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.

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

Letter wherein Narcissus calls Echo a Bighead

E--

Your head is too large for your body.

--N

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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).