INPUT #2 - Me, Myself and I

INPUT ITERATION #2 SPRING 2010

Me Myself and I Published by INPUT INPUT FOUNDATION Executive Editor, RenÊe Vara 141 Wooster Street, Suite 4D New York, NY 10012 www.inputjournal.org Š January, 2010 INPUT FOUNDATION All rights reserved for all contributors, artists and writers including reproductions and images. All efforts have been made to secure the proper permissions and credits, please email info@inputjournal.org if there are any errors, omissions, or claims.

The moral right of INPUT and its various contributors including the artistic images and/or reproductions included herein to be identified as the author(s) of this work has been asserted by INPUT in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by anyone by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and INPUT FOUNDATION. ISSN 2152 - 7318 (print) ISSN 2152 - 7326 (online)

(Conversations with Oneself)

A project by Elena Bajo + Warren Neidich

Table of Contents 8 Elena Bajo + Warren Neidich INVITATION 14 Meena Alexander Composition in Slow Time 20 Avi Alpert No body died today 36 Eric Anglès open edition ygr 22 Marco Antonini the graduate center doodles vol. 1 32 Boško Blagojević SCRIPT FOR A SHORT FILM 38 Boshko Boskovic Questions about myself, 2009 42 Daniel Bozhkov Everything 52 Tyler Coburn WL14/TC09, 2009 Manifesto 58 Jon Cuyson Sleepwalkers 70 Keren Cytter August December 80 Judy Dater Eating; Ms Clingfree; Queen of the Night; Scream 86 Josechu Dávila HORROR VASTITATIS, 1 October 2009 96 Jeremiah Day Tarlabasi Crawl 100 Jonatan Habib Engqvist & Vendela Fredricson My, oh My. A Story of Love Table of Contents 4

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102 Andrea Fraser Projection, 2008

214 Adina Popescu Holidays in Cambodia

108 Pablo Helguera Otto’s Self Board Meeting

224 Ana Prvacki Surfaces for Narcissism

112 Claire Hooper World of Interiors (magazine)

226 Sean Raspet No

116 Alexis Knowlton Sweet Nothings

242 Georgia Sagri JANE, Performance and audio instructions, Exhibition, New York, 2009

126 Chris Kraus The Failed Collective 128 Ajay Kurian Beneath the finest silks and the coarsest stuff, he calls, 2009

250 Amie Siegel Author, Author, 2009

134 Sean Landers Art, Life and God: “C-H-R-I-S”, “Mercury Breeze”, “Cruel Dark Sky”, “To Anyone”

254 Alexandre Singh Notes (a character named Miss-Chief; concerning the possible asymmetry of time; a room full of chairs and stools, arguing)

142 Annika Larsson Proof I’m Blind 150 Thomas Lawson Thomas Lawson: pages from a sketchbook, 2009 160 David Maljkovic Video stills from “These Days”, 2005 and dialogue extracts from “Easy English”

by Living Language

262 Andrew Smaldone A Closer Account of Myself 274 Erik Smith The Oneiric House (2009) 290 Gabriele Stellbaum Bartleby

174 Amir Mogharabi A Form and a Face

298 Mathilde ter Heijne Fake Female Artist Life

182 Anneè Olofsson “Put your mouth into the mouthpiece and whisper in my ear admit to me the things you can’t admit to yourself admit to me and no one else”

314 Eve K. Tremblay EKTBF451

188 Alix Pearlstein Series of video stills from Finale, part of a project entitled TALENT, 2009 196 Falke Pisano symbols ( from: “Figures of Speech”) 204 Angelo Plessas Poems from RobotPoetryReading.com, Angelo Plessas, 2009

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7 Jakob Schillinger

324 Heidi Voet Hello 326 Martha Wilson Art Sucks, Premiere 330 Artists’ Bios

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INPUT Iteration #2 Me, Myself and I (Conversations with Oneself ) INVITATION What is the role of the dialogic process in the production and construction of art?

Artists, writers and filmmakers, just to name a few, typically have in their heads simultaneously, internal conversations and multiple voices.

On one hand some of these voices might be echoes of past artist’s research and on the other, they might be reverberations of other contemporary discourses. Conversely, these multiple expressions might be a resonant cacophony of multiple personality disorders sampled from a world gone mad.

Sometimes the end result represents different points of view that accumulate to form an assemblage of thoughts manifested on the surface of the canvas, in the body of the text, or the flash of the cinematic screen.

How might these transient discussions taking place in the eye of the artist’s mind materialize into a set of rules that help determine a medium of choice or a process?

In other words, how do these multiple internal voices and discussions characterize and materialize aesthetic production?

In this second issue of INPUT, we have invited a variety of artists to produce text and imagebased works that make visible the invisible development of one’s personal thinking process, however radical and unformed it might be.

The focus of this iteration is specifically centered on the simultaneous dialogues artists have with themselves including their associated internal conflicts and diatribes. As a dialogic exercise of self-discovery and/or reflexive mindfulness, this edition of INPUT seeks to explore how an artwork becomes a disembodied representation of an artist’s internal voice in all its contradictory and multifarious nature.

Artist’s submissions should explore the subjectivity of one’s view of oneself in all its concurrent forms—from psychological examinations of the “splintered” self to those of “historical” narrative as it blossoms from childhood into adulthood.

Elena Bajo + Warren Neidich INVITATION 8

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4) SUBMIT BY EMAIL ONLY (please submit your materials to either Elena or Warren) Each contribution to INPUT should define a process, create an intervention, or present a composition wherein the ideology of the “self ” is examined as a conscious/unconscious construct that ranges from the modernist notion of a “core unchanging self ” to the postmodernist notion of “masked self ” to the post-modern modernist “re-enacted historical self ”.

Each work submitted should engage the problematic of these internal sensibilities as to incarnate the page with harmonious and/or discordant aesthetics.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: (please follow carefully)

INPUT 2 Guest Editors: Elena Bajo - elena@elenabajo.com

Warren Neidich - warrenneidich@gmail.com

INPUT Executive Editor: Renée Vara - editor@inputjournal.org 5) DUE DATES: Please submit your work NO LATER than October 15, 2009.

You are invited to produce a text and/or image based work for:

6) EACH PARTICIPANT:

“Me, Myself and I (Conversations with Oneself)”

Will receive 1 free copy of INPUT (limited edition)

1) IMAGES:

May reproduce submitted work in other media and format(s) with written permission + proper citation of INPUT

Black and White production images only Must be produced at 350 dpi. Send both .tif or jpeg and also .pdf if you require special layout 8 pages total (front and back) but if you have special requirements let us know PRINTED JOURNAL SIZE: 23 cm (H) x 16 cm (W) (approx. 9 inches H x 6 5/16 inches W).

IMAGE SIZE REQUIREMENTS: 350 dpi, tif/jpeg 2) TEXT: Please send a .doc file, Courier style 9 point font size Not to exceed 750 words, but if you have special requirements please let us know 3) ALL SUBMISSIONS: Must clearly indicate your name + title of piece Must be accompanied by 150 word bio including interests, exhibitions and publications which will appear in the edition Signed agreement/permission to reproduce by INPUT is required. Please note: all artists will retain the copyright to images/texts, but must agree to allow INPUT to use it both in print and online along with proper credits. See attached permission to reproduce form. No artist will be published without a completed and signed form.

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Enter

Composition in Slow Time Day 1 I am writing to myself as it were from a great distance, putting it on the computer screen so I don’t slip up.

The screen is a mirror that allows me to be – the imagination in its incompletion living out a shining darkness. * MA why send emails to yourself?

It’s pitiful really.

Trusting extravagant distance, as if space might succumb in this way and the soul reveal itself.

Soul?

Bizarre traveling noumenon, luminous flesh, the cast iron grid of the body cannot allow too much of you, The scrim of things radiant with disaster allows you in.

That is all, a meager foothold.

This is what you call your history.

Day 2 You have been reading the Mu’ allaqa in translation.

Why? So that sounds of Arabic from that place you can never return to, will sound in your ear.

The echoes are what make the future happen, especially in this tourbillon of a city.

Stop! To weep over the memory of a beloved And the ruin of the house of the beloved In the soft sand that ripples Between al-Dakhul and Hawmal!

Meena Alexander Composition in Slow Time 14

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Day 3

Day 5

There is no day 3. It is day 2 inside out.

You read that a harvest moon will appear tonight.

The yolk of the egg splits free.

Farmers in ancient times used to pick their crops, the sweetest grapes, the most succulent guavas by the silver rays.

Tiny grains of sand in the beloved’s ear spring free Musically to zither and oudh she sang as the caravan halted.

In Manhattan women gather up bits of flint from the edge of the subway track, shards of glass, drops of martini tossed from a bridal suite.

The rocks at the edge of the oasis were colored indigo in moonlight.

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(Note: There is nothing that you can write which will truly allow you to go forward.

Rinse your hair in moonlight, a mother will tell a child, so that your husband comes quickly.

This is in Kerala where you are from.

