On Visibility

I'm excited that i received the book that accompanied a Theresa Hak Kyung Cha retrospective. It's serendipitous that I received this book after reading Calvino's "Visibility" essay. At times, his essay sounds so reductive, and so not "for the millennium." He reduces the imaginative process into a banal binary that either "starts with the word and arrives at the visual image," or "starts with the visual image and arrives at its verbal expression (83)." What about the word as visual image?

Enter Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's breaks it down in her text and photo piece, "Commentaire":

COMME COMMENT
COMMENT TAIRE TEAR


In Cha's piece, we are witness to a scene "taking place before our eyes (83)". We are witness to the scene of the word--the seen word.

Trinh Minh Ha translates best:

"Comment taire? The question raised is not simply how to keep the silence, to stay quiet or to hold one's tongue, but how not to say while saying. [...] Commentaire offers, in its spatial and linear layout of the words, the possibility of a comment or a commentary that includes a comment taire, that is, a comment/how to and a taire/silence, be silent. [...] Engaging language as simultaneously seen and heard, her writing plays up the arbitrary relation between the sound of a word, its visual spelling, its multiple referents, and its foreign mate in translation (Trinh 35)."

Calvino describes words "that accumulate on the page" as being "infinite but more easily controlled, less refractory to formulation (97)." How would he read words on the body? Could Cha's Aveugle Voix be the class segue into performance? See it here. Hear it here. Can words really be controlled so easily? Can words be managed like the citizens of Jackie Chan's dream of a controlled China? Can words let us see the images of the imagination with less refraction than a curved lens? Or, do words still fail?

on silence

since our class my mind keeps looping back to the conversation on silence. involuntarily so. a la a song worm, so perhaps the blame on the following splatter of unfiltered thought should be placed on my neurons and not on my conscious person. but i agree with julia. that silence is impossible for us humans. i remember reading once that even when we read, the tongue, the throat, it moves. the muscles undulate just as they do when we speak aloud; there is no difference. and always, the scientists say, there is noise, even if it is beyond our decibel range of hearing. even in space, there is noise. there is sound. so then what is it we attempt to achieve when we attempt to offset the noise, the busy, the too much? it is not silence, no. not only because it is impossible to achieve, but because it is too austere. silence is the ultimate death, and we (for the most part?) do not attempt to achieve death. no, rather it is quiet. calm. peace. and these things -- quiet, peace, calm -- these are very different from silence. it is not a difference in semantics. it is wholly emotionally, spiritually, physically and biologically different. atoms still move, our brains still function, our breath still in- and exhaled. there is still sound, but it is peaceful, it is calm, it is quiet. therefore the question of silence and noise -- unless one is a nihilist in the purest and truest sense of the word -- is not the question to consider. the question of "how to achieve silence" is irrelevant. the question when presented regarding the absence of the bustle, hectic, frantic, is to ask "how does one achieve quiet?" and in response to this, well, i do not exactly have an answer. no no. simply put. i do not have any answer. but i think the attempt to achieve it through any medium, any means, is one that often -- though not always -- leads to the generation of human activity. not just via art, but everything. even if that peace is a brief period, a rest, a point in time and space that inevitably makes us at the same time aware that there is more to seek and understand. the rest is not a resolution, but in fact a lead to the next moment of activity. at the same time, it is not necessarily a reaction/response, an anticipation, or an antecedent. it is its own space in time which allows us to recoup, rethink, re-acclimate, reassess. it does not ask us to move forward, backward, up, down, around. it makes no demands. it simply is. WE decide what to do next. WE who, in these periods of inertia, decide on our next move, to build and push our momentum to the next point. and no, there is no silence in that. it can also be difficult to endure, stressful -- but that does not come from quiet, it comes from us and what we choose to allow into the quiet. or not allow into it. it is permission to create our own space/time. it is the transference of responsibility on our individual selves to recreate space/time. and there is plenty of sound, music, noise, energy, movement in that. but it is different from more ostentatious, practical, explicable ways of moving in space and time. it is connected, but at the same time different and in a category of its own. and so it is "quiet" rather than silence, that we create or attempt to create at times in our work, in our lives. how ironic. the amount of noise/energy necessary for creating quiet. pathetic? funny? both? a "wah-ha" if you will?

just some thoughts... what are yours?

p.s. this is kyoung. i am listed as "xyz" because that's what i called my account when first setting up the blog. i didn't know that i wouldn't be allowed to change my id until post-facto. so sorry if the "posted by" confuses!

p.p.s. in response to pouya's post on "left, right" thinking, check out jill bolte taylor's ted conference presentation called "stroke of insight". powerful. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Imagination vs. Calculation

This recent article (see link) reviews Daniel Pink's  writing, on the right vs. left brain thinking. It is somewhat interesting to see a global analysis on how the socio-political landscape as well as the development of the third world , as well as industrialized nations is related to a need for more "creatIve imagination"rather than more scientific and technical progress. However, from a different perspective Pink's suggestions,  on a different level, lead to an even further separation of what defines our societies, since the very day to day tasks of a third world nation is predicted to involve more task oriented  processes, while in industrialized nations - or more specifically  the United States, may involve more creative thinking.  Visual arts, writing, performing arts, all are bound to be effected this emphasis, as predicted in MFAs becoming more in demand than MSCs.  It is not far fetched on this path that authorship and production may in fact develop a geographic definition.

