Tuesday, December 30, 2008

news/noticas echo & narcissus

Film Pulgar
Chris Danowski (translation by Iris Mexico)

Bien, aquí estoy a las seis de la tarde en la noche del miércoles, el miércoles antes del día de gracias y no sé exactamente que quiero hacer aquí… Creo que me gustaría decir que si observas cerca del ojo, si observas muy muy cerca el ojo de alguien, tú ves las partes del ojo (del uno que observa). Y ahí están, las partes del ojo que conozco serían: la retina, la pupila, y está la parte alrededor de la pupila que rodea el centro donde puedes ver dentro del alma, la parte alrededor de la pupila creo se llama iris, si lo recuerdo correctamente –ah!-
Y esta es la parte que da al mmm, al ojo el destello y el color y ayuda a guiar la vista. Y si tu vivieras en este ojo supongo que sabrías todas las direcciones a las que necesites ir y de repente te encontrarías una mañana en el centro de la rueda de la fortuna, y desde esa rueda podrías ser capaz de tomar cualquier decisión y cualquier giro y caminar en cualquier sendero que desees.

Ok, wow, estoy grabando mucho hoy, pero está bien (suspiro) quizá hice una cosa estúpida, no estoy realmente seguro pero… el doctor dijo que podría quitar la venda y mirar si quería, entonces lo hice, y, aquí esta. Esta es la nueva versión. Esta es la versión 3.0 de mi pulgar.

Y como cabellos salvajes que vienen a tu puerta y te conducen a cualquiera otra puertas que alguna vez imaginaste.

El sendero del camino que te conduce a desde la civilización hacia la naturaleza y este camino, ah, es el camino a mi propia naturaleza carnal…

Y te encontré. Y cuando te encontré, te encontré mirándome. Y no sé a veces si estoy hablándote a ti o estoy hablándole a una musa y justo ahora no estoy seguro si te estoy hablando a ti, o a una musa o le estoy hablando a una cámara que me mira… es necesariamente “yo” observándome a mi mismo, y no sé si yo te observo podría estar viéndote o podría estar viéndome porque no estoy terminado y no puedo completar la historia sin ti… Hay un terminación en el camino que podría finalizar con la segunda parte de la oración o esa parte de la pregunta que es su opuesto.

Creo que luce como el viejo excepto que un poco más corto.

El opuesto también contiene el espejo de su inicio.

La verdad es que ahora mismo saboreo la sangre en mi boca, y la verdad es que ahora hay cosas recorriendo mis venas que están haciendo el mundo muy ah… un lugar muy extraño.

Acabo de ver El Libro de Cabecera, mmm… mientras lo veía en esta clase de estado del delirio, continuaba mmm teniendo otras imágenes que empezaron a mezclarse dentro de la película, mmm, o el filme, debería decir, más un filme que una película, mmm, y me gusto mucho, mucho mucho, ah, me gusta… muchísima escritura en el filme, de cualquier forma, estaba muy bien, om, de cualquier forma, sigo entrando y saliendo, y las entradas y salidas, mm, ahí hubieron imágenes de alucinaciones, o cosas aquí, como en la casa pero cosas que… ah, bueno cosas como; afuera ha estado lloviendo toda la mañana y afuera en el teléfono por la casa hay maceteros que se inundaron y… ah, estaban muy mojados, las flores estaban bien, pero las flores se habían inundado, y entonces cuando en cierta forma yo regrese a través de eso que me di cuenta que no tengo maceteros aquí, entonces fueron un montón de sueños acerca de cosas que… ah, que no estaban realmente aquí… oh, sueños acerca de cosas que ah, que yo me había olvidado, pero que no eran cosas que ah… ¿cuál es la palabra? Había más aquí, habían cosas escondidas que estaban haciéndose visibles o cosas que no había notado antes…

Cuando esta herida se abrió… esta ocasión en octubre, alguien más vino a tocar en mi imagen y preguntando por qué me gusta ver el mundo de cabeza. Un hombre colgado, bien colgado... desde este espacio, no puedo ni hacer una pregunta o dar una respuesta, ah, este espacio de sueño donde todas nuestras preguntas y todas las respuestas son sospechosas.

¡Ah! Realmente, ah, no lo mires demasiado.

Y entonces planeo encontrarme a menudo comiendo carnívoro y peligroso por el filo de una cueva enterrada en medio de la naturaleza, y con esto…
Envío un beso.

