Letter to Alessa

November 29, 2022startind

[A] “When I thought about what I could show you, what I could write you, I thought of this letter.”

[D] “We will take detours along the way tracing spaces in traces, spaces in places, traces in spaces, places in traces. We will have to trust we will find our way home because from there we go out to all other places. Let us linger here together at the threshold…”

[A] “In a letter, in a sentence there are 3 things I determine. The definite things, the names, the things yet to be resolved: the questions and the things that just don’t mean anything at all. I find myself paying attention to these pauses, silences and endpoints. I wonder if I can show you what I mean, I wonder about what we’re all doing and if our thoughts overwrite each other, whether you would hear what I am saying.

How often do we say: “I see what you mean”… well do you? I cannot see what you mean I can only imagine.”

[D] “In truth there is nothing I want to make you see, there is nothing I really mean and this nothing can never be exhausted. You made a distinction between hearing and listening just as I do between seeing and looking. Perception is an act of consumption in which we hazard nothing.”

You said: “When something is conclusive it means it never started; labour does not make a work and perhaps, you wrote, the first and last form is an empty bowl…” This made me entertain a fantasy of pointlessly making bowls which means labour could make a work but only as a device to understand the failure of creating an audience.

You wrote: Perhaps the only painting is black but there are endless possibilities in black. Old black, fresh black, lustrous black, dull black, emerald black, oil black, sunlight black, shadow black and the black of the lime tree in winter.

You wrote: Maybe the only score is silent. What does it mean to experience silence as the essence of language?. Being silent is not the same as being mute. Silence is the only form of articulation. This is the gift of language.

I read a story about a child and a house built out of small red bricks. When construction was complete the child squatted next to it, placed a pig inside it and carefully replaced the top. Occasionally she walked away from the enclosure but always returned, opening it carefully, looking inside, emptying or filling it. This was her universe. Then you wrote me a story about a red house, a model that came to be built for real in red brick, found like a little time machine although you couldn’t determine if it goes to the past or the future. There is something tragic about the kind of architectural model created on the kitchen table. A house of meetings but also departures, its walls urge you to remember your compulsion to forget.

What does it mean to inhabit something, to capture its music? You thought about a nautilus shell for a long time and I wondered how you could blend with the darkness of the sea…

Dear Black Spot…

Gazing into your liquid emerald darkness suffused with silver halide crystals of light, sinking into your inky depths, enveloped in your perfect form, in a slumber dead to the world, an eternal caress wrapt in your tender abyss.

As I write to you I can sincerely say I have lived in this house although I cannot determine whether it is the past or the future. The ghostly sublime of a chair hovers in the background then I realised it never went away because it was never there in the first place. In the distance doors exploded from their origin, nothing is being asked or explained. A serene velocity at the mirrors edge hovers in the silver of the ground.

Symptoms manifested in the smashing of windows, the rehearsal of a ventriloquist act in empty rooms constructing an emotional temperature. I have stood under the darkening sky at the strike of madness where dead fingers dance, the dark matter of corporeal poetry: a shadow soundtrack of whispering grass kicking the air.

[A] “When we believe in a concept so deeply we might make a container for it over and over again…until the object might measure half the thought or the form smothers its nucleus. Just like a faucet that leaks [D: and there is comfort in this sound] concepts survive between half full and drowning.”

[D] “Let us go, you and I beyond the perimeter where the Lime Tree is the tallest tree in sight, taller than the pines, the birches and willows, let us forget the names we give to the things we see.

There on the mossy bank of the lake I shall add my half empty to your half full and we shall wade out into its depths. We will forget that in spring and summer the Lime Tree was green all over and now in winter its branches are black, we will forget we are sad about that. We will forget because here in the lake we will be testing the concepts of surviving and drowning.”

You wrote: Perhaps an artist cannot live, but only die in what he or she creates. In reality this appears to be a trifle like a paper cut and ‘when this cut is made nothing is destroyed’, but beneath the work are the cuts, sharp, clean, deep. How do you obtain relief? Breathe and keep cutting.