The mirror is your own palm held up at the edge of the pool of clear water.

This was in another life.)

What does it mean to say, where you are from?

Where indeed?

Day 4

What ontology is sufficient, what flowing water, what light?

When you first saw a mirage you were five years old.

Always there is alterity.

You were traveling with your mother and father in the desert.

In Khartoum moon light swept through the Nile and the water bore within it cities entire, sunken cities, lost metropolis of desire

The train stopped in the desert on the way from Port Sudan to Khartoum, a journey of four days.

It should only have been a day and a night but something happened on the way.

Did the engine catch fire?

To this day you are not sure.

In ancient Egypt the names of the dead were inscribed, backwards so that in deep water they could be read out loud.

Or scribbled onto flesh.

But you saw a whole caravan afloat with its burdens, men with white turbans, red casks of incense and honey, black gunny sacks filled with guns, camels their hooves golden, tipped upside down, into eternity.

Day 6

That was the beginning.

What is his given name in Arabic?

The women came far behind, their faces covered.

How will it translate?

Why their faces were covered I could not tell.

When will he come to me?

In the place from which I came, women never covered their faces. Their faces, arms, torsos shone in sunlight, in the moonlight.

Mama, why do they cover their faces?

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Whose name shall I inscribe on my flesh?

Day 7 You return to the poem Imru’ al-Qays composed at the edge of the sand dune, at the edge of a ruined house where the beloved once lived.

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You read it in the subway, over and over in English translation – the Mu’ allaqa.

Stop! Is how he starts the poem.

Is that any way to start a poem?

Not unless it is able to veer into greatness – which he was able to do.

Evoking the Mu’allaqa, even quoting one of its lines: ‘If my actions grieve you, let us separate your clothes from mine’ you write sitting in a high room, thinking about a man you barely know, making him up in your head.

How will the mirror perfect itself?

When will you stop writing?

________________

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No body died today. I cannot be blamed. I was not there. Someone was talking to myself.

But what’s it matter? Someone was talking to myself. I repeated that old lie. How good and sweet it is to find myself everywhere. How good and sweet is to find myself everywhere. Samuel Beckett. It said: Becky, stop lying. Stop lying, Becky. Said it. I said it. To myself it said itself. It said I, replied myself. I repeated that old lie. Repeated itself. To myself.

It is said that for 6 days in 1492 nobody died. Columbus quickly made up for the excess.

Columbus took journals. All good murderers keep journals. All good journals keep murderers.

That old lie. Writing is. Is writing. Writing is only ever preparing the way for me to have no one to talk to. Not even. Or moreover. But not yet. Writing was preparing me to have no voice to talk with. More than this. Still only one, but more than this. Now the history of this story written as chronicle and not as narrative: October 12, 1pm: No progress.

October 12, 2pm: Some October 12, 2:26pm: Uttered October 12, 2:28:43pm: Words.

October 12, 2:29:23pm: Fewer words.

October 12, 2:46pm: Vague and unclear thoughts.

October 12, 3:01pm: Signs made into pictures.

Some time later: Consider the diagrams:

Step 1: Sort through a series of references.

On the left is philosophy after Hegel. On the right is philosophy after Bergson. On the left is art after Mondrian. On the right is art after Duchamp. On the left is literature after Zukofsky. On the right is literature after Joyce. On the left is music after Schoenberg.

On the right is music after Cage. On the left is politics after Cavaillès. On the right is politics after Marcos.

Step 2: Negate the references and make something absolutely original.

Step 3: Patience.

Step 4: Dialogue with internal polylogue of others’ voices.

Step 5: Realize the absolutely original as the continuous.

Step 6: Attempt to overcome Euro-centrism of references.

Step 7: Fail at Step 6.

Step 8: Re-read references as similarly failed attempts.

Step 9: Proceed.

It is said that for 6 days in 1947 only British children died. What had Becky wanted me to remember? The subject dies before the verb? These words are not mine. These words speak me but they are not mine. A friend makes a joke. The death of the author. We are always already psychographers. A joke makes a friend, a lover, a foe. I don’t recognize the handwriting.

Did I buy the book used? Whose hand is this! The woman on the subway yells, whose hand is this, that is, when the man grabs her. Hanne Darboven. Hanne, oh Hanne. Darby, oh Darby. The epoché in reverse. Empty the subject. Save the world. And who could have known what she was referring to?

Call me Jude, or Thomas. I don’t mind. As you wish. Detritus. Detritus. Through this I write.

Avi Alpert No body died today 20

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Marco Antonini the graduate center doodles vol. 1 22

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September 2009 New York City Boško Blagojević So I’m making this exhibition, it’s right around the corner. Freedom is on the tip of my tongue, if not on my mind exactly.

S.C.Squibb Very American of you, Freedom on the tongue but not in the mind, necessarily. Why freedom?

Boško Blagojević It’s become an ugly word to me. Enduring freedom, Iraqi freedom. But I’m thinking now about telecommunications: speaking freely across a horizontal field.

S.C.Squibb I think the ugliness you are responding to has different names in different places. In America we call it freedom, dress it up in stars and stripes and sing it little songs. But the freedom you are speaking about is something different, quite practical, quite real.

The disenchanted freedom of technology, a freedom that flows in two directions. The more accessible we are, the less time we have. This time too, is called free.

Boško Blagojević Thinking of a plurality of freedoms leads me back to language: the prime technology that produces equivalence by way of difference, leveling reality by marks or sounds and their repeated, varied production. It is freedom of expression after all, that is installed at the kernel of our idea of a fulfilling contemporary life. Where can the voice travel that the feet cannot?

S.C.Squibb More and more places everyday, it seems. There is something more in the contrast between feet and voice, between language and body. Both language and the body provide us the initial impetus for freedom, insofar as it is by considering their capacities or impositions on them that we measure our relative freedom. And yet—even passing over the classic oppression leveled by culture or the state—our respective, individuated languages, and our physical bodies are the first limit to our freedom, offering the initial boundary.

Boško Blagojević Perhaps this is related to what Heidegger speaks of when he says the abolition of distances in no way creates nearness. You’ve just recently opened a new production, a theater piece that’s free and open to the public, right here in New York.

Boško Blagojević SCRIPT FOR A SHORT FILM 32

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S.C.Squibb I have. It’s an interesting work, designed to force upon the audience the freedom they always seem to miss, fidgeting in their seats. Falling asleep in the dark. Many miss being told what to do.

Many more simply seek out whatever structure is available to them and tuck themselves in. The most remarkable are those who thrash about desperately for guidance, for narrative, and, upon finding it, complain about it. Oh this was weird, this was difficult, I couldn’t see, hear, whathaveyou. For which my response is, well yes, but you could’ve left, couldn’t you? Moved on? Oh, but we didn’t want to miss anything. Part of me thinks freedom involves letting yourself miss something, preferring possibility somehow.

Boško Blagojević I quite like this theater or freedom of missing parts. The impulse to collect experience and assemble in totality seems a neurotic logic deeply ingrained with the present moment, in the right now. For me however, your new piece also somehow foregrounds presentness, the locality of the theater, even moreso than a more rigidly defined locality—like a fixed set—might.

as in, speech free from interference by a state: the absence of a certain presence. But this same refusal to interfere prevents the arrival of something like free speech on a legitimately popular scale. I used to have very high hopes for open-source software. Was I mistaken?

S.C.Squibb Yes, the theater is nothing if not local. The great check against its otherwise overwhelming self-importance. It can’t happen everywhere, can’t be reproduced really, mechanically or otherwise.

This is,of of course, its freedom and its curse, this absence of a certain multiplicity. But I am interested in your show. How have you found your freedom in it? What sort of freedom is it?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between collective projects, and ones produced by lone ranger visionaries.

In my darker moments I’ll confess an appreciation for the ruthless efficiency and smooth cohesion of an authoritarian model.

Most art, for example, seems best served by individual origins. Is this the true distinction between art and politics?

Boško Blagojević The freedom to disappear into its making, perhaps. That seasonal freedom thrust upon us all when we work alone in our studios or studies. Once enough choices are made, rules set out, the making itself becomes rote within the parameter of form. It’s a tenuous freedom, this. But it starts with a kind of slogan, at once asserting an individual’s freedom and calling for it, an artifact from the late nineties. A free Kevin.

S.C.Squibb A free Kevin?

Boško Blagojević Open source developers in discussions will often distinguish the different freedoms implicit in “free beer” and “free speech.” I think in some spheres of life the space between the two might actually be getting increasingly more difficult to locate.

Boško Blagojević Collective, communitarian, networked and just-in-time production is a model that works quite well when one is building software in competition with existing commercial alternatives. But take this model and put it towards a different end—say the cultural sphere— and results become wildly unpredictable. This is like the Soviets applying Taylorism top-down across the entire organism of a massive state: it was a disaster.

S.C.Squibb Ah yes, the terrible freedom of the model divorced from the logic of its manufacture. We recently saw this most vividly in the placing of a corporate debt model of securitization onto private mortgages. Turns out they were not so similar.

