natashamaria

LostWax - BLinKinG

2011-12-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

OR: constant change out/in side

I tried to write about Alvin Ailey when they came to town. But writing about a company who's been around for so long seemed daunting. As an untrained dancer and person who likes to think and share but doesn't aspire to be a 'critic', I never got past my struggle to write a proper disclamer, let alone to the meat of my notes.

Well it's been a busy few months since then. I had a solo visual art show, said fairewell to the person I was working on coreography with, met a new friend to go to dance performances with, danced in a site specific piece, and did my own iteration of an interactive art/performance piece. I'm no more at ease as a writer, and bearly more at ease as a "mover", but I know a bit more about biting off the right amount to chew, and I'm hoping to aply that to writing this and get it up before the night it through.

Tonight I finally saw BLINKING by LostWax (multi media dance theater) These are my parentheses. I hate to see that explanatory tag-on mess up the poetry of their name, the gist of which, combined with the piece Blinking, prove it's visionary / creater/choreographer, Jamie Jewett's preoccupation with 'what is lost' or 'what is left' or 'the peripheral'.)

Blinking is a collaboration between Jewett and R. Luke DuBois (bio quote: "composer, artist, performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera". The piece has original video (projected mainly on the backdrop screen), sound (created before/during/after the creation of the video/choreography), and choreography for 8 dancers. There was some sort of tracking device used on the dancers in some parts, which created lines relating to the video projection and were then projected themselves. More (but not much more) on this part later.

So You've got the elements now. Let me start by saying that this is perhaps the ONLY dance/video piece I've ever seen where there was no chance that the video would have detracted/destracted from the live dancers. I am someone who cannot ignore a tv when its on in the room. So that's really saying something, and not that the video was a boring element. Just that there was an evenness about the balance. The movement was more compelling to me And. And the video integrated almost the way the music did-- relating to the movement in a two way street sort of way, rather than dominating it.

I think that what I'll do is simply share my notes, and elaborate where necessary. Here goes.

mother blinks sits in public looking in one direction

periodically focusing on two young boys jumping and swinging around

two dancers with similar playful interaction, eyes meeting often, amused

circle on floor in center appears almost as a rug.

dancer flips it up and it becomes a projection screen.

reminds me of tonight's full moon

gets flung aside slides across floor to stage corner and stops...

becomes light source beautiful.

second spot flood projection on floorspace dancers occupy doubles the circles' meaning

there are lines from the womans face to the boys. tons of them, thin, white, apparently in the act of mapping. they move at slight angle shifts- perception of a million details is near simultaneous. all the thoughts observations visions intake crammed into 5 seconds, 45 seconds. An hour could be a lifetime at this magnification.

Two dancers become four-

on costumes: child-like ones are in purple and green turtlenecks and black pants with the a double white runners strip on the outer seam. they are boyish, short haired, even with the sparkeling aknowliging eyes and mascara.

the next two are in black bell-ish high wasted short-pants [i want them immediately. they are perfect] and asymetrical white shirts. their sleves are a mirror of eachothers- each with a long sleve bearing two black stripes and a short bellish sleeve. I immediately think of eye lashes and eye lids. Struck again by all the doubles.

the motion here is low down, with alot of jumping up then down again.

more down than up, the reverse of the woman's eyes, the reverse of waking life.

then four became five. more white. the odd one out in a dress with two black stripes down the middle. more thoughts about lids or mediating or action or equal sighns, translators, the In Between. Who is ever in there? Who is ever not?

mother watches children clip on loop dancers in front are moving differently though.

children (projected and mirrored) are dancing in a web of protection that is the woman's act of witnessing. in a web of inaction/restriction that is her judgement, no way to know. i project both with my own eyes onto the youth in my past prestent me.

a third piece starts within the whole. it's full of two legged hop/twirls and i instantly want to learn it. all the actions have an inner logic that has to do with momentum and gravity and i want to feel the phrases in my body, if i can manage them.

here the dancers do lots of watching, and overall the piece seems on one hand to be running on Ensemble-time, that's my code for what I learned in Bogart traing - moving as a unit with hyper-listening fueling almost-symultaneous but different action. But as i watched my friend i saw she was clearly dancing to 'a different drum'. I learned later in the Q&A that each dancer in fact was counting units of either 7,8,4, 3 or 5. Woah. Then later on the dancers told me themselves that when they were learning this part they would get messed up if they so much as looked at eachother. Now they can see where they need to be based on eachother, using the structure of their relationships to one another as landmarks in the sequences of landscapes they create...

"Inner Landscapes" is a phrase that came to me later as I was watching, in fact.

A couple of thoughts I had as I watched this part:

are actions like colors in that their impact varies completely by context? (obvious but this is the first time i can remember having this thought)

part of working with momentum is an economy of energy for the dancer.

later, in next part--

and then of the girl in the dress: is she the lid the ball the vision? (nn to answer) the dream the thought the optic nerve?

there is a high surface with a sleeping dancer wearing a matching white dress.

a second dancer (the first one in the dress) dances alone below, and a sleeping woman is projected. this is the nearest parallel to a dancer and the woman on the screen.

relationships shift. there is dancer's level of activity/energy equels that of music.

and also, dancer movement is larger higher faster as music is more regular more quiet or simple. and the inverse of that also.

sharing varied measurements of a whole and sometimes being equel parts.

after awhile the dancer moves up the ladder toward the other. she "screams" a loud long "shhhhh" in her ear. its as though she is the thoughts of subconcious or activity of dream, waking the sleeper. or is she drawing her Into dream with shhhh? sleeper and second slump down platform to floor (the toes touch like a pin dropping- slow motion and ringing-perfectly precise) they dance together awhile, touching or rather moving eachother along like sisters or mirror-selves.

then the sleeper takes off her matching dress and begins to put on day clothes street clothes waking world clothes...

is she dream-walking?

betraying her dream visions in dressing.

taking waking. choosing it.

fighting away sleep, or dreams

thoughts, or that second other inner uncheckable fleeting only bearly-felt wordlss reality/part of self...

Dancer hearing sounds on stage

as a sign of change out/in side her

that poignent motion. swaying forward, hands as though heavy, wrists beside eachother as though bound...

Is Blinking a balking of life-- a balking as if at the cuffs of the landscape of conciousness?

on the bed / dock-

she alone

everyone else below the surface,

ear to ground as if listening to a pebble song

everyone else sub concious sub merged

Water. hidden or reflected

two sides of obscure

bits from the Q&A:

"a direct quote of the boys' movement"

"the video was always about Gaze"

and "main sonic element"

I am interested in a good format for thought fragments.

