I am writing from English Harbour. The woodstove is lit because it is a damp cold day. My plans for Parcel Lab? Where to begin? Being here, in a small community in outport Newfoundland. I will be travelling back and forth between Montreal and English Harbour while working on the project. The differences between contexts, between “cosmopolitan” culture and more “provincial/regional” cultural practices and expectations, is bound to play a significant part in my writing.
For a long time I have been concerned about the non-critical use of new media and digital technology by artists. This is one of the reasons why I am so compelled by this project. Parcel Lab will draw me right into the middle of all this. I will get to work closely with folks deeply engaged with new media. I will get to see and feel what happens to my work and that of others when put into this form. I am interested in seeing how the form evolves in response to the content we submit and exchange.
Here, in this bit of scribbling and scratching (bic pencil on yellow paper) I am hearing Heidegger’s ramblings concerned with language, identity and difference, nearness and distance, what is a thing, and even his musings on the origin of the work of art. I suppose this project will draw me back to Heidegger’s work and that of those who have carried it forward. Phenomenology is my art/life ground. I was drawn to philosophy as a way of finding words to describe what I was experiencing with works of art. Poetry might be better. Which brings me to the work of Cixous. Her writing—fiction, literary criticism, feminist theory—will be beside me throughout this project.
I opened with a reference to “beginnings”. Where to begin? I like the relationship between “beginnings” and “the detail”. This idea will be a point of reference for me within this project. It will be a continuous point of departure.
A first impression: A good show. After sitting with works for half hour or so the show doesn’t seem as interesting as a whole. There are some strong works, and I will give time to them, but some of the works seemed interesting on first blush but have turned out to be not so interesting. It’s as if some of the pieces were made for “casual” viewing, fast viewing, drift. But I am looking forward to spending more time with the “train” piece. And I like the “architectural model” piece as well. The paper guns are good too. (I like the use of materials and technology with the paper guns and the architectural pieces. Materiality and technique function metaphorically and metonymically. I like this kind of play. I like how it engages the real beyond representation.) So we have that. And I am sitting beside a piece I liked initially but with the passing of time find less compelling. It is an enigmatic piece, but…. The “fall.” See Kliest on the marionette theatre. See Cixous too. And Lispector (Brazil). And what of my first three themes? The body…. Can’t even remember the others now. What do these texts say? (Jack: Remember to give thought to how the video installation functions as a text. Here I am thinking of how the body is used metaphorically, figuratively, as in dance. Who can I read in relation to body art and dance? I am also wondering how the idea of “performing the self” relates to this piece.) “Hiding” seems like an important theme. I should quote Ingeborg Bachmann here. And now my thought is moving between Lingis and Moure. There’s the memory of Alphonso Lingis reading at the CCA more than ten years back. I will have to give thought to the relationship between architecture and violence. (See Thomas Bernhard’s “Concrete.”) Disappearance is an important theme as well. Note how in José Carlos Martinat’s piece, “Stereo Reality Environment 3: Brutalismo” the printers ran out of ink or stopped working for some reason. For a long time it just spit out “blank” receipts, receipts without legible text. If you hold the “receipt” in a certain light you can make out words on the page, but if you didn’t look closely the “receipt” looks blank. I don’t know if the artist anticipated this happening, but I appreciate the significance of some of the texts being impossible to read. I love works of art that work well even when they “fuck up” i.e. don’t do what the artist wanted them to do. Also have to give thought to notion of “theatricality”. How we think politics with images, with and through art. Me here now thinking about “the body in pain” (Elaine Scary). Thinking about body art, live art, performance art and how these practices deal with the issue of representation, especially in terms of using form of speech that fall outside of language. Sitting in Vida’s studio. Listening to one of Rolf Julius’s CDs. This particular piece doesn’t have that direct “back to nature” feel that I like so much. Communication. Code. Language. Insect-like sounds. Forest-like. Depth-of-field.I wonder if it helps to approach listening to this work in terms of figure and ground. I come back to the ideas “back to nature” and “forest-like”. Yes. How to describe the spatial qualities evoked by this work? And now I am trying to recall how I felt with the work in situ. Also how I felt during the performance. What was he doing during the performance? Was any of it “live”? What does he use as raw material? How does he make this sound? How does he compose? Sound environments. I have to give thought to the sculptural and installational aspects of his work. Am I listening to an element of a sound installation or am I listening to a song? And now I am making a link to the sculptural piece at Oboro right now. I am thinking about how elements of the work bare a metonymic relation to things we encounter out there in the real world, outside of the art gallery. With the piece at Oboro right now I am thinking about the “receipts” that spit out of the architectural model. With Rolf’s work there are the cricket sounds. I wonder why he stays with the high-pitched sound? Why this particular fascination? Materiality and time: how the materiality of this work cites a particular time. Above ground. Floating. Voices. These are the voices of other life forms. The inhuman. We have to give thought