Objectification

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

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

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

MODEL 2-COULD BE INTENSIFIED COULD BE CAUGHT ON FIRE

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

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?

red plexiglass

Rietveld 2

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

Rietveld

1.Detail add table

2.Small table

3.Drawer

Baldessari Blueprint

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.

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

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

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

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

Stefan Kalmar meets Bernd Krauss Archive
at Whitechapel Gallery

NO MUSIC

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

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

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