Filed under: culture | Tags: love art lab, Synchronous Objects, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, shame, sexuality, violence, elizabeth stephens, annie sprinkle, eco-sexuality, sexecology, femina potens, international day to end violence against sex workers, sex work, sex workers, kimberly kline, madison young, carol queen, center for sex and culture, st. james infirmary, sex positive
Yesterday evening I was honored to have the opportunity to participate in a vigil for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers at Femina Potens Art Gallery in San Francisco. In addition to being present for the vigil itself, I was honored to be included in a press conference preceding the event on behalf of my blog. I came to San Francisco to experience and write about Love Art Laboratory’s current exhibit “Sexecology: Making Love With The Earth, Sky + Sea” (currently on display at Femina Potens). Although this vigil was not an official event of the Love Art Lab, I timed my trip in order to be present for this important cause. I am pleased to be able to contribute to the “press” surrounding the event.
I have considered and reconsidered how I might want to document this event, while still pertaining to what I consider to be the mission or creative platform of this blog. What makes the most sense to me is to relay what I found striking, what will stay with me, what I found to be of importance. This relates mostly to ideas, perspectives, and theories surrounding culture, violence, and sex work(ers). Statements or ideas may not always be credited to specific speakers; that was not the way in which I was engaging with the event. I won’t be detailing the rich history of this event or its spread and international implications. Instead, I will offer ideas, quotes, and paraphrases that emanated from the community in attendance, while recognizing that any community is constructed from a complexity of intersubjectivity, a collection of individuals, and that any one of these ideas that have stayed with me originated in a specific individual even as it became expressive within and of the community.
I will briefly offer context. The gallery is a beautiful space, currently filled to the brim with work by Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie M. Sprinkle (Love Art Lab) addressing sexecology (or ecosexuality). Chairs were set up facing the back corner of the gallery where there had been erected a simple altar for victims of violence against sex workers. Signs with provocative statistics surrounding violence in this industry/community, red prayer candles in memorial to specific victims, red umbrellas that would fulfill a further function later in the evening, and a collection of flowers comprised the altar. In attendance (introduced at the press conference) were Annie Sprinkle and co-hostess of the evening Kimberly Kline, Madison Young, executive director of Femina Potens, and Carol Queen, noted sexologist, co-founder of the Center for Sex and Culture.
The press conference gave us the opportunity to hear and discuss issues surrounding sex work, violence against sex workers, the implications of violence throughout out cultural infrastructure, the complexities of the community which is identified as “sex workers,” and the relationship between the the movement for sex workers rights and the LGBT rights movement.
The vigil itself took the form of an informal ritual. Carol Queen opened the ritual with a stunning invocation honoring the Goddess, Her sexual power, creative potential, and presence. This invocation was followed by the reading of names of sex workers who have been murdered in 2009 by Kimberly Kline and Madison Young. This was a list of women, men, transgendered, and unidentified bodies, of all ages, from around the globe. After reading and honoring those who have been lost, the ritual shifted to an open mic for anyone who wanted to share or express. Some told stories, some offered poems, others shared their personal histories in sex work. Annie Sprinkle closed the ritual with guided breathing experience, breathing in the love and connectivity and support of this community and taking that into ourselves to bring back into the world. The next phase of the vigil was a “solidarity stroll” from Femina Potens to St. James Infirmary, which provides “compassionate and non-judgemental healthcare and social services for all sex workers while preventing occupational illnesses and injuries through a comprehensive continuum of services.” Those of us participating carried the signs, candles and umbrellas that previously adorned the altar in the gallery. It had a sacred feel as we became the bearers of these implements, a mobile “altar” of human beings. This was the conclusion to the vigil.
Emerging from this structure and community were so many profoundly relevant ideas and perspectives surrounding sex work and the culture in which it operates. To begin, there is the breadth of what sex work includes, and the complexity of that such diversity entails. “Sex work,” as discussed throughout the evening, signifies professions including street prostitution, indoor prostitution, work in the porn industry, strippers, exotic dancing, erotic massage, etc. It includes professions in which sex is, at least in part, that for which one is being paid. This diversity presents its own difficulties. During the press conference, Madison Young and Carol Queen discussed the tensions and divisions that exist between these professional subsets of “sex work,” making a unified politically activist community even more difficult. Rather than recognizing the essential similarities that may unite these professionals, emphasis is lost on distinctions. As Queen put it, the strippers can always say, “Well, at least I don’t fuck them.” I describe these infrastructural tensions and divisions because conceptually I think they are expressive of one of the fundamental issues surrounding violence, both against sex workers and within our culture at large.
Similar to the expansive nature of the designation “sex work,” another function of the evening was exposing the expansive and pervasive nature of what constitutes “violence.” This was a profound realization for me, considering that which serves as the foundation for violence as implicit in the violence itself. Addressed were the perhaps obvious forms of violence: murder, rape, assault, abuse, battery, physical and emotional trauma. But also addressed were what might be seen as the more subtle aspects of violence: porn companies that prohibit the use of condoms, the lack of sexual education for those entering the sex work industry, the lack of compassionate medical and psychological care for sex workers, without judgement or assumption, the defamation of character suffered by those in sex work, the laws in this country the prohibit sex work, making reporting violence effectively impossible. One speaker specifically addressed the “violence of shame, the violence of having to hide.” This was striking to me. Shame has been a recurring subject in my creative work for some time. For my purposes, shame is an interpersonal experience in which one’s experience of oneself is compromised or contaminated by one’s perception of the Other’s perception. A culture of shame is familiar territory within the LGBT community (one of many similarities between these two sometimes overlapping communities), but what was a substantial shift for me was the recognition that the society or culture that propagates shame might be considered a culture of violence. The foundation of shame is judgement, or at the very least the perception of judgment. Put simply, that it is not okay to be who you are, either in whole or in part. A culture of shame emerges when the social assumption is that in difference and diversity there are correct and incorrect ways of being. A culture of shame emerges when diversity and difference are not celebrated, when their distinctions are used to separate and divide rather than unite. This makes me think of a presentation that Norah Zuniga Shaw gave concerning “Synchronous Object for One Flat Thing, reproduced” in which she emphasized counterpoint as a system of recognizing diversity and difference as the superficial organizational structure, supported by a deeper unity of purpose and intention. She presented this not only as a potential way for looking at dance, but also for considering society, culture, and community. My thought is that a society which looks for sameness, in which diversity is potentially unacceptable, which proliferates shame surrounding difference, is a society in which violence is implicit.
