2 June 2010

museum


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

square cabinet

square, lighting system

3 possible light sources (4 including the spotlights)

beginning of right wing, view on large entrance

ambulatory parcours, side without windows

ambulatory, side with windows

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

entrance of the same space

entrance of the same space, the other side

the same space

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

Hope you get a better idea.

26 May 2010

the dry bit


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

roadblocks

ceramic
\

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

Invitation

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

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

still from video (video see link below)

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

18 May 2010

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

10 May 2010

Popular Gesture #1

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

7 May 2010


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.