There is a particular thing I enjoy using only my portable computer or any random computer to make something. First of all I don't need to set up again and again a kind of a personal environment in order to focus. When I switch on my computer my environment is in front of me and it is waiting for me. When I use a random computer I can very easily set up an environment by uploading files from my hard drive, from dvds and documents out of my email account. On the screen I have folders, shapes and ideas. I don't need to go to any store, wonder around, searching for what I need and what it would be useful for me to use. Archives, articles, folders, staff in general are such a complicated thing. You need at least a permanent address to own shelves and a room to have pencils, folders with images and heavy duty books. But if you don't have specific address, if you don't find it appealing to work full time jobs to pay the rent and if work is not one of your favorites, maybe you just end up hung out here and there. The other day I went to the Pearl, the art store on Canal street, and I felt so confused. All this brushes and paints and things I didn't know why I had to get even one of them to use. There was this red pastel and it was another red beside it and then another and another. They looked so much the same the one beside the other and it didn't make to me any difference if they differ even a tiny bit as they were on the same shelf with the similar uniformed labeled template, it made me nervous even to watch them. Then, I thought well, in order to spend time with them and figure out their differences and how to use them, I had to either buy them or steal them; and then on top of that I needed paper and bla bla bla and I forgot why I needed to put those reds on a paper in the first place. I will do the test on a blank document see the differences and figure out how it does it and if it does something I will save it and keep it on one of my folders. Maybe, not necessarily soon, perhaps at a particular moment, it will become something.
Possible a copy, there won't be any bricks if you wonder what is behind the curtain, it might become three or four dimensional. It could be made out of a material which possesses fast appearances and disappearances. What kind of material would that be? Digitized signals, waves, electric colorful pigments of movement; and meanwhile, until my file will shift dimensions, I can choose to do nothing.
3/30/2010
3/25/2010
Note (Aristotle from Poetics) and questions
Story Line
A perfect tragedy should be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should moreover imitate the actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of the virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear, it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of tragedy; it possesses no single tragic quality- it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should be downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would doubtless satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes- that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.
A well constructed plot should therefore be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice but of some great error or frailty, in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view. At first the poets recounted any legend that came in their way. Now, the best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses - on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible. A tragedy, then, to be perfect according to the rules of art, should be of this construction.
Questions:
What is the role of the chorus in the drama? How does the chorus follow the character?
For performance art, the drama is already staged and the performer returns the role of the audience to the audience, by embodying different states of spectatorship.
The performer is a spectator, meaning she is already part of an ongoing spectacle that she responds to. She is a part of the spectacle, she is not outside nor inside, she is already a part of it. Does then a performance piece need a plot? No, and that's what makes performance art different to theater or any other performance (music, dance, cinema) because it mostly demands the performer's actuality and truthful response to the ongoing, present drama, life as it is. It is the way chorus responds to Oedipus or speaks the secrets of Antigone. If life as it is, it is already a spectacle, her response to the main characters turns flat. The chorus is the agora already on stage. This is how it is and it is part of the performance to show that there is a way that this body, our bodies on stage, can take responsibility for the acts of the main characters, the rulers of the drama. If there is something to focus upon now it is the making of that body, how to awaken it, how to create the language and the movements that speaks, and how they can be activated.
Is it possible to understand that there is no separation between drama and real life?
If everything is spectacle including our own bodies what she wants to show is that she still can receive as if for the first time and the gestures will be of that exact moment. The gestures cannot be fully prepared yet cannot exist without ground, without memory, a memory of reality. They can't be from something personal, as they will limit her focus, but they can't be without her heart because that will limit her expressions. The choric body, khoriko soma, which occupies but doesn't territorialise, which speaks out truth, undefined but specific in movement.
Some performances want just to add another layer of spectacle on the existing one by using the same violent, grotesque tricks. Others assume that violating the body will give examples of how spectacle can be harmed but in the end they only achieve alienation. Some want just to comfort themselves and all of those around them, to make them forget, to make them sleep a deeper sleep than they are already in.
