As round as an apple, as deep as a cup
Published on the occasion of As round as an apple, as
deep as a cup, a series of installations and happenings curated by Kristan Kennedy for PICA’s 2014 Time-Based Art Festival. Projects were on view from September 11 to October 2014 at PICA, THE WORKS at Fashion Tech, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College, and in the basement of 714 NE Hancock, Portland Oregon. Typeset in Abril, Coranto 2 Headline, and Bell Centennial. Printed by Oregon Lithoprint in McMinnville, Oregon.
Š 2014 Portland Institute for Contemporary Art 415 SW 10th Avenue, Third Floor Portland, Oregon 97205 pica.org
Kristan Kennedy ⁄ (A well.) — 5 Karl Larsson ⁄ Editing Youghal — 9 Emily Roysdon — 12 Aki Sasamoto —22 Jesse Sugarmann — 26 MSHR — 30 Wynne Greenwood—34 Jennifer West —38 Lisa Radon —42 Contributors — 52 Acknowledgements — 55
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Kristan Kennedy (A well.)¹
Poems are problems. They mess with our relationships to language and meaning.² Our mouth feels different in their execution. Reading them requires taking them in, but also pushing them out. Out loud. I am positive they change our brain chemistry, but of this alchemy I have no proof.
◄ This image is a stand in for the concept of zero as discussed in Kristan Kennedy's interview with Lisa Radon (p. 44) it depicts tuning coils for zero point energy as used in sacred geometry and the Vedic metric system. themeasuringsystemofthegods.com/html/ ancient_zero_point.html continued on pg. 48
► Clark Coolidge , b. 26 February 1939 at 7:48 am, Providence, Rhode Island, 41n49,71w25, Natal Chart (Placidus), Natal Chart English style (Equal houses), astro.com/ astro-databank/Coolidge,_Clark
I am not sure if you know this, but poems are very popular. At least they seem to be in my world. This curator’s bookcase/bedside table is/ are stacked with volumes by Bishop, Pound, Radon, Coolidge, Creely, Tompkins, Stevens, Wright, Kapil, O'Hara, Sexton, Ritter, Larsson, Choi, Stevens, Saroyan, Cummings, and many others... the obvious and the obscure. I believe my growing interest in/need of poetry is a shared one. I can feel your heads shaking in agreement. We know it to be true.
1 As round as an apple,
As deep as a cup, All the king's horses Can't pull it up. 2 “Replace: “love.” with “meaning.” I feel like if you
say “love” you are marking out your poetry concerns as more conservative. Without it, it’s more open to all kinds of poetry. Same with the previous edit, re: language and meaning rather than understanding.” – Lisa Radon
Int r o duct i o n 5
In spite of the fact that no one will pay for a poem, poem and poet persist.³
The Art World’s current obsession with “the poem” and its maker “the poet” seems related to the form’s and the maker’s freedom, as well as to its sparse economy. (For the purpose of this introduction, Art World is THE WORLD.) We have yet to commodify it, to trade it, to destroy its value by placing it on the auction block. Those of us over here want a piece of poetry because some of the magic in our world has been lost. What is more magical than a poem, more otherworldly than a poet?
I can’t tell you how many artists have said to me over the past few years “Language isn't working!”⁴ What they mean is that we don’t have the words to describe the art we are making, let alone the place and positions we find our society in. We are not even sure if we should put words on top of “things” or “experiences” or “feelings.”
When we do reach out to find words that work --------- our grabbing hands often clasp a poem. In fact just now, in a moment of exasperation with writing this, I reached out for my phone. The first image that popped up on my Instagram feed was from the Paris Review. It reads…
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The Library at Night: A Short Story, Bolinas: Aram Saroyan, 1974. First Edition. 8pp. Near fine in stabled wrappers. Text reproduced from Saroyan’s holograph. Cover art by “Gailyn.” Inscribed by Saroyan inside the front cover, “for don/ from Aram/ 2/24/74”
► Frank O’Hara reading his poem, “Having a coke with you,” in his flat in New York in 1966, shortly before his accidental death. Taken from USA: Poetry: Frank O'Hara, produced and directed by Richard Moore for KQED and WNET. Originally aired on September 1, 1966.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!⁵
Poems know the answers before you do. They offer great solace during this confusing time. (Maybe “confusing time” is the business of poems and poets!?) The poets I have spoken to about this renewed interest⁶ in their work have reactions ranging from, “It’s about time!” to “That’s nice.” to “Thank you.”⁷ and also “Fuck you!” now that their work and their ways are being adopted, co-opted, borrowed, quoted, cross-referenced, pressed into vitrines, photographed for the internet, celebrated, and exhibited. As round as an apple, as deep as a cup is a group of projects by Emily Roysdon, Jesse Sugarmann, Lisa Radon, Jennifer West, MSHR, Aki Sasamoto and Wynne Greenwood*. It could be called an exhibition or maybe a poem. The presentations are not odes to something… the artists may or may not be poets, but all of it is OF poetry. For sure the installations, performances and publications produced will rely on poetics…the study of how different parts come together, contributing to the never-ending search for “subject.” I hope that the endeavor feels like this, a thing broken apart and then put together again in the mouth, made real by reading it out loud. That the projects behave like the carefully chosen discordant words in a certain kind of poem. The kind of poem that is a problem of the very best kind. F
3 “I could sell a piece of paper for a penny but if I
printed a poem on it, I couldn’t give it away” —James Sherry, Looking over my shoulder: Roof at 35, 2012 4 “Poetry’s social function is to imagine how language
works within its culture, while pursuing a critique of the culture; this suggests that poetry can be a countermeasure to the reinforcement of cultural values at the heart of both popular entertainment and consumer politics. At the same time, poetry’s aesthetic function is to refuse even this “value” in the pursuit of what Louis Zukofsky calls the pleasures of sight, sound, and intellect.” —Charles Bernstein from an interview with Eric Denut originally published in Musica Falsa #20 (Paris) 5 “...reading through Lisa’s edits I realized that she
is approaching your argument as a writer and editor of poetry, while you're approaching this idea like most things, as a reader and appreciator of it. She made some good points, mostly about how you don’t need to explain the importance of poetry… I think it’s about synchronicity or happenstance, and how you can find a poem (or story) to suit a mood or idea you’ve had trouble articulating. Language fails us, but not in poetry. You do the same thing with images.” —Patrick Leonard 6 “Nobody likes poetry. And why would they? Do we need
another poem that describes the way that light falls on your writing desk as a metaphor for your mother's cancer operation? Absolutely not. And yet artists are flocking to poetry these days precisely because it's an orphaned and evacuated space, ready to be repurposed with poetry that looks nothing like the kind of poetry you see (but don’t read) drizzled across the pages of The New Yorker. Instead of sonnets, we see apps, image macros, hacked photoshopped images, found language, hardcore programming, and YouTube videos posing as poetry. Suddenly, poetry looks interesting again…. The internet is the greatest poem ever written, unreadable mostly because of its size. We are drowning in language. The best poets are those who can best repurpose that language, reframing it as poetry. Poetry will be made by all.” —Kenneth Goldsmith dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/20894/1/ kenneth-goldsmiths-manifesto-for-poetry-now 7 Thank you to Lisa Radon and Patrick
Leonard for editing and consultation. * Wynne Greenwood, Stacy was curated by
Stephanie Snyder, John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, and Wynne Greenwood.