[A] “I wonder are you bored because time is being consumed. Boredom is when what you want is elsewhere and you are obliged to wait for it, or wait without it.” [D] This absent content is a fragment that shines like gold. There is no sound we can run to in this prototype theatre; we can only act out to the sides.

Roland Barthes writes: ‘There is a scenography of waiting: I organize it, manipulate it, cut out a portion in time in which I shall mime the loss of the loved object”… the object yet to come, the object that should have come and didn’t, the object that might never come, “provoking the effects of a minor mourning.” A Lover’s Discourse, Waiting, P.37

I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. I have no sense of proportions. The being I am waiting for is not real. I create and re-create it over and over, starting from my capacity to love.

[A] “In a letter, in a sentence there are 3 things I determine. The definite things, the names, the things yet to be resolved: the questions and the things that just don’t mean anything at all. I find myself paying attention to these pauses, silences and endpoints.”

Fernando Pessoa writes “I think with my feelings and feel with my thoughts”.

[D] Do you see what I mean?… I imagine in this instance that you do.

Fig 1: Ad Reinhardt https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30264327612&cm_mmc=ggl-_-UK_Shopp_RareStandard-_-product_id=bi%3A%2030264327612-_-keyword=&gclid=Cj0KCQiAsoycBhC6ARIsAPPbeLtQgCUrkcC2Ctc-JHu1kkto0JtMevpaSmm_YV4-VyK3iwGtVb4SEg4aAqODEALw_wcB (accessed 27/11/22)

Fig 2: Courbet, Woman with a Parrot, 1866 https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/woman-with-a-parrot/jgHoAxofXjqd_Q?hl=en-GB accessed 27/11/22)

Fig 3: Mondrian https://www.nicholashedges.uk/drawing/mondrians-trees/ (accessed27/11/22)

Currently Reading – Nadja, André Breton

November 28, 2022November 28, 2022startind

Léona Delcourt (Nadja), 1920s. Source: Jacques Rigaut

“One of the most iconic works of the French surrealist movement begins with the question “Who am I?“

It is based on Breton’s actual interactions with a young woman, Nadja (actually Léona Camille Ghislaine Delacourt 1902–1941),^[1] over the course of ten days, and is presumed to be a semi autobiographical description of his relationship with a patient of Pierre Janet. The book’s non-linear structure is grounded in reality by references to other Paris surrealists and includes 44 photographs.

The narrator, named André, ruminates on a number of Surrealist principles, before ultimately commencing on a narrative account, generally linear, of his brief ten-day affair with the titular character Nadja. She is so named “because in Russian it’s the beginning of the word hope, and because it’s only the beginning,” but her name might also evoke the Spanish “Nadie,” which means “No one.” The narrator becomes obsessed with this woman with whom he, upon a chance encounter while walking through the street, strikes up conversation immediately. He becomes reliant on daily rendezvous, occasionally culminating in romance (a kiss here and there). His true fascination with Nadja, however, is her vision of the world, which is often provoked through a discussion of the work of a number of Surrealist artists, including himself. While her understanding of existence subverts the rigidly authoritarian quotidian, it is later discovered that she is mad and belongs in a sanitarium. After Nadja reveals too many details of her past life, she in a sense becomes demystified, and the narrator realizes that he cannot continue their relationship.

In the remaining quarter of the text, André distances himself from her corporeal form and descends into a meandering rumination on her absence, so much so that one wonders if her absence offers him greater inspiration than does her presence. It is, after all, the reification and materialization of Nadja as an ordinary person that André ultimately despises and cannot tolerate to the point of inducing tears. There is something about the closeness once felt between the narrator and Nadja that indicated a depth beyond the limits of conscious rationality, waking logic, and sane operations of the everyday. There is something essentially “mysterious, improbable, unique, bewildering” about her; this reinforces the notion that their propinquity serves only to remind André of Nadja’s impenetrability. Her eventual recession into absence is the fundamental concern of this text, an absence that permits Nadja to live freely in André’s conscious and unconscious, seemingly unbridled, maintaining her paradoxical role as both present and absent. With Nadja’s past fixed within his own memory and consciousness, the narrator is awakened to the impenetrability of reality and perceives a particularly ghostly residue peeking from under its thin veil. Thus, he might better put into practice his theory of Surrealism, predicated on the dreaminess of the experience of reality within reality itself.”