I question that occurs to me is “To what degree do we celebrate difference? How ‘different’ is still acceptable?” I think the answer is perhaps simple: to the degree that the difference itself does not produce violence.
One of the commonalities or deeper unifying organizational structures within the “sex worker” community that was discussed was the “sex-positive” movement. It is perhaps here, from perspectives of sex and sexuality, that this culture of shame and violence emerges. “Sex-positive” is a loosely defined term, but what it hopes to promote is the perspective that sexual expression is good and healthy, an essential aspect of our humanity and being. It is in response to cultures that cloak sexuality in secrecy, shame, restriction, and suppression. I dare say that while there has certainly been progress, American society and culture continues to be less than “sex positive.” Sex is addressed in the public and political arenas as a moral issue, a religious issue even. Once sex is considered in these terms, diversity and difference are less likely to be celebrated. These are the arenas in which homosexuals are considered deviants, whores are considered criminals, in which sex carries a narrow definition and in which expressions of sex and sexuality that extend beyond this narrow definition are deemed inappropriate. They become targets of condemnation, shame, and thus violence. I believe that this is the predominant, mainstream culture within our country, a site of struggle for any individual or community that exists outside of the mainstream, or predominantly accepted, definition of sex and sexuality.
This was not the culture represented at last nights vigil.
Sex work was discussed as an expression of giftings, “undervalued gifts of robust sexuality,” overwhelming compassion and generosity, a deep capacity for creativity, healing, and love. Sex workers were described as heroes, super-heroes, priestesses of the Goddess, who make their living opening themselves, completely, becoming vulnerable and sharing love and energy through what they do. These giftings, this openness, this generosity and sharing is part of what makes this community susceptible to violence.
With this honoring of sexual difference, sex as positive, and diverse sexual expression came an emphasis (or re-emphasis) of the source and site of violence, not in these professions themselves, but in the conditions of these professions that are produced by our culture of shame and violence. For instance, because prostitution is illegal, prostitutes become susceptible targets to violence; the violence cannot be reported without the targets themselves becoming implicated in the crime. Medical care is compromised due to cultural mindsets that there is shame or indecency in these professions. Stigma is attached to the persons of these professionals, potentially compromising their social standing and personal relationships. Because the difference and diversity that this community represents is not celebrated, the conditions this community faces become compromised and compromising. The violence emerges not from these individuals, not from what they are doing, but from the society and perspectives in which they are operating. And, no, it isn’t as simple as changing the laws, although this would/will be a profound shift in our culture. Amsterdam and New Zealand both have regulation for legalized prostitution, and violence still persists in these countries. The shift must be deeper, a shift of perception, and a value for our diversity.
One speaker made a statement that I found to be a striking summation of this plight: “Human rights are human rights; they don’t stop at sex work.” This could be said about so many communities and individuals that face violence based on actual or perceived difference. Human rights do not stop at our differences. They are pervasive. The right to own, honor and express one’s own person, one’s own body. The right to happiness. The right to love and have that love recognized. The right to explore and express the uniqueness of individual identity without fear or shame. Too often difference and diversity are denounced as destructive; this is fear, and eventually hate. Those who are perceived as different or deviating from the regulatory norms of culture are dehumanized, deemed less than human, by effectively denying them these fundamental human rights based on their differences. What I suppose I am proposing or supporting is a shift of consciousness as the “end to violence,” recognizing diversity and difference, and celebrating them as not only essential to the fabric of culture, but as a fundamental human right.
The vigil last night was both solemn and celebratory. Solemn in memory of those who have suffered the effects of violence in our culture, and angry at a society that, if not condones, does nothing to prevent such violence. Celebratory of difference and diversity, because it is in this celebration, in this shift to recognizing a deeper pervasive unity in the uniqueness of human and sexual expression, that the potential to end violence resides.
Several people have asked that I share the paper I just finished here on my blog. It is entitled “Body of Knowledge/Knowledge of Body: An Analysis of the Presence of Embodiment in Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced.” Below is a link to a PDF of the paper. Please respect that this paper is my property. After further revision, I am considering it for publication or presentation, so while I am more than happy to share these ideas with you, please honor that they are my work.
Filed under: art | Tags: allison c. buenger, folds and cracks, wild goose creative
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing “Folds and Cracks,” a collection of art works by Allison C. Buenger constituting her BFA Senior Thesis Exhibition at Wild Goose Creative. It was a lovely show of work in thoughtful materials, loaded with conceptual content. There were themes the occurred for me throughout the work: the encroachment of the public into the private, and the private into public, the site and situation of domesticity, the making of a life, illusion and disillusionment, fixity and fragility, and absence and abandonment. To be transparent, my reading of the work likely says more about me than the artist, but then that could be said of the perception of everything.
Throughout the work were recurring images and representations of a house, in various materials. Also recurring were images and forms taken from birds-eye-view plans of neighborhoods. These images were mostly incorporated on the surfaces of interior spaces and objects of domesticity: curtains in a window, the cushions in chairs, the surface of a table, a panel or material on an ironing board, the iron itself, the cord of the iron, etc. Overall, the juxtaposition of the exterior view of the house and the neighborhood plans across these interior spaces left me with a sense of the implication of the public involvement in the private sphere. There were questions raised about the foundation of the interior/private/domestic sphere, whether it was somehow in imitation of a domestic ideal (which was my association with the images of the exterior of the house) or in fulfillment of a social design/construction (the neighborhood plans), whether the two were essential to one another, or whether they served to sabotage the integrity of the other.
Perhaps it was the handmade quality of the work along with the materials being used (what struck me most were ceramics, wood, and textiles) along with that for which they were being utilized (in the reproduction of various domestic scenes: a table with four chairs beneath a window; a chair before a wall of televisions; an ironing board; a ceramic “model” of a house itself), but the show carried a sense of “the making of a life” for me. But this process of life-making seemed fraught between illusion and disillusionment.
Illusion was an important part of Buenger’s work. Especially in the setting of the table, chairs and window, a piece entitled “Reciprocal Setting,” in which curtains and seat cushions that seemed loose, pliable, even comfortable, were in fact formed and fired in clay. The tabletop that seemed at first to be made of ceramic tiles was in fact a textile quilt. The widow was a frame with “blue sky” painted in it, behind ceramic curtains. There was no window there, only the illusion of the window. Following the recognition of the repurposing of materials came the pang of disillusionment: the seat cushions would not give way comfortably; in fact, several were cracked. The curtains could not be pulled back, but it would not matter; the signification of a view was not a view at all. The table that seemed sturdy and supportive was fabric, pinned at the edges. I was left with a sense of “Things are not as they seemed they would be.” With this sense of disillusionment came the recognition of absence and abandonment. These were empty chairs. The fabric on the ironing board was still wrinkled. The chair before the wall of small televisions was empty. No one was living here in this fabricated domesticity, and if they were, they had abandoned the space for a time.