Int r o duct i o n 7
â–˛ Snail sex in Microcosmos by Claude Nuridsany and Marie PĂŠrennou, 2.07min
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Karl Larsson Editing Youghal
comment and share to enter community, enter community to change / edit. While checking Recent Changes tonight we noticed a pattern of edits and reverts to this article. The problem appears to be that someone (currently editing from 109.76.148.204) does not want the article to mention Youghal's severe long-term economic decline. as soon as we had the information and its references all traces of literature had disappeared there must be more than form and context there must be innocence, vocabulary, lies we feel this weeping model, this contract even in our shared and moderated environment over the hills and into the forest over the nematic into the smectic there is some space for exploration and once in a while, yearning for something to get very, very close to get very, very heavy and very much on top of us to squeeze what is not left anyways until it breaks, no pops, no displays itself as anonymous
“Editing Youghal,� Karl Larsson, 2014 is printed with permission by the artist and was written for the occasion of this publication.
Larrson 9
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L a r r s o n 11
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L a r r s o n 13
◄
50 Poems, e.e. cummings, The Universal Library, Grosset & Dunlap, N.Y. , 1940 , originally owned by Winifred Z. Kennedy, the curator’s mother. The curator would like to take this opportunity to admit stealing this book for her own pleasure and enjoyment and thank both of her parents for always having important books in her midst.
◄ Clocks pictured during fabrication process, for Emily Roysdon. Clock Design: Emily Roysdon; Produced by: Liam Drain. Photo: Liam Drain, 2014
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Emily Roysdon
As for an exhibition, inquiry, or end—I will continue to ride the wave-t. It's a shape that really intrigues and touches me. And time will continue to shadow. I can't walk away from any of this. KK: Talk to me about this text you have written. It will be performed by whom and to what end? ER: Me and you don't know yet. It's my text and a few key references that could be given voice.
Kristan kennedy: Last year we made a giant sun dial together on the side of a massive warehouse; it is there to this day measuring time. This year we made clocks, of your design - to your specifications. Can you speak about these different tools and perhaps how one led to the other, or didn't. Emily Roysdon: In the first case it is a question of how do we measure. When thinking about time it always comes back to the sun and rotations, so the sundial is obvious in a way. But it began the project about time with the softness and imprecision of a shadow. The clocks this year are tangible and accessible and invested more in the symbols and measure of time. I like the idea that it’s functional, can be taken home and seen around at friends’ houses and that time is transmitted through a new primary shape and object, and we will talk of waves, rhythm, history, depth, loss. The sundial and the clocks share this wave-t (as I've begun calling it). KK: Your clocks are fashioned out of clay; your light sculpture is made of glass and neon; your clock stands are welded; your prints are made from images burned and pressed. There is an alchemical transformation in all of the processes. Can you speak to this? ER: I have written about the alchemy of time. The project started
with a base desire to “make time.” and I've been asking questions about the process and possibilities of making time—in performance, relations, materials, symbols. kk: This project is the result of several years of research. It came out of things you have been thinking about, and from a conversation we had at your kitchen table. It seems to be a part of a system you have been working with for quite some time but more recently it evolved out of conversations you had with other artists (dancers, choreographers, curators, writers) and "experts" in theatrical constructs (scripts, acting, lighting design), esoteric arts (astrology, healing, philosophy) and science (astronomy) both in Portland and in other parts of the world. Originally you thought that it would turn into a dance made for “the stage.” Over time it morphed into an exhibition and a text. Is this exhibition a beginning or an end to this inquiry? How did you arrive at this arrangement of things? ER: It has been a territory, yes. And all of those different things construct and populate the territory. It's all in the fold of the thinking. Another thing to mention is that I wanted to play the process out public, not emerge finished. So the conversations and collaborations, all the pieces that influenced and became part of the project are the material.
KK: Do you think of your work being related to poetry or to poetics (the breaking apart of something to assess its meaning)? ER: I don't think of it that way, and I'm not trying for it, but I acknowledge it and can own it. It's simply the way I can write. I learn a lot from writing, and wish I did it more. F Emily Roysdon's installation Uncounted Futures was on view at PICA from September 11 to October 11, 2014. The project was commissioned by PICA and was developed over two engagements with the organization as part of the 2013 and 2014 Time-Based Art Festivals. The research, development, and presentation of this project included a series of public conversations between the artist and others, the construction of a massive sundial on the side of the Conway Warehouse in northwest industrial Portland (on view from September 2013–September 2014), a limited edition silkscreen, an installation of sculpture, and a performative reading of “Uncounted,” an evolving text work by the artist. Roysdon describes her installation Uncounted Futures as: “The rhythm of a wave, a kaironic triangle, intuits another possible time. What goes unseen in time and how do we measure our own? Waves of history, what floats?”