Please post comments with any you use / have seen.

Later, on the drive home, I recalled my art school unfoldment as an "Archaeology of the self"

Thank you to the artists and performers for their dedication in putting together an ambitious, successful and insightful work.

An Arcade Project

2011-12-10T19:22:00.001-08:00

I was a mover in Elise Nuding's movement/archaeology site specific exploration of the Arcade, in downtown Providence, in November. It just confirmed for me that I want to be performing more, moving more. The whole process and performance was documented on her blog: anarcadeproject.blogspot.com/

Introducing the SKULL KINGDOMS (a post mortem?)

2011-09-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

About a year ago my sweetie Sam Holland and a mutual friend of ours (brilliant local artist musician producer mystic who shall remain nameless by choice) decided to start a band. The name is more forboding than most of our sound. So far, anyway. There are five of us, give or take, depending on the project. Most of us are untrained, and identify first as writers or visual artists. Our time playing together occurred mostly in the lovely reverb of the little bridge in India Point park, which is technically part of the east bay bike path. There were bucket drums, guitars, bass, cello, recorders & voices and an instruction: impriovise, listen as you play, go from soft drone to fuller sound and back. This description is written in past tense because we have not played together in sometime. The sound was loose. Perhaps at some point I'll post a clip of it...

This spring, I was interested in doing a couple of projects and I didn't want them to be solo ventures. They were of the art/ritual/installation/participatory sort and I thought working collaboratively would bring the energy necessary to pull them off and keep them interesting. I got the group nod to use the Skull Kingdoms name, and various members stepped forth to participate in their own ways.

Working collaboratively with what in the end were two friends from childhood who know me and who i know (or some earlier versions of them/me) rather intimately. Working together or beside eachother in what for all of us are almost always solo acts that we might even tend to think of as ritual rather than art making was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Even just being in each other's presence daily, speaking on the phone and acting (or not acting) as a team... feeling eachothers rythems and patterns and flow was SO Different, so new, so informative and Transformative. Not everything that came of the project was good, I think we'd all agree on that. But we can't say we didn't learn.

The project I'm most refering to is our Wooly Fair Pod, which we called the Den of Divination. In the end we each worked very differently, flt through envisioning the space and occupying and performing the space differently. Wooly's theme was To The Moon, and in a strange way our pod was like a tent on the frontier- one where scavanged remainders of objects from the home planet were treasured for their relationship to our deepest sense of place... It bacame our cave for medetation, our alter for prayer, our fiery performance space. Alchemy was the goal. There were places for written reflection, there was an invitation to do your own devining--- let your eyes and sense travel the tent. notice where they settle, to what they are drawn. Nothing is a cooincidence. From this, what can you learn about yourself and your current state? Outside was a wild party, but inside, party goers dropped to their knees, rearranged the fountain, fell quiet and still. I was astounded.

Some Images, here: http://s1137.photobucket.com/profile/skullkingdoms/uploads#!cpZZ1QQtppZZ20

Current: Exploring Embodiement

2011-08-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

Above is a detail from the installation piece in my latest solo show.

Here is a set of photos showing the pieces and how they were installed. i think of this as a single body f work, united by theme and in many cases approach. let me know what you think! http://natashamaria.zaplife.com/

fun fun fun!

2011-06-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

Revisiting some fast and fun collaborations I made with my sweetie a while back.

They are short little videos, or animations of quick successions of still shots, actually.

See one here http://vimeo.com/25167490 I call DRIP

and another here: http://vimeo.com/5858382 This one is vibration :-)

I love the ease and joy of presentness they represent.

Observe a phenomena. Play with it. Capture it. Share it. So simple!

Through My Eyes: Brown's 2011 Festival of Dance, Stuart Theater

2011-05-19T19:51:00.001-07:00

For some reason i like to write about dance

Here's what I got down tonight:

Enter Comma Prepare is not a minimal dinner party but rather a social event, gone mechanized… Like any good film about drugs I found the dancer body/mind state to be contagious. "Is that what -yes sometimes thats what- I'm like" runs through my head. It is almost a simon says with audio instruction, video projection, tables and well dressed Brown students. Dancers follow prompts like robots, only they each interpret 'left arm back' a little differently, and when malfunction or overload occur, they shut out the input by masking face with hands. Although somewhat silly and alyrical, Enter Comma Prepare has an eery familiarity.

Another modern work by the Dance Extension starts with sound continues with action linked to sound like a code. But the tight correlation quickly disintegrates. Also humorous at moments and grey in mood, Ms. Sokolow and her dancers direct attention to subtlety with ease: the sound of fingernails tapping, and chin protrusions. Not your typical dancers-on-chairs-piece, associations with flopping fish gasping for air, and alien-amphibian frogs are as organic as it gets.

Watching first and reading later, I felt Overlay was certainly a collaborative exploration of related movement by pairs or groups of dancers. Apparently it was. It's irony was much appreciated.

INTERMISSION

Enter muse, chaos, goddess Kali and all her fullness. When a work credits three individuals and one theater troupe with "conception, choreography, text, music and direction" you can assume there will be a lot going on. Indeed. There were puppet makers, an aerial coach and a masquerade coach. Some viewers will need coaching too. This being my second experience of a Michelle Bach-Kubali premiere, I was as prepared as one little human could be.

Advice to viewers: Don't work too hard to follow a 'story' though it may be presented as such at first. Instead let the presence of the story simply lead you in. It will give way to the conviction of the performers and the emotional/elemental -dare I say alchemical shifts swarming around you.

If you try for the story you get something like this: boy in civil war corresponds with younger sister or sweetheart? dies of typhoid fever. girl and her doll morn. live in haystacks? turn witchy. Doll escapes or gets stolen. Then tells us her side- tortured servitude as comfort giver (slap cuddle slap). From there it is sexual, animal, dark chaotic and amorphous. Choreography is fast and emotional, a landscape of individuals, hearts beating wildly in all directions, a pack of beasts prowling.

What is certain is this: Luna Rise was a massive undertaking which clearly and generously embraced collaborative process as a method of investigation. The live music was awesome, and the entire cast and crew were dedicated with a willing-to-go-there-not-knowing-if-theres-even-a-there-there attitude. No doubt, inspiration and deep inquiry can be this messy, and this beautiful.

