tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91571037630154797302024-02-21T06:03:57.203+00:00Good Grey DayAmy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-13711174746280147122018-10-29T15:34:00.001+00:002018-10-29T15:35:21.831+00:00Catastrophia. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was very pleased to be invited to make a new work for this event at Peer Gallery, London which responded to the work of Alvin Lucier with readings, performance and audio. </div>
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My work <i>Catastrophia</i> is on SoundCloud <a href="https://soundcloud.com/aamypettifer/catastrophia">here</a> if you'd like to listen. </div>
<br />Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-25100979656615603052018-09-22T15:58:00.000+01:002018-09-22T16:00:14.870+01:00The Mouth Takes A Bite Out Of This Cruel Summer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On a slightly gusty Saturday evening in early September myself and Jennifer Boyd presented our fourth listening event as SHELL LIKE in the beautiful scented garden of <a href="https://lux.org.uk/">LUX</a>'s headquarters in Waterlowe Park, North London.<br />
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This programme engaged with the notion of 'cruel summer' as an altered state of psychedelic resistance. A space of aspiration, idealism and augmented libido in which rebellion against normality seems possible, event as it pushes at the boundaries of what is sensible, safe and known. Sited very much in the city and the mind, with voices speaking both 'in heat' and from the shade, it encompasses concrete and sweat, mould and crowds, proximity and precipice, commingling with languid self-touch - potential as cool breeze either ignored or taken between the teeth.<br />
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The programme featured the biggest number of new work to date, with new recordings of text by Penny Goring, Madeleine Stack and Samira Saidi and brand new commissions by Matilda Tjader and Mikatsiu, alongside a significant work by Ain Bailey and two works from the LUX collection by Louise Foreshaw and Jem Cohen, which were presented as audio only. I also presented a new work which you can listen to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/aamypettifer/no-closer-2018">HERE</a>.<br />
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This was such a special event for us, thank you to everyone that came for their generous attention and for not running indoors when it started to spit! Huge thanks also to very best Matt Carter at LUX for all his support.<br />
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Find out more about our listening events at <a href="http://www.shell-like.com/">www.shell-like.com </a>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-86919728484032538652018-07-17T15:42:00.000+01:002018-09-22T15:43:23.867+01:00Rebecca's<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm delighted to announce that, until June 2019, myself and Jennifer Boyd as SHELL LIKE along with Dyveke Bredsdorff of ilyd will be one of 13 groups in residence at Raven Row gallery in East London.</div>
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The space we will be working in is an apartment on the gallery's top floor, originally occupied by three sisters, the surviving members of a family of green grocers and textile merchants who lived in the main building in the early 20th century. The flat is named after Rebecca Levy, the eldest and longest surviving sister who lived there until her death in 2008. </div>
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The flat has been preserved and retains every detail of the Levy sister's maximalist approach to interior decorating; these domestic traces making it the most potent atmosphere for working and making. I feel very lucky to be able to spend time there.</div>
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A full list of the groups in residence can be found on the Raven Row website <a href="http://www.ravenrow.org/events/groups_and_organisations/">HERE</a>.</div>
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<br />Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-29156038053790180492018-07-10T15:19:00.000+01:002018-09-22T15:32:11.054+01:00Expand And Contract: Navigating Undergrounds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It was a pleasure to participate in this amazing and inspiring conference organised by Flora Parrott and Harriet Hawkins at Chisenhale Dance Space.<br />
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Academic conferences can easily be rigid environments in which ideas and experimentation are quashed rather than nurtured. Flora and Harriet turned this completely on its head, programming a completely eclectic programme of presentations that included shamanic drumming and LARP (much less excruciating than it sounds), interwoven with lectures on cave art and the subterranean mapping of cities.<br />
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The focus was on a tactile engagement with the subject - a sense of curious play - that undid institutional rigours and replaced them with collaboration and real, generative sharing of ideas.<br />
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Participating as SHELL LIKE, with my collaborator Jennifer Boyd, we closed the day with a live essay titled <i>'The Mouth Of the Cave; The Cave of the Voice; The Voice of the Flesh.' </i>This was an experimental text for two voices that explored some of our interest in the relationship between body and voice and was interspersed with sound works by Diana Policarpo, Tamar Banai and Jennifer Boyd.<br />
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Huge thanks to Flora, Harriet and all the participants for an amazing day.<br />
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<br />Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-29085061780108190202018-06-01T15:53:00.000+01:002018-11-02T15:56:12.272+00:00Ilyd<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChyTV4NTE3sMUAb12BR4Ldb-4pec5QsIB5XGveRveIrobuy8XiPz2BMf96XopH-TUOiOCY0m4BU1sjrzaT-M3-a3fhrs4tIXvarfnfus4axfRxOGZNM6KwtmQUkGjtl1tY-9qD4nxtpQg/s1600/homepage+ilyd+two.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChyTV4NTE3sMUAb12BR4Ldb-4pec5QsIB5XGveRveIrobuy8XiPz2BMf96XopH-TUOiOCY0m4BU1sjrzaT-M3-a3fhrs4tIXvarfnfus4axfRxOGZNM6KwtmQUkGjtl1tY-9qD4nxtpQg/s640/homepage+ilyd+two.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Between June and December of this year, myself and Jennifer Boyd as <a href="http://www.shell-like.com/">SHELL LIKE</a> will be taking over programming of <a href="http://ilyd.nu/">ilyd.nu</a>, presenting a series of new and existing sound works by writers.<br />
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ilyd.nu is an artist-run, online exhibition space in sound, curated by Dyveke Bredsdorff and Emile Kjaer. Since opening in 2016 in has commissioned and exhibited 22 artists including Hannah Regel and Gray Wielebinski whose ilyd works appeared in SHELL LIKE #2 and #3 respectively.<br />
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We are delighted to be working with ilyd and to be showing commissions from our past programmes online for the first time. From its beginning, SHELL LIKE has been interested in how text might exist outside the bounds of conventional publishing and - in response to ilyd's foregrounding of early sound works by visual artists - we will use this takeover to present a series of audio works by writers. In many cases, these are their first experiments with the medium.<br />
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The exhibitions will change monthly, as follows:<br />
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<b><u>June:</u> </b>We are beginning with our own work! Showing my 2015 piece <i>(57) #Passion</i>, and Jen's 2018 work <i>But With What Protein? (Straining Collection)</i><br />
<u><b>July:</b> </u><a href="http://lobstersforliberty.blogspot.com/">Octavia Bright</a>, <i>Heathcliffe, It's Me, </i><br />
<b><u>August:</u> </b><a href="http://www.nisharamayya.com/">Nisha<b> </b>Ramayya</a>, <i>Containing Passages From Dictionaries; Along With The Shell Or Husk; Along With The Membrane.</i><br />
<b><u>September:</u></b> Matilda Tjäder, <i>Erogenous Zones.</i><br />
<b><u>October:</u></b> Leyla Pillai, <i>RIMMING GLAZZIES OF MILK ON THE TABLES TURNING: SYMPHONY #1</i><br />
<b><u>November:</u></b> <a href="https://alexborkowski.net/about/">Alex Borkowski</a>, <i>The Hydrocephalus Suite.</i><br />
<u style="font-weight: bold;">December:</u> Mikatsui,<i> Gerasimou's Crystal Shadow.</i><br />
<br />Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-77646365496867575862018-03-12T16:51:00.002+00:002018-09-22T15:02:48.200+01:00Windswept Baby<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bethan Lloyd Worthington, <i>A succession of hilltops with the hum caught underneath</i>, 2018.<br />Twelve framed drawings in pastel and ink on paper.<br /></td></tr>
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I'm very excited to announce my participation in this exhibition and book project conceived by artist <a href="http://bethanlloydworthington.com/">Bethan Lloyd Worthington </a>for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.<br />
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The exhibition and publication features new work by Bethan, alongside a series of new texts made in response to objects from the V&A ceramics collection by myself, Jack Underwood, Megan Nolan, Luke Turner, Lucy Biddle and Kayo Chingonyi.<br />
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The exhibition ran from May - August 2018. Full details at <a href="http://www.windsweptbaby.com/">www.windsweptbaby.com</a><br />
Supported by Arts Council EnglandAmy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-89473211472395231822018-02-16T11:29:00.002+00:002018-02-16T15:36:00.033+00:00A Whirr Like A Heart Working<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">The funny thing about writing is how it can sometimes separate you from a living, breathing person, saying what they want to say, but in the work of Sue Tompkins the text is full of pulse. Within it is a recognisably fractured world of modern communication, riddled with distortions, distances and typos, but it’s fed back through a more tactile world of writing - hammered on typewriter keys, scribbled in pen or cut through canvas. You can tell there is a body at the beginning of it and this written presence isn’t just a trace, it’s fully realised in the room, as soon as Tompkins picks up a microphone and opens a lever-arch file.</span>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">Like her typewriter works on paper and more recent paintings, the pages hold text that is alive, vernacular, questioning and funny - familiar in snatches but newly woven into bright, rhythmic writings. Having got them on the page Tompkins then throws the words into a performance space, broken sentences falling into verse - her vocal storm forming the fantastic racket of life that can be tuned into daily. In it you can recognise your own voice, echoing back at you in the good acoustics of the bathroom, but it’s also choral, collective - what Yve Lomax calls “pure, mixed –up, multiplicity on the move.”<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">[1]</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">In the early 1990s at Glasgow School of Art, Tompkins studied painting but was already working with a typewriter and developing performances. She then collaborated with Elizabeth Go (an art collective formed with her sister Hayley, Cathy Wilkes, Victoria Morton and Sarah Tripp) before becoming, in 1999, lead singer of the band Life Without Buildings. The lyrics of their songs (captured on a single, shimmering album) arose in much the same way as her performances do now - sheets of paper covered in collected notes, spread out on the floor and reshuffled as the band played, with Tompkins editing and refining the selection over time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1">Both on paper and as a performer, Tompkins’ relationship to language is kinetic and textured. Equally steeped in the flurry of words as in the silences - the breaths - that buffer them. Some works on paper bear the scars left by the artist folding oversized sheets in order fit them into a typewriter – seemingly not to make room for more words, but to create bigger gaps. In others, words are visually soundproofed within patterns created by repeatedly stabbed punctuation keys - gestural trails that could well tip over the edge. In live performance her speech is couched in the same kind of space - the flow occasionally halted by a pause, a moment to stop and smile or to visually underline a word with a gesture. In both mediums, words are: “...the start of an event that keeps going, off the page...”</span><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">[2]</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;">From here a line can be drawn back to concrete music and poetry, through performative writing and Fluxus, but also squarely and joyfully to the worlds of punk and pop. There’s a beat happening in the motion of the performance, sounded in the click of her heels and the doubling of words - in the time it takes to turn a page. It’s the same pulse that helps pop music get under your skin, transmitting messages straight to the heart by coming at you from all fronts. Emotion, energy, action and exaltation - repeated to fade. There’s also a clear expression of love in Tompkins’ handling of words - a love in the spoken that helps us to deal with the lack of writing - that closes down the distances and isn’t embarrassed to look you in the eye.</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><b>This text was commissioned by Tate on the occasion of a performance by Sue Tompkins of her work <i>Mob de Mob, </i>alongside a screening of Tony Conrad's seminal 1966 film <i>The Flicker. </i>The event took place on 15th February 2018 as part of Tate's film programme, and was curated by Linsey Young.</b></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">[1]</span>Yve Lomax, “A Twittering Noise” in Sounding the Event: Escapes in Dialogue and Matters of Arts, Nature and Time, (I.B Tauris. London. 2005) p 13.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">[2]</span>Vito Acconci, “Early Work: Movement over a Page,” 1972, in Words To Be Looked At, Liz Kotz (The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007) p 165.</span></div>
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Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-42790318643842925192018-02-03T22:04:00.001+00:002018-02-03T22:10:25.299+00:00High On Time The Voice Box Heaved<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghxBv2ZFGGLQCg73hv5UCMUPaOLOknDeIJIEr3FxR_2lYX5QR-YQHr__gx9x2vOInYrW2AjRwiUNJLzBloAuI2sdC_tUzHbxupEWOq1FCmRJ4_2VdfdGkwWiJLBCGY9yF2pMK0Ys-p00ZF/s1600/High+On+Time+Graphic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghxBv2ZFGGLQCg73hv5UCMUPaOLOknDeIJIEr3FxR_2lYX5QR-YQHr__gx9x2vOInYrW2AjRwiUNJLzBloAuI2sdC_tUzHbxupEWOq1FCmRJ4_2VdfdGkwWiJLBCGY9yF2pMK0Ys-p00ZF/s640/High+On+Time+Graphic.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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I am very excited to announce the third listening event under the banner of <a href="http://www.shell-like.com/">SHELL LIKE</a>, my ongoing collaboration with the writer <a href="http://jennif3rboyd.tumblr.com/">Jennifer Boyd</a>.<br />
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How do we dream when reality appears to swim before us? How do we combat the real with the strange if reality already appears to be floating? When time itself lurches back and forth - future-stuttered and rattled by a vertiginous present, we experience a kind of sea sickness, finding ourselves adrift in what Mark Fisher calls 'the post psychedelic oceanic.'<br />
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In <i>High On Time The Voice Box Heaved</i>, striving treatises and weird meditations on time will revolve, evolve and reverberate inside Toynbee Studios Court Room, whose wood panelled walls were salvaged from the library of an ocean liner.<br />
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The programme will consider the substances and sensations that allow for evasion of capitalist time and the ways in which the body and voice can take us towards a new surrealism.<br />
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The hour-long programme will contain existing and newly commissioned audio works by UK and international artists and writers - soon to be announced.<br />
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<b><i>High On Time The Voice Box Heaved</i></b></div>
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<b>Tuesday 6 March 2018</b></div>
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<b>Artsadmin, London</b></div>
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<b>7:30pm</b></div>
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<b>£5</b></div>
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<a href="https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/4110"><b>BOOK HERE</b></a></div>
<br />Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-6252885533002720802018-01-04T17:36:00.001+00:002018-02-03T22:06:41.412+00:00RILF 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCcds6hQPesMQw29efPifdTmBCW2sbCGyh4qkQRpITFD0iUuYSZEDrYeCNUVeexhsHzw5bF_gMuzlROLqEp6tNgYkpD9nKxITBT0UJOUt7YDSTCrkbwJTMV2hO-8g7ug2WD8M-2iOnEdvX/s1600/IMG-0293.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCcds6hQPesMQw29efPifdTmBCW2sbCGyh4qkQRpITFD0iUuYSZEDrYeCNUVeexhsHzw5bF_gMuzlROLqEp6tNgYkpD9nKxITBT0UJOUt7YDSTCrkbwJTMV2hO-8g7ug2WD8M-2iOnEdvX/s640/IMG-0293.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dearest and most darling flinty rock.