Beso y soplo…

para

Yo soy
;-p


C 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9xNOcKv0GI&feature=channel_page


Love Lovely
de Iris Mexico (traducion de Chris Danowski)
To integrate loving blessings between volatile desires
Why every moment transformations are different, and we wish to integrate what minutes ago, minutes more, hours less we wanted to disintegrate and vice versa?... Is it that every day you wake up with my name on your lips, wishing to integrate yourself with me, or is it that there are times when you do not know me or times when you really want to dissolve our bonds? Can we believe that every morning is a repetition, can we confirm that every day is different, repetitions flow in spirals, circles, zigzags, straight lines… and there are those who say that they bring hidden blessings… How then, with so many uncertainties related to the volatile thing of our desires and of the repetition, could we have a certainty to integrate ourselves in love?
To integrate loving blessings between volatile desires…

To integrate strawberry butterflies’ moments
Today, I had strawberries with natural yogurt and bee honey for breakfast… and I thought about you… after that, I took the morning sun on the terrace, and you came back to my memory… later I saw that you thanked me for the pictures of the dinner that I sent you, I was wearing a long draper dress, with pierreries in the décolleté, colored pignon, the silk emphasized my bronzed skin, and my make up in Mexican pink and golden tones… You wrote me that the woman in the picture is like a dream, I wonder if love is like a dream, a blessing to which we wish to integrate ourselves, and nevertheless she is as fragile as the butterflies that greet us in the garden. Then I recognized myself as the instant… and that wonders are not less by being ephemeral…
To integrate strawberry butterflies’ moments…

To integrate ourselves or to remember ourselves in timeless portraits
It was nine o’clock when I saw you, do you remember? And that was the instant which, for some strange surprise, destiny kept for us, and even though you were accompanied by a very pretty girl, we were ready to decide us for us, and we began to talk about twins, pretense, representation, presentation and the multiple forms of portraying reality… They say that the worst of all the steps is the first, perhaps it was singularly simple for us to overcome the inertia of having ignored us in the past, probably we remembered us from past millennia, distant seas and exotic landscapes… and we concentrate the force of solitudes and yearnings to impregnate each other with letters, dreams and actions…
To integrate ourselves or to remember ourselves in timeless portraits…

To integrate the lemniscata glance with rose petals
Do you want to believe that we are going to see this New Year as if it were the first time that days will pass in our heart, because of the fact that we are sharing the view? And so it is that you have begun to observe the world through my eyes, and I recognize myself inhabited in your maps… And you are, and I am, when the pupils wake up every day decorated by the Iris, under sandalwood perfume and skins made humid by the sea… When I read your plays, I recognize my portrait behind my confessions, and I know that when you listen to my voice, you recognize what you wanted to say to yourself… In a lemniscata kiss, we cross borders and we seed roses…
To integrate the lemniscata glance with rose petals…

To integrate in our skin the stars, science, the heart, worlds and fetish
Oh, and I sigh, countless sighs in your name… And my grandfather keeps watching soccer every afternoon, I suppose that his vital energy is nourished by the sexual metaphor of a ball of semen untiringly looking for the ovule goal… ah, did I tell you that he is over eighty years old and he asked to me to buy him a sexual stimulant? Even though I am his most faithful pornography distributer, I am taking some time in order to fulfill his request this time, because I have to consult with a doctor to see which is better, Viagra or vitamins?… they warn that even some vitamins should not be ingested by people under 18, so I wonder about over 80… Have you used sexual stimulants?, I wonder if you would need them with me?, could we integrate our erotic desire only illuminated by the sun, or would we find light from adults’ toys and provocative substances?, and so it is that when fusing ourselves we keep on being present in this world of families, sports, medicines and the fetish, and we add this to ourselves as well… oh, but I still have curiosity, I know that it will be months before we begin to add the world in our skin, although we begin to experiment in sharing this in the epistles of now…
To integrate in our skin the stars, science, the heart, worlds and fetish…

To integrate childhood and magic in a smiling kiss
Yes, corazón, I recognize the caution, I understand that you don’t talk about your childhood on the first date, and that you have not yet cried on my lap… ay! Women are quicker to tears and drama, maybe even though I don’t watch soap operas, and don’t read pink novels, they are part of my genes… and do you still have patience for my restless nights and infantile confession? I can’t help it, it’s just that some days I wake up fragile, like regressing to that girl who has lost something and still does not know what it is… as if you could help me find it… and then you send me a gift, maybe that’s what I lost, and that will help me to complete me, nevertheless the government postal service on the border of River Piedra is so slow… and I have been waiting for centuries… I sigh again, you call me and you swear to me that this time the postman will ring my door… and I don’t know, maybe it is not necessary anymore, there is something magic that I could receive in my dreams or in your kisses.
To integrate childhood and magic in a smiling kiss…

To integrate the shared truth
It’s nine minutes after nineteen hours… and I still don’t choose the truth with which I will go to bed tonight… I wait… You will come at nine under the moon, and maybe then we can choose a shared truth… if you want… You like my cut crystal glasses, and I love to see how the pink cider plays and is reflected between transparent forms under candlelight… Sometimes you do not see the glasses, neither do you see my dress, nor my hands, nor my lips, nor your hands, nor my eyes, nor the emptiness… sometimes I know that you are observing my soul, and that I do not have anything to lose, and that I can trust your glance…
To integrate the shared truth…

