Pictures of the moon with teeth

pic t u r e s of t h e moon w i t h t ee t h

pica at 2500 n.e. sandy blvd.

Opening Reception

Exhibition on view

Tannaz Farsi Jibade-Khalil Huffman Bill Jenkins Dawn Kasper Karl Larsson with Morgan Ritter, Pascal Prosek, & Container Corps Peter Simensky Akio Suzuki

sept. 10: 7:00–9:00 pm

sept. 11–20: Daily, noon–6:30 pm

MPA curated by Chiara Giovando for the 2015–16

sept. 21–oct. 11 2015: Thu–Fri, noon–6:30 pm Sat–Sun, noon–4:00 pm closed mon–wed

Performance

Installation on view

Sept. 12: 6:30 pm

Sept. 12–13, 15–17: noon–5:00 pm

Disjecta Curator-in-Residence program

for additional performance times and other exhibition details, visit: pica.org ∕ moon

Dedicated to the memory of T.C. Smith

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Wallace Stevens1 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramourâ&#x20AC;?

Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: Within a single thing, a single shawl Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, A light, a power, the miraculous influence. Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves. We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous. Within its vital boundary, in the mind. We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark. Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.

PICTURES OF THE MOON WITH TEETH Introduction — Kristan Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

page 6

INTERV IEWS

DAWN KASPER .

AKIO SUZUKI .

. page 12

. page 14

. page 16

AKIO SUZUKI & AKI ONDA . KARL LARSSON .

BILL JENKINS .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 22

TANNAZ FARSI .

. .

PETER SIMENSKY .

. .

page 24 . page 26

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 28

JIBADE -KHALIL HUFFMAN . MPA .

page 30

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 32

POE TRY

WALLACE STEVENS . ALICE NOTLEY . Ack now ledgments .

. . . . . . . . . . . . verso folio

page 20

page 38

Colophon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39

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Pictures of the moon with teeth is an exhibition made up of projects by JibadeKhalil Huffman, Dawn Kasper, Peter Simensky, Akio Suzuki, Aki Onda, Tannaz Farsi, Karl Larsson, Pascal Prosek, Morgan Ritter, Gary Robbins of Container Corps, Bill Jenkins, and MPA*. Their work asks what do we believe in, or perhaps what is spirit? In this way, it lives at the intersections of belief and disbelief and that is where we will meet them. Pictures of the moon, is the holy spirit1, is the tongue of fire2, is the ghost body3, is host body4, is the formless thing5, is anxiety6, is ecstasy7, is seeing through the mirror8, is energy9, is neither here nor there10, is god, is G–, is godS11, is NO GOD ever was, is inside you12, is clay, is crystal13, is vapor14, is hair15, is sound16, is gold, is light, is words17, is wave, is lump, is desert dot18, is geometry19, is concrete, is floating20, is memory, is trickery, is hawk overhead21, is notion22, is nature23, is knowing24, is never knowing25, is why go on26? One day while sitting in the living room of my childhood home, I asked my dad, “What is spirit?”27 to which he replied, “Spirit is creativity.” He said that we love to anthropomorphize the more slippery concepts (the incorporeal, the imagined, the spiritual, the unproven) by assigning them image or form (fire, dove, voice in the cloud,28 person…29), but that those tactics of understanding were like throwing a sheet over a ghost, only necessary if you don’t believe in the ghost30. This ghost is the thing inside us that drives us to realize thought31. It is society32. It is art33. It is belief34.

1 “We have to be reminded of some-

thing! What is this humanity!? It is the Holy Spirit! What is the holy spirit!? It is an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for one another!” Slavoj Zizek on the Holy Spirit, Zucotti Square, Occupy Wall Street 2011, New York https:∕∕youtu.be∕WijwuJccts0 2

3 (see page 8) 4 (see page 8) 5 “There are, however, also import-

ant and striking difference between the two. The beautiful in nature is a question of the form of object, and this consists in limitation, whereas the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes a representation of limitlessness, yet with a superadded thought of its totality. Accordingly, the beautiful seems to be regarded as a presentation of an indeterminate

concept of understanding, the sublime as a presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason. Hence the delight is in the former case coupled with the representation of quality, but in this case with that of quantity. Moreover, the former delight is very different from the latter in kind. For the beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and is thus compatible with charms and a playful imagination. On the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only arises indirectly, being brought about by the feeling of a momentary check to the vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport, but dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination. Hence charms are repugnant to it; and, since the mind is not simply attracted by the object, but is also alternately repelled thereby, the delight in the sublime does not so much involve positive pleasure as admiration or respect, i.e., merits the name of a negative pleasure. But the most important and vital distinction between the sublime and the beautiful is certainly this: that if, as is allowable, we here confine our attention in the first instance to the sublime in objects of nature (that of art being always restricted by the conditions of an agreement with nature), we observe that whereas natural beauty (such as is self-subsisting) conveys a finality in its form making the object appear, as it were, preadapted to our power of

judgment, so that it thus forms of itself an object of our delight, that which, without our indulging in any refinements of thought, but, simply in our apprehension of it, excites the feeling of the sublime, may appear, indeed, in point of form to contravene the ends of our power of judgement, to be ill-adapted to our faculty of presentation, and to be, as it were, an outrage on the imagination, and yet it is judged all the more sublime on that account.” [emphasis added]: 1790, The Critique of Judgement, Immanuel Kant, translated by James Creed Meredith 6 Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 The Age of Anxiety is a piece for orchestra and solo piano. The piece was composed from 1948 to 1949 in the US and Israel, and was revised in 1965. It is titled after W.H. Auden's poem of the same name, and dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky. 7

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (L’Estasi di Santa Teresa), located in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) 8

“energy is neither created nor destroyed” — Julius Robert Mayer, 1842

10 “there is no there there,” Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1937, p. 298.

I n t roduc t ion

Albert von Schrenck-Notzing – The medium Stanislawa P emission and resorption of an ectoplasmic substance through the mouth, 23 June 1913 15

several attributes and meanings: Hawk is the messenger of the spirit world / Use the power of focus / Take the lead when the time is right / Power to see, clear vision / Strong connection with spirit, increased spiritual awareness 22 “My name is Nobody.” The Odyssey

— Homer,

The earliest known visual depiction of a heart symbol, found in the letter S as a lover hands his heart to the beloved lady, in a manuscript of the Roman de la poire, mid-13th century. 12

16 “I’m worse at what I do best, And for

this gift I feel blessed, Our little group has always been / And always will until the end” —“Smells like teen spirit,” Written by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl and produced by Butch Vig

17 (see page 2 0) 18

Dear Cindy,

Moldavite

Morgan Ritter and Kristan Kennedy point at the dots in a Prince of Wales (Midpul) painting, “Body Marks,” during the installation of No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting (from the collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl) at PICA in Portland, Oregon, June 20 – August 16, 2015

L.A. Story is a 1991 American romantic comedy fantasy satire film, written by and starring Steve Martin, and directed by Mick Jackson. This publication was designed by means of the golden ratio. 20 (see page 36) 21 The hawk spirit animal or totem has

From: “Tom kennedy” Subject: Re: would you be willing? To: “Kristan Kennedy” Cc: (con t ’d on page 9)

pic t u r e s of t h e mo on w i t h t ee t h

(3, con t â&#x20AC;&#x2122;d f rom page 6)

(4 , con t â&#x20AC;&#x2122;d f rom page 6)

I n t roduc t ion

(con t ’d f rom page 7)

What is Spirit? That which permeates and gives rise to everything...energy at its subtlest level.....quantum state giving rise to all ...creative intelligence....Ananda.....in Sat (Being).... Chit (consciousness)....Ananda (Bliss). Holy Spirit as in Father(creator).. Son(created....reflection of creator)... Spirit (Love between them)....Tao that can’t be named is not and is beyond Spirit.....Spirit gives expression.... Spirit moves.....Spirit is Creative Intelligence....Spirit lives in the depths of our consciousness and is our consciousness at the deepest level....creativity is the process and ultimately the translation of content from the unqualified depth of being into a myriad of forms....Spirit is what we access in the creative process that flows through our particular collection of genes into form or forms to interact with other collection of genes and in fact all of creation. Flow.....Be the Flow. It is the embodying of Spirit within ourselves and the simultaneous expression of that which cannot be measured in relativity.... Why go on? Why create? Why move? Why be? Why not? Creativity is the extension of our soul which we might say is our individual expression of Spirit in activity....extending it affects the souls of others....in doing so more evolutionary energy is created which in turn opens up into several new energetic patterns etc. etc....It is not a linear process but multiplies in the collision of energies that are extended by all souls. We are part of the whole and are the whole simultaneously. Creativity thus pushes the stagnant limit of ourselves and gives way to the new in the moment of connection, in the moment of shared experience. So Why not? Peace....Busy day ahead running around. Hope this is helpful....love... dad 27 (see 2 6) 28

Monica the Medium / Spirit at Work, Season 1, Episode 2 “I am really trying to do my best and focus on what I was hired to do but I am just getting constantly bombarded by Spirits who are trying to come through and it is just really, really hard to ignore this. If I give a reading I could be letting down the store, but if I don’t give a reading I could be letting down Spirit it is not an easy decision either way it goes.” –“About Monica the Medium–her uncommon vocation provides an endless supply of emotional and engaging stories with a unique millennial perspective” — A BC Family 31 Zeitgeist or Geist seiner Zeit (the spir-

it of his time) — Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1975). Lectures on the philosophy of world history: introduction, reason in history (translated from the German edition of Johannes Hoffmeister from Hegel papers assembled by H. B. Nisbet). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press or rather “no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit.”Glenn Alexander Magee (2011), “Zeitgeist”, The Hegel Dictionary, Continuum International Publishing Group, p. 262 32 The curator of this exhibition / author of

this piece has no proof but rather a belief in this statement. Perhaps more so after learning about the work of Hilma Af Klimpt from Iris Müller-Westermann, Senior Curator

of International Art at Moderna Museet in Stockholm who was brought to lecture at Reed College, Portland Oregon at the invitation of Stephanie Snyder**, John and Anne Hauberg Director and Curator, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College on September 9, 2014. In an video interview produced for the Moderna Museet, MüllerWestermann says of Klimpt “ She comes across as a very thoughtful, aware and analytical artist, a brave artist who gave it her all. She followed her own visions and went all the way, at a time when that really wasn’t on the agenda for a woman...her works are about us living in a polarized world, everything that we perceive is based on the notion that there is male and female, day and night, hot and cold, we can’t see the world in any other way… but (Hilma) and others believed that behind all of this everything is interlinked and all things correspond and are linked to each other and beyond that this invisible to us is a world in which everything is one...as early as 1906 she started using letter forms in her paintings, combinations of letters and symbols which were difficult to interpret ...she says that “u” means spirit, and “w” means matter. Much of her work deals with matter developing from the spirit.”