Scythed out coal nugget. Utter hunk, jagged from cutting, rests on my chest -
the exact replica of a heart, tossed in a fire and become charcoal. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In grasping at it day by day, dusty
drawing marks are left on my skin. Finger edges, belly muscle, circles around
areola - imperfect lines that have been rock traced from neck to tit to belly
to cunt. Not to mention from sun scorched shoulder down the arm to the hands, a
finer line marking out the five bones of the fingers. A nervous system/skeleton
newly etched by a wetted finger in inky coke. Expanding outward </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">from the beloved centre of the black
heart rock. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">- From a series of four shot, fictional texts written in 2017. </span></div>
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Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-37924591258628240682017-11-16T18:22:00.002+00:002018-02-03T22:07:41.340+00:00Closer<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In retrospect, 17 was probably too young to see a play whose first act ended with the line ‘Now fuck off and die. You fucked-up slag.’ But that’s what happened and I have never forgotten it. In 1997 </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - the second play by British writer Patrick Marber was heralded by critics, press and audiences as </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sensational</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - a description that carries not only a celebration of its merit, but also the epochal baggage of a culturally raucous and reckless 90s. In the same month that </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">finished its initial run in the National Theatre’s Cottesloe auditorium, the Royal Academy opened the group exhibition </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sensation</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> changing the face of British Contemporary Art for good. As Damien</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1e1e; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin, Marcus Harvey and others splattered the pristine white cube of the art establishment with body fluids, formaldehyde and warm Becks, the quartet of characters in Marber’s play did something similar to the rarefied world of the stage – painting an unapologetic picture of contemporary sexual politics, accompanied by a symphony of profanities projected</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">at one another and over the footlights into the faces of an unsuspecting crowd. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0aLfx2gvefTFvHGKZrkAqzGyekxnQ3w_5e51RleK1ruoctzxKzFm6owhcHp6JSW-J8rCZ3RZ2LtcwHxqqsqcBOXtSP0pYXe9ccg37ZjCRqvl-YAECJQbaCD0fdOZzsuzEcN7ffrgOuweI/s1600/tracey_emin_bed_3250138k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0aLfx2gvefTFvHGKZrkAqzGyekxnQ3w_5e51RleK1ruoctzxKzFm6owhcHp6JSW-J8rCZ3RZ2LtcwHxqqsqcBOXtSP0pYXe9ccg37ZjCRqvl-YAECJQbaCD0fdOZzsuzEcN7ffrgOuweI/s640/tracey_emin_bed_3250138k.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tracey Emin, <i>My Bed,</i> 1998</span><br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW-_oAuXaW6vxAJqqVzMiu92XDwxRVAtdZjt1Fez5aXJixAKeUbKROYgY8RIICO3SAvvH8f_1YBZiHkiZc7pm6_LU2mKF-dXBKHkPTuzGe0sUjo7ytGuyETMAk9B66H5E_EFD9ILsBKlmP/s1600/80e0ccb4-a3bc-4190-9878-c49bee30ea66-2060x1355.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW-_oAuXaW6vxAJqqVzMiu92XDwxRVAtdZjt1Fez5aXJixAKeUbKROYgY8RIICO3SAvvH8f_1YBZiHkiZc7pm6_LU2mKF-dXBKHkPTuzGe0sUjo7ytGuyETMAk9B66H5E_EFD9ILsBKlmP/s640/80e0ccb4-a3bc-4190-9878-c49bee30ea66-2060x1355.jpeg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Liza Walker and Clive Owen as Alice and Dan in the original production at The National Theatre, 1997.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />At the time Marber was heavily profiled in the Sundays as a leading exponent of ‘In Yer Face Theatre’ alongside Martin McDonagh and Mark Ravenhill whose poetically brutal </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leenane Trilogy</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and zeitgeist-y </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shopping And Fucking</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> respectively, made similarly rough theatrical waves in the late 90s. But graphic descriptions of sexual fantasy and abundant swearing aside, that label seems ill-suited to a piece of theatre that appeared to me, at the time, the epitome of a bluntly sophisticated adulthood. Just as when one character apologises for using the c-word, the other rightly replies “I’m a grown up. Cunt away.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marber’s four characters are Dan, an obituary writer desperate to mine some meaning from a mundane existence; Anna, a photographer, superficially robust enough for brutish romantic encounter but ultimately fallible to it; Larry, a dermatologist plagued by working class guilt and Alice, a walking mystery – all youth and desirability with an exterior of easily scrapable toughness. Their romantic configuration shifts and resolves with tragic inevitability over the two hours of the play, the scenic detritus of Vicki Mortimer’s set accruing by the back curtain like so much emotional baggage. The quadrille they dance is greased by an energy so endlessly heroic and foolhardy that it makes your head spin. “Grow old with me…” Dan begs Anna after a single meeting – “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">die</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with me...Wear a battered cardigan on the beach in Bournemouth. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marry Me.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” Together they spark like flints, at the mercy of fate and the whim of the city - London in the last decade of the 20</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 4.2pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> century. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marber depicted a universe of stylish and sexually charged independence where the froth of romance was replaced by animal desire and an unassailable quest to get exactly what you wanted when you wanted it. On the same day that I saw the West End transfer in 1998 (with a better, more polished cast than the original production) I also saw a Pinter matinee at the Donmar Warehouse and almost had sex in a bookshop on the Charing Cross Road. By the time I’d seen </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I was totally convinced that this world – however inappropriately ruinous – was my destiny. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhSVUAJ1GHw7MHKCErbRRSdNoMjruzt37-ZGk7h4-vzlSA5KIAwD2aTOVF17vfBIQGAOYOEx4E4leT36O07s2NS1VmKYOq9Hm2J2UVa8L8gJM8V6txOKE0FDOmk7k0Ce2YOBLVuBv_HL3/s1600/tumblr_inline_o8pih0MUb41rdh6ct_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="513" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhSVUAJ1GHw7MHKCErbRRSdNoMjruzt37-ZGk7h4-vzlSA5KIAwD2aTOVF17vfBIQGAOYOEx4E4leT36O07s2NS1VmKYOq9Hm2J2UVa8L8gJM8V6txOKE0FDOmk7k0Ce2YOBLVuBv_HL3/s640/tumblr_inline_o8pih0MUb41rdh6ct_500.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Michael Gambon and Penelope Wilton as Jerry and Emma in Pinter's 'Betrayal', 1978.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sophistication I was homing in on is due in great part to Marber’s own tutelage of the work of Harold Pinter, to whom the play text owes massive debts. There are formal echoes of works like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Betrayal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Moonlight</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in which stiffly elegant characters work to dissolve propriety with illicit encounter. It’s a world of dropped gin glasses soaking the carpet, raincoats and cigarettes on dark corners - of telephone calls. In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this is updated to champagne at art openings, indie music in strip clubs and sex on the Conran sofa (or in internet chat rooms as one infamous scene depicts). It is still enticingly clandestine but, in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">getting caught is just as pleasurable; as is the moment of confessing, or the act of bringing everything crashing down around your ears. Marber’s characters own their deceptive behaviour, accepting it as fact and presenting it to one another cold, jellied, specimen-like. At the end of Act One Larry exits the room in a dressing gown and returns fully clothed because he senses Anna is about to leave him - everyone is poised for sudden abandonment. “It’s the only way to leave” - Alice tells Dan the first time they meet – “I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This stark brevity of language and sentiment is the strongest echo of Pinter in Marber’s work; his lines have a deadly concision, shaped for poetry and impact but somehow scaffold-less, their emotional underpinnings blasted away by the lean libidinal economies of the age. But it’s very funny too. There are rarely more than two people in a scene and their various emotional chemistries begin in the language of the double act. The opening scene, in which Dan sits with Alice in a hospital waiting room after he’s peeled her of the road following a collision with a taxi, is beautiful patter - rhythmic, flirtatious and smart. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dan:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Didn’t fancy my sandwiches?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alice:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I don’t eat fish.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Why not? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alice: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fish piss in the sea.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dan:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So do children. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alice:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I don’t eat children either. What’s your work? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dan:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’m a...sort of journalist.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alice:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sort?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dan:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I write obituaries.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alice:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Do you like it...in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dying</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> business? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dan: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a living. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbeR7DG23LEA8vCziIQQaVkHPpkzNT-g3r_gb2fAImIizfLNIUkntZRwU4OJsK5-9KU1RHunyFJR1ZvowOiqfCLxVkYg5BUOwtUzljGKcmDtuMlU9TlKUHlA4S8-Nsymox596kYniy-AiV/s1600/B8hqHtbCAAAZ-oH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbeR7DG23LEA8vCziIQQaVkHPpkzNT-g3r_gb2fAImIizfLNIUkntZRwU4OJsK5-9KU1RHunyFJR1ZvowOiqfCLxVkYg5BUOwtUzljGKcmDtuMlU9TlKUHlA4S8-Nsymox596kYniy-AiV/s640/B8hqHtbCAAAZ-oH.jpg" width="432" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Liza Walker and Clive Owen as Alice and Dan.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This pre-coital shorthand is best and funniest however in the play’s most notorious scene, in which Larry and Dan encounter one another in an internet chat room called LONDON FUCK, with Dan posing as a woman (pseudonym Anna). There is no talking, instead their conversation is projected onto the backdrop as they type - making </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">probably the first major play to involve contracted text speak. This is social media in its earliest, most embryonic form, operating with a language in which not everyone was fluent. When Larry poses the question “Nice arse?” and ‘Anna’ replies with a single letter “Y”, Larry counters “Becos i want 2 know.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An interview with Marber in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Times, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in 1998 relates that “despite having had an internet account for the past year, he has only been online a few times” which seems impossible to comprehend twenty years later when every moment of our lives is played out on the web. Somewhat presciently he continues, “The possibilities of lying on the net are so vast and interesting and strange. You can forge your identity.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This theme is carried through the play via the second nature deceit of the four characters but particularly, and less salaciously, through Alice who exists so much in the eye of her beholders (Larry, Dan and also Anna who photographs her for an exhibition of portraits of strangers) that she is little more than a cypher - a composite person, never truly known. Larry and Dan both notice the scar on her leg before anything else. She gets under their skin with her gamine beauty, forward approach and relish in her job as a part time stripper, but they make little effort to see her as anything other than fantasy and surface. This is mirrored in the reality of the time too, when for every broadsheet desperate to paint Marber as a literary genius, there was a tabloid cooing over Liza Walker, the actress who originated the role of Alice. While the scope of the internet has matured exponentially over the last 20 years, it’s notable (and depressing) that the depiction of women in media hasn’t; although, for many women, reconfiguration of the self online has become a freeing, creative outlet - a way to take back control. “Lying,” Alice tells Larry “is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it’s better if you do.