First Wheatpaste

2011-05-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

Fun!

it's up in Northampton, (two) and here in Providence (three places).

There's a misspell. I don't give a damn. It's happy art. A triumph.

activity afoot

2011-05-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

so much going on. so much to talk about!

I have started dancing. Well that's silly to say. I have been dancing all my life. In my living room, mostly. But I have started making dances, or focusing on movement other than yoga poses. So that's the new part. Making meaning through movement. Went to a couple of dance concerts too, and wrote about them. Soon to come. I might as well post them here. There's not enough dialogue or criticism or whatever you want to call it in these parts or ever as far as I am concerned.

2011-02-28T13:39:00.001-08:00

Photo a Day for January

2011-02-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

This was my Fun-a-Day project. Taking pictures everyday got me out of the hose when I'd otherwise hibernate, and for that I'm greatful. Plus now I'm bonded with my new camera, and have a little more insight on my default tendencies in term of framing or composing a photograph. I took almost 1000 pictures in January. To help me narrow down and decide what to display, I limited myself to only those I shot as squares. I've always wanted to play more with this format, so it was a good fast way to do that. I find myself wanting to break the rules. Cutting the square into almost four equal parts, etc. Weren't rules made to be broken?

If this work were to have a dedication, I would read something like this: Thank you, sun, source of all outer light, for helping remind me of the light that dwells within. When in doubt, mirror the good. Not a bad lesson for a dark month. And a great way to start my year.

Side note: The dinosoar is not my work. It's a super fun piece by another fun a day artist, name to come, I gotta look him up! -NMBS

2011-02-08T19:38:00.000-08:00

Hello friends and collegues.

I wanted to invite you all to a very special event this weekend. Fun-A-Day began in Philly more than 5 years ago. But in Providence, it started because a new transplant to RI missed her hometown tradition. We had coffee, placed an ad on criag's list for helpers, and the rest is history. I never anticipated how wonderful it could be to organize an event with a group of strangers. I suppose an idea like this -have fun every day by being creative- is self selecting. Over 80 Rhode Islanders wrote to tell us they took on the challenge. About 40 artists will show their work this weekend. Join us, and please help spread the word. Find more info at http://funadayprov.blogspot.com/

The details:

Fun a Day at the WBNA, 1560 Westminster St.

two days only!

Opening Party, Fri Feb 11th, 7-11

Closing Party, Sat Feb 12th, 5-10

And, looking forward to NEXT weekend, New Urban Arts shows student works in progress.

I like to think of all of us as works in progress. Being a learning community aimed at fostering both creative practice and real relationships, the ultimate goal is to grow individuals who will in turn grow healthy communities. I have been asked to "curate" this show, which basically means facilitating thinking around art process and the display of work. We are considering questions like "What does progress mean?", "Is there an apt metephore for my process - such as growing or building?" and "How can I share the growth of my art, my self, and my community?" By witnessing this show, you will become a part of this dialogue.

Invite here: http://www.newurbanarts.org/NUA_MidyearMakings_front_2011.jpg

Yours in creation,

Natasha

2011-01-31T12:17:00.000-08:00

glasnost

a thaw democratization of information free knowlege an open mind

cavity

revene opening rotting infection

palms in cup

gesture of a begger homeade vessel holding an offering

tree bark

inedible. dead. protective covering. living structure amidst urban concrete. fuel for fire- warmth and light

2011-01-31T08:46:00.000-08:00

Street Art

2011-01-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

So this is not my first post about how I love encountering art out in the real world. be they chalk tracings of night shadows, zippers inserted into sidewalk cracks, "War" spraypainted under the "stop" on a stopsign, or signage on a subway telling you "do not fall in love" instead of "do not lean on doors". I delight in buskers and street music of most kinds. So its no wonder I loved the movie about/by? controversial/loved/mysterious British street artist Banksy. Entitled "Exit through the gift shop", the film is guessed to be the artists' own pseudo documentary turning the lens towards the art market's effect on art making and art makers. I saw it recently, long after it came out, and for me it was a kick in the pants to finish a project I started in November.

Really the inception of this field of study goes back to 2009 when I returned to Rhode Island, and started meeting with childhood friends and collaborators Alvin G. and Sam Coren. Between the three of us are writers, historians, visual artists, musicians, producers, thinkers and mystics. We wanted to do what we began calling a Deep Map of Providence. Looking at the city we loved as if looking at a living being with chakra centers, energy blocks, wounds and other stored memories. The site of a collective and personal history. We wanted to find a way - in various mediums- to explore and begin telling this history. We wrote essays and poetry and may texts that fall in between. We read histories, visited sites, and walked the streets with eyes wide open, alert to the feeling of a place. There was this idea that certain areas were places where pedestrians intuitively did not go. A sense that the highway was strangling the city and that these spots were either energy leaks, where essential life force seeped out of the city, or were energy knots where things got stuck and had no where to go. We weren't talking about traffic patterns necessarily, although they played a role in things of course. But we were observing the less visible ENERGETIC realities of certain spaces throughout the city.

We excitedly monitored the DOT website for signs of progress in the 195 highway relocation. We watched the tent cities under those bridges in fox point and the jewelery district spring up, thrive—if that can be said—and get evicted from their makeshift homes. One day in November I realized that the highway ought to have words on it. The idea of writing on the landscape has always appealed to me. My first installation had writing across a long horizontal wall and over the weeks I took to cover it, I often returned to the concept of the horizon, the line created by sky meeting land as far away as your eye can take you. To limit and to dream. We live on that line, in the thin between where the body of the earth ends and the endless space of heavens begin.

