User's Manual

Joianne Bittle

USER’S MANUAL

Appendix

Joianne Bittle User’s Manual / 2017

design: Joianne Bittle and Nicholas Knight artwork photography: Nicholas Knight fieldwork photographs: Joianne Bittle reference images: in cases where the image was collected by Bittle, the copyright belongs to its creator. with thanks to: Molly Krom Enrico Gomez Nick De Pirro

All artworks are copyright Joianne Bittle, 2017. All rights reserved. joiannebittle.com Published by Subject Predicate Projects, SPP-026. subjectpredicateprojects.tumblr.com

ISBN: 978-0-9881895-0-8

Joianne Bittle Articulated Dummy

USER’S MANUAL

version 7.0 FOR HUMANS

Table of Contents

Joianne Bittle

USER’S MANUAL Occurrence at the Crawdad Pond MAN REMADE

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Depression Birds The Rib

Appendix

Occurrence at the Crawdad Pond

Mini-Spectacle (Goethite), 2016 collage, paint, mirrors, and plaster 9 x 12 inches following spread: Mini-Spectacles, 2013 - present photo collage, wood, plexi-glass mirrors, screens, acrylic and dry pigments various sizes

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At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, Insect or Worme; those waved their limber fans For wings, and smallest Lineaments exact In all the Liveries dect of Summers pride, With spots of Gold and Purple, azure and green: These as a line their long dimension drew, Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kinde Wondrous in length and corpulence involved Their Snakie folds, and added wings. First crept The Parsimonious Emmet, provident Of future, in small room large heart enclosed, Pattern of just equalitie, perhaps Hereafter, join’d in her popular Tribes Of Commonality: swarming next appeared The Female Bee that feeds her Husband Drone Deliciously, and builds her waxen Cells With Honey stor’d; the rest are numberless, And thou their Natures know’st, and gav’st them Names, Needless, to thee, repeated.

John Milton Paradise Lost (1674) Book VII, lines 475 - 494

The Coming of Planktonic Lifeforms (Chance Proverbs in 5 Acts), 2016 pencil on paper 18 x 24 inches

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MAN REMADE

Articulated Dummy, 2012 - 2014 oil on panel (7 panels + foot panel) 106 x 72 inches

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Organ Box, 2013. Oil on 10 panels (brain, heart, guts, foot, ear, rib, kidneys, backbone) with plywood box, 73 x 23.5 x 23.5 inches.

I spent days peering through a telephoto lens in search of an endemic crayfish species. Tiny lifeforms were shedding vortices on the water’s

future of non-humans, indifferent to this story, took to the water, ground and air.

surface, singing voices in the trees and invisible rattlers on the ground.

A

from a man to create a woman. It was said that this woman was to be his companion. Somewhere else, a

desert. There, I came upon a small pond nestled in an ancient canyon.

whether a crayfish has a mind or not.

long time ago many humans believed there was a garden of paradise far away and that a single rib was taken

The Rib originated five years ago somewhere in the far west Permian

comes and goes in, like, a long weekend. In the end, it’s really quite an open question paradise) to techno-utopian deliverance (a post-biological subject), the whole schmear I left the pond and returned to Queens...from the mythology of origins (a garden of

Well, I learned a lot there at the pond. An arc which bends far enough becomes a circle, and one short enough

appears straight. Time is manipulated to emphasize the shallow focus of human perception. Think what a

I studied the minerals and rock beds closely and dreamt of an animal disguise with an electronic voice. I learn through painting, so I made 7 paintings of chosen birds in hopes to know more about them and become a passive watcher of things too. Composed of 7 segments, a human-size aquatic-air dummy-suit was planned to perhaps better articulate the physical movements of underwater creatures. Her internal organs painted and removed.

twitching blink of an insect eye our human presence in the world is!

others were able to defy gravity, fly toward the zenith as they wish. over and over. Some never left the thin line above or below the surface of the water and in a world of flatlands without names or language, their lives tiny little circles, over and muck, a world of multivalent origins and collapsed infinities. All things were existing About this pond, then – as a player in this story, it becomes the site of our primeval

