Three or more people in one room

Jacob's ladder

2010-06-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-06-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

simply tiles

I'm impossible with titles

2010-06-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-02T04:28:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-20T04:11:00.000-07:00

2010-05-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

2010-05-18T09:12:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-18T02:33:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-10T04:56:00.003-07:00

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

2010-05-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

2010-05-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-07T03:32:00.001-07:00

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.

2010-05-05T05:55:00.001-07:00

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

Positions

2010-05-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

Finding anything

2010-01-19T22:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-11T09:28:00.001-08:00

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)

Waiting

2009-09-10T05:07:00.000-07:00

One could deprive everything and also completely give over to a kind of imagined power through a waiting. but by now an idea of waiting is probably a bit fashionable and not really what we mean.. "Oh! I'm so exhuasted all the time etc."

Several short systems:

Take dust jacket off

Collect all images

Relaxation

Deny everything

Hyper ventilation

Lying on the ground under a table

Table falls on top of you and you can't move

Smoke starts

Whole place catches on fire

Black Box

further-further to deprivation

2009-08-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

I keep on thinking how freezing to a pose and disrupting the archive could be related. Perhaps what really happens in the situation that Pavel describes (maybe there are more thinkable scenarios) is that through freezing the pose, the camera becomes part of the or interferes with the script. Applying that same language, thus speaking of role-change in approach to the archive or scripted material (history), perhaps its possible to say that to freeze is a an expression of the desire to interfere with this script.

I am still not able to answer your question who or what changes role in the performance situation or imagine how 'it' could perform. I can only attempt to imagine 'it' performing, when I draw back on moments in preparation to work with a certain material, hence this crazy talk about transcendence.

I was scanning through an article by Flusser, printed in F.R. David (with the fish), I think you own a copy as well. In it a nice alternative is given to how Pavel speaks about the power of imagination. Flusser says an inversion has taken place of the historical roles of reason and imagination. That history /writing /reason instead of explaining and critcising the imagination, has become subservient to image making. That (in the worst case) writers write scripts for new images, so called techno-images and this cycle becomes a kind of 'eternal return of life in apparatus that progresses by its own inertia'. This is a very black-and-black summary, but I feel more for this vision of imagination then Pavel's. My own interpretation of this short text on an intuitive level goes hand in hand with my experience with the government archive and social service. The role that objects play in the images that document the Social Service around it's instigation in the '60s, perform a rational, divisional, hierarchical, standardized function or sometimes frustrating relation between user and provider. In the present situation, co-existant to some of these still present 'older' objects, is a much more irrational image cycle at hand, one that seems to make physical this notion of techno-imagination: 'a tecnnical progresss that has become autonomous of human decision'. They are images of people performing, personalised models. I didn't know how to call this phenomenon, still don't, it becomes too easily a judgement; but some kind of temporal cyclical time, with no sense of history. (obviously)

Back to freezing, Flusser also talks about a black box which feeds on history, text or script (lineair time) and freezes it into techno-images (cyclical time). He then asks himself how and if this can/should be resisted. Before reading any further, I let my imagination flow unobstructedly and imagined us in front of this black box, before the histories and texts are devoured, posing before it, maybe becoming script ourselves and then many possible ends:
- devoured by the black box
- unmasking the script (that it is in fact scripted), then devoured by the black box

Perhaps I can wear my dust-jacket on the opening and hang yours on the wall in the Transmission gallery, as evidence of our collaboration and your absent presence?

I like this object (in combination with a mirror), maybe it's something to keep in mind as a form for the booklet or a photo-album (ruth at work/ touching objects)

2009-08-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

I had interpreted your photograph of the light obscuring your face as an intentional light flash from a lamp pointed towards the camera. Could this dual reading, between determination and failure be similar to the relation between performance and pose? Performance, carrying the progressive connotation of presence instead of representation, while posing as an attempt to resemble oneself is always doomed to fail?

"Posing is like waiting for a moment, the shot, of which one knows nothing except that it must be the 'right' moment. It's like a simple yet obscure emergency, the emergency of having to resemble oneself at a specific moment, that will occur, which always occurs almost-now, always quite soon, always at the risk of coming to early or too late"

So, in response to this quote, maybe in approaching the material that we want to work with, we create a state of emergency/ a moment; pose to let the material 'perform'. (I'm actually always a bit scared to use performing in connection to objects or material although I am very interested in their hieroglyphic representation of social relations, if that's what happens in the drawings...)

2009-08-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

I like when illumination fails (or as in this case is in excess and consequently fails).

2009-08-14T00:41:00.000-07:00

Marina sent this image of the face down woman, and above a nice comment my friend Ruben made about the photo of me with my flash covering my face....

Further to deprivation

2009-08-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

From The Freeze in Ghost Stories- Stray thoughts on photography and film by Pavel Büchler (s0me less interesting than others)

"(of course there is also another way of looking at this: the freeze is a simple role change. For an instant, we are privileged to look through the camera– as though we hand't been looking through it all the time– and see the film creww making a pause for a pose)"

In our situation who changes roles? What kind of – if any– heirachy is there? I would say that we as performers need to operate/co-exist or deprive ourselves in order for the (any) meaning to become activated- that IT poses rather than us. Like the photo of the light/reflection/camera (all simoultaneously working) obscuring my face. This could be how to approach the appointment, a flash of light that obscures?

I'm not quite able to articulate it yet, but I think this freezing to a pose in film is similar to how we are disrupting the archive- we interrupt its normativised mode of performance, deprive it, and thus create a possible contingency.

In this book, by Pavel, which is sometimes less interesting he says earlier...

"it tells us how imagination, the power to make something out of nothing, can be manipulated to unite us collectively in a vision of reality which otherwise conflicts with individual perceptions and consciousness"

But as mentioned in passing before, perhaps we ought to rather make this as an imagined scenario, in a poster or discussion than actual performance?

a pause for a pose

2009-08-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

I'm glad you introduced a metaphor of the film set, this makes it easier to abandon the mind-numbing dichotomy of performer and audience. The photograph of the heads are indeed working. To extend the metaphor of the film, the head or obscured face becomes part of the 'set'; it absorbs, reflects and mirrors other elements in the set. It is at work also because as Buechler mentions, a role-change takes place. This role-change ideally, is a moment of tension or alternation between immanence and transcendence. Immanent, because the head is part of the set (poured into the space) and transcendent, because of a transferred consciousness, the camera consciousness or perhaps becoming a looking glass oneself.

Freezing, then, isn't about converting an experience into an image, rather a sensibility that transcends into the image. (like a ghost) It is true that, maybe it sound freeky, I (we) use this as method to approach a space or material, to let go of a focus or normative mode of attention in order to act with the material or let the material perform, or yes, maybe less floaty: to create a possible contigency.

I like to stretch the idea of physical presence in performance situation, perhaps we could make a dialogue-script for Transmission and leave it relatively open for Ada (e.g. poster project).

pfff...
wish I had an idea now how this could be actualised.

Deprivation

2009-08-04T13:50:00.001-07:00

the image of turning away, shadowing, blocking or in this last case the disappearance of the face all create a hole- it's not I think we should discuss void here but perhaps it is about the turning, shadowing and over exposure of the moment of FACING that could be something, this could be a deprivation that incites a willful instigation of a subjective protocol ie. this could be an appointment?

face time

2009-07-31T02:51:00.000-07:00

Although I like the simple idea of a face-to-face situation in front of an audience, I'm still a bit confused about my passive-aggressive role in the performance. It would help if we could discuss the conditions and situation more thoroughly, without getting too philosophical about it. I mean, such encounter implies some sort of primacy of relation; a condition for the beginning of language as dialogue. Our performance is properly speaking not a dialogue (perhaps the text that is read aloud could be written in the form of a dialogue).

The awkward experience me and other participants had during the tour was in my opinion caused by the (unintentional) demand that you make when you speak and look at one person particularly. For example I sometimes had to choose between reciprocating this address and forget about what you had to say or focus on the content of your talk. So even though a face-to-face encounter constitutes the beginning of dialogue, it is necessary to detach oneself from the face's expression; disconnect the voice from the face.

Interesting here is that this non-reciprocal relation of responsibility ('many ways to the notion': 'nodding/clapping/winking/turning one's back to responsibility' (Thesaurus under Special Social Volition)) was an important motive for my gestures in Video Class.