I remember New York city in the early nineties. During the 42nd street revitalization project they kicked the xxx theaters and smut out of the west side of 42nd street, between hell's kitchen and times square. When the theaters were being renovated and were tenantless, all the marquees were filled with haiku by local poets. I was so moved by the stillness of their words in the bustling city. The moment of contemplation, handed to me and every passerby like a communion wafer. In November of this year, I had just finished lettering signs for Greenwich Village's Halloween parade with Kingston artist Robert The. I decided that the highway needed some words—not any words, but some words. I wanted to start quietly, the way one might begin a conversation with a complete stranger. With curiosity. Listening as much as speaking. I called Sam. Sure enough, he had notebooks with words conceived under that bridge. I consulted another friend about typeface design. This picture is the first image of our first piece in what we hope will be a long series, or a continued conversation. I have all sorts of thoughts on these words, and would love to write about them, but more on that later. We hope to have a fruitful talk.

currently untitled

2010-09-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

here is a sculpture i made in june and july. it's the first actualized piece in a series i first started envisioning in 2004. i had been working with white vertical lines which bulged in places. there was a sense of hanging and stasis. some lines seemed like collapsable hollow tubes through which a bulging something might descent. the suspended stillness and the slow descending of the unnameable disguised form had my full attention. Not long after making the pieces with lines and what I later came to call "fertile dormant sacs", I began to imagine more shapely forms with inner spaces. Most were columns of some sort. Still white. For the first year of seeing them, the columns were either completely suspended, like this one, or touched only the ceiling or the floor. At first they were too narrow to get inside. then they grew. When they connected to the ceiling or floor, they were pesky and in my way- coming down from the ceiling so that you might bump your head on them, or up from the floor enough to trip and fall over. There was always a forest of them. It was so long before I saw a single column alone, and by the time I envisioned a column that connected the ceiling and the floor, I was so used to seeing incomplete forms that I was shocked. when i first saw this one, it was brown inside and i could get inside it. i felt utterly peaceful and at ease when i was.

The Wheel of Fortunes at Foo Fest 2010

2010-08-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

14 artists and 48 original works of art (we omitted duplicates for this grid).

If we judged by how these works intrigued, excited, inspired, offended, perplexed and/or touched Foo Festival goers, then the night was an unqualified success. They came in droves—there was a line around our booth all night—and waited eagerly as Sam, playing carny huckster, lured them in and held them at bay, watching on as I, the "medium" in flowing white, interpreted the works of art as fortunes in a quiet corner of the tent. They cheered as the wheel spun, and had a whole host of reactions to their readings. Some nodded solemnly as they heard their fate, others cried, shared stores and dreams (both kinds), or laughed with joy. I was astonished by the intimacy of the experience—many hugged me goodbye as though we were not strangers.

Many of the pieces are still available for sale (all are under $33). Email me at natashamaria0@gmail.com if you're interested.

We hope to do this again!

Sam documented all of the works. You can see them close up (along with a couple of shots of the booth) here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwwwheel-of-fortune/sets/72157624608558399/

(Keep checking flickr this week, as I will be adding comments under individual pieces, sharing some of my interpretations and the more memorable reactions and experiences resulting from this project.)

DUET Our first fortune for the wheel!

2010-08-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

When folded closed, this pair of pollinators serves a double purpose. What is there to learn about ourselves and our fortune from our beautiful monarch brethren? Designed and created for this project by Jenny Lee Fowler, of Port Ewan, NY.

To make a wedge yourself, read to call for art on this blog.

See more by Jenny here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennyleefowler/sets/72157621138090326/

Pollinators

2010-07-19T10:51:00.001-07:00

Just quickly...

I was weeding milkweed out of my garden one day (it's as persistent as mint or raspberries) when I learned that monarch butterflies would be extinct without it. This is just one of nature's many ways of balking our ideas about independence. Psychologically, independent = healthy, budget-wise, independent = healthy. But in the natural world (of which we ARE a part, no matter our resistance to the idea), independent is simply IMPOSSIBLE. Like silence, it's an abstract concept, rather than an actual reality. After a road trip with some botanists where we did quite a bit of roadside plant identification, I was eager to put these two lessons together. I am more than ever interested in the invisible relationships between animals and plants. When I was a kid my mom had two friends in a relationship. Their names were lois and jan. We said Loisandjan so quickly. They were always together when we saw them. It got to the point where I really identified them as two parts of a whole. When Lois and Jan broke up I just couldn't get used to saying "Jan" or "Lois". It was as though some part of the word and the unit were missing. I want to start seeing plants this way. To see trumpet vine and think humming bird. To see sunflowers and think bees or golden finches. I've started doing research into pollinators. Here are some images I've collected while looking around on the internet. They are on an ImageSpark Page, which is a cool way to collect images online.

http://www.imgspark.com/profile/view/natashamaria/

Call for Art

2010-07-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've just built a wheel for this year's FOO FEST. This here wheel is A WHEEL of FORTUNES. That's right folks, this is your future we're talking about. And the future of every spin-inclined Foo-goer on the fateful night of August 14th.

(Here is a picture as it stands now. The arrow, the spinning mechanism, and of course the fortunes are still to come.) The wheel has 9 wedge-shaped spots for YOUR art. (That's 9 at any given time. We will be selling the pieces, so we need tons of them).

The thought is to cull from the ideas, images and language of divination in its many guises. All sorts of mysticism, science and pseudo-science may be used for inspiration. Tarot, palm reading, numerology, I-Ching, dreams, myths, science-fiction, astrology, Rorschach, you name it.

Starting at 7pm, Foo Fest audience can spin the wheel for a low low price. Their fortune is told based on the wedge of art the wheel stops on. They also get the opportunity to buy that particular work of art, if they so choose. Each artist sets the cost of their work ($30 and under, please), and keeps all but $2 of the sale cost. Participants may spin the wheel multiple times to try to land on a work they like, but their fortune will only be told once.

Details for Artists:

The size and shape of the piece is specific. You can pick up a template at AS220 main gallery, AS220 project space, Firehouse 13, RISD Office of Student Life, the Coffee Exchange, and various other spots around town. The wedges will fit on a 11 x 14 sheet of paper, but you can use any flat surface as a base. It is ok to build up (they can have some dimension to them), but please keep them under 1.5 inches thick/tall.

Due by Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
To 54 Trenton Street, Apt #1, Providence, RI 02906.

Be sure to include the following:
1. NAME of the piece, (please name it that will help in the telling of the fortune)
2. PRICE of the piece, (all work must be for sale)
3. Your name, email & phone number.

If you have ANY QUESTIONS, email me: natashamaria0@gmail.com (that's a zero at the end)

---

Here is a little more about the artists, and the project:

Natasha Brooks-Sperduti & Sam Holland
Natasha Brooks-Sperduti uses the motion of her body to make site-specific sculpture and installation. Her actions trace a boundary between our tangible world and another, less visible reality. Continuing her investigation of gesture, the spiral, and the invisible divine, she and collaborator Sam Holland present A Wheel of Fortunes. They invite Foo-goers to enter into their oracular lair, open up to possibility, take their chances and spin the wheel. Each spot on the wheel is an original work of art, created by one of dozens of artists just for you, dear spinners. And like a tarot, it foretells your future. Worry not! They will help you interpret, just remember, they are only the messengers!

