Abstract

This piece is an exercise I consider a failure, but, as such, a meaningful artifact. On the one hand, I have been becoming increasingly frustrated by writing; on the other, I have been trying to resolve a piece whose first iteration took form in late July this year. There were a few different key components, including a sculptural/architectural structure, reminiscent of a temporary shelter, intended for one body; and the core of this work was a performance, which took place without much preemptive announcement and similarly remained not excessively documented. I was interested in the seemingly ephemeral formal nature of the work and yet the potential, due to its content, to be quite the opposite and to linger and even fester. The performance component of this piece was my setting a timer and speaking without any preparation at all for 1 hour 20 minutes about trauma. The specific topic isn’t so important, although I enjoy something like the lyricism that the ostensible content densifies the ideas of articulation, especially spontaneous articulation and all the otherwise hidden tics and convulsions that become manifest in extemporaneity. I am still processing that experience and still very much in the midst of trying to resolve this piece. One of the important components of this aforementioned piece is its unrepeatability; this seems to best fit the formal logic that the work suggests for itself. A hurdle, then, in pursuing further investigation. Hence the idea to try a variation of it in which I improvise sensory deprivation as well as disorientation and talk, again without preparation, this time about the space of a studio and trying to transfer that space in some way to another place. To furthermore remove the locus or formal/physical center of the work, there was no separate architecture and instead the whole of my studio became the “temporary shelter” and the voice became material in lieu of wood, plastic, metal etc. And the tangibility of this voice becomes manifest in the transcription. So the exercise was to test the wager that while the manifest material components of the work changed, that the content would remain. That the content, as I said, wasn’t the ostensible content (trauma) but something else, something I have thus far found unnameable.
But if forced, then I would say it is something like articulation and testing the threshold of articulability. Why this exercise fails, at least for me right now, is that the materiality and physicality, which get necessarily lost through the transcription, appear more than ever to be in fact quite essential to the piece. Perhaps failure is a misnomer. It is rather that this other form rather than evolving the piece seems to rather just render another kind of work. And in that, it perhaps does what I wanted it to: to transport to another space, while playing with the ideas of transport and of space. Though I am still not convinced that text is the way that is most native to the work I’m after, it is nevertheless making me begin to think anew about so many complications endemic to performance/action, about the complexities between score and execution, about trying to master or manipulate time, about trying to subvert known architectures.

   41°18’50”N 72°56’4”W 

                                                                                                    I’m    I’mreally   I’m really dizzy and I’m sitting on the floor   I’m not entirelysure what direction I’m facing  I have ear plugs on   I blindfolded myself and then I   rotated multiple times  and then I stopped   and I set an alarm for about an hour
I think I’m gonna lie down  I’m gonna lie down And then  I’m gonna have this thing next to me and I’m just gonna talk I
What is
What is wrong
What is the difference
Why is it that I don’t think why is it that this one form of writing research or thinking I don’t think can be what is the word it is not equalisable it’s not tantamount it’s not the same thing as I think the kid of research one does when one is trying to make a work in art let’s say in quotes because the art        because          I think when I’m researching or I think one of the things that happens everythingkind of equalises  Everythingbecomes subsumed under the idea of source material   The taxonomy sort of flattens out or becomes thisone everything can become source and I don’t think this is something irresponsible or slop slipshod about it but rather it’s it’s always operating at degree of your being and being sensitive and realising you are related to the world and all you can is create these things that the world seems to accept or designate as art or at least that is how it is for me      when I   everything I do  even going to work  sitting there  hearing some noise in the hallway   it triggers some memory or triggers like a set of ideas not even a set of ideas triggers something in me threshold as affect or sensation and the task or the  it’s truly a what is that expression a labor of love to pursue that line of thought or that line or it’s not thought to call it a thought is already to give it too muchofadesignation that experience   or that  becoming aware or something  be it some kind of schema or  I mean the joy really comes from just being open to everything   and having the faith that because you are   somehow singular   I mean bracketing everything like my god that we are products of ideology products of our environment product of our past etcetera etcetera prisoner as it were of the context in which that inhabit bracketing all that having the faith that you are this singular sieve through al this will be poured ad so that what comes out if you stay      honest  to your sensations try to really get to that degree zero of encounter  and experience and awareness   and begin to operate at that moment   then what you will create whatevertheformitis     it’s going to be    good it’s going to be             it’s going to make sense somehow    I get frustrated often by people telling me    Ihavetostandup because lying down makes me sleepy right now I get so oftenfrustrated by people telling me I get so often frustrated so often telling me that  oh I am a researcher and so