Iris Müller-Westermann, in front of Hilma af Klint, Altarpiece, No. 1, Group X, Altarpieces, 1907 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk. * MPA’s project Nothing To You is both installation and performance and was hosted by Disjecta

Contemporary Art Center and curated by Chiara

Giovando for their Curator in Residence 2015-16 program, all other projects were curated by

Kristan Kennedy for the Portland Institute for

Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival, as part of the exhibition Pictures of the moon

with teeth, on view at 2500 NE Sandy Boulevard,

Portland, Oregon from Sept. 10 – Oct. 11, 2015 **Stephanie Snyder and Iris Müller-Westermann are curating an exhibition of Hilma Af Klimpt’s

work to further illuminate her spiritual and sci-

entific research methodologies as they migrate through different mediums including paintings

schematic drawings and journals. The exhibition

will open in the summer of 2016 and travels to

Reed College during the 2016/2017 academic year. 33 (see 32) 34 (see 32)

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DAWN KASPER

Dawn Kasper is an interdisciplinary performance artist. Kasper’s work has been exhibited widely; The Migros Museum, Zurich (2005), Human Resources, LA (2011), Tramway, Glasgow (2012), 2012 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2012) Redling Fine Art, LA (2014) David Lewis, NY (2014) Kasper lives and works in New York. Kasper was a participant in PICA’s pilot Creative Exchange Lab, Spring 2015 which took place in Portland Ore., and Caldera Art Center, Sisters, Ore.

K r istan K ennedy: What is spirit? Could it be the “constant epiphanies” you play out in your performances? daw n k asper: Spirit is defined as the soul, “The nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character.” Through exposing the process of creating an experience, I believe the result of what occurs during my performances could be recognized as an epiphany. However I’ll admit until now, it never occurred to me that anyone else could actually experience an epiphany as the result of a single performance. What comes from the result is up to the viewer to decide. Very simply put, it has been my aim to attempt to illustrate meaning. KK: Why go on? In this “age of anxiety” as you call it. Why go on as an artist?

“I know but when you ask me I don’t” — Saint Augustine of Hippo

DK: Funny you should ask me this because I ask myself this all the time. A few years ago I called one of my professors to ask him why he continues to make art. At the time I think I was about 5 or 6 years out of graduate school. I left a message with his secretary, and he never called me back. In school I was so eager to learn how to become an artist, it never occurred to me to think of sustainability. Looking at

For Pictures of the moon…, Kasper presented WHAT IS TIME?: a new site-specific performance composition illustrating historical perceptions of time in the ‘age of anxiety’. Referencing philosophical topics such as the meaning of life, existentialism, and time, this work intends to explore, interpret, and draw lines of interconnectivity through improvised movement and sound. Kasper performed each day from September 10 through September 20, 2015.

(Fig. 10/11–1)

Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, an electrical lineman in Indiana who encounters and forms an obsession with UFOs which in turn causes him to manifest his visions in sculptural form using, dirt, clay and detritus from his front lawn and mashed potatoes at the family dinner table, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stephen Spielberg, 1977

who I am now, having some more life experiences as an artist, I can tell you I go on simply because I can. What else would I be doing with my time? Practically speaking at this point on paper, it’s all I’m qualified to do. It’s all I know how to do. Art is everything, it’s all I think about, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. I love talking about it, looking at it, thinking about it, dreaming about it, and making it. I believe the ability to create is a gift to be cherished. KK: What role does improvisation play in your work? When a piece is made over time – or in the moment – with pieces and parts of your associative thinking, deep or tangential research, audience activation, machines, sound loops – where do you start? When does it end? Is your performance work live collage or a composition being organized in plain view? DK: Kind of feels like you’re asking me to reveal the punchline to a joke before hearing the joke first, chicken or the egg? In a way, I’m always beginning and the work never ends. Always ongoing, I’m always working, even while in line at the grocery store, driving, or doing my taxes, it’s everywhere. Collecting the pieces as they all fold into each other like fabric, or a dream. Fragmented evolving feelings that lead to the acting out of images. Improvisation plays a huge role in my work and

Daw n K a sper

in my practice. In order to perform the endurance-based performances during the beginning stages of my career, I had to first recognize all of the potential safety concerns. Check out the space and its surroundings. Physically train so that my body was fit and in shape – no sex, no red meat, no soda, no sugar, no drugs, no alcohol. However, there was only so much I could prepare for in advance. This work required a significant amount of energy to be left to chance. I had to prepare for all of the possible outcomes, possible sceneries, what could happen? What could go wrong? I believe this type of preparation allowed for my initial introduction to improvisation. Ultimately, the performances begin when I enter the space, and they end when I leave the space. All of my performances and installations are a collage of residual ideas, concepts, images, thoughts, and questions. The ephemera plays out like a visual poem, or visual score, created over time, the process exposed. Therefore, putting the fragmented pieces together to create one performance that eventually crescendos into an entire body of work. It takes forever and it is ongoing, like locating clues to the meaning of life, it becomes an obsession. Like the quest for the Holy Grail, Shangri La, El Dorado, or Atlantis, the search for meaning never ends, even after death. I’m simply telling the story of my life by exposing the process of my personal journey.

during the work. I believe a more intimate environment – smaller audience, smaller room, good sound system, nice, gentle, clean conditions – makes for a better experience to understand and engage in the full potential of a performance. KK: You will be performing inside of this exhibition everyday for ten days. When you leave, the exhibition will go on. What do you hope to leave behind? DK: I hope to leave behind a sculptural sound installation that embodies the experiences had by all while performing in the space over the course of the 10-day performance. KK: When we worked together on your first visit here, you lectured at

KK: You have described to me and others – in lectures and in conversation that your work has evolved and that you are now seeking to make things with a greater sense of intimacy. Why is intimacy as an artistic gesture important to you? DK: Consideration of intimacy with regard to how the audience experiences my performances is important to my practice. I want to allow for all possible energies to come through

(Fig. 13–1)

(Fig. 12–1)

Exhibition space awaits Dawn Kasper’s performance

9/7/2015 1:38 PM: “Just a little light packing,” text message received from Dawn Kasper to Kristan Kennedy

the university I teach at and gave my students the best list of sources. I think I asked for three and you sent more than thirty radical and important videos and texts for them to explore. Many of them were inspiring lectures by other artists and thinkers. What if I asked you to send me three sources that have helped you arrive at this work you are about to make. In what directions would you point me? DK:

laphamsquarterly.org ∕time ∕captain-clock laphamsquarterly.org ∕time ∕maps ∕ marking-time http: ∕ ∕www.laphamsquarterly.org ∕time ∕ daylight-savings »

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akio suzuki

K r istan K ennedy: What is spirit? Or rather what compels you to make art?

Tr a nslators: a k i onda a nd

A iko M asubuchi

Ak io Suzuk i: By “spirit” do you mean inspiration? I think that with things like that, you wait for them to descend on you…. In terms of me, I don't aggressively go about trying to make art. It's more about how I can respond to a “place or nature (a situation)” that I am given. KK: Why go on? Why go on as an artist when so much of what we make or do is of immaterial value? AS: It's “my way of living” that I have cultivated slowly over time so I have no choice but to continue down it. When a “theme” appears in front of you, the only way to move forward is to personally overcome it. KK: What is your hope for Nami? How do you find the sound you are looking for (in reference to Nami)? When do you know you have the radios tuned or their position just right? Since sound is moving and filling space is there anyway to control it? Since this is the piece's second life has it's potential meaning or resonance changed for you? AS: Rather than looking for it, it's more about really listening with a lot of curiosity. In regards to the placement of the radios, I don't decide where they go, rather it's decided by the relationship between the piece and its environment. My job is to help assist that relationship. Nami in Portland is in some ways a composition piece for me. The actual installation will be done by other people and so the piece will leave from my hands and go on a walk of its own. As a result, I'm even more curious about how the piece will function in the massive warehouse space. »

(Fig. 14–1)

Preparation for Akio Suzuki’s Nami

A k io Suz u k i

(Fig. 15â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1)

Tin foil solution does not stop electromagnetic interference, variable speed turn table engineered by Spencer ByrneSeres for Akio Suzuki

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AKIO SUZUKI WITH AKI ONDA

Interv iew

conducted for

Issue Project Room, August 26, 2012;

R e-Pr inted w ith per mission

from A k i Onda Tr a nslator:

A iko M asubuchi

Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, visual artist. Onda was born in Japan and resides in New York. He is particularly known for his “Cassette Memories” project—works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of more than two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In recent years, Onda often works in interdisciplinary fields and collaborates with filmmakers and visual artists. His on-going collaborations include Nervous Magic Lantern with Ken Jacobs, improvisation trio with Michael Snow and Alan Licht, site-specific happenings with Akio Suzuki, and audio-visual installations with Raha Raissnia. Akio Suzuki is known as a pioneer of sound art, but the breadth of his activities and the form of his works far exceeds the normal boundaries of sound art. It is perhaps more as a “quester after sound and space” that he has received the most attention from artists in many fields. Suzuki’s journey as an artist began in 1963 with a performance at Nagoya station, in which he threw a bucket full of junk down a staircase. The inspiration behind this performance is the idea that if one were to hurl an object down a well-balanced stairway, a pleasant rhythm might be the result—took the desire to “listen” as its subject. That desire to hear, to listen has remained the one constant in Suzuki’s stance as an artist. During the sixties, Suzuki’s sense of playfulness led him to undertake a series of Self-Study Events, where he explored the processes of “throwing” and “following”, taking

the natural world as his collaborator. The experiences he gained in these events led him in the seventies to invent an echo instrument he named Analapos. The instrument’s structure resembles that of two mirrors facing each other, reflecting into infinity. As an extension of the principles underlying Analapos, Suzuki constructed the Hinatabokko no kukan (Space in the Sun) in 1988. This space consists of two huge parallel walls, in between which the artist can sit all day and purify his hearing by listening to the reflected sounds of nature. This space leads the artist to discover a new method of listening. Suzuki himself comments: “Sound, which had been conceptually imprisoned in various spaces, is freed to circle the world.” His performances and installations have been presented at major venues internationally including: Yokohama City Art Gallery, Japan, 2010; The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2010; The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, 2007; Gelbe Musik, Berlin, Germany, 2007; The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan, 2005; British Museum, UK, 2003 and DAAD Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 2000. He has also participated in major international events and Festivals including: Tuned City, Brussels, 2013; LISTE Art Fair Basel, Switzerland, 2013; MaerzMusik, Berlin, Germany, 2012; Nuit Blanche Festival, Paris, France, 2004; Adelaide Festival, Australia, 1999; Sonambiente Festival, Berlin, Germany, 1996; Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987; and Festival d’Automne, Paris, France, 1978. For TBA:15, Aki Onda and Akio Suzuki performed the duet ke i te ki at Disjecta on Sept 14, 2015.

