Jacob's ladder

Have you seen this image that Jan regularly uses in his lectures, with two well-t0-do man playing chess, one is about to make a move with a chess piece. The man's little finger touches the edge of a patio where happens to be a dog. Maybe you now how he embeds this image in his talks, but I thought about the flattening and flickering of the actual depiction that happens through this touching of the finger with something out of physical reach. The dog or other animals are used in illuminated manuscripts as well. Here animals fill space left at the end of lines in more decorative way, nevertheless I think the dog in the painting also merely serves as a decoration, an ornamental curvature. Besides being that floating ornament in space, it also breaks the continuity of time, a sort of time knot. This could be a very fantastical interpretation, because I don't have the image in front of me. Your image with the hand, the door and the vanishing point reminded me of Jan's image. Where did you take it from and what's your interest in it?

After reading your crazy poem I did some undirected search and found this description about the ornamentation in the 'book of kells':

"the initials are conceived as elastic forms expanding and contracting with a pulsating rythm. The kinetic energy of their contours escapes into freely drawn appendices, a spiral line which in turn generates new curvilineair motifs."


The other thing I came across, connected to the 'wayward punctuation' is the so called The McBee Keysort System for Mechanically Sorting Folklore Data...



This is perforation has little to do with 'the wayward punctuation without equilibrium', but an interesting find that I wanted to share.

Someone experienced the video with the stuttered leafing as being caught in a time knot, giving cards out and retreating again.

A fluidity-
An extreme equilibrium (slow evolving) that happens when the images absorb and saturate the forms, gestures to the point of excess and exhaustion. A condensation that ultimately leaves nothing left to say, that is silence.
This video is a fiction, maybe, but in reality there are some forms that have a slow, stagnant life as well.

An interruption or punctuation-
Symptomatic in nature, a disturbance that happens on the surface as an effect created by a mechanical intervention. At the same this effect creates a surface for encounter, away from the moment of recording toward something that is more like a memory (or trauma?). I mean encounter in a positive sense in that you're not asked to enter an unmediated mental state.

one crazy image to go with your poem:


and a couple of title suggestions and plan for the space:

Sliding up a curve. Or what to put in an ash tray

The problem, the figure, the form, the building catch on fire, or are set on fire, or simply burn, as the season brings an updraft, a hot front, a wave of air. The curved spiralling lines and small triangles of the weather pattern mark the look of the fire, the feel of the heat. The problem, the figure, the form, the building, congeal, become mercury, become magnets, swivelling, as the small triangles on the curved spiralling lines turn blue and then silver. The problem, the figure, the form, the building flicker as the light recasts the situation, flicker as they breathe, flicker as the arrows slide up and down the spiralled curve, the triangles changing colour. The characters or the seasons are temperature, are a look, a light; the characters, the seasons are a movement, a secret, a touch and a touching. A way ward punctuation, without edges, without equilibrium.

The space is 6x10m? The drawing is not in proportion and I'm careful about where the video book could be projected, it's quite spastic as you might have noticed.
I've made some time in July and August to actually work on the sculptures. To propose (a more or less) definite floor plan is hardly thinkable. I'm afraid the sculpture might just be another testing of the surface, the imagistic and the spatial, which is not my intention.. One video might drop out during the process depending on what is emphasised in relation with the sculpture.

**********Is the dark area, a part of the wall darkened? I think this seems pretty good, I wonder if we should consider to build some kind of platform in the room somweher to break the flat parcour up a bit too, maybe part of "my scene" could be raised? Or we place a kind of catwalk in the space for your spiral ash tray? Again, as in THE BF I think we need some eye level rhythms. the curtain I have is only 280cm high, so it will have to kind of hang in the middle of the room wiht some construction or hang very high! (haha) To accomoadte that then maybe we could Imagine climbing up to another area (a platform) to enter my scene and also have a nother vantage point for viewing your pieces, i like the idea of your spiral becoming a landscape that represents everything....


