My Blog

Saatchi Gallery

Miss Vix — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 23:29:50 GMT

I am pleased to announce that my artwork is now online at the Saatchi Gallery website at http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Victoria%20M+Quinlan/14670.html under my art pseudonym.

What constitutes life?

Miss Vix — Sat, 13 May 2006 22:50:08 GMT

What exactly constitutes life? Although there is no one definition that can define the complex act of living, on a purely scientific rather than philosophical level scientists generally accept a generic definition of life. In order to define an organism as alive, it must exhibit the following phenomena: Organization, Metabolism, Growth, Adaptation, Response To Stimuli and Reproduction. However, this can be more of an ultimate question. While this may be fine for plant and basic animal life, is it really life when it comes to humans? While having the above attributes is enough to biologically define you as alive, they don't necessarily make you feel alive. And if you are able to do the above but aren't actually exploring and engaging in the act of being alive, is that really living? And is it actually wasting your life if you are enjoying what you are doing at that precise moment in time which is seen as wasteful to others? In order to gain the most from life you need an array of compex stimuli in order to engage you that fits in with the nature of your personal identity and socially constructed self. Thus, in order to gain the most from life in a capitalist society you need money in order to travel, learn, keep in good health and generally get the most out of life, but in so creating the need for money you have to hand over a certain amount of your time to an organization that is willing to pay you wages for the job that you can do. Maybe you have to study for the job and it's not even something that you are particularly interested in. If you have to work 60 hours a week just to pay the rent, eat and subsist, surely that can't constitute living ? And dedicating that amount of time or even 40 hours a week to something you despise can't be construed as it either? Life can be a myriad of things. It can be a juxtaposition, both joyous and painful at the same time. Your quality of life which is an essential aspect to any human life can be rich, poor, middling. Every class has its woes and taboos which can deeply impair a persons quality of life. The poor have no money to fulfil their dreams, the middle class are stuck in the middle, a state of inertia whereby they are comfortable with their life but want so much more. The rich need to conform to a ritual of societal niceties and are under pressure to perform. So, are any of us living?

Polemical buzzwords, debt and the NHS

Miss Vix — Thu, 11 May 2006 22:28:04 GMT

We live in an Orwellian nightmare coupled with a Huxleyesque brave new world, where we can buy everything to entertain us (on credit as we don't get paid nearly enough for what we do if we are on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder-thus making us in debt to the banks and in turn the state) just as long as we are surveyed. Everyone in the western world aspires to the Nietzschean ideal of the will to power, however due to the socioeconomic glass ceiling effect it is few who can achieve this, and so the punk like anger the masses feel towards this ideal is turned inward and creates a rise in mental illness that the west has never seen before. According to The Independent, £20 million is to be cut from budgets quote "ear marked for mental health care", even though 1 in 5 people are going to need treatment for a mental health problem in the future over here. Due to a capitalist outlook on society from the misnomer that is the New Labour party (read- old conservative party!) the funding is being cut and so people are now being coerced into going private. Once people go private due to a total lack of National Health Service funding there will be no reason for the government to keep the NHS, thus the Labour ideology of a free health service for all will be a thing of the past. But at least Jamie Oliver is helping children to eat properly, that's the main thing.

Writer's Block and Human Transience.

Miss Vix — Sun, 07 May 2006 00:05:42 GMT

This has been playing on my mind for quite some time now. I'm sure by society as a whole you are seen as the same person from life to death, but how can this be? Not only do you go from awakening to awakening in your lifetime, be it with gender, sexuality, art, science or any other personal revelations and education, you go through over 100,000 cell renewals and natural genetic mutations (of the non malignant type of course) in an hour. So, this coupled with the fact that you go through set changes in your life such as growing up, moving through social circles and primary and secondary socialisation, how can you ever be the same person even from day to day, let alone your lifetime? Would you want to be the same person? What actually constitutes a person? Where does a person begin and end? It isn't in the skin. You leave traces of pheremones and scent everywhere you go which can be construed as a part of you. Humans are transient beings. Paradoxically the human body craves routine, whereas the mind (especially if creatively inclined) longs for a lack of it, to be free of constraints which can ultimately cause problems. As a social creature we are constantly in a state of socio-evolutionary flux. It's all so fascinating.

Writers Block and Human Transience.

Miss Vix — Sat, 06 May 2006 23:57:55 GMT

I always have trouble writing these blogs. I've got LJ, My Space, have my head buzzing with ideas and probably a myriad of chemicals which I have induced via pesticides and still nothing comes out! I despair at times. Does anyone else have this problem? I'm somewhat sporadic. I have a tendency to write nothing and then suddenly write about anything and everything, like this musing I'm posting next...

Philosophical Drag

Miss Vix — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:15:13 GMT

Is it possible to have a Genetic Female Drag Mother? Surely if they are receptive to transvestism or drag and introduce a man to the world of makeup then they could qualify as they are being the mother to their drag awakening. However, they may not necessarily be a drag queen which means in the context of that sentence they can't be a drag mother as they are not in drag per se. Even if they were a female drag queen, would that still qualify? Female drag queens aren't always polemically welcome by some.