Praxinoscope: Hours of the Day

PRAXINOSCOPE PerformX | Documents No. 3

H O U R S O F T H E DAY Los Angeles, California October 12, 2022

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Hours of the Day PerformX Documents No. 3

Works performed October 12, 2022 Poetic Research Bureau Los Angeles California

Derek Denckla, Editor

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Visit Praxinoscope Online

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Hours of the Day

PerformX Documents No. 3

Works performed October 12, 2022 Poetic Research Bureau Los Angeles California

Derek Denckla, Editor 3

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Praxinoscope: Hours of the Day PerformX Documents Volume No. 3: October 12, 2022 Volume compilation, introduction, editorial, and back matter Copyright @ Derek A. Denckla (aka Praxinoscope, PraxinoscopeX) All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the permission (or acknowledgement) of the publisher.

Published in the United States of America

by Derek Denckla / Praxinoscope.

All of the materials in the volume are reprinted with the permission of the holders of copyright and publishing rights.

All photos of performances are by Derek Denckla, Jennifer Leiva, and Kenli Black except those courtesy of the artists as stills from the films or videos and the image by Karolina Lavergne and Jessica Dillon.

Distributed by Praxinoscope, Derek Denckla and Lulu.com.

Library of Congress ISBN 979-8-9863355-3-7 ISSN 2832-3394 First Printing Release Date 2/28/2023 Editor: Derek Denckla Assistant Editor: Matthew Bussa Logo Artist: Monte Antrim Layout + Design: Tattfoo Tan

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P E R FO R M X D O C U M E N T S N O . 3 : HOURS OF THE DAY E D I TO R : Derek Denckla

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Forward | E S S AY |

BY Matthew Bussa

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ON THE HOUR Salton Sea Revisited | FILM |

BY Xárene Eskandar

20 ON THE HOUR Opening Remarks | E S S AY |

BY Derek Denckla 27

AROUND THE CLOCK Bells Of— | S O U N D I N S TA L L AT I O N |

BY Derek Denckla

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ONE O’CLOCK Aubade Pantoum | POEM |

BY Rachel Whitfield

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TWO O’CLOCK Keeping a Schedule | FIELD RECORDINGS + OBJECTS |

BY Jennifer Bewerse + Cassia Streb

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THREE O’CLOCK 15. min in the mid-day heat | POEM |

BY Jacqueline Young

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A S S I S TA N T E D I TO R : Matthew Bussa

ON THE HOUR The Law of Conservation of Urgency | LIVE MUSIC + VIDEO |

BY Mouth Noise (Nina Sarnelle) FOUR O’CLOCK Countdown | POEM |

BY Christian Perfas ON THE HOUR The First Few Moments of the First of January | FILM |

BY Eneos Çarka FIVE O’CLOCK The Day I Chose to Love You | POEM |

BY Sabrina O’Reilly ON THE HOUR 1991 | FILM |

BY Saif Alsaegh SIX O’CLOCK Golden Hour Grows Bright Flowers | PERFORMANCE |

BY Rayne

109 SEVEN O’CLOCK One Day | POEM |

BY Diosa X

113 EIGHT O’CLOCK Too Much Art About Collective Memory | POEM |

BY Kenzy El-Mohandes 117 NINE O’CLOCK Golden Hour | SONG |

BY Camille Ora-Nicole 125 TEN O’CLOCK Shopped Around | POEM |

BY Jason Rodriguez 131 ON THE HOUR Live Life, Watermelons A.F. | PERFORMANCE + SCREENING |

BY Jessica Dillon + Karolina Lavergne 139 ELEVEN O’CLOCK What is It? | POEM |

BY Kierunya Davis 145 TWELVE O’CLOCK Punitive Worm Shoots the Sun | PERFORMANCE |

BY Nikki Ochoa 157 ON THE HOUR Losing Light | FILM |

BY Alisha Tejpal

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Salton Sea Revisited Video: (Real-Time-Lapse, Time Slice) Shot between 6am and 9am on 6 March 2012 This video is the first of its kind to depict a new aesthetic of time capture in photography and video, which I coined “Time Slice”. It also defines a new

On the Hour

| Film (2012) | BY Xárene Eskandar

methodology of environmental data visualization called real-time-lapse.