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Emily Roysdon UNCOUNTED*
1. I believe in an alchemy of time. That a certain combination of words, a length of inaction, a discomposed room, or with some such cipher, I believe we we can make time. 2. In a memorial poem to Yeats, W.H. Auden wrote, “poetry makes nothing happen.” Nothing is the realm of uncounted experience.¹ 3. Uncounted experience, unseen in time. It did make something happen. If only a wave in proximity to other waves. If only a wave that made a texture of a surface of a top of the line. If only a wave expressing the contour of a bottom, it’s bottom, the under. If only a wave a rhythm. With all potential to break. Crash. hit. rock. wander. If only a night wave, peaking. If only a wave never
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DANCE (version with film), Lucinda Childs Dance Company. Choreography by Lucinda Childs, Music by Philip Glass, Film by Sol LeWitt, 1979. Photo by Nathaniel Tileston, Reprinted with Permission from Pomegranate Arts
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counted. Measured only if a threat. In the same poem Auden repeated but one refrain, “what instruments we have agree” “what instruments we have agree.” What instruments have we? Beyond the will to measure. 4. Gertrude Stein said: “The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything.” what is seen. How everybody is doing everything. In 1926 Stein wrote “Composition as Explanation,” to talk about ‘time-sense,’ distribution, ‘using everything’, and a continuous present. In her elliptical statement on epochal thinking, imaging and representation (what is seen, difference) are aligned with the ability, potential, and mechanics of the body and technology (how everybody is doing everything). To which I add: How everybody is doing everything is what is different, and how difference is seen. What is seen depends upon how everybody is doing. 5. What is time if not activism? 6. I’ve been thinking about the word ‘to discompose’ for about two years now, and I can barely use it in a
sentence. In some ways I have taken this as a good sign, and in others, the failure has felt constitutive of the idea itself – a focus on the frame, a limit. My pleasure in holding on to it was to work with something open ended and hard to harden, a word that eschews form and opens to the queerly formed. That as a horizon of thought, I could not see the end of it’s line. Now as I write this I am noticing something. A scene I have been seeing and not saying, that has gone unnamed. Behind the eyelids. I realize that I am someplace when I see this word. When I hold this word, to discompose, there is a particular wall in the Museum of Modern Art that I feel like I am walking past. It is a blank wall, taller than I, whiter than I. There are other people in the room, gazes in all directions. It is no coincidence that it is one of the atrium walls dedicated to MoMA’s performance program. I’m looking in the direction of this wall and walking by. …And now moments pass in writing and I can examine the ‘scene of my thought,’ it is in fact still, a still picture. I have the gesture of a stride, but I am still. The people around me are fixed points. To discompose, I have always resisted conjugating it. The infinitive form is part of the proposition, an integral part of the dramaturgy of the
idea. That it’s in motion. But the action I cling to in the word, is stilled by the scene of its thinking. My struggle to understand it, has been in this contradiction – that the movement became an image, fixed and framed out of time. And I could not use it in a sentence. 7. What if the museum becomes the authority on alive time? How does an organization, built to historicize and exhibit, work in aliveness?² Practically, everybody’s asking, practically. Institutions discipline, live time within an architecture of power, so how now, thinking through movement, what is an ethical way to authorize alive time? 8. I look to Lucinda Childs’ masterpiece DANCE, a collaboration with Phillip Glass and Sol LeWitt. About this work Childs’ has said, “The conflict in DANCE between the image and the dancer is very much intended.” I know that here she is referring to LeWitt’s projection onto the dancers. I know this is formal and that DANCE is the title of the work. But what if we extended the metaphor into all elements of this collaboration… Glass’ monumental repetition with variation. LeWitt’s perspective and scale altering projection. Childs’ rigorous epic continuous movement. Some of these elements, adjectives, are of the house already built. For is not traditional exhibition making ‘monumental repetition with variation?’ And then some of the elements are strategies for how to recognize conflict in that house – rigorous, continuous, scale altering, movement. Could Child’s intentional conflict be a script for liveness in institutions?³ I look to Jack Smith who was obsessed with what he called ‘landlordism,’ and made work that started seven hours late and lasted five hours long. Undisciplined time to counter the culture of owning and renting. I listen to David Hammons when he says “nothing fits, but everything works.”⁴
9. How to be alive in a museum? Any living thing becomes queer in the museological. Queer in the museological. Aliveness trespasses. It doesn’t know it’s marginalized. Aliveness as marginalia, genitalia, queer in the museological. How to be alive in a museum? Labor and leaving. How to be alive in a museum? Use everything. How to be alive in a museum? I once saw MPA hump, mount and destroy a Carl Andre sculpture at the Hessel. Living for a few moments in the thought that it might be real and really happening.⁵ How to be alive in a museum? ‘Make nothing happen’ and revel in the uncounted. 10. Collectivities instead of collections. Is this a question? Can we support collectivities instead of collections? 11. Does naming time generate time? Rehearsal is a great name for time, solitude another. Clock into darkness. Clock into leaves. Fall, falling, a time. What if we all agreed to live a year on moon time shunning the sun. Name it. Your period is a great name for time, now another. 12. For the past while I’ve been thinking about transitions. Choreographic, interpersonal, governmental, the shifting of weight, changing of direction. Transitions, no matter the context, are a political moment. The choreographic detaches itself from any position of certainty. It is full of transitions. I came to thinking about transitions through another vocabulary set that had guided me in prior years, the relationship between struggle and improvisation. Transitions, no matter the context – A combination, question, a force. What is a transition that is not a solution? (This question developed in conversation with
* I dedicate this text to Ian White. I had the
pleasure of discussing these thoughts with him in our last conversation, his fierce mind a reflection. Ian was a beloved friend and inspiration, and I dedicate these uncounted futures to him. 1 While reading and researching around the idea
‘uncounted futures’ I found a book called Open
Secrets by Anne-Lise Francois where she discusses uncounted experience. I first found the Auden quoted there. The poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” was published in Auden’s anthology Another Time, 1940. 2 I wrote this inconsistently between 2012–2014,
accumulating questions and phrases and sometimes presenting them along the way. Notably at three performance conferences: “How Are We Performing Today?” at MoMA in NY (November 2012), “Dancing With the Art World” at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (April 2013) and “Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive?: The new performance turn, its histories and its institutions” ParaSite Hong Kong (April 2014). Simultaneous with these symposia were two year commissions from the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) for the Time Based Art Festival (TBA:13/TBA:14) and a partnership between If I Can't Dance and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) which encouraged these questions in textual, material and performative ways. 3 As Robin Bernstein says in her text, Dances with
Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race, “the term script denotes not a rigid dictation of performed action but, rather, a necessary openness to resistance, interpretation, and improvisation.” 4 “The Walker,” Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker,
Dec 23, 2002. full quote: “I really love to watch the way black people make things…. just the way we use carpentry. Nothing fits, but everything works…. Everything is a thirty-second of an inch off.” 5 MPA performance at the Hessel Museum,
Bard College, May 1, 2011.
