Saturday, November 21, 2009

magnetic fields


this is a blog without caps
tonight, jfk pageant, jeff falk's brainchild, a room of people waiting to have the party for him, he never showed, and we go back to 1963, november 22nd, stuck in a space of waiting, a performance about memory, 7 participants making new memory work about a memory that shifts as much as the zapruder film, marcelino quiƱones channeling rfk, barton doing monroe stand up, and exploding watermelons, and jeff giving his santa claus story about the year after the shooting, and memory comes in to talk to us about what it's done to us, and what have we done to memory, avoiding it most of the time...
but here we are making new work, and it seems like on the verge of something again, something done before and something new like unfermented pomegranate wine (just cuz i don't drink, you can have fermented it doesn't bother me)...
somehow sitting in the dark i'm thinking about the festival, and haven't been able to put what i wrote to publish, so many mixed feelings about that, and don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (but most people would not be hurt, but still, don't want to be gossipy).
marcelino and klute both talking about the way it works in phoenix, people will not come after a wave has hit, and the last one in phoenix crested in 2006 maybe? it reaches a high water mark here, the high mark is still low, and that's the 'this far and no further' for art here,
maybe another generation can see this shift, and not be true, i hope you read this and i hope it's you...
but at some point it has to be clear that this is about getting people in, but then it's never about that, after all...the best work i've done has been in small places, with small eyes that connect in the dark (big eyes fine too but all eyes look small in the dark)...performing in large spaces, done that too, and i like it, large crowds, but it's never the same as a small packed room where everyone is humming,
so, we're doing this work, and it's fulfilling while we're doing it, and it's something that seems like a history written as we work it, and so what there are only a few people, and then some more, and then some more...how it works, in phoenix, people do brave and innovative things, and small crowds see it and they talk, and a month later everyone in town says they saw it...talking and texting are almost the same as showing up...
but it's always been small crowds watching revolutions.
we could do a history lesson on it, but safer just to say: dada cabaret did not draw the crowds as much as mama mia, and one of these meant something essential to the history of art...and aimed to hit that bullet hole of memory, and hit, even if it didn't feel like it at the time,
so, we take our best talents and make things in small rooms and wish it were larger, and our chronic dissatisfaction follows us all over like a strange, nervous dog,
but spirit dogs are starting to gather, and they know when it means something, that something's happening...and it's up to us to let them tell us when it's working, and only they can know, and maybe we perform for them...
the next work, on obsession, a birthday party, i am enjoying watching energy gather for this, and gathering the energy is also helping, note to self: gather when u are feeling like nothing is happening, and nothing is good.
today it is good, and good enough, and just that.
and there's a spark in my eyes besides, because something is starting to make me feel like my head is on its way to turning in a new direction...
the work tonight: i have the zapruder film, about 8 seconds, and play with loops on fcp, making slower and slower then faster, and distortions, like memory distortions, the film always cuts right before the shot, so it's sweet and so nostalgic, because everyone still has a nose, and by the end it is like black and white jagged fire,
this projected over my naked body, i meditate in lotus, covered with cascarilla, a white ghost, or a monk on the verge of self-immolation...(thank u ralph cordova for getting that, and seeing more things in it than i knew), the film is on my belly, history written on the body, a trope but it's a generation's trope, and i am claiming it for the one following the boomers, too, but so is everyone else not a boomer in the room, we are in this together...
over my head a ziplock bag filled with water, and a needle prick is enough to make drops fall, small enough to make them fall slow enough so that you can see the water falling through the light of the projector...
and the soundtrack is jfk talking about conspiracy and media, gunpowder & the printing press,
and this powder added at the end, that turns to blood when water hits it,
so watching the film is watching a belly breathing, but then images distorting, and all the while sympathy for the devil plays and builds, and when the water hits the head it sprays just a bit, the dust on the head makes a splash of dirt that looks like smoke, and then it drips down to blood,
and i writhe and feel something like a dog running through the veins, and fall forward, and drops on the back drops on the back, and hm...
my friend says this is an interesting part of a cycle and to keep pushing this,
and i think he might be right.
and i'm charmed by this, and charmed by something i can't even speak about right now, hoping that in a month you might remember it as if you were there,
but here in my cold house, getting ready to sleep under 4 blankets and a dog, i think about you, and bid you a good night, wondering about the stories that are about to pour out of your mouth like water and smoke and ghosts of the dogs that follow us between these worlds where art does something that resembles matter.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

lux, fascism, luxembourgian german is more like french

FARSICKNESS
The macchiato here is a masterpiece.
Ok, I don't understand why I am dreaming about nazis all the time, but here's another one...woke up this morning, almost cried, hugged the dog who licked my head.
That wasn't the dream though this was:
In a sort of hotel at the edge of the world, a usual hotel, one in other dreams, with cliffs or fields or something at the edges that turns into the end of the city...so Hitler is coming, and everyone knows, so we're all making last-minute preparations. Everyone is aware of what this means, so it's all very clearly thought. Old people and the extremely young will be taken out first, so they are put away in rooms with a lot of beds and closets, so the old people don't have to struggle much, and the babies don't have to watch.
While these plans are being made, I am also trying to figure out the final schedule for the teato caliente festival, it's supposed to happen in a ditch this year, just outside the hotel,
and while I'm getting ready for that, I'm talking to my ex, her grandmothers have been moved to where they won't have to struggle so much when they're killed (they're both already dead, there's a lot of dead people in this dream, I did get to see them), and we're talking about the festival, and what to do with Elli. It's sort of a nice conversation, and I can tell she'll be all right, even though we may not see each other again for a long time...but before the festival starts, just outside the window, in a ditch, Hitler's showing up early, and I see him in a car with Eva Braun, coming down the street. The car starts to turn into an arrow, but then they turn around and decide to enter around the back.
This all means that it's over, and the genocide's about to start again, and no festival or so fucking what festival, I have Elli and we have to get her somewhere safe.
We're climbing up and up, she said good bye to her ma, and we're going up, and at an attic, inside the attic (it's a brightly lit attic, lots of sun coming through) there are rows of beds hanging in the air, they go up at least 13 rows; this is like Anne Frank & the doors in Monster's Inc.
It's me, Elli, & my brother, who is dressed as a woman, with red lipstick.
We see these beds, and this is a good spot, they won't find us here.
I want Elli on one with me, so I can hold her, and keep her quiet when they come looking, but my brother explains that they can't fit two, only one per mattress, or we would fall to our deaths, but at least this way we will be safe, because these are the beds from our childhood, he explains.
He is telling me his friend is supposed to be bringing his favorite snack, but he's realizing that she would have to come in the next minute, because we are about to seal the attic where we will wait for at least a day and a half, or maybe 15 years, for it to be safe again. He is looking helpless in his lipstick, which does not smear, while he is realizing he will not get his snack, and he is trying not to cry.

(why am i dreaming about nazis? and what the fuck is this saying about art? i am reading about representation, and unrepresentable blabla, Lancier's The Future of the Image, lots of nazis in that, but who are they in this dream world? i used to think they were culture nazis here, the supremacists that keep things mediocre, but this is something much larger than that even, and i'm very angry about all of this...also, yesterday i find myself thinking about the Gaels on me mum's side, and the ones who are from Luxembourg, and wondering what they heard when they were talking to trees, because they certainly did talk to trees, and the trees talked back)...

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