Natasha and Sam are Providence residents and RI natives. Sam earns a living [via interactive design]. Natasha produces community events in Providence and New York, and teaches yoga. She has shown her art locally, in New York and London, and holds a Bachelors' Degree in Studio Art from Bard College.

preservation

2010-07-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

I currently work at a historical library. It is frigid there year round because the collections, apparently, decompose slower in the cold. It is an environment dictated not by the needs of the people in it, but rather by the "preferences" of the precious objects we "value" enough to preserve. I am fond of exclaiming "I'd rather be dead than preserved.

To continue the thread of thinking about time and space and human efforts towards confusing them, linking them artificially or otherwise insisting on a linear relationship for the two, I offer these two bits of beautiful found writing, both of which crossed by desk today. The first offers a beautifully abstract definition of history, and knowing. It re-mixes temporality and memory into the fold...

The second also argues with its perceived imposed linearity in the act of preservation and history-making.

In a recent review in Powells, Mark Gustafson tells us about a book called Nox, A Box of Greiving, by Ann Carson. The book is a

so-called "poem" (a Greek-derived word meaning "a thing made"). A unique assemblage of bits of conversation, letters, postmarked stamps, memories, cut-up photographs, drawings, paint, staples, etc., Nox is here replicated as one long accordion foldout in a clamshell box.”

Carson connects what she is doing to the Greek word historia, "asking about things," and to Herodotos, the first historian. She says: "Now by far the strangest things that humans do -- he is firm on this -- is history. This asking. For often it produces no clear or helpful account . . . Historian can be a storydog that roams around . . . collecting bits of muteness like burrs in its hide." She adds: "To put this another way, there is something that facts lack."

(more:) I came to think of translating as a room . . . where one gropes for the light switch. I guess it never ends. A brother never ends. I prowl him. . . . Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.

2. the art-agenda elist published my herforeto favorite press release ever, reprinted here:

Extempore Temporary Contemporary Art Museum Amsterdam opens

Since the Fall, October '08, an uncomfortable gap exists in Amsterdam, missing a, or actually, theContemporary Art Museum. In these one and a half years passed, nothing has been done in its absence. Nothing real has been made. Nothing to address this problem. What lies waiting is only an ever more critical responsibility. Until the Stedelijk returns.

We jump into the abyss between the now and future. Not no longer, not not yet—

now now now now you missed it
there's a new now now now now now.

If not us, who? With nobody left to make the selection, we've selected ourselves. We do it because we can—subjectivity as our only strategy.

You can disagree.

ETCAMA.
Problems for a problem.
Contemporary for the Contemporary.
Art for Art.
Museum for Museums.

History exists. The Contemporary exists. Museums are Contemporary Art history making machines.

Our Museum is a Contemporary Art making machine. The only history it writes is its own.

Museums collect linearity. Show linearly. Important artists, important movements, placed on a great timeline in the name of a complete, objective education. Our Museum does not confuse time and space.

Museums suffocate, cryogenically freeze works, techniques and ideologies, they preserve a type of value. They are non-profit, profit making, with democratic illusions of balance, of objectivity. The structure of Museums, the language they use, their goals and premise are not wrong. We do it different.

A Museum is a failed Art project because a Museum can't fail as an Art project.
We are essentially dealing with an economy of means. We have limits, they are subjective.

This is the only way.

We will not, can not operate, in a typically Museum-like manner. We are concerned with presenting Art, the Contemporary and to give Amsterdam a Contemporary Art Museum project when there is none.

Supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst / space in collaboration with What Is Happening Here

I am compelled to collect things and moments. Lately I have taken to obsessing over 72 hour time lapse photo projects as a way of capturing a moment in time. It is a curious instinct some of us have. To archive, to map, to record and catalogue, to trap or still or freeze something or some moment in time. In the past I have attributed it to fear, to attachment, to desire, to control. I have thought of it as creative, as damning, as violent, and also as kind. I am interested in the various motives and outcomes of this sort of action on living beings, on moments in time, and on objects. How these actions can change the nature or essence of a being, relationship, moment or thing.

This whole post makes me want to re-read the author's note from My Cocaine Museum, by Michael Taussig, and follow his bushwacked rainforest path to Walter Benjamin's writings on Collecting...

For stilling, de or re contextualizing, and framing is the problem of anthropologists, philosophers, curators, historians and artists alike. Those that try and make sense of things, order of things, meaning of things, must study and define the edges of that thing. They must seek it's isolation even when it is inherently connected. Is this true?

If motion, or change, is our only constant, what does it mean to freeze something? What does the action serve or accomplish? If the goal is to honor something, or to study it (I respect study most when honoring is the initial action of the inquiry. Understanding may be impossible without honor first) how can we accomplish that goal as we allow the subject in question to live, breathe and change? If sight were our only sensation, then video might be an answer... But we have bodies, we are, in fact, part object ourselves...

Related posts on this blog:

http://natashamaria.blogspot.com/2008/07/mapping-thoughts-and-radical-re.html

http://natashamaria.blogspot.com/2009/03/riff-on-seas-define-our-graves.html

back dated to 6/6/09

2009-06-06T19:20:00.001-07:00

(I wrote this then, and am just posting it now... It's the beginning of a thought thread, unfinished, but still whirling in the mind...)

So I'm writing just to write. Is that so wrong? Been having the sorts of time-losing conversations where the brain fires a million times a second and the ideas come so fast you can't remember the ride afterwards, but it sure was good. I guess I want to see if I can return to some of the tastier bits, or the ones I'm still chewing on, somewhere in my psychie...

There is a thought path I'm exploring about physical attraction, sexual drive, and human and animal needs that underlay this complex play. (Now is where I question the placement of this entry on this site, herforeto safely avoiding sex even when discussing gestation and fertility and the embrionic state, mainly for the metephor of dormant/invisable below-the-surface activity). Strangely it seems safer to talk about this aspect in terms of death than in terms of sex. It's not polite (or perhaps it simply finds you in bad company) to use the word on the internet. But what the hell.

These days I am lucky enough to consistently have a roof over my head and be free from most forms of physical danger. Many of us can say that the threats our animal bodies are poised to respond to are simply not current or immenent in our daily lives. Perhaps this frees us up to choose mates differently? (I should take a minute to say that in this post my perspective ecchos my reality: that is, it speaks to a 'straight' woman's perspective, narrow at best) So my thinking last week was about the difference between physical safety (as in powerful, as in having a lover who can beat off other agressors -the classic Alpha, or conversly, as in nurturing, having a lover who will nurse your wounds and care for you in weakness or illness) and emotional safety (having a lover who will hear -maybe even understand- your emotions, track your triggors and avoid at most costs further scarring of your psychie).