To integrate the courage in the middle of fragility
Ah! That is what my vanity whispered to me on the boulevard, when I was with my mother, who asked me where I came from.
- From Palais-Royal.
- And I from the Opera –she said to me-; I thought I would see you there.
- Why?
- Because the duke was there.
- Ah, he was there?
- Yes.
- Alone?
- No, with one of his girlfriends.
- That was it?
- The count went for a moment to his theater box; and then she left with the duke C. I kept thinking I would see you. There was a seat next to me that was empty all evening, and I was convinced that it was for you.
- But why am I going to go where the duke goes?
- Because he is your lover.
This ridiculous parody reminded me of the fragility of my susceptibilities, the vulnerability of my shame, if I had found him on the eve of his wedding and he had talk to me honestly, of course I would not have been so stupid. I was on the verge of going to see him, but I feared that revenge covered us with its mantle…
The most horrifying part of my situation is that even “The Lady of the Camellias” damaged me… love forces us to put our dreams in the hands of someone who can destroy them, and that is inevitable… I suppose that the only way I can accept that trip to Paris you want us to take together is by being brave… and do you think it is worth it, do you think that I am strong by being able to show you my fragility? Oh! If we know well that we are all still more fragile than butterflies. You have already have confessed it to me, in many of your deeper pains, you knew that there is pain in the world, you knew the relation between desires, consequences and causes, and even still you thought that it would not happen to you… Yes, I feel the same…
To integrate the courage in the middle of fragility…

To integrate intuition and life
I was seduced by your story of walking on a road with a heart, I found me in your words about how you intuited that to be together is a life way… It enamors me that you pronounce my name with untiring pulsing, and that, flexible to the life current, you receive my force… I like you when you dance between rhythms, sheets and verses… I kiss you, then, in the soul…
Sugar Bloom Iris
I am
http://www.5celula.org/selai2008/irism.htm

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Thumbtock

There are three things to discuss:

thumb

santeria/ this yaworaje

the third is just a matter of discretion but it's the only thing on my mind (well the other two also...but the third, oh the third...)

there needs to be a way to make hyperlinks for all of these (i know the way is called hyperlink, but that's not quite it...)

so i will just talk about all of them in one single breath--

i have been a Yawo for 11 months 2 weeks and 1 day now, and am looking forward to the anniversary of my crowning (jan. 5th) and the week after that where everything goes back to normal (jan 12 only not so normal, as if it were ever so ever so as if it were ever so...). i have less thumb, less money (in graduate school, not teaching as much, and after next semester not at all, so, ha...interesting to see how this will turn out...new adventures in the wings...), a lot of work, a lot of new work, a lot of strange experience, and more strange experience, and suddenly, strange experience...

I want to talk about the thumb.

Here's why they say you should not divine for someone you are attracted to: she was looking at the cards and I saw the two of hearts, and two choices for her: the world, or the fool, and I thought the cards said she should pursue the new relationship that was forming in front of her (which was us) and the world would come to her, or she was a fucking idiot and would fall of the edge of the world. I don't remember what I told her, not that, not what I thought, which turned out to be true in all respects, in every respect, um, but this is why...

***tho not exactly true because later in another part of the world i read for someone i thought was kinda hot, and it turned out to be right, and there was nothing like the choice between being in love or being an idiot, not for her, but oh this got confusing and I shouldn't talk about this here...

I am discrete

there's a lot more to this but right now i have to play a board game with bored Elli...i have no sustained concentration this year...

but I love that child, so what can I do?

I will post pictures of my thumb soon, but not of my face, not until next month...only the beloved ones get images and that's not here, and not her, the her that is beloved is one and she is there so very much there, and so much not here...

Um, new font for a new president. While I was self-absorbed, there was an event, an event that happened, events happening all the time, that's what events do, but this one, this event.

Was not about the thumb, and for now, here's how things worked out with the thumb>>>

On May 6th, 2007, one week after my head was marked for Obatala (I have a feeling not everyone will know what that means-- THIS IS THE SPACE WHICH I WILL FILL IN ), I was wondering about some things that were up for discretion and not discussion and wondering wondering, and although I had been marked, and with the idea that I am of that part of the clan where we need to pay more attention because we are prone to accidents, I was witness to an act whereupon a chain of a running motorcycle, being cleaned by the party of the first part (I or me), not turning it off before cleaning it but rather running it intentionally and running the chain through my thumb and index finger of the left hand, with a sock on said hand, sawed the thumb get caught up in things (as I tend to do) and went far far away from the end of my hand and to parts unknown. The two guys who lived in my apartment complex (both named John, as I recall), told me later they found the tip of this thumb but in too many diverse geographical locations to be something worth collecting, which means in Mayan cosmology I would have this as a sick part of my soul needing to be collected on the hour of my death (and I am not Mayan, but then again this is probably radically inaccurate). And so, this is how I came to lose that part.

And it took a long time to heal, and in fact took so long that the surgeon sent me to a pain doctor, who prescribed mild painkillers until it was decided (by him) that I was no longer in pain. It was less, for sure, but not gone. This would have been March or April of this year. So, well into my Yaworaje. And in March or was it April (section deleted for continuity)...and yes for the rest of my life, but who knows why things happen the way they do, and especially why twice (except for the blood).