Ak i Onda: Your first work was the happening, Kaidan ni Mono wo Nageru [Throwing Things at the Stairs] at Nagoya station in 1963. Why did you think to do this and can you let us know what events lead up to it? Also, what was the sound like when you actually threw the things inside the bucket against the stairs? Ak io Suzuk i: It was really an unplanned first performance. I was taking time off to study for my university entrance exams and for a year I stayed with an architect in Nagoya who took me under his wing. Japan is a small country so I wanted to design buildings that made use of staircases. I thought I would approach the idea via sound by throwing all sorts of junk against existing staircases. So, at Nagoya station, owned at the time by the Japanese National Railway, I found a set of stairs that lead to the platform of the Chuo line and set forth with my task. Of course, at first, I hesitated, but at the time, the art world was all about Gutai and in the era of happenings. So, I found my courage and got to work. But just as in the letter “X” in which two lines intersect, when my two concepts about Junk and Music intersected and I was beyond this

(Fig. 16 –1)

Throwing Things at the Stairs, Photo by Suzuki Nana

A k io Suz u k i a n d A k i On da

point of intersection, the actual sounds that emerged (the clangs ♪ and the splashes ♪), as I was finally being taken away by the station’s public safety employees, were surprisingly more raw and fresh than what I had imagined. It was then that I realized my goal to diminish the gap between music born out of concepts and actual real-life noise. That was how I began my study in sound. Since then, I still experience things as the “intersection of X.” AO: From here on, I believe that echoes became the point of inspiration in your work. Why echoes and not the originating sound itself? AS: I was already 23 or 24 years old when I decided to quit architecture and found myself in Sound. I was self-taught and my teacher was Nature... That’s why, immediately, Self-Study style performances that I did for myself became my main arena for study. Pieces such as Ogawa wo Tazuneru (Visiting the Stream) and Echo Pointo wo Saguru (In Search of Echo Point) were born out of this practice. Immersing the body into the surrounding environment became my fundamental approach and it was not until later that my experiences during my confused 20s began to emerge in my work. Echo Pointo wo Saguru is a result of me playing with the echoes that I heard after shouting out into the open mountains.1 It was by taking heed of this phenomenon of echoes that I created my own echo instrument ANALA POS. My current project in progress, oto-date is an extension of the performances that I held for myself during this period. There is a famous haiku by Matsuo Basho that goes “such the old pond/frog jumps in/water sounds.”2 The landscape in this haiku only becomes apparent once the frog takes action. Furthermore, the picture that one imagines from this haiku differs in a myriad of ways

depending on the readers’ unique experiences. “Nagekake (to cast, to throw)” and “Tadori (to trace and to follow)” are two words that I throw at myself in order to heighten my senses. If I were a mathematician, I guess it would be like seeking the most beautiful equation… Echoes happened to be the kind of sound that was exemplary of an era when futuristic musical instruments began to come about in the name of “convenience for civilization.” Think about karaoke and how we sound better than our actual abilities. My own petty analog instruments, though, were quickly overtaken by digital ones (laughs). AO: C an you elaborate on your selfmade instrument, ANALA POS – an instrument that is very characteristic of you as an artist?

was calling out to the mountains, I did not fail to notice the sound that was being created out of the coincidental meeting of two objects. ANALA POS is made of two one-lidded cylinders attached to each other by a long steel coil. The coil is stretched taut and you make it ring by either using your voice or by touching the spring itself. In 1976, six years after its invention, I had them up as an installation at a gallery in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. The birth of this weirdo performer happened when the gallery owner, Kusuo Shimizu suggested that I play at 4 every day. It was then that I met Toru Takemitsu. Among many things, Toru invited me to play his film music (for Empire of Passion, Nagisa Oshima, 1978 etc.) as well as participate in the exhibition, MA-Espacel temps au Japon at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, 1978. That was my first international performance. My career began in a flat gallery space so I experimented with everyday objects and explored playing to audiences within the confinements of four walls. AO: In 1981, you did a residency in New York through the Asian Cultural Council (ACC). You had many performances then. What were the impressions you received from New York at the time, and can you tell me about these performances?

AS: The application I sent to the Japan Institute for Promoting Invention and Innovation for ANALA POS was a rather fancy one since the name derives from a portmanteau of the word “analog” and “postmodern.” The construction of this instrument is similar to the toy telephones I played with as a child – with two cups attached to either end of a piece of string. When I

(Fig. 17–1)

analapos ,

photo by Keiichi Tahara, 1978

AS: I think it was 1981 when I was in New York through the ACC residency program and participated in an exhibition under the direction of John Cage called Sound on Paper: Music Notation in Japan. I felt very honored when my graphic notations piece Mudai (Untitled) appeared on the cover of the exhibition catalogue. For the opening, I performed a semi-improvisational piece called SOUNDSPHERE. I have never been able to forget the “bravo!” that came from Nam June

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Paik and Shigeko Kubota. Then in 1983, JAPAN HOUSE invited me to play in Performing Original Music. However, we were heavily snowed in that day and ended up playing to only a handful of people. During this time, I became friends with Marianne Amacher who passed away in 2009. One time when I visited her apartment, as a joke, I inhaled some mold that was growing on a dirty plate. As a result, I developed empyema upon my return to Japan. I have always hated going to hospitals and so a year later, I found myself having a near-death experience. I was climbing the Tower of Babel when I time-slipped in my dream to the top of the tower, which I had been wondering about for quite some time. Once I was up there, everything was shining white and surrounded by cliffs that seemed to lack any sense of distance. Just like in my youth, I started to play by calling out. The sparkling sound that echoed back to me belonged in the inaudible region. Ecstatic, I threw myself into this game, consumed by greed to enjoy it all to myself. The moment I decided that I wanted to share this joy with a good friend of mine, I sat up on my bed and just like Rodin’s The Thinker, I held my head in my hands and dug my nails into my skull to endure the searing pain I suddenly felt. That was when I came to. Later, I thought that maybe during their last moments, people die immersed in the things that they like doing the most. I confirmed then that it was okay to be “Sound being.”

AO: I n the late ’80s, for your project Space in the Sun, you spent sunrise to sunset listening to the sound of nature, staying in between two walls that you had built. Can you talk about this? AS: T he ’80s was when I self-proclaimed myself to be a “conceptual performer.” Space in the Sun was my way of returning back to basics, back to my youth when I spent all my days listening to the sound of nature. I chose the place and chose to practice asceticism in order to concentrate on listening. Doors of opportunity kept opening up for me once I decided on doing it at the northern most tip of the meridian line - the line which determines the standard time in Japan. The Tango region in Kyoto is north of 135 degrees along the east longitude and is the birthplace of the chirimen fabric. In the midst of this declining industry, the people of the region gathered and started a support association saying they were happy that I had followed the meridian line and ended up where they were. My comrades and I were given a mountain and shelter. We migrated there from Tokyo and were able to work on the project. However, my habit of becoming lazy soon became apparent and I was given a two year restriction (my deadline was September 23rd, 1988—the day of the Autumn equinox). Everyday I worked furiously at 150m above sea level. I made about 10,000 bricks using the red dirt from the land in order to build the “wall space”—two walls facing each other with a seven-meter wide gap in between. The sizes of the two walls were based according to my instincts (3.5m tall and the 17m wide). To spend all day facing nature was an exceedingly solitary project, but after almost being buried alive at one point by a collapsing wall, there finally came a time when I was at the point of intersection,

just like in the letter “X.” On the day of the solstice, I sat by the center of the northern wall and was immediately bitten on the neck by several mosquitoes - it was an unexpected way to begin. In order to make my many supporters proud, I applied my entire body and soul into this moment - an irreplaceable experience in my life. Just when this point of all intersections felt like it was on the verge of breaking down, I heard the autumn insects call to each other and heard the cries of the mountain birds. It was then that I was enlightened to the idea that “when humans listen to these cries, they replace them with words.” After this point, I acquired through this bodily experience, the skill to become one with nature like the trees that surrounded me. AO: From the ’80s onwards, you became more active in the European sound art scene and your work has more often been presented in the art world rather than the music world. You became friendly with the likes of Rolf Julius and Hans Peter Kuhn and also participated in exhibitions such as Documenta 8 in Kassel, 1987 and the Sonambiente Festival for Eyes and Ears in Berlin, 1996. How do you think these experiences aided you? AS: You’re right. Since my experience with Space in the Sun, my approach towards sound has definitely shifted. However, it’s difficult to be self-aware of these things... Well, in the ’90s, I began sound installations based on the concept of Sound but do not actually emit any noise. My pieces Flower in Saarbrucken Stadtgalerie, Germany, 1997; Pyramid in SoundCulture 99 in Auckland, New Zealand and MAKE UP in SanjyoShirokawa, Kyoto were all part of this concept. However, people like Rolf Julius and Terry Fox who appreciated and understood my work

(Fig. 19 –1) (Fig. 18–1)

Space in the Sun, photo by Junko Wada, 1988

oto-date. Ichinomiya, Japan, 2008 (Fig. 19 –2)

Akinyan, drawing by Akio Suzki, 2009

A k io Suz u k i a n d A k i On da

is probably irrelevant by now but I sprayed inside one of three standing phone booths and taped it shut with a bunch of construction tape until the paint dried. Oto-date is composition. A kind of “tadpole” placed in the streets. The concept of “listening as a performance” is dependent upon the senses of the individual who stands in these places. have all departed from this world. I feel left behind. AO: You initially revealed your work, oto-date at the 1996 Sonambiente Festival for Eyes and Ears. How did you come to this piece? AS: Ah, yes, yes, oto-date can also be seen as a piece that came about from the idea to “be on the side of the listener.” After receiving my invitation to the festival, I spent a year thinking hard about what I wanted to do. It is a piece that uses my earlier work Echo Pointo wo Saguru from my “Self-Study Event” days as a sort of a blueprint. It was just around the time when the capital city of Germany was changing to Berlin and I listened to the symphony of sound found in the midst of the city’s construction boom. I worked to find listening points in the sandbanked islands that Berlin originated from (specifically the islands with museums such as the Pergamon and the southern fishing islands). I spent over a month locating 25 spots and marked each one with my oto-date logo using white spray paint. The logo is the shape of ears and footprints combined. I had not alerted the police about this so it was not only unwarranted “graffiti” but because half my locations incorporated a bit of humor, I ended up receiving the nickname “Bad Cat (Bose Katze).” To give an example, I marked a section of the road where the water rose to about 10cm high after the rain. Also, this

AO: After that, you presented oto-date in various cities around Europe and Asia. What did you learn from these experiences? AS: Yes, this project triggered a series of chain reactions in places like Strasbourg (France), Chu-wei (Taiwan), Paris (France), Cork (Ireland), Koln (Germany), Turin (Italy), Bristol (UK), Brest (France), Bolzano (Italy), Aichi ( Japan), Kanagawa ( Japan), Kyoto, Tokyo and etc... Maybe over 30 locations. One great advantage was that I got to feel the culture and the landscapes of these places. I am certainly not doing this out of the desire to conquer. I think it has more to do with being given the time to be challenged by the act of “truly listening.” It is as if oto-date is taking a walk of its own. By the way, the term oto(sound)-date(point) is in reference to an actual term “no-date” which is a term for an outdoor location used to practice the art of tea.