Boško Blagojević Some would say any cultural product that outlives its own moment in time does so precisely because of an intrinsic anachronism, because it operates out of its own time. I think politics is a bit different. But maybe I’m just being unadventurous in my thinking of the latter.

S.C.Squibb Not at all. One could do a great deal worse for a definition of the work of politics than a consistent, endless effort at catching up.

If cultural products have an intrinsic anachronism—a phrase I like very much, by the way—perhaps the state is an inevitable anachronism, and politics is that which takes place in the space opened up between the state and our present moment. Thus, perhaps, the discourse of political freedom becomes the pursuit of a certain permission to be contemporary, to be in time.

S.C.Squibb Free speech certainly belongs in the category of negative freedom,

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Eric Anglès, Me, Myself and I, INPUT 2, 2009, New York, p. 36-37.

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Boshko Boskovic Questions about myself, 2009 38

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Please find the following instructions, which will help you figure out yourself.

It is imperative that the questions are read out loud in front of a mirror to oneself. If you do not know the answer, skip to the next question.

Once you are done, please copy the questions by hand and mail to someone as a gesture of generosity. Send by post—avoid e-mail and digital media.

This questionnaire has been made possible by the generous support of the Me, Myself & I Foundation.

1. How do I perceive myself?

2. How do I project myself?

3. How do I find myself?

4. Am I satisfied with myself?

5. What do I think of myself?

6. What do I want from myself?

7. Am I asking myself too many questions?

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Daniel Bozhkov Everything 42

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Tyler Coburn WL14/TC09, 2009 Manifesto, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Cuyson Sleepwalkers 58

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The randomness of cities and its deceitful and absurd realities have an inner meaning and discourse similar to dreams. Beneath the production of cities contain hidden workings of desire and fear that inevitably construct the identity of a place and its occupants.

In Benjamin’s analysis, “dreaming” has two apparently contradictory meanings. It describes, on one hand, a state of sleeping and, on the other, a state of waking. Both asleep and awake, however, the mind dreams. Analytically, then, Benjamin was concerned to discover and interpret dreams, both past and present. Benjamin sought to reveal the dreams of the collectivity in the arcades and other dream houses – through the process of awakening. As a historical project this meant the unification of awakening and remembrance: “indeed, awakening is the exemplary instance of remembering: the instance in which it is our fortune for us to recall the most immediate, most banal, most nearby things”.

For Freud, dreams are the “(disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish”. However, dream work responds to this imperative in such a way that the wish does not wake the dreamer. Dreams, therefore, are also “the guardians of sleep”. It is presumed that the basic thought constituting the dream would trouble the dreamer enough to wake her/him up: so, the dream takes on a disguised form because the revelation of the dream’s secret wish would, presumably, be disturbing and wake the dreamer up. This is certainly Benjamin’s understanding of the modern individual, sleepwalking in the city. Thus, dreams become the guardians of a sleeping modern world. For Freud dreams work mainly (though not only) through the use of images: “Dreams construct a situation out of these images; they represent an event which is actually happening … they ‘dramatize’ an idea”. Such a view accords neatly with Benjamin’s. The city is a collection of images, which can be produced in different forms. The city is put together as a situation – or series of situations – in which desire can be dramatized. However, these desires are dramatized in disguised ways.

Thus, commodities represent a desire, but not directly. So it is, too, with physical infrastructure: homes, skyscrapers, overpasses, subways, piazzas, and the like. It is evident that, in the production of the dream city, some serious thinking has to take place: the wish has to be felt, then thought, then represented through images that disguise the thought, then the multifarious images have to be carefully assembled into a dream that has a (un) believable story line (however absurd the images and story seem). Freud calls this mental process dream work and identifies within it some key components: condensation, displacement, and the means of representation. It is this idea of dream work that might help us progress Benjamin’s analysis of the work of modern city spaces.

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For Benjamin, the dream is most vivid at the point of waking. In practice, this means that Benjamin was most interested in those parts of the city that were being torn down or being altered, since it was as if people were waking up from the dreams that these spaces embodied.

Like an archeologist, he dug deeper and deeper into the historical layers of the city, to find the persistence of its dreams. Benjamin was searching for a memory. He was attempting to travel in time – and space – to recover the long history of a society’s desires and fears. Through the labyrinths of the city’s streets, through the journeys undertaken, Benjamin would piece together the unconscious strivings of social and urban imagination. For Benjamin, we can see that his desire was to shock modernity into waking up. No such option would appear to exist in Freudian thought. Perhaps this means there is no future for cities.

On the other hand, it is possible to draw other lessons from Benjamin, Freud, and co. In this, we can think again the paradox of dreaming: that it occupies both our sleeping and waking worlds. Through dreaming, it might be possible to imagine different transformative possibilities.

Thus, instead of waking (to realize those secret wishes), or, instead of returning to the dream (to find those hidden messages), the significant move may be to pursue with greater enthusiasm the unconscious logics of the city. These will not be singular, or universal, or capable of being circumscribed by a master narrative of urban development. Instead, we would be forced to recognize that cities “will” have contradictory, incommensurable logics. And perhaps this is why cities are like dreams, both because they are never simply works of the mind or of chance, and also because they embody paradoxical and ambivalent elements.

But what does dreaming mean to cities that are wrecked by flooding, earthquakes, riots, bombs, pervasive disease, and abject poverty? The problems confronting cities are so vast that they seem more like nightmares than dreams. Western-dominated neoliberal economic strictures force people off the land and into the shantytowns of the poorest countries of the world, perpetuating an inbreeding of crime and poverty. Perhaps the scale of the problem explains why it is so easy to forget what the dreams of the city are all about – what it means to live in cities, their freedoms and opportunities, their new communities and cosmopolitanism.

Can we (as culture producers) then suggest an alternative revolutionary practice? A practice that collapses neither into the waking world of rationalizations and instrumental logic, nor into the dreamworld of barbaric desires and satisfying fears, the transformation of urban space that would instead necessitate an understanding of vicissitudes of the dreamcity. Perhaps dreams are the site for reflecting on the urgency to rethink our notions of the Past and the unforeseeable Future but more critically the Present and the Everyday. Perhaps Benjamin searched in the idea of the dream not as a source of revolutionary hope but out of fear that we may never wake up.

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Keren Cytter August December 70

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Judy Dater Eating; Ms Clingfree; Queen of the Night; Scream 80

Eating, Co. 1981 81

Ms Clingfree, Co. 1981 82

Queen of the Night, Co. 1981 83

I had cabin fever, living on a wind swept plain several miles outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was engaged in photographing myself in the landscape since 1979, but couldn’t always travel. I wanted to photograph in my studio, and continue the autobiographical themes I had been exploring in nature. At that time, I felt that creating stereotypical personae – alter egos of myself – would be an interesting way of dealing with issues that were very real to me. The different characters I portrayed were humorous, angry and satiric, inspired by experiences such as dreams, books, opera, and women I happened to see in the grocery store, on the street, or next-door.

These photographs are an extension of my earlier portraits of women in costume, a theme I have explored since the 1960’s. I willingly show a dark side of myself while confronting the dilemmas of women in late 20th century America.

Judy Dater Berkeley CA 10/25/09

Scream, Co. 1981 84

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Josechu Dรกvila HORROR VASTITATIS, 1 October 2009 86

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Transcript of 24.04.09 performance as part of collaborative work with Can Altay “You Don’t Go Slumming” Arcade, London, April 25-May 30, 2009

Can Altay doesn’t really perform anymore. About 10 years ago Can was in a band and they had a song that I like, so I’m going to cover the song even though there is no band, and the song was Name Song so I have to say the name of all the people in the room whose names I know: Celine Condorelli. Asli. Can Altay. Christian Mooney…

Celine Condorelli, Amalia Pica, Can Altay, Asli, Christian Mooney, Keith Stern Pirlot…

Celine Condorelli, Christian Mooney - there were other names we practised but they’re not here but I’ll say them anyway. Emily… Pethick.

Jeremiah Day Tarlabasi Crawl 96

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Part of what we were doing was with names. In 1990 an Italian politician - there was a moment when he was sort of being blamed for killing a journalist and so he had to kind of deal with this so he stood up and he made a name which some people know, so he said, he said, it was Andreotti, and he said: “It’s called Gladio and it’s not my fault. It’s something that we were responsible for doing so it’s clearly not my fault and I’m sorry, but it was for the service of the country. That’s how it must be and we must understand this.”