Absence and abandonment were most acute in the pieces “Reiteration” and “Namesake.” The latter consisted of a series of small ceramic reproductions of television sets, each on its own shelf, hung in a formation, I was told, imitated the Braille for “Allison.” One the “screen” of each television were images of two women from a popular 1980s television show (the name of the show escapes me). A few feet back from this wall of ceramic televisions was “Reiteration.” It consisted of a chair on which was laid an afghan and another small reproduction of a television, this one with a fabric “screen.” On the screen had been partially embroidered a reproduction of one of the images used in “Namesake.” It was incomplete. Spending time standing behind this chair, I became painfully aware of the absence of its occupant, the unfinished work of the embroidery, the act of imitation (embroidering that which was so fixedly produced on the ceramic “televisions”), the tension between fixity and fragility (the televisions were ceramic, their images not only unchanging but fixed in the materials; yet these are fragile materials. The assertiveness of the fixity seemed to be in question), and the lingering question of whether or not this embroidery was work that would be completed, or whether it had been abandoned. It raised the question of whether it implied an abandoned ideal, the abandonment of a life being made, or the abandonment of imitation or social prescription in favor of a more vital living?
Reinforcing the sense of absence or abandonment was the social situation of the opening. To be fair, art openings have a tendency towards social gatherings as opposed to providing an ideal space in which to engage with the art, yet the amount of attention not being paid to the art itself was poignant in the context of the work. Already the chairs were empty, the ironing and embroidery left unfinished; the amount of social activity near by but not including the art reiterated the tension between it as a life that was once lived, once made (or being made) and lives being lived, mere feet away, in and between those populating the gallery. It was in this awareness that I began to question whether the work felt like the representation of an ideal life, or a fabricated life, one “worth” being abandoned. Was the kind of domesticity and imitation being depicted ideals to which to aspire, or were they iterations of social regulatory norms, the insistence of what a life is “supposed” to be?
One piece in particular seemed fairly removed from the others, conceptually, spatially, and materially. It was entitled “Split Level,” and consisted of a large ceramic model house surrounding by tiny reproductions of that house. These tiny reproductions also populated the interior spaces of the large house. It seemed to lend itself to readings concerning social class, imitation, use, and control. Did the “big house” refer to social hegemony, the small houses being that or those which the dominant social forces regulate? Or might it be more abstract, the large house being an ideal that proliferates smaller iterations of that ideal, iterations that then entrench themselves in the ideal itself (the small houses in the interior of the large house). Maybe part of the ideal of the “big house” is that there are “small houses” with which to compare.
There were several moments, after spending significant time with the work, in which I began to recognize further implications of imperfection: on the fabric on the ironing board (the piece entitled “Folds and Cracks”), a neighborhood plan had been printed on the material. In one corner there was a faint overlay of one plan with another. It made me question which plan was first, how they came to be overlaid, what the contradiction in the plan might imply. On the quilted tabletop in “Reciprocal Setting,” one panel of the quilt did not quite fit in the grid. It was out of line. Whether these “imperfections” were the product of serendipity or whether they were meant to be tiny clues as to the further imperfection of the settings that had been created did not matter in my experience of them. For me they were not flaws in the work; they were implications of flaws in that which the work represented.
Overall I found Buenger’s work completely engaging. Besides the intense amount of meaning that the work held for me, Buegner demonstrated exceptional skill across multiple mediums. I will be interested to see where her work evolves from here.
Filed under: Dance, art, creative process, inspiration | Tags: Synchronous Objects, William Forsythe, mark johnson, embodiment, ballets russes, improvisational technologies, prada, elizabeth stephens, annie sprinkle, lady gaga, judith butler, sexecology, femina potens, fame monster, moca, francesco vezzoli, frank gehry, damien hirst, bolshoi ballet, vaganova, diaghilev, jill johnson, george lakoff, amelia jones, heidegger, henry sayre, action painting, chihuly, tit print, yves klein, accessibility
I haven’t updated as recently as I would have liked. There is so much going on here at the end of the quarter, but I feel that there are several points that I want to quickly share. I confess, there is very little overt connective tissue between these various ideas, but the common denominator is that they are occupying my attention right now, and as I hope is clear through the overall journey of this blog, that which occupies my attention inevitably finds its way into influencing “the work” (i.e. my creative practice, the dances I make, the papers I write etc.)
So there’s Lady Gaga. There’s her new album Fame Monster that is blowing up my world.
And there’s its connection to ballet. On November 14th, Lady Gaga premiered her new song “Speechless” at MOCA’s 30th Anniversary Gala in Francesco Vezzoli’s “Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again).” She played a piano customized by Damien Hirst, wore a hat designed by Frank Gehry, was accompanied by dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, who were attired in costumes designed by Miuccia Prada. That alone should be enough said. But you can read more about it here. And see a clip of it below. And an image.
So for my last week of teaching ballet this quarter (to beginner non-majors), I set all of my barre combinations to Lady Gaga, predominantly the new album, as an homage to this contemporary intersection of high Russian ballet and contemporary pop culture, it in itself an homage to the Ballets Russes and the work of Serge Diaghilev. After having taught Vaganova Technique all quarter, it felt appropriate.
I had an amazing opportunity to take a class with Jill Johnson, former dancer with William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet (among a list of other credentials). I relished the opportunity to revisit a way of moving that became familiar last winter working with Nik Haffner and Forsythe’s “Improvisational Technologies.” Today Jill emphasized the relationship between these ideas and classical ballet technique, epaulement as rotations in the body, and working rigorously in abstracting these various rotations and counter-rotations. It was not the same way of moving that I explore last year, but there was significant overlap, and moments of realizing how that experience last year changed the way that I move “naturally.” You can see me exploring some of those ideas in a piece I performed in October here.