Audio: Drawing inspiration from Jean-Claude Risset's “Sud” and Luc Ferrari's “Presque Rien N°1 (Le Lever Du Jour Au Bord La Mer)”, the piece begins with a dialogue between the environment: the waves, the bleached barnacle beach, the train, the birds. The envelope of the composition follows the envelope of the aural activity of the day, as well as the patterns of the birds which tend to be noisiest at dawn and dusk (with a calm in mid-day).

The subtitle of this piece, “A Choreography for Seven Pelicans Performed by Three”, alludes to the core concept of the time slice series: through the compounding of time in one image, “moments” become “events.” What we miss in the moment-bymoment passage of time—due to our small scale in relation to time—reveals itself when we are able to have an all-encompassing experience of time.

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Opening Remarks Good evening. Welcome to Praxinoscope No. 3: Hours of the Day. Praxinoscope is an artist-led platform formed to invigorate and elevate leading-edge performance art practices and support emerging performing artists.

Our events present innovative productions that each revolve around changing central performance themes and formats. Praxinoscope solicits and selects new artworks for each of our events. We invite our artist community to contribute more than once.

We envision forming a new tribe of Praxinoscope artists.

Praxinoscope promotes collective and collaborative connections between artists practicing their craft in diverse art forms.

This new arts platform also seeks innovative ways to extend opportunities for audiences to interact with the artist’s work beyond the singular moment of performance—through: • PerformX Documents print anthologies— available for purchase tonight— • PerformX Podcasts that broadcast live audio recordings, and • Instagram Live Artist Talks.

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Tonight, we present a group exhibition of artists engaging in a wide variety performance practices: sound installations, conceptual art, poetry, spoken word, dance, film and music.

When you hear a bell ring, turn towards the sound to see the next performance. The 15 performances will be roughly following the movement of hours around a clock face that we imagine to be etched on the floor, as if we are standing on an immense sundial in this space together.

Act One performers will be arrayed from One O’Clock to Six O’Clock. Videos and performances with projections will be presented “On the Hour” at that raised platform stage area.

After a brief Intermission, Artists in Act Two will perform in the imagined locations of Seven O’Clock through Twelve O’Clock. Our “Twelve Midnite” performer will close out the evening’s performance.

We encourage all of you to remain standing and actively engaged throughout the performance—like general admission ticketholders at a rock show.

We consider you to be participants. Or, you can think of yourselves as moshers in the mosh pit. Whatever imaginary framework helps you stay engaged.

Seating is provided at the periphery of the space.

Those seated may find they may not be able to see as much. Anyone who requires greater accessibility 21

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accommodation may approach me during the initial film or raise your hand now and I will come to you after I complete this Introduction.

Works will flow from one to the next without introduction or explanation. Please refer to your program for the names of the artists and explanatory information of each work.

Please take this moment to silence your telecommunications systems. Photography is permitted, but please disable your flash to avoid interfering with the performances. And, if you like what you see, please tag “P-R-A-X-I-N-O-S-C-O-P-E-X”.

Be mindful that Kenli, the man with the movie camera and spotlight, will be turning his mobile tripod towards each performer in the performance sequence too. Please try to stay out of his line of sight of the performers so we can capture these performances for our archives.

Please help yourselves to wine and beer. Donations are welcome. Tonight is also our book release of Performance Documents from our last event, “Signs of the Zodiac”. Copies of this edition as well as our first book, “Months of the Year”, are available for review and purchase at the table in the back. Both may be purchased online.

And now for “The Hours of the Day”.

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Aubade Pantoum

The day hisses open again an accordion bus door over steaming asphalt.

We rise to greet it.

An accordion bus door

One O’Clock

| Poem | BY Rachel Whitfield

bumps its way to the stop curb, and we rise to greet it each of us with our needs & wants.