So what happens when we stage this situation? The setup with the table and lamp emphasizes the physical symmetry of the face-to-face opposition. Our presence is completely asymmetrical, it always is, but you speech/talk, have a microphone and I sit and don't speak. What distinguishes me from a bunny or a wall is that I intentionally (volitionally) focus on you. The decision whether you face or back (or leave it open) the audience, will have an effect to the extent in which your amplified voice will be experienced as disconnected from you.

It could be an appointment, but it might be experienced as a game, and is that a good thing? Am I a kind of continuous interruption by not responding verbally? Face time implies some kind of honesty or a confession, do you think we can keep a tension between this implication and alienation? Or do you think that my interruption ridicules me and/or you?

Of course there's the flickering light, but for now I let it stew a bit and see what you think.

freezing/flowing

2009-07-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

muddled shades 2

2009-07-22T08:47:00.001-07:00

new haircut

2009-07-09T02:16:00.000-07:00

At Ginger's place.

social worker and client

2009-07-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

2009-07-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

2009-06-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

I love the addition of the hole in the corner (blue panel), it very precisely indicates the nature of these boards as samples. I did the set ups with silver paper very quickly. Perhaps a silver band can run through the width of the space or a triangle in a corner.

congealed metaphor

2009-06-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Lets get physical! Making Appointments!

2009-06-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

I think this is something to remember- the physicalness of all our discussion.

Simplicity

I think now that I look again the slide projector is way too much- we can ask if there is a possibility to get one incase. But I would rather say no to my to much suggestion. The lighting situation we can play with- but I would start with basic cold light (could also use timer on this- on a mirrored surface it has a good effect)

Elements of a scenario

1. Office table (black) with adapted top

Biege/dark cream opaque perspex (at the RCA thing we used opaque cream it was very good- I think an opaque would be best anyway)

2. Box monitor under table with speakers playing VIDEO CLASS

3. Slide stand (black) with adapted shelf surface (mirror) OR shelf mounted on wall made with mirror, sitting on the mirror is a paper mache brocoli (muted bean green) out of which comes headphones playing BUILD A WALL OR BE A ROOM

4. thin board (2mm MDF?) approx 177cm x 80cm, painted hi-gloss mint green leaning against the wall created a slightly limp or curving surface. At the bottom of the slightly limp wood is a collage (yet to be defined) A4 size

5. Optional. Next to hi-gloss mint green a piece of 3mm aluminium 60cm x 150cm coated in hi-gloss paint (needs to be done professionally) in midnight blue. Top right hand side a hole is drilled through the plate, which depending on lighting conditions and how close it's placed to the wall casts a shadow on the wall behind.

6. Performance- Ruth and Rachel sit opposite each other at the table and adjust the tube light to flicker at a slower speed, the use a microphone and speakers and Ruth speaks (text not defined yet- but mostly about disappearance?) looking in Rachels eyse. This could be called Appointment

red on blue, white on blue

2009-06-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

installation with silver paper

I understand now how the first image you posted today was done. A red transparent slide projected on a mirror, on the wall or straight on the wall out of focus. I have to try and see what that looks like on blue, maybe you have a picture of that as well. If we'd use a light tube would it be a normal warm (sun) light or a red light bulb/red light tube. I guess using aluminum is the only way to make it look really smooth and glossy, but a bit more complex to produce in Glasgow perhaps. (If you mix bulb-light with a certain grey you sometimes get beige. I guess if you mix normal/yellowish tube light on dark blue it appears as white) I like beige for the table top too, but it is a difficult color for acrylic. I have a lot of samples in my studio, only one is beige, but it's opaque, not transparent, anyway that doesn't have to be a problem. (This particular color is usually not in stock and not all suppliers have it in their collection) I think, we should have a spare color in case beige is too difficult to get. We could ask if Transmission has a slide projector that we can try out things with, what series it is, if we put a timer on it (I have these d.i.y. timers) It is very difficult to decide already, I mean perhaps a nice flickering can happen between the intervals in the video and the slide projector. If we'd use a normal light tube it could also reflect on the mint green (Luxaflex) glossy panel. I don't know what the exhibition space looks light but maybe they have tube lights that we can lower and direct. But I agree that a slide projector might be a bit too much, it blurs the relationship with the table and the video. Spotlight seems more at hand in this scenario, but maybe it is nice have a tension between theatrical (blue panel) and functional/institutional (light tube). Though in this set up it has already lost a lot of the theatrical/magical atmosphere that is present in the slide projector-glossy surface picture.

objects-indexical-frustration-light-proximity

2009-06-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

I intended to respond earlier to that wonderful combination of words: objects - indexical - frustration - light conditions - proximity. Now that we are more or less aligned, I thought I'd write you my initial thoughts. Three different angles that are interconnected, but a little bit too much hard work to explain how and so I just sum them up.
- Holding ones head down in reading position, staring at a fixed object, arresting time. Loosing sight of both its exposing and concealing properties. Considering it a whole as and as complete ideally, not approximate in any way. Avoiding frustration of the impossibility of exactness. As an example of such object, I took the archive, which in correlation to fixed object one could address as the saturated archive (with rarefied documents). This is a rather cryptic description and perhaps it's better when I post an additional image:

collage: Cut out elements printed on different colored papers, each cut out piece of photograph matches more or less the color of the paper printed on, glued together to form one image again. Part of the floor (except reflection/shadow cardboard) and two pieces of duck-tape are cut out from silver paper.
I think the silver part could be interesting in giving form to congealing- congealing of a metaphor. (literally transfer reflective and amorphous qualities of shadow and reflection onto a shape.) Could be a paper collage or a surface in the gallery space.

- I was also reminded of a sentence in S. Sonntags text (the aesthetics of silence), when I interpret it freely, she said something like that religion creates a vocabulary or language that charts the disaffection with the existent language. In a way this vocabularies can be seen as an attempt for absolute or 'abstract' language. In relation to your sentence 'objects are indexical of frustration', this disaffection is affiliated with frustration or exhaustion. -In short could it be interesting to see the use of abstract language (in my work if the question is too general otherwise) in the light of outworn use of (historical) references? More specifically, is the abstract thought process which takes form in the approach to the material and inhabits the (art)work, a way of deviating attention from the fixed, rarefied and saturated reference/archival image, to create an ostensible relation with its surrounding?

- M.Blanchot- The last man (although it completely escapes any attempt to make sense)

When she talked to me like this—and in the beginning, it was rare, but later much more frequent, because of my obstinacy and what seemed to be a need that forced me to turn her thoughts on him in a way that was
almost implacable and made her suffer, made her say: “Don’t ask me any more questions; at least, not now; let me get my strength back”—I experienced the disturbance I have already mentioned, a sort of exhilaration, of mysterious gratitude, almost of drunkenness, but also a wound: not from the fact that I had to share her interest—that was fair, she wasn’t frustrating me at all—but that, because of him, I was entering into a relationship with her that was almost too large, a relationship in which I was afraid of losing her, of losing myself, one I was aware of as an infinite distance separating me not only from her, but from myself, and giving me the impression of distancing us from each other at the same time as it brought us together, allowed us to be together as though through times that were richer, more diverse, but also more uncertain, a labyrinth of time where, if I could have turned around, I would have sensed that another woman was already separating me from her, and from me another man, a disjuncture that perhaps only wanted to scatter us joyously into the sphere of happy immensity, but that I tried to hold back because of a feeling of doubt. For this reason I redoubled my thinking and watching. I don’t mean I watched her; rather, I followed her, I tried to understand the things she did, understand where we were going together, this way, and whether we were already two shadows for each other, joined in the intimacy of the shadow that can no longer be divided by forgetfulness.

Failed scientist

2009-06-26T04:48:00.001-07:00

I found this image in 2006 when I googled search images under 'failed scientist'. I used this image alot in various assemblage and also poster works. Lets think more about the moment to face on another.

Proposal

2009-06-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

My proposition is more or less analogous with yours.

In this diagram I suggest we put the brocoli (the host for a sound piece via headphones) to placed on a projector stand and below that an additional elmement- a 35 mm slide of the colour red projected onto a hi-gloss surface (either coated alumninum or hi-gloss painted wood).

I can imagine this could be too much- but I wondered about our interest in dialouging with a surrounding and dissolving- I wondered if it could be a good idea to add the element of light.

But as you will see this is perhaps too much- then I would suggest to use a light tube and suspend it from the ceiling to hang just above the mirrored shelf with the brocoli on it..