I am also working on authoring a new paper, the working of title of which is “Body of Knowledge/Knowledge of the Body: An Analysis of the Presence of Embodiment in Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced.” I am working to construct a working theoretical definition of what is meant by “embodiment” from synthesizing writings by Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Judith Butler, Amelia Jones, Heidegger, and Henry Sayre, among others, and then looking for the presence of embodiment in Synchronous Objects. I have found that there is a fairly widespread uncomfortability amongst dancers engaging with this dance-based research project. I think it has something to do with a sense that the knowledge that we know as our moving bodies has been extracted, transformed into date, and re-presented in forms/objects other than the moving body. My interest in the implication of embodiment throughout the project, in the site of origin (the dance), the collection and translation of the choreographic systems into data, the transformation of the data into alternative re-presentations, and ultimately (and perhaps most viscerally) in the viewer of the project himself or herself. While the paper is still in the works, I feel that there are implications of embodiment throughout the project; this is most acute in the viewing of the project. The project is an object to be viewed, to be understood by a viewer. It is a request for the re-embodiment of the knowledge being re-presented. I am attempting to describe that not only does the site itself necessitate the (embodied) presence of the viewer, but that the way in which the objects themselves are understood are through conceptualizations of time, space, density, movement, etc. that emerge from an embodied experience of the world in which we live. This is supported primarily by Johnson and Lakoff’s writings in Philosophy in the Flesh and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. I’ll keep you posted on the paper. In the mean time, I hope you go and explore the site.
In the reading I’ve done in preparation for writing this paper, a gem of a resource was a book I came across by Henry M. Sayre entitled The Object of Performance: the American Avant-Garde since 1970. Sayre writes about the shift of importance in the visual art world from the art object to the performative act, and in doing so the shift of “presence” from the artist/object to the viewer of the object. He writes beautifully about the photograph emerging as a respected medium, a signifier of both presence (the viewer of the photograph, and even the photograph as an object itself) and absence (that which the photograph depicts). He also wrote about the action painting (re: Pollock, Krasner, others) as a significant shift, in which the paintings that were bought by museums and collectors were not the action painting itself. It was a thing concerned with the immediacy of the action; the painting acted as a trace, a document of the action, and yet an object itself. Like the photograph. Like Synchronous Objects. It has sparked some fascinating notions as I have engaged with visual art after this reading. Last weekend I saw a series of works by Dale Chihuly, mostly large glass sculptures. It was fascinating and exciting to engage this work as “movement traces,” the documentation of the actions of the glass artists (which, in Chihuly’s work, art already mostly interpretations of Chihuly’s “action painting” designs for the pieces), and even farther as potential “movement scores.” Visual art as movement score. Reading visual art as movement scores as a method for engagement. There is something there.
Speaking of art object as documentation of action, I just ordered a “Tit Print” by Annie Sprinkle. She posted on her facebook today that she just made another batch of them, and had them on sale today. They consist of large ink or paint prints using her breasts as her instrument. I think they’re lovely, a kind of Yves Klein way of revealing the body. And the fact that I am going to San Francisco later this month to interview Annie and Beth and see their upcoming show “Sexecology: Making Love with Earth, Sky and Sea” at Femina Potens Gallery.
One of Annie's Tit Prints
Finally, a little rant: I am exhausted about hearing about making art or dance “accessible.” I take issue with this word. Because it rarely refers to making art experiences available to the population. It most often implies that the art be constructed in such a way that the viewer can “get something out of it.” It is not about making the art itself accessible as it is about making a specific experience (or kind of experience) of the work accessible. I think it has emerged from the collective anxiety of audience and artist worrying that they have somehow misunderstood the art experience. And my issue is this: “accessible” implies that there is something to be “accessed,” something encoded that must be (able to be) decoded. It assumes that art is essentially communicable, that its purpose or intention is that the viewer understand or “access” the experience that the artist has of her or his own work. And I think that is simply not the purpose of art. My theory is also that we live in such a visually complex, communication driven culture that we spend our lives trying to “figure out” what we’re supposed to understand from images, advertising, commercials, etc. etc. etc., that we come to the art experience with that same pressure. It is my opinion that the art experience is perhaps the opportunity for reprieve from this way of engaging and understanding. The purpose is not to access the encoded meaning, but instead to engage with that with which you are presented and make it meaningful for yourself. Construct meaning rather than access meaning, using your experience of the dance or sculpture or literature or music, etc., as the materials by which you construct your meaning. In this sense, I am opposed to making art “accessible.” I am in favor of making art available. But I would like to do away with this language/concept that there is anything to “access” in art. It is there. You experience it. You make that experience meaningful for yourself using the materials before your as the materials of your meaning.
There. That’s my little rant for today.
Back to reading/writing about Synchronous Objects.
Filed under: art | Tags: aisle gallery, eric ruschman, if anything happens you are my constant, matt morris, op art, pairs well with
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Cincinnati to see several art exhibits, most notably new work by my twin brother Matt Morris and friend Eric Ruschman. It’s been a few weeks and I still hardly feel that I am capable of putting words to my experiences of these shows and the work included in them, but I felt to pull to make an attempt before the freshness of my experiences of the work becomes even farther removed into the conclusion of this quarter of grad school.
I saw Eric’s show, “If Anything Happens You Are My Constant,” first and I was struck by several things. First, and this seems to be a recurring theme in my art experiences as of late, I was aware of how much my personal knowledge of Eric affects my perception of the work, and with that personal context, coming to this work with a context of having seen years of his work, both in exhibitions and in his studio. I truthfully cannot imagine how someone who does not have this context might experience the work. Thankfully, I saw the show with a friend who does not have that exposure or familiarity, offering me an insight into that kind of experience.
So with a disclaimer towards the stance of non-objectivity, I will try to relay my experiences of the work:
It struck me as very personal. Some of the work is representational, and even when not directly representational, the work has a sense of referentiality that seems reenforced by Eric’s sometimes esoteric titles. Yet in contrast to the personal-ity of this work, it felt somehow more open than previous work. My experience of Eric’s work has often been one of innocence paired with disillusionment, cute paired with both hope and cynicism. The content has previously felt more experientially driven, anchored in personal association, connotation, narrative, and anecdote. This work retained some of these elements: Eric’s work, both the representational and the non-representational, has a cuteness to it. There is a eruptive joy in his careful color palette. Something boisterous emerges from the contrast he creates between purples and teals, pink and black, red and blue, etc. The assertiveness of the vibrant palette seems sympathetic to the persistence of hope and the adamancy of disillusionment, the poignancy of that contrast reinforce and nuanced by the specificity of the palette. And while the careful specificity of the palette was retained (evolved?) in this work, assertive as ever, there was less association. I felt less directed towards specific experiences like memory, hope, or disillusionment. And yet certain details seemed to still address these ideas; I think I brought more of that to the work from previous work than was present in these particular pieces. In summary, I suppose, despite the specificity of certain elements in the work and the sense of the personal that they seemed to carry, the work felt more open to a wider range of association and appreciation, even just the experience of the color itself.
