nous déménagons

les obsolescent forecasts bougent !!! 

please visit the new blog site at : www.jinavalentine.com/blog/ 

though currently under construction, it's going up in early 21st Ce. Mc Mansion Style (tres vite!)

...in praise of folly

Goya, "The Madhouse"

From Foucault's "Madness &; Civilization," follow a few quotes in praise of la folie.  Thereafter, I'll return to this text with more images, and comparison with the previously noted Thévoz texts.

In reference to de Sade, "The madness of desire...the most unreasonable of passions--all are wisdom and reason, since they are a part of the order of nature....There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored."

In the "classical experience" of art and madness, "there existed a region where madness challenged the work of art, reduced it ironically, made its iconographic landscape a pathological world of hallucinations;  that language which was delirium was not a work of art.  And conversely, delirium was robbed of its meager truth of madness if it was called a work of art." 


And on Nietzsche & Artaudian madness..."(it) is the absolute break with the work of art; it forms the constitutive moment of abolition, which dissolves in time the truth of the work of art;  it draws the exterior edge, the line of dissolution, the contour against the void (into which they slipped)...Madness is no longer the space of indecision through which it was possible to glimpse the original truth of the work of art, but the decision beyond which this truth ceases irrevocably, and hangs forever over history."

Though madness is not the only language "common to the work of art and the modern world...but (rather) through madness, a work that seems to drown in the world, to reveal there its non-sense, and to transfigure itself with the features of pathology alone, (it) actually engages within itself the world's time, masters it, and leads it;  by the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without an answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself."


**It's perhaps important to reiterate here this blog's agenda, as well as my own here at the computer.  I'm busy reading everything written on the subject of Art Brut, particularly the works and writings of Jean Dubuffet in his search for art in the mental institutions in Europe.  Before Madness and Civilization, I'd written about Michel Thévoz' writings on Art Brut and art chez les fous (Thévoz was the first director of the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne, and a dear friend of Dubuffet), and is an incredibly insightful critic and art historian.
In the months to come, I'll be updating this site with photos from my visits to archives here in Paris--including the Sainte Anne Hospital, the abcd-artbrut Gallery, and the Biblitheque Nationale Française.... among others.  At the moment, the blog is a synthesis of what-all I'm reading, what I'm making here in the studio, as well as my two cents on art-openings and exhibitions I've attended. And as I mentioned above, I'm aiming to condense these text-fragments into something a bit more directed and pithy...  thanks for reading~~

this place you see has no size at all

an excellently attended opening at the Kadist Foundation on Friday December 4th was introduced in pamphlet form thusly :

Sir/Madam, 

  Everything I am about to tell you began with a sighting of a heron in a tree. There I was in the Jardin Trocadéro at the Parc de Saint-Cloud on a late summer afternoon, burying the bones of Tom Ripley, in what the history books told me was once a labyrinth. When I looked around, I noticed that the place had no size at all. In one instance, the landscape was unusually curvy and in another, intricate alleyways and corridors appeared miraculously as I turned corners.  Though I could see no one, a flurry of recombinant voices echoed from the hedges and the dialogues of fourteen characters began to take on the qualities of those around them, in a seemingly ritualistic order.   

 "This place you see has no size at all..." is an exhibition rooted in the possibility of virtual and parallel worlds as a viable platform for the production and consumption of art. Originally proposed as an out-of the box adaptation to an "alternate reality game", on July 22, 2009, artists were convened from around the globe to partake in a "scenario" at the Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris, of which they had little knowledge of, yet were immediate to its origin of initiation. In collaboration with sci-fi writer Mark von Schlegell, an abstract time-travel guide was scripted, combining clues, facts, and prompts around the peculiarities of the garden together with the singular questions: What could you perceive as the present? What would this present be? What are the elements of the present? Who are the members of the present? What methods and tools could be used to arrive here? The guide spawned a chain of events suggested by and created for each of the artists with the purpose of activating a work and a communication process.  