So very briefly in Belgium and especially in Belgium because there were these incidents related to Gladio that other people remember, and then in Turkey now - which is where most of those pictures are from and so in Turkey, now, Gladio is in the newspaper a lot - I mean you could google it so I probably shouldn’t get into such intense detail. But briefly the idea was that after the war, Churchill thought - so it comes back to here actually - Churchill thought that the resistance movements in France had performed so poorly that he should set up a resistance in advance, he should set up a resistance in France and Holland and Belgium and especially Italy that would then defend Europe from the Communists in case the Communists were to overtake it, I’m going to come around in Turkey I promise…and so in Turkey this structure which had different names like counter guerrilla and…now is known as Ergenakon which I don’t really understand and so in Turkey this, in the press because there’s this reform: was there a secret army? Was there a coup? Was there a “post-modern” coup? Was there a coup without a coup, did the government step down without a change of election? I mean there were tanks in the street in Ankara in 1997 but no one’s really sure and so there’s this quality, it’s a quality of things shifting and there’s names for these things, so Gladio appears in the papers, doesn’t appear in the English papers, appears in the Turkish papers…

And so I’d often thought about this period in Italy and in Italy they called it ‘la strategia della tensione’ or ‘anni di piombo’, the years of lead. The years of lead… boom. Boom. Boom.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. I don’t even know what that is…is that like a weighty year? And I thought what is the weighty year like? What is it like for us in that?

And then all of a sudden I was in Turkey with Can and in theory actually it’s not so different there in Turkey from the strategy of tension and the period now… so the discovery actually was kind of anti-climatic, the discovery was that in this problem of naming, actually people don’t want to talk about it very much and the closest I got was a mutual friend said “you know the reason we don’t like to talk about it is that it kind of makes you feel small and then the more you think about it the smaller you feel so you don’t talk about it.”

So in fact actually names were not that helpful. But we wanted to show something, so then if names are not that helpful we can show something if we can’t name it then maybe we can just show it… but… but so we were up here. We were on the top of a hill, it’s an area on the Pera, on the peninsula, the Pera that comes down and we were on the top of the hill and there’s this nice commercial street so there’s like a Starbucks, Nike Town and a big studio building and it’s owned by a bank and Celine was in there with us too, and we all had our studios in there, and then down at the bottom of the hill is this kind of other neighbourhood that they call Tarlabashi and that’s changing because they are going to destroy about ten square blocks of it. So Can and I were up there, and then down there was this other thing, and I was actually living down there, so I had to walk there all the time, and we were trying to figure out what it was to go from this loud Nike town place, the studio owned by a bank to this, where…

they didn’t have any heat and they lived in squatted houses and so they burned these other things, they burned plastic, and so there was the smell of burning plastic, and my girlfriend is sure it was what made her sick.

So… in this place that we couldn’t really describe, I mean it’s very Dickensian, right? It’s 19th century to actually see lots of poverty, and to see this tale of two cities and to see this up at the top of the hill and then down. We walked down there we actually talked to lots of them and made photographs, and one day we were followed, so we were down there making photographs and we were followed by this child, and you’re not sure…because there’s also a political situation, there’s the Kurds which relate to this Gladio-like condition, the secret armies and there’s also organised crime and you don’t know which is which so someone is following you around and…maybe it’s no a problem, maybe it’s a big problem.

And you can take pictures there, we went there you know, we went there later with these architecture students and they were taking pictures and Can said: “Actually, you know, being down here, it’s actually making the situation worse, because then all these people, they think that actually people care enough to do something about the fact that 15 square blocks are being destroyed, and that’s actually not true.”

And so it was a little bit like, “could you hold still, please?” so that you could take a better picture of someone dying.

So we decided not to take pictures and we talked a lot about how to show this thing, talked a lot and we just talked a lot - we had lunch every day…what is this thing that’s happening around us that we can’t seem to describe?

And we had a couple of different ideas which we didn’t try, but the one that I seemed to really like the most, was the idea that I wanted to somehow crawl from the studio at the top of the hill down the hill, and then maybe like, just like looking at me crawling, like you make a video of it, but just looking at me crawling you would see the context, and the context would change maybe, maybe children would come and follow me and they would crawl too maybe I mean what kind of crawling would it be, would I be injured by the end of it, would that be part of it, if I was all bloody and fucked up would that be like mimicking some bloody and fucked up situation? And so that was the idea we called it ‘The Tarlabashi Crawl’. Kick the can Tarlabashi, or an homage to David Hammons, kick the bucket Tarlabashi, and it would be that just from crawling from one part...from back up there down to the bottom there…from the top down the hill and then...you sort of crawl and it would be like…we would describe something properly that way. …Thanks.

I don’t know. The only way to describe it without sounding strange is that at night when it was cold there was the smell of burning plastic because no one else could…the people around me couldn’t,

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My, oh my − a story of love Thursday. A café. I am fingering a cup, hand. Restless, yet comfortable. I am not afraid. “What do you think,” I say. “I think that myself might be in love with me.”“Well, if you ask me” me said, “that might be only half the story.”“What does that mean?” I enquired.” Is that some kind of insinuation?

What have I said?” Sound of slamming brakes. Crushes through the room. Great distraction. I spoke: “Sometimes when I see myself talk about me, it makes me think that there is something cooking.

A little thing. I can’t really say what it is. A slight shiver, perhaps. Perhaps nothing. Maybe I am just making it up. Imagining.

Wishful thinking, somehow. “Projecting.” I heard myself answer.

“Such self-indulgent…”“Did I say something?” I answered. “I just get this feeling… why so jumpy? What’s the urge?” The cashier bell.

A rough sound, heads turn toward the counter. In comes me. The scent and warmth of a tripple espresso. The breath. I hides under the table. “Oh, it’s so good to see myself. It makes me feel… all warm inside,” me says. I hit myself on the shin under the table.

Encourging myself not to respond. “Ouch!” As if transformed into someone else I could hear me say: “Oh, so sweet. That is exactly what I mean. What I wanted you to feel. I want you to feel. Feel.”

I couldn’t see my face. No faces at all. All chairs and legs. And cigarette butts on the floor. Still smoking. Oh, dear. This might start a fire. Judging from the breathing, something had made an impression on myself. “Where is I?” A book is placed on the table.

A diary. The pages are flipped. “Don’t want to talk about it,” me says. “Ouch!” There is something in between. Me and myself.

Continue. “Last time I saw myself things didn’t seem quite right.

That’s why the question was asked. I couldn’t really say what it was. A slight shiver, perhaps. Perhaps nothing. Maybe I was just making it up. Imagining. Or projecting. Maybe it’s me,” I heard the voice of me say. “And now. What about now. What is this?” myself responded. An echo. Again. Silence. “I was talking about symbiosis.

But. As if there was a veil. Or a shield. I can’t see myself clearly.” The response was instant. “Me neither.” Wondering about the need for clarity I heard myself sounding oddly self-confident.

“That’s suspicious. Isn’t it” I bluntly stated. The constant pain was not an issue any more. A slight shiver. The air. “Tighter,” I said, from down under. An upper-cut feeling. “What the hell… what am I doing down there. And what did I mean by that… Tighter.”

Looking up at me I answered: “I have been here. The accident. Then the bell rang.” “Me came in,” myself filled in.“I am not hiding from myself, I just don’t know how to handle me when… It’s just this feeling I get. This urge,” I said. “Tighter. That’s the urge.” A blend. Dissolve. Un-merge. Repeat.

Jonatan Habib Engqvist & Vendela Fredricson My, oh My. A Story of Love 100

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Projection is based on video recordings of intensive psychotherapy sessions in which the artist participated as a patient. The artist transcribed these video recordings, and then separated the two sides of the dialog, editing the transcripts down into two scripts, each composed of six short monologs in the form of one-sided dialogs. This process also involved adapting the dialog to the gallery space by substituting the present for the past tense and second for third person pronouns, as well as replacing specific nouns and proper names with shifting indexical and demonstrative terms. Fraser then performed these scripts for video, addressing the camera directly. These recordings are projected life-size in an alternating sequence on opposite sides of a long, narrow, darkened room, placing the viewer in the position of the addressee and object—or, perhaps, the screen—of each projection. Through this experience, the artist aims to make explicit some of the latent psychological projections that inevitably structure the relations between artists and art works and their viewers.

Andrea Fraser Projection, 2008 102

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Two-channel high-definition video installation, 40 minute loop, 40-50’ x 12-15’ Courtesy the artist and Galerie Christian Nagel.

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Projection (excerpt) 1.

2.

Right Screen: [anxious] Is that a question? That’s an observation… I don’t, I, I…

Left Screen: But… let me ask you again: what is the harm?

R: [laugh/cry] Yeah.

L: Yeah, but [lean forward] you see, that is a, um, diversion. I recognized the minute you sat down that you have a lot of very positive feelings about all this that are based on the contribution it’s made to your life. But we are discussing your NEGATIVE feelings about this. You’re not making the connection on your own behalf. That’s why you get stuck in this loop. And now you’re here, and that indicates that this is something you WANT to do. You’re investing time, trust, effort…

R: Well, I mean, I, I… I do keep these relationships very mediated, and keeping you at a distance, I mean it’s… it’s partly about protecting myself from people, but I think it’s also about… the more problematic part is… protecting people from myself, is thinking that I, I… R: Angry and critical… destructive.

R: [louder, forced] I’ve always been very ambivalent about my field, and I made a kind of career out of that, um, ambivalence, to some extent, but in the last couple of years it’s just gotten extremely difficult and… [weeping] I just don’t think that I can do it anymore…

R: No, I feel more loss, now, at the moment.