Maybe there are different kinds of threats, or maybe we are simply privilaged enough for these to be our worst? Statistics say frightening things - that one in four women are sexually molested by the age of 20? Perhaps feeling safe in such an intimate act, feeling safe during sex with your partner is a modern privalege? Is choosing a 'sensitive man' over an alpha not just a modern choice but also the mark of an evolved woman? And further- does it work? Are we programed -either through our animal makeup or our our experiential imprints- to be turned on by danger?

In a culture where masculinity has so long been defined by dominance, one has to wonder where will this dynamic get us?* Basically power, abuse... etc

*Obviously I will have to address, at another time, the issue of 'human' vs. 'animal', which comes up alot here. Worth consulting on these fronts are Daniel Quinn -Ishmael author, and Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild...

Eric Francis' Latest

2009-05-28T15:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm hoping to get around to writing a response to this latest column by Eric Francis sometime soon. His word choice or lead-ins can be awkward at first, but I think he's one of the deeper thinkers and more compelling writers of our time. He is a true seeker, trying to understand the self and the cosmos, with an understanding of relationships (personal, sexual, communal and environmental). He combines psychology, his M/O about personal evolution, his a career in astrology, with a radical sense of responsibility and grounded-ness. You can find him writing on politics, the environment, virtually anything in this world or the next.

Here, I particularly like what he says about claiming our right to our existence, (I know I feel like I'm always trying to earn my keep) and acknowledging the other side of life. Not just death, but non-existence. He talks about the need to be a hero as a sort of narcism and as motivated by our fear of death. Very interesting food for thought. More on this in another post. In the meantime, give it a read:

http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2009/5/Horoscopes/Unraveling-the-Mystery-of-Self-Esteem

2009-04-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

under over across through

2009-04-07T18:05:00.001-07:00

Across:

horizon line splits

Over & Under.

We are OF it,

stuck in the thin Between

stand here. travel there.

with eyes, mind

observe.

'stuck' courtesy of the illusions

Still & Separate

Particles,

defined by discrete boundaries

by separateness, and specific location

are the body of our earth mind

(they pretend at stillness, notice

difference, gravitate toward sameness)

But we came piped on the light highway

over and over forgetting this origin

THROUGH is the collision of time and space

through seeming solidity is wave motion

Notes.... Exciting Art in Providence

2009-03-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

This week marks the closing of two inspiring shows: "Knot", a three-part solo exhibition by artist Annabel Daou at The David Winton Bell Gallery (more from me to come on this show!), and "How to Hold On" constructed works by Jon Laustsen, at 5 Traverse. (5T is holding a closing party this Friday, March 13th, from 7-9 with DJ Timothy O'Keefe).

But not all is lost! Call me biased, but I am particularly psyched for the upcoming show in the Jewelry District, at 150 Chestnut Street. (Full disclosure: I will have work in this show)
One of the more unique things about this show is that it features *tons* of site-specific installations, many of which are interactive.

Learn more here: http://deconstruct2.blogspot.com/

2009-03-03T12:24:00.000-08:00

Riff on "The Seas Define Our Graves"

2009-03-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

(quote: Erik Wohlgemuth)

by Natasha Maria Brooks-Sperduti

Water flows in constant motion. Energy waves course through me in waves of e-motion defining my environment, transforming me, lifting me tossing me, dragging me and placing me back down when they are through. I fear how constant they are. I fear their motion. I have no way to stop them, but I try, seeking stillness for solace. I have this idea that bodies are still and solid and that these qualities add up to “strong”. It is an antiquated idea. Never really true but in few cases, and always with a quieter rule of Flow balancing, governing, that 'truth'. But I know that I am made up more of water, motion, energy, salt and silt than hard or still or unchanging Anything. Maybe my ideas are like sediment. A slow cementing clogging up the experience of Now with notions of stillness.

-- -- --

Outside Marseilles I hiked the Mediterranean cliffs they call Cornishes. I looked out through the wind, my eyes spilling down the steep dry rock to the sea below. There was a narrow inlet where boats huddled against the coast, rocking gently, protected from wild motion of wind and water by the body of the earth. In that moment the boats were people or pups in a litter – huddled for warmth, for comfort and safety. Sea farer or not, humans are land-bound.

-- -- --

I spend a lot of time thinking about our strange in-betweenness. Our commonality, on one hand, with earth, mud, and stone. That we have bodies with boundaries; bone, muscle and skin. That we experience the world, in part, as Objects In Space. And I spend at least as much time thinking about what is also true: How much of our physical being is water. What water's properties are. How real our perceptions and projections and psychology are. That we have energetic realms that exceed our bodies, and they are the palpable power of emotion and consciousness, which travel in wave forms. How our experience, how WE are constantly changing. At times I feel more like light. Like I manifest at least as much as a wave as I do a particle. I exist (as do you) way outside the body as well as deep within it. I am both place and place-less-ness. I stand alone, And we are all one...

-- -- --

The Seas Define Our Graves.

How?

The Seas. They limit our boundaries of earth, where we live and die, the boundaries of our safe space, and do they perhaps also define what is to us unknowable, and therefore occupy the realm of our fear? If not unknowable than simply that with which we have not yet learned to identify: the fluid, and the invisible.

'The Seas' define what we are not or what we fear to admit, what we refuse to acknowledge, what we struggle against. Chaos, disorder, our utter lack of control.

Because they are deadly to us, creatures of the earth.

In that seas of emotions threaten life as we know it, provoking change, they threaten our beloved predictability, or perception of reality. Seas, emotions, wave-forms, and The Changing threaten the foundations on which we have built our ego, our story. Their existence threatens to obliterate such things.

If Sea brings death and Earth life then how do we account for the healing quality of water, or for our own 85% of our shared make up?

The Seas Define Our Graves.

Define is a nice word. To define is to limit, to mold or shape. Water defines the earth through erosion. Earth limits water with its banks and shores, its tightly-packed slow moving mass. But in the span of time, water slowly wins. We are defined by what we are not. And as we live out our years we learn more and more about What We Are Not. This is as much a relief as a heartache. I am freed to be what I am as I shrink into that shape by seeing the full large space of not-ness around me. And yet. This is a particulate notion. [there are others, as I've said, as i feel, as i hope to push the world to acknowledge.] It can be painful. The process of definition. There are always wounds, mistakes, struggles. 'De'. Is that a negative prefix? Fine. A smaller grit. More polished, more specific.

