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."

les huîtres

sunday night we ate a lot of oysters... specifically "Les Papillons #4" et quelques autres, aussie #4--les plus petites, but more delicious. also, we made a ton of couscous with fresh vegetables, mint, and enough garlic to fend off the entire vampire population of France.  additionally, there was some strange green I found at the market--not Kale, not Collard Greens, and certainly not bok choi--but some relative of all three perhaps.  with even more garlic, onions, lemon, and a pinch of salt, i'll immodestly confess that it was by far the best pot of winter greens i've yet made. mmm. and en plus, untold bottles of red and white wine, with the evening rounded off with clementines and whiskey. 

perhaps it's imperative that i define the number of we present at the occasion, as well as elaborate a bit on why i've chose to write about it just now.  we were six, hailing from the states, switzerland, austria, and italy.  it's important to note the nationalities to give you some idea of how complex dinner conversation could become--what, with my little knowledge of German, better knowledge of French, and ability only to curse a storm in Italian.  now also imagine that between us, we've all got these linguistic limitations, but a profound love of eating and wine drinking, apparently.  oh, also we ate two enormous baguettes and fresh tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and artist picked and pressed olive oil (compliments of Aurèle). i'm also mentioning this because i'm imagining you might've wondered to where i've disappeared--i've been meeting the other folks here and eating. oh, ok and drinking a bit of wine too.
here's a few photos of the after-dinner merry-making, which included video-sehen, wein trinken, und ein bißchen tanzen...

 

 

 

 

au tour des galeries : conceptual ethnography

thursday night:  Galerie Karsten Greve hosted an exceptional exhibition of "Photographs" by the long-time, British collaborators Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Photographs explores four conceptualizations (dubbed "conceptional ethnography") of media representation the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

the Red House, is a particularly fascinating series of photographs (100 x 76 cm each) taken inside a torture location (a "jail") nicknamed the Red House.  in 1991, after the site had been abandoned, by Saddam Hussein and his cronies, the graffiti made by the previously deferred Kurd prisoners was discovered.  the photographs themselves are simple, unpretentious documentations of the scrawlings carved into the stone and plaster walls.  admittedly, i'm quite fond of them for their inherent naïve qualities, and for their aesthetic semblance to those lovely chalkboard scribblings of Cy Twombly (also represented by Galerie Greve).  but, beyond that, beyond the aesthetic interest, they're loaded with so so much that escapes traditional photojournalism essays.  what sort of boredom inspires such belabored work? and particularly from those men who'd ostensibly never previously explored their artistic visions?  and what'd they endure between drawings? and to where did they disappear? all these questions remain unanswered, and we're left with the imaginings of obviously imperiled and desperate men, incarcerated in what must've been the very worst of the worst torture cells in Iraq...previous to those in more recent times perhaps.

the three other experimental photographic works featured left less of an impression on me. however i did have a brief conversation with Broomberg about the conceptional content of the exhibition--specifically the different lenses through which we watch war.  and more precisely what's the difference between journalistic photographers (with their responsibility to accurately portray reality) and artists who use photography to present their own admittedly opinion-ed interpretation of events and peoples.  i asked Broomberg if he imagined that he, in the Red House Series employed the same, or a similar, lens through which the Iraq war is presented to the Western World... and more specifically if he thought that he'd a wholly objective view of what he saw.  he unabashedly replied that "well of course I have an opinion. so do you. I'm not a reporter..." and he went on to suggest that this is why it's important that artists are looking and representing war images--that we admit our bias, and yours as well.  he also explained his fascination for the way in which the Western media lens is always that of watcher or colonizer, or at worst ethnographer.  this he accepts is also his role, but he explained that the difference he sees is that the media will likely never admit that this is theirs, fundamentally.

more images of the exhibition are online here, as is further information about the artists.

au tour des galeries

Galerie Eric Mircher : Nazanin Pouyandeh
this gallery is perhaps thrice the size of my studio, and was full full full of people and paintings.  as Peggy Olsen, of Mad Men quotes (season 3 episode 4 i think) "it's so crowded in here i feel like i'm on the subway." and they spilled out onto the street, mingling with the respective crowds of the nearby galleries.  now what i'm trying to understand is, what's all the hubub about? i'd rather be kind, and say, "i just don't get it," rather than flat out denying there existed any merit to the work in this show. but, i'll let you decide for yourself. here is the exhibition card image:

my neighbors in the building offered an excellent reprieve from a rather unsatisfying evening out at the galleries (Saturday).  short animations and films...one entitled "White Out," was discomfitingly similar to Paul Pfeiffer's earlier videos wherein he'd remove the basketball players (or boxers...etc) from the arena, leaving the viewer with swishes, blinking lights, and the sensation itself, minus the spectacle's main characters.  another, beautifully done, though i missed the title, involves a slow rotation through domestic spaces...as though the camera, panning 360 degrees moved so slowly there was time enough to change the scenery entirely before it'd come full circle.  we begin our voyage in the attic of an old house, panning eventually past bedrooms, bathrooms, living room spaces and workshops, a doorway with someone desperately ringing to get in, and finally conclude in the garage, just as the door shuts.  and it's also so eerily ersatz, the pieced together photomontaged landscape, in its hyper-real color, and just-a-wee-bit off movement. kudos you guys.  if you'd like to find them online, my neighbors organized a screening of works by themselves &; friends including: claudia larchner, liddy scheffknecht &; armin b wagner, and markus hanakam & roswitha schuller. later i went out with some friends, residents here, sissa and auréle.

last night le Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac hosted a vernissage for Elger Esser, whose work i'd forgotten was so breathtakingly poetic. the exhibition entitled Saone & Rhone features photos of those two landscapes printed large enough as to allow each of us the opportunity to dive right in. and standing before one of them i realized i'd never seen so clearly the division of air, land, and water.  i'd never been offered such an opportunity virtually.  the uppermost and bottommost edges of each print fade to almost-white before the frame's edge, and in each a modest strip of land is suspended like a tight-rope pulled taught through the middle.  and it's revealed: the division of water, solid, gas. and it's so simple, and we wonder why we'd never seen it this way before.  and not to ramble on at great length, but the colors, so muted, seem to have been breathed onto the paper's surface.  they're somewhere between entirely desaturated, sepia tinted, and that artificially yet nostalgia-inducing hand coloration effect from the early 20th ce.

also on exhibit are francesco clemente and terence koh, both of which were terribly disappointing.

DEADLINE

at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris - ARC
(à coté de la Palais de Tokyo)

your last words. your last meal. your last experience listening to music. your last kiss. your last sarcone's hoagie. imagine all these. i mean, imagine knowing full well that it may be your very last, this one right here, in front of you, this person right here in your arms, and this last morsel of hoagie, it's the last one for you.

i highly recommend watching the video above, the curator's statement about the deadline exhibition. in brief, the exhibition centers around the idea of "last works," primarily of artists with terminal illnesses, who fully aware of their imminent ends, infused their last oeuvres with a force that we healthy people cannot imagine. years ago, i wrote a paper on Deleuze, Peter Greenaway, and the impossibility of imagining auto-defenestration. while it's possible that we can imagine all those experiences falling from some too-high elevation, it's frankly impossible to imagine our own bodies hurtling through a space at such a great speed that the impact would kill us. and so, it's with this sort of awe, terror, and curiosity that we approach the works in Deadline.

the show features works by: Martin Kippenberger, Hans Hartung, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gilles Aillaud, Hannah Villiger, Absalon, James Lee Byars, Joan Mitchell, Chen Zhen, Willem de Kooning, and Jörg Immendorff.

Absalom's three videos, entitled "Bruits," "Bataille," and "Solutions," are short films of actions, respectively: yelling in bursts until the throat is too raw to continue (i cried watching this), fighting off imaginary enemies whilst wearing a suit, and the artist at a table eating, drinking, smoking, being calm.

The Death of James Lee Byars (excellently reviewed here)

Robert Mapplethorpe's last series possesses a sort of gloomy luminescence not uncommon to his earlier work. but in this setting, in this context it's a much seriouser thing.  take for example "Bust & Skull," image below.  perhaps it ought to've been titled "Pan, Death, Self Portrait."

Jörg Immendorff's enormous untitled works from the last years of his life reflect the evolution of the disease from which he'd suffered, "lateral amyotrophic sclerosis."  more than any other artist included in this exhibition, Immendorff's works seemed to be the artist's great triumph...the crowning achievement of his entire oeuvre.  i'm aware this is arguable, and it's a loaded thing to say, but i'm just saying. and what's further, the last years of his life were pretty scandalous... i'd forgotten..

also on view at the Musée...  Albert Oehlen. Albert, i love you. not because you work with trash and found objects, or because your painting is trashy and bad-it's really bad painting-or because your collaging together of various found imagery is so awkward and almost unconvincing, but you see color in a way i never have. you see all those places where too many hues come together as awkwardly as your imagery...where the oils go all muddy, blur, and find their ways again. and your artist statement is pretty ok too :

the title of the exhibition comes from Abstract

Reality, an album by a very good metal band Nasty

Savage.  I personally didn't take it seriously.  Maybe

they wanted it to be, but I think as a title it's a bit 

wacko.  It sounds as if they were trying to be 

abtruse and hard to understand.  I like it when

people take it as a swear word, or meaning a

sickness or a mess.  That's very close to my

definition of what my work is.

his interview with the preeminent Glenn O'Brien lives here .