AO: A while ago, I saw your cartoon alter-ego Akinyan at the Gelbe Musik in Berlin. Can you tell us about that? I often see this “spirit of play” appear in many of your works. AS: Maybe I am merely “Akio Suzuki”…. Some people say that they can only see me as a cat and therefore calls me Akinyan [translator’s note: Aki (his name) -nyan (meow)]. I’m like a cheshire cat roaming the world I guess (laughs). I’ve had a rubber stamp picture of Akinyan, leaving the site of one of his Mr. Bean-style pranks, used on the cover of a catalog. AO: Akio, you don’t seem to create your pieces all by yourself but rather to create an experiential space to mingle with nature and other human beings. There is something game-like in the nature to your work. Where does this liberalism and gentleness come from? Your attitude seems like a rarity in the sound art world. AS: When I was kid, I lived right next to school. I only went to school after I heard the school bell ring. I would clamber over a secret fence to get to class. After class was over, I would leave the regular way just like my friends. As a result, I got into the habit of loitering around before finally heading home. I think these times spent meandering opened me up to observing nature and are probably the reason why I can still become infatuated with strange and silly things. In a world where speed is on the rise, maybe there is a place for an absent-minded cat like me. »

1 Akio originally said, Yamabiko asobi: a game that one plays by shouting words at open mountains and listening to the echoes. 2 translation A. Masubuchi. Original Japanese: 古池や蛙飛び込む水の音 (Furu ike ya/ kawazu tobikomu/ mizu no oto)

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Alice Notley1 “Perhaps Not For You”

There is

the audience

could see how

audience

you are peaceful and the

because

there is

flies

languid, glossy

no audience. But the audience will still bring So if you speak only to

its own feelings

imagined beings

to these

what does “only” mean?

words

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

not seeing you

not seeing

This building formerly a restaurant . . .

what I

this small room has been scraped of its paint

am present for.

and denuded of most former furniture: but also it has grown in size—can a building be

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

enticed to grow? Because it is now as big as an airplane hangar.

Who has left me here, I have.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Who are your Your

familiars beautiful face

unbloodied beneath

flies

Come into the

enlarging Mother of flies your

page if you dare

beauty

to turn to. If only

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A lice No t le y

I think this is hard. (That’s part of it) Because he invented your shape I do mean

How they prefer him must go.

structure I think this is difficult singing because he invented you badly Length and repetition

everything is still hidden.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

create power

If this voice can return like

a body

I was to impale myself on a quadrangular

It resembles something that’s already been,

steel rod, with a blunt end with a blunt end

Changing.

which would make puncture

more difficult

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

and I tried—it’s too hard. I can’t Okay said the voice. I can’t

Chestnuts broken

Okay

autumnal fungi so you will remember, that

then I was weeping

But it’s blood! I’m

crying blood! I

it’s fall

outside

falling. you’ll go down

screamed this is no story for the puling That’s part of it said the voice.

social classes

No not at all it’s for us my familiars say

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

who let me weep blood on their ground.

Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

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KARL LARSSON

Karl Larsson is an artist, poet, and editor. These diverse positions have coalesced in an artistic practice that can be described as both editorial and literary, but differs from writing in a conventional sense in its focus on spatial experience, embodiment and activism.

K r istan K ennedy: What is spirit? K ar l Larsson: Wittgenstein already answered this, “Where our language suggests a body and there is none — there, we should like to say, is a spirit.” If one is of a melancholic kind (I’m not, by the way) perhaps one sees some other kind of spirit in later utterances like ”I don’t want to die in America. I am a European — I want to die in Europe.” But I think the most honest answer is: I don’t know. If there is one thing I’m also totally okay with not knowing what it is, it is this one thing you ask right now. KK: Why go on? Why go on writing or making exhibitions? What value do you think or hope these pursuits have for yourself — for the world?

For Pictures of the moon…, Larsson uses H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace book, published after the author’s death as a starting point for his own book Commonplace where fragments of horror, poetry, craft, CAD, waste, design, play, and climate change assemble in a book and an exhibition where the unfinished idea, the formless form, and fear of what can never be fully grasped works as a methodological engine. For both Commonplace the book and exhibition, Larsson worked with his longtime collaborator, designer Pascal Prosek, Portlandbased artist Morgan Ritter and Gary Robbins of Container Corps. Ritter contributed to the exhibition through a sustained correspondence and collaboration with Larsson which resulted in a series of objects and helped to shape the conceptual framework for the show. Robbins worked with Prosek and Larsson to develop and print a special edition of Commonplace.

KL: I have a political framework that I have applied on what I do. I have at some point convinced myself that working with poetry in a certain way and with sculpture in a certain way is the theoretical possibility I have at this place in time to do something that also makes

(Fig. 22–1)

Pascal Prosek typesetting the Commonplace publication with Gary Robbins at Container Corps in Portland, Ore.

sense for others. What I have always been most interested in is real creativity and real critical thinking (I mean not interface creativity and judgment — populistic forms of both) and this interest is an interest in life itself, of course. It’s like being someone who loves. And I think I am. In my little world, when you have once been pushed to this level — that you are somebody who loves — then you can’t go back. You can be an exhausted lover at times, but you can’t go back to being a hater, or doubter, or whatever the opposite would be. KK: We began talking about this project several years ago, it started with a simple correspondence and grew into two residencies, a book, an exhibition, the introduction of several new collaborators, Morgan Ritter and Gary Robbins at Container Corps, and the bringing in of your long time collaborator Pascal Prosek. Can you talk a little about where you hope to end up — and why you have decided to bring others into your process and project? KL: The first time, it was because of the strong sense of community I felt when arriving in Portland. It would be a bit cheesy to involve the curator in the artistic production, otherwise you would have been in the show too. Morgan wrote a letter to me on a brown paper bag at an artist talk I had. Then she gave it to me. So, it was like we worked together even before we got introduced. She later described it more as conversational than collaborational, which I think is a brilliant distinction. I always have conversations with people before an exhibition and acknowledging that is only fair. I hope everybody feels included. But also, I know that is difficult…collaborations are rarely fair. You always end up doing maximum 99% of what you would like something to be. Once at art

K a r l L a r s son

academy, a professor asked me to participate in his gallery show, and I felt like I had never compromised so much in my life. But I think what we do here at TBA will be a good conversation. Not collaboration, but conversation. KK: H.P. Lovecraft, witches, wormy wood, weirded objects, slenderman, some words, some blankets, and other things are all going to be coming together in one room — or have been a part of the collection of influences that comprise Commonplace. What is the mood of the exhibition? How do these things link up with one another, and where does your book come in? You talked to me about wanting to make a formless thing — to what end? KL: To where the tentacle ends! No, but seriously, lately things that I have always seen as weaknesses in my work have begun to get some attention. Not so much as weaknesses, but as question marks or curiosities. Question marks and curiosities are very frightful in a commercial context, and I think perhaps I was focusing a bit too much on that before. I was obsessed with understanding it, by trying to grasp the source of any authority in the field where I work.

Now I feel rather different. If I have the chance to exhibit I should show strength through weakness. Not be an open wound or heroic of course, but when I have the chance to speak as an authority, I should do so in a way that is as varied as possible. It should not only be about occupying a space with your work, but to also try to make more space with it. How does this all connect to Lovecraft…? Perhaps I felt this extended space in the format of his “Commonplace book” which is the format I have borrowed for my

(Fig. 23–1)

Stabilizing brace for Morgan Ritter's stucco hand, fabricated by Kent Richardson next to interrupted bottle sculpture by Karl Larsson fabricated at Axiom Custom Products, Portland, Ore.

(Fig. 23–2)

Concrete block fabricated by Sam Orner and Spencer Byrne-Seres in Portland, Ore. rests on dolly

book Commonplace. In this book 221 ideas of Lovecraft’s are collected and almost each and every one of them are simple thresholds to amazing rooms of imagination. I simply got inspired…in the sense that I felt it made sense…it was an impressive form in itself — and at the same time somehow formless. Some basic interests of mine also come together in their shared lack of concrete outline. Horror — it is exciting, and always fleeing definition…climate change — it happens, we feel it, but we can’t say exactly what is going on or what the consequences will be, immigration issues, interface issues, capital issues, there is much more still… more or less all serious things are just like clouds today — what we project upon them is what they will look like. Sometimes contemporary art feels so hopelessly behind its time in its need to be conceptually comprehensible. John Giorno once said that poetry is 70 years behind art, perhaps it is the other way around today. Now when I think about it, perhaps that is why my next exhibition is called “Leaving the 20th century.” »

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bill Jenkins

Bill Jenkins is an artist born in California, now based in New York City. He has had solo shows with Laurel Gitlen in New York and with Jancar Jones in their former San Francisco location. Jenkins’ work has been included in group shows at Sekkima Jenkins & Co., NY, James Cohan, NY, Yvon Lambert, Paris and Feature Inc., NY. Jenkins had a collaborative show with Alina Tenser at the Suburban in Chicago, and is collaborating on a show with Chadwick Rantanen at Michael Thibault in LA concurrent with PICA’s 2015 TimeBased Art Festival. Jenkins’ work is represented by Laurel Gitlen.