Text quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadja_(novel) (accessed 28/11/22)

Image reproduced from https://artandthoughts.fr/2014/02/06/andre-bretons-nadja/ (accessed 28/11/22)

The Contingent Object

November 25, 2022November 25, 2022startind

Richard Serra. Joe: **Torqued Spiral,** 2000. Weatherproof steel. 13 ½ x 45 x 36 ½ feet. Plate thickness: 2 inches. Collection of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Saint Louis. Photo by Dirk Reinartz. © 2008 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society, New York.

Abstract forms and spatial experience

The function of copying or transcription

The play between abstraction and representation,

Equivalents – Fall

Artifacts and relics.

The cast and the copy; a function of authorship and reproduction.

Participation as a function of the original

Participation as an act of design or arrangement

Participation as a challenge to authority,

Participation as a vehicle for heterogeneity

Avalanche

Or performance

Of the fragmented mark

Of the symbolic equivalent

Of play between absence and presence

Performing the failure of the mark or trace of bodily action

The Shadow [Detective]

Fingerprint

The Shadow [Detective] collecting commodities and subjects as a basis for subsequent practices.

Slumber

Reproduction as a basis for quotation and reference

Reproduction as mediation and transformation of

Perpetual Photos and Plaster Surrogates

Originals decay or deteriorate.

Mortar and Pestle

Diagrams construct an ephemeral site in place of the object

Diagrams as a form of delay

Diagrams as a form of intent:

Viewing Matters, Face to Face in the Public Toilets

‘May I Help You?’

‘Yes, I would like a bag of donuts and 3 urinals please.’

‘Not Here’

Avalanche

Lick, Lather and Gnaw at impermanence as the index

Lick, Lather and Gnaw at the contingent object

Lick, Lather and Gnaw at the experience

Lick Lather and Gnaw at the material evidence of authenticity

Gnaw at organic materials

Gnaw at chocolate, lard and soap

And yet still there looms a galvanized iron wall and a straight single tube where there dances the

Preserved Head of a Bearded Woman decorated with a String of Puppies

Puppies which need a lot of care and attention

What is this Strange Fruit [for David]?

Painted Bronze, Fountain Meltdown

The scrap metal process separates idea from material truth: an Island within an Island

No amount of Litanies can stop this Statement of Esthetic Withdrawal

The artist’s hand now becomes an object of desire along with Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch Intervals.

Drowned Monuments and Shared Fate; a function of external evidence like Every Building on the Sunset Strip

Short Circuit – Casting, Splashing, Torqued Ellipses

a simple ‘verb list’

Remade readymades,

Readymade readymades

Eureka!

Image reproduced from https://imagejournal.org/article/gravity-and-grace/ (accessed 25/11/22)

Letters of Motivation – Move[ME]nt

November 16, 2022startind Leave a comment

Loïe Fuller & The Serpentine Dance, physical poet, 1862-1928

things shifting, slowly, imperceptibly, m-o-o-o-ving, don’t…know…where to…a movement toward […] away…shifting…things appearing…vanishing…[sub] emerging…it might be too soon to say “A Denise”…might be a “A…might be “A…D…might just be ” but at least that is a start…an opening