I think that                            writing for me has         has been something like     transcription  its always notes for something or its transcribing something and at the same time becomes notes for something buthatsisalltosay I’ve never considered writing as something onto itself but always notes for me  like para like prosthesis   paraphernalia or scaffolding for the works that I am and the [my ] works that I make are PRECISELY the things that resist transcription  Writing at the end of the day is transcription I know that throughout my whatever brief existence I have read this and that theorising about writing it was at most pleasant  but all that  at some point seems like notes NO sorrythatsnotwhatIwanttosay it’s really hard for me to get traction with that kind of writing I’m not interested in writing  ultimately because      it’s something that cannot be part of my practice     and it’s not because    I’m shy or unconfident  or   whatever  it’s simply not   I’ve come to realise it’s not part of who I am  and so   it is uncomfortable that so much of our transactions now necessarily   operate with get transmitted via the vehicle or currency as currency of all these transcription text is like the receipt  of something that happened or is happening

But this is all boiling down to perhaps what I want to speak about the irony that I should express through writing my issues with writing  But more than that the task I set out for myself to discover in this next hour  
What does it mean that the space of the writing is an extension or is part of my studio  And I mean that in an emphatic sense  

I think making this kind of gesture or not just gesture but living  really living it  that’s urgent here  that’s urgent here  And using that as a kind of constraint for me to think about what does that mean for a studio practice  what does mean for writing  I think this hearkens back to thing I said at the very beginning When you are researching as an artist everything becomes material  Even when I’m sitting in the toilet

In any given moment in the moment of embrace in the moment of   of I don’t know kissing someone or something like this the mind is always going the studio is there of course that is a different moment than say when you are testing out a new material or trying something or when you are outside shooting something  Perhaps it’s preciselyasbeing trained or training as a photographer I’m out there in the world truly as a nomadic creature but also finding a kind of humbling solace in the studio but that humbling solace is so energising that it makes me greedy and then again not humble but greedy let’s say and feeling megalomaniac
So long as you don’t beat my body and my mind is still going I am still there

And I think about things like
So long as my mind is going I’m still there aren’t I  And to say this space  two three pages these sheets of paper in a journal somewhere this blank website well it won’t even be blank I don’t know yet but it is       a part of my studio  you see you look into my studio you get to be with my studio in a way I don’t know how you feel about that but this is uh     uh          I don’t know is that the closest form of touching in a way
Come here and hold my hand a little bit
The floor is cold
And I was resting my hand a lot of my weight on my left hand so it feels a bit funky it feels a bit crunchy and I need to kind of roll it around to get it back to normal My body is a little bit uncomfortable because I feel like I’m coming down with a cold or something
The last days were a bit strange because my sleeping schedule got messed up and it made me body feel leaden  It was a very thought provoking week in some ways  

Ultimately to ask an artist to express something about what it is that they do or think it’s strange
Not to say it’s such a privileged position but maybe it is
But it’s like they