As, I understand it, there is not an either or not, there is neither against or acceptance, but response. Response maybe replaced with the word come back or feedback but maybe it is not the right word. I am using this word without the reactionary root which it carries, but well, this come back, this response, the feedback, has nothing to do with tricks and examples. It is immediate and it is actual and it is disturbing how more actual it can be.
So when the performance starts?
Does it end?
Does it need to be good?
For the witch, ruptures come in time and out of smell.
A perfect tragedy should be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should moreover imitate the actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of the virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear, it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of tragedy; it possesses no single tragic quality- it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should be downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would doubtless satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes- that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.
A well constructed plot should therefore be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice but of some great error or frailty, in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view. At first the poets recounted any legend that came in their way. Now, the best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses - on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible. A tragedy, then, to be perfect according to the rules of art, should be of this construction.
Questions:
What is the role of the chorus in the drama? How does the chorus follow the character?
For performance art, the drama is already staged and the performer returns the role of the audience to the audience, by embodying different states of spectatorship.
The performer is a spectator, meaning she is already part of an ongoing spectacle that she responds to. She is a part of the spectacle, she is not outside nor inside, she is already a part of it. Does then a performance piece need a plot? No, and that's what makes performance art different to theater or any other performance (music, dance, cinema) because it mostly demands the performer's actuality and truthful response to the ongoing, present drama, life as it is. It is the way chorus responds to Oedipus or speaks the secrets of Antigone. If life as it is, it is already a spectacle, her response to the main characters turns flat. The chorus is the agora already on stage. This is how it is and it is part of the performance to show that there is a way that this body, our bodies on stage, can take responsibility for the acts of the main characters, the rulers of the drama. If there is something to focus upon now it is the making of that body, how to awaken it, how to create the language and the movements that speaks, and how they can be activated.
Is it possible to understand that there is no separation between drama and real life?
If everything is spectacle including our own bodies what she wants to show is that she still can receive as if for the first time and the gestures will be of that exact moment. The gestures cannot be fully prepared yet cannot exist without ground, without memory, a memory of reality. They can't be from something personal, as they will limit her focus, but they can't be without her heart because that will limit her expressions. The choric body, khoriko soma, which occupies but doesn't territorialise, which speaks out truth, undefined but specific in movement.
Some performances want just to add another layer of spectacle on the existing one by using the same violent, grotesque tricks. Others assume that violating the body will give examples of how spectacle can be harmed but in the end they only achieve alienation. Some want just to comfort themselves and all of those around them, to make them forget, to make them sleep a deeper sleep than they are already in.
As, I understand it, there is not an either or not, there is neither against or acceptance, but response. Response maybe replaced with the word come back or feedback but maybe it is not the right word. I am using this word without the reactionary root which it carries, but well, this come back, this response, the feedback, has nothing to do with tricks and examples. It is immediate and it is actual and it is disturbing how more actual it can be.
So when the performance starts?
Does it end?
Does it need to be good?
For the witch, ruptures come in time and out of smell.
3/24/2010
3/23/2010
Note (from Cocteau to somewhere of less loneliness)
From Cocteau
Free to choose the faces, the shapes, the gestures, the tones, the acts, the places that please him, he composes with them a realistic documentary of unreal events. The musician will underline the noises and silences.
to somewhere of less loneliness
Free to choose the faces, the shapes, the gestures, the acts, the places that please us, we compose a realistic documentary of unreal events. We are actors and at the same time composers and we will do music which will underline our noisy and silent acts.
Free to choose the faces, the shapes, the gestures, the tones, the acts, the places that please him, he composes with them a realistic documentary of unreal events. The musician will underline the noises and silences.
to somewhere of less loneliness
Free to choose the faces, the shapes, the gestures, the acts, the places that please us, we compose a realistic documentary of unreal events. We are actors and at the same time composers and we will do music which will underline our noisy and silent acts.