Footnotes 1. “Trailer Re-Made”, 2012 2. Hans Memling, “Chalice of St. John the Evangelist,” 1475 3. Hieronymus Bosch, “Garden of Earthly Delights (Paradise)”, 1503 4. “Think Box”, 2013. Photo collage, preserved triops #54, mirrors, and glass bottle, 14 x 18 x 5 inches 5. “The Canyon” (detail), 2014 - present, oil on canvas in three parts, 116 x 252 inches 6. Francisco Goya, “The Straw Mannequin,” 1791-17927 7. Film still from “The Invisible Man,” 1933; Fragment of a Queen’s Face, Egypt, yellow jasper, ca. 1353-1336 B.C. 8. Giotto, “Desperation, Infidelity, Envy” (The Seven Vices), Scrovegni Chapel, 1305 9. Rene Magritte and “The Eternally Obvious,” 1938 10. Max Ernst, “Die Anatomie,” 1921 11. “Octopus Garden”, 2012 12. Giovanni Bellini, “St. Sebastian,” 1487 13. Modesta Canyon, Permian basin, Texas 14. Found cowboy painting, Shafter ghost town, Texas

Appendix

Joianne Bittle

Subject Predicate Projects

USER’S MANUAL Occurrence at the Crawdad Pond MAN REMADE

10

Depression Birds The Rib

Appendix

Joianne Bittle

Table of Contents

11

Coney Island Octopus, 2013 oil on panel 24 x 24 inches

Depression Birds

Everything Is Going to Be OK and Its Ghost 2012 oil and charcoal on two panels 48 x 24 inches each

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Depression Birds), 2015 oil on panel 8 x 8 inches

fore-brain stem & optic nerves etc., 2013 pencil on paper with found frame 20 x 16 inches

Mean while the tepid Caves, and Fens and shores, Their Brood as numerous hatch, from the Egg that soon Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed Their callow young, but feathered soon and fledge They summed their Pens, and soaring the air sublime With clang despised the ground, under a cloud In prospect; there the Eagle and the Stork On Cliffs and Cedar tops their Eyries build: Part loosely wing the Region, part more wise In common, ranged in figure wedge their way, Intelligent of seasons, and set forth Their Aierie Caravan, high over Sea’s Flying, and over Lands with mutual wing Easing their flight; so steers the prudent Crane Her annual Voyage, born on Winds; the Air, Floats, as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: From Branch to Branch the smaller Birds with song Solaced the Woods, and spread their painted wings Till Even, nor then the solemn Nightingale Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays.

Others on Silver Lakes and Rivers Bathed Their downy Breast; the Swan with Arched neck Between her white wings mantling proudly, Rows Her state with Oary feet: yet oft they quit The Dank, and rising on stiff Pennons, tower The mid Aereal Sky. Others on ground Walked firm; the crested Cock whose clarion sounds The silent hours, and the other whose gay Train Adorns him, coloured with the Florid hue Of Rainbows and Starry Eyes.

John Milton Paradise Lost (1674) Book VII, lines 418 - 446

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Pyrrhuloxia (Depression Birds), 2014 oil on panel 8 x 8 inches

Belted Kingfisher (Depression Birds), 2014 oil on panel 10 x 10 inches

Free-tailed Bat and Dissolved Reef (Proverbs and Follies), 2015 oil and charcoal on canvas 72 x 48 inches

Nerves of the Orbit, 2013 oil on canvas 84 x 84 inches

The Rib

Time Zone (Members of the Colony), 2016 pencil on paper 18 x 24 inches

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The Archives (Members of the Colony), 2016 pencil on paper 18 x 24 inches

Spinal Worm (Fossil Matrix), 2013 charcoal on paper rolls 30 x 76 inches

Rib, 2014 oil on panel 8 x 12 inches

Occurrence at the Crawdad Pond, 2012-2017 HD video with soundtrack by Command-X 6 mins 31 seconds

Joianne Bittle

Appendix