"And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic orders?
Even if one of them held me to his heart,
I'd vanish in his overwhelming presence.
Because beauty's nothing but the start of terror we can hardly bear,
And we adore it because of the serene scorn it could kill us with.
Every angel's terrifying."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
There is something really important brewing in my work! The only harsh criticism I’ve ever gotten was from a red faced man curing jet lag with cocaine and vodka breakfasts. He mentioned Bataille in disparagement of trash romance novels and all things ...
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There is something really important brewing in my work! The only harsh criticism I’ve ever gotten was from a red faced man curing jet lag with cocaine and vodka breakfasts. He mentioned Bataille in disparagement of trash romance novels and all things unbearably hideous with which to lump me. ‘Ba-tay.’ ‘Ba-taaay.’ The sounds rolled right past recognition fluttered faithfully in my memory bank until I was unpacking a box of books several months later.
“Bataille!” That old bastard. Erotism: Death and Sensuality— of course! The volume brandishing that shiny picture of Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa; at least my connection to the cover art is pure and acute. (Suffering from food poisoning in Rome it was my dying effort to see Bernini’s transformation of Daphne into a tree, whilst quivering in hopes not to shit myself.) Oh, but the words within— how insulting! For me, anyway. Every time I try to sit through him I must ask, ‘when was this written??’ Any text that aims to discuss sensuality and inscribes woman strictly out of it is an apt counter-text for me to frame myself against.
Enter Helene Cixous. Enter the Dog Women of Paula Rego. Jenny Saville if you like as a giant hermaphrodite. Any of these, just give me a strong woman who takes the ‘sensuality’ and reframes it as something with guts. Put some life and blood behind it that goes straight to the end of the earth and doesn’t reflex upon itself or stop to ask permission. The end of the earth in a moment of pure authority may well be the backs of our own retinae for there is no plainer fact than the un-contracting pupil of an animal’s eye.
An animal’s eye. Is that what all these strong women are after?
The self-sufficient masturbatory monster of Duchamp was still a ‘bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even.’ And Bernini bless his soul still needed the mythos for a few centuries more to mitigate a woman’s own power. A man makes a woman out of all the things around her. And here we are as women, Cixous writes The Laugh of the Medusa, Rego paints women as dogs. Along with Saville’s hermaphrodite these amalgams trample traditional boundaries with blank and dilated certitude.
I join them. I draw sheep for now that are thankfully moot on gender and I want for you to watch their qualities closely. These things that we can accept in an animal as simple and self-evident are being borrowed to elaborate a new identity, one that lives the ecstasy of St. Theresa without being a springboard for something else’s force. One that may mire itself in struggle and complexity but never in uncertainty.
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Emanuele wants to know how I go on as an artist.
There are moments when the thing you want to make flows out better and faster than you could ever have hoped. Look up Elizabeth Gilbert on TED, author of Eat, Pray, Love. She gives a great lecture on the etymology of the concept genius, and how historically it always referred to a spirit that touched a person only for blessed moments. No one bore the burden of self-inspiration and the genius spirit might only come around once in a lifetime. I’ve joked with other artists about how a taste of that kind of moment is enough to keep you hanging around for at least 15 years or more hoping it will happen again.
So on one hand I’m nothing better than an addict grasping forward for a carrot. On the other there’s a whole sense of compassion behind me pushing like the ghost of the human race. Or maybe just the achievement ghosts I see in my own family. I think every member of my family hopes profoundly for me to continue. Or where their hopes meander off I interject for them, knowing their intense intelligences have not found a stage. Sadness for circumstance or doubts about the meaning of life are debilitating little horrors cured only by the singularity of vision that hurdles forward toward a single point, a small speck of redemption far off in space that when touched by one person invigorates experience for the human race. Connection to histories, philosophies, identities and aesthetics are realized afterward, but at my very root is this striving for abstract social triumph.
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Seamus Liam O’Brien - 2010-01-02
My name is Seamus Liam O’Brien and I am a visual artist (drawing, painting) living in Brooklyn, NY. My wife and I moved to the city in 2006. Like most people, we decided to move to NY because of the opportunities that exist within the city, especially for young artists.
I am currently the studio manager for the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Creating Mr. Murakami’s paintings is how I make a living in the city, but when I return home from my employer I work on my own artwork in a studio located in my apartment. I hope to support myself with my own artwork some day and exhibit in galleries but I am unclear as to when this will happen.
My ‘work’ (not to be confused with my own artwork) has been seen by millions of people and has been published in books and magazines, but no one knows this but me. Artistically speaking, I am anonymous. It is a strange situation for sure but this anonymity stretches throughout my career.
But let me start from the beginning…
‘WELCOME TO THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH’
I was born with sawdust in my veins; you see, my parents were circus performers and I was born into the family circus act. Along with my older brother, we traveled as a family throughout the United States performing on various circuses and shows. The ‘act’ consisted of juggling, tumbling, unicycles, and the slack wire. Unbeknownst to me at that time, the circus would become a place of artistic inspiration for me. The colorful environment combines both spectacle and promotion. It takes a bow towards the light and cute world of animals, colorful balloons and bright confetti, but on the other hand, behind this glitzy facade are the trained artists and skilled performers that make the circus relevant. Acrobatic and elephantine, wholesome but freakish, this was my home.