And then in October it would be, October 8th from my medical records, I was learning how to pluck with my left hand, and suddenly felt the pain return like it had before, like it had from May-March approximately, won't you come see me queen jane)...and I saw my doctor, who told me it was nerve pain, and it continued to hurt but only exactly like before only much much worse, and I saw her again, and she was actually angry that I was bothering her, and said, we've already talked about this, what's the problem, and I said, it's pain it's continuing pain what the hell do you want me to say it's pain, give me darvocet,

And she did and she thought it a good idea to go back to the surgeon, and she was still angry at me, for reasons i do not understand, but think perhaps switching doctors is not unreasonable, or moving to Europe where there is medical care, um...

This is longer than I intended, and impossible to complete, but this is the start of something longer, I guess.

The short version now is: shorter thumb, the surgeon amputated more bone, and it's skinnier at the tip, and I think a little more elegant, a little more sleek, and the new pain doctor, when I asked her about the results of the addiction screening where I spoke with a psychologist who looked like a cross between John Cage and George Bush (the younger, the shoeheaded dethroned fucktack), asked me , why, are you concerned? are you doing anything weird? you're not poppin 8 of em at a time are ya? Which i take as a clean bill of mental health, at least as far as wondering if I were in fact creating this pain in my mind. Glad to know I am not. But tonight, tonight, tonight I really wanted to talk about something else, but this will have to live under my tongue, it's double-tongued, and watches, and I think this would be lovely already if it were not so lovely, and this is the truest part of this part which is one part of a longer part, but the longer part also has her written in its sleeve and that's also true...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

untitled

This is a piece that's meant to be projected onto a body wrapped in a white sheet.  You have to see it, really, this is just what goes onto the sheet.  You need to see it on a real body.  It doesn't work without the body.  Nothing really works without the body, nothing is working when the body is missing, and the body is missing.  This is a piece for a body that's meant to be seen on a body around the time of the election in the U.S. part of the Americas, meant to be seen in a country that is or is not in the U.S. part of the Americas on a body that is.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Nothing to see here

So Monday was interesting, this would be Monday the what is it, 6th of October, for a number of reasons, all of which have something to do with my larger projects (oh, I should mention, the larger projects here all have to do with Narcissus and Echo, so being in that realm, it's all about them, which is to say, me, and often, you, yes you).  Sunday night, I am putting together final touches in Final Cut Pro
(and while I write, my thumb my thumb, it's started up again, hurting like hell, this is a revolution of mirrors, this year...)
on a project for Monday, which I want to post here, but think there might be restrictions on nudity, even though it's kind of artistic nudity, you could still hit the pause thing and see all sorts of obscenity which will bring our puritanical world to its, um, knees, change subject please...
thank you.
project for Monday, and wondering, hm, some of these shots are making me uneasy, and more than anything, exhibitionistic, which might be true, but even so, you have to pretend you are not, even if it's like a date, which this is not.
the performance was not a date, and neither is this blog.
So I asked my ex if she would look at this, and let me know if it crossed lines or whatever--not to speak against crossing lines, just wanting to get a tone right for the piece--she said sure, so I took my computer to her house, and put together an Ikea chair, but that's another story, and another story about my daughter dancing around like a water faerie, which is one of the funniest goddam things I've ever seen, but another story is the one I can't tell right now but am trying--
She (ex) looked at video (me, her ex), and the bits I felt uneasy about read like that to her too, but even more so, and she pointed out parts that were homoerotic (I don't want to not be homoerotic, but apparently wearing a fishing net has enormous metaphorical value to me, but reads more like something in a biker bar to other parts of the world, complicated this is complicated...), and parts where I looked like a naked balding Harpo coming on to a hooker, which, all these are good, Harpos and hookers and bikers and nets, but not the tone for this piece, so...I was editing these parts and it's coming together, and a friend of ours stops by, and my Ex asks her, Do you want to see Chris naked?
and Friend says, No!
and Ex says, It's on video.
and Friend says, Sure!
but it's not ready yet, and it's rendering, and besides, now it's been through a curatorial process and is now ready to be a piece of art (and not exhibitionist, but still, would be lovely to catch the attention of some witchy woman with an interesting nose and glassy eyes, and it did, but she left before we could talk, and my heart breaks for another unpossible muse...another story...)--
But I'm interested in this for many reasons--
the next day, a class project idea which has a nude art model, and I think it's great, only, hm, it might be a Really Big Deal to our puritanical world, because we seem to be in another swing toward covering the bared ankles again...and nuff said on that, but yes, trouble, but really only because of the live, and on video, not such a big deal at all.
so I wonder why the live body is more threatening than the video body, which is inviting...
and wonder about the gender thing here--the shots that were suggestive were all ones which broke the frame, where the figure stepped toward the camera, like a lover like a lover oh like a lover, only like Harpo stepping like a lover like a...
and my Ex theorizes that the woman nude is always presented as a present or a sexual gift, but a man only if he moves in the direction of the desiring gaze...it's more complicated, but seems yes, in this direction, I would like to know more...
my project, though, which I will figure out how to show somewhere on the web so it can be referred to, is about European bodies, ancestors that lived near the Danube, and then these inscribed on a series of nude bodies, which are all mine as a stand-in for my family's ghosts, and then this is all projected on my live body which is covered with white cloth.
and there are of course, in all this, issues of my year as a Yawo, where I have to be extremely careful about images of me, and wear cloth, and be dressed like a monk, and live like a monk, which I have, against my will and desires, but why the hell should I complain about that, it's been interesting, and I love and adore you, I do, enough...
so my project here was playing with the male nude in video on a live male body covered head to toe, and the face not clear anywhere, but you know it's me, because of my strangely shaped ears, and missing 1/4 inch of thumbness on my left hand...but I have questions about how this reads, and would like to hear any answers, especially from the witchy woman with the interesting nose (you know who you are, you sat behind me and complained that your finger smelled like rubber...it happens, oh it happens...)--
and I assure you and I adore you--
Krzysztof