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Eleanor Bauer.) What’s a transition that is not a solution? 13. With every passing, any awareness of time, the choreographic discomposes the space around us, asking how we arrange our bodies in response. 14. Virginia Woolf opens “A Room of One’s Own” with a disclaimer, “I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions – women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.” Woolf resists the call to a conclusion and instead performs as an unsolved problem – she thinks. She writes a scene of thinking. “Thought – to call it by a prouder name than it deserved – had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until — you know the little tug — the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say. “But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind — put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation.
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Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle*; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding. “What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could not now remember.”⁶ Thinking as trespass. She hopped up, Virginia Woolf popped up and sprang about. Her thought had her alight and the territory fell away. That she was minor, and should be mindful escaped her. That she was minor and should be mindful and un-thinking escaped her. That she was minor and should be mindful and un-thinking and un-passionate and not un-bound escaped her. There were bushes aflame in Autumn light and soon proud thoughts hither and tither. So there was no territory. There was a stream and a line down. So there was no territory. So there was no, so there was. Was territory. The thinker, call her by any name you please, had trespassed where there was no, where there was. Thinking while walking, walking while thinking, movement and discomposition, trespass our territory today. 15. How we use space constitutes the nature of our political selves.⁷ 16. “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it." James Baldwin⁸ 17. How can we build a structure to be alive inside? To to to-wards a building of space and commons that
privileges movement and margins. 18. Not to be the thing itself. I was in a workshop with Miguel Gutierrez, he asked us twenty-seven questions and this was one of my answers. Life, permission, conditions. When I build something – a project, phrase, collaboration – there are little holes everywhere. I encourage the space between 0 — 0 Little gaps of intention that life fills up with conditions, with proximities. Little holes everywhere 0 — 0 little holes. Permission. Not to be the thing itself. It’s also a way of saying ‘with’ 0 — 0 entanglement and alignment. Honoring a margin from a movement. Not to be the thing itself is a transition that is not a solution. Is this queer form? 19. On April 4th of last year I had the idea to write a play where ‘something fantastic is discovered, something that debunks the white supremacy ideology of the ruling patriarchy.’ This lost thing would let loose the ordering energies, shift the paradigm. You could find it under water. Or it could be in a major collection’s closet. Underwater, that would be theatrically productive. Gravity would shift. The audience could be weightless, and surprised. Shouldn’t we be constantly surprised, a politics of surprise.⁹ 20. This year it was suggested that humans had the capacity to conceptualize time 5,000 years before previously believed. Stone age holes filled by the light of the moon. The will to measure. The moon the method. The ordering energies of day and night. Hanging our narrative on breakfast lunch and dinner.¹⁰ The construction of time and history itself. Walking out beyond the moon to the political. And what is under the water after the moon? A minor planet dragging through the galaxy? scale altering temporal drag.¹¹ Something to slip through.
21. The most crucial and most queer thing I can say is that these thoughts are all about that which is unseen in time. All that exists and goes unnamed, uncounted, disregarded. In queer life you have to use and mis-use shards of time, search out references, create your own constellation and pull small threads forward.¹² You dig and discover all that was, in it’s time, against the continuity of it’s time. That which stepped out to a different speed and didn’t reproduce itself in the pendulum’s binary. Can we grab the discontinuous untimely and name it in the future it didn’t know? Where is the permission to name? To use, to materialize, to make due. 22. If yes, if we do – do revel in the uncounted, do wave, do transition, do trespass, do make due. If we do, then we live to the experience of uncounted futures. A commitment to the unseen in time. Beyond the will to measure. 23. What instruments have we? F 6 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929.
EDITORS NOTE: This text is an evolving document. This is not the final version. It has been printed with the artists permission. 9/3/2014
A ’beadle’ is ‘a minor official who carries out various civil, educational, or ceremonial duties.’ 7 paraphrasing Rosalyn Deutsche in Agoraphobia “How
we define public space is intimately connected with ideas about What it means to be human, the nature of society, and the kind of political community we want.” 1996 8 James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955
9 In the introduction to “Time Travels: Feminism, Nature,
Power,” Elizabeth Grosz writes about a ‘politics of surprise’. 10 A story through Sara Jaffe about Lynne Tillman
realizing her time structure could be meal time. 11 temporal drag, coined by Elizabeth Freeman in
“Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories” 12 It’s worth differentiating these world-making gestures
from the homonormative tendencies of recent years.