Oehlen is represented by Luhring Augustine, whose website is here.

and with that i leave you Nasty Savage ...serious smoke machine footage here...

pre-text to yesterday's post (re:PALANC)

it should have been noted, in yesterday's post, that all quotes and references therein were taken from Dubuffet's Prospectus et tous écrits suivants Vol. I .  and it should also be noted that Thévoz also discusses PALANC in his writing Art Brut.

so i'd like to premise yesterday's post with two brief explanations. firstly, i'd like to elucidate why i'm personally drawn to les écritures des gens fous.  secondly, i ought to explain further the connection made between Foucault & PALANC, and their ideas about words and things.

to begin with the second agenda first, because, why not? here's a bit of writing i've done on the subject of words & things and Deleuze & Foucault, which should help a bit :

In Gilles Deleuze’ essay Strata or Historical Formations, he argues that speaking is not seeing (and seeing is not speaking). This is a reference to Michel Foucault’s concept that although statements and visibilities are primary and irreducible utterances, there is not necessarily any system of causality between the two, nor is there any transferable symbolism.  Deleuze explains that the object of a statement is specific to that particular statement alone.  It can neither be transferred to another statement nor can it be transferred to the visible object to which it ostensibly refers. The lack of direct causality between articulable elements and visibilities evinces their truly independent existences. They effect each other indirectly, modulating the threshold of tension that binds their relationship.    

He then argues that the visible qualities of an object are exclusively related to its sensual experience; the articulable elements exclusively relate to the supportive text or dialogue. And that which is addressed in the form of text/statement creates its own correlative object within the text (the object of the statement is particular to that statement).  The visible qualities of an object evoke a visceral response (particular to an experience of an object). Because they are so very self-specific, or collapsed, they are each subject to their own revelatory limitations.

and in relation to my own work:

Rene Magritte suggests, “thought is what sees and can be described visibly.” In this, thought, an action, assumes a form.  Deleuze employs Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas un pipe as an example of an artwork that exacerbates the limits of articulable and visible things.  Ceci est incroyable in its com-possible relation of words and things.  In Consumption I, I attempt to “exacerbate that thin little line separating text from figure.”   

The piece consists of eight 4 x 6 foot dry-erase boards, almost entirely blacked-out with hand-drawn text in dry-erase ink.  The textual content ranges from Mixtape + Maussian gift-exchange, to the Limits of Rebellion in the Arts, to Spitwad Theory, and each text is approximately eight pages when typed.  The content, though deadly serious, analytical, and accented with dorky wit, is intimidatingly densely penned and difficult to read (a six foot long sentence is hard to follow).  Up close, it’s possible to read in the speed-reading method: scanning an amorphous area of text for content, rather than following entire sentences.  

From afar, the text forms grey waves on the white surface—Agnes Martin or Bridget Riley drawings come to mind.  And true to formalist sculpture, the object itself is intimidating.  Hung higher, and encompassing greater surface area than the human body, the text-on-board is elevated beyond its word-on-page/computer screen status.  Beyond decorating the surface of the object with text, as I’d intended, the text adds value-in-content to the object, and the object magnifies the potential power of the written word.  And as if this dialogue between viewer and text-covered object weren’t already confrontational, the ink of course is impermanent.  The reader is tempted (taunted) by this realization. 

 Dubuffet's chapter on PALANC concludes with a transcription of Palanque's text on Autogéométrie, which if i understand it correctly, is basically a set of instructions on how to draw with one's entire body, mind, and spirit simultaneously.  apparently, Palanque used a large black table to draw with both arms simultaneously on one sheet of paper.  he stresses understanding the difference between "la geste règle" and "le gest compas." and the attitudes of gestures : "curved," or "straight."  and the process of drawing (writing really) becomes a sort of metaphysical gymnastical exercise.  
he says (my translation):

All these reunited disciplines are a psychophysical treatment.
All the gestures, following their attitudes, their drives, their regularity, their precision, influence the physical and mental well-being. 

also, there are 17 published "poèmes géométriques," by Palanque.  when i've found and read them, i promise you'll be the first to know!