I suggest to use a shade of beige for the table top instead of orange. I'm interested if it would be possble for us to use beige and a mint green! Both such institutional colours.

I very much like the idea of making a small collage- could be something like the image I posted earlier- or your amazing image of the blurred couple speaking?

I think we have to remember that the text piece adn the video are both very powerful works so perhaps I already know that the slide projector is too much....but would then really go for a tube suspended near to the brocoli..

Deception

2009-06-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

Thayer and his colouration experiments, investigated both colour and pattern making in order to dissolve into surrouding.

Abbott Thayer, 'Monochrome Soilder Exposed, Concealed-Disruptively Patterned Native Woman Concealed', date unknown

Abott Thayer, 'Stencilled Installations as Windows into Nature', date unkonwn

2009-06-26T02:39:00.001-07:00

---RK

Did you know that 'presentational acting' is a term they use in theatre?
I was thinking about your proposal and especially the leaning panel. I think the broccoli-mirror and the video-table-perspex combi is really good. Thinking about the panel the possible form it could have in relation to the other works, I would suggest some kind mimicry or camouflage piece. For example I started to
consider the use of the grid as a strategy that is both expansive and diagrammatic in use. A method to explain/organise thoughts or an articulation of a subject-world-intertwinement, but also a wish dissolve or disappear, a kind of camouflage. Perhaps this is bull shit, and I just feel caught in a grid, or trapped in architecture and am in want of something more natural or fluid, like flickering light, reflections and water. I guess the A4 paper with the grid and the wave-shape somehow reflects this approach/stance. It good be something else, but then you know what kind of track I'm on.

RK---

----RB

Ive made some drawings but left my camera at home so will send them through tomorrow, it's almost exactly the same as yours, but different use of colour!

Amzing, I just read a wonaderful essay about early cammoflouge and deception in animals in Cabinet Magazine..also had been thinking about the congealing/dissolving thing both in terms of the Rietveld Schröder huis, but also realting to the new piece I will make relating to the disappearance of Agatha Christie....

escape, visible, secret

The Crucial Moment of Deception Hanna Rose Shell
Abbott Handerson Thayer’s law of protective coloration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_Handerson_Thayer

there are examples of work by Thayer that are incredible!!!Including a 'tree man' 'rock man; If I can figure it out I'll scan it for you and email it through. tomorrow

I'm goign home now, it's too hot in here and I want to be outside so I send more tomrrow, but basically I think we are totally in agreence, I will make my colour suggestions and slightly different surfaces....and lets think more about a kind of image/collage- I think this would be a good addition!

More tomorrow
RB-----

-----RK

Love it, beautiful pictures and I'm curious to see more. Suddenly I realise why I started to work with inverted archival photographs, but never did anything with it, because inversion didn't give me the desired effect, it should have been more like the model duck with countershading.

Or another proposal with two people sitting across a table; the work folding in on itself.
The striped sweater is a pretty nice example of disruptive camouflage. You also have a girl reading with a striped shirt in your image archive somewhere...

.

I really got hooked up with designing special outfits for a performance or maybe a staged situation.
When I made this drawing I was imagining you reading or speaking the 'built a wall or be a room'-text to me and this time I would be able to look you in the eyes. But I'm sure I can come up with something better, just a beginning.
RK----

recent skye discussion- dissolve the grid

2009-06-26T02:13:00.000-07:00

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 13:57

hey Ruth I'm on line

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 13:57

hi dear

23/06/2009 13:57

7 minutes, just need to arrange something with jo hardy...

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 13:58

good, talk to you later

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 13:58

talk soon...

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:05

Well, 'll just start anyway, I like a slow beginning. It's possible I stay slow throughout conversation, have to go through my tax papers this afternoon.

23/06/2009 14:05

I liked your short proposal in yesterday's email----

I think we should totally propose something like this as a host strucutre, a table+shelf+display wall/leaning wall- combi of images a sound piece and video, simple strong statements. In London we got these kind of Ikea tables specified by using various table tops- perspex, lino and mirror, I think a coloured perspex one would be great- perhaps wiht monitor underneath on the floor a small shelf above with a sound piece coming out of a brocoli and another perspex leaning against the wall with coated metal or wood...??

23/06/2009 14:08

I can imagine how a table covered with colored acrylic and Video Class-video underneath it could work out really well. In that same line of thought the broccoli that is speaking on a mirror-shelf.

23/06/2009 14:10

They both are clear statements in the way you can easily describe and name there positions, almost like a caricature.

23/06/2009 14:12

Since I've been working with this table arrangement and describing the ink-jet prints as saturated and congealed, I would place these two before-mentioned suggestions within that category as well.

23/06/2009 14:17

Then the next question would be how they would enter into a dialogue with their surroundings. I'm looking for things that are less clearly outlined, I think. Perhaps as you would say: tilted - seeping - flickering - blurred edges/ light astray/ periphery - shadows - movement - touch - billowing.

23/06/2009 14:30

I'm wondering if Jens gets these messages as well once I've added him to my chat list. Don't think so, because there's always just one person selected.

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:30

Hi R

23/06/2009 14:30

i'm not usre if Jens gets this as well?

23/06/2009 14:30

I think we can forward it to him?

23/06/2009 14:31

i think we can't add him since he has the black moon next to his name...!

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:32

I accepted him as my contact, no what. Oh, that could be the 'problem'

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:32

i have hm as a contact now, but when i ask to add him to my chat it doesn't let me...but shall we call?

23/06/2009 14:33

or maybe typing is easier?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:33

no. let's wait and chat a little bit more before..

23/06/2009 14:34

Did many peoples form JvE join the tour? staff, advising, researchers?

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:34

I think the basic proposition of a surface that is both reflective and absorbing and also open (with nothing on it) implicates the surrounding space in that way, in that it is sucked and warped

23/06/2009 14:35

this implicating the surrounding space could also be exagerrated by placing surfaces like that around the space

23/06/2009 14:35

either tilting or leaning, or much more dramatic coul be to use the mirror trick that I have done from time to time,

23/06/2009 14:35

this could be a very elegant combinatino

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:35

Yes, but the relation is not specific, as it would be when you lay images out on a table.

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:36

table with acrylic, video monitor underneath, mirror shelf with brocoli and mirrored tilt else where

23/06/2009 14:37

so you would say tha tputtng images on top of the coloured perspex surface implicates the surrounding space more?

23/06/2009 14:37

or more specifically?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:38

No, it's just an example, a bit like you described in your tour, when putting images on a tabletop

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:38

in this case I'm not sure- since by placing this surface above/below/between a voice and an acting body seems to me a force of implication- it becomes a structure that unites these two gestures (though colour and a a nod to archiecture) and then strteches out

23/06/2009 14:39

i think both those works- the video class and build a wall speak to and address there surrounding anyway

23/06/2009 14:39

...?

23/06/2009 14:43

Or we coudl suggest that we both come for 2 days or so with a bunch of materia and just stand around organising it on the table??

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:45

Yes I see how they could work together quite specifically. But with images, as an example from experience, there's a relation where 1 cm to the side or up matters. But I don't know, perhaps I need to see a gap, an undermining of these clear statements, more fragmentation. No, I don't think images are the solution necessarily

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:46

im just wondering in the context of a group show it might not be better to work with rather strong statements that create a flickering

23/06/2009 14:46

both pieces, in combi with a perspex surface and maybe mirror do that

23/06/2009 14:47

strong statments but that rely on the shifting of light and proxmity to address the viewer?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:48

Perhaps, but there are not so many modes of viewing or approaching the work e.g. mode of reading.

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:49

what do you mean?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:49

Close-up, absorption versus something else outside

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:50

hey do you get this message from jens?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:50

no,

23/06/2009 14:56

hi ruth

23/06/2009 14:56

are you there

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 15:00

toilet

23/06/2009 15:00

im back now

The way colour distorts and opens and closes space

2009-06-26T02:08:00.000-07:00

Face

2009-05-10T05:01:00.000-07:00

It's hard to imagine the book as an active surface or a changing space, but I want to imagine it as live, this is the act. We decided that after each event we will work on the action that occured and re-formulate or filter it through the colour (cromolux high gloss) onto and INTO the form of the book. So the action is changed and re-cast but it is still part of the action not retroactively reinventing waht the act was in the first place, it is like a ripple in the water, it starts in centre and as you press further in the curves undulate and change the surface slightly, this water is still the same but it looks different. Of course it is a book and that is the limit.

active forms

2009-05-08T03:21:00.000-07:00

You cast a color on each action that appears in the book. What comprises an action in the book. What could be such action that you respond to and how can it be (pre-)conceived as part of a book (structure)? Or does the action imply the decision to make it part of a book and this is what you act on?