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

space







These fotos are from the performance space on Fillmore in downtown Phoenix, just so you can see what it looks like in here...

postale

N--
I have a twin too. Looks nothing like me.
love your games, funny, funny, funny...
I love your shoulder, trembly, trembly.
I love your gravity, it makes me fall, and I fall, fall, fall.
I am an assemblage of metal and wood, just like you said.
Love,
--E
PS Moving to Berlin, taking the letters and the sounds with me.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Letter to Echo

Dear Echo--
I wish I could tell you all the things we used to tell each other, but you're not around, and I don't think you ever really were. I keep meeting people with your name, but none of them look like you, and none of them look like me, none of them are you, and I can't find you. I think some of them love or loved me a little, and maybe I loved or still love them a little, but none of them are you. I can't find you. No one could ever read me like you could. So I'm left looking for your traces in a country I don't know, and I wonder, I wonder if, when I get to look into mirrors again, if I'll still wonder if I'll see you, coming from behind me, like a hurricane, like a hunger, like a message from the water. And I wonder if I'll find a way to stop looking for you before the Summer is over, because I don't know how to be with the people who remind me of you, when they turn out not to be you. And they always do. And I wonder if you're living behind the eyes of the woman on the train, in the cafe, on the street, checking my eyes to see if I've stopped looking for you, because I think that when I do, I might decide to enter this life, as if I were born to walk in it. I miss you on all the corners of the earth.
--N

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

hair of the god "s" (3.1)

This is a durational piece with some nods to Ana Mendieta. A note about the objects: this began with a bunch of yellow hair I found on the side of the road on the way to see the Underground exhibit in Linz, where art about memory and forgetting is set in a huge series of tunnels where Hitler had planned to store Jewish art after the final solution. So the hair is a kind of metaphor for all kinds of mourning and longing. The string is red and yellow taffeta, which turns into a nice papery texture in the mouth, and makes it easy to work with. Red and yellow string have had a big metaphorical association for me that gets more traction over time; on an obvious level, they can be seen as iconic colors for the inside of the body, on other levels, I can't explain. In the final image, the hair is tied like a Kongo packet, charged with some other ingredients and prayers from my mouth and heart, to be placed as an offering later that can't be documented. So this is a piece about the documentation, more or less.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

xo_tact test



This is another idea for some of the projections to be used in "xo_tact." This is the same video, but using a few different filters to move the image that will be on the screen toward something a little more abstract. I know it's still a representation, or a symbol, but I mean, you can't see like eyes. It's creepy. No eyes. Creepy, huh.

Casa Abandonda (Fack of nazi)

This house is probably appearing in a lot of TI projects, and I'm going to add to that list. These are stills from video, mostly looking for some useful stuff for the thing I'm working on now, but I think there's a lot of accidental footage that will come into play too. There are a lot of ghosts here, you can probably tell. If you look close at the image third from the bottom here, you might see a face. If you look at the image below that, the shadows make it look a little bit like a crushed I <3 NY Trash Can. I didn't doctor this at all. Facking spooky.











Tuesday, July 22, 2008

mystomachhurts

This is a projection for my stomach, it's a couple tunnels on both sides of the Danube, I think the title probably says enough. It's part of the x series of works, more than likely the "xo_xy," version, but I might end up doing this somewhere here, somewhere in an inappropriate place with bright lighting, so the image will be invisible, but I'll stand somewhere with my shirt lifted. This is in part because last weekend's fair was filled inexplicably with men who had their shirts lifted, or pot bellies and writing on their shirts about their bellies. It's an interesting tradition, so I would be taking part in this performance of masculinity while trying to isolate and desegment its codes, as well as provide an invisible projection to suggest a poetic reality that is not accessible without the dark.