**********
********** Sorry, I only noticed this comment now. It's good to insert comments to respond directly to something, saves time describing the thing you are referring to. If there would be a way to alert the other that a comment is added or a hyperlink structure with which you set up relationships from one text to another.

So the curtain is not going to reach to the ceiling,. that changes everything, in a good way. Perhaps we can work on a joined plan, because J. told me he wasn't sure if he was able to keep us together in one room. That would be a real pity. Is the curtain not going to reach from wall to wall, or do you mean that an elevated platform allows some tall people to look over the top edge of the curtain, or a platform that extends to an area outside the area that the curtain delineates. I agree things can be done in the space to create some eye level rythms. I don't know if the black/dark area should be a painting on the wall or some panels attached to the wall. I drew it in because it because form a certain angle the spiral could appear as suspended in the air, with a little imagination. Also I thought it would be good to break the rythm that is creates by all these doors.

In terms of leveling, at the moment I try to keep all the elements in similar proportions; objects that easily fit between my arms. For example, the monitor would show my hands leafing through the pages slightly smaller then real size. The monitor also lights the spiral, which is too big to be a model too small to be an earthwork. The awkwardness of the spiral could be amplified by the nearly real sized representation of the book.
Something like that could be happening with the speakers and another sculpture (perforated tiles) as well.

If you could make a drawing of a platform I can respond to it and maybe send this to J?

simply tiles

I'm impossible with titles

I'm rethinking the third work where I proposed to artificially incorporate both a reference to a previous Municipal exhibition and respond to the given frame work of this group exhibition. But I realise that the synthetic binding and unhinging is already present in the form of the ceramic spiral. I hope it both simulates a devising for something to emerge and anticipates a being out of date (surplus of production process), creating a hole in time. It doesn't add anything when I'm using this as a metaphor for a way of working with the given framework. I think that the proposition should have better been formulated as an observation, while the newly painted walls, the blinded windows, lowered ceilings, and false walls together hide any sense of joining or juxtaposition of planes, inside and outside. No visible plug sockets or ventilation shafts. The cloud of paint. The lighting system to create a diffused light and blurry yellow spotlights. The ambulatory walk.

The 'third' work, provisionally titled 'la Pierre' should create some air in the installation, which I imagine to be filled with a dense light and an occasional sound track, which sound something like grrrr... klabeng.
(still don't know how to embed a video)

grrr..... klabeng


book

****did you make these funny photos with the tiles and la pierre? beautiful!

museum

square cabinets, entrance
- the color of this image quite accurate

square cabinet

square, lighting system

3 possible light sources (4 including the spotlights)

beginning of right wing, view on large entrance

ambulatory parcours, side without windows

ambulatory, side with windows

likely to be our space, doors, behind which the building excavation
- I asked to leave them this way, not to paint it white like the rest of the space

entrance of the same space

entrance of the same space, the other side

the same space

The whole experience was quite dense, a thick mist and no sense of an outside. The facade that is the most prominent and visible feature of the building has no relation to the current interior.

Hope you get a better idea.

the dry bit

quicksilver flooding a model (Dutch city planning in the 70 's)

roadblocks

ceramic
\

Just sharing quickly the work I had to do for you know what. The text has a bit weird tone for that reason. Getting ready for a wedding now, but hope that I can spend more time on the blog from now on.

Invitation

The request on the one hand could be taken as an invitation to make an insertion that functions like an exception of the standard: an interruption. While on the other hand an activation of the framing could produce a self-reflexive commentary on the whole situation. This is the action where the exception actually binds. To extend this interrogation a bit further; to reflect on the exhibition that I’m simultaneously part of, would create the situation where one becomes part of his/her own image, a second appearance.