Note (Cixous)
She must write herself because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of he liberation has come will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history, first at two levels that cannot be separated.
a) Individually. By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more that confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display- the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth. Our naphtha will spread, throughout the world, without dollars-black or gold-nonassessed values that will change the rules of the old game. To write.
An act which will not only "realize" the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength;
a) Individually. By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more that confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display- the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth. Our naphtha will spread, throughout the world, without dollars-black or gold-nonassessed values that will change the rules of the old game. To write.
An act which will not only "realize" the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength;
3/22/2010
Note
By this drop of your blood, I can see through your dynamic impulse. All the murdered lips mark hollow stars. With sparked arch and sparked ankle. This is this. If you like it. Dig me with no end, more inside. continue repeat. The thick painted red, which was always sweating by our enormous humidity, needs no detailed explanation. Zoom in. She and He speak in reverse.
Note
Excuse me..
blue background
hands and feet in opposite directions
She is strange, with short hands
different when standing on her toes
whistle
the triumph of youth
Reject habits
run with me
faster than beauty
blue background
hands and feet in opposite directions
She is strange, with short hands
different when standing on her toes
whistle
the triumph of youth
Reject habits
run with me
faster than beauty
3/16/2010
Note
Constant rejection of preservation,
without others there is no survival-the ecstatic is not immanent
Not out of dialectics, out of absolutes
Letting go
To detach
Temporality
the time is the concept of itself
Dialectic without completion, a shape outside the seen, the form can only be presence
The face cannot be plastic
The otherness of other cannot be form
Self-fashioning
Strategy and hiding
At once two and in a distance
Scene
to arrive at a scene
to assume shape
shape is not matter
it derives within itself
time again that defines any given shape
Try alternatives alter alternatives
without others there is no survival-the ecstatic is not immanent
Not out of dialectics, out of absolutes
Letting go
To detach
Temporality
the time is the concept of itself
Dialectic without completion, a shape outside the seen, the form can only be presence
The face cannot be plastic
The otherness of other cannot be form
Self-fashioning
Strategy and hiding
At once two and in a distance
Scene
to arrive at a scene
to assume shape
shape is not matter
it derives within itself
time again that defines any given shape
Try alternatives alter alternatives
3/14/2010
This is a party, Athens/NY, 2007
Where are we my friends?
We are nowhere
And we are here again and again
I feel how real you are
Open mouth
No teeth
This is a house
No, but maybe yes
It could be a dog
A very happy dog
This is nothing
I’m here for no reason
This is nothing
And I’m nothing at all
If the party stops
It’s only depressive normality, extreme separations.
Depressive normality, lonely crowds, impossible utopias, society of society for society
This is a party
A collection of places, infrastructures, dreams, nightmares, bodies, thoughts and desires
Desires that circulate among us among the places we move and meet
What about, the formation of sensibility as a force
The sensual of the sensitive
Of the sensitive sensuality
The relationship as no way meeting from the accident to the no resisting full ending
Or starting again and again
We are nowhere
And we are here again and again
I feel how real you are
Open mouth
No teeth
This is a house
No, but maybe yes
It could be a dog
A very happy dog
This is nothing
I’m here for no reason
This is nothing
And I’m nothing at all
If the party stops
It’s only depressive normality, extreme separations.