Recognising the tangibility    Um I’m not exactly going for a universal or something like this I don’t want to be dogmatic about anything  It’s probably like the worst case of some kind of narcissism just doing something to figure out something for myself  Perhaps almost pathologically so and then          um      I mean there then there’s exposure then perhaps someone  reacts to it    um       I’m quiet just now because I’m thinking about the idea of exposure and visibility and perhaps    writing or transcribing is making something visible granted that the audience is literate  You know there’s all this blather  all this vocalisation then you transcribe and it becomes a record and then becomes visible in that way     I suppose you could have speakers and have the sound be projected and have some kind of installation or    install the speakers somehow   so then you get to have some visible tangibility too   But I suppose writing also doesn’t have to be visible  There’s also Braille writing that’s for the blind   But what I’m trying to get at is   the idea that                       when I transcribe           this moment      and begin to draw       the          draw the extension of my studio  with  these  words               where  where is my studio         Where is it           It’s like I’m trying to         send you a piece of my self through that  But why not figure out a way to like    youknow  connect via webcam  What is so interesting about this particular medium of           accessibility  I think it’s also being embedded    in this other space        making the hard claim    that it IS my studio   it’s a kind of    re  it’s kind of a re-territorialisation it’s a kind of colonisation  it’s a kind of parasitism  Or it is rather shedding light on what’s precisely the schema of parasitism what’s parasiting on what  Of course there is the pun of para-siteHaha  not my original um         I’m so cold here right now and there some other noise I vaguely hear through my earplugs  And I feel so feverish I could be anywhere  Outside right now is a mountain for all I know  This one   this  like extinct volcano outside of Edinburgh where lots of tourists are going up it’s very very steep and until I saw this place in real life I saw it a lot in my dreams  and upon seeing it for the first time I realised all the dreams I’ve been having  the recurrent ones for the past twenty years  it was here    This volcano  This extinct volcano  And from up here  you can see the ocean  You can see the sea  That I think is pointing towards ultimately like Norway       I can’t quite smell it yet  It’s a bit windy and the sun still feels hot when the sun breaks through  from the clouds It’s summer  It’s cool though  it’s not hot like where I’m from   It’s not sticky like where I am from       Being in the place Ive seen in my dreams the last two decades       its like feeling homesick and so full of home at the same time   like a shock  like a dizzying like a dizzying feeling and I keep shivering                                                                                                                                  

I think this interest  or this      adamancy  about the fact the this text      does demarcate the space of      the part of my studio     it is also about camouflage     camouflaging my studio                                   what happens in my studio for me anyway and I’m sure for many people too     is a kind of   the most    vulnerable thing    and it is to say here   I am transferring my most vulnerable to you
ButofcourseifIweretomerely transcribe these words and send them    or publicise it that way  maybe they would be dead  But perhaps it is enough  to have the disclaimer: listen    literally  listen – all these words were part of the moment when  all these words are equal to the moment  ARE the moment when     I began to talk about the space of the studio     It’s okay to talk about the space of the studio because so much art now maybe always been recurrently is about the possibilities of making art and it’s strange   I can never get myself to think about what is art  but perhaps a concession maybe it’s a concession I think about what is the space of   that contains   the production   Being here with my eyes  closed  and my ears  plugged    feels so cold and shivery   rocking and forth a little bit  it’s like flying  I can’t believe I’m related people people that are outside of here to whom I’m related connected biologically psychologically   emotionally   affectively   sexually   politically  I don’t know  so many things and so in a way this space      DO NOT READ MY TEXTS AS TEXTS but read them as these new geographies and       new architectures  Notevennew architectures notevennew just read as architecture as geography it’s all  what is a map   a map transcribes and makes potential that’s what  a map is so this is the map    the map of my studio   it IS my studio     And I’m rocking faster now because it is cold
It is autumn
It is in my studio
And we are thinking about thresholds and camouflage and mapping  What if the way the map was became   real   What do I’m sorry I lost focus for a second that is not the sentence I want to produce      
But incidentally  camouflage interests me because it’s also about distraction          working on iridescence trying to figure out what that means continuing to work on it and realising it’s not stupid to continue on something adamancy adamancy adamancy dedication dedication dedication commitment commitment commitment I love I love    I love        it is you whom I love  c’est vous dont j’ai besoin  iridescence    it’s like a it led me to think about camouflage but all of it makes me think about distraction to say something is there out there happening or elsewhere happening yes that’s it my studio is happening elsewhere and here allwhere everywhere that      it’s everywhere   and it’s not just because the accident of the fact that I’m trained or being to trained to be a photographer which brings together some outside and inside practicenono but it is the reality the matter of fact of this kind of making it’s this   hyper aware sensitivity to all that is around you and perhaps you’re in disguise and people will read you another way but then you are iridescent creature    and perhaps your shine misleads the people When you lift off that veneer    and            that’s why  there’s this speaking   without notes   just speaking  trying to            trying to say  say some tell you I’m TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU I want you to know I SO DESPERATELY WANT YOU TO KNOW    that I so desperately want you to know that    I’m not the kind       of   writerthatyouthinkiam       but I do write    and perhaps I’m not the kind of maker you think I do make     This issue of writing I got so hung up on because it’s this issue of visibility   to be visible  I want to be invisible until I am ready to show the things I want to make visible   Perhaps this is another reason why I’m thinking about the audible lately Initially I was thinking about the audible because of                 the fact that I had no camera and computer for a while   over the summer  but I had been working with sound more and more before that and   which  which led me to think about feedback and how feedback relates to camouflage and you know punning on the word feedback but more importantly it’s because I had no camera and computer for a little while I began to think of composing and how I want to compose    
     films  I don’t want to make a film  script but I wanted to compose because I was thinkingverynaively verybluntly very crudelycoarselyRUDIMENTARILY   about    you know   metaphysics 101orwhatever intrometaphysics class where they talk about one of the important cases what is the relation between a score and its execution   I wonderifitsquitesthesame as the relationship between a script and its execution I wantto say its something different because there is something about music the fact that in itself it’s like   you know   abstract    let’s say   inherently abstract it doesn’t refer to language or anything  Whereas script is already a transcription you can read it you can like a novel a separate thing