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◄ “Computer brain unearths better insect repellents”, Royal Society of Chemistry,
Chemistry World News, May 2008
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Aki Sasamoto
Kristan kennedy: At times your work is referred to as "Performance Poetry" is this something that has been put upon your work by others, or is it self prescribed. In either case, can you describe how this term relates to your practice? or What is your relationship to poetry? aki sasamoto: I wasn’t aware of this particular term, but it tickles me. When I get along with those who handle languages, they often turn out to be poets. I have desire to fill a space with descriptions and explanations, but my words fall short. Facing the emptiness of my descriptions, I fill the space with other things, whether they be sculptures, objects, body, sound, smell, whatever. Poets and poetry seem to be sensitive to this kind of gap that could not be filled by descriptions. My practice may be too noisy for some tastes, but when I get along with other poets, it may be due to this shared acknowledgement of the void. KK: This piece has been performed several times in distinct and unique circumstances, locations (spaces and geographic) how does this notion of underground and above ground translate across these changing sites? as: My ‘descriptions’ started rather literally. So at the very first time when I performed this in the basement, the
correlation between the actual and the metaphorical provided me with conviction; I used the actual basement to talk about the metaphorical. But after that, my mind is set with the concept of this parallel, and I didn’t have to rely on =. I could start casting the metaphorical undergrounds over different spaces (inside, shades, under an object) or using the metaphor to leap into thinking about underground experiences in life (subway, apartments, restaurant kitchen). At this stage I enjoy more linkages and associations, and that is what enjoy the most by performing multiple times. KK: Tell me about your drawings, they emerge during the performances, and recently they have made their way out into the world (gallery exhibitions, art fairs, etc) do these drawings change when they leave the performative space? as: In my performance space, drawing look great, but drawings don’t. I am after the act of drawing out a concept as I make up a mind on the spot. I use line drawing, writing, moving, and object handling to do this ‘drawing.’ After a performance, I often discard ephemerals (open food, deflated bags, etc), close a book I opened, and take down obvious drawings with ink involved, because the communication modes differ so much from the
slower and the more rigid parts of the installation. Out of these, some drawings do contain major concepts in a fashion of notes, and still function as separate entities. Personally I was not attached to the drawings, but people want to see it, so there you go. KK: In one version of the performance you bring up Jean Jenet and specifically how his art freed him from jail. There are other references to books and scripts and the hidden information within them - perhaps clues? Can you talk about the role of the criminal in this piece? Is criminal another word for artist? KK: Yes, I am making that parallel. And like criminals Jenet talks about, there are petty artists and noble artists. I draw parallels to my personal life or artistic life or art practice in the context of the art world, and use Jenet’s words to generate self criticism and warning. F Aki Sasamoto performed Skewed Lies on September 20, 2014 in the basement of the 714 NE Hancock Building. Sasamoto says about the work: “This is a story about mosquitos and how much I hate them.”
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Jesse Sugarmann
kristan kennedy: What I am most interested about this piece, and perhaps the project in general—is the overwhelming projection of "sincerity" in every image, in every reenactment. It is present in the quiet pans over the Pontiac lot, or the cars, or the people and even in the noise of the crashes or the bending/ breaking metal. There is a haunting feeling for sure, emptiness, death, destruction and failure, but, more often I am touched by your subjects’ vulnerability, their persistence and the final video's honesty. Do you think this is an accurate read of the work? What were you hoping to portray? jesse sugarmann: This project, in its entirety, is designed to serve as a monument to the Pontiac Motor Division. And I feel that monuments are sincere by definition, so yes, sincerity is a primary energy within the work. Honesty is another question. Monuments are physical embodiments of some emotional response to an event or trauma or loss. And this response doesn’t have to be based in fact; that is, sincerity doesn’t require honestly – monuments are built more on sentiment than on fact, an emotion edified by a sculpture
◄ American carlot, photographer unknown.
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or structure. So monuments are not always honest, as they are sourced from emotion and tend towards oversimplification and revision. The Pontiac Motor Division is at the center of a great social loss in Michigan, a loss of tradition, a lost source of employment and purpose. And I’ve approached that loss from all sides, pursuing honesty by sourcing the sincerity of my monument in different places, be it in a broken down van or in a worker’s obsolete muscle memory. I’ve tried my best to be honest with this project, to offer a plain view in my monument. But I can’t be sure that I’m not blinded by emotion, because I loved the Pontiac Motor Division and I miss it. kk: In a recent interview with Creative Capital, the main commissioners of the project, you talk about the “organic choreography” of the former auto manufacturing workers, and the car crash “victims?”—and how they represented both the “birth” of the car industry and its “death.” When you are making your monuments or kinetic car sculptures do you think of them having an organic choreography? js: No, the sculptures are more stilted than they are organic, if you will forgive the pun. As monuments, they are inorganic. They are purposeful fabrications that summarize ideas or losses. The elevated cars you see in the videos are spatially subverted car accidents, sculptural car accidents in which the spatial norm of the accident is reversed. If a car accident is a problem of a car occupying the wrong space, then these elevated cars are engaged in a sculpturally defined accident, occupying the wrong space by being up on poles. The car is only damaged when the structure collapses and the car returns to its appropriate space. This process reverses the organic orientation and narrative of the car accident; the car teeters undamaged in the sculptural accident space, the damage occurring only upon the car’s return to its non-accident space. I mean, that’s a mouthful, but the meaning is in there. These monument sculptures are
inorganic accidents, products of design, and they sit in opposition of the organic choreography of the assembly workers and accident survivors. kk: Is the "muscle memory" of the workers an embodiment of a particular history? And if so to what end? js: The goal of We Build Excitement is to reanimate the physical and social histories of a dead corporation, to draw a chalk line around the corpse of the Pontiac Motor Division and force it into motion. The muscle memory of former Pontiac assembly workers makes an uncanny tool in this effort. This lingering, unintended choreography, mastered through thousands of repetitions on the assembly line, is physical evidence of Pontiac’s history. Disembodied, it serves as a sort of social dance, framing the absent space of the assembly line while exhibiting a forgotten or expired skill. Pontiac can be reanimated through the lingering physical knowledge of its former employees, the obsolete duties Pontiac had once parented turned into a dance of tribute, the obsolete spaces Pontiac once occupied redefined from memory. kk: Why celebrate Pontiac via monument? Or rather why celebrate anything via monument? js: I’m making work about the end of Pontiac, about the end of a way of life and the extinguishing of a source identity, while encapsulating a history and assessing a sour completion. And considering these motivations, the format of monument seems like the only solution for me. The monument is an appropriate medium through which to acknowledge a loss of conclusion. Most often, that is the purpose of the monument. And monuments typically absolve their foci, which, really, is something that Pontiac could use. Plus, I’m interested in the preexisting relationship that monuments share with the automobile. Monuments, as a collection, make up the museum of the highway. Monuments are