[flashing cursor on the screen as I pause then press return…and move…toward…

…uncertain steps, uncertain of his convictions, unsure of herself and…]

her future, an uncertain smile seeking a point at which rays of light converge as they simultaneously diverge, searching for the distinctness or clarity of an image rendered by an optical system in the act of moving,

a change in place
or
position, the focus of a lens, whir-click, click-clack

touching the ornaments – knick-knack – with uncertain fingers – touch, brush, tap, tap, tap…tick…tock, hearing the driving and regulatory mechanism of a watch or a clock, a movement toward, finding in the rhythmic structure of movement a self contained symphony…

a series of actions and progressive events, a centre of interest and a movement toward,

move as smoothly as wind across water, move listlessly, move quick and light, move like a flightless bird, like a shoal of silver fish, dart, descend, drift, float, glide, move as if on a treadmill to the centre of interest and a movement

toward the distinctness or clarity of an image,

pace, rush, scamper, shuffle, c-r-e-e-e-e-e-p, glide like a shadow|shadow, twist, travel, totter, hover […]

like a woman uncertain of his convictions, unsure of herself, an uncertain smile groping in the dark for the sub-conscious memory of a rhythmic structure of movement – toward – a self contained symphony.

uncertain seeking, unsure future, uncertain convictions, taking uncertain steps to a point…to a point…to a point…to a point…to a point…to to to the point at which rays of light simultaneously converge and diverge –

move[ME]nt.

Loïe Fuller image reproduced from https://bibliolore.org/2013/05/20/loie-fullers-serpentine-success/

Chronically Fatigued

LinkJuly 31, 2017July 31, 2017startind

Hippolyte Bayard, Portrait of Self as a Drowned Man, 1840

As I lowered myself slowly into the pool I hoped no-one would notice my muscles shaking and my face wince from the pain in my shoulders. I went to the edge and looked down a 25m barrel. I stood there feeling a little relief as my body was supported by the water. How am I going to do this? Well you taught yourself before Denise so you can teach yourself again. Ok, deep breath, you got this.

Usually I go to the pool when it’s fast swim times but not today. I watched two women swimming in slow motion and thought how I’d usually roll my eyes, these people would usually be in my way back when I could swim a mile 5 times a week without blinking. I love swimming, but it’s been at least 6 months and longer since I could exercise (I realise how much I’ve lost track of time, this started in 2016). I can only do the breaststroke but even then I was faster than a lot of people doing the front crawl.

I didn’t look at the clock but kept my eye on the goal. I’d prescribed myself 20 lengths and a jacuzzi for the pain, which radiating from a multitude of indeterminate spots, makes itself most at home in my shoulders. So I put my goggles on and set off…s l o w l y, even then these women were in my way and I got frustrated, glad to see I haven’t lost my competitive spirit.

After 8 slow lengths with good form I realised I had to stop. I look like I’ve hardly done anything but my body was doing a lot and it told me so. Now what? Just walk. I can’t do that it’s ridiculous. Do you want to do these 20 lengths or not? Yes…then walk. Tears of frustration gathered in my goggles, I’d usually power through the water like a knife through hot butter. I cleared my goggles. Ok deep breath, you got this. I walked for 5 lengths. Kid, I said, you’re over half way…but my body felt like lead. I stopped and turned my back on the pool and grabbed my left arm because my shoulder was still trembling. Should I get out? I feel stupid. No I said that would be a stupid reason to get out. I gave myself a few minutes and then swam 5 more lengths

s l o w l y.

18 lengths, ok good enough just walk the last two, so I did. I stood at the poolside exhilarated and trembling. Normally I’d be the kind of person who says well if you can do 20, you can do 30 and if you can do 30, you can do 40…but not today.

I went to the steps to get out, it felt like I was trying to drag a beached whale out of the water. Is it just me or is everything going in slow motion…1…2….3…..out.

I walked

s l o w l y

to the jacuzzi feeling like I was still dragging that beached whale behind me. Of course no-one could see that but it was there. I gave myself 15 minutes of bubbles as my reward.

Today and the next day I can’t even put the washing away…maybe next time I go I should just float or give myself bubbles. No you won’t next time you go you’ll do the same until you can swim 20 lengths and then you’ll add one length at a time until you get there. Maybe it was too soon, will there be a next time?.

Of course there will, but in the meantime you will have to occupy that twilight space between the living and the dead…

Ok, deep breath, you got this.

Image reproduced from http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/self_portrait_as_a_drowned_man/ accessed 31/07/17

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