I just want to move my body   and show you    I want to reach out and   show you I wanna                                               I wish I could see myself even though I’m blindfolded it didn’t occur to me to record this part that component    I was too much hung up on the audible   I suppose   but also I didn’t want to see myself                    
and                   I wanted to                                          I wanted to think about              
  the space of my studio  That’s why I want to lie downinit I want to lie down and I want to think about the space of my studio   I don’t know which direction I’m facing I can’t tell where the light is because I’m blindfolded     I don’t know where north is where east is east or south I don’t know where you are    I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE   I don’t know where you are I don’t deny myself desire                             I don’t deny myself anything   so perhaps I just feel neutrally about you              I have yet to show you my studio I have yet to properly show you my studio                to say that         if I produce a text and that text    IS   part of my studio  does it also mean that my studio   consists of studio   There’s walls there’s drywall there’s floorboard there’s wood  MATERIALS glass wood  plastic   metal        iridescent cellophane  aluminum foil  blue liquids  gold powder  fruits vegetable water feces   even    aspiration     anxiety    joy     hurt       duration

the intended duration   that I really cannot say    but how   so then from that   how do you get to    that other space      is it merely just     referring to that    that space of    
    is it sorry isjust referring to that thing about you know studio is in your mind         I think I’m trying to create a map but why do it in this analog way but it’s not analog it’s every kind of possible material I don’t think that’s irresponsible

think   THINK                      my studio                      it is show you       my vulnerability        my confusion           both my hands are on the floor                     and both my hands areon the floor  both my wrists are feeling the pressure of my weight as I lean forward   but I have no sense I am losing the sense of top or bottom    in a way because I’m blindfolded and I have earplugs and I can’t hear anything and I can’t really sense where the light is coming from                                      I don’t even hear my heartbeat when I get still all I feel is a little bit of wind chilliness that seeps in  in the space between my jeans and my sweatshirt why it’s warmed up a little bit the floor doesn’t feel exactly dirty but I can feel little bits of dust and when I tilt my head I really feel like I’m in a round space I’m in a round space and I’m a little bit dizzy   Perhaps it is enough to say here too  is my studio  Here and here and there          here too is my studio                   cuz these are all exceptions of my research and my searching      but I         threshold     between the perception and recognition   a threshold   between two people                   that                                                                
      I hesitate because so many wordsjust came into my head and I didn’t use them irresponsibly like transintimacy or iridescence thingsthatImworkingon                     but I have noticed about iridescence or how people speak of it   something to do with scintillating multiple and even queer   Yes I’ve always felt it’s related to queer and that’s why that’s part of why I wanted to think about it  I wanted to queer a little but intimacy and make transintimacy and make a new kind not a new kind but I want to suggest    there’s this other ways of being close  and perhaps that this is an exercise of transintimacy   to say that that space   that space there is here and here is there and I   perhaps it’s another way of saying I am you and you are  me     interface   there’s no interface    interface is an excuse                                      and that dizzying hall of mirrors that is iridescence to find the right one   the real mirror   the real door   to there tocrossover to there                                                                                                        
                        Yes                                                                                                        
         Intimacy                            is camouflage          together                                      
 We’re gonna make                                                       no we’re not                         it’s not camouflage   against                      it’s camouflage together                                          
  STAIN ONTO ME   I  stain onto you               bleed a little bit onto you       and hungrily you slurp it or something like this                             TRANS no sorry                  
                                                            The very fact that iridescence can also get read as kitsch it also I think a part of its     deceptiveness its deceptiveness I’m interested in it’s like dazzling distracts you you think it’s oh it’s like about some teenage girl   Kitsch camp I don’t know this one conversation I had about gay men’s aesthetics of a bygone era