Bumping her way to the stop curb comes a woman my father would call big-boned.

Each of us with our needs & wants winds our own way down the street, but a woman my father would call big-boned is the first to board this day.

Winding our own way down the street, we circle this city like sweaty vultures.

You could fry an egg today over the steaming asphalt and eat it with fingers on your morning commute as the day hisses open again.

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Keeping a Schedule JENNIFER BEWERSE: In 2020, I started a project of mailing friends short music compositions called postal pieces. “Keeping a Schedule”, my 5th postal piece, was for Cassia Streb.

It’s inspired by Cassia’s herculean efforts to support her family during early COVID-19 quarantines. At the

Two O’Clock

| Field Recordings + Objects | BY Jennifer Bewerse, with performance by Cassia Streb

time, I saw how Cassia was teetering on the edge of burnout, emotional depletion, and grief, and I worried that her experience would get lost in the flood of lifethings that had to get done. My goal with “Keeping a Schedule” was to make a space that centered Cassia’s experience so she could have time to creatively reflect on and process it.

It’s a petite piece but touches on some important ideas: the way the pandemic disproportionately impacted women in caregiving roles, how our feelings about experiences change over time, and the role of creative expression in processing difficult experiences.

CASSIA STREB: Jen sent me this piece in the mail right at the beginning of the pandemic. I was managing the virtual schooling of my kids and trying to figure out what it meant to be a musician now that everything was on pause for an unknown amount of time. I took the field recordings on a typical day that felt like any other in order to gather the raw materials to perform the piece. When I listen back now, it takes me back to an 45

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uncomfortable “in-the-middle” place where I couldn’t see the end. The daily goal was to just keep moving forward in some tiny incremental way to find a path through.

Through revisiting and performing this piece, I’ve been able to internalize that I’m not actually in the middle of that life anymore — a powerful and much needed reminder for me that after the middle, there is the end.

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15 min. in the mid-day heat attend to this burning cigarette, not the violence your body remembers it’s a terrible thing to do, you know, these four or five a day, but less the stress

Three O’Clock

| Poem | BY Jacqueline Young

better this momentary quiet than the suffering your skin will endure a sheet mask won’t fix everything but some, and the wrinkles will come one way or another better the burning than the beating heart better these moments in the backyard with the stray cat curled beneath your feet better the bite, you know, her body was on high alert better the swelter and the lull, you’ve heard she has suffered too.

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The Law of Conservation of Urgency On the Hour

| Live Music + Video | BY Mouth Noise (Nina Sarnelle)

how close am I? how fast will it fall? how dead will I die? show me the curve. urgency urgent seas pick one thing to look at hold just one ocean in your teeth

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how close are we? how fast will we fall? how dead will we die? show us the curve. urgency urgent seas I will not pick one thing pick one thing to be angry about

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urgency urgent seas are rising in our eyes urgencies arise when none of the knives are clean when the light reclines and turns walls honey-eyed like a half-empty bottle of Colt 45 on its side.

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When some urgent flavour lingers around the thawed cod in the fridge one person's urgency is another person's garbage or rent control or dinner.

Urgency can be plasticky abstract hung on the wall diplomatic starving.

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Every morning a fresh uprising.

Point your fingers at the water and flush the pockets under your nails:

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they say the best thing to do after a nuclear blast is take a shower.

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How close am I? Giving Tuesday was their last attempt at heroism.

How fast will it fall?

No one expected them to rise so they didn't.

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How dead will I die?

Do you think it's possible that all the talking we do here is actually screaming?

Show me the curve.

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1991 SYNOPSIS

1991 revolves around a conversation between the filmmaker—an Iraqi asylum-seeker living in the U.S.— and his mother Bushra, an Iraqi immigrant who was living in Turkey while she awaited approval to immigrate to the US. Both are in uncertain positions

On The Hour

| Film (2018) | BY Saif Alsaegh

regarding their immigration statuses and have not been able to see each other for years. 1991 navigates the distance between them.