  Puzzles, motion, fictitious force, heuristics, chambres, a perte de vue, lost item, incoherency, the dead end. In one of the alleyways I found a man resting on a bed-sheet. He was surveying the universe with a planisphere. He told me he got there via an air balloon in order to produce a shroud, that this shroud was an embodiment of all of us. A fiction of the strangest kind that can't be materialized in any known form of art including classical conceptualism. He held an invisibility cloak that somehow protected him from the world of visible matter.  It was sure to give him good fortune.     

A hypothetical collective structure, a private happening, and now exhibition, "This place you see has no size at all..." is purportedly non site-specific; on the contrary it grapples with the objectives of context. At Kadist, newly commissioned works are paired together with existing works, prompting an array of interactions, relationships, and readings in the exhibition setting.      Dear reader, what I am telling you is real. I believe in real things. If we did not have real experiences, how would we have dreams? 


i'm well aware it's not the best form... perhaps even "bad form" to fully quote the curatorial statement, but in some cases the statement is far and away better than the work it's attempting to describe. it's really a piece unto itself, the show is illustration at best. at worst, it's attempting to keep up with the textual prompt (as was the case here).  although, i do recommend visiting the Kadist Foundation website. and the work of Asli Çavusglu is represented in part on his blog.  though i don't recommend attempting to read through the entire faux-thesis presented there, you'll get the gist, and perhaps a laugh (or cringe) from just a brief visit.

at dinner, just before the opening, par hasard, the kind folks at the next table over were also starving, anxiously awaiting the 19:00 H when the kitchen opened.  we got to talking, and it turned out they were visiting from the Pays-bas for an artist-book-fair since canceled due to strikes at the various Parisian Museums; last weekend, the Pompidou suffered employee-strikes.  Johan and his assistant were wonderful folks and invited us to visit their website; i invite you to do the same.

open studio I : bajtala, ferrier, micheli, valentine

 

at the very least, once a week there's an open studio here at the Cité International des Arts.  though lately, perhaps it's because of the weather or because the fall season is just winding down, there've been several every week.  this week I was had the good fortune to exhibit new work with a few friends here.  the image above is a photo of the main-building, pre-reconstruction (read: demolition) taken by Sissa.

beginning at six pm, folks meandered into Aurèle's studio, where i was still writing on the floor. the "performance," the first hour of the open studio, was intended to be a critique of sorts of the gallery-opening model:  we go to openings ostensibly to look at newly completed or newly acquired art.  though more often than not, we spend the majority of our time there milling around, watching the other folks who've also come to look at the art, drinking free wine, and eating cheeses.  this said, in the first hour, the attendees stepped over and around me as they attempted to mingle with each other atop the artwork on the floor.  some squatted and attempted to read what was penned (in erasable window marker) on the floor, semi-conscious of the fact that their moving atop it also aided its erasure.  mulled wine was served by the gallon, as well as a variety of beers and snacks, some of which ended up mixing with the ink--quite nicely, i should add.

from seven pm till ten, or just about then, Sissa, Aurèle, and Miriam screened movies to what i'm proud (of them) to say was a packed house.  for thereabouts of ninety minutes, the studio was completely full of folks sitting on stools, the floor, pillows, the text, and leaning against whatever surface, craning to catch every second of video projected.  all the while, still others milled around down the hall, enjoying more snacks, and another open studio of video works and short animations by KID.

i highly recommend checking out the following links for a sample of what was screened:

Miriam Bajtala

Aurèle Ferrier

Sissa Micheli

KID (update coming soon, with apologies!!)

after the screening, everyone was invited to stay on for a final, thorough, obliteration of the text (ie: a dance party).  following are images of the text piece, before and after.

(the texted space is approximately 25' x 15' irreg.)

les marie antoinettes

  

all photographs by Sissa Michelli
(note : this is not "performance art," rather 5 Marie Antoinette Wigs on 5 persons)

lydia lunch et des choses dangereux...