R: [sits up, uncrosses and re-crosses arms and legs] Sure, that makes sense.

R: I’m convinced… I’m convinced, I’m convinced but I… [look up] okay.

R: I just… I’m not arguing with you, you know, I mean, I, I think you’re right, I just don’t…

R: It doesn’t feel like anger, though.

L: But it also makes you feel less valuable.

L: Are there images associated with that? Do you see images?

L: I understand, but… [lean forward] but what do you want to DO? L: You know, passivity is a very, uh, insidious sabotage maneuver.

L: And you’re displacing that onto art, and you think that’s it? I don’t.

L: What do you want to do to ME? What do you want to do with this situation that makes you feel so, uh, unloved? If you picture it clearly, what do you see yourself doing, if you don’t let yourself be, uh, weakened by this, uh, charisma or whatever it is?

R: Maybe it’s… you frighten me.

L: And that does what to you? Neutralizes you, seems to me, as any sort of, uh, threat. I mean, it essentially makes you… subordinate.

R: [weeping] I think it’s already in the room.

L: Good.

R: I don’t like it… It’s violent.

L: And? What do you perceive?

L: Yes, it is.

L: Oh, I think it’s worse than that. I think you actually want to strangle yourself.

L: So you’ll sacrifice anything, any part of yourself? And what do you want in return?

L: [lean forward] Well, it’s the part of you that loves this and thinks that it’s more important than you are yourself, so, so anything you feel against it has to be punished out of you.

L: Destroy it.

L: That’s the tragedy.

L: The end of what?

L: Well, I think it’s only the end of a fantasy, the fantasy that I would be what you want me to be, that this would be what you want it to be.

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Otto: Thank you all for coming. I had to call this emergency board meeting of all my top senior selves in order to address a matter of serious importance to the Otto Rumperstreiser Art Career Corporation. As you know, Us, Otto, have not received an invitation to do a solo exhibition for 2010.

We are approaching

the end of the year and so far My/Our exhibition schedule looks empty.

This

is an unacceptable situation that I/We all have to work quickly to correct.

We just can’t allow this embarrassment. I look forward to your suggestions.

Otto, Senior Marketing Strategist: To be honest, I have been saying all along that we don’t promote Us enough.

People are not aware of our product. We have to be more aggressive. We are up against other artists who have huge galleries with promotional machinery behind them.

We need to spend more money, like sending weekly emails about

what we do to everyone Otto knows and maybe buy an ad on e-flux. And We have to get ourselves to more important openings. We keep going to the same stupid openings in Chelsea without collectors or decision-makers. We just need a dramatic change of tactic.

Otto, Social Etiquette Supervisor: We have to be careful with the self-promotional thing. It looks inelegant and desperate. We don’t want to appear desperate.

I agree that we need

to attend higher-end openings and we need to be more on top of important people’s birthdays. But email doesn’t work anymore. People just delete whatever they get, everyone is saturated even with Facebook.

Otto, Chief Financial Officer: I am sorry, but we can’t afford an ad campaign right now.

Those services

charge a fucking fortune. Otto hasn’t sold a work in months and the only money we are getting, from that lecture in that College in Ohio we are going to use it to pay for that stupid photo print job for that piece that Otto agreed to donate for the art auction, and then the rest of the money will have to be spent on that expensive dinner date this coming Friday with the French curator.

Pablo Helguera Otto’s Self Board Meeting 108

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Otto, Manager of Getting Laid:

Otto, Senior Marketing Strategist:

Excuse Us - the French curator actually is a promising relationship. Don’t

Wait a minute: what if we ask the French curator to do the voiceover, and

forget that she said she is very interested in Otto’s work. And in the

then once the piece is made we ask for her help to get the piece shown?

meantime, let’s face it, she is really hot and Otto is in dire need to get

Wasn’t it a French colony? Wasn’t she working on a show about post-

laid.

colonialism? She is totally going to love this piece.

She may even have

contacts in Morocco.

Otto, Deputy Director of Art Ideas: Please, let’s focus on the content of Otto’s work. Without the content there

Otto, Deputy Director of Art Ideas:

is no work, without work there is no career. The other morning We were in

I don’t know about that idea, it’s too opportunistic…

the shower We had a really interesting idea for a video piece that would be about the slums of Morocco. It would be a multi-channel video piece and it

Otto, Coordinator of Reality Check:

would show these slums with a narrative of a blind Moroccan prostitute whose

At least sounds doable. We can pull it off.

story Otto read the other day in Paris Match.

Otto: Otto, Coordinator of Reality Check:

We are pathetic.

That’s ludicrous. First of all, how the hell are we going to get to Morocco to do the video, and then find the prostitute? There is no fucking way we can

Otto, Manager of Getting Laid:

pull that project together.

I think it’s a great idea. What do we have to loose? If anything, We will get laid.

Otto, Deputy Director of Art Ideas: You guys always have to ruin every great initiative. That is why Otto will never make it as an artist.

----

Otto, Chief Financial Officer: I am sorry, but we don’t even have the money to buy that external hard drive Otto needs, let alone...

Otto: Wait a minute. I thought we were talking about getting a show, not about coming up with a new piece!

Otto, Cheating Manager: How about if we just steal footage from YouTube or something and get a female friend to do a prostitute voiceover?

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He sits opposite me and this is as close as we get to each other. The lighting is perfect on both of us.

I am wearing my black satin number, which has more sheer, glossy fabric on the floor than on me. Everything that should be covered is, but only just, No, I’m wearing an emerald green cocktail dress with a diamond choker and ivory silk elbow gloves.

No, a simple white suit in Marino wool bouclé and a little hat.

No hat.

No, just a fashionable pair of straight cut jeans with riding boots and a well fitting black cashmere sweater.

Short, sensible haircut.

He is femme fleur, he is femme hysterique, he is femme tragique also.

He is wearing a scarlet satin blouse with a brooch in the place of a tie, in the shape of a crown.

There is a royal blue curtain in the background, but this is no member of the English Royal family. It isn’t even American Aristocracy, it’s far more complex than that.

He is not Elizabeth Regent Taylor and Sophia La Reine. He has no use for the look that says “I have forgotten more than you will ever hope to know,” nor the one that snaps like a .45 and says “I am tired of your impertinence, of your impotence.”

Apparently his purity protects him.

He is Arthur and his hair hangs shining and black around his face, occasionally his eyes glisten and burn with pity and wrath in equal measures, belying his fitful temper.

He is femme enfant.

If he were not so painfully young he would have the right words to express what he wants to say and be done forever with this serpent before him. Instead he flutters with the modesty of youth and the fragility of a person whose position has earned him years of being treated like a Fabergé Egg. Here is the freak show, what can we do, almost cumming on our couches. Don’t you just want to Fuck him? I want to Fuck him! Fuck the monster and feel powerful like a man. I want to Fuck him to see if he BREAKS, I want to see if his skin pulled and filled with poison would snap open like a sausage.

He would, if he were at all in the habit of being an adult in public, tell everyone present to question their own sordid bedtime reading.

Or is it all normal he wonders, all just full of teenage girls who know more than you and/or buff men? Is there really just fun bits of bondage to spice up the readers life? Have they really just tried the things they recommend this month on the cover’s of the women’s and men’s magazines, in their respective colour coded racks?

Or in Bizarre? Tasteful black and white erotic Oriental girls pinned and splayed while they look out in mock innocence? Sculptured male nudes, Mapplethorpe to Terry Richardson and a million in between.

Blondes and brunettes and Asians and Black Beauties all in g-strings with pierced navels and clits and nipples.

Claire Hooper World of Interiors (magazine) 112

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Orange tanned jocks in sport socks bent double in the gym. Lip gloss on waxed pussys and assholes OH! endless.

A little ass play, a little pee, some food, anyone into shit? Animals? Amputees, Dead people, Cannibalism?

Ok it’s all out there, and other things I can’t think of.

Come now, let’s get inside.

I would like to see him come; does his face crinkle up like on MTV as he would have us believe, or is it different? And when he cries?

I notice as he is talking to me that he can only open his eyes so far and no more.

He has that kind of celeb anorexia thing, that’s good, I’m glad he doesn’t eat, I’m hoping he doesn’t work out except dancing.

And what colour is his cock? I think it’s greyish/mauve and thickish in the middle with a slightly pointed tip, cut.

If I close my eyes I can see it, flashes of it, a retinal after image, a sunspot: I see him bite his lip, I see him toss his head, but then he spins and tears at his shirt - into the wind machine.

He has slipped away.

Now I see his head on the pillow, coarse black hair on white Egyptian cotton… but it’s too well lit and he is giving me that beatific smile.

Gone again I see no reflections in the enormous black part of his eyes, I see the liquid grey egg whites around them. I see the black kohl around the lower lid and the brown/black line across the top lid. I see the eye shadow, say, Christian Dior in Moonstone, slightly iridescent, not cracking, not creasing, but too heavy on the surgical scars.