One piece affected me profoundly. The title had something to do with a banquet I believe. I found out later in conversation that it was intended as a kind of response or re-imagination of a surrealist painting. And there was certainly a surreal quality to it. It was (basically) a rectangular support, mostly a light blue with a fluorescent pink circle at its center; around the edges white foam cloud stickers drifted on and off of the support and the wall on which it hung. There was something about this pink and blue . . . it made me see spots. It seemed to flash when looked at directly. When I looked away, the pink circle remained imposed on my field of vision, as if scorched on my retina. Easily my optic nerves had been affected. And there was something refreshingly aggressive in this effect. I think I can be extremely sensitive to work that literally makes an impact or alteration within my physical body. This painting literally affected the way that I saw, it asserted itself to be retained for a time within my field of vision. If there was a “bite” to this show, it was (for me) in this piece. As I have said, Eric’s use of color has always had an insistence, a bold assertiveness to it (for me); here the color literally left it’s mark on me. There was a sense it which it felt a little like “op art,” but with more gravity to it. I think this had to do, again, with my familiarity with the artist. It was more than just a painting having an effect on my body; it served as a point of mediation for an inter-subjective collision (I think this might be said of all art; this was perhaps more palpable because of its lingering physical effect), between Eric and the viewer (me).
Another point of note included the situation of figures that I would have previously expected to be rendered two-dimensionally in paintings finding their way into three-dimensional sculptural form. Whereas I think Eric previously created windows (paintings) into situations, other worlds, of cute creatures, memory, and anecdote, now he has a points situated these figures into the actual space of the viewer, implicating the viewer into the world/situation he has constructed.
You can view a video of Eric offering a guided walk-through of the show here.
One image I found from the show on the facebook event page:
As a segue, I also wanted to share Matt’s writing about Eric’s show:
“Eric Ruschman’s new body of work entitled If Anything Happens You Are My Constant is constructed from a regimen of exercises in painting, installation and combinations of the two. Delicate renderings in oil paint of animal characters continue to make occasional appearances in a vocabulary of color, shapes and found objects that have broadened considerably since Ruschman’s previous exhibitions. Substitutions have been made, so that stickers, stenciling or the charm of the high-gloss monochrome are interspersed with his painted narratives; the saccharine visual experience that Ruschman masters now has some resistance built in. Rather than resemble the simply summarized life lessons represented in anthropomorphic Fables, a single take around the room involves paintings (some hung alone, in groups, or occasionally leaned at the bottom of the wall), objects and cluttered shelves—a game of chutes and ladders through the artist’s recollections and daydreams.
Ruschman has been occupied with the maturation process throughout his young career. What may seem like a logical set of steps from childhood to adulthood to some is called into question, deconstructed and reassembled into abstractions of life plans by Ruschman and his team of black kittens, unicorns, voles and other critters. Throughout the past year, he has been a collector of visceral experiences and unassuming bits of wisdom from his everyday life. Paintings make offhand or straightforward references to a day trip to an alpaca farm, evenings immersed in Cincinnati’s local music scene, tender moments with house pets and careful appropriations from pop culture, such as the empowered “Toonces the Driving Cat” of Saturday Night Live and Youtube fame. Ruschman has gravitated to these scenes because of a specific humanizing element and has drawn connections between disparate source materials in order to populate a situation in which playful, innocent characters find themselves caught in dilemmas of aesthetics, displacement and the challenges of adulthood.
Eric Ruschman earned his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2007. He has an established exhibition record in the Cincinnati area, having shown at the Art Academy’s Pearlman and Chidlaw Galleries, ArtWorks Gallery, semantics gallery, Synthetica Gallery and the Cincinnati Visual Fringe Festival. This is his second solo exhibition. His work recently graced the cover of the first volume of the online zine Sparklezilla. Ruschman is also a curator and collective member of semantics gallery and U•turn Art Space, two alternative gallery spaces in the Brighton district of Cincinnati.
-Matt Morris
colleague, artist, freelance curator + art critic”
From Matt’s description of Eric’s work, I will segue into my experience of Matt’s exhibition. In comparison to Eric’s work (comparison comes naturally; I experienced the shows within hours of one another), Matt’s work was far more elusive, less assertive. To be frank, my language surrounding the work is similar. How to find words for experiences that seem to shift, transform, vanish, and reappear as your experience them? I’ll see what I can work out.
Also, as if it isn’t obvious, I cannot be objective about Matt’s work either. Far too much context. This is my disclaimer for subjective familiarity.
Matt’s show, “Pairs Well With” (continuing at Aisle Gallery, 424 Findlay Street 3rd Floor, Cincinnati, OH 45214, through December 20), is a “multimedia installation conceived and installed in direct response to the nature and idiosyncrasies” of the exhibition space. Its list of materials is expansive. Most notable for me were tissues, small found objects, light and translucent/transparent materials, clear paint directly on wall surfaces, etc. The entire show seems to suggest evanescence, the fading, the vanishing, the spectre, the elusive, anchored in concrete matter, small, precise objects, the materiality of the space itself. There is a sense in which I felt the work functioning as a sheer veil, a hardly substantial reality, that pulled back to bring heightened attention to the space itself. I cannot experience this work without situating it in my experience of Matt’s work up until this point. As he has shifted farther and farther into the realm of installation work, I have felt increasingly that an intention or function of his work is the elevation of the mundane into something sacred, the expansion of the art or aesthetic lens to include the banal, the overlooked, the forgotten, the unnoticed, beginning in the space itself, the materials included within the work, then extending this elevated attention into the psyche of the viewer. This experience was pervasive throughout this work.