Friday, July 4, 2008

angelcorpse



Another prototype thing for the piece in progress, "xo_tact: manchamos/we stain each other," this is an image to be projected on a body, or gauze in front of a body, or onto a body in front of a moving car (if things go terribly wrong).

spectershake



More messing around with images to play with on the live body in performance.

bodyfire2


Ok, so I tried a few things with this, and even though it seems elementary, deciding to film the flames in the same light as the body seemed like a revelation in how to get the filters on this to play like I wanted. This is an image that would be projected on a screen, and a live body performs in front of the image to get a double belly breathing kind of effect.

xo_tact



This is the video for the June 28th excerpt from this new work, "xo_tact: manchamos/we stain each other(because we care)." For the live part, we (Jenny Cohen and I) stood behind a gauze-covered wardrobe rack, dressed like blood-stained faeries, eating meat (or fruit roll ups that look like meat) off of bones. The rest is very self-explanatory and clear.

from xo_tic


This is Eva Hamilton from our "xo_tic" film for performance. I wrote the text and did most of the video work for this. (I'm trying to find someone else to blame for the sound on this, still looking...) It's a little hard to position this work, since most of it really depends on the live performers even though the majority of the image and words are recorded. But here, in this piece, she and I were always present in the performance, sitting on a bed behind multiple screens, controlling the media from a laptop, and talking quietly about other things. The viewer then, is watching film images which seemed like a random collection of vampyrs, mermaids, and people pretending to be in Godard movies, and also talking about the war (not pretend). The images cumulatively start to form an idea of the performers' attempts to represent themselves, and find spaces to escape the representation. So this was a piece about finding escape routes. Or other things, too. But for sure it was about us, and positively certain in a cartesian sense that this was about you, and still is, right now...

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Studio & Research Project

Art (studio) project:
Working title: “xo_3” (xo_tact, xo_xx, and xo_xy), a trilogy of films for live performance.

Description: This project will be composed of three separate works, roughly 60 minutes in length each, called “films for performance.” They will be performed and developed primarily in the The Basement gallery space in downtown Phoenix, AZ, USAmerica (this is also my house). These will all be developed through a combination of live installations (where I will develop live moments focusing specifically on the “live” body), and showings of the video work, both of which will be shown to open audiences at the First Friday events in downtown Phoenix. These will be followed by workshop performances, where the live and the video are put together before small audiences, and ultimately move to other venues.

The first part of the trilogy, “xo_tact,” takes desire and the theme of “staining,” or “marking,” as a thematic metaphor for the uneasy relations between the U.S. and Mexico. Of the trilogy, this will be perhaps the most directly readable as political in terms of content and aesthetic approach. The filming space will consist of images of white, red, and green (the colors of the Mexican flag, as well as a nod to Kieslowski, and Amores Perros’ nod to the Three Colors Trilogy). Each color will be used to represent and re-imagine notions of, respectively, purity, sacrifice, and vegetal regeneration. The white images are drawn from religious (specifically Spanish Catholic) iconography. The red images come from Indigenous ritual (here indigenous is used as an umbrella term that’s consciously too broad, to play on the Euro- & Euro-USAmerican notions of indigeneity in Mexico and the tropes of blood sacrifice, which is a colonialist notion). The green will come from mythical figures and icons of regeneration, such as the green people in the forest, corn husks, and skin-shedding reptiles and amphibians. In the live performance, I will work with my collaborators in developing gestures where the live bodies intersect and/or reject the projections.

The second part, “xo_xx,” will confront desire for the Muse, and the conflation of female identity with the sources of inspiration under the male gaze. The iconic imagery here will draw from figures in Santería cosmology. Specifically, I will be working with four Orishas: Yemaya (the Mother of the Ocean), Oshun (the Goddess of Love and the River), Oya (the Spirit of the Wind and the Cemetery Gate), and Yewa (the Worms at the Bottom of the Grave that Eat the Flesh, as well as the Exiled Daughter at the Edge of the Wave). This will be the first work where I draw from Santerîa iconography directly. I will be using video images from various location in natural and urban settings, and would like to collaborate more virtually on this than other pieces (i.e., where the other works will depend on the live presence of collaborators, here I would like to work with collaborators in their absence, where they are manipulated as images and sounds and gestures; this is to foreground the notion that the Male Gaze is in effect, but will also play with narrativity in denying closure to these manipulations and gestures, so that the figures and collaborators, ultimately, should overpower the performer in terms of complexity).

The third, “xo_xy,” will focus on the idea of Narcissus and Echo as a model of normative behavior. Again with the female-male thing. Here, I’m interested in using this metaphor in creating a piece where the figures of Narcissus and Echo intertwine and change places and mingle, like a very unwieldy and unhealthy strand of dna. Here, I want to play with visual mirrors (water physical mirrors, web cams, and live feed) as well as audio mirrors, to make a long meditation on the processes of reflection, repetition, and projection as they operate in mechanisms of desire.

This past Spring I finished a work called “xo_tic,” which was the first move toward making “films for performance.” This signals a shift in aesthetic approach, where the eye (camera, receptor of objects of desire, gazer and gazed, tantric keyhole) is becoming equal to my interest in how the tongue (spoken, written) works in live, mediated performance. This is inspired by chasing rabbits down strange tunnels and getting lost, but not caring, and wanting to articulate an ineffable sensation of life as a journey. I try to find it with words, I hear people I adore speaking ineffable things that seem true, or making pictures that also ring true, but open up a motion toward longing that I want to pursue through making these events which are captured but ephemeral. This trilogy then is inspirited by rabbits, some with human faces, and would speak to these rabbits, as a means of deconstructing the hegemony of the human audience member. Similarly, it’s work dedicated to spirits (again, some with human faces).

Production schedule:

June 28, 2008: show first segment of “xo_tact” at Space55, Phoenix.

