and have it reach the intended person • Find another cat that I can love as much as the one I had that died • Learn to communicate in cat language (meow!) • Have a Ball Python as a pet • Get a job as a Jack Daniel’s promotional model • Work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) • Stop procrastinating •

[ I probably have a few more in the back of my head,
i'll update this post as soon as they decide to come out of the dark. ]]

Remember to use the word ‘CUNT’ in one of my new artworks…

[[What do you think of that?! Ah???]]

Some people, myself included, not always learn from their past mistakes or trials. Some of us just rush back to make the same damn mistakes. Some of us are that fucking stubborn, that fucking stupid andheadstrong.

Bad stuff is not necessarily all bad. There is no white and black distinction in life. We have to accept that there might be some good or benefit to those “bad” things because if not there might not even be a reason not to do or have them.

I will not tell anybody ever no to do any one thing because it is “bad”, harmful, or risky. (I would though warn them to make an informed decision). If people want to do anything, they  will. And if they want to repeat that, they will. A person’s inner-self will dictate what they do or don’t do … not anything you or I will tell them.

So, if you see someone who you think needs your help to stop doing “bad” things, please think more than twice about it because most peope tend to reject unwanted help. If you still decide to try and help them anyways, stop trying to do so as fast as that person asks you not do do so and go away.

Always remember to respect each and everyone’s will to do as they please and to think as they please.

- Adrianne Katzen

10. Eat the same things over and over each week.
9. Wait until I’ve run out of underwear or socks to wash a load of clothes.
8. Think about getting an actual paying job but doing nothing to get it.
7. Watch the same episodes of a TV show over and over again (even if they’re not interesting).
6. Not answer my cell phone calls or texts for more than a week.
5. Buy pointless stuff thinking I might use them in the future.
4. Buy tons of condoms, have them on my purse or on me, but forget to use them from time to time.
3. Procrastinate every single thing I have/need/want to do.
2. Randomly “forget” to do stuff that I agreed to do just because “I don’t feel like it right now”.
1. Do risky things that might get me killed.

Now, the fact that I do these things and I shouldn’t does not mean that I will stop doing them. Ok… I agree, some I should actually not do anymore and change them for “healthier” things. But, whatever.

// 8CN58DESRCF8

Now, i’ve seen all these new “wonderful” ads for the campaign “Above the Influence”. Really? Like that’s gonna help. Why not instead of spending thousands or millions of dollars on this crap, spend it better in trying to help those who want to quit using. There’s all this talk about how people should quit drugs but there’s no actual help for those who need it, for those who don’t even have a dime to pay for real treatment. The government should focus instead on treating addicts as patients not as criminals.

If people want to use all kinds of shit, let them by all means! It’s their own bodies they’re damaging. Just like with the damn birth control pill, any kind of drug is a choice an individual makes. Legalize the damn stuff and drug users and addicts will get clean drugs that won’t be cut with even more dangerous shit.

The world is fucked up and will continue to be fucked up until people in general accept that everyone is entitled to have the freedom to make their own choices as long as they don’t infringe on other’s rights!

Anyway, enough about my ranting about the government and drugs.

     Adolf Hitler was first and foremost a man, a human being, and as such bound to make mistakes. I’m not trying to make a case in his favor, but rather analyzing a part of his human nature. I’d like to briefly explore his views on art, criticize him as an artist and as a “pseudo-curator” (of ‘entartete kunst‘ or “degenerate art”), and state that question that has always lingered on my mind. Actually, i’ll start with that:

What would have been the course of history had Hitler been accepted as an art student at the school of Vienna? What if he had achieved his dream of being a successful artist instead of becoming Führer?

[Me] As a visual artist, I may see his case in a kind of biased way, but I will give no apologies for my thoughts on this subject specifically. Just to clarify: I do not claim to be an expert of his work in any way.

Hate the guy or not, he was an art-aficionado and considered himself an artist. So, let’s talk about the artist not about him as the brain of the mass murdering that took place with him as a leader.