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She infuriates him in their second meeting (in a private room of a strip club) by insisting that her real name is “plain Jane Jones” - but for once it’s the truth. Jane Jones is the name in her jealously guarded passport whereas Alice Ayres is lifted from the memorial in Postman’s Park which commemorates ordinary people who have died saving the lives of others. There is nothing accidental about this move. For all the grand declarations of love and steely coldness in the wake of rejection, Alice is a terrified person doing her best imitation of someone brave. At the end of the play we hear that she has died, hit by a car in New York, her secrets, like her guts, finally spilling out around her, ‘She made herself up’ Dan reveals to Anna in the final scene. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Susan Hiller, <i>Monument,</i> 1980-1</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Alice Ayres' plaque in Postman's Park, London.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Marber stated that the first moment of the play he conceived was this encounter in the strip club, where a broken hearted Larry crumbles in front of Alice, a girl he believes he knows. Both abandoned, their lovers having left them for each other, Larry attempts to reach her in the thoroughly inappropriate setting of ‘The Paradise Suite,’ while she remains emotionally behind glass, tough in the naked veneer of her stripper’s armour. It’s a drastic, dramatic and totally apt distillation of a play capturing fin de siècle romance - all overt sexual need, foiled inhibition, transaction, power and performance. It is sad too - the loneliness of it. Although that was lost on me at 17, instead it looked totally thrilling, probably because the four characters possessed all the trappings of a successful adulthood (lunch in restaurants, Elle Decoration bathrooms, confident denial) but behaved like hormonal teenagers. And that’s what I was. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liza Walker and Neil Pearson as Alice and Larry in the 1998 West End transfer.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wanted to be Alice. To comport some degree of enticing, youthful mystery - to be the kind of girl whose attentions might prove destructive. But that was then, before my heart had been properly broken, before I’d been bewildered by infidelity or inexplicably, repeatedly lured to it myself. For Marber the play picked at a tender emotional scab - that desperate need to do or feel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">something </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">before you die. Love, passion, lust - all these things are a temporary madness, an escape from the numbing inconceivability of forever. Drawing from details of his own experience Marber said that he wrote the play after a romantically turbulent period of his early 20s. “A bit of life happened to me” he described. But I wonder which is the part that he qualified as ‘life.’ The romantic fervour and excitement? Or the comedown - the bit that happens while you’re busy making plans with someone else’s girlfriend?</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Natalie Portman as Alice in Mike Nichols' film adaptation, 2004.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While re-watching Mike Nichols’ starry 2004 film adaptation (both sadder and much less funny than the stage version), as well as a blurred VHS of an early performance in the National Theatre’s archives I find myself slightly incredulous at the melodrama of it, it feels indicative of an era whose often romanticised insouciance now looks indulgent, selfish, arrogant. One half of my brain is screaming, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this is NOT how people behave! </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the other knows full well that this is not true. People are terrible. Age does not equal wisdom. Bodies are not logic. Desire and pain are much the same. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With an almost mathematically perfect structure and endlessly honed dialogue Marber aimed at ordering chaos into a tidy set of actions – equal and opposite like the motion of the Newton’s Cradle on Larry’s desk. As a result, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> endures better as a piece of writing than it does performed drama but it’s still brilliant - to witness this wrangle with a shitstorm of human emotion - like wrestling an eel or lassoing smoke. Love is always excessive, a bloody, visceral mess, but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closer</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a work of art. Not quite a head made of frozen plasma or something dead, pickled in a tanked - but a raw human heart which, as Larry tells Dan, “looks like a fist wrapped in blood.”</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Marc Quinn, <i>Self</i>, 1991.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">With thanks to the National Theatre's Archives.</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-9e6c7eb9-c5f8-7e39-451e-45bf5531f1d1"><br /></span>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-89969946831160702662017-10-28T21:34:00.000+01:002018-02-03T22:08:12.106+00:00The Interred Voice<span style="font-family: inherit;">This text was a product of the research process of <i><a href="http://www.shell-like.com/post/165544475592/listening-event-2-the-mouth-is-a-fossil-bog">The Mouth Is A Fossil, Bog Buried And Glowing Blue</a></i>, the second in a series of listening events curated by myself and <a href="http://jennif3rboyd.tumblr.com/">Jennifer Boyd</a> under the name Shell Like. The text appeared in printed form alongside the programme for the event, which took place in the environment of <i><a href="https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-culture/sidney-cooper-gallery/whats-on/exhibitions.aspx">Shell-Lit Siambr</a></i>, the first UK solo exhibition by <a href="http://bethanlloydworthington.com/">Bethan Lloyd Worthington</a> at Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury. Her exhibition continues to 25th November.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTCU2tuLuY6EevB9Gkr_5ELG3PUdvwPa5YKJSkc2ZDgP-mpfl0i2mQuJgK0UgvB_2NmJDWmVE93jBucsaU2rUoAVjWX_iJjFUadWUigeaJzXovJ1ZG8tpQ9WqgJApGwTQnlPSLz7h3o1U/s1600/IMG_1195.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1535" data-original-width="1535" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTCU2tuLuY6EevB9Gkr_5ELG3PUdvwPa5YKJSkc2ZDgP-mpfl0i2mQuJgK0UgvB_2NmJDWmVE93jBucsaU2rUoAVjWX_iJjFUadWUigeaJzXovJ1ZG8tpQ9WqgJApGwTQnlPSLz7h3o1U/s640/IMG_1195.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Image by Jennifer Boyd</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>“Being full of holes and dents, the corpse could talk out of any part of its body. ‘Now,’ said the corpse through the back of its head, ‘I shall tell you a story.’</i></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>The Happy Corpse - Leonora Carrington</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A pilgrimage is a solo walk. A creeping, in private thought, to a ‘place of asking.’ The air around a site of pilgrimage is thick with questions posed to a specific, but no less empty, corner of the ether. Having exhausted the wisdoms of proximate family and friends you head instead for higher powers, frankly caring little if they are breathing or not. A pilgrimage then, might be a last resort, an odd holiday. A collective hope. Drowning out other noise and focusing on hearing a single, specific voice that emanates (you suppose or are told) from remnant bits of someone who knew better. Someone who has been there and done it but then passed on, leaving their teeth behind, buried in the bricks. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We like to cling on to the bits. Perhaps because we know, deep down, that ghosts are nothing but bones are something. We have listened at a wall or door and definitely come away with answers. We have screamed into streams and felt better - so, let us now listen closely to teeth and to flesh and to skulls as they crack open. Let us ask that bog body to spit it out before it sinks; or lean an ear to the to the tomb side and wait for echoes; or absorb the song of the stretched-out corpus as it lies long on the forest floor - taking note of the change of key as its edges fur and it fuses, finally, with the wet ground beneath - becoming itself a heavy wooded door to listen at. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then let us crouch there, hoping against hope, that we like what we hear.
</span></span></div>
Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-75358657993924261772016-07-18T14:34:00.000+01:002018-02-03T22:08:30.893+00:00Corps Etranger<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">In
order to enter Mona Hatoum’s retrospective at Tate Modern you have to navigate
the pit of the stomach and the flesh of the throat. There’s no way around it.
Just over the threshold is the dark bulk of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Socle du Monde </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">(1992-93),
which transforms Piero Manzoni’s sculptural joke into the base of a troubled world
- as complex and mysterious as the system of forces that allows thousands of
iron filings to fur the work’s surface in a writhing, intestinal pattern.
Beyond it is </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Corps étranger</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"> (1994), a squirming projection of an
un-medical eye probing private fleshy apertures. It’s difficult to watch as the
camera ventures far beyond what is comfortable or desired; the interior of the
artist’s body pushes and pulls, refusing the invasion – a different sort of
gag.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-dw0eJsy3UTcYOZ1cfg79JjaGRqJka5Hwt1S41xjbsSLhktSkUoWW-6LPKXTkw6-8WbtIjpCow-ckHrBr4Mw84mDJZ7HnGLiiHN0GvGBbXxC5NktubuFlozdd9x6UagxxJtuScdwxOMV5/s1600/Mona-Hatoum-154-155_861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="861" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-dw0eJsy3UTcYOZ1cfg79JjaGRqJka5Hwt1S41xjbsSLhktSkUoWW-6LPKXTkw6-8WbtIjpCow-ckHrBr4Mw84mDJZ7HnGLiiHN0GvGBbXxC5NktubuFlozdd9x6UagxxJtuScdwxOMV5/s640/Mona-Hatoum-154-155_861.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Socle du Monde </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">(1992-93)</span> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white;">I have
asked myself what it means to resist many times in recent weeks and I know I’m
not alone. Resistance has risks in it. Not just the very real danger of being
overcome, but also the realisation that you might cave – despite your best
efforts – suddenly becoming intimately aware of your limits. Resistance is
shaped by information but it begins in your body and, moving through the
exhibition spaces, which hold around 100 of Hatoum’s works from the last 35
years, this fact dawns like a gut level punch.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white;">The
roots of Hatoum’s practice are present in documentation of early performance
works, which confirm her reading of the body as a battleground. Addressing a
troubled relationship between developing nations and the west, Hatoum created
visceral installations that placed her at the dead centre of situations from
which there was no escape - from threat or from the eyes of others. However
it's beyond these photographs, in work that suggests rather than involves the
presence of bodies, that a sense of precarity and peril is most keenly felt.</span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL4eFCXX1AAfKqVEUsXKFMyQq7BNSRlgNm4VPlJyYEMNp-sgPNKwOSWxzIrnZXTIT7Upo3FuG9hZtOZM_fabwVy0MLpCDCXZclEjUOLgxGhTWC2fIW6vICLRlvtDQyIMf3FOaSxf84VlGJ/s1600/Home+Bound.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1163" data-original-width="1600" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL4eFCXX1AAfKqVEUsXKFMyQq7BNSRlgNm4VPlJyYEMNp-sgPNKwOSWxzIrnZXTIT7Upo3FuG9hZtOZM_fabwVy0MLpCDCXZclEjUOLgxGhTWC2fIW6vICLRlvtDQyIMf3FOaSxf84VlGJ/s640/Home+Bound.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Homebound</i> (2000), Tate Modern installation view.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white;">At the
centre of the exhibition is <i>Homebound</i> (2000) a kitchen tableau hijacked
by a live circuit. The irresistible draw of familial warmth is replaced with white
heat - the heart of the home pulsating with deadly voltage. In other quiet
corners are a baby cot whose mattress is piano wire and a wheelchair kitted
with knives. Space is carved up by the cheese grater room dividers produced in
the early 2000s and then by the stacked cage and barbed wire works of more
recent years. The illusion of safety in both public and private space is
weaponised, threatening to physically alter you with indented skin, electric
shocks and blinding, interrogative light.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1975
marked the beginning of an extended exile from Beirut for Hatoum, who was
travelling in the UK during the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. It also
marked a dismantling of the idea of home as a place you could easily identify
with a pin in a map, let alone as a refuge from danger. As such, Hatoum’s is a
landscape of current and friction, where the bold and combative rub up against
intimate domesticity. Among works whose scale is oppressive, their materiality
cold and hazardous, there are textiles, voices, stains and handwriting - body
stuff; traces of humanness clinging like hairs to soap. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KRA-XwXG17h_S_6839cFksOgpi9v9huYkEL5DTkAknAee3b1RUbDKJZvjJlop0TkWiezkuNZw7FVvz189zvzq4Rf1odo7LG9ucuLdxkmuKL9Bo83M5fE6fM2PJ37vDAquVRv6AbJvy21/s1600/deadbody.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="648" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8KRA-XwXG17h_S_6839cFksOgpi9v9huYkEL5DTkAknAee3b1RUbDKJZvjJlop0TkWiezkuNZw7FVvz189zvzq4Rf1odo7LG9ucuLdxkmuKL9Bo83M5fE6fM2PJ37vDAquVRv6AbJvy21/s640/deadbody.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Over My Dead Body</i> (1988-2002)</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Hatoum shows
us how the body appends itself to the world, covertly altering and occupying it.