‘FOLLOW YOUR DISNEY DREAMS TO A PLACE WHERE STORYBOOK FANTASY COMES TO LIFE FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES.’
My theatrical experiences flourished years later when I auditioned to work at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom as a costumed ‘Character.’ For years I portrayed a variety of Disney cartoon personalities: ‘Characters’ such as Pluto, Eeyore, Tigger, and Goofy, among others. I generally worked in all areas of the theme park attending guests, and performing in parades, stage shows, and television commercials. It was a strange experience to be some one else while at work, or in this case, a furry representation of a popular 2-D animated Disney character. But in many ways I found the Disney work environment to be quite similar to my circus upbringing.
‘WE PROVIDE A UNIQUE AND CREATIVE CANVAS FOR OUR CLIENTS TO CREATE THE MASTERPIECE OF THEIR DREAMS.’
For years I worked as a Scenic Artist for various production companies throughout the United States. These production companies would deal with the design, construction, and installation of themed environments for theme parks, exhibitions, businesses, and trade shows. My job specifically was to paint these constructed environments (including decorative painting, faux finishing, sign painting) to enhance the set design and in effect, make the settings look more ‘real.’ To be honest, I had always lived and worked in themed settings in the past without really thinking about how they got there or where they came from. In essence, themed environments were reality in my mind. Now that I was part of their creation, it became blatantly clear to me as to how much this industry had infiltrated our society.
Which leads me to where I live today…
‘IN NEW YORK, CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OF’
My past experiences have led me to my present employer. Was it fate? Was it a coincidence? A romantic union of ‘high culture’ and ‘low culture.’ Low culture meaning ‘pop culture,’ or ‘of the common people.’ But in a strange way I have managed to ‘perform’ in a theatrical version of both. Where making ‘art’ is in fact a ‘day job,’ where I literally ‘clock in and clock out’ at the end of each ‘workday.’ The ‘meaning’ is the ‘faux finish?’ Well, this is all dependent on ones point of view.
Of course, these experiences have all undoubtedly filtered into my own artwork. A collection of memories and events… So where does this leave me?
A strange situation indeed
Rob Andrews - 2010-01-02
This is a prayer.
A prayer into a bag. Into water.
This is a prayer to remind time of something.
This is a prayer for my son and the smell of his head. I pray for you boy! I call your name with a mouth full of fire and sorrow.
This is a prayer for my students. To warm the copper wire kept in the freezer. May this melt it. May it break the hand that winds it round and strikes you. May it give your anger words and your words wire. This is a prayer for your words.
This is a prayer for the dead.
This gas-bag. It will be full.
I am the cold wind!
This is a prayer for wild fishermen who live outside of time. For whom there are no middle ages.
Names are dreams.
Memories are names.
Memories are dreams.
This is a prayer for praying dreams. A sea prayer.
This is a prayer for that old minotaur and his broken heart. For the dinner table he dreams of. This a prayer for him.
This is a prayer for sense. For holes.
This is a prayer to never be scared again.
This is a prayer for work.
Give me something to do for a long time!
Rodney Dickson - 2009-12-22
During the last 3 months of 2000 4 of us lived in Hanoi, Vietnam. I was working on a series of paintings there and together we were all working on a documentary about what Vietnamese people thought about USA in relation to the war.
One day, our good friend Tran Luong took us on a day trip to the countryside outside Hanoi. We stopped off at a small village on the road. It was desperately poor and the people lived in shacks they had likely built themselves. They really had almost no income and just grew a little bit of food outside their small one room dwellings. My friend Luong told me, these were among the poorest people in Vietnam and they also had a hard time during the war, as they were on a US bombing route to Hanoi and on the return journey, if they had bombs left on board the plane, they would drop them at this point, because it was considered dangerous to land again while carrying bombs. So these people, would be bombed in this way, even though they had no military significance. I guess not many people went to see these people in this very remote place. So I guess we may have been the only foreigners they would have met and they would have automatically associated us with the US bombings of their houses. However, they never mentioned anything about that to us, on the contrary, they were delighted to see us. They had almost no food, but the head guy of the village went around the houses and borrowed food from his neighbors and provided us with a basic meal that day for our lunch. We talked for a while and then moved on, but for us all, this was a memorable experience, to be treated so well by these people.
Well, I am not really wanting to get all romantic here about Vietnamese people or to put too much meaning into this story, I just think it is a nice story.
Sarah Walko - 2009-12-17
There is a title to this story however, I cannot say before I know who the listener is. If this book fails to take a straight course, it is because it lives in a strange region. There is no map. No table of contents. It walks and works by your light.