I will take this process of unhinging and binding as a departure point. Such an “in-betweenness” will on the one hand negotiate and confront standards in formats of presentation and on the other instigate terms under which an entry into another position is made possible. A position that moves beyond a state of exception.
One work, in the form of a video, will be set around the encounter with one particular documentary image: A still from a documentary about a Dutch Welfare office in the eighties. My aim with this image is to move through its primarily indexical signifying function and beyond its surface. This process introduces a personal methodology to approach documentary or archival images in general: the handling and touching of the material activates new relationships between the image, body and their immediate surroundings.
Another element which I’d like to extend and amplify, through sculpture, is the extraction and isolation of a particular motif. The motif comprises a spiraling form which is derived from the still image that also appears in the video. The spiral follows the illuminated edges and shadows of a generic type of ashtray which rests on the table where two people, respectively a social worker and a client, have a conversation. The ashtray or spiral is literally removed from this table, highlighting a potency or promising something charged. This sculpture, made of ceramics, will materialize the unhinging and binding forces I have described before.
For the third, complementary work, I want to use a particular image from the Stedelijk Museum’s archive documenting a municipal acquisition exhibition in the seventies as a starting point. (See image) One of the centrally depicted elements in this image comprises a frame that creates an atmosphere of separation and circling around. The reference to road blocks was most likely used to generate a commentary on the status and position of municipal art made public. In the context of the group show I will use this form of rectangular framing to comment and reflect on the dense installation of works of the different artists gathered in one of the wings the museum and the synthetic nature of the theme through which they are brought together. I intend to use this frame to stage a re-appearance of the means I appropriate and use to facilitate communication, but which in themselves are not contributing to a meaning per se. A display of pure means, which I will exhibit by synthetically reconstructing them, to have them appear as an effect. I imagine this effect to be non-nonsensical with moments of reinforced factual representation, as if reason suddenly hits you again.

still from video (video see link below)

http://www.divshare.com/download/11495866-d7f

Directionality

Is it the naming, that framing that makes it so hard to stop from falling,loosing, losing?

Like the seasons, where one is both in control, they have a name, and out of control, it cannot be controlled, the characters may become equally as confounding, reassert their strangeness

Popular Gesture #1

A building wearing a t-shirt catches on fire. The t-shirt says "Next Time".

Break the law, just short of breaking off communication entirely.

Dear Sirs

Forgive my negativity, but there seems to be some problems here, on my side and your side.

The problem is despite efforts to carry out rigorous investigation into specific ideas or problems, despite efforts to develop forms of notating that are both open and somehow strangely foreign, despite efforts to work, there seems little interest in in fact developing artistic practice that uses the speculative, the intimate, the spacing as a anything more than an idea or concept. Although art is often advertised as the place where one could manifest, think through, even suggest an alternative mode of accumulation this seems nothing more (more often than not) than talk. Because in the end there is always an agenda, and the agenda must be pushed. And we all know that statements spoken in the imperative are more easily perceptible than statements spoken with a sense of trepidation, spoken like a shuddering weather pattern that never settles, but is unsettling.

I will tell-you-what-I – am-doing-so-there-no-point-in-doing-it-anymore.

There seems to be a problem here, and that problem is something apparently I have to address. To be honest, I simply cannot take any more rejection. Any way, not clearly opposing intersections of opinion. Truthfully, I can’t bare opinion any longer.

I know that if I told stories that moved from a—b—c there would be a life for this or these interests of mine, but you see that’s where the problem comes in on my side. It’s not only the things, the things I think about that I want to rattle, but also the ways in which they are communicated. I won’t deign to say I am anything like anyone, I've already been described as watery, detached, diaphanous, compared to that “hard edged shadow”. I tried to suggest relations, relationships before and look where it got me: watery, detached, limp. To be honest, I find these adjectives confounding, what on earth does that mean? If I had TOLD you about a certain path, all those problems I encountered, “shared” would you feel I was more connected to what I do? If I had said, Oh look I found a thing, and now I’ll “share it “ with you, would that appear as more solid—everyone likes evidence you know. What on earth does it all mean?

I won’t deign to say I am anything like anyone, but perhaps one has to be angry sometimes, or at the minimum frustrated. But what on earth to do with all these watery emotions that float around in my detached and diaphanous self, clearly there seems a problem.