In </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Keffieh</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"> (1993-9) long dark locks
of hair are embroidered into a traditional male headdress; in </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Over My Dead Body</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"> (1988-2002) a toy
soldier balances on the artist’s nose in the direct barrel of her defiance. The
cultural specificity of Hatoum’s experience is shown to be bold lexicon in her
work, but its relevance is universal. The metals of masculine war games are
twisted into something fleshier, something that breathes. Resistance is
affected in personal, interior space; in a female physicality that might not
always be granted ownership of its boundaries; in a shared connective tissue. It
feels right then, that in order to leave the exhibition you must navigate </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Undercurrent
</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">(2008), a splayed nervous system of red wires, woven to a grid at the
centre and frilled with bulbs that pulsate with gentle light. Beneath the conflict
and noise of the surface Hatoum draws attention an elemental charge. To
something living. And there’s no way around it.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="text-align: right;">Entry for the Frieze Writers Prize 2016</span></span></div>
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Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-83527356516259896852012-11-05T00:15:00.001+00:002012-11-20T19:00:27.014+00:00Diagramming<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;">Diagrams seem to be
having something of a moment. Their usage in all branches of philosophy is
well documented; from the hard edges of logic problems, to Lacanian </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;">Strips</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;"> and </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;">Tori</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;"> to
the soft intensity of Deleuzean and Bergsonian planes of matter and
experience….</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
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<a href="http://www.christianhubert.com/writings/diagram___abstract2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="http://www.christianhubert.com/writings/diagram___abstract2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, serif; line-height: 150%;">I came across many in the last 12 months of studying the voice. Curious and
often baffling attempts at mapping the intersecting spaces of body,
subjectivity and sound, perhaps attempting to locate an elusive voco-fragment
hovering within the blank and potential page which give space to the lacuna
between these concepts; as if the only way to spot it is to compose a line of
best fit amid the scattergun mess of crosses on the grid – one of which may hit
the mark.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">While the notion of a diagram as a pedagogic tool meant to clarify and
enlighten is widely accepted, there are doubtlessly cases in which it might
actually make things worse (see below!) – but perhaps again this has to do with
gaps. Gaps in knowledge and an absence from the point of thinking in which the
diagram originated; to be coldly presented with such a visual maze is perhaps
to miss out some steps in the process. In other words there must be more –
there must be text or demonstration – a collective thinking through so that
that all the elements can nestle into sense. With nothing else around it, the
diagram below would be as useful without its mysterious labels than it is with
them.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB5PBkEYhUBCTgSz-9BoP5KRUy7bdrDkz3p-lkKZH7sHM_VFFO3buA5SK7rHbHKa971VFYBDAwg4SYD7pKBtdTX2PZ_iTL8HNtko5kmX2aI6-42htTghgrvGbNgeWmDSbVRj1I7zpz_WVt/s1600/diagram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB5PBkEYhUBCTgSz-9BoP5KRUy7bdrDkz3p-lkKZH7sHM_VFFO3buA5SK7rHbHKa971VFYBDAwg4SYD7pKBtdTX2PZ_iTL8HNtko5kmX2aI6-42htTghgrvGbNgeWmDSbVRj1I7zpz_WVt/s320/diagram.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">So perhaps you need to be there. Or RE-be there. If not originating the
diagram itself, it becomes necessary / helpful to redraw it - to map the lines
for yourself. In some cases this might negate the unifying or democratising
space of scientific accuracy that the conventions of diagramming suggest -but
it does allow a more personal shading and figuring whose subtle diversions can
point toward a particular, subjective understanding.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The notion of originating diagrams as a parallel or even proxy practice
for conceptual unpacking is also interesting. For a recent project I ended up
approaching a literary essay in exactly this manner – with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Nabokov’s</span></a> infamous
exam questions (devised for his English Literature class at Cornell in the 60s)
as a starting point, I attempted to investigate the use of slow motion in
Kafka’s <i>Metamorphosis</i> via a measured method of data collection and
meticulous graphing, rather than via more tried methods of text or research
based enquiry. This idea of applying un-native methods across genres, media and
practices was introduced to me by <a href="http://conversationalreading.com/four-questions-for-kate-briggs-on-roland-barthes-preparation-of-the-novel/"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Kate Briggs</span></a>, a writer and translator whom I
met through the experimental publishing house <a href="http://goodgreyday.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/information-as-material.html"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Information as Material</span></a>. The idea of a more
‘hands on’ approach to <i>making</i> theory or <i>marking</i> reading
immediately appealed to me as it seemed to somehow dislodge certain conceptual
barriers – in the sense that adhering to other rules and conventions allows a
certain circumventing of the usual obstacles to thought – a more direct route
though if you like. </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I haven’t tested it extensively but the operation in this case was
certainly a success, opening up and shedding light on a feature of the novel
that I would not have noticed otherwise. Plus the visual methodology was
intensely satisfying – liberating even.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><a href="http://www.simonosullivan.net/"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Simon
O’Sullivan’s </span></a>new book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Production-Subjectivity-Diagrams-Finite-Infinite/dp/0230249809"><span style="color: #aa7676;">“On the Production of Subjectivity: Five Diagrams of the
Finite-Infinite Relation”</span></a> too deals in exactly this notion;
explaining a series of diagrams which allowed the writer a freer approach to
theoretical work, in many cases acting as the pathway to ideas that would not
have emerged otherwise. Also, within contemporary philosophical thinking –
these info-images act as morsels of vocab or stretches of code within some kind
of shared language or conceptual plane. They can be overlaid, combined, cut and
pasted and edited together – O’Sullivan unlocks one particularly interesting strain
of thinking via the juxtaposition of Bergsonian and Lacanian visual concepts.
In thinking along these lines I notice too (for the first time) that the
troublesome diagram I mention above, which to me had always looked like a
spinal, corporeal structure – bares more than a passing resemblance to<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Bergson’s</span></a> <i>Cone
of Memory </i>(below), spiralling upwards like a hurricane from a
trapezoidal plane of matter or axis of experience. </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://larvalsubjects.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/triple-cone-p211-english.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://larvalsubjects.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/triple-cone-p211-english.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Could this accidental observation elucidate something about the initial
image that had previously eluded and baffled me. Perhaps so. Perhaps more than
a forensic understanding of its complex terms may afford.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br /></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">So again, it appears that a slippage and desire to work, perhaps
roughly, with this scientific rigour, is the way through to new thinking and
understanding.</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I listened to a discussion by O’Sullivan this evening on the topic of
Bergson and memory, which centred around his notion of the pure past and the
presence of universal matter that lingers in varying proximities to the black
holes of our relative experience – shaping the world as we see, feel and
remember it. The discussion of our relationship to these various, elusive
elements of time and action caused me to think about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Harman"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Graham
Harman’s</span></a> ideas around <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology"><span style="color: #aa7676;">Object Oriented Ontology</span></a> – which attempts
to move away from an anthropocentric philosophy and to explore the inner lives
of objects - as equally caught up with notions of time and emotion as these may
no doubt be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Further Reading...</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9COn%20the%20Production%20of%20Subjectivity:%20Five%20Diagrams%20of%20the%20Finite-Infinite%20Relation%E2%80%9D">Buy Simon's book here...</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.simonosullivan.net/articles/stuttering-and-stammering.pdf">Read his essay on Bacon and Deleuze here ...</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.bannerrepeater.org/events/then">Some archives of Banner Repeater's recent exhibition and talks programme 'Diagrammatic Form' here....</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.christianhubert.com/writings/diagram___abstract.html">Short but sweet thoughts here... </a></span></div>
Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-22103666140933396462012-05-17T21:11:00.002+01:002012-05-18T09:00:19.285+01:00Conversations with the Voiceless Glass...<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At the end of last month I finished a paper titled <i>Conversations with the Voiceless Glass: Learned Glossolalia, Conduit Speech and the Machinic Grain</i>, which explored our contemporary relationship to communication technology, focusing on the idealised and very physical form that these relationships can take. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have been interested for a while in <a href="http://www.vocalitiesavc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/telephonic-bodies.html">the idea of telephonic bodies</a> and was inspired by a work called <i>Anathama </i>(2011)<i> </i>which <a href="http://otolithgroup.org/">The Otolith Group</a> premiered in London in April. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfAEPYgyXFqDTivMmhyG_mVuzxOHJQEHucQeoOnyfx53gEgLzIzbf_Ix-A8V8NzHcudX6rQnIiOvbAUmI7YOaPoq8woAB0Gw-o6ICtZ5xjl6Fn2aS1QBT7WB9bdsB4XIyOOUcunncIlYX/s1600/ANATHAMA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfAEPYgyXFqDTivMmhyG_mVuzxOHJQEHucQeoOnyfx53gEgLzIzbf_Ix-A8V8NzHcudX6rQnIiOvbAUmI7YOaPoq8woAB0Gw-o6ICtZ5xjl6Fn2aS1QBT7WB9bdsB4XIyOOUcunncIlYX/s320/ANATHAMA.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This work is described by Kodwo Eshun as "The machine dream of a mobile phone," and it follows the secret life of liquid crystal (the sorcery of the LCD screen) alongside appropriated fragments of TV advertising in which the ubiquitous, portable <i>black mirror</i> is elevated to the status of the desired / adored body. Implicit with this proxy is a vocabulary of magic gestures which play on the libidinal economies of human touch, breath and voice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film also incorporates moments of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia">glossolalia</a> from mainstream news-casting - highlighting incidences when <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvkC4t2d9Ok">the hybrid human/machine breaks down</a> in a struggle with codified language. But glossolalia is also a learned phenomena, taught by example and lauded in the context of religious dedication and we might imagine this tongue-talk as exemplary of the way in which we willingly adapt and reorder our subjectivity to better fit with the technologies that begin to overtake us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The American theorist <a href="http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/">Jodi Dean</a> (whose work Eshun and Sagar cite as influential to the piece) speaks at length about the nature of this relationship and more widely about the impact of this reordered, discursive hierarchy on democratic exchange. The lecture below outlines her theories of <i>Communicative Capitalism</i> and is well worth watching in its entirety. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another trigger for the essay was this beautiful notion of the <i>voiceless glass</i> which is a line from Harold Pinter's 1950 poem "A Walk By Waiting". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I liked the idea of voiceless glass as descriptive of this contemporary relationship to communication technology - a space that we look to for reflection and confirmation of our ideal subject self. It seems such a vocal and reciprocal scenario - a digi dialogue that allows us to build who we are.... but perhaps closer inspection reveals these respondent voices actually to be our own, reflected and bounced back by the black mirror. The glass itself has no voice other than the one we willingly give - and give away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What follows is the introduction to my text - I'll try and post the rest elsewhere.....</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Poor foolish boy, why vainly grasp at the fleeting image that
eludes you? <span style="font-size: small;">The thing you are
seeing does not exist: only turn aside and you will lose what you love. What
you see is but the shadow cast by your reflection; in itself it is nothing. It
comes with you, and lasts while you are there; it will go when you go, if go
you can. </span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">–
<b>Narcissus By The Pool<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></b></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
story of Echo and Narcissus is one of attendant proximities and unrequited
caress. Its vocabulary is one of reflections that suggest a coming together but
which ultimately denies any proper touch. Echo becomes locked in a pattern of
vocal loops and, bound by the flighty vernacular of birds and ghosts and air,
is robbed of a full bodily presence. Denied possession of her voice she begins
to waste away and can never properly express her feelings for the man she loves.
Potential conversation is reduced to the re-voicing of his fragmentary call;
flighty Echo is the original fan girl whose identity constitutes a series of appreciative
re-tweets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Narcissus
too lives a life outside of his body. Thanks to the protective double-bind that
prevents him from knowing his true identity, Narcissus is always on the run
from the desires of others. He is set up to be the only person he could ever
truly love and his undoing at the banks of the reflective pool reduces him to
the same hopeless thrall that had consumed so many suitors. He is a perfectly formed profile, lacking the
connections that would bring him fully to life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
thing about reflections is that they elude proper contact. The moment of
connection is caught up with rebound – the touch is always on the return.