Just by looking at his artwork, his paintings, one can surely deduce that he was an extremely conservative person and even possessed a sort of sensitive personality. It is obvious that he didn’t handle rejection or criticism well. He had his own style which was very traditional, even “neo-classical” with a tad bit of influence from modern art even if he hated it. Observing his paintings closely one is able to see the brush stroke and able to sense a bit of rapid movement of his hand – which could indicate a tiny influence of the way impressionists used to paint. On the other hand, this was not necessarily the case and may simply mean that was his own personal style. One thing is sure, he loved adding all those little intricate details of the buildings he painted – to which we could argue shows something of that complicated spirit he possessed.

Personally, I think that technically his artwork is pretty good since he seems to dominate well the concepts of perspective and light. I’m not a fan of landscapes or urban life as a topic in general…but to each his own.

Below are some of his works:

He denounced/criticized many famous artists by calling their works “degenerate art”. I strongly believe it was based on his ideals of what art should be…and that art obviously had to resemble his own. Each artist has a strong sense of what they believe art should look like and what purpose it has. He was no different. Any art critic or curator can decide what to put on a show based solely on their personal views (although it is not always recommended…) and think to themselves “the hell with what others think!“. Art is not something that can be clearly defined, so how can it be clearly defined what good or bad art is?

Anyways, he didn’t stop creating art after being considered a failure as an artist and I think that in itself is remarkable. The will to keep doing what he liked even with the knowledge that he’d never be famous in the art scene like Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, Kandinsky, Cézanne, van Gogh or Picasso, etc. is something I find oddly inspiring for some reason or another.

- Adrianne Katzen

[Update]  I will probably be making more posts on this topic later on
(maybe discussing Entartete Kunst further in detail)….

Ever since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by world religions and beliefs. I was brought up in a Christian environment and had to withstand biblical classes throughout high school even when I no longer believed these things. All this made me question religions and people’s motivations to believe in something greater than themselves that kept “order” between what they categorized as “good” and “evil”. Of course, the main religion I decided to explore further was Christianity (along with a bit of Judaism and Islam) because it was the one that hit closest to home and information was widely available to me as a child and teenager.

I started to notice a lot of inconsistencies with it and started to think the Bible had either serious errors or missing information. I believed (and still do) that the Bible is not the literal word of God (and that’s if ‘God’ even exists) as people claimed it was. I knew that information changes as it is passed generation to generation via the memorization and oral transmission because this is evidenced in a multitude of old literature and the different copies of it from different times. Also, every text loses something in translation. Now, if you take that into consideration and add the fact that writing had not yet been invented at the start of the events of the Bible/Torah, it is enough to convince me to take anything I read from this book as it is said “with a grain of salt”.

For example, a lot of people claim the first man and woman on Earth were Adam and Eve. I have two major problems with this: (1) How to account for the different ethnicities in the world?; and (2) Genesis, the first book of the Bible that gives the account of creation, has what one could either call a “flaw” or a conflicting view with this claim. Let’s take this second problem further into examination: Genesis 1:27 tell us that God made man “in his image; male and female he created them” (from dust). Genesis 2:18 states that God saw that Adam was alone and in Genesis 2:21-22 he creates a woman from Adam’s rib. Now, if this does not mean that God created 2 different women, it certainly poses the question of which of the two ways was she actually created.

And that’s just the first of many things I could find wrong with this book, with the Bible. I’m not saying you cannot find good advice and real bits of wisdom. No, not at all. I just think of the Bible as a sort of history book that combines poetry and prophecies in it.

In any case, I have studied other religions and have found innumerable things that seem strikingly similar between them. That leads me to believe that no one religion has a complete overview answer of everything and anything that happens here on Earth and on the spiritual plane (if, again, it exists).

Then again you don’t have to believe as I do nor am I trying to make you think like me. I hate people preaching to me about what’s appropriate, so I won’t do that. I’m only letting out what my thoughts about this subject have been for years.

In fact, the way to sum up what I believe is – that I will never be able to know exactly if a Higher Being exists, if that Higher Being prefers one path over the others or has no preference, if there is a “devil” or “evil one”, or if there is an afterlife or anything of that nature (including any view of heaven and hell). Many philosophers and religious people have tried (and failed) to uncover the Truth as it is. And since I believe humans are not capable of knowing the whole truth, I, myself, won’t bother trying to do so. I will live my life as I see fit and in a way that brings some happiness and peace to me.

- Adrianne Katzen, “pseudo-philosopher of religion”