designed to be travelled to, usually driven to, possibly visited in passing. So a monument seemed appropriate, on several levels, to the subject matter considered in We Build Excitement. kk: Do you think a sense of place has traveled with the work now that it removed from its research and development phase in Michigan? js: I’m not confident that the video will whisk you away to Oakland County unless you’ve been there before. The specific qualities of a Michigan summer exist in light and breeze, but I don’t know if you will prickle with the humidity unless you’ve spent time in Pontiac. There is a stronger experiential translation, though, contained in the sequences shot on brownfields, the vast expanses of concrete slab where automotive assembly factories once stood. The experience of standing on a vast brownfield is really quite singular, the moment in which you understand the vastness of what was dismantled and lost in Michigan. And I feel like that translates, this vast emptiness of this manmade Michigan desert, and it’s something I want people to experience. The clearest sense of place I took away from Michigan, however, exists in the soundtrack. When I was a kid, growing up in New Haven during the crack era, you could always hear gunfire. If you just stood quietly for a moment and listened, you would hear gunshots. It’s the same thing in Michigan with engine noise; if you just stand quietly for a moment and listen, you will hear someone, in the distance, hitting a rev limiter. There is constant engine noise in Oakland County during the summer, the environmental consequence of a gearhead culture that hasn’t faded. It’s something really specific to Southern Michigan, a constant and universal interest in automotive performance.
js: Absolutely, I do. Film editing, at its best, is a system of visual poetics. And I try to use it as such. Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, poetics is something that I’ve been trained in. I was once enrolled in a poetry program in a public arts magnet school. I mean, I feel compelled to disclose that I was expelled from the school for being a stoner. But I was a peripherally aware kid and so the lessons still stuck. The ability to construct and deconstruct poetry is the same ability one needs to understand or construct an experimental film. Reading and writing poetry has made me a better film editor, teaching me alternative methods of pursuing or avoiding a narrative. Poetry offers an abstraction of narrative as well as way of finding comfort or structure within non-narrative abstraction, and that duality mirrors the possibilities of film and video. F On September 18th, 19th, 20th, 2014, Sugarmann screened his three channel video work We Build Excitement on the side of the Fashion Tech Warehouse in industrial Southeast Portland. This ambitious ongoing project by the Central Valley-based artist is a series of performances and videos examining the evolution of the American auto industry as a
parallel to shifting American identity. Starting two years ago, Sugarmann opened (and plans to continue opening) unsanctioned Pontiac dealerships in former Pontiac dealership locations across the United States. He activates these dealerships as sites of celebration, honoring both the American auto worker and our fraught, intimate relationships to cars themselves. In the project’s video works, he documents laid-off assembly line workers and car accident victims, recreating the movements of their former jobs and crashes, respectively. Their deadpan choreography forms a moving homage to the mundane and the traumatic moments in both the birth and death of the automobile. We Build Excitement is funded in part by a grant from Creative Capital.
▼ "We Build Excitement" (Still) image courtesy of the artist and Fourteen30 Contemporary Art
kk: Do you think of your work as related to poetry in any way? Or rather to poetics (the breaking apart of something to assess it's meaning?)
Suga r m a nn 29
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egyptian head
Suga r m a nn 31
MSHR
Kristan Kennedy: Where does your work begin? Where does it end? I ask because Lisa Radon and I have decided to talk about the ancient idea/debate/philosophy/science that asks or tells where the world begins, or where we begin? Zero or One?
◄ Note from a paraphrased conversation the curator of this exhibition had with the artist, activist, and educator Julie Perini regarding one of her fondest memories of Tony Conrad while she was in graduate school at SUNY Buffalo: “Tony brought a plate of sliced watermelon to class, and a very old light bulb. He passed around the watermelon and screwed in the bulb. The lights went off and he said, ‘today we are going to look at old light.’” Perini mentioned that the conversation that ensued was one that touched on changing culture, time, film history, and many other things – and also that the watermelon was delicious. Tony Conrad and Paige Sarlin presented work at PICA in a series of screenings and conversations in the Spring of 2014 in collaboration with Cinema Project.
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mshr: We’re more like a square-wave oscillator. If we’re at 1, we go to 0. If we’re at 0, we go to 1. Trying to identify a beginning point in our practice leads to infinite regression… we’re more interested in conceptualizing our work as a living feedback system. Feedback systems have become central to our work, both as a compositional structure and as a conceptual model for our workflow. In our creative ecosystem, idea modules are plugged into each other in an ever-complexifying network. Each module can be translated across a multitude of forms: digital sculpture, sound, performance, synthesis, texture, physical sculpture, interface, etc. In our collaboration, feedback between one another is a fundamental creative principle. And as artists we want to have feedback with our culture. It’s not a closed system: we take as much input as possible, and frequently experiment with rerouting, adding or changing elements in the system just for the sake of mutation.
kk: Can you talk to me about the systems you create or use to make your work. I am thinking specifically of this idea of looping sound, or continual light, or a never ending coil… mshr: Light-audio feedback systems are a fundamental structure for our recent musical performances and installations. In these systems, light and sound are mutually generative and mutually modulating. Here is a technical description of a specific type of light-audio feedback system that we use: There is a very basic synthesizer made up of 4 oscillators that modulate each other in a series. This means that each oscillator will affect the overall sound of the synthesizer in a different way. The frequency of each oscillator is controlled by an optical sensor—the more light that reaches a sensor, the higher the frequency of the oscillator will be, from subsonic to ultrasonic. The audio signal from this synthesizer is split into 2 paths—one output goes to the speakers and the other goes to a device that triggers groups of lights based on the volume and frequency of the audio signal. So, the light and audio signals trigger one another, generating fractal fluctuations. The flow can be modulated by varying the proximity and sensitivity of the lights and the optical sensors.