Contingent with reflection then is chase and desire “the echoplex turns
listening into running”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a> and this
chase is never-ending. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Like
the nature of the echo, this search is one of like for like, the “immutable
periodicity of sameness”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></a>
that organises the system of logos-giving shadows in Plato’s cave. The system
dictates the primacy of a duplicate self which will neatly fit the scheme; expounding the power of a
communal as opposed to an individual subjectivity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps
then, rather than the lament of two bodies failing to come together, the
predicament of Echo and Narcissus is more the failure to fully constitute the
self in this collective way. What they seek or lack is a space in which to manifest
their communicable desires, a scenario which we may consider allegorical for
our own relationship with the universe of information and communication
technology which formulates and frames our idealised identities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
Ovid’s tale the vocal individual is forced back to a pre-linguistic state where
the only option is to copy. She has no choice but to face the <i>acoustic mirror</i> and deal with the
hackneyed playback of her own adopted words. With nothing of her own, her voice
becomes the <i>everyvoice</i> and the material
of her subjectivity is itself this communicative ping-pong. Narcissus is both
the cause of her broken heart<i> and</i> her
rebound guy. Narcissus on the other hand, sees an ideality in the pool that he
can only hope to possess and he attempts to do so up to the point of
exhaustion. Rather than any real human interaction (he flees from embraces) Narcissus
pledges love to a reflection of himself and also therefore to the watery screen
that creates and holds his image. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What
each spurned lover in the tale experiences is the confounding of their attempt
to formulate themselves in the union of two halves - much as the world of
communication technology presents us with an interlocutionary scenario that
ultimately fails to deliver. As Jodi Dean discusses in her lectures on
‘Communicative Capital’ our experience of the contemporary communication
network appears to present the promise of interaction and response while in
fact remaining a repository for individual contributions where “facts,
theories, judgements, opinions, fantasies, jokes, lies – all circulate
indiscriminately.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span></span></a>
Our speech and focus may be directed out towards the other - but it is the
refracted ripples of the self that ultimately return. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So
where does this leave us and who in fact, are we talking to? Ovid’s tale is one
of fragmentary personae – subjectivities are shown to be made of component
parts, physical, vocal and emotio-intellectual which seem available to be
separated. This split is the basis of many discussions around the voice as a difficulty
remains in attempting to locate it within a specific biological body; a
discussion which becomes ever more pertinent as the mobile technologies which
enable the majority of daily exchange, operate within a <i>voice to voice</i> hierarchy that separates out ‘face time’ as an
executive extra rather than an originary constant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To a
degree, our inter-subjective experience is increasingly with machines, the
conduits of speech and selfhood, rather than with a present discourse or
physicality. Even within the metamorphosis of Echo and Narcissus, the bodies
and voices of the story are transformed into screens and devices; Echo’s body
becomes a stone, her voice alone emanating from the rocks while Narcissus’ brut
presence dissolves into something as mercurial as his watery reflection. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">These
elemental proxies are no less fascinating however; if anything the renderings
become more desirable than the originals. Rather than retrieving Echo for flesh
and bones we may be compelled to keep her as a stone tape and mine the
archeoacoustics of her body; we might also choose to save the beloved image of
Narcissus on the screen, rather than risk the inconstancy of a true relational
encounter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is the status of such conduits in their moment of transmitting
the human voice and how does our willingness to adapt to their functionality
affect relationships with language and with the formation of a subject self? Is
it the case that we are speaking into a space capable of eliciting a response?
Or is the contemporary communicative landscape merely a reflection pool, silent
but for the echo of our own voices? Is our
relationship with technology one of equivalence or if we have indeed been too
quick in giving the <i>corpus proxy</i> what
Michéle Martin refers to as “the privilege of the last word.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a> Ovid, <i>Metamorphosis</i>, (London, Penguin, 1955) 85.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a> Kodwo Eshun, <i>More Brilliant Than The Sun, </i>(London, Quartet, 1998) 64. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></a> Luce Irigaray, “Dialogues” in <i>Speculum of the Other Woman, </i>Gillian C.
Gill trans.<i> </i>(USA, Cornell University
Press, 1985) 267.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span></span></a> Jodi Dean, from the lecture
“Communicative Capitalism: This is What Democracy Looks Like”, presented at the
Sheldon Auditorium, University of Nebraska-Lincon, 17<sup>th</sup> November
2011. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5UUgm2q_Q">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-5UUgm2q_Q</a>, 00:28:39. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span></span></a> Michele Martin, ‘<i>“</i>Hello Central?” Gender, Technology, and Culture in the Formation
of Telephone Systems”, quoted in John Durham Peters, <i>Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication</i> (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1999) 73. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-20152367257456840322012-05-06T13:50:00.000+01:002012-05-08T20:56:58.621+01:00Tappa Tappa Tappa<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Tappa Tappa Tappa</i> is a collaborative zine project between myself and the genius Chicagoan artist <a href="http://jessicaharby.com/">Jessica Harby</a>. The work below was one of the first I saw when we began plotting projects together....</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxB8Q7CGzNaRBeeV6viqQpp_Yo0yI7YSFatJMjOSv3oWpSocq5xt72FKI1pujkNYuIXIY2TvfltwlUqZwCvE5U6mOVCNKODPMTbKBghbLI0NSi-Aiqe_8Fb2C2zjI9nyYLhcPDKI10iMjm/s1600/tumblr_lxp06i19nN1qk0k1co1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxB8Q7CGzNaRBeeV6viqQpp_Yo0yI7YSFatJMjOSv3oWpSocq5xt72FKI1pujkNYuIXIY2TvfltwlUqZwCvE5U6mOVCNKODPMTbKBghbLI0NSi-Aiqe_8Fb2C2zjI9nyYLhcPDKI10iMjm/s400/tumblr_lxp06i19nN1qk0k1co1_500.jpg" width="267" /></a><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We'd been chatting about a collaboration for some time and an opportunity presented itself in the shape of her first UK solo show earlier in the year. We decided that a zine would be a much more fitting, tactile, responsive endeavor than me just writing a text about her work so we set about sending things to one another. We both fairly trepidatious but it actually turned out that our brains are the same and the end result (hand folded over several hours with the aid of gin and cheeseburgers) was something we were both pretty proud of. Plus we got to play with some fun stationary.....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We made the first issue under the title "Pretty Girls Doing Horrid Things" (the title of the exhibition) and collaged together writing and imagery that had featured in and illustrated our discussions and shared passions. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jessica's work employs fine and fair media such as pencil drawing, water-colour and needle-work to brilliantly dark ends. The exhibited series took gangster/heiress Patti Hearst as its poster girl and, in her words, explored "the danger of teenage girls and the social construct of villainy." Read more of Jessica's thoughts and words <a href="http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/lifestyle/weekend-life/arts/pretty-girls-doing-horrid-things-1-3548801">here</a> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0xAYvni29rxtzJsaFFxmtnhXiemSeuPcmC95YuLcR8DNr2hno0yVZ2fKwd6fnC_9fUttcuT_C3uTgpU4nAqAWFFNHUyjaV0yI2rLxqMcnsup7xnvbdlVCzLAxOTa7iww6B2Ty6bu7UfUk/s1600/daughter-of-darkness2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0xAYvni29rxtzJsaFFxmtnhXiemSeuPcmC95YuLcR8DNr2hno0yVZ2fKwd6fnC_9fUttcuT_C3uTgpU4nAqAWFFNHUyjaV0yI2rLxqMcnsup7xnvbdlVCzLAxOTa7iww6B2Ty6bu7UfUk/s320/daughter-of-darkness2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In short this was one of the most fun things I've done in ages and I can't wait for the next one. For now, here's my text; </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>Unruly girls, who will not settle down, they must be taken in hand</i>….</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sometimes the girls get mad and things get nasty. The perfect porcelain of the epidermis is peeled back to reveal the skull beneath the skin. From unblemish to blemish. When the girls are unhappy - things get broken. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Teen girls in gangs and cliques garner power from their secrecy - the alchemic qualities of their gathering precious objects on vanity tables; their plotting in diaries and their formation of rogue languages and quiet codes…these delicate universes hinge on the dialectic of the unexpected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But at the root of the polite aesthetic of girl-dom is a dichotomy of enforced gentility and barely concealed suspicion. The possession of beauty is essential and the subject of worship – but the fine qualities of a face give rise to accusations of duplicity. Quiet obedience is the age-old model - but a placid surface must surely conceal a tumult of trouble. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The normative corseting of young girls into empirical modes of femininity engenders nothing but the possibility and desire to break free. The ripping of seams and the unpicking of <i>cross </i>stitches. So why this surprise when she suddenly goes off the rails? <i>She was always such a good girl</i> – or so they said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In Greek philosophy the figure of the female is consistently allied with misrule. Ecstatic music that strays, in unbridled joy, from the word of the law (of God or the father) is equated with a dangerous femininity –becoming the seductive agent of anarchy, temptation and disarray.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Sirens on the rocks sang such a perilous ballad and wrought doom and death out of beauty. What was their motivation? The behest of some ancient spell? Some folly of the gods? Perhaps the thought of another day in static repose and another boat load of sailors were too much to take…maybe they just flipped…?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The machismo of garage music appropriated by girl groups in the 1960’s gave rise to some interesting re-workings of classic pop cultural narratives “my mamma told me – you’d better shop around girl” but as well as swathes of Alpha females heading things up with a more androgynous self – there were others pushing the limits of textbook femininity – pushing them over the edge with a candy painted nail and a siren song. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9157103763015479730" name="_GoBack"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shammy and the Ruis Family’s breathy rendering of the off kilter ballad “I’m just a little Girl” for example, is saccharine to the point of sinister. A toxic coquette persona curls the words of a well worn tale …<i>I need someone to hold my hand</i>…around its little finger, before snapping that finger and going in with sharp teeth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What will she do next? … That good girl gone bad…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There are echoes today of this tendency, not to crack the mould of empirical prettiness, but rather to embody the dark dichotomy of enforced perfection. We might think of the hyper-feminised monsterism modelled by Nicki Minaj – a day-glo, living doll whose flawless face flickers moment to moment from a manic smile to a primal snarl. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">First things first she’ll eat your brains – then she’ll start rocking gold teeth and fangs……<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The social constructs which strive to align young women with a palatable type, which damns with the same hand that pets – only serves to push them further into biker jacketed arms; in front of a crowd toting a pistol or before a camera flipping the bird. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Barbarism (or might we call it <i>Barbie-ism</i>) begins at home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Issue Two of <i>Tappa Tappa Tappa</i> will appear in the next few months. To register interest or to get hold of a copy of Issue One email: <a href="mailto:tappax3@gmail.com%C2%A0">tappax3@gmail.com </a></span><br />
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Oh...and take a look at Jessica's Tumblr <a href="http://andthentheycalledmetania.tumblr.com/">here.</a> It's pretty hot. </div>
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</div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-25626445430154774822012-05-04T22:57:00.003+01:002012-05-04T23:45:19.332+01:00Lately....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Good Grey Day has been silent for a while and it has been mainly because of concentration on other voices.....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've been working on various things surrounding, but not exclusive to, my MA Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths. The course in question, Vocalities, taught by <a href="http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/">Mark Fisher</a>, has been a mellifluous journey through <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwb36p_Oh_8">Mladen Dolar's ethereal exo-voice</a>; Barthes' machinic grain, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Acoustic-Mirror-Psychoanalysis-Representation/dp/0253204747">Kaja Silverman's Acoustic Mirror</a>, <a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/19519/Research/Voice-Devoured-Artaud-and-Borges-on-Dubbing-by-Mikhail-Yampolsky.html">Yampolsky's vampiric dubbing</a>, <a href="http://www.vocalitiesavc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/barker-speaks-presentation-notes.html">Prof Barker's Vocal head-smash</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/More-Brilliant-Than-Sun-Adventures/dp/0704380250">Kodwo Eshun's afro-futurism</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_the_Singer,_or_the_Mouse_Folk">piping of Kafka's mousefolk</a>...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For more about this take a look at the <a href="http://www.vocalitiesavc.blogspot.co.uk/">Vocalities blog</a> with a couple of posts from me (GGD disloyalty) on <a href="http://www.vocalitiesavc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/telephonic-bodies.html">Telephonic Bodies</a> and <a href="http://www.vocalitiesavc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/singing-in-grain.html">dubbed female voices in what is perhaps my favorite film of all time</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Following on from that, I presented a talk at </span><a href="http://hotsauna.tumblr.com/" style="text-align: justify;">Sauna Space</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> in Hoxton a couple of weeks ago based on the </span><a href="http://www.goodgreyday.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/not-i-mouth-of-cave.html" style="text-align: justify;">Mouth of the Cave</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> post from earlier in the year. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">This was a longer meditation on Beckett's </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8C4HL2LyWU" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Not I</a><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> and the implications of reading it as a feminist text via Irigaray. The exhibitions taking place at Sauna were on the theme of Individual and Collective so I extended my thinking to the notions of a collective or individual female voice - using the notion of </span>