There was a performativity to this work, a responsiveness to the viewer’s presence, motion, perception, and attention. As one walks down the long hallway where tissues are suspended lightly from their top edge across from object “responses,” the tissues flutter and float, disturbed or worried by the presence and motion of the spectator, almost clamoring for attention, but in a subtle almost beguiling fashion. There is a mysterious enchantment that takes place when something so fragile and like enlivens itself at your presence, then calms, relaxes again for your examination and attention. This performativity was in other work as well, where motion of thew materials were not presence, but the materials transformed in the perception of the viewer as he approached. Perhaps the most striking and memorable of these was a cardboard box that was part of a full room installation. At first glance this object registered simply as a box lying on the floor. But as one approached, it illuminated, shimmering radiantly with a fine sprinkling of glitter over its surface. This moment of transformation, in which the object reveals itself as something more than it seemed at first apprehension, was an essential quality throughout the exhibit, and completely definitive of the process of elevating the mundane to a place of the sacred or aesthetic. This occurred again and again throughout the work, in transparent paintings on walls that only revealed themselves in certain angles of the light, in a pedestal that seemed solid from afar but then revealed itself as styrofoam filled with styrofoam packing materials, something far lighter and (dare I say?) less reified than a gallery pedestal. Other works were fairly concrete materials, but almost hidden, overlooked, at the base of walls, in the shadows, etc. Once they were noticed, my attention was heightened even farther, looking for all that I may have overlooked. This way of looking extended, as I left the gallery and went “back into the world,” bringing more relevance to my environment around me, and extending, perhaps, even into myself. The work provokes a kind of buzzing calm, an awareness to detail, a sensitivity to subtlety and nuance, that infected my self awareness as well.
I wish I had titles to post here. Their wit and cleverness were a sensational part of the nuance and subtlety of the show.
Which may bring me to my last point. This exhibit was a championship of subtlety and nuance, both of which are essential elements in my own aesthetic. There is something so sophisticated about work that doesn’t reveal all, that holds back, obscures certain elements, demands time and attention and even affection in order to uncover or reveal itself more fully. The work behaves as a refined madam, sparkling and shining in only specific light from certain angles of approach, fluttering lightly, gently to attract attention at which point she sits back to be admired. The lightness and ephemerality of the materials demand a kind of intimacy if they are to be understood, a care and (dare I say?) commitment of time in order to tell their secrets. If seen through a rough or hasty glance, the work may provoke the statement, “There’s nothing here.” But it’s in investing in that which is there that the materials work their enchantment, revealing themselves as an entire universe of subtle details and transmogrifying of the act of perception. It is a spell that lingers.
A short talk through of the work can be seen here.
A few images lifted from the facebook event page for the opening reception:
I think those are all the words I have for my experience of this work for now.
Eric’s show is up through 5pm today at the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center in Covington, Kentucky (1028 Scott St.).
Matt’s show is still up as mentioned above. The full information for the show is as follows:
“Matt Morris
PAIRS WELL WITH
Objects + Installations
Pairs Well With is a solo multimedia exhibition by artist and writer Matt Morris that has been conceived and installed in direct response to the nature and idiosyncrasies of Aisle’s newly expanded gallery space.
Aisle Gallery
424 Findlay Street 3rd Floor
Cincinnati, OH 45214
M-F 1-4 p or by appointment 513.241.3403
November 7 – December 20, 2009
November 7: opening reception, 7-10 p
November 21: artist talk, 1-3 p”
Filed under: Dance | Tags: abigail yager, dave covey, john cage, john giffin, labanotation, littoral zone, manimal house, manimals and other human creatures, maree remalia, meghan durham, melanie bales, merce cunningham, ming-lung yang, osu, patterns of prayer, susan hadley, susan van pelt petry, Synchronous Objects, victoria uris
Last night I had the privilege of seeing “Manimals and Other Human Creatures,” the Resident and Visiting Artist Concert put on by the Department of Dance at OSU. I rarely write full reviews/responses to dance concerts, but I left with so many ideas scribbled on my program that I felt the need to put them down somewhere.
Susan Van Pelt Petry presented a new work entitled “Patterns of Prayer.” Because I work as the assistant to the costume director in the department, I had already seen this piece several times, but new ideas and aspects presented themselves in its theatrical staging. When the lights first came up, the audience was met with a line of dance kneeling at the front edge of the stage, each one working strands of cord intricately between her hands. I immediately felt as if I was at a wall of contemplative human activity, the simple concentration of the dancer’s actions demonstrating a reverence and relevance for their tasks. There is something loosely impermeable about dancers in a straight line from one side of the stage to the other, as if they have formed a barrier of some sort. But the intricacy and focus of their gestures drew me into their contemplation, creating an interesting tension, like an invitation into something remarkably exclusive, all via spatial formation and gestural material.
Spatial configurations played a significant role in this piece, moving through circling pathways, grids, lines and braiding pathways. Perhaps the most captivating passage of the piece involved the dancers’ organization into a three by three person grid. In this grid the choreography moved in and out of unison, composed of a steady stepping and continued intricate hand gestures. As their bodies moved through levels of space, from mid to low to high, etc., I had the distinct impression that there was something almost mystical in their gestures (the mystic was constantly reinforced by the sacred sounds of ancient music, the repeated movement of a continuous stepping turn, reminiscent of a whirling dervish, casting a meditative quality to much of the piece). I felt as if these intricate hand gestures were somehow unlocking passage between levels of space. The concept of enlightenment has long been represented spatially, moving upward into transcendence and illumination with the base or mundane existence being situated below. As the dancers shifted upward and downward on this vertical axis, I symbolized the gestures as somehow giving access to those various levels of mystical transcendence.
The piece involved a video being projected behind the dancers. Its imagery was simple: a white cord moved along the top edge of the projection, and a red silhouette of a dancer continuously turning in that dervish-esque fashion mentioned above moved along the bottom of the image, level with the dancers on stage. I chose to read this relationship between the projection and the live dancers as meaningful: I read the projection as symbolic of the meditative/spiritual ideal, the constant practice, the continuous action towards ecstasy. This image was literally interrupted by the play of shadows cast by the dancers on stage, as if acknowledging the interruption of the ideal by the effects of human action. In the final moments of the piece, however, the video faded, and the dancers took on the whirling, stepping action, the piece concluding with a single dance embodying the turning that had been imagined by the video throughout the piece. It felt like the achievement of a goal, or the transfiguration of the immaterial into the material, the ideal into human practice.
Melanie Bales presented a new work left untitled, set to music by Erik Satie, and danced by Abigail Yager and Ming-Lung Yang. It was a charming, intimate and skillful dance. Beautifully performed and sensitively choreographed. Perhaps most interesting for me was seeing Abi dance like Melanie. I am familiar with both of their ways of moving, and it is always intriguing to me to see movement and ways of moving that I associate with one individual coming so precisely from the body of another, especially when I have a fairly intimate familiarity with the movements of that body. I am in Abi’s technique class this quarter, I am very familiar with the way that she moves. To see her move like Melanie . . . well, it addresses my interest in the transference of movement material and the relationship of that process to the constitution of identity. Now there is something of Melanie that lives in both Abi and Ming’s bodies, and that was demonstrated with ease and precision in this piece.