I see the brow, shaped large and arching in Mocha, using 3 kinds of brush.

Concealer; Mac, after moisturiser; Kiehl’s, and ‘Yellow Balance’ by Benefit.

Then foundation; one for nose and cheekbones, one for cheeks, one for neck; Mac. Blush; Chanel.

Lipstick; Dior, matt, old roseI love the way that he paints his lips higher than they are because of that huge gap under his nose. Lauren Bacall has that.

His nose, well, it could have been done better if he’d only waited, a real hatchet job, a piece of archaeology.

He is femme fleur, he is femme hysterique, he is femme tragique also.

He is Tristessa St. Ange and with a defiant flick of his immense white hair he darts out the window. And when it is cut off and his scalp is shaved he even kisses the boy with the tattoo on his infantile chest that did it to him, and he laughs a beautiful melodic laugh, generous and sensual as a summer afternoon, -before the child finishes being sick and shoots him dead.

Here is the look of hurt. His look of hurt, probably followed by his look of childish exasperation.

Come now, let’s get out.

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Alexis Knowlton Sweet Nothings 116

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The Failed Collective: There’s no such thing as a failed utopian community; or, if the collective is an experiment in shared time, how can time fail? A great sense of failure couches every success: YES, and SO WHAT? What is the goal we’re talking about here? Utopia (static, unattainable) is never the point … the collective arranges itself around a desire for something, to produce something, to become something else.

Gilbert and Ann took me to Piha. Ann’s friend Barbara, a preschool teacher, came along too. (There’s no such thing here as a meeting of two: there are always more people around, and they come along too.) We parked in the lot near the ocean and walked 15 or 20 minutes up the hill. They showed me the break in the bush, the shoulder on one of the switchbacks, where they uncorked the ashes, meant to scatter them into the ocean. The funeral party lasted three days and everyone was themselves: the drunk and the timid, the loudmouths, the grandiose artists, the tormented girls.

Everyone had to gather and spin through predictable cycles of grief, the public the private, what shouldn’t be seen and what’s best forgotten. It’s been more than a year since that happened, and now the grave is a nice place to visit. (Down below in the ocean, scene of a 19th century wreck, merchant ships off the coast, or so the legend goes).

Still, all of that action had to play out against the electric green field at the base of the hill before there could be this powerful silence … G.’s death imparting that silence. He was ambitious at time pompous but mostly generous, and died on the brink of attaining enough power to conclude that power is actually boring.

That stupid play people act out at school by August Strindberg, The Stronger. His death a great gift and also iconic, the way he liked things to be. His death the death of everyone’s youth, that’s what was grieved, and what happens next is always a bore. The group disperses … “real life” the real anti-climax.

Of course the ashes are no longer here. The waves took them away.

- Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus The Failed Collective 126

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Fig 1.0 “I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedents, and which once complete, will have no imitator...�

Beneath the finest silks and the coarsest stuff, he calls, Ajay Kurian ‘09

Ajay Kurian Beneath the finest silks and the coarsest stuff, he calls, 2009 128

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Fig 1.1

The Voices of Silence

Fig 1.2

“...My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.”

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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http://www.ubu.com/film/beckett_not.html

Fig 1.4

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Sean Landers Art, Life and God, “C-H-R-I-S” 134

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Art, Life and God, “Mercury Breeze” 138

Art, Life and God, “Cruel Dark Sky” 139

Art, Life and God, “To Anyone” 140

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AN N I KA LARSSON PR O O F I’M BLIND 20 0 9 .9.24 I w a s not at all aware that my ey e b rows were raised and mouth o p e n e d , un t i l I looked at myself in a m i r r o r .

20 0 9 .9.25 K i s laying on the floor, drunk a n d pa s s ed out. His body streched o u t , tw i s ted, exposed and half naked .

Cu r i ous fingers are playing wit h h i s mo u t h and opening his mouth.

20 0 9 .9.26 I ’ m drinking. My self-confidenc e i s in c r easing, I’ m becoming more a n d m o r e ge n e rous, and start talking mor e .

I’ m drinking more. I have diffi c u l t y sp e a king and speak slurredly ( w h i c h od d l y enough, I cannot hear mys e l f ) , I s t art shivering, and complica t e d ac t i ons are becoming very diffi c u l t t o ex e c ute. My visual perception a b i l i t y is b ecoming limited, and I cann o t pe r c eive movement and distance. I ha v e difficulties keeping my ba l a n c e .

I’ m falling. I become tired and v e r y un s t eady. I start shaking. I vo m i t .

My c onsciousness is now suppres s e d , an d I’m in a coma. I’m in the v a l l e y of t he shadow of death.

2 0 0 9 . 9 . 2 8 Is it true that bandé means both to be blindfolded and erected?

I’m blindfolded. Shameless.

2 0 0 9 . 9 . 3 0 Yesterday L and I went to Stuttgart.

I filmed the empty playground, the lines and the artifical grass. We had lunch with A, M and G and talked about football, film and Sweden. They asked me what I looked like, if I was blond. I observed that they touched the money for a long time before paying their food. I then filmed A, in jeans, striped shirt and wideopen eyes. Naked.

I saw the eye itself, all of a sudden exhibited in its own opaque body, an organ of inert flesh, stripped of the signification of the gaze that both animate and veil it.

2009.9.30 Last night I made music. Two new tracks; Wind and Ghost.

Annika Larsson Proof I’m Blind 142

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20 0 9 .10.02 I f e lt impotent, so I raised bo t h m y sh o u lders in a quick movement, l i f t e d my e yebrows and wrinkled my for e h e a d .

I b e nt my elbows closely inward s , se p a rated my fingers, opened my ha n d s, and raised them, turning t h e m ou t w ards. I threw my head a lit t l e o n on e side, and opened the mouth.

20 0 9 .10.03 On m y studio floor I see a pict u r e of a dead person in jeans and y e l l o w es p a drilles. Next to it stands a p a i r of w orn light yellow espadrille s , i n si z e 42. On the wall hangs a pr i n t o f a m a n in baby clothes, a bishop , a po l i ce, a naked man, another po l i c e , a r u bber band, a whistle, a gua r d , a ne t in plastic cover, a child r i d i n g on a dad, Pier re Boulez, a Rottw e i l e r , a m a sk, a pair of shorts, a wig , a c h in strap, another man in ba b y cl o t hes, a man with a sweater o v e r hi s head, a general, another po l i c e , a p a ir of baby nike shoes, a ma n i n un d e rwear, another bishop, anot h e r ge n e ral, a pair of socks, Mazar e i n a Na z i uniform, a human horse, an o t h e r bi s h op, another human horse fed w i t h ha y , another bishop, a whip, a j u d g e , a p a ir of shin guards, a riot p o l i c e , an o t her naked man...

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2009.10.04 Yesterday I wrote A to tell him I was happy with the material. And I saved a jpg on John Milton, he was also blind, as A, and Homer.

BLIND001-”The proof I am blind”,16 Juli 2009, 48 sek 2009.10.10 A while ago I went to the zoo to film a gorilla. Our eyes met. He blushed intensely on the face, ears, neck and down the body. His body grew hot. His heart beat rapidly and his breathing got disturbed. Shame. He wanted to look down to the ground, but did a vain attempt to look direct at the person who causes this feeling; the antagonism between these opposite tendencies lead to various restless movements in his eyes. In a strong wish to avoid the appearance of shame, he turned away his whole body. He got confused, lost his presence of mind, and uttered singularly inappropriate remarks. Much distressed, he started to stammer, and to make awkward movements and strange grimaces. He didn’t even know what he was saying.

Absolute silence, we did not utter a single word.

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Thomas Lawson Thomas Lawson: pages from a sketchbook, 2009 150

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All images courtesy of the artist, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna and Metro Pictures, New York

David Maljkovic Video stills from “These Days” 2005, and dialogue extracts from “Easy English” by Living Language 160

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Amir Mogharabi A Form and a Face 174

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Anneè Olofsson “Put your mouth into the mouthpiece and whisper in my ear admit to me the things you can’t admit to yourself admit to me and no one else” 182

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Alix Pearlstein Series of video stills from Finale, part of a project entitled TALENT, 2009 188

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Falke Pisano symbols (from: “Figures of Speech”) 196

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Zig Zag Philosophy I contemplate the symmetry of Chaos.

The light and the eye, An unusual case.

When by shapes my words are known, I try To Explain.

In a world of reality, I wonder if I myself am truly real.

Angelo Plessas Poems from RobotPoetryReading.com, Angelo Plessas, 2009 204

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Electricity Comes From Another Planet I like being here.

I dream to meet the Senses and chase them across the skies.

I like happy Endings but maybe it’s one rule for the upcoming Echo.

The presence from above deepened the shadows beneath but I enjoy watching the sunrise from down under.

I might want to take You Higher upon Desire.

I dream that someday on this planet, the sun Will still rise above our presence.

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Unwhite Me The bare Essentials of the surface, it seems that some confusion could arise.