<i style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Écriture féminine</span></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> as a basis and thinking through the issues of wedding female voices so tightly to biological bodies, an idea contested by Dolar and upheld in Barthes </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U_8yYj9h7aIC&pg=PA181&dq=the+grain+of+the+voice+pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1kWkT8PsIcXG8gPO9cWNCQ&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20grain%20of%20the%20voice%20pdf&f=false">Grain of the Voice</a></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> which has become a really interesting text for me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's rife with problems and contradictions, mainly surrounding Barthes almost pro-cyborgian love of somatic mechanics, but these present some interesting avenues for considering our contemporary relationship to communication technology. This, coupled with a growing fascination with the voice as mediated by the telephone, formed the base of a recent paper called "Conversations with the Voiceless Glass" a section of which I'll be posting shortly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center;">Other than that there have been exhibitions and zines....more on those to follow. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center;">It's nice to be able to breathe for a moment.......</span>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-81662140924625823142012-01-10T17:24:00.034+00:002012-01-12T16:03:22.559+00:00The Mouth of the Cave<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've been fascinated with the writing of</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><a href="http://butdoesitfloat.com/523480/That-s-how-it-is-on-this-bitch-of-an-earth" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Samuel Beckett</a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">for as long as I can remember and, having studied his work in terms of its silences and gaps, I am now listening to its voices. While many of his plays are driven forcefully by character and visual motif, there comes a point at which the voice takes over and becomes more or less the lone remnant of a present subjectivity, even if it is a subject talking to itself, echoing back and forth in the darkness and the years</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and caught in a stasis loop of its own creation. </span><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The 1972 work<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_I">Not I</a></i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>is perhaps my favourite for the sheer, raw, voracity of the visual image it presents as well as it being one of the most interesting female voices Beckett writes - particularly when read in line with some feminist critiques. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="separator" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1ES3IFj_vC1Sa2ZTPIiWugdJ0O0roVng1aHSUx5F2ESHx5pPWBXsXAW1xsRUZf9-NsFZ7Lt5CbSqIAM9zZqtJgvlAfoQRL8DfjAun2-RBoPk0JWGYuGFw6GVzarhgcs5d4G01nMIgrNyV/s1600/Not+I.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span style="text-decoration: none;"></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitkxhoR4S5BDN70SWRAzq6q1hOPwjmYlvN9xCRC5FZd8ZtAThTzFAFPjvC5ZwZYPef8su9RiFFmrEPIHQ_oaQqtW0mBxDWQvbFWvOZU9URFznxA0ucPu4z3PK0b4CLtKIe_I_XurERvUek/s1600/Not+I.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitkxhoR4S5BDN70SWRAzq6q1hOPwjmYlvN9xCRC5FZd8ZtAThTzFAFPjvC5ZwZYPef8su9RiFFmrEPIHQ_oaQqtW0mBxDWQvbFWvOZU9URFznxA0ucPu4z3PK0b4CLtKIe_I_XurERvUek/s1600/Not+I.jpg" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Theories of the the voice tend to wrestle with the connection to a body, presence or subjectivity. How is the voice twinned and affiliated with meaning? What is a voice without a body?<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Not I<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>absolutely illustrates such concerns, reducing as it does, the female protagonist to a mouth, suspended in darkness and uninterrupted in the warming and waining of the stage lights. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But this partial acousmatic of a character also seems keenly relevant to the works of the French poet, philosopher and psychoanalyst<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/irigaray/">Luce Irigaray</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>who set about re-writing the history of psychoanalysis in order to displace the universally male referent that dominates and to insert a radically 'other' female identity into the mix.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a chapter from her landmark text<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Speculum of the Other Woman</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(1974) entitled 'Dialogues', Irigaray deconstructs Plato's<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave">Allegory of the Cave</a>, which describes a set of shackled prisoners whose fixed bodies and heads allow them only to experience shadows and echoes made by puppeteers behind them. To the prisoners who can see nothing else, these spectral machinations are real. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From this allegory, Plato expounds a theory of enlightenment - a logocentric system where like perfectly reflects like - the sun (god / the father / man) guiding and giving life, direction and knowledge to all.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UQfRdl3GTw4" width="420"></iframe></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For Irigaray, it is the perfect dualism of these reflections that troubles; the necessity of silence and absent voices to allow for the deceptive echoes and visions that organise the cave. Where is the female voice in all of this? In other words a voice which may muddy "the silent virginity of the back of the cave" or an identity whose radical difference will not perfectly reflect. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In attempting to write the female body into psychoanalysis (in line with the idea of an<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89criture_f%C3%A9minine">ecriture feminine</a></i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>promoted by fellow theorist<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.egs.edu/faculty/helene-cixous/biography/">Helene Cixous</a>) Irigaray identifies a style (or dance) which is circular as opposed to plainly back a forth; a tendency for muddle and mess; a voice which, frenetic and repetitive, is not easily or cleanly reproduced. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is a fitting description of Mouth's narrative in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Not I<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>which is riddled with repetitions, is wildly emotive and runs itself into circles in a an attempt uncover some self truth - to "hit on it in the end". <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/M4LDwfKxr-M" width="420"></iframe></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Further in line with Irigaray's critique of the cave allegory, it is at the summons of a 'sudden flash' - a powerful, unexpected burst of light (that we might identify with the Sun as it appears in Plato) that Mouth is forced into her monologue and routinely compelled to accept the first person pronoun <i>I</i></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. What could allow</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not I</i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to be read as a feminist text is precisely this refusal to take up a prescribed place in the symbolic order at the behest of the all-powerful light / logos at the centre of the world. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Beckett writes a rhythmic motif which resounds forcefully whenever Mouth is encouraged to contextualise her narrative within this subjectivity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She responds; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"What?.....Who?......No?.....She!" <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Always at a remove and yet somehow partial to a form of identification which is in itself more radially 'other' and more feminine in its nature that the phallic <i>I</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Irigaray would approve too of the visual symbolism at work, which upholds her description of the female body as having two sets of lips (facial / labial) which 'speak together'. The foregrounding of the erotic/manic action of Mouth, the image of which has been liked to ''a vagina attempting to give birth to itself," reduces the subject to a highly feminised cipher at the most extreme reach of Irigaray's definition. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In abandoning the rest of the body however it is possible to bring in some ideas contra to Irigaray - namely from<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaja_Silverman">Kaja Silverman</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>who, though greatly indebted to the ideas raised in ''Speculum of the Other Woman", takes issue with the insistence on locating a specific female body. Silverman argues that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>any<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>body, however re appropriated or reclaimed for feminism, will always be codified by the social constructs that are<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>always already</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in place. Instead she posits the radical and subversive possibilities of the disembodied female voice (particularly as it appears in film) - a thought which further expounds the possible feminist readings of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Not I. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mouth<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span>makes some reference to her age (70) and possible geographical location; some hints to the spaces and experiences that have coloured her past and her present character, but without a body her speech exists independent of any code or easily identifiable subject. As Mladen Dolar discusses in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Nothing-More-Short-Circuits/dp/0262541874">"A Voice and Nothing More"</a> (a key text on the voice) there is a impossibility of placing a voice so firmly in a body - an element which always resists and refuses to fit, as would be the case if the rest of the form suggested by the presence of the mouth were to be revealed. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There's much more to be said here and I may add more as time goes on - importantly on the fact that this is of course a text written by a man.... <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Whitelaw">Billie Whitelaw's</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>seminal performance of the piece from 1973 (shown above) is well worth watching in its entirety; the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.ubu.com/film/beckett_not.html">ubuweb version</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>includes an interview with her in which she describes working with Beckett.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_I">Elsewhere</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>are descriptions of the rigours of the staging required to perform the piece, actresses clamped in neck restraints to keep their heads angled to the single beam of light. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sounds eerily familiar...</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">..</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-72877224599140233412011-11-08T13:23:00.005+00:002011-11-13T19:23:40.941+00:00Send / Recieve<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some years ago, when I was working at <a href="http://www.fishmarketgallery.co.uk/">The Fishmarket Gallery</a> in Northampton, I was lucky enough to meet the Glasgow based musician and artist Fergus Lawrie. Fergus used to be in the band <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/artists/u/uruseiyatsura/">Urusei Yatsura</a> but now makes experimental sound pieces and installations <a href="http://jbreitling.blogspot.com/2009/04/projekt-kos-fergus-lawrie-on-album-of.html">under various guises</a> and among a rich scene of other experimental practitioners in Scotland. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=ODOTB.jpg" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=ODOTB-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/ODOTB-1.jpg" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Obscure Desire of the Bourgeoisie</i> installed at the Fishmarket Gallery, 2009. Photo by <a href="http://www.philsharp-photo.com/">Phil Sharp</a>. </span></span></b></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">When we met back in 2009 Fergus staged a project titled <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty63IJqycrw">The Obscure Desire of the Bourgeoisie</a>, a beautifully atmospheric work that involved the manipulation of gently fuzzing electric guitars by the undulation of electric fans. The swell of the noise, which seemed to make the breeze audible, sounded magnificent in the cavernous ex-market building. We had several sound works and performances in the gallery over the years and it really seemed like the best possible thing to fill that space with. The building seemed to come to life - it soaked up, flipped back and rang warmly with all kinds of sound from un-amplified voices to drone violin to recorded symphonies to raucous, wrangling guitar. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">On that night Fergus came, at the invitation of our exhibiting artist <a href="http://www.louisiem.com/">Louise Marchal</a>, with a group of fellow experimental musicians including Lee Cummings (aka <a href="http://www.myspace.com/kylieminoise">Kylie Minoise</a>) and Neil A Simpson (aka <a href="http://www.buffalobuffalobuffalo.net/">Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo</a>) who are among those behind a new film he has made alongside Ben Ewart-Dean. </span></div><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="295" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/27681390?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/27681390">Send/Receive (Part 1)</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1775014">Ben Ewart-Dean</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><i></i><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Send / Receive</i> talks to some of the key players in the Glasgow experimental scene and asks them, among other things, to name their favourite sounds. All the answers are strange, brilliant and sincerely meant - from sirens; laughter; the sub-bass from a bus engine and a speeding motorway through a dictaphone right down to silence and the simplicity of the human breath. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The interviews are interspersed with blunt bursts of visual white noise - the screaming storm of white pixels familiarly associated with fuzz, drone and the presence of 'no signal'. Out of this crunchy haze we hear passages of music by some of the interviewed artists; some angrily match with the manic white-out of the visuals while others are slight and sparse bricolages of faintly familiar sounds. Presenting the music in this way made me think of the idea of <a href="http://acousmatics.blogspot.com/"><i>Acousmatics</i></a> - the notion of purposely veiling the material source of a sound so as to better experience its integral and autonomous nuances. To hear and feel the sound as an independent object as opposed to simply an effect. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="295" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/27728493?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/27728493">Send/Receive (Part 2)</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1775014">Ben Ewart-Dean</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">This type of sonic experience is referenced in the film and it seems, in some ways, to be at the root of this experimental work. There is a sense that all noise takes up its place within a broad, open space of musicality - there is an urge to plunder and re-compose the world of noise that is democratic and non-specific in the best possible sense. Sirens can be beautiful, the noise of a train is textured, layered and has a pulse. There is even the admission that pre-existing sound, or ready-made sound if you like, is often better than anything that could be consciously composed. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the film <a href="http://www.glasgowinternational.org/index.php/artists/view/raydale_dower/">Raydale Dower</a> references the idea of 'framing' in relation to this and acknowledges the importance of context to be able to hear such noise anew. Perhaps this de-contextualising or framing is also a kind of veiling. The action of transposing sound from the specificities of the world it inhabits to a more intimate context where it is possible to really<i> hear</i> what is going on. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=white-noise2.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/white-noise2.jpg" /></a> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">While I think there is an acousmatic comparison to be drawn here, I also like the fact that these musicians are tuned in to not just the audio but to the material make up of the world around them. The experience of hearing certain sounds - where you were, the time of day, the specific location, the touch and feel of an object in your hands - all of these tangible things seem to become constitutive to the end result of their music </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">The title of the film says it all. The relationship is reciprocal. Sound is always in motion, back and forth and forever being re-shaped, re-sent and returned. </span></span>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-49849331082307073462011-10-10T23:46:00.005+01:002011-10-11T00:10:11.020+01:00Let me in<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">All the descriptions of <a href="http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/works/anna_barriball/1/">Anna Barriball's</a> brilliant solo exhibition at <a href="http://www.mkgallery.org/exhibitions/anna_barriball/">Milton Keynes Gallery</a> describe a transgression of the 'crossroad between interior and exterior' and this is more or less true - delicate fabric leaves are tumbled across the main gallery floor as if the door has been left open on an autumn day. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=leaves_barriball.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/leaves_barriball.jpg" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Yellow Leaves</span></i><span style="font-size: small;"> (2011), Curtain fabric.</span></span></b><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">But if there is one thing we know for sure, it is that there are no open doors or windows within the exhibition. The walls are lined with ghosts of entrance-ways and exits, from mottled glass, to framed doors, to chimney flumes - all of the potential ways in or out have been delicately blocked by the artist's hand; papered over and blacked out. <br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">These inter-spaces have been made tangible by the methodical shading of hard graphite on paper</span><span style="font-size: small;"> to create darkened, monolithic and strangely textured portals that are unrecognisable as the bright windows they once were. But in the process of creating liminal spaces that we can reach out and touch, there is the converse visual motif of erasure. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=bariballdoor.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/bariballdoor.jpg" /></a> <b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Door </span></i><span style="font-size: small;">(2004), Graphite on paper.</span></span></b> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">In works such as <i>Silver Map</i> (2003) and <i>Money Drawing</i> (2000) Barriball switches to a ritzier palate with gold and silver ink obliterating pound notes and world maps. There seems a similar dual intention here - or at least an intention with dual outcomes. I like the notion of gilding something that is already valuable, lionising the already grand and brightening the already bright, as in <i>Light Drawing</i> (below) where the full beam of an anglepoise is directed at a circle of sunny yellow ink. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=lightdrawingbarriball.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/lightdrawingbarriball.jpg" /></a> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Light Drawing<span style="font-size: x-small;">,<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></b></span></i><span style="font-size: small;"><b>(2000) Marker pen on lamp and paper. </b></span><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">But again, with this intense highlighting comes a congruent obliteration. Money becomes useless and the map can no longer tell us how to get where we're going. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">It seems nothing is exempt from this possible erasure, whether precious or mundane, and there is the creeping feeling of our own contingency in this. A series of framed works show images of buildings in which all but the windows have been painted out. Without their architectural context these windows hang oddly in space - wonky and precarious, which serves to draw attention to the uncanny placement of the other works within the space; the blacked out doorways; the deftly placed projection of <i>Draw (fireplace)</i> (2005) with its mantle at the perfect height; the domestically spaced window tracings and the spangle of the tinsel curtain that leads only to the solid wall behind. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Barriball has created, from a sensitive palate of materials, the unnerving feeling of being <i>within </i>the world, within space and behind closed doors. There is a sensation akin to moving through a play space, a dolls house of paper and cloth outside of which larger forces are at work - an exacting and excited hand, hell bent on the ornamental but ultimately destructive gesture of silvering over the world. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=barriballmap.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/barriballmap.jpg" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Silver Map </span></i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">(2003), Silver pen on world map. </span></b></span><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">Emphasis can lead to obliteration - like colouring too hard with dark graphite and puncturing the paper - blacking out a clean sheet to the point that its pencil surface becomes silvery and reflective once again. Pushing on but never quite getting through to the other side. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i>Anna Barriball</i> continues at Milton Keynes Gallery until 27th November 2011. </span></b>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-76459139264566586542011-09-17T23:56:00.005+01:002011-09-18T11:16:03.571+01:00Colour Sick<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><a href="http://www.davidkordanskygallery.com/?n=artists&aid=12">Elad Lassry</a> and<a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/emily_wardill/"> Emily Wardill</a> currently have works on show in <a href="http://www.artreview100.com/people/656/">Bice Curiger's</a> <a href="http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibition/54.html?back=true"><i>Illuminations</i></a> exhibition at the Arsenale in Venice and both leave the same kind of haunted, floating jetsam of colour on your retina that remains when you stare too long at a bare bulb. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=eladlassry2.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/eladlassry2.jpg" /></a></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Their use of colour strikes. It is in turns nauseous and sentimental - ancient and antique. There is much more to the work than just their colour palettes but, among the over abundance of works in the Biennale, it is the sheer volume of their respective aesthetics that endures.</span><br />
<br />
</div><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=wardill.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/wardill.jpg" /></a><b><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Emily Wardill<i>, Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck, </i>(Detail),<i> </i>2007, 16mm film. </span></b><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Wardill's film <i>Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck </i>(2007) takes religious tableaux from stained glass windows as its source and presents these fragmented and surreally vivid instances in hazy, full bleed primary colour, the action and dialogue physically cut and jarred by the rigours of the aesthetic. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Wardill writes; <i> </i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div align="center" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Stained glass is broken up by lines so that you get cuts where you wouldn’t normally, a head will be sliced in half, a toe will be framed with a table leg and a bird will have its face obscured by a lead divider</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">.* </span></div><div align="center" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; text-decoration: none;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=wardill2.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/wardill2.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif"; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">She speaks also about stained glass' parallels with film in that both require light to pass through them in order to be brought to life. Stained glass is essentially a narrative form, albeit a freeze frame - a static slide locked in the carousel. It's interesting to consider the role of colour here, the notion that sense would be drained from these episodes if the colour was absent. Thus Wardill's film is over saturated - with the tangible feel of melted, theatrical gels - the heat of the colour is turned up in a bid to keep things alive, to keep things moving despite the <i>wreck and wreck </i>of the fragmented form. Failing to keep inside the lines to a point of a mania, sick and strange. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Elad Lassry's film work <i>Untitled (Ghost)</i>, (2011) inhabits a world of only four colours. The striking setting is rendered almost limitless by the wall to ceiling coat of mushroom brown - its feel is usual, institutional, cautious but it quickly appears to us as a liminal non-space between life and death by virtue of the dual presence of the real dancers and the lone girl ghost - all moving in systematic rhythm, bold and ordered as punctuation or blown out pixels. As with Wardill's film, life is signified by hard colour and strong lines - the living dancer's bright lemon and jade sparks against the, faded forest tone of the ghost dancer's colours. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=eladlassry3.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/eladlassry3.jpg" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Elad Lassry<i>. Untitled (Ghost)</i>, 2011, (detail) 16mm film. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">She is more </span><span style="font-size: small;">allied to the endless beige of the walls that surround them. Light passes through her and reveals the dead space, rather than holding fast with opacity as the other dancers do. They seem almost oblivious to their environment whereas the ghost in the image feels her way through the space - the retro crudity of the special effect leaving the sticky trace of her presence over the seemingly endless motion of the dance. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";">Like Wardill, Lassry deals with the philosophies entwined with the mechanics of photography. Both artists visualise Barthes' ghost in the machine - the curious mechanisms of light that bring back the dead. In <i>Camera Lucida</i> Barthes mentions his dislike for colour photographs, likening their painted on tones to the chalky, unnatural look of a cosmetics on a corpse. This same gaudiness is present in both films - extreme and specific the colour works to expose photography as <i>always</i> hyper representative of life - and of death. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Illuminations</i> continues at the Arsenale and Giardini, Venice until 27th November. <a href="http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/el2011/">A solo exhibition by Elad Lassry begins at White Cube, Hoxton Square on 22nd September</a>. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times","serif";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">*Quoted in an interview with James Cahill. Read the full piece </span><a href="http://www.jotta.com/jotta/published/home/article/v2-published/1123/jarman-awards-winner-emily-wardill" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">here.</a><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></span></span></div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-11071537487818200102011-08-07T00:25:00.011+01:002012-01-12T16:16:35.848+00:00Information as Material<div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"> <a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=Room1.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/Room1.jpg" /></a></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Last week I took part in <i><a href="http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/1/product_id/928?session_id=13126707087e40d1ec224ba0292265cc6bba5a450b">The Summer School for Literary Perverts</a></i> at <a href="http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/">The Whitechapel Gallery</a>. Under the watchful eye of current writers in residence <a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/">information as material</a>, around eighteen of us spent three days pulling apart a library assembled of the attendees favourite books, using these existing texts as material for extended and experimental readings, cut up projects and exercises in gonzo self-publishing. Stupidly I didn't take too many pictures of our space (apart from the one above), but this little film from 2008 gives a very good idea of what we ended up with. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/S_5_mnpDurU" width="560"></iframe> </div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Each day began with a lecture; <a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/?page_id=79">Simon Morris</a> talked us through the brilliant poetic anarchy of his projects <i><a href="http://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/10522/the-royal-road-to-the-unconscious/">The Royal Road to the Unconscious</a></i> (2003) and <i><a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/?p=731#more-731">Getting inside Jack Kerouac's head</a></i> (2010); <a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/?page_id=79">Nick Thurston</a> spoke on the subject of experimental reading - exploring the specificities of the reading space; and finally, writer and translator <a href="http://conversationalreading.com/four-questions-for-kate-briggs-on-roland-barthes-preparation-of-the-novel/">Kate Briggs</a> looked at experimental criticism, unpicking and tracking the emotional experience of reading. All were exceptional. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I really appreciated hearing about this possible interspace between modes of art and literature (something I've been trying to square for a while) and also the emphasis on a physical engagement with text, something which has interesting performative connotations of its own. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was so much to take in that I probably can't do it justice here but I intend to write more when I've read <a href="http://informationasmaterial.com/?p=738">Craig Dworkin's <i>Perverse Library</i></a>; a love letter to the olfactory and textural/textual joys of reading, published by iam. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I spent the large part of my time working with traces and clues left behind in the assembled books. I find these markers really interesting and poetic, particularly when they function as instructions or editorial suggestions imposed on the text by the reader, tracking their own experience and informing future readers of a shared, hand me down volume of text. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=Pinter1-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/Pinter1-1.jpg" /></a> </div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This manifested in several ways - first in the inclusion of some abrupt 'blackouts' in a copy of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker and secondly in creating a fully edited version of <span lang="EN-US">Vilém Flusser</span>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil%C3%A9m_Flusser"><i>Towards a Philosophy of Photography</i></a> purely based on the passages, lines and words underlined by the owner of the book. I liked the idea of creating an 'essential' working version of a text as so often happens when using essays for critical work. The resultant texts were telling, and possessed an accidental poetry here and there; </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> e.g. The chapter titled <u>The Technical Image</u> was reduced to;</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> no everyday activity</span></i></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">which does not aspire to be photographed, filmed, videotaped. a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable. </span></i></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in order to be translated into a state</span></i></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">of things. </span></i></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> action and agony</span></i></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">whereas the chapter titled <u>Why a Philosophy of Photography is Necessary</u>, resulted in a blank page. