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

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

Popular Gesture #1

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

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

Dear Sirs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours &c.

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

Positions

Clearly it is the exception.

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

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

First lets start with a new colour: green?

NEW LANGUAGE

Finding anything

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

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

Empty table, rattle my head

meeting point

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


Sign: Meeting point


stool without seat


wavy line

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






Proposal II

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


table game


drawings (they are supposed to be horizontal)