Distraction

2009-05-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

To draw attention to the approach to the from, the approach becomes the form and the perceivable form itself, this is why I dispute collection, this is not an approach only an impulse or mechanisation of too much time on ones hands. What could be beyond an impulse into an approach that is the form?

At the point when the imperfect mirror acts (coated alumninum in midnight blue) it acts by simoultaneously absorbing and reflecting, one folds and unfolds, draws a line out and up and not at all. Ambivilent?

I too am supposedly making a book, where colour is used to cast light on the each action that occurs within the book, the books appears accumulitively. An index, we drop it in.

Ambivilence?

Letter

2009-05-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

The idea for a publication rose during a studio visit with Joelle Tuerlinckx last year, she saw there was enough material that would be suitable for such a format. She had brought some of her own books for her presentation that day, I found them very inspiring but they have also set an impossible standard. I hear all the time that my work reminds people of her work, and I don't really know what is the reason for this projection, e.g. I unfortunately do not have this collecting mania and therefore cannot make the work of the (personal) archive the content of a book, even if I would have liked to. In her books (or the one I looked at specifically titled b.o.o.k.) structure personal anecdotes and descriptions of exhibitions by a specific attribute of the work, in this case color. The nominalism applied creates both a fictional and personal thread that runs through the work. Through assignation the book (the reproduction) is taken beyond the status of a documentation/recording of an exhibition. The plain naming of things, in a stage of reduction, denies the promotion of a specific experience (think e.g. of a linear relation between pre- and post-production or any durational aspect for that matter) by leveling (neutralising) the value of the different works, thus creating a potential for endless proliferation/multiplication. This somehow grasps a reality that I find very attractive. (Is this sense of reality rendered through a structure that is at times applied arbitrarily and sometimes justifiably?- creating a closed system that opens up for an abstract elsewhere)

In Role of a Lifetime (vanAbbemuseum until June), Deimantas Narkevičius combines drawings of a landscape where a lot of post-war socialist sculpture in Lithuania reside, films by an amateur filmmaker depicting Brighton and an interview with Peter Watkins. Especially interesting here is the moment where Watkins describes how he became interested in a series of photographs published in Paris Match and studied where the people were, what they were looking at, to extract that special feel that would allow him to construct a make-believe reality, which this series expressed for him. Further how this perception of what is real is completely subjective, he continuous that the fact that his work has always been marginalised must have effected his view; his political- and social position.

Peter Piller collects images that are familiar to everyone. He finds them in the filing cabinets of regional newspapers or in the archives of a company that sells aerial photos of houses. Freed of their original purpose they initially seem to be devoid of meaning. When the artist rearranges them and classifies them in series they at first reveal the clichés of commercial photography, but then also bring new meanings and unusual relationships to light. What appeared to be a detail, somewhere on the edge of a photo, could be the start of a narrative.

The reason that I'd like to start working on a book has to do with a slight feeling of discomfort when it comes to the exhibitions I've done so far. Even though they are very real to me, they appear (real) and disappear quite arbitrarily. The duration of the different shows, varying between one or two months, stretches the moment of presentation to an unspecified length and leaves me with a surreal feeling.
I would be most interested in employing/utilising the publication as another moment of selection (just like the exhibition), whereby this selection/construction process is imbedded in a larger structure; that of everyday life. So rather than extracting the particular from the mundane as Peter Piller does, I'd like to strengthen the ties between the personal work and the world/mundane/reality. (multiplicity)

Technocratic Openness Free Aggression

2009-05-06T02:56:00.000-07:00

still

still

stillstill

Transformation versus Juxtaposition, Identification versus Standardization

2009-02-12T01:42:00.000-08:00

This is an impossible attempt to set up a relation between the archive, working with the materials (process) and its representation. Integrating the different time levels, but at the same time undermining the idea of retrospection from the standpoint of the here and now. On the one hand and not visible in the images attached yet:

History / process / standstill (fix) / frame.

On the other hand and here I made an attempt to visualize it with the materials at hand:

Present / afterimage (color filter) / temporal / standardization (sequence, A4) / transparent

The main motivation behind making this disfunctional structure is to allow myself to make a selection of the vast array of accumulated images connected to this project, but also to create a framework which makes it possible to discuss and negotiate these decisions, by this I mean the structure as well as the selection process.

Addition to latest post

2009-02-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

Angled diplay and print in the vicinity

2009-02-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

neutral |ˈn(y)oōtrəl|
adjective
1 not helping or supporting either of two opposing sides, esp. countries at war; impartial : during the Second World War Portugal was neutral.
2 having no strongly marked or positive characteristics or features : the tone was neutral, devoid of sentiment | a fairly neutral background will make any small splash of color stand out.

A neutral background pale, light; beige, cream, taupe, oatmeal, ecru, buff, fawn, gray; colorless, uncolored, achromatic; indeterminate, insipid, nondescript, dull, drab. antonym bright, colorful.

Neutral: splash of grey paint, desk lamp yellow light, beige office table.

Part of the work The arrangements of sorts:
implying different strategies for the organisation of information. (see floating plan below)

Some time ago I made a copy of an essay from a book available in JVE library. The essay Documents and Engagement (?) is written by Dirk Lauwaerts and I think the book is called Attitudes and Positions in Photography. It explains my intuitive attraction to bureacratic documents as a self relativating counter force when I commenced to work with the social support structure.

Floating Oblique Plan

A layout of the space in Artis, a similar type of drawing could be used as description for the works during the exhibition.

The rectangular shapes in the space are angled panels from color coated aluminum or opaque perspex, or some other glossy, sharp edged material. The idea is that they are supported by construction elements in the building, such as corners between floor and wall, intersections between two walls or between a column and the floor. The panels reflect or double this intersection that also keeps it in an angled position. The design is a bit derived from the display elements that you designed for the exhibition in Haus der Kulturen der Welt. What I liked from the photos documenting that exhibition which are posted on this blog; are the narrow, useless spaces generated at the back side of these displays. The residual spaces work really well in contrast with the open display surfaces. I would alter the design a bit in the context of Artis, besides making literaly use of the building as a support structure. By choosing a more 'finnished' material like aluminium the panels slice through and end abruptly in the space. Which could be a quality that can perform in relation to its flexible, temporal and repetitive qualities. I am really curious how the images on display are correlating with the displays themselves. I can't really tell from the documentation I've seen so far. In this case -and I still didn't select any particular images or objects for display, but perhaps designing a display in the first place would help- I wouldn't limit myself to the surface of the panels as a display area, anywhere near would be good and sometimes even better. Then I think they can perform both the function of presentation and representation simultaneously. A little bit like some of the photos I've posted before, e.g. with the angled grey board and the print of the shelves put up on the wall of my studio. A support that allows the conditions for multiplicity to occur. Maybe this kind of display is the next step after disorientation set in motion by the angled plane towards disintegration. Below a quote from Falke, more of this text: http://www.smba.nl/en/exhibitions/object-the-undeniable-success-o/

It is the setting of the supporting structure, which first enables the object
to go from an invisible to a visible realm; which subsequently provides the
conditions for its reception as a consistent and solid unit, and which will finally
instigate the disintegration of the object.
The resulting support does not only subscribe to the formal aspects of the
object, but also addresses its qualities and conditions of expression as well
as the potential of its meaning.

She continues...

The structure to which the spectator becomes receptive, is not bound to any
field of relationships, but traverses all different domains.
His relationship towards the object makes place for a multitude of different
relationships towards its attributes, qualities, features, disparate elements –
and the structures that support them.

Sketch for display works VPRO and Videoclass.
Loosely based on Bruce Nauman's Corridor or Tunnel works, I'm not sure which one I've seen in the Stedelijk many years ago. While I was looking for a title and description of his video installation I came accross a text describing some kind 'withdrawel from the subject position' phase, I've gone through that phase as well (photos hallway JVE). Working with these corridor spaces but also triangular spaces and bright light, he was very much interested in conditions that create a sense of physical disorientation.

2009-01-16T00:27:00.000-08:00

Three options, which can coexist -because structures are for sissy's- to work with, speak to, have an encounter with the material of the archive (or other mild forms of activating the archive material that is not aiming for a complete didactical/informational overview).