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This ended up tying in nicely with Kate Briggs lecture and her extension of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes">Barthes</a> idea of <i>Pathetic Criticism</i> - a mode of reading whereby a text is reconstructed only by means of its most vividly remembered fragments. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we look a back at a text, we judge it only on the pool of remnants that have happened to stick. We can never judge the book as a whole - we rewrite and re edit unconsciously. Bending words to our will. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The emphasis of the week was on experiment and play as an essential companion to genuine intellectual enquiry. Another interesting thought was the idea that artistic methods of hands-on making and interaction with material should form a facet of any critical work. This really did it for me and I'm very glad to have come into contact with <i>information as material</i> for many reasons, not least their energy, their obsession with Samuel Beckett and their occupation with sincerely brilliant, absurdist gestures such as this; </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hUhq1HzLYEU" width="425"></iframe> </div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I now feel a little less bad about throwing that copy of <i>Beyond the Pleasure Principal</i> against the wall....</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Read more about iam's projects at <a href="http://www.informationasmaterial.com%20/">www.informationasmaterial.com </a></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">An <i>Autum School for Digital Perverts</i> will take place at the Whitechapel Gallery later this year. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"></span>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-43902155952383466132011-07-16T20:00:00.001+01:002011-07-16T21:10:08.543+01:00Domestic Bliss<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.pinksz.com/">Silvia C Ziranek</a> </span><span style="font-size: small;">has always fascinated me and her </span><span style="font-size: small;">name has come to light more than once as I've been researching certain corners of British performance art practice from the later part of the 20th Century.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEXb41hOK7CkX-vBvccQfn38in3V5XLw_l_JTCcXMH9q1JFtNtmi0Ck0UfDxli9V8Vgw_DKe_pOY6vJoD3MdBawPm0KWvmFkeCSeyaJ58_FUlNqL8z1Y0gTtxUK-bLrKN4gy8-rpJWJQUu/s1600/Tea+Cups.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEXb41hOK7CkX-vBvccQfn38in3V5XLw_l_JTCcXMH9q1JFtNtmi0Ck0UfDxli9V8Vgw_DKe_pOY6vJoD3MdBawPm0KWvmFkeCSeyaJ58_FUlNqL8z1Y0gTtxUK-bLrKN4gy8-rpJWJQUu/s320/Tea+Cups.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">She appears in the seminal, all woman ICA show <a href="http://www.luxonline.org.uk/history/1980-1989/about_time.html"><i>About Time</i> </a>from 1980, and could be found regularly performing at the <a href="http://ensemble.va.com.au/Grayson/art/Basement_Group.html">Basement Group's </a>underground exhibition space in Newcastle around the same time. <br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ziranek slips into a persona that is part middle class housewife, part society hostess; glamorous, eccentric, miraculous and possessed of the ability (as such models of feminine excellence were expected) to conjure perfection, charm and style with deftness and lightness. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">But her performances are tinged with the hyper-real hot fuscia of her notorious wardrobe and the cartoonish fluctuations of the adopted vernaculars and accents which characterise her poetic monologues. Her curious and brilliant performative texts chip away at the layers of the blissful veneer, with swirling undercurrents of mania and frustration; the words trip and cascade - like high brow dinner party conversations spinning through hints of darkness and doubt as the night wares on and the truth comes out. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">Listen <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/audioarts/cd1_20.shtm">here</a> for the work</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Cooking with G*d (I (H)ate Solitude)</i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> from 1983. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ziranek is still making work and news of upcoming performances can be found on <a href="http://www.pinksz.com/">her website</a>. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the meanwhile, here are some of my favourite images from the archives....</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu0U-i_h4Lgl6upWemYeV0NvjrVWm6PDbn5a-bh3Fnwghehyphenhyphen1eAfO1Zo07ePeWpmqR7ZZg0h9RFDH3kbfbQJXEDsl5yngi_LMSUa5KDIdbicKozGKno8-XkSrb3RLYmHDPcB2q8SpwKBBM/s1600/Anyone+Can+apron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu0U-i_h4Lgl6upWemYeV0NvjrVWm6PDbn5a-bh3Fnwghehyphenhyphen1eAfO1Zo07ePeWpmqR7ZZg0h9RFDH3kbfbQJXEDsl5yngi_LMSUa5KDIdbicKozGKno8-XkSrb3RLYmHDPcB2q8SpwKBBM/s400/Anyone+Can+apron.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPHOSei8C2FEAXHTxmEIcMFC-bCri8y5Cm5RfxYoXEao9bKVizKVxni9v488fLLCevC32NyDsIANnhHCxC5-TxSo825a8I0_4CtaTnszyYe16RHCixy1X2a6MwyzfZ727LaDygfpEgJ8Ix/s1600/Scales.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPHOSei8C2FEAXHTxmEIcMFC-bCri8y5Cm5RfxYoXEao9bKVizKVxni9v488fLLCevC32NyDsIANnhHCxC5-TxSo825a8I0_4CtaTnszyYe16RHCixy1X2a6MwyzfZ727LaDygfpEgJ8Ix/s320/Scales.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3x3EMYoVJmJUF8eynQUoESionVygYhmx14VGD8t8HcFheRA4YXlcD3wsVZSslyD4jNoR-TQ-1yzfAs_VEGRhtYtSJwnfoyo-Dl-8OqrHpbciUIxNEyLbRynxJr6-vp4IxmyLoKy5cTONs/s1600/Postcard+Absolutely.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3x3EMYoVJmJUF8eynQUoESionVygYhmx14VGD8t8HcFheRA4YXlcD3wsVZSslyD4jNoR-TQ-1yzfAs_VEGRhtYtSJwnfoyo-Dl-8OqrHpbciUIxNEyLbRynxJr6-vp4IxmyLoKy5cTONs/s320/Postcard+Absolutely.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMjyN0dubb0AAYShhzbNVkX3IVgQN2uZEpKbmHwbfB-1s2zRe55il2FSHiz0gjnKwx4QB-g1upnttNeFzLBBmuyY_C5SPOmoDJ1DeLWA2fWVZIszK6WvOPP1twOTJIWfaSjyhdj_jbeLT/s1600/Meathook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMjyN0dubb0AAYShhzbNVkX3IVgQN2uZEpKbmHwbfB-1s2zRe55il2FSHiz0gjnKwx4QB-g1upnttNeFzLBBmuyY_C5SPOmoDJ1DeLWA2fWVZIszK6WvOPP1twOTJIWfaSjyhdj_jbeLT/s320/Meathook.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JRCp4A5nGj9_FvUPfpXdFbQJ90I60ZSL_xU6OyzKPKDj8-UzgCJtVEFi4TOJ2ldPvBIiPqx3LClwQiiscrFRzWU45ygTLMOixH0Tnj3wgSVQLYFND3RIVg7vbOScI2FKCpJrFB6sz8MJ/s1600/Ga+Ga+Bongo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JRCp4A5nGj9_FvUPfpXdFbQJ90I60ZSL_xU6OyzKPKDj8-UzgCJtVEFi4TOJ2ldPvBIiPqx3LClwQiiscrFRzWU45ygTLMOixH0Tnj3wgSVQLYFND3RIVg7vbOScI2FKCpJrFB6sz8MJ/s400/Ga+Ga+Bongo.jpg" width="297" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTISVdVImM9kpvja8otc3JCucTnIFd05BcYSXDaUVA56I5pR2zc3738bdMVUHpHUaqI6ZIM-3p5u-5skd3vqEbL6m014FAHm18xO3uX0t9c_Z04k5eRFgIJDRa2AaoinOj97yGkx88OQGf/s1600/Coolie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTISVdVImM9kpvja8otc3JCucTnIFd05BcYSXDaUVA56I5pR2zc3738bdMVUHpHUaqI6ZIM-3p5u-5skd3vqEbL6m014FAHm18xO3uX0t9c_Z04k5eRFgIJDRa2AaoinOj97yGkx88OQGf/s320/Coolie.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4MIq_xsoc6BXmB7VQtzLaX4s9NDHR778RUsc-k2vSSwE778d0Kmzhl5-yjMhPel55vQcg_qj6Y-IRs-eXoA59CHtKgyh8PhhtvGjoqrkslR-SLtZzAnoLpXfZkWmtOg-zC6ewRM_Wh2IB/s1600/Whist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4MIq_xsoc6BXmB7VQtzLaX4s9NDHR778RUsc-k2vSSwE778d0Kmzhl5-yjMhPel55vQcg_qj6Y-IRs-eXoA59CHtKgyh8PhhtvGjoqrkslR-SLtZzAnoLpXfZkWmtOg-zC6ewRM_Wh2IB/s320/Whist.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">All images </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">© Silvia C Ziranek</span></span><b><br />
</b></div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-2898041380559841232011-07-09T19:39:00.004+01:002011-07-10T11:28:47.004+01:00Islands ... Traces<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">A couple of really interesting projects </span><span style="font-size: small;">curated by <a href="http://www.annebean.net/">Ann Bean</a> and <a href="http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/gary-stevens">Gary Stevens</a> </span><span style="font-size: small;">are currently taking place in two spaces situated in leafy Southwark Park. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Both look at the politics and processes of collaborative practice with <i><a href="http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/wake">WAKE</a></i> asking a series of artists to create work from the remains of an installation that has preceded them and <i><a href="http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/archipelago">ARCHIPELAGO</a></i> asking fourteen artists to jostle for space, locked in negotiations over boundaries and take overs; poised on the brink of possible invasion. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm looking forward to seeing the development of <i>WAKE</i> this weekend but have set down some thoughts on a work by <a href="http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/ian_bourn/index.html">Ian Bourn</a> entitled <i>Skirting (Version One)</i> which does a really good job of holding its own amoung the chaos of <i>ARCHIPELAGO</i>. You can read my piece <a href="http://visibletracks.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/its-always-the-quiet-ones/">"It's Always the Quiet Ones"</a> over on the accompanying blog <a href="http://visibletracks.wordpress.com/">VISIBLE TRACKS</a> as well as some other interesting discussion about the project. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=skirtinginstallation.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/skirtinginstallation.jpg" /></a> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Skirting (Version One)</i>, Installation View. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">WAKE is open 12-6pm Saturday and Sunday in Dilston Grove and ARCHIPELAGO from 12-6pm Wednesday to Sunday in Cafe Gallery. Until 17th July. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-83372685843909874482011-07-03T18:42:00.003+01:002011-07-03T18:59:24.705+01:00Summerteeth<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's nice to get out of the city sometimes...</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=TheSea-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/TheSea-1.jpg" /></a>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9157103763015479730.post-36429411547318035712011-06-27T19:52:00.038+01:002011-06-27T20:16:57.294+01:00The Thing is / The Thing<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The current exhibition at <a href="http://www.ravenrow.org/current/gonewiththewind/">Raven Row</a> gallery, <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, is an exhibition about sound, governed by a pervasive silence. Featuring the work of <a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/Walter+Marchetti">Walter Marchetti</a>, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/maxeastley">Max Eastley</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takehisa_Kosugi">Takehisa Kosugi</a>, the show is less about sound as a medium or material form, and more an exploration of a landscape in which inconsistencies, subtleties, accidents and interjections become the agents of incidental sonic encounter. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=Gonewiththewind.gif" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/Gonewiththewind.gif" /></a> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Rather than clamouring with strains of the experimental music that is inherent to the practice of all three artists, the exhibition is buffeted by the quiet of exquisite watercoloured notebook pages (Eastley's), the heat pulse of a piano wrapped in Christmas lights (Marchetti's) and the compelling trail of documentary images of Japanese Fluxus gatherings (Kosugi's). The curator, <a href="http://resonancefm.com/">Resonance FM's</a> Ed Baxter speaks of "a willingness to wait patiently for sound to emerge ... or not" as characteristic of the work on show and indeed it does appear as a kind of landscape full of ghostly monuments and geographic features in waiting. We might imagine this landscape as characterised by the stave, the site of musical notation, which appears among the documentation of all three artists. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The approaches to this theoretical rigour are all equally riotous; populated with blocks of primary colour/rhythm (calling to mind synesthesic practice); maculate with manic black marks that over-roost the stave's like swarming birds, or else they are absent of notes, the stacked lines themselves subject to delicate recolouring and fracture as if to illustrate the concern with playing around space rather than within it - of listening intently to what is already available to hear; the base resonance's that will always, empirically form a foundation for created sound. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The overriding question or experiment seems to be, what happens to sound (or to a room) when objects are placed within it? How does their presence affect inherent or applied sound? This calls to mind <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Lucier">Alvin Lucier's</a> seminal 1969 recording <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Sitting_in_a_Room">"I am Sitting in a Room"</a> in which Lucier endeavoured to <i>s-s-s-smmmooth</i> out his speech by immersing himself in the natural sonic frequencies of a particular space. The amalgamation of his physical presence and the electronic manipulation of the recording acting as a balm upon the aural blemishes in his words. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sCgicEWD1Nc" width="425"></iframe> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm interested in the possibility of this happening visually as well as sonically. While at the gallery I was lucky enough to see a performance by <a href="http://www.arteleku.net/estherferrer/">Esther Ferrer</a>, the creator of some vital experimental works in the 1960's and a collaborator of Marchetti's. She presented her work <i>Las Cosas</i> <span style="color: #999999;">(</span>The Things) which seems to have been performed for the first time around 1988. Ferrer engages in a process of making pictures with her body. A selection of mundane objects are juxtaposed with her naked / part naked form to create bizarre statues while a recorded voice marks the passing time.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm often a little troubled by the presence of performance works as add-ons to exhibitions, rather than having space to themselves, but on reflection, the siting of her strange procession of statues within the quiet sonic landscape of the exhibition, fits well with the ethos of the curated works. Randomly, possibly and impossibly things can appear to change the dynamics of an encounter, whether this be a note on a stave or a body, sitting in a room. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/?action=view&current=hace_camino_andar_sml.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o279/amypet/hace_camino_andar_sml.jpg" /></a> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The building sensations of discomfort, curiosity, hilarity or embarrassment felt within the crowd at the sight of the elderly artist, bare breasted and crowned with a portable TV or monkey toy, palpably changed the dynamics of the room in the same sense that Lucier's recorded feedback threw light on the sounds that we experience but are not tuned in to. As the recorded, metronomic voice ebbed on and the audience tuned in to the systematic rhythms of Ferrer's ritual, the space, and the experience of it, began to change. You are alerted to different things, things that are usually lost underfoot.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The title of the work refers perhaps not only to the surreal arsenal of objects in Ferrer's bags but also to these unnameable elements. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Resonance FM are broadcasting from the gallery throughout the exhibition and I like the idea of the rogue, taboo presence of dead air with which the exhibition is imbued, coming about at the behest of a radio station. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think a station which programmes static, silence, wind and non sounds - like the beating of Eastley's butterfly wings - is my kind of station. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Exhibition runs until 17th July. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></div>Amy Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800540714190019557noreply@blogger.com0