All that yeah sure       but the fact that it    catches your eye   something sinister about it    How to Make it Sinister                  yeah     not how to make it sinister but to show that it is sinister to show something for what it really is And in Fact    or to show like something else that is also essential to it and that is    that is    also   that is   this exercise   of wagering that This space is That space       it’s to show both something about it but also the nature of space so perhaps this is it  that to show the sinister component of iridescence is also to show something about the sinister                
    because     it’s like dazzling    seductive     thinking about this I don’t feel annoyed or shame or whatever frustration or whatever that I seem to have gone back to what I was dealing with back in June  nonono this is productive thisisgood  And    if I were to let me try a thought experiment if I were to encounter something and say this is part of the studio  and perhaps I would think this is receipt from the studio or something but to think that it is part of the studio it begins to make us reconsider the very idea of space and lived space but we’re already doing that    it is another way of manifesting   virtual space   you are virtually here   you are basically  there you are essentially there HERE you are essentially here and             and there’s nothing    Well first of there’s nothing radical about it  I don’t think  my goodness         be in this space with me    it is the ultimate studio visit     what is a studio visit   you come into this charged space      
   and there’s so much affect   you experience          mundane geometry differently it like transforms   the mundane geometry                      and                               like when you hear an incredible piece of music   transforms its basic        the space you inhabit begins with proprioception I think    and extends out and out and out    it goes through so many different    kinds of space     my desire     my desire to reach the stars    the farthest star     so in a way my space     extends all the way that much out                        
                                                                             and         oh    and this is great because I was thinking I’ve been trying to figure out a way to realise this one project that involves                                                  starlight and volcanoes and      because I was interested in like the closest thing and the farthest thing and it became the oldest thing and farthest and now I’m back to thinking about it as the farthest thing and the closest     the closest thing is the thing that I already have the farthest thing is the thing that I desire           the ever expanding thing is also what I desire     expanding or extending my      studio        towards you  
                                           

41°18’50”N 72
°56’4” W

Recurrent performances begin to provoke the question of documentation. The recurrence of performances (of actions, of experiences, in other words recombination of time and space) parallel the question of documentation, which itself can imply primarily a couple of different things. The contemporary obsession with visibility, specifically curating visibility, the renewed taxonomic pathology. In a word: branding. The perceived need to control visibility, to be a good auto-PR person. To that end does documentation, in one sense, become an issue. But the other sense is more interesting because it is has more conceptual ramifications, it can potentially (and should) feed back into the conceptual core of the work. The relevant question basically would be: is documentation at all possibility? This might be a case in which precisely tampering with the system, as it were, changes it. One can never really document, just as one can never measure x without… This might be a digression because performances, recurrent obsessive pathology to noncommittal cynical to whimsical, do not necessarily require documentation.
Indeed, the initial and sustained impulse towards performance originates from the simple hunch that “everything” is material, as in source material for a work. Make no mistake and think that this implies the whole of existence could be one intricate ready-made. That is too boring because it is too broad; it lacks a punctum. It does not seduce. Rather it is interesting to see everything as various components whose relationships shall never be precise but always potential, that everything that is available is malleable, recombinable. Please try to jump back and forth across categories and dichotomies until demarcation forgets its own provenance, abandons its name: material/immaterial, dreams/waking, life/death, performance/ documentation, writing/speaking, scribbling/mumbling, walking/dancing, etc.
So really the word that is at stake here isn’t so much documentation as it is performance. Documentation, in this case specifically transcription, itself becomes a performance. But:

I have read little to no performance theory. The vocabulary I deploy here only accidentally coincides with that idiom. By performance I just mean an idea, even a whimsy, that is made manifest through my body for some duration. There might be witnesses, but there do not need to be.

Transcription became a component to my investigations not for the sake of documentation but as a means to examine the possibilities for the material uncovered during the manifestation process.
And also:
Words are boring, for me. Rather, words become interesting when I no longer think of them as words as such. No more writing as such because that then makes writing discrete from everything else that is possible.

The problem:
It must be perennial form versus content contention. The look of things is misleading. This looks like a text, it’s inserted among other texts. It isn’t a text.

Possible solution:
Let me tell you, it is a feat of great camouflage. Intimately transparent. In other words, my own iridescence

40°45’15”N
73°49’37”W


“To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not—this is the beginning of writing.”1< I’m afraid the age of manifestos is past; this is no manifesto as much as it is merely making manifest. It’s hard to tell, really, having lived mostly in a psychological if not physical isolation through the accident that is my specific existence, what’s happening in the world as it is now—now = the time and space I happen to occupy, co-occupy… But this much I can sense, the now appears to be a hyper-sedimentation, hyper-juxtaposition, etc. of making manifest.

48°12’33”N
16°22”22”E

Recurrent performances begin to provoke the question of documentation. The recurrence of performances (of actions, of experiences, in other words recombination of time and space) parallel the question of documentation, which itself can imply primarily a couple of different things. The contemporary obsession with visibility, specifically curating visibility, the renewed taxonomic pathology. In a word: branding. The perceived need to control visibility, to be a good auto-PR person. To that end does documentation, in one sense, become an issue. But the other sense is more interesting because it is has more conceptual ramifications, it can potentially (and should) feed back into the conceptual core of the work. The relevant question basically would be: is documentation at all possibility? This might be a case in which precisely tampering with the system, as it were, changes it. One can never really document, just as one can never measure x without… This might be a digression because performances, recurrent obsessive pathology to noncommittal cynical to whimsical, do not necessarily require documentation.
Indeed, the initial and sustained impulse towards performance originates from the simple hunch that “everything” is material, as in source material for a work. Make no mistake and think that this implies the whole of existence could be one intricate ready-made. That is too boring because it is too broad; it lacks a punctum. It does not seduce. Rather it is interesting to see everything as various components whose relationships shall never be precise but always potential, that everything that is available is malleable, recombinable. Please try to jump back and forth across categories and dichotomies until the line drawn in the sand forgets its own particularity: material/immaterial, dreams/waking, life/death, performance/ documentation, writing/speaking, scribbling/mumbling, walking/dancing, etc.
So really the word that is at stake here isn’t so much documentation as it is performance. Documentation, in this case specifically transcription, itself becomes a performance.

But:
I have read little to no performance theory. The vocabulary I deploy here only accidentally coincides with that idiom, if at all. By performance I just mean an idea, even a whimsy, that is made manifest through my body for some duration. There might be witnesses, but there do not need to be.
Transcription became a component to my investigations not for the sake of documentation but as a means to examine the possibilities for the material uncovered during the manifestation process.

And also:
Words are boring, for me. Rather, words become interesting when I no longer think of them as words as such. No more writing as such because that then makes writing discrete from everything else that is possible.

The problem:
It must be perennial form versus content contention. The look of things is misleading. This looks like a text, it’s inserted among other texts. It isn’t a text.

Possible solution:
Let me tell you, it is a feat of great camouflage. Intimately transparent. In other words, my own iridescence.