3) Repetition; repeating or mimicking opposing points, spatial traversals, contingencies that are already present in the archive in my day to day environment. Includes: studio, storage space. (kind of complex)

(from left to right)
Digital print job-square Enschede 2o07,
A2 glossy paper grey,
A1 copy plan Social Service Enschede 1969,
perforated board,
lab stool,
MDF board grey,
tripod,
window half-opened.

View from my studio window, Hengelo, 2009.

1) The porosity of time.
Following the grid through different topologies/ time: Exhibition '1940-1945' in the basement of the Social Service, Nijmegen, 1969 - Documentation of Steven Willats displays (He still makes use of the same display strategies for his schemes and grids as he did in the 60's.) - The job-square in Enschede where the grid is applied on walls with a decorative function. - The use of the grid in my studio and Artis.

I have thousand of these images, but haven't found a way to work with Picasa albums yet, I would like to put some restriction on their public accessibility.

2) Color coding, possibly material listing (reflection, absorption) and sort of lighting (daylight, artificial), because these conditions affect the colors naturally:

Social Service 1986 (Leiden): television tube colors; blue, green, red.
The archive dossiers (Amsterdam); pale- brown, green, pink.
Depository (Nijmegen): apple green, artificial light: fluorescent daylight and warmlight.
Job-square (Enschede): orange, others use bright colors like; apple green, magenta, blue
Studio (Hengelo/Maastricht): grey, white, beige (considered neutral colors)

Perhaps this is a good handhold for you (Andreas) to work with?

Sliding from improbability into reality

2009-01-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

Oblique Violence

The images you'd posted some while ago titled: Destabilizers, made me think of a discussion that came up during the diagram cluster about the distinction between games and experiments or play and simulation. Clearly the Pendular Destabilizer tends to be more of an experiment or a simulative environment, but for example Theo's wooden block has a playful element to it. With these destabilizers in mind I'm going to think and write towards the destabilizing moment in the works and photographs that accompany this text. The distortion that took place in the reproduction of an archive image is perspectively 'corrected' in the installation with a floating cardboard which serves as a projection surface and is suspended in the same oblique angle as the angle of the camera set up during the moment of reproduction. In this process a trapezium of residual light, that is nevertheless part of the reproduction is cast on the wall/door/door frame/window. This is quite a technical and formal shift, which analyses the moment of reproduction; camera (production) and projector (presentation) can in fact be swapped and with it the original event leaks into the documentation, the original location into a new location. The installment with the floating cardboard suspended with fish wire is quite a different language that speaks of the stance towards the subject (matter). The gesture perhaps opposes the technocratic, 'impersonal' procedure of distortion and correction. It is a nostalgic act, that is elaborated on by the Malevich like shaped leaking projection light on the back wall. Talking about Nostalgia, romanticism and desire are not far off.

Does describing the work get me anywhere?

PARTICIPATION-INTERACTION-ACTIVATION
Actually the destabilizer appears more in this context: openness/passive - aggression/ active. In the dialogue with Ruth before she coined the term passive design in relation to flexible furniture. The slope, obligue angle in this relation destabilises patterns of expectation. Perhaps, if not too abstract, it (they) can destabilise expectations of the past and patterns of the future, or something.

Studying these destabilising environments a bit closer I found that the physical and visual disorientation can take place among others through the disruption of the equilibrium between floor, wall and ceiling. (Floor and dust, wall and frame, window and view.)
Shades, reflections cast on anything without making a distinction between the different dimensions, humans or objects. These shades, reflections also disturbs the density of joints or intersections that often define the transition from one dimension to another, or one space to another. When these densities of intersection are more diffusely spread in space, the space transforms; inverted, turned upside down, at odds with gravity.

Video class

2008-11-27T09:03:00.000-08:00

In this introduction video of a documentary from '86, titled: "Local Social Service; Right or Rule, part 1,
a woman's voice explains the content of this documentary that we are about to see. As background music one can hear a synthesizer play a riddle with a repetitive theme.
I imagine this video screened on a box monitor placed in the vicinity of a wall, which reflects the characteristic bright colors inherent to the outdated ('timed') technology of the television tube; yellow, green, green, blue and red.
This setup naturally in relation to the not yet finished video-class, where the gestures are floating or activated in a state of suspension.

Acting quickly, or inappropriately may destabalise but may also give several employment oppurtunities

2008-11-27T04:48:00.000-08:00

Destabilizers

2008-11-20T08:17:00.000-08:00

Destabilizers

In 1966 the architects Claude Parent and Paul Virilio published nine issues of their magazine “Architecture Principe” in Paris. Their manifestoes on “The Function of the Oblique” reconsidered the idea of human orientation in relation to the inclined plane and the oblique axis, and were meant to destabilize both contemporary modern and postmodern perceptions of space. Starting from the spatial experiences of a human body moving on an inclined plane, Parent and Virilio conceived various experimental installations, among them the French Pavilion in the 1970 Venice Architecture Biennial and Parents own house in Neuilly-sur-Seine. One of their last common projects was a self-experiment in inhabiting the oblique, called the “Instabilisateur Pendulaire“(Pendular Destabilizer). Both Parent and Virilio were planning to inhabit a capsular space hung up in an angle on the campus of the University of Nanterre, monitored by sociologists and medical scientists. Due to the beginning of the student uprisings in Nanterre in 1968, this experiment was never realized.

Why do you think I'm standing closer to you than you are to me?

2008-11-19T03:04:00.000-08:00

Interview :T-shirts available to purchase

2008-10-17T08:55:00.001-07:00

Limited edition t-shirts are now available to order from us throughout the duration of the exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum. Each of the 4 texts is taken from the interview with us conducted by Agata Jastrzabek that has since been published in the exhbition catalogue.

T-shirts are €15 each +postage/packaging and are available in white with black text in a variety of sizes.

Orders can be made up to and including the 25th January 2009 via rachel.koolen@janvaneyck.nl, please allow 20 days for delivery.

Open displays for particular viewership

2008-09-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

http://picasaweb.google.de/ndrsmllr/Fotos?authkey=mdecyT0oCgA#

"In the Desert of Modernity", Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
curated by Marion von Osten, Serhat Karakayali, Tom Avermaete, exhbition design by Jesko Fezer, Andreas Müller and Anna Voswinkel

Each 'item' to be included in the exhibition was approached as a surface of display, in that each work had its display formated to its physical presence, This to me seemed a very good way to make a kind of physical confrontation with items which may have had much less resonance if presented in a 'standard' format- in that much of it was source material, posters/models etc. So then they took the standard format of the display (especially if we think of the kind of informative display of the idea of 'visitor centre' which become part of the langugage of visiting architectural sites -the Schröder Huis will, for example, get a new visitors centre this winter and when I visited Buckminster Fullers dome near Montreal this was sort of all there was, the dome itself was dying ) and specified it. If Andreas said that Rossi was using normative typologies in a kind of unspecific way then this would be opposite, staging an openenss by using a recognizable form and then specifying it by adjusting it to the materiality of the posing item.

And other concrete objects

2008-09-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

Sound console

Tripod with over sized light bulb on timer/ 'If I ever filmed this text'

Hoffmann tables/ vitrines

Flexible multifunctional display

2008-09-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

Depot

2008-09-06T10:01:00.001-07:00

Rietveld, reallocating values and relations.

2008-09-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

We went through this topic quite a lot now, still not bored with it.
At the housing development site near Tilburg modernism seems only to have been adopted as a style for the purpose to comminicate values like good quality, back to the basics, etc. and maybe even socio-democratic values. Yet the first impression of the image with subtitle 'no music' remains modernism/empty space = no music
What if we would highlight this aspect of (hollow?) idealism; the video might create an interesting tension with the bureau when projected on it. But maybe this is still to literal and we just need to project the video we already have of the construction of the terras. The construction video and the presentation of the Rietveld bureau in the museum is a clear cut, but sometimes clear is good right? Like all other objects presented in a museum especially this type of museum (this architecture and layout), Rietveld's furniture will be stripped of it's original meaning/value, instead an empty symbol is created. The signs of wear in the context of the museum become traces (evidence) to track down it's life, as if practicing modernist archeology. The utopic-functionalism of Rietveld is reduced (the everyday function between people and things are taken away) to an abstract idea/notion (In my opinion the definition of design)-just posing-, but (sorry I repeat myself) it's made into a functional (open) support by means of projecting on it. This is also where the whole technocratic/admimistrative design starts to interact with Rietveld. The idea of a table (the Hoffmann table) AND the idea (utopia) of a table (Rietveld),(=some 'design', ooh it's design or ooh it's art!).
What do you think will be the effect of listing things stacked on Paula's Rietveld chair as such and on the whole choreography? Do you think it will be an artificial attempt to retain the everyday function of the chair in the museum. (which can be good, don't misunderstand me) The actual question would be what do we highlight by highlighting the personal motif. Perhaps better to speak about the private versus the public.