Erosion. I think of wind and water carving out canyons. Exposing layers of time. Earth and bodies becoming living histories of themselves. I think of rushing water grooving deep riverbeds down through our country. Refining and defining and re finding their path. Sometimes hopping the edge to forge new paths. Flooding planes and Having Their Way, reserving the right to re-route. I think of man pushing back with dams and bridges and reservoirs... River rocks get refined *really fine* till their surface is as smooth and reflective as the water which defined it. And I think finally of sand, the continuation of this process of constant motion. A toss-until-lost approach. Banging makes it softer, sort-of.

I think The Seas Define Our Graves is poignant because of the emotional connection between the sea and fear. Motion, that ultimate uncontrollable element, that element that comes with birth into this world of space. That which is unpredictable yet constant, and which rattles me, from inside out and outside in. Motion. CHANGE. We want it. We have it. We fear it. We fight it because we have no choice about it. And because in our desperate attempt to believe in our own power over nature we normalize The Constant. We act, in our minds, with our notions like Normal = Stillness, sameness. This is a creature comfort, a creature desire. We mistake stillness and sameness unchangingness for safety, and so we seek it, trusting only ourselves to initiate action. Feeling dominated and oppressed by other forces of power, other initiators of change. We seek what we know. What has come before. What is unchanging. But change is our only true constant. And being the flow we feel is a possibility, a choice, is not weak, but powerful. This sea of/we fear is not the enemy. In fact, it is our fear of change, our deep desire for consistency which buries us, limits us, causes our death.

Our Graves. In our graves is what we bury. What defines our graves is what buries us. The earth, the notion of stillness, the attachment to solidity, the perception of stillness and solidity, themselves an illusion or at best a temporality. We bury what we wish away - The dormant the subconscious the invisible the deniable the tugging but silent. The horror. The truth. Occasionally, we bury what we struggle to accept, once we have laid it down to rest, let go. We bury then as a way of putting it back. Into the pool. Into circulation. Out of this realm and into the next. With human death, we are given little choice. This is what is done. Graves are the last concrete, latitudinal longitudinal Earth-bound places of loss. They locate our grief on the body of this Earth. But we know that emotion such as this cannot be limited to place or in time. Emotion such as this is like we are, and bigger than we are.

The truth of death calls for a re-defining of the Self as wave form. Of the self as reflective of that oft-denied half of truth: The truth as changing, as existing in and outside of time, as being shapeless, formless, transparent and shifting...

The seas define our graves. They do. In that our fear of fluidity limits our conscious experience of existence. Our motion-related anxiety limits our evolution, limits our ability to see Truth.

Acknowledgment of FLUIDITY - it's power, it's beauty, it's essence, it's all-pervasive presence around and inside of us. Embracing it, learning to be it, championing it's wisdom, harnessing it's power, normalizing it. That is the next way that Truth will set us free.

2008-07-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

Mapping thoughts and Radical re-cognition...

2008-07-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

Dialog 1 (length indefinite)

Natasha's Provokation

Mapping thoughts and Radical re-cognition...

Most maps contain certain elements, in fact, they likely contain indicators
if not direct reference to all the basic elements- the shore line traces the
boundaries of Earth and Water, topography references ancient glaciers,
telling us about where heat (Fire) does and doesn't settle, and hinting at
the travel of Air off the water, over the hills and through the valleys. Maps
endeavor to limit a specific Place-in-Space, to define not only it's physical
boundaries, but also to fix it in a particular Space-in-Time. A map of your
home neighborhood is like a candid snapshot of a dear friend- it stills a
single moment, a single expression of a creature much more complex,
varied, and impossible to reduce.

What I would like to see is a method of Mapping which allows for motion.
One which shares the classic map characteristics of being a record of
local, specific truth, but which also imparts an impression of time,
allowing for a fuller truth, one which encompasses the waves of motion
that are life. The breath of the human body, the rotation and rise and fall
of the earth... One which recognizes Change as the only true constant.
I want to create a map which reflects experience in time rather than a
representation of stillness. It is, in part, this stilling, stifling, killing of a
fluid entity through static representation which leads to the politics of
domination. Something about the military being the driving force behind
map making? I want to see a map which achieves a goal of knowing,
honoring and sharing rather than limiting, reducing to stereotype, and
dominating. I want to find a way of mapping that makes implicit the
relationship of Time to Space, and begins to re-balance our conception
of truth toward the fluid.

What if we were to truly conceive of space as fluid? Here's an
interesting example. If space were as fluid and changing as my thoughts,
how might I map it? My thoughts, of their own accord, wander and
bounce, endlessly in motion, subject to abrupt change of focus and
random unrelated tangents. If we thought of space as containing this
infinite an array of motion, how might that affect our approach to
mapping it? One of the best ways to map thought is through the
free-write. Stream of consciousness writing is a skill which takes some
practice, but then so is drawing (word for map drawing? cartogrophy!).
It is also limited to linguistic thought or else relies on translation from
sensation and image into written language. But stream of consciousness
writing is like taking a thought walk and recording (or mapping) that walk.
Following this path of consciousness allows room for shifts in the
landscape over time, and gives way to associations, dreams, and
memories all of which are embedded in place and time. In this flow exists
the sacred and mundane alike. The specific and the vague, the sensory
and the logical. This inclusion of all worlds, this wholistic rather than
hierarchical view, creates a certain rhythm necessary for a more
complete and accurate impression of 'the truth' of any given space or
time or space in time or time in space. The unity of time in space is
necessary here. It is the goal. The rhythm results from the bumping up
against – the crash and rub – of wave patterns of thought, and is organic
texture – sound! And so Thought becomes another element. Like the
others – Earth, Air, Fire and Water - it is also a player, a traveler on the
other elements...

This is the human experience. We are made of both water and earth,
and have fire and air running through us. Our lives are fleeting but our
creation lives on. Light, necessary for the existence of life on earth acts
both as a wave and a particle, and it follows that any record of truth must
contain equal parts Space and Time.

Command Language

2007-08-18T22:39:00.001-07:00

Making Fun, or Everyday Acts of Art

2007-08-18T21:58:00.001-07:00

Tonight at a party I said something silly and, as often happens, I met the resulting chuckle and retort with the teasing accusation: "You're making fun of me!". "No", said the new friend, "I'm making Fun". I like to think of mixing up a big steaming cauldron of Fun. And I like to think of making art in a similar way.