Hence, to take a leap of imagination, one may ask: are we destined to become two different species, Authors and Producers ? 

Three D spaces

i saw this the other day and it made me think of our class discussion concerning 3-d text.  It also has a strange connection to Kate's parade idea.  Personally what i find most amazing is how fluorescent those Zoo Balances are.
 

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Literation Levitation

This is Jeff Koons' energizer bunny inflatable being towed through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade:

And this is Blockhead, the (relatively tame) Paul McCarthy inflatable sculpture outside of the Tate Modern in London:

And one more McCarthy, inflatable pigs...

You can also google his Santa with butt-plug piece, but that's a bronze and I'm really interested in inflatables.

You may be wondering what this has to do with our class. I've been sort of inspired by inflatables and parades lately. There is something about the scale and/or levitation of these pieces that seems to create the monolithic experience (as we were previously talking about) that is so out of scale with the human body, and yet. They are still basically over-blown (ha!) balloons. The juxtaposition between the sublime quality of the monolith and the carnivalesque sensibility of the balloon really excites me. And then, in addition, the element of parade that I think that inflatables beg for is also interesting; the participation, the idea of walking art like you might walk a dog, but a really really big floating dog...

What I haven't seen is giant inflatable text. And that's sort of what I'd like to do...a sentence parade. Because then each letter is also an object, and the composition of the words, and of the sentences, becomes a slippery sort of project. You experience the letters one by one as monolithic objects, but then also there is a developing sense of meaning or comprehensibility that the monolith initially seems antagonistic toward. That tension makes me excited, and it also seems like CalArts could really use a balloon parade because it is starting to get warm and nice outside.

I don't know how to make giant inflatables, but I think it could be interesting to learn. I don't know what the sentence should be. Kristin suggested "The sentence does not exist" and I got pretty excited about it, because I thought it was funny and smart and just the right sort of familiar and yet obtuse. But can we workshop some alternate sentences? Anyone want to help me make a letter parade?

Ok. Hope everyone's spring break was lighter than air.

Updates!
There was some interest in the discussion of how to make inflatables, and here is the resource that I was looking at:
AKAirways
AKAirways is a very open-source community. Their inflatables are hung, rather than floated, so I think we'd have to employ some trial-and-error experimenting to figure out how to levitate them.

If I brought in some sheet plastic and a fan, might we be interested in trying to make a very simple circle inflatable in class next week?

Christian Robert-Tissot

just thought i would pass this along.  this guy seems to be working with language in a way that is slightly different (in both material and context) from some of the other artists we have been looking at (ie. weiner and holzer).  enjoy the break!

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Rebus Shmebus! eye + heart + ewe!

Thinking about our discussion in class (which ended like 20 minutes ago) about the way in which text as object and when does text become object, and the act of writing and author is eliminated for sculpting and sculptor (for example), as in cubist paintings, illuminated texts, and the Chair. In all these instances I viewed it as being not as writing, but as re-writing, which in essence is writing, sort of.

If we take the example of memory, which Tom brought up, if I may partake in a proof of sorts, or one of those stupid SAT analogy things. If we see memory as cerebral narrative, that in our minds, when we recall something we are "writing" into the neurons of our brains the narrative of a particular memory, then in fact we are constantly re-writing the narrative, as we discussed today the consistent inconsistency of memory. Even if we verbalize or record the memory in the same manner each time we recall it (details such as it was day, the bike was red, he was tall) the re-compiling of the memory in our brains, is still different each time we remember something. The more it is remembered the less authentic the memory becomes from the actual original event. If in fact a text is taken and re worked into a different context, a definition rewritten onto a wall next to a chair, magazine cut outs pasted onto a canvas a la ransom notes, or "scribes" basically re-writing what God has spoken, it indeed is, to me, a particular way of rewriting. And in this sense, like memory, rewriting is just as generated as writing is.

In addition, text put in different contexts, often are still related to, the phenomenological observer as text, the consciousness of text as still text remains. Now however, there as extra step of interpretation for the viewer. Not only is there still the aural quality in the brain, the reading of the text inside the brain, but also a human impuse to decode. Like in Rima's blog post of purloined letters, I think that any artwork which "destroys" text or reformats it, gives way to the human impulse of trying to reform it, to find codes inside of the destroyed text. Perhaps that was not the original intention of, let's say Tom's shorthand piece, but it is a human impulse to find text inside of text that looks wonky.

Language has to do with the structure of codes, and the way in which different symbols interact within a specific cultural context. Etching or drawing heiroglyphics into a stone slab or papyrus is in fact still writing, but drawing and writing. The images relate to a particular symbol, sound, or idea that, what I believe happens in every language, can only be completely understood by the culture of which is was created and evolved in. This "text" is about the relationship between image and text, and the content is directly related to the image. A wonky textual art piece is an evolved hieroglyph of the English alphabet.

Like....Rebus! These refer to either those images that sound like words that make a sentence, or those puzzles where text turns into image and back into text:







Fun! Here's more, a website for kids!
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/braintpics.htm












And here's something extra. My brother's CV website which plays with language a bit. Doesn't really pertain to any conversation we've had (maybe internet "space") but I just thought his love for language and whimsy turned his science minded website into a language text art piece of sorts.