Lydia Lunch played last night at a place by Clingancourt called Mains d'Oeuvres.
ah...what's to be said of Lydia Lunch beyond what the lady herself has said?
so for your reading and viewing pleasure, here's a few pictures, and a few fantastic quotes:

"you (the audience) are my alibi tonight ."

(in response to the guy in the audience who asked why she was drinking so much whiskey on stage) "it's cognac motherf*cker)


"i hate a f*cking musician who can't hold his drugs. if any of you out there can't hold your drugs, please deposit them here on the f*cking stage--i'll hold them for you."


note i scrawled down during the show:
"from whiskey infused Southern Baptist prosthelytizer to torch singer circa 1920 to Lynard Skynnard sans penis mais con cojones...still waiting for the gospel."


yeah she's still got it. but what's the decision you make to adhere to the person/a you embodied 20+ years ago?  do you make this decision then, or as time goes by, there's no not sticking to it? 

synthesizing notes: honor to savage values

from Dubuffet's text Honneur aux Valeurs Sauvages:

in reference to the artistic creation, in general, Dubuffet states:
"il faut qu'il soit une projection immédiate de ces humeurs de l'artiste..." 
if we assume that there is little advance consideration of developing a well-rounded and cohesive oeuvre--by the ArtBrutists--during the actual creation of the works, the artist then is free to change.  and we must assume that the artists' temperment must necessarily change from day to day...so if there is no professional motivation underlying, one is truly free to be one's expressive-self-in-constant-flux.

"l'art consiste essentiellement dans cette exteriorisation des movements d'humeur les plus intimes, les plues profondément intérieurs de l'artiste."
Dubuffet continues this thought stating that this exteriorization of the deepest essential self will be recongnized by those seeing the art and the we will recognize that psychically we are the same (as the mad, or the psychically free, rather); we possess the same essence, compulsions, and inner-workings.

"we look for an artist who explodes away the surface layers, revealing all those glimmering beneath."

and sometimes we as artists do not realize we've been knocked-up by someone else' ideas, aesthetics.  the bastard art we call our own, not realizing it's been tainted by some outside forces to which we'd not seen we were susceptible.

an artist--argues Dubuffet, in regards to those interned in mental hospitals--needs solitude, perhaps a bit of boredom, to find in himself the drive and the will to create.  in the absence of other excitations, he will fabricate his own "théâtre de fêtes et d'echantements."

"tous les méchanismes qui fonctionnent chez le fou existent aussi chez le sain, et ils sont l'un et l'autre bien plus semblables qu'ils ne le croient--ou du moins que ne le croit celui-ce qui prétend être sain"
my translation follows:
all the mechanisms that function in the crazy also exist in the sane, and the are both more similar than they believe--or at least less so than those who pretend to be sane are willing to believe.


on the artist Aloïse, whom will undoubtedly be revisited in detail, in future entries...

the figures with blued-out eyes in Aloïse' drawings are often mis-construed to be representative of masked persons.  rather, they are blind to the reality into which their portraits gaze, for the simple fact that they don't exist in it.  in addition to bluing out the eyes, the figures are further removed from reality by Aloïse' negation of a continuous narrative consistent between the thousands of images.  though, some narrative may be perceived from one page to the next, the absence of any continuous logic frees her oeuvre from such banal requirements.  and further, it insists on a certain timelessness, impermanence, and irrationality as its rules, rather than its exceptions.

Dubuffet, unconvinced of Aloïse' acting mad--though her sever autism is documented in other writings-- says that one mustn't lose sight of the fact that one who's given themselves over entirely to madness has, at least in some small part, done so voluntarily.

Foucault, who we'll revisit in a few days, says in Madness and Civilization "madness is the déja-là of death... what death unmasks was never more than a mask...from the vain mask to the corpse, the same smile persists.  but when the madman laughs, he already laughs with the laugh of death."