July-August: Shoot video and collect material for “xo_xx,” in Austria.

August: Begin second segment of “xo_tact,” The Basement.

September 5: First Friday: present segment of “xo_tact.”/Body

October 3: First Friday; present segment of “xo_tact.”/Video

October: Shoot video and begin collecting material for xo_xy.”

November 7: First Friday; present rough of “xo_tact.”

November 21: Performance of “xo_tact” at Teatro Caliente, PHiX Gallery, Phoenix.

December 5: FF; segment of “xo_xx.”/Body

January, 2009: prepare for NY residency (17-19)

January-February: Collect and refine material for “xo_xx,” continue with collecting for “xo_xy.”

February 6: FF; segment of “xo_xx.”/Video

March 6: FF; present rough of “xo_xx.”

March: present workshop version of “xo_xx.”

April 3: FF; segment of “xo_xy.”/Body

May 1: FF; segment of “xo_xy.”/Video

June 5: FF; present rough of xo_xy.”

June: present workshop version of “xo_xy.”

Note: the First Friday events, which are where a mass of people come to downtown Phoenix to look at art, hold enormous potential for populist works, and very little experimental performance work is seen here. This gallery space (The Basement) will be showing segments of these works-in-progress as repeatable, short performances on these Fridays. And they serve as good deadlines for the work as it progresses, and as people start to catch on to what we’re doing. Unknown quantities of people will be coming through, so we have to show something new each time, which is fortunate for us and them, because we can show new things.


Research Project
“Narcissus' Twin Sister, and Echo's Stain: Deleuzian Blues”

Through the lenses of Jane Blocker and Amelia Jones, the trope of the performance artist as narcissist has been re-examined and re-constructed through various feminist schools of thought, and I would like to look at the Narcissus and Echo stories as a contextual framework for performative practice. I would like to suggest that the desire to see oneself represented and echoed is a construct that might be useful for performance, not only in the content, but also in the working practice, that is, in the subjectivities of the performers while they are constructing work. I want to begin by examining the Lacanian notion of the mirror stage, and the pre-mirror stage, in the formation of subjective identity, for some foundational analyses, and because it is a "lack" in my own theoretical framework up to this point. I would then begin to plan an escape route through the works of Gilles Deleuze, which will then turn my inquiry into a process of investigating rhizomatic connections, and occasionally reigning these in to make them useful (so they may continue to act as lines of flight in my thinking and in my practice). Eventually, this would become a 3000+ word document, which will act as a research project technically, but should also function for me as a very useful map.

I am interested in the trajectory of movement from Lacan to Deleuze for very specific reasons. In my performance work, desire is always the subject and the object (this notion enhanced recently by looking into the films of Godard). In the process of making work, I am involved in somewhat intensive processes (like anyone), in intimate working conditions (like anyone working within walls), and the power relation is constantly shifting (in idea circumstances) where different participants become Narcissus and Echo and varying combinations of the two. In performance, this construction is made much more obvious because of the nature of representation and repetition, where the visible and the invisible can alternately form assumptions toward reflection and echo based on the spectatorial desire. However, although it seems interesting to me to investigate these constructions according to the Lacanian models (Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real), I would like to suggest that taking a Deleuzian turn will unveil radical possibilities. In Lacan, desire can be perceived as a lack and an impulse toward fulfillment of that lack. In Deleuze (this, stating it very simply and erroneously, although I'm using it here just as a shorthand without assuming any authority) there are possibilities, through difference and repetition, to make desire useful, as an opening toward the immanence of arrival (as opposed to, or perhaps complimented by, or even constituted by, the Eternal Return). In this, then, I am curious to investigate and even lose myself in the rhizomatic geographies of longing, where the subject and object, entirely locked in a search for the sound and sight of each other as "Other," become not simply objects or subjects, but radical lines of flight in and of themselves. This line of inquiry would, I suspect, lead to radical possibilities for the performing subject, as well as open lines of flight in working practice, for a process that may hold or hide liberatory possibilties.

There are, finally, two directions, or lines of flight, which I will include (with the intention and awareness that this may split into more connections that will lead to other lines of thought): gender representation and ritual representation. In my work, these ideas of representation and power are explored with the intention of distruption and deconstruction, and often the re-representations appear in degradaded form. In a post-feminist aesthetics, is it possible to investigate how the male body functions in live performance, or what roles it might play as sexual signifier? Another question I want to follow, using this framework, is how the notion of representation functions in Santeria Aesthetics (which seems here like a tangential notion but is actually absolutely central in my work). In the year of initiation into Santería, the Yawo (“bride of the secret”) has a number of prohibitions. One of these is mirrors. For the first three months, s/he is not “allowed” to look into mirrors. This is interesting to me to consider as a metaphorical re-creation of the self through dissolution of the ego. David Brown, art historian and scholar of Santería, suggested this Lacanian pre-mirror stage notion to me, and the idea of self as created through its reflection is fascinating to me, and in this context, where the ritual nature of the year mirrors many of Lacan’s ideas on the formation of self. Of course, this will lead to more sensibilities and possibilities which, I hope, will radically change as the project continues, so that I might become more aware of my own tendencies in formation and production, and work more consciously toward a praxis of Immanence.