For Pictures of the moon…, Jenkins continues his experiments with light and architecture converting 8,000 square feet of dilapidated warehouse into an ambitious installation work constructed and composed of a system of tarps and ducts to affect and capture the light. The installation evokes mass infrastructures, but is made of readily available materials and deployed in this contradictory space. It raises questions of individual agency in relation to the complex historical, financial, and social structures that form spaces for living and working.

K r istan K ennedy: What is spirit? Bill Jenk ins: I think spirit is a very open term for things, events, feelings that are not understood. What do I know about the universe? But I think spirit or spirits accrue when knowledge lacks behind perception. I think and feel from a position of both absolute doubt and being open to the subject. If I had to say, I think spirit = memory and all of the ways memories can come and go, and come back again. Memories not just of individuals but held in common amongst, families, areas, societies, cities, etc. KK: Why go on? Why go on making things in a word full of things? BJ: On the whole-world scale, I don’t have any redemptive answer to this. Considering this question, right away my guilt finds a steep slippery slope of rationales towards utopian ideals…and then I think of the boundlessness of human desires foiling utopian attempts at equitable distribution of resources. From there I bounce into and around a middle ground of both feeling hopeless, and also that it’s imperative that working towards a better world goes forward. On a more practical level, I doubt the waste created by artists or “the arts” (excluding big budget movies) compares at all to the waste of manufacturing and mass consumption habits. Art and artists are culpable for sure, but I don’t feel like I’m cluttering the world. Conversely, I’m refusing to abide by the norms presented by business and society of how to think about and consume objects. I make objects so I can have a voice to describe ideas and observations I have that verbal or written descriptions would not

communicate. I don’t mean to say that my ideas are beyond the realm of words and symbols, just that I feel most connected to my physical-temporal encounters with things (all things), and I want to communicate in physicalities/experiences/aura. I regard the mythical “aura” of artworks to be a very real physical sensation – but more generally I think all observable things have aura and there is a spectrum or tonal scale to the phenomenon. Hopefully what I am putting out into the world slightly advances the grammar of physical experiences that are available to people to think and feel with. As with any new technology, it is impossible to control how it will be used; by opening new territories of feeling, there is always the potential that those new realms could be co-opted to sell or produce new consumer goods. KK: Y ou have referred to the work you do as performing a “useless utility.” Can you talk about your impetus for moving light around a room? BJ: Since last year I have been thinking of myself as less of an artist who makes objects and more of a pseudo business entity who is an unneeded and cumbersome middle

(Fig. 24–1)

Hoops are prepped for Bill Jenkins' arrival

Bi ll J en k i ns

and why did it start to morph into the system of channels, ducts, loops ?

person between the “natural resources” of architecture: space and light and the users/consumers of those resources. It started as an attempt to solve a common problem in New York City apartments (and many other urban areas) of having little or no light in any given room. I thought about how I could fix this issue from a non-specialist understanding of light or architecture, and instead as a consumer of space and light. The more I thought about light and space within buildings as “resources,” the more I started to think of American land art works moving around large masses of earth to create sculptures. Loosely referencing Smithson, Holt, Heizer, and Serra, I’ve been treating light and space like a mass that I can move. The hang-up though is that this isn’t actually possible. It is not a viable solution to urban problems of limited light and space. Working with light, space or mass tends to become instantly romantic, sublime or extremely technical. I’m trying to resist these allusions and focus on “fixing” or “providing a service” for problems I see in architectural spaces with the same materials and haste that one would use to fix a broken window or a leak in a pinch; architectural triage.

(Fig. 25–1)

Bill Jenkins during installation

(Kind of like how credit cards pretend to make things easier for a person and or business that accepts them, but in reality, they are adding a needless and covertly nefarious layer between the exchange of money and goods in order to skim money from consumers and businesses alike. Credit cards are also physically unassuming relative to the actions they can be used to induce. My installations are a less benevolent-seeming and foot in mouth version of this maneuver.) I’ve been imagining an alternative to Richard Serra’s famous list of adjectives (“to roll, to bend, to press”, etc.) that goes more like “to neglect, to waste, to forget, to dump, to make haste, to cut corners, to loose, to leave, to ‘pass the buck’,” etc. This list would describe all the human forces (or lack of) that bring about the kind of lived-inness character of places. KK: T his space and this radical transformation you have undertaken started with a few simple visits to a very raw warehouse. Over time the installation has taken form... can you talk about some of the decisions you have made here – when did you start to "see" the space in its future state and how

BJ: When I first looked at the space I knew already that I wanted to build a system to harvest the light coming into the space and deposit it in holding areas, which I had been thinking about as something like a cistern for light. The site visits, and then watching video documentation of the space, helped to decide what the design for this system should be. My first concrete idea was to create circular pools for the light to be siphoned into via reflective ductwork. The scale of the space is many times larger than anything I have worked with before, and I wanted to reference large municipal or logistics forms, like pipelines, train tunnels, airplane fuselage, sewer systems. I decided to stand the forms of the pools on their sides and leave both ends open to make something that is like a section of a large tunnel or pipe. To me these forms suggest the movement of resources as well as functioning as exaggerated imaging devices that “look” upon or frame the space beyond them. The large apertures are without optics though, and only capture and present the space as it is. Thinking again of iconic American land art works and how they are often sited in proximity to large-scale resource extraction operations, I wanted to bring something of both of these kinds of activities into an interior urban situation. »

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Tannaz Farsi

Utilizing the language and history of sculpture, installation, and conceptual art practices, Tannaz Farsi’s work highlights and re-presents objects and images that contextually start from a collective experience found in the current news or within the milieu of our cultural archive. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Disjecta (Portland, OR), Pitzer Art Galleries (Claremont, CA), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art (Grand Rapids, MI), Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, and Sculpture Center (Cleveland, OH). She has been granted residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Ucross Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. She received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in 2014. Born in Iran, Tannaz Farsi lives and works in Eugene, Oregon where she is faculty at the University of Oregon.

For Pictures of the moon…, Tannaz Farsi renders in light text by Bertolt Brecht with 5,000 LEDs programmed to brighten and intensify parts of this well-known author’s writing. The decentralized method of reading and understanding this text disrupts narrative, highlighting words as “vehicles of ideas” and with compelling simplicity suggests a thesis on the relationship of visibility to power.

is because it goes deep and dark into the power dynamic of rich and poor? K r istan K ennedy: What is spirit? tannaz farsi: I love that the latin translation for this equals breath – an operation that is conscious and unconscious – availing us to be present or helping us bypass the moment; a type of echo between the seen, the felt and the imagined.

TF: A ctually, that is not quite the translation that I used – it reads – some are in the dark and others are in the light / we see them in the light / in the darkness we do not see them. My work is continually influenced by my experience of other works of art, and this spans visual

KK: W hy go on? Why go on as an artist when the work that we do is sometimes unseen? Not just because lack of opportunity but because of indifference or lack of perceived value? TF: M y relationship to art has changed over the years. In my 20s, it was a lifeline that helped me give form to ideas about community, value, and identity. In my 30s, I started to think about art making as a “profession.” In this coming decade, I want to say no to rules; no to constraints; no to austerity measures in my art practice! There is a type of freedom in art making that gives me autonomy and agency; it is deeply rewarding to realize ideas, give it form, make it better, and learn from the process. It is an uphill battle when value is generated from the vantage point of a capitalist system – where productivity is the desired outcome and the act of laboring itself is undervalued. I have trouble understanding what collective value is at this moment and why I should feel compelled to prescribe to it. KK: Can you tell me how you arrived at selecting the verse, "There are some who are in the darkness, And the others are in the light, And you see the ones in brightness, Those in the darkness drop from sight," from Brecht's, Three Penny Opera? It is a verse that is seldom used in modern versions of the play/poem/song. Do you think that

(Fig. 26 –1)

Sight-line featuring Tannaz Farsi's moving sign

Ta n n a z Fa r si

art, sound, writing, theory, news and images. In this case, I saw a program of music by Kurt Weill, the German composer, sung in German by an amazing soprano. It included The Ballad of Mac the Knife, a song from the Three Penny Opera, and the lyrics are written by Brecht. When I was looking at the translation, this verse somehow illuminated something humanistic about power, about class, about poverty, about difference without

placing geographic specificity – it somehow emotionalized suffering. The play as a whole is a critique of capitalism. I am not sure why it isn’t always included – but for me the tenor shifts from symbolically describing the brutality of this character to a didactic use of language. Maybe it is a jarring departure in form that doesn’t make sense in popular covers.

KK: How did you arrive at the form of your piece? Why language? Why light? Why 5,000 lights? Why do we see it from front and back and why the choice to have the text erode and reappear over time? In other words how did this work emerge from a thought into a sculpture? TF: I was messing around in Photoshop using the selection tool and it glitched – somehow the text became hypnotic and alive, and I really loved the idea of mimicking this selection as a means of materially and experientially translating the text. The number of lights are dictated by the text itself. The piece has a complex circuitry, and it is completely exposed in the back – I am always interested in juxtapositions of objects, of material qualities and oscillating between control and chaos. While the front is hypnotic and seamless as a surface, the back becomes corporeal, reminiscent of hair, map lines, and it supports an anxiety associated with these territories. »

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PETER SIMENSKY

Peter Simensky’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum 52, New York; The Swiss Institute, New York; and Project Row Houses, Houston. Selected group exhibitions at Sculpture Center, NY; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Mass Moca, North Adams; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery New York; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York among others. Simensky’s Gold Dust was recently featured in Cabinet’s Money Issue. He has received awards and grants from LMCC, NYFA, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He lives and works in Portland, OR and Brooklyn, NY.

K r istan K ennedy: Why go on? Why go on when the work we do has an indeterminate or immaterial value? Peter Simensk y: I don’t think the work could exist in the first place without those two conditions. When the work comes into being it is also slipping away, that is its beauty. Not just in a poetic sense but formally, materially. A speck of gold is nothing, and in a vile packed on top of each other at the cost of several hundred dollars, it still feels somewhat insignificant. But once cast off as a sea of particles moving in the air, it opens up, becomes a mass, a sculptural form, a column of light, a dancing vibrating hive – simply to go away again. The drama is in those moments of coming together, but ultimately, the work resides as well in the falling away, residue, absence, or memory. I hope the video captures some of this transience while recreating the magic. But I am equally interested in the remains of the event itself – as a footprint or a sparkling gold particle trapped in the crease of someone’s skin. KK: When we started talking about your project for Pictures of the moon… you began with the seeds of two past projects and they have both since emerged into a site responsive work, can you tell me about this evolution?