Depressive normality, lonely crowds, impossible utopias, society of society for society
This is a party
A collection of places, infrastructures, dreams, nightmares, bodies, thoughts and desires
Desires that circulate among us among the places we move and meet
What about, the formation of sensibility as a force
The sensual of the sensitive
Of the sensitive sensuality
The relationship as no way meeting from the accident to the no resisting full ending
Or starting again and again
Sadness comes when I can’t touch your face. When you think that relations are only for you and me and not for him, who I desired just for ones, in a bar
You hate my character
I hate your flat imagination
You hate my character
I hate your flat imagination
This is our party
Me, and my friends have a party
We have been raised as survivors
We have been raised with concepts and projects
An assumption that everything must be tolerated, that everything can be thought so long as it is recognized as being without direct repercussions on the structure of society, of its institutions and of state of power
Any idea can be admitted; its expression should even be favored, so long as the social and the state rules are accepted
The freedom of thought must be total, as well as the freedom of expression in principle, but we must not want the consequences of our thoughts as far as the collective life is concerned
Me, and my friends have a party
We have been raised as survivors
We have been raised with concepts and projects
An assumption that everything must be tolerated, that everything can be thought so long as it is recognized as being without direct repercussions on the structure of society, of its institutions and of state of power
Any idea can be admitted; its expression should even be favored, so long as the social and the state rules are accepted
The freedom of thought must be total, as well as the freedom of expression in principle, but we must not want the consequences of our thoughts as far as the collective life is concerned
No, this is not a house
This is not a temple
But who owns the keys?
We want the keys and no one knows where we can find them
You should have the keys
Don’t you?
This is not a temple
But who owns the keys?
We want the keys and no one knows where we can find them
You should have the keys
Don’t you?
We don’t have any keys and we walk on the desert
We don’t care how many days or nights
We don’t need the keys
Because
We shall see
Two or three comments for the design, please
It really has two plans
We don’t care how many days or nights
We don’t need the keys
Because
We shall see
Two or three comments for the design, please
It really has two plans
with Allison Katz, 2008
A.K What is your understanding of the difference between Desire and Pleasure?
G.S Desire is an unspeakable essence that exists outside of me and needs me to complete its purpose. Desire exists for me without me. Navigates my steps and I am the where and how that doesn’t exist yet with me. Desire is not an object, it’s the impulse to make, an impulse to do something in relation to someone who you desire in order the desire to exist.
Pleasure is complete
No thinking about pleasure
Pleasure exists in the mind of heart
A.K Where is the body?
G.S
Body is earth
Earth doesn’t have any purpose to stop it’s rhythm
Layers
Archaic evidences
The skin
More
Holes
No
Surface
Digging inside the earth
More layers
Stretched evidences
Naming again
A.K What time is it?
G.S Sun on the leaves of orchids
A.K How did you know?
G.S I knew by love
A.K Do you agree with Kristeva, "Psychoanalysis tells us there is no dialogue, just desires clashing, forces colliding"?
G.S
I knew by love
And
There
there
Was no dialogue
A.K Do you agree with Joan Didion, working through the question "of whether or not you could go home again," writing in 1967, that "Sometimes I think that those of us who are now in our thirties were born into the last generation to carry the burden of 'home,' to find family life the source of all tension and drama."
G.S
Home is blue details
on the corners of each door
I am with
You
Touching the walls
Smelling your effort to protect us
My mother
In the family
On the table
That we eat our bread every day
That’s how
I learned
It
I don’t know anything about Didion
A.K What comes to mind when I write the name A N N A A H K M A T OVA?
G.S A long narration/ Something with a tragic beginning and a tragic end
A.K A poem of yours, please:
G.S
Poem
A tiger mouse
A.K And in the year 2012?
G.S
Only weather reports for an entire year
Heavy rains like in the tropical forests
A.K The compliment of color is _light again_________. Bonus:
One of Gaugin's most beloved paintings is titled, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"
Romance or Anarchy?
G.S
Anarchic Romance
New Seductions
1-14
1
do you like art?
I never thought of it
2.
Vancouver (another other place) This cold place where you need to take the car and go there, from here somewhere far away. The painting can be a place far away from the surface of the painting. You need that kind of painting as a fantasy/quilt/avoiding in order to operate painting.
3.
Memory is different when is linear than when it’s in layers and we live in both ways of memory. Conflicted about them, collapsing in another’s ground. Well, what about the ways of creating memory with someone? In my opinion is such a rare thing to happen. We need to talk more about that.
4.
Lots of Gods
Different temples
(that's what you said?)
5.
No I don't read Nietzsche
Or, yes I do
6.
For the HA!