Question: St. Francis, you've mentioned him once before but I couldn't find it back (ostensibility-text?). What does he have to do with the provider/user- and privat/public relation in our work? Oh man, I am boring technocrat!

Responding on a remark in your latest text called 'Tecnocratic openness-free aggression', furniture from Hoffmann and other office-interior suppliers are BOTH 'transparant/open' AND 'empty surface of mass made/ pre-fab'. Both aspects are interesting in connection with Rietveld. This aspect of time wasn't so visible in the presentation of the Rietveld imitation shelves at the jobsquare, but when exhibited in a art space, creating an overview of the whole (mass) production they will be an expression of time. There are about 7 try out shelves and the other 44 are more or less similar, yet clearly hand made. Utopian time, administrative time etc. are combined, contrasted.

I 'm happy that you offer a handhold for structuring the materials, using forms and devises from the technocratic world. Although I don't understand what you mean with 'to focus on the way in which the works are timed' (maybe that's a matter of showing) And I agree that if we would decide to stage ourselves in the worker's cottage, time is an important element to work with.

Conclusion: pure pose only exists in endless, continuous, indifferentiated time. Any kind of time that does differentiate will articulate what can be called attitude, which heavily depends on how one time/space is structured in relation to another. But this is pretty abstract too.

signed,
OPENNESS AS AN ACT OF DEFIANCE

I haven't been to your studio yet, because...

2008-09-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

I wanted to organize my thoughts first in order to be more open; create special interior shelving to be more receptive for whatever is there. This is kind of a continuation of the batik figure; there are some elements, as you wrote, that are being pushed back a bit, at least in my imagination/mind, I hope to see them back again: the human touching, the stage which is not a fight, getting physical with relationships. What connects them is an aspect of physicality or embodiment (embodied passion), like the fan blowing the batik fabric is expressing. I'm still attempting to find the right tone to address this theme. In what way should I think about the worker's cottage: a stage, where we play out this relationship between embodied passion and behavior management? Very hard to make that concrete, are you thinking of something? By the way, I agree that 'no music' as subtitle goes better with the cottage than the retro-modern housing development. The other combination is too dramatic.
In one of the texts 'getting physical in relationships' is mentioned in the same breath as 'reallocating values'. In this context you wrote about using the form of invitation sincerely but in a way that is not necessarily recognized by the participants. Even though I wouldn't know how to imagine to get physical with relationships, which might be at stake in this whole loose construction, I do know we are reallocating values, or relations for that matter, especially with Rietveld. Even though this paragraph is quite messy I hope you can respond somehow.

Rossi's Bonnefanten and the Pose

2008-09-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

In one of the previous texts you describe the analogy between office design and the Bonnefanten; that Bonnefanten has a corporate look. The day I was given this tour in the depot I took a picture of one drawing that's put up on the first floor, department for classical art.
It is analogue to the style in which the real museum is built. (and many other pictures like this).

Ledoux
Oikema, vue persoective, 1804

Happy colony

Pjotr Mueller
Koningin Beatrixpark, Almere, 1989

Short train of associations: Revolutionsarchitektur (Boullee, Gilly), precursors/ contemporaries of this architecture is the folly, both of which heavily rely and borrow from classical, gothic, oriental (Egyptian) archetypes. Of these three archetypes the classical is most dominantly present. The architecture reminds of ancient platform for philosophical discussion (forgot the Greek word for it) depicted in Raphael's fresco. Or indeed 'corporate': a 19th century industrial magnet's estate.

'Philosophy of Athens' by Raphael is dominated by pose (pure pose) similar to how you perceived the way works in the Bonnefanten museum are staged/presented.
Jo Frenken had a large transparent film (for silkscreen printing) with a reproduction of this fresco lying around in his office. I was playing with the thought of making a film (1:1) of your photograph with the figure+ batik. Note that only a few of these classic paintings can be downloaded for free in high resolution from the internet.

Associated Adjustments

2008-09-02T01:46:00.002-07:00

2008-09-02T01:46:00.001-07:00

2008-09-02T01:45:00.002-07:00

2008-09-02T01:45:00.001-07:00

2008-09-02T01:44:00.001-07:00

2008-09-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

If we want to make a few other partitions of space, using the language of the 'dark room' and changing it slightly to fit this other place of opacity, the office- which anyway the exhbition space resembles because of the Rossi corporate look- here are some other languages to borrow, we could use the metal and make the central form clear, build some metal frames on wheels is still my dream- this could also be a way to surround your video work where you paint the window/mirror out, as a way to highlight a physical engagment with revealing/hiding, transparency/opacity- instead of a plant we take a monitor and show that work, on a table could be the fan blowing the batik fabric, and then some lights on timers?

All by way of suggestion only- just to take the dark room structure and run with it. Has a very good relationship with the transformative (especially archiectural) histoyr of the JVE space too...

Technocratic Openess-Free Agression

2008-08-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

Space dividers
Space dividers 2.

Informational displays

After visiting the space at Bonnefanten yesterday I again began to think about your questions of choreography of the space., which is natrually the biggest thing for us at this stage, but what seems very important in our case is that it is a way of moving both through space AND time. An this combination of space and time is something not at all evident in the current exhibitions, they feel as pure stage, with no sense of building up, no sense of tension or impotence, only PURE pose. I think our interest in pose needs to become more and more Attiude as Form, so that the attitude (the way we have worked though and with both time and space) may become visible.

Things piling on top of each other, filtering in and getting pushed to the back only to emerge again. Being exposed, over exposed and then asked to disappear or transform.

So perhaps we can use some very simple forms/devices from the technocratic world which speak of these things.

As we have discussed in relation to your project in Enschede, such places have the appearance of openess but have the function of obstruction. So perhaps the relationship you are making in Enschede between the technocratic and Rietveld, (although I'm not sure this is entirely clear to me, but if feels good...) is what we should use here and skip Hoffmann altogether.

Using the so called 'open space' of 'transparent administration' rather then the 'empty surface of mass made' to make this tension between open/under-exposed- generous/agressive.

Then to link these relationships between 'open time' (genereous) and 'administrated time' (agressive...???probably not, but maybe obstructive anyway, because there are procedures) I wonder if we should focus on the Rietveld workers cottage as the main site to visit and 'stage ourselves within' rather than the building site in Tilburg/Breda. The workers cottage some also seems to intuitively relate to the subtitle 'No Music' I used for that video and the discussions of the invisible collaborators...

Or would this mean we are getting into 'workers ethic', which I don't want, well not in the usual way it's understood or approached...

So I guess the thing is for us to think through what has been most important and I would think at this stage the relationships between time and space - as a structure of the project, and then what we have put onto/into this structure, which you made very clear in your point about the red plexi glass and the underexposed photos being intensified.

So the relationships need to be the generous (open) and agressive (under-exposed).

How do we make the space the articulates both with the choreography? Is it too simple then to really focus on the way the works are timed, via some of those obstructive/transparent froms from modern office design, and like the light coming on and then video playing, or for example using shelving as "time line". The top shelf could be 'most recent' bottom shelf 'oldest', so that it gets this relationship with physical building up too?

Again,

LETS GET PHYSICAL

Odious Trees

2008-08-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

air blowing next to the 35 mm slide show of the beautiful shelves.