Simensky’s multi-part Surface Contents 1 & 2 employs gold in a series of actions, architectural interventions, and a new site-specific video. The resulting work hopes to form a dialogue that sees gold as a literal index of locatable value and something ever-shifting in meaning and immense influence.

PS: In the past I have attempted to quantify the value of a room or a building by creating, at least temporarily, a condition that identifies and illuminates the whole. In one case gold dust, which carries a precise value by weight, could define a mass or cavity as a literal condition of value. What is the value of the space between four walls? We

can find that out and real estate agents can market it to us and either we can afford it or not! The Sandy Boulevard site also has real estate value as part of its underlying story. It is such a hulk of a space. If I had tens of thousands of dollars to throw at it, I could really fill that void – mark it for what it is worth. Instead, it offered its own solution to me. The ceiling shafts create all the light that makes the gold visible. It’s all I chose to mark or fill and it’s the subject and light source for the filming. The light through the roof forms shapes or halos on the ground, but it’s not until they are dusted with gold that their volume is perceptible – like a projector in the cinema catching dust. This volume is defined according to a specific percentage of rentable space and we purchased enough gold to define that value. Comprising the second part of this piece, gold security blankets function in iteration between their formal display as discrete objects and their use by audience members. They can appear purely as aesthetic entities removed from use. The unfinished warehouse is adaptable to art objects but left alone might it be a possible squat where the need for warmth would be primary? The blankets highlight the body, but they also can define the movements of a group of bodies. In this way, they are linked to the gold particles just at a different scale. KK: Why gold dust? And more specifically how did you arrive at the amount of gold you would disperse in the space? PS: A few years ago I was asked to make an artist project for Cabinet’s Money Issue. For years prior to this, I had bought and sold artworks, built collections, and had my own functioning currency operating in the art market. My

Pe t er Si m ensk y

artwork was inseparable from the system of valuation it examined. When the market crashed in 2008, for a moment we collectively stood on shaky ground. The value of things that we thought were stable were shown to be other than that, in reality they never were stable at all! My work was also naturally shifting and I was looking at places that had less fixed identities and locations for value. Speculation was also inherent in this new work but uncertainty and indeterminacy became that much more evident in its form. Gold Dust was a way of both defining a space – in the case of Cabinet, the worth of two pages across the circulation of an issue of the magazine and creating something more ephemeral. The magic of the piece relied on an

(Fig. 29 –1)

Surface Content 1 performed by Peter Simensky at 2500 NE Sandy Blvd. prior to exhibition opening, documented by Evan La Londe

image that might never be seen, or at least never seen on the printed page. It was left as a textual citation or found as traces between the margins. As with the piece for Cabinet, an amount of gold can define the value of a building spatially as it was before applied to the measure of a page. Gold itself felt primary – of course, it’s used as a standard measure of value. It’s also loaded with so many signifiers and histories. Gold as a particle is unique from its solid because of its ability to not only fill space, but also to show light. I think this use of gold was what religious or romantic painters sought in portraying heavy bodies or sunbeams. KK: I was struck by how this luxury dust took shape in the streams of light filtering into the

space and co-mingled with the regular old dust of the warehouse. How will this private performance/ process of transformation play out in public? PS: I hope that the gold blankets will reanimate in real time qualities of the gold dusting that happened in private. Likewise the moving images may be a reminder of this lingering quantity of “luxury dust” that is still in the space mixing in or hiding around the rafters, in corners, on walls and oil stained floors. So it’s a bit of a gold mine still. »

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jibade-Khalil Huffman

Jibade-Khalil Huffman is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. He is the author of three books of poems, 19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008), James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011), and Sleeper Hold (Fence, 2014). His art and writing projects, spanning photography, video, performance and poetry, have been exhibited and performed at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, MoMA/P.S.1, Long Island City, NY, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. Huffman, was a participant in PICA’s pilot Creative Exchange Lab, Spring 2015 which took place in Portland Ore., and Caldera Art Center, Sisters, Ore.

For Pictures of the moon…, Jibade-Khalil Huffman presents a multi-channel video work which winds itself through a series of repurposed car dealership offices. The result is an exploration of adaptation, mediation, and the act of seeing.

K r istan K ennedy: What is spirit? Jibade-K h alil Huffm an: I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about this. But off the top of the head, spirit is the underlying enthusiasm, for good or worse, in a given activity, phrase, word, epoch, product, etc. School spirit naturally comes to mind and so, in a way, does the idea of ignoring certain things, faults, problematic aspects, etc, in the service of doing the thing or making the thing happen. KK: Why go on? Why go on making poems, plays, videos or installations that are all of those things and more in the face of societal struggle? JKH: I honestly don’t know what else I would do. I still may be proven wrong, but I believe this is my lane or way of dealing with societal struggle, that I can both slightly alter people’s perception of the world via the work and use the privilege I have to enact more practical change on the local level (via volunteering and teaching young people who look like me and attempting to normalize a world that is usually cut off from those with less privilege). KK: Where did this work come from? You have been working with actors, collecting original and found footage, composing a sound and video collage of sorts... what is emerging for you as a central narrative? Or in this case, is narrative even important? Maybe a better word is mood or attitude...how do these things generate content? JKH: Oof. I don’t know that I know how to answer this question, as I am at the moment so deep into the editing. There are so many moving parts with a piece like this that the best way to make the work is to sort

of just let things happen. There is never a dull moment or a moment of being blocked because if, for example, I’m having trouble figuring out the writing, then a song I might use on the soundtrack pulls me in another direction and in the process of listening to that song over and over again, I figure out the rhythm necessary for the text. Narrative is important, but it’s really about the desire to expand the possibilities of video – to disrupt this via the commonplace or via a straightforward narrative that has been exploded in the way it has been edited and executed in the space. I get really annoyed with the (I suppose, somewhat understandable) tendency of viewers to expect A to happen, then B, then conclude with C. Non-timed based forms of art don’t really have this problem. You can enter a painting from any direction, in a sense (though I’m obviously generalizing here). But people expect to be moved (in the most conventional ways) or to be patted on their back when watching even the most experimental video. Same with reading poetry. It drives me crazy. KK: Where does the viewer figure into your work, are they are player in the scene, a voyeur? JKH: Depends on the project. In the case of my work for TBA, the viewer is more a voyeur, though one with perhaps more access to the structure of the thing I’m deconstructing. KK: Do you see this resistance to linear narratives / linear thinking / linear expectations to be a form of political resistance? I ask this because there is a certain underpinning to your work (despite its diffuse nature or minimalism) to pull out the essence of cultural memory and reorder it with more meaning... as if retooling our viewscape might cause the right kind of contemplation, access to inner knowledge or

J i b a de - K h a li l H u f f m a n

encourage personal agency? JKH: Not at all, though I suppose you could project the political onto it as with anything. I think it’s simply the way we are trained as viewers and our more limited access to/ interaction with more experimental works. Most people stop reading poetry, for example, beyond what is required in high school or their college freshman year English survey course. And so anything that challenges the good feeling or sense of meaning they’ve been trained to appreciate becomes an affront. I’ve seriously had people angrily ask me why I write the way I do and demand “more of me” in the work because they aren’t getting that thing they expect from poetry. Even though I’ve clearly set out to make a different kind of work and it might be helpful to look at what I’m doing on its own terms; as opposed to subjecting it to the same sort of analysis one applies to more straightforward poetry that lays out an image, then struggles toward an epiphany and states that epiphany

(Fig. 31–1)

Khalil Huffman testing his video installation technology

in a way we can all understand. I’m not necessarily interested in everyone understanding. Or, rather, I think the onus is kind of on the reader/viewer to step up as opposed to me making something that makes you feel good. KK: To put it bluntly what is this work about? Is it space, image, and time coming together or something else? Or are you saying that the audience or voyeur to the scene is really the one defining the work? JKH: I am pretty resistant or at least strongly reluctant to saying outright what a work is about. I am opposed to sound bites and reductions of this kind, though I understand the need within the realm of press. This is sort of why I was indifferent about attaching an image to these questions--I never want anything to be reduced to one image. Or I don’t ever want to be the person creating this sound bite or choosing this image. I put my everything into the work and then let go of it afterwards. I’m cool showing slides in a lecture and talking about the

piece when there is some distance but the more immediate explanation is the sort of thing I leave up to writers and curators. Since I began showing, I have fought for my work to be thought of beyond the realm of identity, which is usually the thing people want to talk about when they are talking to an artist of color. Racism, for example, can’t be one part of a larger narrative. As soon as you say it’s partly about race you set yourself up to fail at living up to another set of expectations that have very little to do with the myriad thoughts and ideas, formal or otherwise, that are in the work. I’m also not an art historian or a critic. In some ways I make art to express what I can’t express in words. But, I guess if I had to say anything I’d say the piece or pieces are about momentum and screens. They are works that are autonomous and yet also connect as one connects various points/moments throughout a day. Clearly this question is making me super uncomfortable, but I hope I’ve at least sort of answered it. »

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mpa

mpa in

con v ersation w ith disjecta 2015-16 cur ator-inr esidence

chi a r a giova ndo

MPA promotes the body as a paradoxical site tethered to the social and political exchanges that distinguish a space. Enriched by ritual and contradiction, her performances and installations depict power as an embodiment of these relations. These works have been seen in the U.S. and abroad at venues including the Swiss Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, LACE, the Stedelijk Museum, and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Oaxaca. Her body of work Directing Light onto Fist of Father (2011) at Leo Koenig Inc. combined 16mm film and a plaster cast of her father’s fist in an installation inciting three durational performances. Trilogy (o) (2012) centered photographs of Nike war missiles as an orbiting moon calendar at the arts cooperative Human Resources in Los Angeles, CA. A frequent collaborator, MPA is a visible muse in many works by contemporary photographers, painters, and performers. After receiving a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2013, MPA relocated from NYC to 29 Palms, CA to research somatic practices. She is a frequent visiting art lecturer in New Genres at UCLA.