The laughing masks can't be upside down to create another expression
It is more about the, with a common laughing cut each one laughs differently.
7.
Super subject is the shoe designer of a huge company who dreams his shoes wore and used not only just as shoes but as codes that someone can totally identify with. Living the dream in order to continue produce interesting buyable designs. Beautiful/sexy/fast. These are some words that fit to that term.
8.
Why you use your name easier when you are a written text and not a visual text? What's the difference?
A dead body is never a written body but a visual body
9.
Wish you'll think of the poetry tomorrow morning.
10.
So nice to see you
would love if you come by again
except signs we’ll make toasts
Near by my house there is an indian restaurant and a cinema.
11.
don't want this to end in no 10
12.
May i come to your place? I’ve never seen your place. I would love to see it. I heard the door bell on the phone yesterday. Is there a corridor? That's how it sounded. Wooden floors for sure. Lots of staff on the floor and everywhere. Not many echoes.
13.
anyway
sad you can't make it for a drink
Next time maybe
Do you feel ill?
Make a cup soup if you don't feel like making a soup.
I love cup soups
tomato
chicken
and the etc
14.
13 is bad luck?
NO
not anymore
Yes
sure
why not
No
Not
any
more
3/12/2010
Note
#210 | “How would it feel if a foreign policeman was beating you up in Athens? (the Greek uprising is truly going European!)
(article written by an Occupied London author for our friends at Last Hours, on the eve of tomorrow’s general strike. Continuous updates and photos, on both websites, tomorrow!)
It is early in the morning of Tuesday, March 9th. Bemused audiences tuned in to an Athens news station to listen to an evidently uncomfortable police spokesperson. How could he not be? He must explain a rather embarrassing incident: days earlier, on March 5th, the police had tear-gassed Manolis Glezos in the face for trying to prevent a youth’s brutal arrest [photo]. Glezos is 88 years old today; it was almost 70 years ago, on May 30 1941, in Nazi-occupied Athens that he and Apostolos Santas climbed up the Acropolis and tore down the Swastika – an action for which he was arrested and tortured the following year.
Trying to justify the police’s action and to show that things must stay under control at any cost, the spokesperson made quite a revealing statement: “if the local police fail at their task”, he claimed, “the EU and the Greek government are ready to dispatch a 7,000-strong European police force to repress what might seem like an upcoming revolt”. “Imagine it!”, he added, “how would it feel if a foreign policeman was beating you up in the streets of Athens?” A funny question, that one. You would imagine police baton blows feel similar regardless of the passports of those holding them. Whether or not his statement was a slip-of-tongue, it definitely seems to hold some validity: a supra-national police force, the “European Gendarmerie Force” (EGF) does exists already and is prepared to take operations in countries where local governments invite it [http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/oct/eu-gendarmerie-treaty-sept-2007.pdf]. The Greek government have so far declined to answer questions on the issue in parliament. I don’t think Manolis Glezos was expecting to see German public forces on the streets of Athens again in his lifetime. But then again, if they tear-gas the way the Greek cops do, there won’t be that much for anyone to see…
General strikes are more common in Greece than in most European countries – but still, they tend to come in the rate of one or two per year – not per calendar month. Thursday’s general strike is the country’s third (two full-day and one half-day) in the few weeks alone. Panepistimiou Avenue, part of the main protesting route – and one of Athens’ major thoroughfares – has been closed off for a week by strikers of Olympic Air; on March 10th, an attorney general ordered the police to disperse the crowd of about 2,000 who have gathered there.
The country’s official printing-house (where state laws are printed in order to come into effect) is currently occupied by employees in protest against the newly-introduced austerity plan. The general accounting office (this, ironically, in charge of monitoring the effects of the implementation of the austerity plan) is also under occupation by its employees. In the small northern city of Komotini employees at a local troubled company went straight to the source and occupied two of the city’s main bank branches.