NO MUSIC beamed on the CLOSED bureau of Koen Brans

4 Gipsen lights

Rietveld 3

2008-08-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

to Coen, to Paula

2008-08-12T03:00:00.000-07:00

Confirm once more there's a lot of material to work with. I'll just take the drafts of the letters you'd send me as a starting point. (We might post the drafts, the corrections and the final letter on the blog) In the letter addressed to Paula you attempted to quickly and in general terms describe our approach to Rietveld: "How one can make, transform and live in and with space" and very much connected with your interest in the Schroeder house: "how one can delineate a self-initiated space to work in through working with it". However my corrections -"His far reaching influence and how his ideals are being transformed/altered in the present day context... or... how different social, economical, psychological conditions influence perception of his designs."- aren't really clear either. This and the remark about claiming Rietveld as a space of personal design opposed to "the transpiring effect of Modernist mass production ethic where any particularity is reduced to simple and repeatable forms that we can all have access to" pushed my thinking about Rietveld a step further. Some time ago you told me that it was about time for you to make an aesthetic object that the beholder of it desires. This is exactly how I see our interest develop in the direction of Rietveld's designs; it has very much to do with a kind of instant statisfaction, partly due to it's recognizability and openness. As you said our interest in him is seductive. But the real quality we or at least many others like to claim is the specific 'aura' (the attitude of Rietveld, the ideal to change society) of these objects, emerged in their perception, gained through their history. This is also a lost (absent) quality, something that cannot be retrieved again, because society has changed tremendously. He is also an interesting figure to me because he worked form the early 20's till the 60's both very important decades, where from two major economical shifts, new attitudes within art and design towards society evolved. (1. I don't like to speak in these general terms, this is just to offer another point of view on the whole matter) (2. I have the idea that Rietveld in the 60's, bu now a celebrated architect, built a few cultural institutions) To get back to the proposal; how to work with/treat these pieces of Rietveld furniture owned by Coen and Paula? Articulating the personal experiences related to these objects, claiming Rietveld as a space for personal design, is completely in line with the present mode of value creation. This is actually quite strong statement/potential, in the setting of the museum, where we will choreograph our own space with his pieces. The Rietveld furnitures do not deny any of the viewer expectations, even more it advances these expectations, it makes them even more desirable. This is why I think the drawers or doors of Coen's bureau should remain closed and have only the literal surface to project on. Then it doesn't give anything away of it's content (the bureau's interiority, let's say). Then it does become an 'open' surface. It becomes an open surface because we choose to project on it, which highlights the surface as a surface. Then, I also understand what we could call a kind of aggressive attention (twist) to the content (the story) If I would think of an 'open surface' as such, it would be a non-specific, functional support. The kind that I felt was missing in the Piet Zwart exhibition. Hope you can still follow me here. It does help that Coen's bureau is not painted, I really hope it doesn't have any kind of finishing at all, just plain wood.

Objectification

2008-08-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Just thinking a little more about the objectification of our subject allowing us to become detached viewers, and that also the subject becomes the object to apprehend...

This is from the book I'm reading now

"If anything, the every day function between people and things, reminds writers both of the literary potential of objects and the material limits of subjects...Contemporary inquiry on the subject/object dialectic then to theroize subjects and to historisize objects. I have elected to follow the lead of the writers themselves [Keller,Dickinson, Freud and Proust], treating objects as viable philosophical subjects and subjects as tenable material objects" pg 16.

"Still the question remains , what connects the interior furniture of houses to the interior furniture of minds?"

From 'A Sense of an Interior- Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them', Diana Fuss, 2004

This above text also reminded me of an engraving I saw once when St Francis of Assisi (the engraving was 16th Century I think) and he is at a table with animals, like he is conversing with them...well obviously, but it's a really lovely image.

Is how we could describe the provider/user relation, the public/private relation in the project?

Interior Design

2008-08-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

Ricostruzione- Disertori/Libera-the video Towards a Historical Fable about Modernist Architecture and
Psychology,by Tom Holert, with Claudia Honecker for Manifesta 7.
quite alot of crossovers for us here..

www.ricostruzione.isvc.org/video

Abstract

2008-08-06T02:40:00.000-07:00

The material describes space and by that evokes the imagination of a bodily object

MODEL 2-COULD BE INTENSIFIED COULD BE CAUGHT ON FIRE

2008-08-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

After visiting the Design store to look at the Gipsen globe lamps. The store was very special, you had to ring a bell to get in which I liked immediately. The woman lives above the store with her husband, the building used to be a bakery so they have lot of room, former kitchens, former store front, and upstairs. There is a show room whne you enter but she took me to the "other rooms", which there were 4 of, and each of these rooms are more blurring with the distinction of storage/display. She does painting restoration as well. The globe lamps can be specificed, we can choose which length to have them hanging from the ceiling. She has read all of Janet Frames books, I sort of offered to lend her 'Towards Another Summer', I really wanted her to invite me into her private home space. I have no boundaries they are all gone.

Today we climbed up the side of the JVE building to look inside Koens office to see the Rietveld bureau, which is a replica of a very early replica of a bureau I saw at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (the drawer pictured below was saved from the original cabinet itself, rumour has it, when the house it was in caught on fire it was saved because of the Albert Heijn zegels were inside it). The bureau in Koens studio is not painted.

COULD BE INTENSIFIED COULD BE CAUGHT ON FIRE
The red plexi glass is moveable and can be shifted but in keeping with your commentary ti should be having light form one direction
The plexi glass would work with a section of lowered ceiling
This would have the globe lamps hanging from it, at least 3 in different lenghths, all on timers
Below the lights the words "IF I EVER FILMED THIS TEXT" would be displayed
Near to this would be a monitor with Baldessari SINGS Le Witt
On the other side of the plexi would be the bureau from Koens office, the sliding doors would be open and it would become a projection screen for a video (which one?...at the workers cottage, the building site between Tilburg and Breda, the neighbours builidng their terrace, this sitll image of the housing saying NO Music, something we don't know about yet)
On the other side of the bureau would be Paula's Rietveld chiar with one of the t-shirts draped on it, like the proposal you made for the Job Square, the quote could be
"by saying ‘artistic agency’ I mean an ability to do or not to do. It’s about orienting oneself, I suppose everyone wants this”
The Hoffman table could be in a long line
The fan could blow the batik fabric hanging near to David's poster reading THIS SHOULD NOT BE PERFORMED

After suggesting this, there is alot to consider in relation to the earlier post about the JVE audotorium furniture. Just thinking with the space?

Passive Design-Agressive Generosity

2008-08-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

1. There is a lot of material here already to work with-in reading over the comments so far and referring back to our originial proposal I think that we start to use the conceptual framework as a physical one which I find very appealing, in that short introduction where I mention Rietveld's relationship to writing as “ Rietveld never liked to write although he did it often, it was said that he was a better speaker than writer. Considering his relationship to space, this seems to make sense, that is, if we agree that the act of speaking is sculptural; each spoken word is placed in the space in the way one might place a wall/chair/lamp/table. It has also been said that when he wrote he repeated things, one could say that by writing in this way he was getting physical, one could see a movement, a winding, a layering, a building up.”
We start to do that with the way we are circling the conceptual framework, moving things out, bring things back again. That things start to look like the video you made where you use this very long brush to paint out the mirror, all the time the relationship between the action, the reflected action, the mediated gesture and what is really going on is blurring between each other. The relationships are not clear but they occupy space.
2. WRITER/READER
We blur this, and we blur the roles between provider and user, I find it liberating to feel that I can move between both. We blur these relations to make something that is neither and both. I think the way that we are deflecting from ourselves by working so much on the frame work of the project, and it is a good point that we obejctify it somehow to say that we participate like ad detached other. (is this where the relatiaonship with deisgn, especially something like pre-fab design from Hoffmann could come in?) But by deflecting I think we make a space that is open enough for us to enter again as that viewer, that reader, why we have the ability to work consequently work on our OWN frameowrk, by making a gesture that is passive design (maybe a very shaky term but I mean something like a recognizable, that acts a preface or introduction, it sends a signal out that is enough to make it open, and then somehow by using a symbol that is recognizable, like lets say a Gipsen globe lamp, a red plexi glass from a dark room, we close it down, the generous - or empty symbol- becomes aggression because it defies the expectation and speaks in its own key, poses in a way you don't expect it to. Does that make sense, could this be true, or is this the sexualized thing, denying the fantasy but staging the seduction.
This what makes these physical surfaces very important I think
3. CASE STUDY- potential example of passive design/aggressive generosity
In the work of Slovakian artist Julius Koller it has been descirbed that he 'did what was NOT needed in the tone of what was needed DESPARATELY- by passively creating/delineating a service that was not asked for he is designing a pose that is generous and agressive, one is always uncomfortable when you see something presented to you as if it is what you needed even though you didn't even know it was an option.
4. MOVING FURTHER- TRANSFERENCE OF SPACE ALLOCATIONS- STUDIOS, BEDROOMS, HILLOPS
So bringing it from this aggressive-generous space back to how usage is assigned, with the provider and user, the reader, writier, then this can be the way to introduce how to work with the format of the JVE furntirue form the auditorium and as well the extension of the invitations to the personal furntiture of Koen and Paula, how to invite them as participants into our space in ways they don't quite recognize, yet it uses the form of the invitation and also sincelery. I think we are reallocating values, somehow,or relations, I find this important (and brings us to the staged fight at the Rietveld workers cottage- .How do we get physcial with RELATIONASHIPS????