What I know is that antagonistic empty letters like this don’t help, and don’t “change” anything. But perhaps it bares consideration to think why I’m dong this.

Why is it that in the language of art, art making, artists, that we often feel so far on the edge? We already know we are the exception but does this have to become a costume? Do not write things in the state of anger, and break the law just short of breaking off communication entirely. Woops, I’ve done it! I’ve again said the words of someone else, but I am certain someone will point this out to me, let me know just how detached it is. Of that I am certain, there is always a someone who wants to help.

But in any case I’m working on a wonderful documentary about the founding fathers of a remote artistic commune, which consists of INTERVIEWS and some archival material cut out of magazines and put in vitrines and READING ROOM which opens and expands on the issues addressed in the documentary with A LOT of interviews. I will also lean some sticks against the wall, and work with you-tube to readdress how I talk.

Break the law, just short of breaking off communication entirely.

Yours &c.

I guess there would be a question here somewhere about internalisation.

Positions

Clearly it is the exception.

These images, the one of the woman in the installation, for some reason I can't find a decent version---but none the less, this image of the woman, the artist in her installation preparing for an interview with national television seems to me to articulate some kind of positioning that may be where we are now---a circling, a watching, but a constant estranging or separating.

These image are ones I've been interested in for a while now, and I've wondered how to work with them. But perhaps through this sate of positioning is one way? I took these from the Hocken Collections in Dunedin, NZ. The Hocken somehow co-hosts NZs longest running artist in residency programme, it is also prestigious. The residency is named after Frances Hodgkins, who for many years had two pubic city galleries- Dunedin and Auckland-- dedicated almost entirely to collecting her work and her work alone through their aquistions budget (along side her they collected the work of Colin McCahon who had that retropsective at the Stedelijk in 2002, initiated by Rudi Fuchs in 2002). But the point was, this residency is somehow co-hosted by the Hocken Collections (you remember this image from Technocratic Openess Free Aggression?) and at the end of the time you "get to have a show at the gallery!" This photo was taken in 1982, a few years after her show, she is reinstalling and preparing for the interview. Entry to another position, that is beyond exception and in its own terms.What are those terms?

First lets start with a new colour: green?

NEW LANGUAGE

Finding anything

There is a poem I like to repeat form time to time, it's called Forerunners by Charles Brasch, a NZ poet and publisher. I never remember it in it's entirety, all I remember is 'fore runners, they came before us'.

The other thing about that empty table, is it is still. It is also empty. An empty still table. Strangely attractive. I wanted to look at it again as I spoke to a lingust yesterday about sign language- the form (shape) is equivilant with consonants, and the movement is equivelant with vowels. The movement is the vowel, the stillness is the consonant. One requires both for tranmission.

Empty table, rattle my head

meeting point

Hi Lee,
I'm a little bit tight with my schedule, but I'd like to give you some clue of what I could do in the context of the show at the shop. Concerning ideas about silence, I have some texts lying around that are specifically dealing with this topic and of which I know had some influence in the work I'm making now, but I need some piece and quiet to gather my thoughts. I make the proposals sound quite concrete, but they are nevertheless still very open for change. In my experience this concrete way of putting things can help speed up the process. Let's see...


Sign: Meeting point


stool without seat


wavy line

Proposal I
Group of sculptures at the spam-shop:
- wavy line as graffiti on the wall parallel to the stairs that lead to the second floor
- suspended triangular sign, "trefpunt", painted wood, blue/yellow
- stool
- divider wall with halogen industrial lamp, wood, hemp, glossy mint-green paint
- playing on plastic spacy 50's video monitor downstairs; video 'scrap'






Proposal II

- 3 wasco drawings or ink-jet print
- divider wall, mint green, halogen lamp
- light, sort of floating, wooden sculpture of table game
- 'scrap' video, same monitor as in proposal I


table game


drawings (they are supposed to be horizontal)