The proportion You want between the SPACES of the mind and the Passionate Heart is a Winning equation.

I dream that my four little words Can mean anything.

The new ‘anything’ is always Relevant..

I want to gain control of your blaze, we ought to See this benovolent side.

Specific Codes are defined by opposite ends almost from the first minute.

I hope this Brings a sentimental celebration of time

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I want to be a machine Neon machine emotions watching, waking, moving linking wonderous worlds of free expression cast me down from heaven.

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Anima Leggera My own short story, lost and found in Translation.

Going around in circles, I never See a Rainbow appear across the screen.

The vision of my Heart is a Lonely Number.

You might Think, Ok this guy is a Modern day Martyr.

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Double Faced

Angeling Around

For those who Know Best their mirror, a Conspiracy revolves around.

Silence from behind devours a relic from the past.

Life is usually attached to lengths of magnetic fields.

You might be Emerging as something else.

I might Switch Back.

All I wish is that when I start up, my life will be OkaY

Reality, My favorite Argument against Time.

Looking up or down, I investigate the physical mechanisms responsible for this regulation.

I enjoy Being a part of the Growing Connection.

My secret is a process, A ceaseless cycle of cause and effect.

Yet even More, evidence of a moral abstraction

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The Taste of Tears A standard manner to Perception, is ordinarily a limit to the Size of Thoughts.

I want to lose the attention that constitutes our visual experience.

The objectivity of quality control was complied.

Society is doomed.

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"Holidays in Cambodia..."

The Dead Kennedy's Living now is like perpetually scanning a set of boring personals ads. Everyone

WithinWorldInnerSpaces

A Scenario from the Future, curated 2036, by Adina Popescu.

want's the same cozy evenings by the fireside, the same long walks on the beach.

This is what we call 'individuality'.

The only way out is the same way we came in. All we can do with words and images, houses, urban structures and all kinds of material, is appropriate them, distort them, turn them against themselves. All we can do is borrow them and waste them: spend what we haven't earned and what we don't even possess.

It is J.G. Ballards definition of life in the postindustrial ruins. And the insight that culture is after all empty, that its imposing edifices are just ruins or sound stage facades, that bodies are extremely plastic, that facial expressions are masks, that words in fact have nothing to express.

For bodies and words are merely exchange-value: commodities or money. Late Capitalism is a frenzy of delirious shopping or better, still: of shoplifting!

A staged exhibition that takes the form of a theatrical or filmic set.

Only the plot is missing. The work that will be shown here is the architecture and infrastructure of the city itself- with a little difference: By fictionalizing our everyday surroundings for a period in time, architecture. houses and the things we use, in every day life will turn into Duchampian Urinals- displaced objects, bare of use or meaning. The cityscape will be transformed into a film set- awaiting a plot: Houses without people, scenes without actors.

The city's infrastructure formats our every day life. Transforming the city into a stage will create a temporary autonomous zone, in which people can look at their life's from a distance and by that, envision their future society.

What if Agamben's concept of profanation was being applied to the infrastructure of the city itself?

The attempt to fictionalize and temporarily disfunctionalize the cityscape, or the places we use as a public can be thought in terms of Agamben's idea of profanation: "..we will be playing with everyday life, or with the things we use in public, just like children play with disused objects, ‘not in order to restore them to their canonical use, but to free them from it for good.’ (Giorgio Agamben)

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ART is not what an individual mind can come up with, but what a collective of people imagine in uncertain times, in order to give themselves a FUTURE!

The WorldInnerSpace is cohesive. However, it also produces disruptions and omissions. And therefore there are gaps. Construction gaps for example, gaps in marketing and particularly gaps in the legislation. The gaze of politicians on posters goes upwards, as well as dictators on portraits. What is up there? The Future?

Satellite Networks? A Greater Good? Or just an untenable thought?

We are writing the year 2036, .......all of Manhattan has turned

into a big hardware store. There are no NATIONS any more. Instead, the visible

public space is controlled by corporations. Three BILLBOARDS, bearing the logos of UBS, Microsoft and Russian Standard sit enthroned on the rooftops of Manhattan...

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The Storyboard

In 2036 there will be no more nations.

Instead, the visible public space is controlled by corporations. Three billboards, bearing the logos of UBS, Microsoft and Russian Standard sit enthroned, elevated.

Three other billboards, designed by Enkie Bilal, Andreas Hofer and Lebbeus Woods will advertise the future city, forming the outer circle.

In the centre of the space there will be five more bilboards which show the faces of: Larry Page (Founder, Google), Dr. Kai-Fu Lee (Google, China), Walter B. Kielholz (credit Suisse), Rustam Tariko (Russian Standard)Each individually.

These five billboards will form a pentagon; in which the individual faces are looking upinto the sky. Like dictators or Chinese heroes- their gazes fiLLed with hope.

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The Idea of 'THE RUIN'.

Data debris, oxidized steel, carnival. Stories of former Dictators remind of lust and surfeit.. A Palace wants Eternity. „Because all lust wants eternity, deep, everlasting Eternity.“

BILLBOARDS. The Exhibition In his book Radical Reconstruction1 Lebbeus Woods argues that crisis become fully visible at a system peripheries and edges, but not at it's core, even though that is where it's causes and most fatal effects are found. "At the core, this crisis is effectively disguised, while towards The boundaries, which are always to some degree neglected or at the limits of control from the centers of authority, the disguise slips somewhat and the crises is revealed. (...)This culture (of "disguise") is maintained at the expense of creativity(...)."1

"Tomorrow we will begin the construction of a new city."

L.W.

W.I.R. attempts to transpose this idea of the" periphery" to the very core: Manhattan.

Lebbeus Woods and Enki Bilal will design six billboards based on one of my plays, serving as a storyboard that depicts how Manhattan will look like in the year 2039.

http://www.miniaturescenery.com/DataPage.asp?Code=CMBCRH

War-disabled buildings as build-it-yourself-sceneries. ©Lebbeus Woods Since 1976 Lebbeus Woods turned exclusively to theory and experimental projects. He is currently a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City. He has designed buildings in Chengdu, China and Havana, Cuba. In 1988, Woods co-founded the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, a nonprofit institution devoted to the advancement of experimental architectural thought and practice while promoting the concept and perception of architecture itself.

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1 Lebbeus

Woods Radical Reconstruction, Princeton Architectural Press

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ŠEnki Bilal is a french comic book creator, comic artist and film director.

Born in Belgrade, Serbia (former Yugoslavia) he later moved to Paris where is career got started. His most recent publication is Quatre (2007), which is dealing with the breakup of former Yugoslavia seen from the future.

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Surfaces for Narcissism: -Pool and lake surfaces as well as larger puddles -Mirrors -Black mirrors -Windows on shops and buildings, elevator doors -The sunglasses (and uncoated reflective glasses) of the person you are talking to -Polished Carrara marble -Glossy photographs -Lids of stainless steel pots and pans -Polished cutlery -Solar panels -Rear view mirrors -TV, computer and mobile phone screens, best when turned off -One’s twin -Black granite countertops -Dan Graham pavilions *Ideally, this text would be printed on Mylar reflecting sheeting so you could look at yourself in comfort and just pretend to be reading.

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Track 1: LET THE AUDIO PRO GR A M R ECOR D THE L A NDSC A PE SO UND : Track 2: M A KE JA NE’S SPEECH PL ACIN G YO UR M O U TH CLOSE TO THE Track 3: M A KE A BE AT USIN G THE S A M E AUDIO PRO GR A M . PR EFER

Georgia Sagri JANE, Performance and audio instructions, EXHIBITION, New York, 2009 242

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PEOPLE TA LKIN G, C A R S PA SSIN G O U TSIDE ON THE STR EET A ND

STRON G WA LKIN G A RO UND WITHIN THE SPACE. THIS TR ACK WILL

M ICROPHONE . R ECOR D YO UR VOICE S AYIN G : “E xcuse me, may I have

your attention please. My name i s Jane and I am going to replace Georg ia

BE AT INSTRU M EN TS INSTE A D OF GUITA R OR S A XOPHONE. IT IS

E A SIER A ND YO U WILL SPEND LE SS TI M E TO M A KE A BE AT

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PROVIDE TO JA NE HER STEPS A ND M OVE M EN TS IN THE SPACE today. Thank you” BY INSERTIN G YO UR N A M E INSTE A D OF TH AT OF

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GEORGI A’S. WHEN YO U FINISH R ECOR DIN G HER SPEECH COP Y PA STE

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THE SECOND TR ACK A ND PL ACE IT A LON G THE FIR ST TR ACK

M OVE A R O UND THE SPACE IN THE S A M E WAY A S YO U DID IN TR ACK ONE A ND M I M IC THE SPEECH A LR E A DY R ECOR DED FOR TR ACK T WO. N OW YO U A R E JA NE. R EPE AT A S M A N Y TI M E S A S YO U LIKE. EN JOY IT!