This photograph is under-exposed, please would you intensify it?

2008-08-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

red plexiglass

Rietveld 2

2008-08-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

View exhibition > reference to my interpretation of a Rietveld miniature/ model/ montage/ monument/ shelf

Rietveld

2008-08-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

1.Detail add table

2.Small table

3.Drawer

Baldessari Blueprint

2008-08-05T05:55:00.000-07:00

Would we use the setup in the auditorium of the Jan van Eyck as a blueprint for the exhibition in the Bonnefanten as a kind of physical evidence of the situation in which the B-masterclass and our B-Blueprint was presented? As traces of actions taken place?

Since some time now we have been introducing spaces to each other. By speaking about them, visiting (sharing experience in) them choreographing a performance in them.

Let's say that Gallery 4 dimensions' are 6.50 x 10 m. The setup of the auditorium would take up quite some part of the total size. What are the qualities we'd like to convey (with it)? Certainly it'll look awkward and institutional. If we're not allowed to borrow the tables from the JVE or if it is somehow better to imitate the setup with slightly different furniture, like the tables from the Hoffman catalogue, what kind of qualities should those tables ideally have? Flexible/ collapsible/ new/ smaller then real size..?

Could you post the 'abstract' that I borrowed from you on the blog, if you still think we can do something with it. I find the text interesting and totally ridiculous. It mixes up and creates a big knot of words: embodied passion, demotivation, work behavior management / motivation management, emotional situations, expressive/emotional processes, emotional realities, embodied passion, passionate processes -of the organization, it's members and workers.

Staging a fight in front of the Worker's Cabin.

2008-08-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of things I'd like to discuss. I'll start with the nature of the collaboration. With the third (invisible) man we have created ourselves an imaginary audience and a sort of structure (between writing and reading, between a readerly and writerly position taking) for the process of collaboration. I wander if you went through the introduction on Starobinski's essay on Rousseau, which is very interesting in this context. I'll continue fantasizing on the possible structure it could provide. We are the authors (writers) of the works we will produce for the exhibition. But we act like readers at the same time because we envision ourselves as the 'work' of an immanent other or we see ourselves from his point of view. Therefore we can speak and think about the seductive from the work might take, up to a certain level we can experience it, while we have objectified it. This is where the appearance of our collaboration takes the most tangible form. We decided on a pose. This pose is at best described by a sentence you borrowed once from Janet Frame which says: "This photograph is underexposed please would you intensify it?" The man, the audience implied in the work whether they'd be bothered or not, want something impossible from us (from the artwork?) why not ask something impossible from them, something they cannot possibly reciprocate or offer them a tool for help which is quite useless other then make this 'problem' appear physical.

Rietveld

2008-08-04T08:49:00.001-07:00

We should go and see 'the workers holiday cabin' by Rietveld

"Some thoughts, even when it's hard to think"

2008-08-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

REPLY SITUATION WANTED

Thus the absent presence (of a man who doesn't bother) forms the drive to bother us to stage anything at all. One could already detect him in our earlier presentation/ proposals. Yet we didn't get any further then addressing him or interpreting his thoughts through the use of a passive voice. Now that you framed him or rather have a vision of him through the text of M.Duras I wonder if we'd stage his absent presence in other ways. If this would be of any interest at all? Already with this blog we are performing for a passive mass audience and a few friends we might invite to have a look if everything works out.

SEXY

Today you'd wished to make a really sexy artwork. Mentioned having once photographed animal's vital parts, or any other body part for that matter, kept in strong (?) water, to later construct a new type of creature.- Instantly let to the idea of making poetry. Which could be called "sexy poems with body parts". (A continuation of "poems about nature documentaries")
Continuing this line of thinking I must admit that the machine/ the drive we propose to work 'from' has quite a sexual undertone. Not surprisingly, cause it's vital to Duras' story. (NOTE: it would be good to have a copy of this chapter with stage directions on the blog)

I can't remember exactly: what role did the man who doesn't appear play in 'The malady of death'? Is he only mentioned in the part where she describes the actors, the stage, the play?

Documentation of Bernd's work

2008-08-04T05:11:00.000-07:00

Stefan Kalmar meets Bernd Krauss Archive
at Whitechapel Gallery

NO MUSIC

2008-08-04T01:40:00.001-07:00

SOME THINGS WRITTEN IN THE PAST DAYS-THOUGHTS AND DESTRUCTION WELCOME

2008-08-04T01:39:00.000-07:00

A guy walks into a post office to apply for a job, after completing the application form he takes his place in queue to wait for his interview.
Finally it’s his turn, wearing his newly pressed suit he’s feeling optimistic about the coming interaction.
The man behind the desk looks disinterested, his slightly balding wispy hair is swept to the side, glasses sit on the edge of his nose. He holds a pen in his right hand and slowly skims over the application form. The gliding motion stops suddenly and looks up from the page, tapping the pen in the counter, an expression of dismay spreads over his face- he coughs.
“It says here that you are a, a, poet- is that right?”
Shuffling from foot to foot the man applying for the job replies, “Ahhhh yeah, that’s right, well, I’m trying”
“Do you think poets can be trusted to carry and deliver communication? Ever, even in their own writings?”
“Is that a yes or no answer? Because I’d probably go for a maybe”

BA-DOOMBOOM-CHING!

SITUATIONS WANTED

2008-08-04T01:30:00.000-07:00

The man this story is about will never appear, in fact it would be best if we didn’t even really get a sense of who he was, or that he necessarily existed as such.

Some machines are powered by coal, or electricity or hydro-damns, fire, wind, nuclear energy- this machine however is powered by none of those things; this machine is propelled by the idea of the man, who will never appear. He becomes a something; we move around him and speak of but never communicate directly to or with him.

Through this indirect communication, or through a certain amount of willing on our part, we know what to do.
Today he even suggested that we fight, so we fought.
There was no winner, or loser, only confusion. This feeling of confusion seemed to suggest that we should re-asses how we understand the word fight.

Later, sitting at my desk, attempting to install the newly purchased short-wave radio consol. Frustrated, I paused and sat absent-mindedly tapping out rhythms on the tabletop. The rhythms produced were in fact morse code and said the following; this is not a fight, this is a stage.

On this stage there are several key items
-Something not yet finished, probably a building
-Something resting, probably a human
-Something extremely alert- probably an animal

All 3 things form part of the stage, taking various roles in how the action and atmosphere are developed and connected. Very often the human moves between the building and the animal, touching each. Each act of touching is an attempt at reducing the sleepiness and increasing the visible activity. But this doesn’t seem to change much, one thing is always unfinished and the other always alert- and touching doesn’t seem to perform the desired transfer, neither to the animal or building or the human. In fact it seems to complicate matters. It could be worth considering to finish the thing, probably a building and seriously engage with the alert being, probably the animal.

But this story is not about this combination, but rather, the man this story is about will never appear. He is not part of the action on this stage, but stands somewhere else entirely. In any case, the suggestions are
One- he is standing, not sitting
Two- he doesn’t know who we are
Three- He is not bothered by any of these factors

2008-07-15T03:15:00.000-07:00

Dance, 2006

2008-07-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

The man this story is about would never appear

2008-07-15T03:09:00.000-07:00

There is a large piece of tie-dye fabric (also known as batik) hanging in my studio, I made it to use a photograph once.

Attached to the fabric or 4 pieces of paper- one starts with the sentence "the man this story is about would never appear", taken from Duras, Malady of Death, next to that is an image of a 'Dutch house', its modern and in the middle of nowhere, it has the subtitle 'No music.'. Next to that is the sentence "If I ever filmed this text", and next to that is the image of letter we sent to David.

I'm trying to imagine making a video- it feels quite clear already in many ways. I want to use the footage you shot of the neighbours building and them make footage of the housing development I saw being built on the outskirts of Tilburg. I will write a script and I think this beginning from the Duras text is very good. I like the idea of imagining a visitor to our exhbition who will never come.