“I do not believe that this performance will put people into a transcendental state. We would need much more time together to accomplish this. So, what to do in the meantime?” — mpa

Nothing To You is a temporary site-specific installation that will act as a frame for an encounter. MPA will direct an action that tours the perimeters of thoughtful collision between bodies, objects and sound within the space. Here, speakers mature into characters, and bodies regress into objects, calling into question the

and we see a lot more “bodies” in contemporary art again.

notion of pre-tense, the state of being before action, during approximately 45 minutes of provocative and attentive collapse. Nothing To You is both installation and performance. The performance took place on Sept 12, with the exhibition running until Sept 17. It was hosted by Disjecta Contemporary Art Center and curated by Chiara Giovando, Disjecta’s Curator In Residence 2015/16. We

sat on a wooden deck built precariously against a hillside in a backyard in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Some sawhorses and plywood making a table, two chairs, one dog, tea, cantaloupe (cut into pieces), a bowl of almonds and an iPhone. “Watch out for the ants.” A thin tangle of cactus and succulents growing wild along the hill is the only thing keeping the dry sloping earth from sliding down and wiping out the deck during the next heavy rain. “I went to high school in Alaska,” says MPA.

Chiar a giovando: There’s a loose theme being presented by Kristan Kennedy for the 2015 TBA Festival around spirituality, and possibly crossing into religion. For me, the interest, and so the language, describing these things is increasingly interchangeable as mainstream American culture consumes the New Age. We see the metaphysical appearing in contemporary art practices, conversations surrounding affect, interest in occult imagery, and New Age aesthetics.…It’s funny because I remember, not so long ago, that kind of content would be considered naïve in contemporary art circles. I had a teacher who really challenged me when I talked about intuition in relationship to my work in undergrad. MPA: Yes, there is an interest again in the intuitive space of the body

CG: I don’t think that intuition and conceptualism are ultimately at odds. I hope not… So what about the body? MPA: Toooo big of a question! CG: O K, tell me about Alaska. MPA: Well, I grew up there and I’m thinking of my early experiences with religion. When I was 16, there was this person in my life. We presented as best friends, but she was kind of the first woman I was in love with. She was raised Christian and at that time she was curing herself of homosexuality by going to a Pentecostal church, not her family’s church. This was high school. CG: W here were you? MPA: Anchorage. The year before my friend's older sister had gotten a gang of kids together, not exactly to beat up, but to harass her and the girl she was dating. And so, when I entered the scene — we were all in this alternative thinking program in the high school we went to, called School within a School. School within a School it had purple hallways and the rest of the high school had white walls… Anyway, through this young woman I was in love with, and another friend, who was out of high school, I started going to a church in an alleyway. It was a carpeted space in a garage. There was a Jesus guy playing guitar and a mostly white congregation. You could ask for the spirit to come to you and then one of three things would usually happen. You would go into a really deep trance, or you would start speaking in tongues, or you would start crying or laughing hysterically, maybe a combination. So, with my friends I witnessed this happening many times over the course of a few years. You know, this was how you could get saved. I never got saved, but questioned or anticipated it each visit. The friend

M PA

who was out of school and with a loose sexuality was the one who said she didn’t think I would ever get saved or it would happen much later in life. CG: W hat did it look like to get saved?

CG: Y es, or those actions, another experiential that will have to be in place for those kinds of actions to take place. MPA: Yes, and art world spaces probably are not the most desirable places to bring those actions.

MPA: You would go in front, the preacher would lay hands on you CG: S eems like the question is — is and a kind of “PAUH!” (sharp loud a ‘transcendental movement’ even sound) and most people fall down possible in the locations that the and are in the energy of that. They contemporary art world inhabwould say that Jesus had come to its and creates? I wonder though, them. I was mostly a witness, but does that mean that this kind of I felt welcomed. Coinciding with ‘transcendental movement,’ as you this I’m also taking LSD and smok- are calling it, isn’t art any more? ing pot, so there’s these two things Because it can not occur in art going on in that developmental age for me that both felt valid. With these two friends we could be driving at night coming home from a show and before dropping me off, one of them would say — and this happened several times — “There’s an energy here, the Devil is here,” and we would hold hands and pray for an hour. That could lead into speaking tongs or just a long prayer. Years later I left Anchorage. I am not connected to these people anymore, but I still have a strong impression from that time. With this question of being saved, I never believed that Jesus was the conduit, but I do know that everything that went on in that room was real. This wasn’t tele-evangelism, this wasn’t a preacher playing a prank, this was the power of faith. I think I spaces? or does it mean that it’s a have always carried that with me in kind of art that can’t happen in our terms of what’s possible to do with current frame of contemporary art? collective faith. If there is a collecMPA: Probably a bit of both. I believe tive faith you can go into trance that “Art” has been hijacked from states…. We were talking about a lifestyle and ritualistic practice. this last night, when we talked That doesn’t stop people from livabout magic. I’m interested in how ing artistic lives, but a definition of that translates into performance. “Art” as separate was and continues There’s part of me that’s ready to to be manufactured.. Also I feel like find a collection of people that are what I’m interested in challenges ready to instigate a transcendental individualism. The art world has experience. But I don't believe that a difficulty embracing collective. happens from the cerebral. There That’s not to say that collectives has to be another experiential that don’t break through, they do, and I will link these people together.

(Fig. 33–1)

don’t mean to trivialize that. CG: I t’s true, we don't often see a list of credits behind the work in the art world in the same way we do in other genres. (Crunching sound of mouths eating almonds.)

MPA: Thinking about performance, at this moment, I’m putting it out there that I hope that ‘those people’ arrive. (The people she needs.) MPA: Back to my early church experiences… that kind of experience can’t happen with one. And

supporting anarchist feminist politics, I’m not interested in replicating predominant structures of power where there’s a conductor for altered states, a leader per say. So there’s two objectives for me. And one is about going into a spirituous but also that it’s not only about a dropout society that abandons other social politics that I believe in. For example, I know some people who might find healing for themselves in magic circles, but I feel I personally have to be responsible for the violence that is also happening in the realm of material

Simulation of the Higg’s Particle, also nicknamed the “God Particle”. The Higg’s Particle was recently confirmed as the elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics at the CERN particle accelerator.

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conditions. I don’t want to go make a sacred coven and not still show up for Black Lives Matters, for example, when we need people in the streets. I still believe politically in mass movements going to the streets and I still believe in being a citizen… Sometimes the work of spirituality can lead you into a journey where you might relinquish… CG: T he worldly. MPA: Yes. CG: I grew up in Santa Fe, NM, at that time possibly the New Age capital of the world… MPA: Still might be. (Laughs) CG: Y eah, so I was subjected to all kinds of experimental technologies and alternative healing practices at a very young age. A lot of them were super intense and I was probably too young for them. For example, when I was 11, my mother took me to a witch who told me I accidentally walked across the path of a Columbian curandero as a baby and that I was cursed. Then I had to do months of EMF or Pulsed Electromagnetic Field therapy. I went to all kinds of different things like this, if I had a stomach ache I was given reiki and kombucha, when I was upset about my parents divorce I was taken to see a psychic. So, I basically have been aware of and surrounded by family and community that are actively engaged with reviving, remembering or trying to reenact all kinds of technologies that come from various cultural pasts. By technology I mean magic, shamanism, energy work… I see all of these as technologies, working in the same ways as industrial systems of knowledge do. We are experiencing a time where most all of these technologies or cultural bodies of knowledge have been interrupted or erased by colonialist imperialism, and there seems to be a homogenized or totalizing predominate

cultural trajectory that is based in rationalization and a language of logic in a very specify way. I think that rationalization and the ways we formulate language might be keeping us from even seeing other realities. That we can not see magic or miracle… That we can’t see a man turn into an animal anymore. I think this touches on your work, and we’ve started talking about this, because it ties into ways of seeing. MPA: Yes, and language. Ways of seeing and… I think you hit it on the head, colonization has continued an agenda of erasing people’s language, ritual, and entire lives while asserting a dominant order of time. Going along with that, human practice has been compartmentalized. The thing I trip out on is how science is organized magic. The roots of science in the West came from wizards and hermetics, and they were eventually named heretics because they challenged the power of the Church. They were playing gods. CG: … Or they taught self-reliant ability over the mind, body and spirit that threatened the control of the church… and later science. MPA: Yes. That kind of compartmentalization also comes into play

(Fig. 34–1)

when we talk about the contemporary art word. Everything is compartmentalized. Art is over here, science is over there, administration is over here, and now when people mix it, we are still trying to prescribe language. Perhaps we are at the point where, and I think you said this, we don’t need to say it, we need to be it. Artists are being requested to be comprehensible, but actually, as your saying, these ways of being stump the order of comprehensibility that has been organizing our time - an imperialist, colonized time. CG: Y eah, because a lot of what we are trying to describe with our art are things in the liminal state of imagination. It’s necessary to create spaces where we can experiment with thresholds. Because with all these breaking points threatening the planet, environmental, humanitarian, political, we need places where people can challenge old habits. So what does that propose to you in terms of being? MPA: I mean, I really feel this has to happen with the multitude. And also, older friends, in their ’60s and ’70s that I’ve seen put a lot of work

M PA

into activism and making change, are teaching me that it’s a long haul. That we, in many ways, cannot control change, that there are motions much stronger than humans. But the other thing that it means to me, is not to give up on art. I feel that art is one of they ways in which it occurs. (The sound of a fresh cup of tea being poured.)

MPA: Art can be a broadcast, but that’s not it — it’s limited there, because art in the U.S. can be arranged to not have a diverse audience in terms of class and who goes and sees it. Also how pedagogy frames it, who finds themselves in the art class… So it’s not about that completely, but about the practice of creativity — it leads to that practice of being. I think art is one of the oldest activities we have. A need to express is in the roots of humans, beginning with vocalization, or ways to move our bodies to express, or literally drawing marks in the sand, these gestures were right there as we were trying to gather food or build shelter. That’s what I believe or that’s what I see in my dreams. I don’t think art was something added on or an invention in human evolution. I think it comes from our assets as human beings. CG: I first met you just as you were coming to Los Angeles from New York City via Berlin. I had seen your performance work and invited you to do a show in L.A., you ended up making a static work. MPA: I had a period of doubt around performing. I became aware of my tropes. I really liked my audience in New York and they really liked me, not that ‘they’ were one solid thing… But I was sitting in a space where people understood an activity I did and it was being well received. But I was aware of tricks and replays that I would bring into each performance. So taking space away from

performance, what has happened is that I can be fearful of the live. Because the live has risk and feels vulnerable. I’m wondering what do I feel vulnerable about? It’s not so much that I’m afraid that I would make a bad performance, but rather that there are higher stakes about what I think I should be achieving with the live. And it’s directly related to what we are talking about. CG: u mm hmm. MPA: I do want more from the live. I do want… I could even cry about it now… I do want it to be transcendental. I don’t feel like that is about being an instrument of one. I don’t think I can accomplish that being an instrument of one, so there’s a little bit of putting it out there into the world; who are those other members? And also, who is that willing audience? Because, is the work to be done by the performers to open up those capacities? Or is it about meeting mutualities between both performer and audience? And will it break down how I have been defining performance and how many people have been defining performance? But saying that, there are tricks to the trade that I still believe in. A sound track, the power of a drum beat, the feeling of a shaft of light. (A flock of geese fly overhead, the sound of wings and bird calls.)

