Waiting

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

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)

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...)

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

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

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

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

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

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

muddled shades 2

new haircut

At Ginger's place.

social worker and client

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

Lets get physical! Making Appointments!

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

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

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

 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

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

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

---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

                                              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

Face

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

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

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

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

still


still

stillstill

Transformation versus Juxtaposition, Identification versus Standardization

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.