Vicki Uris presented a new work entitled “Littoral Zone.” Again, I had seen this piece several times before, but it was somehow transformed into something new and yet unseen in its translation onto the stage. It may be enough to say initially that I hold Vicki as a goddess, a master choreographer, an exceptional craftsman. What she crafts is the whole picture, the dance as an arch and each moment frame by frame. When I focus in on the individual movements, gestures and actions of the dancers, they are not always movements that captivate my interest. Then I widen my scope, I take in the moment as a whole, and I am utterly overwhelmed. I can safely say that I don’t know how Vicki’s mind works, how she can recognize and orchestrate the degree of connectivity and organization that she accomplishes. All of that being said, I don’t feel that I can adequately describe this dance. I can describe my sensations of the movement, what I retained of the action of the dance, but its organization is of such a level of skill that I cannot even begin to comprehend it.
Long pulling movement with sudden flicks of action. Steady stepping or swaying or swinging interrupted by sudden holds or quick gestures. Scurrying steps that seemed to take the pulse of the dance and amp it up for moments. Beautifully odd and grotesque postures. Reaching upward as if suspended by the reach, then falling, collapsing. Grounding, stable stances giving way to flings and jumps.
The organizing structures I can recall are thus:
-A stunning interplay between ambiguous clumps and ordered lines of dancers. This was most potent in the final pass across the stage: the dancers began in a loose line upstage right. Moving in waves of falling forwards and backwards in a slow progression across the stage, the line was distorted. At any given moment, one would just see a clump of dancers scattered across the stage. But if one were to figure the spatial mean of the forwards and backwards action, the line was implicit in the clump. There was something meaningful there, about the implication of order in what seems to be disorder, an order recognizable only through careful observation over time.
-Reverberations of action via attention and observation: Near the start of the dance, there was a sensational counterpoint between a clump of dancers and a line of dancers on the opposite side of the stage. The line seemed to observe the clump and respond energetically and sympathetically to the actions of the clump. There was a wonderful atmosphere of attention as choreographic structure.
-I remember thinking that I would love to annotate the spatial alignments of this dance (re: Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced).
Dave Covey performed a perfect solo entitled “For Merce and John.” It was elegant, delightful, reverential, with an atmosphere that felt much like a séance. I think for most of the audience this was a humorous piece, but for me there was more pang to it. Yes, there was an unmistakable humor in the characterizations that Dave embodied, but those characterizations could never be separate from the fact that this was in memory of two men who have died. In his delightful appropriation of these physicalities that were not his own, there was an atmosphere of almost possession. I found myself wondering . . . if the body is the site of identity and movement or ways of moving that emerge from that body might be considered extensions of that identity, how might this sort of representation, this reanimation of those ways of moving constitute a living presence of those who have passed on? How might Merce have been alive in Dave’s movement, Dave’s body? This summer marked the death of both Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch. I am curious about the continued life of their ways of moving in the bodies of those who have danced for them. It recontextualizes methods for accessing movement such as Labanotation as well. To what degree does inhabiting ways of moving relate to inhabiting a specific being? Reconstruction via Labanotation as séance, embodying and reanimating the departed . . . what an interesting notion.
Back to Dave’s solo, what I found most intriguing was his focus and attention, his concentration on what he was performing. Performers committed to what they are doing are so much more interesting to observe . . . because it becomes real for them. At that degree of concentration, it is no longer an act; it has become real, and I the observer am then present for their experience, not for their imitation of experience.
There was also the beauty of the references. The piano solo in homage to Cage had an overt humor to it, but beneath the humor for something far more profound. It had to do again with attention, with attending to the mundane as meaningful, as relevant, as worthy of being called art. Yes, there was humor in Dave “playing” the squeaks of an old piano’s keyboard cover, but there was also something beautiful about finding the simple and mundane meaningful, giving time and attention to them, perhaps even appreciating them as an art experience.
John Giffin presented a new work entitled “Manimal House,” set to Camille Saint-Saens Le Carnivale des Animaux. It was an over-the-top piece of humor and dance theater. It had so many sections and characters and gimmicks and punchlines, it feels impossible to describe it at any length. I will take the opportunity to rave about Maree ReMalia. I have no objectivity when it comes to Maree; she is one of my dearest friends. But I truly felt like she stole the show when it comes to this piece. She played a tortoise-esque old lady, and I dare say that she was the nucleus of the piece. In what might otherwise been a configured chaos of characterization, a veritable zoo of characters and action and humor, Maree provided a subtle center to the piece, a simple gravity around which everything else could spin (at points almost out of control). Having her in the piece, the way in which she embodied the movement persona of her character, gave everything else more significance.
Meghan Durham presented an excerpt of a larger work entitled Lunar Project. It was a charming solo with a cameo appearance by Shawn Hove. It is always so rewarding to watch Meghan move. She has a fluidity and specificity that she navigates and even interrupts expertly. Last night she did so in the presence of a enchanting sound and set: her set piece involved a collection of hanging lights, like flashlights suspended from the fly at various levels in space. The set itself had the feel of an art installation. I would have loved to see her dance just in the company of the lighted set piece, with no additional light. It was so elegant, as was her movement. I felt myself longing for there to be a more simple relationship between these sites of beauty.
Finally, John Giffin and Vikci Uris performed a duet choreographed by Susan Hadley entitled “Companions.” I hardly know what to say about this dance. It moved me to tears, but on the cusp of John and Vicki’s retirements, this was to be expected. I was moved by knowing them. I was moved by the care, precision, and almost perfect unison of their actions. In the series of actions/gestures/emotions, I felt the inescapable indication of temporality, that each thing lasted only for a time, to be followed by something else. Moments of pause seemed to indicate that movement would follow. Moments of smiling seemed to indicate that moments of not smiling would follow. It was an interesting journey through not only what they were doing but something like the constant foreshadowing of what they would next do. I found myself wondering how someone who doesn’t know them saw this piece. I treasure both Vicki and John, and I have only known them a little over a year. I wonder how those who don’t know them saw that dance, and I wonder how those who have known them for years, decades even, saw the dance. Intimacy was implicit in the choreography; I wonder how that intimacy played itself out in the various viewers. The final moment was just light on two empty chairs. A simple yet potent play of presence and absence, the passage of time, memory and loss.