December’s revolt had been a strong warning sign. The “700 euro generation” (in a country where everyday living expenses closely compete to the UK’s) had every reason to revolt. The death of a 15-year old boy? Cities smash and burn for days. An “austerity plan” pushing labour rights back by a few decades overnight; severe wage cuts, VAT increases, pension-freezes…
It is Wednesday, March 10th – the eve of the third recent strike in Greece. “I don’t really earn enough to get a cab to tomorrow’s demonstration”, writes a commentator on Athens IMC. “And there’s no public transport, as everyone is participating in the strike. Good for them. We are driving down there tonight, staying with a friend. And we’ll be using the car’s engine oil to wash the streets, our little gift to the thugs of the police’s motor-cycle Delta force.” There is anger building up in Athens’ streets and many expect to see it outpouring in the event that multi-national force descends in the city, if not before… Whether national or international, next time Manolis Glezos takes on the security forces he most certainly will not be alone.
3/10/2010
Failed astronaut
Failed astronaut
We had the discussion for so many times
and you’re keep on repeating
that this is the worst time
to fall in love
i say you are wrong
but who cares
i hear you are busy
sweaty like grey rat
making up new explanations
now this is now
this very moment
the moment we are talking
and we are having the conversation
this is the worst time
to fall in love
now you’re solving your life and all the conspiracies, you found the death of the fear of death, the cause-reason-effect of boring nights and numerous un-satisfactions, the below zero degree of sexual interactions tuned in neuron plastic power, it is your cock which is materialized perfectly in nicotine candies, since the last time
we had the discussion and i had sex with you
we had sex with three men after you
every night I give birth to millions of babies
who are ghostly good looking
looking at me when they depart from me
when all of those babies will arrive to mars
you will still be here on this planet.
Note
Pathological Liar/Stalker
March 12th-April 3rd 2010
Fredric Snitzer Gallery 2247 NW 1ST PL Miami, FL 33127
March 12th-April 3rd 2010
Fredric Snitzer Gallery 2247 NW 1ST PL Miami, FL 33127
I am a fan of places I've never been to. Where I live, nobody knows you, nobody has
met you yet. You are contingent to my screen-saver, to the thousands of headless torsos in the chat-rooms... I am your audience and as such, at some point, I felt like I was dating my father or my mother (for the impossibility of it). I find that with you, truth reveals itself in a fictional structure; and the reality of our construction depends on the relational aspect of that exchange and also on the contraband of your photo. Since I 'met' you, my reality became abstraction and like on the verge of modernism you where built as speculation while I turned into a verb. In these paintings, I have no interest in the narratives of what went down between us, but instead, I focused on how for desire to remain desire it had to ignore the very mark that constructed it as such. If I have to locate desire in your body or in mine, it will be in the head. I’m omitting it now. I’m not sure if the word representation would be the right one here, maybe yes, I rather think of these paintings as presentations. Or the discourse without text for the ads and the posters I’m distributing in Europe to find you. In any case, as I was saying, the subjects depicted are sometimes generic headless totems, rocks that look like people, unfinished torsos from bad sculptors in the 30’s, red jackets and black pants ‘walking’ backwards and forward. They sort of echo the basic premise for exchanging one’s own nude photos on the chat room: Always headless, nobody will know who you are...You’ll avoid blackmail. I only have headshots of you; you never got one from me. On our chat sessions 3 modes of exchange took place. I build you up, I erase; I attack. In all 3, there was the possibility of losing control materially, of not being able to direct that curve, or this conversation. The paintings that came from the chat room are now becoming a poster, an ad, a letter. So, in that (sort of) state of becoming, the performance that was started by your image became extra-pictorial drama, and at the end, what was left wasnʼt just a bunch of photos or paintings or letters, but rather the scene of our exchange, its process and the memory of it's materiality, whatever that was. Diego Singh. Miami, February 2010. 3/08/2010
Note
"And Counting..." Wafaa Bilal is performing for 24 hours at the Elisabeth Foundation for the Arts
“And Counting… is the location Bilal’s performance creates. This decisive, irreversible action will establish an embodied, and, as long as Wafaa Bilal is alive, timeless memorial to the nightmare of the Iraq war, with the war’s most devastating consequences engraved not only in Bilal’s consciousness but also approximated in the flesh.