to the machine. Ok, I feel like I am sitting in a tropical forest. Listening. Listening closely. Attentive. Focused. Open. I am forced to try to identify the source of these sounds. Words? A foreign language? Why does this work, Rolf’s work, seem so trite compared to the pieces I like that are installed at Oboro right now? What is the motivation here? With the pieces at Oboro right now the political is front and centre. The relationship between form and content makes perfect sense. Form. Singularity. I remember saying to Vida that it might help to situate Rolf’s work within an historical context. He is one of the pioneers of electronic music. Sound art seems like an appropriate classification. But I want to move on. I am not really with this work now. I am finding it difficult to listen to this particular piece. I feel closer to the other works. I want to be with them. This morning, wondering how to respond to presenting my work. I want to resist thinking of this as work. I want to approach this project in a relaxed and open way. No censorship. Movement. Drift. Follow the lines and rhythms of thought. This particular piece is driving me nuts. On the one hand we hear the machine at work, the transfer of data, electronic code. And now, again, I am thinking of sources, origins, and the referent. I am thinking about nature. Yes, origins. Origins as they relate to the materiality of the work. The mimetic and/or figurative qualities as well. Singularity is an issue as well. I haven’t heard anything like this before, and for that reason alone I want to support the work, give it time, take it seriously. I so admire artists that follow their own path. Concentration. Concentration is so evident hear. Here. I was just now thinking of “repetition.” Yes, there is repetition, but…. Crazy sounding stuff. This particular piece feels like it could go on forever. It feels like a ground, an ever-present ground within late modern or postmodern urban space. So now I am thinking about differences between urban and rural environments. This piece: its form cites the urban and its content cites the rural. This is how I hear it. Yes, in terms of the sculptural/installational qualities of the work, I look to urban life. I told Caroline that I would compare Rolf’s work to Malcolm’s. Why? Writing in Vida’s studio. Wondering about audience. Who will read this? Who am I writing for? Caroline, Chantel, Daniel, to start. And through this, with them, will eventually post some of what takes place here on the web. Context. What are the expectations? What can I learn by writing for this particular context? I am supposed to start with Oboro, my presence within the space, my response to works of art, my interactions with the works and folks I bump into while there. I don’t have to focus on the works of art. Emphasis is supposed to be on the stuff that happens around the work, off to the side, in the background. Freedom. I am free to choose how to approach this. Yes, writing will be a part of things. Writing will likely play a major part in what gets posted, what goes public. But I am very interested working with other forms — photography, video, audio recording, scanned drawings, etc. This morning I thought of using this project as an opportunity to work on a piece, a work of art that incorporates the various forms mentioned earlier. I should ramble on now about some of what came up this morning. This morning, for whatever reason, I started worrying about creating some kind of continuity between texts, between the various posts. This thought or concern came to me because I was trying to write about the first exhibition and the present one at the same time and was finding it difficult to link the two projects. I was searching for common themes, common concerns shared by the exhibitions. A difficult task. And why bother? I find it difficult to shift from one train of thought to another. I can do it, but it takes time. I need time to adjust. I need time to get close to a given subject/object. Anyway, I eventually found something that these works share. Electricity. Without electricity the works of art presented at Oboro that I like would not exist. So now I am going to go off on a tangent, a tangent related to… How will I justify giving time to reading texts that don’t relate directly to the works of art presented at Oboro? I can draw attention to how certain aspects of some artworks lead me to read a particular text. I visited the gallery on Thursday and Friday. There are two works in the exhibition that I want to give a lot of time to. A strange exercise, this writing. I am not writing a review. I have been given an opportunity to work in an alternative form. I often ramble on about the need for more self-reflexivity in art criticism and philosophy. Here I am with an opportunity to do whatever I want, and I don’t really know how to get started. Where to begin? Audience is an ongoing concern. Who am I writing for? I am going to describe the things gathered around me. As I mentioned, I am writing in Vida’s studio. My study is cluttered right now. And I wanted to be close to Vida because it is our last day together for a while. I also want to write from in her studio because it is full of art, full of the stuff that goes into making art, full of unfinished details, works in progress, images and objects that are sources of inspiration for her practice. Her studio is also cooler than my study, and I find a cool space nicer to work in. I have gathered a few things around me that will play a part in my contribution to Parcel Lab. I have a couple of stacks of books, some photocopies, a couple of photographs, scraps of paper from the exhibition… I am really not in the mood to nail things down just yet. I don’t want to decide on a form. I want the form to find me. I want to see what happens if I keep on freewriting, writing as if no one will ever read these words or look at these images. I am going to give this a try for the time being. I am going to write without an end in sight. How? There is an end in sight. To honour my contract I have to post something today, something made in response to my presence at Oboro.