If I was left with an arching thoughts from the concert, it has to do with this final question of intimacy. I find dance so much more enjoyable when I know the performers, the choreographers. Because the dance is then functioning within a framework of familiarity. Through the dances I am expanding or recreating my knowledge of someone I know. This of course relates to the ongoing theme in this blog, the integration of dance and life. Movement, dancing, ways and degrees of knowing, how the knowing affects the dancing and the viewing of the dance. Resisting objectivity and reveling in the subjectivity of my own experience. That’s how I left this concert.
Filed under: Dance, Ontology, cosmology | Tags: ambiguity with specificity, anthro(pop)ology, between, click here 4 slideshow or 6-8 character limit, coco loupe, columbus dance theatre, eric falck, facebook, jeff fouch, meaning
A morning reflection.
Two shows down. One to go.
Every time we do this piece, it’s different. And maybe it’s partly because of the way that I am thinking about my own work right now, but it is so completely conflated with life and living and loving, in the dancing, in the movement/content, in the structures and organizations of the content, in the facebook status updates, in the bruises and bouncing curls and kisses and massages and body piles and pairs back stage . . . it is in no way something that we put on, and for me there are not characters: the way that we are (I am) in the dance, what we do on stage, is coming directly from and feeding back in to everything else. This is us, this is Michael and CoCo and Eric and Jeff. That’s part of why I still have not yet completely made my peace with bowing after “the piece,” because the bow feels like such a theatrical trope, and admission of something like spectacle, a confession that “what has transpired here has not be ‘real,’ it is simply something we do, not who we really are.” But a good friend of mine said that it doesn’t feel that way . . . the whole thing has been so intimate up until that point, the intimacy carries into the way we stand there, looking at the audience, fold at our hips, and strike our “set.”
After the first show, I commented on my facebook status that it felt like an ending, and that from now on the piece would have to be something else. I think part of last night’s permutation of the piece was partially in mourning for the what the dance had been (what we had been?). Today will be something else entirely. In response to the comment on the “ending” quality, this dialogue unfolded via facebook status/comments between CoCo and I:
“Did it feel like an ending? For me it felt like I never got going. Could be b/c the wifi was dead at first. Felt like playing catch up the rest of the time. I could feel you 3 pouring everything into the space however. Also feel a bit like a traitor b/c I’m not observing in the way that I want to. Total immersion in other words. It’s all very fragmented for me. Like I’m not respecting the experience. I’m certainly getting a new perspective on this whole digital interaction/connection thing. And am knowing now that i want the real version of humanity as a general rule w/out the computer screen in b/w.”
-CoCo
“So I think you have landed on another potential “theme” of this piece. The potential between the digital and the human connection. And you situating yourself at the edges of both. Maybe you are revealing something more than just your personal predilections. Maybe this is part of the “commentary” aspect of the work. And maybe the unfolding “human drama” on stage is something like a commentary from the other side? If every human interaction has indeed become a collision, maybe we create buffers like facebook and status updates and video cameras . . . these are my morning ramblings, but maybe there’s something there.
One more.”
-Me
Ambiguity with specificity. This was something that my brother said about the piece, the Friday night performance. And I think it has deep resonance for how I know the work, how it is unfolding for us (how I understand the universe right now?): each thing, each moment, each experience, each phenomenon is incredibly specific, completely and entirely itself and yet elusive, fleeting, gone into the next moment, another distinct intersection of complex contexts and perspectives and perceptions. Each moment is in itself constantly “yet to be revealed,” and yet is dissolves, evaporates, is lost into the next moment, full of its own ambiguity and specificity.
Then there is this quality in the gestalt of experience, the piece as a whole (life as a whole). We tend to be categorizing creatures, we tend to find names for things, labels, taxonomies for organization. I think we do this for ease . . . it’s easier to assume that identities are persistent, fixed, unchanging, recognizable, and not entirely unique. And yet maybe that is not the nature of things. As we look at a gestalt, this dance for instance, we tend to need to know “what it is.” We need to recognize it, to have a name for what it is, clear distinctions for what it means. And yet it may not be so pin-down-able. Besides the moment by moment shifting ambiguities, there is the ambiguity of what we read as the “whole.”
This relates to the perpetual idea of the “in-between,” an idea I return to again and again. We know a thing by what it is not. Knowledge is contextual, established by contrast (we are aware of light because there are shadows, we establish what we think of as male because we compare it to female, etc.). We do not simply know what a thing is, we know what it is in-between. We know that it is not this or that, but it has a kind of relationship to both. For many of these experiences, we either as individuals or as cultures have established names, labels, categories. I would question the fixity even of these experiences. But besides that, there is the question of all the experiences that lie in between our categories, our labels, our recognizable forms. We know them, we experience their specificity, their meaning (more on this later?), but it is completely embedded in its ambiguity, its in-between-ness.
Meaning. This is a question that has continued to come up in a course I am taking this quarter called “History, Theory, Literature of the Analysis of Movement.” Most analysis assumes a meaningfulness, attempts to identify and illuminate the meaningful. This has raised the question over and over again, “What is meaning?” or “What are we referring to when we refer to ‘meaning’?” I has established a working definition of meaning for myself. It is something like: “Meaning is the substance by which a thing is recognizable.” It is broad. I do not intend meaning to be a synonym for “interpretation.” It is before interpretation. It is similar to recognition, but recognition implies a cognitive process, and I think meaning is more sensation, situated in sensory perception, not the cognition of those perceptions. It is the substance of that by which a thing is recognized. It is the specificity in the ambiguity.
The meaning for “click here . . . ” changes every time we do it. There are elements that are persistent. The choreography is set, the sequence of the piece is set, the points of my body that hit the floor, the expanding bruises, they testify to the persistence of certain elements. And yet there is something about it that is continually unrecognizable. It’s meaning, the experience by which it might becomes recognized, is unfamiliar. It is not a situation or intersection I have experienced before. As we go out onto the stage with CoCo and take our poses upstage in the red light, it is something new and unfamiliar, even as we are enacting familiar actions. I don’t yet know what it is, and part of the dance is trying to come to more of a place of knowing, maybe even recognizing the gestalt.
All over the place . . . this post is all over the place. To cap it off, some images, taken by CoCo on stage as part of the piece/performance. Something of the dance is recognizable in these images, and yet I am acutely aware of the fact that they are not the dance nor are they what will transpire at 3pm today at Columbus Dance Theater. One more show. Another permutation/translation/expression/specificity.