Once the map of Iraq is tattooed onto Wafaa Bilal’s back and the 5,000 red dots representing fallen U.S. soldiers are met by the 100,000 green dots designating fallen Iraqis, the latter visible only under UV light, there is no turning back. Tattoos are almost impossible to erase, as many soldiers have learned. They are a constant reminder of an irrevocably decisive moment. Monuments, by contrast, although built with good intentions and designed to help us remember, often simply accelerate our capacity to forget. They inevitably become absorbed into our visual landscape. Remembering is directly connected to the body—sensual stimuli activating hidden memories all the way back to childhood, as Proust, for one, demonstrated with such elegance. So the act of engraving memory onto oneself is an attempt to secure an everlasting re-membrance of the past. " Carol Becker
3/04/2010
Note
KS: The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice provides a much more compelling account of gender than does Oedipus myth- one based on mortality instead of castration. The story is also crucial because it helps us to see the foundational nature of gender: The turn away from woman is a turn away from all relationality. Ovid gives the myth a redemptive coda as well. In Book XI of the Metamorphoses, Orpeus is attacked by a band of women who say "Look there's the man who hates us" They strip him of his power to coerce and compel nature, and they dismember his body. Orpheus is transformed by death. When he arrives in Hades, he searches for his "dear" Eurydice and, when he finds her, lovingly embraces her. They spend their time walking side by side through Hades and reenacting what happened on the slope leading from Hades to earth in a way that undoes its violence- turning it into a reversible and ontologically equalizing analogy. Sometimes Eurydice walks ahead and Orpheus follows, and at other times he walks ahead and she follows; and when it is his turn to look back, his look no longer kills. In the first part of his version of the myth, Ovid tell us what heterosexuality is. In the second, he shows us what heterorelationality would look like- if we were ever to have it.
Artforum, February 2010, George Baker in conversation with Kaja Silverman
Artforum, February 2010, George Baker in conversation with Kaja Silverman
3/03/2010
INPUT at the Armory Show 2010
INPUT
The Armory Show 2010
The Collective Booth (L-18 on Pier 92)
March 4-7
INPUT #2: Spring 2010
Me, Myself and I (Conversations with Oneself)
Limited Edition of 300
Renée Vara, Executive Editor
Elena Bajo + Warren Neidich, Guest Editors
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Meena Alexander, Avi Alpert, Eric Anglès, Marco Antonini, Boško Blagojević, Daniel Bozhkov, Tyler Coburn, Jon Cuyson, Keren Cytter, Judy Dater, Josechu Dávila, Jeremiah Day, Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Andrea Fraser, Vendela Fredricson, Pablo Helguera, Claire Hooper, Alexis Knowlton, Chris Kraus, Ajay Kurian, Sean Landers, Annika Larsson, Thomas Lawson, David Maljkovic, Amir Mogharabi, Anneè Olofsson, Alix Pearlstein, Falke Pisano, Angelo Plessas, Adina Popescu, Ana Prvacki, Sean Raspet, Georgia Sagri, Jakob Schillinger, Amie Siegel, Alexandre Singh, Andrew Smaldone, Erik Smith, Gabriele Stellbaum, Mathilde ter Heijne, Eve K. Tremblay, Heidi Voet, Martha Wilson
Me, Myself and I (Conversations with Oneself)
What is the role of the dialogic process in the production and construction of art?
The focus of this iteration, a project by Elena Bajo + Warren Neidich, is specifically centered on the simultaneous dialogues artists have with themselves including their associated internal conflicts and diatribes. As a dialogic exercise of self-discovery and/or reflexive mindfulness, this edition of INPUT seeks to explore how an artwork becomes a disembodied representation of an artist’s internal voice in all its contradictory and multifarious nature.
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