Our performances are all about moving around the lights and sensors to “steer” the feedback system. In our installations, we have often designed interfaces to allow visitors to direct this flow. For Resonant Entity Modulator, we’re presenting an array of light-audio feedback systems as semi-static compositions. The lights and sensors are in fixed positions, causing the rhythmic patterns of the feedback system to remain fairly constant. But the system is all analog and quite sensitive, so the infinite chain of reactions will continue to unfold as a lurching, chirping organic entity, subtly modulated by the visitors presence. kk: Do you think of your work as related to poetry in any way? Or rather to poetics (the breaking apart
of something to assess it's meaning)? mshr: Our work is all about creating universes—building electronic and aesthetic systems and engaging them as they play out. We’re tinkerers, trying out different combinations of elements, reflecting on the results, modifying the system, starting again. So in this way, I think the process does relate to poetics… finding new ways of approaching the world by engaging and shifting sensory material. F MSHR presented a cybernetic system of hand-built analog synthesizers and hieroglyphic sculptures. Light, sound, and shape are pulled through feedback eddies as the system unfolds. Visitors to the installation
became a part of the feedback cycle, steering a course through ritual space with intentional engagement and ambient presence. Resonant Entity Modulator was on view at the Fashion Tech warehouse from September 11–October 1, 2014. This project is a new commission by PICA.
▼ Courtesy of the artist and UPFOR
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Jennifer West
Kristan Kennedy: Film is a material; it is also a presence. Can you speak to how this installation addresses the physical, historical, experiential space film inhabits? jennifer west: As the analogue filmstrip rapidly becomes a physical material belonging to the last century, the installation takes the viewer into a space of projected light, shadow, color, verticality, pattern, and text made by 35 and 70 mm filmstrips and flashlights. I refer to it as a “post-pre-cinematic” fragmented environment that re-imagines the use of the filmstrip as material. The filmstrips contain references to the history of pre-cinema, to early cinema to experimental film to Hollywood film to expanded cinema, abstract film—even a recycled print of a Snickers bar commercial makes an appearance. Historical slogans from pre-cinematic times such as such as “A Curious Machine” and “Expect Even Better” appear in the installation alongside abstract Pollock-splatter and lip print filmstrips and images of hand-shadow play. It’s both a communal spectacle of hallucinogenic light play over architecture and a piece to provoke thought.
◄ Portrait of Loïe Fuller, by Frederick Glasier, 1902.
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Upon closer inspection of the filmstrips, one will find panels of genre-driven narrative Hollywood films (made from recycled picture fill with a scratch down the middle to protect from copyright)—a Western film, an underwater film, a Mexican shootout, a bank robbery car chase to the desert and if you look for it, the TriStar film logo of the white horse. These strips are abstracted into patterns of color and vertical stripes. More history appears in the form of 70mm blow ups that have been hand-painted (akin to early black and white cinema that was tinted by hand)—images of Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance, Wikipedia image searches on pre-cinema, the full moon, shots of my own collection of video and film cameras. It’s a personal rear-view mirror of my relationship to film, cinema, history, art, light projection—creating 25 virtual windows that become physical, architectural slides to be playfully engaged with. kk: For most of it’s life in action, in this exhibition this installation will be a sort of silent “movie” but on two nights you will bring the film to life with sound, dance, and a light performance. jw: Yes, for two nights, a dancer will perform Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance inside of the installation accompanied by a Theremin player and a synthesizer musician. I will perform a choreographed light show with three others where we will use flashlights to project the filmstrip images onto the dancers silk moving costume—illuminating it with patterns of light, color and varying movements and rhythms. The performances bring together my research into pre and early cinema and my interests in expanded cinema, Happenings, and 60’s light shows. It was a chance to evoke the art of Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance, which played a key role in the events that led up to the invention of cinema as well as was one of the most filmed images of early cinema. Fuller was known as the “Electric Lady” and invented the Serpentine Dance—in which she performed in a darkened space with
a large silk circular costume that was lit with colored lights–the dramatic movements of the silk costume becoming illuminated with light. kk: When you first started talking about the installation to me, you called it a “magic lantern” can you talk about the simple science behind this installation and what you hoped to achieve by giving the permission to the viewer to make the image? Or, what it means to be inside a projection? jw: As we delve further and further into the virtual window of the computer screen and while analogue film is coming to its end—I wanted to stick the viewer inside a space akin to being inside of a giant film projection system. It’s about bringing people back to playing with projected light and shadow—in their bodiesin a communal viewing space. The piece is a “magic lantern” that the viewer must play themselves – it’s a rear view mirror onto history and a swan song of the filmstrip. There is evidence in prehistoric caves that people made shadow projections by placing themselves between a fire and the cave wall and there are the times that children spend making hand shadows in projections— there is the philosophical questions posed about “Plato’s Cave”, there is expanded cinema and there is the death of the analogue filmstrip—all of these things come together in the piece. The viewer is allowed to “make their own movies”—as an individual, do-it-yourself experience—using the flashlight—the everyday item that has its own projection lens. It’s a spectacle that allows for play, hallucination and deeper thought—entirely different for each person, with a punk-rock, indie-experimental film ethos – it’s a love letter to film. kk: You have done extensive research for this project, especially on the life and work of Loie Fuller, you turned me on to the book Traces of Light by Ann Cooper Albright. In the book, Albright talks about how Fuller is often
◄ Moon at 70mm with hand for scale, Photo courtesy of Jennifer West, 2014.