Bibliography:

Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle. 1996. 
The Latest Word from Echo
. New Literary History - Volume 27, Number 4, Autumn, pp. 621-640

Causey, Matthew. 1999. ‘The Screen Test of the Double: The Uncanny Performer in the Space of Technology’. Theatre Journal Vol. 51, No. 4, pp. 383–94

Colebrook, Claire. Gilles Deleuze. 2002. Taylor and Francis.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guatarri. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. U of Minnestoa Press.

Dolar, Mladen. 1991. "I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding-Night": Lacan and the Uncanny. October, Vol. 58, Rendering the Real

Harrison, Charles and Paul J. Wood (eds). 2002. Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Wiley-Blackwell.

Lacan, Jaques. 2007. Ecrits. Norton.

Petek, Polona. 2003. “Narcissus and Echo at the Movies.” Paper presented at the University of Melbourne.

Rajchman, John. 2000. The Deleuze Connections. MIT.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1993. ‘Echo + Women and Narcissism’. New Literary History Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 17–43

Zizek, Slavoj. 2007. How to Read Lacan. Norton.




Points of connection:

The research project focuses on identity formation in contexts where the re-presentation is limited by the mirror and/or echo of the other. I am interested in exploring how this links theoretically with my praxis in the installation-performances, which are in themselves conscious explorations and explosions of re-presentation. I would like to use the linkages between the spiritual systems (particularly Santeria iconographies) and the mythological projections in the artwork, to come to an idea of where my work might be headed. At the same time, articulating these ideas in both discursive and aesthetic practices, will help me to move toward a point where I can articulate where I want to speak from. This is also an approach toward an “open system,” where I can more consciously use the media to manufacture images of desire in order to develop work that is not strictly ironic, but speaks from a body that is under construction.

Criteria for evaluation:
I would like to use audience interviews, interviews particularly with extreme audiences, to ask about the work's reception, and what it does to the viewer. This is material that is, of course, impossible to quantify, and measurements are rather dubious, so I would like to take a more radical approach to audience feedback, and find ways of engaging in dialogue outside of the standard q&a format. Asking for immediate response from the extreme members would be helpful, then, and conversations on the porch afterwards might help work toward a more useful methodology of developing the work.

I would also like to look at the media as a whole when each work is finished, and assess it according to whether or not it might be seen as a completed work in itself, and if not, begin to work toward an aesthetic where the filmed work is itself a consistent whole, and where the performance work is also a consistent whole (here, by consistent, I might prefer the word autonomous, although the intention is not to make these autonomous art works, but rather develop a way of working where both elements are equally strong and "present").

I will also continue the side inquiry toward public reception of male nudity, and see if there is anything to be learned about possibilities in performance.

Lastly, I would like to use my blog page to mark some of the more personal discoveries in linking my identities as a new priest in an earth religion with my student status beginning an MFA in New Media, and see where these connections might inform my research and art. This last is a sidenote rather than a criteria for evaluation.

Past and future, connections:
Moving from theatrical texts for the stage where I served as a writer, and then added in performer and director and producer, I am decided on moving this year toward a practice that is more blatantly interdisciplinary, where the projects are more performance and media-based, so that their associations with theater (experimental) become even less apparent. Beyond that, looking into next year, I am looking toward developing practices that are simultaneously more performance art-based, as well as more filmic. So this year's mentor is based in the practices of live performance, and I anticipate that next year I will work with a mentor who is based in making film (for live performance and/or for video only).


Summary: My artistic and research project is toward developing an aesthetics of re-presentations of desire through examining the trope of Narcissus and Echo as collapsible categories that could yield liberatory methodologies of meaning-making.

Friday, June 27, 2008

from "xo_tact"


Chasing faeries--this is one of the projections we're working with for this next performance; these are projected on a body through a gauze-y kind of cloth.  These are scary fuckin faeries, don't be fooled.  The performers here are Jenny Cohen and Eliza Zavala.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

from "Coyote Love"




from "Coyote Love"

Elina Zavala and Franc Gaxiola in "Coyote Love." (2008)

from "Deseo/Desire"

This is from "Deseo/Desire," a mediated performance created with Natalia Jaeger (she is the one who is responsible for the excellent video work here).  This piece focuses on media representations of desire, the realm of the dream (that's a loose catageory, but so are most categories I think...), and the vapid; we performed as talking heads with tense bodies in a talk show somewhere in the Americas, where we were constantly invaded and erased by representations and projections from the Surround.  Like most live performance, better to see it, of course, but this gives a good glimpse at some of the things we saw while we worked.  A big debt to Jelinek here, who's writings for theatre, translated by Gitta Honegger, and well as an untranslated interview between them, served as a sort of rhizomatic lynch-pin for this, and it's her (El-Frida's) words that we see here projected on the body and whispered on the ear of the person who seems to be you.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

xo_tic post post


This is Chris Danowski & Eva Hamilton in a version of the imaginary.  From "xo_tic" (2008).

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...