Finding poems in the fragments

Tearing up private diary entries and finding poems in the fragments-

This beautiful somewhere,

The sunshine I love, my bike, I excite. Feel good, live somewhere, stomach strong and love feeling joyful.

For my healthy person for I want, I feel, I want, I am, and him, socially actually stimulate feel loved and know.

Know who I am. Balanced life, abundance. 

To collaborate, I feel passion. 

I want learn, get my drivers license somewhere evil.

Mouth, sense of self and. And love. 

Forced Collaboration

"Forced Collaboration"
"Forced Friendship"
"Friend Tape"

I was playing and being silly with Nathan Henton (2nd year) in his studio, and we taped his hands to mine to play the guitar together, as one. It kind of worked, but we couldn't play the guitar with the ease of one hand. This got me thinking about the possibility of working in a performance context with some kind of binding that ties two bodies together, entering into the liminal space between the two participants' autonomy. I'd like to make some kind of FCC- Forced Collaboration Costume, that combines the two bodies in a constricting way that doesn't allow either body to have complete control over the situation. There would be a list of tasks to carry out as one- perhaps in the normative ideals of making art- we would sing a song, paint a picture, make a hand built pot, write a story. Everything would be improvised. This performance activity would require a complete surrender of control by both participants.

Experiments

The experiments above were exploring the possibilities of clay casting further, trying out small sculptures filled with latex and smashed. The results were kind of interesting because the latex sunk in the middle leaving an interesting sculptural form, but it doesn't excite me, partly because the forms remain covered in the clay and coloured by it, instead of the smashed clay revealing a kind of pearl or gem, as I had been envisioning. 

I started thinking about the idea of microscopic cells, connected to the skin or veins or stomach lining like thorns, thinking of the huge importance of the tiniest cells that populate the body, like bacteria on the skin or the mitochondria, or the way that the reproducing white blood cells swell the glands in response to malignant bacteria. I had the idea of handmaking many small, slightly differing cells in gold or silver, piercing a handmade flesh, but I also worry that the work could err into territory of being too decorative- I think there is a fine balance between an invitation for engagement and something that is too attractive to be really interested in. I don't want to make something that would look beautiful in your living room, I want to make something that opens up a line of enquiry.

Still also exploring the idea of casting the tube, making a mass of writhing passages to carry the bodies information. I was trying out plaster and algenate casting but the brittleness doesn't appeal to me. It feels like it uncomfortably straddles the natural and the artificial, when at the moment I want to be making work that has a material significance. Through making this though, I thought of the idea of layering latex on the outside of a long clay sculpture and smashing it on the inside, shaking, pulling or melting it out. Interesting to think of the actual making of the piece becoming somewhat performative in itself.

Science and Art meet in Susana Soares' work

Susana Soares interests me because her work feels like an ongoing enquiry into the relationship between human and the animal/insect world. She seems to foster a symbiosis between species, questioning the features of our biochemical design that could further our understanding of the delicate balance of life and health.

Her work strikes me as almost anti- anthropocentric.

Tara Donovan

Tara Donovan's "Transplanted" uses layers of torn tar paper to evoke erosion, slate, large landscapes, burnt books and rippling waters. I'm interested in the idea of layering in this way, maybe building up and cutting back. I also like the idea of using natural materials to mimic other natural materials. 

Janine Antoni 'Gnaw'

The artist used only her mouth to break off pieces of material from a 600lbs cube of lard and a 600lbs cube of chocolate. From the lard pieces, combined with red pigment she reformed 135 tubes of lipstick. The chocolate, along with her saliva, she cast 27 heart-shaped boxes for chocolate.

The reforming of the sculptures is interesting to me, although in the case of this piece I don't like objects that were made.  There is the potential for my clay sculptures to have an almost infinite life cycle, being reclaimed and reformed over and over and over. Conceptually, this would fit with what I am thinking about and making- I want the work itself to reflect life in all its aspects, and the things that sustain it- breath, flesh, fat, skin, bones. These are the essential components of our lives and are truly cyclical, although these cycles are invisible. Our skin sheds, we swallow ourselves, we excrete and absorb and recycle. This is what I want my work to speak of. 

I also find the method of making interesting in this piece- sculpting using something other than the hands. Although the cube format is almost minimalist, the intimacy of the biting makes a very alive piece of work.
I prefer looking at this work separate from the reformed pieces at the end of this page. I think that those aspects of the work add an artifice that it previously lacked. Without it, the work is reminiscent of animals, stone, erosion, desperation, humanity.

Joseph Beuys' relationship with fat

In 1944, Beuys participated in world war two and was stationed in Crimea.  He claims that he was involved in a plane crash that left him alone in the wilderness, to be rescued by the nomadic Tatar tribesmen, who wrapped his broken body in fat and felt and nursed him back to health. Whether this story is true or is a self mythologised aspect of Beuys' persona, it speaks of the common theme in much of his work; the use of fat seems to speak of the essential elements of sustained life, of poverty, survival, abjection and nature.

Being a German alive for the duration of WW2 must have influenced his work, experiences of starvation,  shock, disgust and witnessing thousands of jews being crowded out of their homes present in each piece. 

In his performance piece "I Like America and America Likes Me", Beuys attempts to heal the broken relationship between the Coyote and man, revisiting his fabled experience of survival in Crimea by wrapping himself in fat and felt, having arrived in an ambulance, fully swaddled and delivered like a package to the Rene Block Gallery in Manhattan. 

The idea of an art persona, performed with conviction to the point of complete adoption by the artist, is interesting to me. Beuys didn't change who he was, he just created a story to support what was being evidenced in his work. Maybe he could identify with feelings of brokenness, fear, survival, and saviour, and needed a narrative that could explain these feelings in no uncertain terms.

Much of his life story is obscured or confused by myth, but to me, this enriches his art practice because by creating his own story he is reclaiming agency over his identity, which so thoroughly informs his art.

I'm impressed by how truly experimental Beuys was, oscillating from working with primitive materials that represent all culture, all human and animal life, to working with modern materials and creating sprawling post-apocalyptic scenes which somehow spoke the same language as the aforementioned work, although perhaps in a different tongue.

I also love his 1965 performance piece "How to explain pictures to a dead hare" in which, with a head covered in honey and gold leaf, Beuys roamed a locked gallery, explaining each painting to a dead hare he carried with him.