CG: I t’s really interesting because this addresses aspects of the history of theatre, the production of spectacle and how emotionally manipulative familiar elements of the theatre can be, and ritual for that matter. Of course you’re interested in all that, but at the same time you want it to be ‘real’. In a way that brings us back to the site of institution. That question about, is ‘transcendental movement’ even possible in the locations that the contemporary art world inhabit and create?

MPA: The audience is a beautiful model because it’s temporal and it’s about a known-ness but at the same time is about the other—an audience can be made up of strangers. So I still love that frame. The risks feel different, like… how do institutions not mark the mark? How strong is the frame of administration? And maybe this is what Kristan is also proposing? (Yes and thank you!!!!!!! for seeing this!!!!! —KK) Like let’s quit insisting that poetry can’t be a press release. These alterations get edited out in the most banal ways all the time, because there is fear of being incomprehensible. CG: R ight, and perhaps incomprehensibility can actually act as a tactic for feeling experiences. MPA: Well, it feels like a rising above to sit on the ground. If human consciousness rises above and is sitting in an understanding that these bodies are containers and that the line between life and death is really not that big, and that my soul is meeting you in this dimension, through this container, but it could just as well be meeting you in a different dimension, through dreams, or another time spectrum. When one sits in that space, or I sit in that space, then none of this other stuff matters. But what’s the longevity of that space? And do I want to only inhabit that space when I have a body? There are so many desires that pull us back to this realm, to this dimension that I am sitting with you in right now, and one of those is wanting to make an art show at a museum. (We both laugh. The voices on the iPhone trail off and are replaced by the sound of a dog yawing on the wooden deck before a fumbling finger stops the recording.) »

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Pictures of the moon with teeth was curated by Kristan Kennedy with the support of:

CURATORIAL ASSISTANT

Roz Crews

head preparator, exhibition design

Spencer Byrne-Seres Preparators

Evan Humphreys, Carlos Vigil, Monroe Isenberg, Owen Hutchinson, Morgan Ritter, Micah Schmelzer, Tony Chrenka visual art program interns

Maggie Heath, Chloe Thompson, Bebe Nyiri lighting design

Bill Boese

publication and collateral design

Sean Schumacher editors

Kirsten Saladow, Roz Crews angel-at-large

T.C. Smith

The curator would like to acknowledge the following for their time, talent, and generosity: Exhibiting artists

Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Dawn Kasper, Peter Simensky, Tannaz Farsi, Akio Suzuki, Aki Onda, Bill Jenkins, Karl Larsson, Morgan Ritter, Pascal Prosek, Gary Robbins, Container Corps, & MPA venue

Special thanks to Kevin Cavenaugh and Guerrilla Development for their generous help in securing and occupying 2500 N.E. Sandy Blvd. for this exhibition. production support

jibade - khalil huffman :

gallery - artists / actors used in production—Micah Schmelzer

(Fig. 36 / 3 7–1)

See page 10

dawn kasper : David Lewis Gallery, Redling Fine Art, Bryson Hanson, Chris Rousseau and Ali Sharifi Rugs, Inc. peter simensky : Charles Seeley, Martin Hyde tannaz farsi :

Michael Smith, Kate Wagle, University of Oregon, OPB, Oregon Art Beat akio suzuki : Aki Onda, Issue Project Room. Akio Suzuki’s Nami project is supported by The Pola Art Foundation. bill jenkins : Laurel Gitlen, Gene Archibek, Dennis Stutzman, Andersen Construction; Jason Hildner, Derek Franklin. PICA is a VAN Partner of the Visual Artists Network (VAN). This project is made possible in part through support from the Visual Artists Network Exhibition Residency, which is a program of the National Performance Network. Major contributors are the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation. For more information: www.npnweb.org karl larsson , morgan ritter , pascal prosek , gary robbins , container corps : Kent Richardson, Henry Silvestrini, Sam Orner, James Lohman, Green Furniture Solutions; Jamie Potter, Jordan Weinfurtner, Craig Bradford, Axiom Custom Products, Anna Gray, Liam Drain mpa : MPA’s performance and installation was curated by Chiara Giovanda, the 2015 Disjecta Curator in Residence. We would like to thank, Robert Tyree, Renee Sills, Edward Sharp, Danielle Ross, Julia Calabrese for their contributions to the performance, Heather Wilson, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and Bryan Suerth, Taryn

Wiens, Sam Hopple of Disjecta publication

Special thanks to Sean Schumacher and Kirsten Saladow for working on the design and execution of this publication with me and to Roz Crews for editing. visual art circle, est’d. 2014

Jeanine Jablonski, Founding Chair; Daniel P. Winter, Founding Co-Chair; John Forsgren, Allie Furlotti, Linda Hutchins & John Montague, Sarah Miller Meigs, Jane Schiffhauer, Topher Sinkinson, Stephanie Snyder pica visual art program

sponsors and supporters :

The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts; Allie Furlotti, Calligram Fund for New Work; National Performance Network’s Visual Art Network; Kevin Cavenaugh, Guerrilla Development; Gene Archibek, Anderson Construction; Dick and Lori Singer: Magnolia Properties; Leslie B Durst; Stephanie & Jonathan Snyder; MK Guth and Greg Landry; Sarah Miller Meigs & Andrew Meigs; Kathy & James Gentry; Jeanine Jablonski, Fourteen30 Contemporary; Bryan Seureth, Chiara Giavando, Taryn Wiens, Sam Hopple, Disjecta; The Smith Famiy, Showdrape; Bill Boese, Morning Becomes Electric; Ace Hotel; Mark Spencer Hotel; Yakuza pica volunteers

Thank you to the current, past and founding board members for their service to the organization and specifically to Eric Phelps and Jill Sherman for their advice and support during the exhibition build-out. I am in awe our incredible PICA volunteers who clocked more than 450 hours in the name of this exhibition. Many thanks to those listed here and to the many who will lend a hand long after this publication fades away, Sam Wildman, Ben Havacek, Kyle Lee, Kevin Holden, Amy Rosenhim, Edward Ershbock, Charlotte Wallis, Jen Elkington, Michelle Wood, Chanel Vivian, Micheala Zapell, Shaun McNeary, Amanda Wilson, Maxx Martinez, George

ack now led gm en t s

Gibson, Lauren Moran, Kathleen Hong, Blanca Vilalobos, Jacob Lopez, Daniel Field, Em Young, Justin Hager, Kensey Anderson, Liz Dunn, Sarah Calvetti, Matthew Tache, Isabel Crosby, Alex Lanberg, Kenia Perez, Amelia Walsh, Will Richards, Jacob Peel, Keith Layton, Shawn Creeden, Leann O’Rourke, Warren Beachtoff Jr., Melanie Stevens, Kelly Forester, Jonathan Haidle, Sarah Turner, Makayla Carpenter, Mark-Allen Hunt and Tobin Herold, Colin Kippen, Miranda Tarrow, Kelly Forester, Bradley Post, Harriet Wentz, James Dower, Christy Bailey, Phil Wilson pica staff

Victoria Frey, Angela Mattox, Erin Boberg, Roya Amirsolymani, Beth Hutchins, Noelle Stiles, Kirsten Saladow, Sean Schumacher, Sarah Yusavitz, Erika Osurman, Sharon Jamin the 2015 time-based art festival

staff and crew : Chris Rousseau, Chris Balo, Bill Boese, Yalcin Erhan, Jeff Forbes, Rob Forrester, Amy Morel, Molly Gardner, Erin Giblin, Daniel Granias, Jason Hildner, Brad Johnson, Garret Megaw, Cassie Skauge, Cassie Smith, Christine Smith, Emily Trimbull, Jason Winslow, Ryan Winters, Felisha Ledesma, Robert Harris, Helmy Membreño, Alley Frey, Erica Thomas, Jessica Risdon, Lev Anderson, Rozalyn Crews, Spencer Byrne-Seres, Chelsea Petrakis, Stacey Tran, Jin Camou, Katy Knowlton

of roof to our roof. To my family and to my friends who are like family, Tom & Winnie Kennedy, Kate Kennedy & Lucas Howard, Brendan Kennedy & Kenny Mellman, David Kennedy, Rob Halverson, Liz Calderon, Jeanine Jablonski & Evan La Londe, Topher Sinkinson, Allie Furlotti, Ryan Noon, Jamie Edwards, Chase Biado, Alex Felton, Owen Hutchinson, Kent Richardson & Pamela Baker Miller, Stephanie Snyder, Sarah Miller Meigs, Dan Winter & John Forsgren, Derek Franklin, Philip Iosca, Rachel Pedderson, Heather Donahue, Jon Hart & Patrick Long, Storm Tharp & Mike Blasberg, Arnold J. Kemp, Mami Takahashi, William Pope.L, Fawn Krieger & Jorg Jakoby, Eleanor Ford, Patrick Leonard & Amanda Pedden, Jessica & Kirk Kelley, Adam Sorenson, Israel Lund, David Knowles, Keith Crowe & Brent Johnson, Sara GreenbergerRafferty, Ramsey McPhillips, Matthew Day Jackson, Sam Korman, and as always, Kristy Edmunds. To my community here in Portland, OR and beyond in Brooklyn, Bovina, and elsewhere. Colophon

Typeset in Mark Simonson’s lovely (if unfortunately named) Bookman revival Bookmania (2011), with secondary support from Monotype Grotesque (1926 / digitized 2001). Printed in September of 2015 by J.E.J. Print, Inc. of Monterey Park, California.

interns : Erin Johnson, Maggie Heath, Chloe Thompson, Bebe Nyiri, Dana Bacharach, Kathleen Hong, Stacey Ray Roth, Laura Stowell, Eri Stern, Stacey Tran, Rebecca Propper, Amy Pitts-Lore

my love and gratitude to

Those who show up! To the Visual Art Program staff and interns who are my true crew, Spencer, Roz, Evan, Monroe, Carlos, Micah, Maggie, Chloe, and Bebe. To my PICA family who makes the impossible possible. To Marc Monaghan, who saved our lives by adding a layer

(Fig. 39 –1)

“Noon, Ryan” August 24, 2015 11:31 AM, subject: MOON? to: “Kristan Kennedy”