Through a FaceTime phone conversation, the film expresses the ways that a relationship becomes virtual and symbolic across forced distance.

1991 is set in a cabin where the filmmaker lives a semi-imaginary, peaceful life building fires, cooking, and dancing. The central phone conversation details Bushra’s memory of the filmmaker’s birth in the middle of the 1991 Gulf War and the danger and suffering she went through. The film juxtaposes the virtual landscape of the phone, the calm landscape of the cabin, and the chaotic landscape of memory, to paint an image of war, displacement, and separation.

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TRANSCRIPT EXERPTS The filmmaker’s mother tells his birth story.

You were born in ‘91. When the war started, I was in the final stages of my pregnancy.

When we found a hospital, it was very dark, there was no electricity. The electricity was bombed. In the birthing room there were no beds, only mattresses on the floor, and there were cats roaming around. It was very dirty.

There were no doctors there. When they needed water, they had to ask a cleaning lady to bring us water, and she found a dirty bucket of water. We have no idea where that was from. The hospital was very dark, even though it was in the afternoon. It was freezing cold. There was no electricity.

We came around in the afternoon and when you were born you were so cold you were shivering, and I was shivering, they wrapped us with blankets, as many blankets as they could find. The doctor told me he has to do some stitching, more intense stitching, because he said if you have to run or you have to escape bombing, I don’t want you to bleed.

During the bombings, a family member invited us to stay the night in the basement of a hospital that they were using as a bomb shelter. The place was very disgusting and very, very scary, and I’m really pregnant, only 94

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a few days away from giving birth.

Your Dad always refused to go with us to the basement when the sirens and the bombing started.

One time the bombing was very intense, but he would stay in my aunt's room, he would lie down there on a medical bed. We kept begging him to go into the basement and he kept saying no.

Eventually, a nun convinced him to go in. The moment he got into the basement, a huge bombing happened, and it was insane, everything became white, the whole hospital became white.

And we would only hear things falling and shattering. And the glass is shattering. Things are falling. And we are in the basement praying, “Oh, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.”

When the bombing stops, we went to see what had happened. A lot of the hospital ceiling was glass. And all of that ceiling had fallen on the ground. We went to the room where your dad had been staying and we saw a huge piece of glass laying on the bed. So, if your dad had not decided last minute to go in the basement, that piece of glass would have probably cut his neck.

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Sirens during the night would never stop.

You cannot even close your eyes. The moment

one bombing stops, another one happens

right after. And, I wasn’t happy. People are

very happy when they are having a kid.

But I wasn’t happy. There was no happiness.

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Praxinoscope PerformX is a platform created by artists to foster and feature work by emerging performance and display artists through quarterly curated, themed events and post-event documents including printed matter, podcasts, and online interviews. Soon, we hope to publish reviews, research and critical inquiry.

PerformX Documents No. 3: Hours of the Day includes artworks by the following artists:

Nine O’Clock Camille Ora-Nicole

On the Hour Xárene Eskandar

On The Hour Mouth Noise (Nina Sarnelle)

Around the Clock Derek Denckla

Four O’Clock Soulstuf (Christian Perfas)

One O’Clock Rachel Whitfield

On the Hour Eneos Çarka

On the Hour Jessica Dillon + Karolina Lavergne

Two O’Clock Jennifer Bewerse + Cassia Streb

Five O’Clock Sabrina O’Reilly

Eleven O’Clock Kierunya Davis

On the Hour Saif Alsaegh

Twelve O’Clock Nikki Ochoa

Six O’Clock Rayne

On the Hour Alisha Tejpal

Three O’Clock Jacqueline Young

Ten O’Clock Jason Rodriguez

Seven O’Clock Diosa X Eight O’Clock Kenzy El-Mohandes

Subscribe to our online journal praxinoscope.substack.com (QR code on Page 2). Follow us on Instagram @praxinoscopeX to find out about our next call for artworks, upcoming events and releases.

Praxinoscope PerformX Documents Series No. 1, Volume No. 3.

ISBN 9798986335537

price ($20.00) 9 798986 335537

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