This story is about bridges built with dull stones. They were worn down until smooth, they were chewed until they mimicked the tongues of the chewers and now they store hymns and hums. Those who built the bridges, formed words on the surface of the waves with the strokes of their arms. They spelled what was the beginning of water? They live where evaporation is the standard of gravity, where everything is ascension. They ask us to sing, sing along.
If the water cycle has three components, the sea, the clouds and the surface springs, then what was the beginning of water? Which of the three began first? Which of the three first fueled the others? I look to their long arms as they pass me, stroke after stroke, even and lean, form and fall into letters, the letters into words, bloodless courses. O taste. O sea.
Each of their houses are built of three parts of an alleyway: the stones, the draft and the steam. They are held together by the semicircular canals of their inner ears. The one weakness in their structures are peep holes in the canals, poked by the petrified cilia that remained all over the ground after each war. They magnetized to their walls, thousands of needle tips to their skin, cleaning and clearing the earth. They pierced and then disintegrated. They live within the ear and eyelets and those uncountable breathing holes, a choir of aqueous whistles which hold up their homes.
Each of their houses were built before roads, before the streets were planked. Eustachian tubes transported lakes to their landscape. They frayed as they approached, becoming brooks and ravines and they all ran after each other and remade themselves into the sundresses they wear and unwear each night. The fields between are only one and one quarter of a step apart. I wrote down their steps as they pattered back and forth between them, carrying each other sugar water and band aids and soon, the symphony will play the steps through their backyards. It will play the grass mounds and scrapped knees and the sound of their smallest sweetest bones. Tintinnabulation. Tapering tops of trees grow grenadine roses. The patterns were built in for them already, for their bedding, for their clothes.
Each of their houses arose out of the habits of hands and feet and muted starling songs composed of four distinct phrases which I cannot say until I know who the listener is. The shrill spill comes out in their laughter. It repeats three times before they move on. Listen close and you will hear: an anecdote, resuscitation, reason in a storm. Listen close and you will hear: a hellacious catch of fish, ringing through the sky little lamb. Their chests rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, incrementally birthing their rooms to life. They breathed enough space to squeeze in. They forgot to build doors. They walk from room to room and tap their fingers, checking temperatures, monitoring the cracks in the windows, the mirrors and the minerals. The beds are made of wood and remain waterlogged and sprout moss for their heads and heaps of hair during those few moments when they sleep, undreaming.
Each of their houses were built when all the carpenters were sleeping. The ferrymen were all sleeping. They crept like clouds passing through branches when you are standing underneath a tree. Always touching and untouched. They crept, the makers of things yet to be made. Ear say, murmuring synonyms. They, clay makers.
They relied on what behaved consistently. They walked to work each morning through their lungs, bathing in pleural fluid, the trachea untangling their hair. Their cries were unmappable. They undid shores. This water is too deep to near cliffs, it knows it would flatten everything and there would be no more land. They stay far from shore. For you.
Boulders float in their stomachs, the morsels they swallowed. The fields between their houses can only be examined through a microscope, and each is the size of the smallest fingernail of any almost child inside each womb. Each field is fenced by caves, which they use thick sticks of chalk to draw on. They use the full swing of their arms to make behemothic drawings of a two-story structure. One level is a panopticon and the other, a labyrinth. The architecture in this region is never what it appears to be.
Striving prisons and palaces, katabetic winds and voices of the sphinx and inside it all there they are, tiny ships, small fleets, there they are. They wander and laugh for fuel in between all of the between and the confused houses which forgot to be homes. Synchronized swimmers, the ships, the water and the oars. And the fish below with unblinking eyes. Each flake of their dry skin is their brickwork. They waste nothing, constructing pyramids not of stone or glass, but of hair.
Lech Szporer - 2009-12-17
Dear Emanuel,
this is my "Personal":
I don’t know how much the muse I am. I’m more amused myself. It’s kind of shocking, living, it’s a surprise to be here, that’s all. My senses are turned on too high sometimes, you know. The perspective aims its aim and you take it as you will.
No, unfortunately I’m no rich kid, I’m applying for food stamps. I come from a working class and I wonder sometimes if we still are. It’s exhausting wading through this water. Since the economic crash it has been hard to find steady work all year. And then to further my troubles, I lost my home. When you have no work and no space you are kind of homeless. Of course I plan to laugh about all of this, years from now. I’m looking to go back to school and study posthumanism and law so as to further my scope at social sculpture and cultural development.
My Projects:
My interest is geared toward public interventions and demonstrations. In doing art I tend to strain away from art. The question for me is what to do after art? What to do in retaliation? What follows and why? It is a post-art perspective I guess.
The last two years, I ran The Sanctuary of Hope together with my colleagues, Matthew Blair and Andrew Wingert. More than a performance church, the church itself was a found object and the project took on in multiple directions of re-territorialization and becomings, according to the anthropological studies of George Bataille and the philosophical breakthroughs of Deleuze.
Due to legal issues we had to close it down. Ironically, the New York Foundation for the Arts took notice and without much delay and no longer constrained by the fixed location of the church we have became The Deterritorialized Church . I believe you’ll dig these two projects.