Last year I learned that curiosity is an act of bravery. Fear can keep you too freaked out to be deeply curious (hence the saying "I don't even want to know"). But being curious is an Opening act- unguarded, detached enough to have room for any answer or observation that might be in front of you- a posture of learning as oppose to a brace against the potentially hurtful 'reality'. Curiosity, at its essence, is a form of Presentness, the practice of experience and oneness (participation) combined with the perspective of a (more distant or accepting) observer. Humor (and 'Making Fun') both requires and facilitates the perspective necessary for fearless curiosity. This too, is necessary for the stance of an artist.

Every so often I get tripped up in the game of producing product I can point to and call art. But what excites me is seeing what is already here: the zig zaggy termite drawings I find on stumps while hiking. Or interacting in some silly curious impulsive way- like putting the puzzle of a 50 pieced shale rock back together on my kitchen table. When I was in the city taking pictures with my friend this July, I saw the kind of art that excites me: in place of the "Do Not Hold Doors" sign inside a subway car was a sticker that read "Do Not Fall In Love", and one morning while walking in the Village I saw three blocks worth of fire hydrants, telephone poles, & trash bins with last nights streetlight shadows traced in chalk on the sidewalk... Now thats art. Observation, Curiosity, Interaction/Intervention.

On the Illusion of Separateness in this Lifetime; A project in un differentiating Life and Death:

2007-06-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

1. Your Children Will Betray You.

2. Babies Are Born In The Graveyard.

3. Love Is Never So Complete As Dying.

Function: (of the language): using apparent contradictions to point to hidden 'clumped' beliefs and to suggest a non dual reality.

(Of the art): Trying to get at that which might be felt but is not seen- bonds between people, between states of being, between people in different states of being... To get more literal: 'pre-decision' states like ambivalence about being alive; or 'transition' states like mourning a loss; bonds like the unwritten 'contract' between parent and child, or like the connection between myself and my unborn children...

The title, 'by any means possible', reflects my modus operandi for making this work. Truncated pieces of wood were bound together, debarked, wrapped, sanded, rubbed, painted, hung and arranged, with my body as the primary tool and with whatever materials were at hand. Trees bodies were used because they were a readily available shortcut to form; they “felt” right because these limbs were masses of energy in both form and line, had a center, and reflected directional shifts. These 'figures' made up the discrete objects in the show, but the space became a fundamental part of the work as well. Having an area to work with which truly felt like a dirty hallway, I decided I wanted to create “moments” where the work could be encountered. My goal with the space was to have it serve the work. As the work is quiet and unfolds overtime, I tried, then, to make the space feel somehow more 'available'. In order to do this, I took the same approach as with the work: I 'revealed' and 'obscured' surfaces as I felt the need. The walls were touched all over, loved, even, with a skim coat of unpainted soft joint compound. The painted concrete floor was scraped and mopped. I tried to respond to the space with the same sensitivity as the work, and to act or intervene with intention.

I had two goals for this work. I was trying to make work that 'felt' right. It mattered to me that the work evoke emotion, though I knew if it worked correctly, what emotion that was would be hard to put into words. All of the pieces in the show speak in some way to gesture, solitude, longing, and hold a certain silence or muteness. My second goal was that the art and art making serve a utility function in my life. I do not necessarily mean this in the literal sense of making vessels to hold my drinking water, but rather that whatever I make must have its own reason for being, its own purpose in my life beyond the 'rule' that i am an artist and must make 'art'.

'Dynamic of Two', the piece I made over the winter, (pictured on my opening invite), for instance, was designed in the hopes that certain invisible things would occur, that is, with the vague hope that the making of the piece would create a space for me to mourn an ended relationship. The process of meditating on uniting and then 'freeing' the two trees provided that for me, and as usual, surprising things happened. The rope took on both an energetic meaning as well as acting as a sort of 'road' for my journey. While wrapping, my mind automatically traveled memories of our coming together. In the act of unwrapping, there was a sense that i was putting something away (that something being the string in a literal sense, and my heartache and regret in another sense). Things I did not expect to occur, but which verify the meaning of the piece for me: that I chose to take it down in a direct reversal of the way I 'put it up', which required a backwards walk around the center of this spiral, being the point between the center of the trees, and that as a result of that choice, my hand slid over every inch of the 3,000 feet of rope, resulting in the feeling of 'taking stock', indeed, the act of pausing where i was at, and looking backward and looking forward, gave me a deep sense of rootedness and connection to both my past and the possibility of my future. My gesture as the rope came off the trees, was one of widening my arms apart and then bringing them together (collecting the rope then coiling it on the other arm). I had the sense of looking like a bird shaking out its plumage. The bodily effect was a workout between the shoulder blades, right where wings would sprout were I to have wings...

I have been in the habit of working with very dry mediums, resulting in scratchy actions and a sort of barren feeling. I felt a shift in me, a need for the work to be more direct and more fluid. In 'Dynamic of Two', what was seen (the bound trees) and the important gesture of the process (fluttering wings) were too separate for me. In 'Frenzy', (what I think of as the clay room or the cave dance, the piece in the show in the most enclosed space), I wanted the product to reflect the gesture more directly than in 'Dynamic of Two'. I wanted the viewer to have a sense of the impulse to write on cave walls and dance around the fire. I wanted the viewer to see the cluttered constant chatter in my head.

With the thesis show, what I was trying to do varied by the piece, but in the sense that it was also one large piece, what I wanted to do was undermine our collective urge to compartmentalize and separate the inextricable: death from life, sex from birth, me from you. Last fall, near the beginning of my project, marked a new development in my understanding. In the process of trying to write an academic paper, and in my struggle to isolate an idea, I drew a drawing of an idea. I then experienced the violence of the operation I was undertaking in my writing process- the imposition of structure resulting in an almost literal amputation isolating a 'central' part (picture a spider body), thus loosing what i celebrate most (picture its legs, but each leading to other body pods). I think of the idea as an endless web of light beams and intersections -the connective energetic tissue-, and I mourn constantly the ever-present but always denied 'place between points' we are forced to edit out. In some way, all of my work in the show speaks to the following tensions: emerge / retreat, freeze / writhe, truncate (rather than connect); reveal & obscure.

Dynamic of Two

2007-06-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

By Any Means Possible

2007-06-12T15:26:00.000-07:00