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Amie Siegel Author, Author, 2009 250

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Alexandre Singh Notes (a character named Miss-Chief; concerning the possible asymmetry of time; a room full of chairs and stools, arguing) 254 254

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A Closer Account of Myself Andrew Smaldone

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I purchased Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself (2005) last year in order to improve my knowledge on moral philosophy.

The problem, however, is that I only read a few pages, yet was hoping that Butler’s work would aid me in my artistic research.

But alas the book stayed firmly positioned high on my bookshelf as if forgotten. I recount this episode primarily as it points out that rarely do my plans or conversations with myself turn out the way I would want them to.

Perhaps it’s an issue of what I can control. In the studio the dialogue is fairly clear; I am focusing on choices pertaining to the making of a painting. Basic choices such as: which type of paint to begin with, paint application, or what kind of material to paint on. These choices might be described as modes with which I can express myself to others. Yet this is fundamentally false as self–expression is always happening. We are always expressing ourselves, as it were, so it’s not that important to think about how to go about it. Although much time in the studio is spent agonizing over what my visual language will look like. And since it’s painting this means that more than likely it will resemble someone else’s language as all paint marks and even non-marks have been painted before. It’s about arranging elements and designing pre-existing forms then.

The painting process would seem, then, to be a straightforward one, even though it never is. Often the biggest difficulty comes

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in trying to marry ideas with technique. The trick would be to find just the right visual language to correspond with a theme. Unfortunately, however, I sometimes end up illustrating an idea rather than exploring it in a more intriguing way.

The nice thing about art though is that often failures wind up being more interesting than so-called finished pieces. When looking around my studio it occurs to me that what is indeed most interesting is the process itself: the works I’ve chosen to put face again the wall (I tell myself it’s to keep dust from getting on the front), but if I’m honest, it’s because I’m disgusted with myself for not getting the results I wanted. And usually these works receive the throwaway label of ‘transition’ painting/drawing – a description that implies that better things are to come.

But why not show these transition pieces – how about displaying my conversation visually trough my ‘failures’. In fact showing my studio with the work I’ve made over the past couple of months is indeed the best account of myself I can give. Some examples being: a detail of two ink drawings taped to a closet door, a close-up of some very small unfinished paintings that sit on my paint stained work table, and even all the failed works I put under the window and in the corner of the studio.

After all even when I try to put something out of sight, like the Butler essays, it never really is out of my mind.

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Erik Smith The Oneiric House (2009) 274

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Gabriele Stellbaum Bartleby 290

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Mathilde ter Heijne Fake Female Artist Life

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“What I’m thinking about now is a picture I painted, years ago now.

Falling women, it was called. A lot of my paintings then began in my confusion with words. (…) Falling women showed the women, three of them, falling as if by accident off a bridge, their skirts opened into bells by the wind, their hair streaming upwards. Down they fell, onto the men who were lying unseen, jagged and dark and without volition, far below.”

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”If you think I want my work hung on some fat corporate asshole’s wall, you’re very much mistaken.“ ”Asshole!“ ”You’re assuming that success is what I want“ ”I can do these still-life pastels in my sleep. I’ve been looking for something that makes a difference, that punches you in the gut when you see it for the first time. This is like ... white noise on paper.

It’s nothing.“

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“I’ll go ahead with my painting: Ascension of an Infant. It’s a picture of a baby, sitting on a five-colored cloud. If I don’t paint it right away, I may never be able to. It’s already on the verge of turning into something different … losing all the love and sadness.”

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„I wanted to be an artist from early age on. Later I took artists as lovers. (…) I’ve got a lot of money, but I am ugly, aren’t I?“

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„I sit at my drawing board with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of white paper before me. Nothing comes. I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a tube of watercolor, cadmium red dark, and I get a big Mopp of a brush, and I fill a jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red.�

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“J’essaye de me consoler grâce en dessinat des fleurs, de petits cochons, des chevaux qui je enluminais ensuite et qui me servaient de papier à lettres. Je peigne aussi des bouquets éclatants où paraissaient des marguerites aux petals noires.”

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Mathilde ter Heijne F.F.A.L. #1–3, 5–7 (Fake Female Artist Life) 2003–2007 Elaine Risley, Carla Vicenzi, Ueno Otoko, Madonna, Clare Abshire, Elvire Goulot 6 Soundinstallations with special effect dummies Mixed media Textfragments from: Cat‘s Eye, Margaret Atwood, 1988 Cream of the Crop (Black Lace), Savannah Smythe, 2004 Utsukushisa To Kanashimi To, Yasunari Kawabata, 1961 Shanghai Baby, Wie Hui, 1999 The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, 2004 La Femme Assise, Guillaume Apollinaire, 1920

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Eve K. Tremblay EKTBF451 314

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New York, Nov 30th, 2007

Dear M. Bradbury, I would like to invite you to the opening of my exhibition, Becoming Fahrenheit 451, opening January 10th, 2008 at BUIA Gallery in NYC. This project was inspired by your book and also by its film adaptation by François Truffaut.

I first read Fahrenheit 451 as a teenager. It marked my imagination and was one of those books that made me read more and more, and I think it’s amazing to see its resonance in today’s world.

The premise of my current project is to try to become a book - to ultimately memorize a book by heart like the Book People do in your story. For a long time, I couldn’t decide which book was my favorite and then I realized that, in a way, your book, by talking about the destruction of all books, contained potentially all books. So I started to become Fahrenheit 451, to memorize the book that talked about the possible disappearance of all books, and therefore to experience a real life sort of mise-en-abîme.

It was my odd strategy to make a decision and avoid the vertigo I was facing in front of doubts, the infinity of knowledge, the desire to possess it, and the impossibility of satisfying it.

I soon wished I was some sort of genius mnemonist and could memorize your book as fast as you wrote it (9 days??!!) but now it looks like it is going to take me as long as it would to finish reading Remembrance of Times Past by Marcel Proust. I am using different techniques- some intuitive like creating in my mind some strange invisible film remake of F451, and some ancient tricks like the Method of Loci and this imaginary path where “I walk,” and it has been and is still quite an interesting journey. I take my time with it, and I become blocked and lost on my way at times, meeting other books, books reading each other, things that make me go slower along the path, but at least at this pace, grass is not only a “green blur” like for the speedy drivers in your book.

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Also…in trying to become another entity other than mine your book for that matter - I was confronted again with questions I have regarding identity and life in general, and wondered what this desire I had to become a book might mean. I am not sure yet, but maybe it is something to do with the reassurance of knowing where the last page stands, instead of just being a living thing that has no idea when its story will end and if it will even be remembered? I don’t know…

But here I am, breaking narratives again, trying to remember to remember, and, or…no…maybe more something like trying to gather the pieces of the puzzle together, as if there were actually a big picture. But even if I try, I cannot even fool myself…

Concretely, in this exhibition you see different things like photos: fragments of mnemonic paths and portraits of book people friends of mine; videos of my friends and me memorizing in different places and countries; a short romantic scene of a book to become trying to seduce another one (and I am showing those amateurishly shot videos on different gyzmos that were anticipated by you a while ago and are now so common. There are also some objects and others surprises - a remake of a prop from Truffaut’s adaptation for example: a hollowed out TV filled with books entitled Le refuge des amis de truffaut in which I put the books that are mentioned in the last scene of his film with the Book people, but I cheated and added to the group a copy of F451 signed by you that I found on Amazon. An English translation would be Truffaut’s friends’ hide-away (I am French Canadian, which…actually makes memorizing in English an extra challenge…but my English is pretty ok so I should be fine in the end…if I get to the end!).

I was just experimenting on a possible art piece: I don’t know if you know the trick of invisible magic ink made with lemon juice? Here is an Internet link just in case http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howtos/ht/invisibleink3.htm.

Since I read in your book that Book People “burn books too” once they have finished their memorization, I wrote the first sentence of your book.

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It was a pleasure to burn with this lemon ink on some of the pages of F451 that I learned. But I did a first test page on a German edition that I had purchased accidentally on Amazon.de since I live in Berlin now…then I proceeded to make the ink visible by putting the sheet over a candle to see the text appear It was a pleasure to burn… and it did gave me a strange feeling…sorry I am out of words sometimes.

I am not sure what you think of the visual art world I am in but I think you might be a little suspicious because of a quote by Clarisse in your book: “And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That’s all there is now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes pictures said things and even showed people” (but I know you wrote this in 1953…). All I can say, as a non-utopian kind of girl, full of questions and restlessness, just like in any world, whatever the world or the worlds may be, and may mean…ouf!, it is not always monochrome. And I guess, although I am a real sucker for colors, my exhibition does have pictures that say things and even show people, so maybe even Clarisse would like it. You tell me!

Anyway, all of this to say I would be so honored if you came to see my show and I would actually also very much like to do a little memorizing-recitation for you if you would like. You probably won’t be able to make it, but I am sending you this image to thank you for writing this inspirational book and I have put some of the videos on you-tube so maybe at least you can see that part online or something. My account is EKTBF451 for Eve K. Tremblay Becoming Fahrenheit 451.

Best, Eve K. Tremblay

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