I filmed a compilation YouTube clips of the Serpentine Dance, which I later blow up to 70mm and hand-painted. kk: Do you think of your work being related to poetry, or to poetics (the breaking apart of something to assess meaning)? jw: In this work in particular, I use pattern, rhythm and arrangement— the way that language can be arranged in poetry. Within that, there are actions and materials that have a twist— like the blood splatter, the snickers bar, the emojis, the Hollywood genres, the history, the lips. F
relegated to the sidelines or undervalued for her work—she is talked of as a muse but rarely as an artist. I was struck by Albright’s elegant and astute argument that there is historical significance in the “traces” of Fuller’s influence. What initially lead you to Fuller’s work and where has your research and this project brought you? How is she important to your piece? jw: I had been researching pre-cinema at the Getty Research Institute in LA and got interested in the link between Fuller’s dance and the invention of cinema. Upon further research, I started to think about Fuller’s inventive use of lighting, mirrors and costume
as a form of expanded cinema. Since she was not trained by any institution of dance, she was free to invent a new forms that used elements of American of the folk culture of the times, skirt dancing combined with complicated theatrical lighting, staging and costume. Her Serpentine Dance was one of the most filmed dances of early cinema and was copied by other dancers across the US and Europe. There is a literal “trace” left in the films of George Melies, the Lumière Brothers, and others. As the project evolved, I decided the installation should include images of Fuller’s dance as well as a live performance. My cinematographer, Peter West, and
Jennifer West’s installation Flashlight Filmstrip Projections was commissioned by PICA. West describes the installation as “the first of her new prepost fragmented cinematic environments where viewers are invited into an environment of flashlights, projections, filmstrips, images, and shadows.” The installation was sighted at the Fashion Tech warehouse in industrial Southeast Portland and was on view from September 11 to October 1, 2014. On the evenings of September 16th and 17th, the artist collaborated with several artists to reinterpret historical sources to present a live flashlight projection performance. Composer Jesse Mejía and theremin player/ builder Mark Keppinger re-interpreted and performed an original score by Sue Harshe (2005) that had been put to the 1921 film Rhythmus 21 by Hans Richter. Choreography from the 1896 Lumière Brothers film of Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance was reinterpreted by Maranee Sanders and performed by Connie D. Moore. Jennifer West, Eleanor Ford, Micah Schmelzer, Leif J. Lee, and Julie Perini performed with flashlights animating West’s room of film strips. The performance was conceived of and directed by Jennifer West.
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Wynne Greenwood
Artist Wynne Greenwood and Cooley curator Stephanie Snyder in conversation: an excerpt from Greenwood’s forthcoming exhibition publication. Wynne Greenwood: Before I started Tracy + the Plastics, I was working on a video project that was a live “Choose Your Own Adventure” show. Somehow the audience would be able to choose what the next scene was. The Plastics were characters in that adventure idea. It never actually happened, but a lot of the elements stuck: an investment in audience participation, choice, multiple voices… Stephanie Snyder: It seems really important that Tracy and the Plastics began out of a desire to have real community involvement and collaboration in your work in real time, to literally engage the audience in its creation.
◄ Head from a Female Sphinx, ca. 1876-1842 B.C.E. Chlorite, 15 5/16 x 13 1/8 x 13 15/16 in., 124.5 lb. (38.9 x 33.3 x 35.4 cm, 56.47kg). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 56.85. Creative Commons-BY
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WG: That intention and that impulse set up the whole project, especially how much process I brought to the stage. The way that that desire functioned when Tracy and the Plastics first took shape was through giving that role to the Plastics. SS: They became the audience? WG: They asked the questions. They talked back.
SS: Why are they called the Plastics? WG: Part of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” narrative included a group of characters called “the Plastics” who lived at the bottom of a mountain that was totally cloud-covered—a dark, grey world. But at the top of the mountain above the clouds was a super bright and colorful world. The Plastics would find bits of debris, bits of colorful plastic that would fall below the clouds, and they would gather these bits of plastic and replace parts of themselves with them. It was a pretty developed world in which the Plastics had a pawn shop and would gather these bits and pieces and either exchange them with others or would do things like pull out teeth and replace them with the bits of colored plastic. SS: They sound like technological hybrids. WG: Yes. They were very influenced by Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto.” SS: And how did they, alongside Tracy, develop as performers? WG: In my first attempt at including the Plastics in performance, they were video heads on black and white video monitors. They had sound, but it wasn’t a coordinated effort between the three of us. I pre-recorded the music and brought it on CD, pushed
play, and sang to the music. After the black and white monitors, I brought one large monitor on stage … Nikki was the first member of the Plastics to say something. She talks about her art project. She was an artist. SS: Nikki and Cola can be so sassy! What were you making music with as Tracy took shape? WG: Keyboard, guitar, a sampler, and a drum machine. And all of these videos, even these early ones, I am re-performing for this project. SS: It’s thrilling to feel the technology gap between Tracy—at her origins—and your new video and installation work. These multiple mediations in dialogue with one another, for me, make the Cooley exhibition swell with a rising energy and temporal pressure. What’s it like for you to be pulling Tracy + the Plastics into their own future? WG: A main concern and intention of Tracy + the Plastics was figuring out how to be embodied while staying engaged with media and its kind of hall-of-mirrors flattening, distortion, and presentation of identities and realities. One of the goals was to not have to isolate myself or my work from media—to explore media’s physical presence and impact on the self and the body. For me, bringing Tracy + the Plastics into the same place as my more recent work, especially the More Heads videos and sculptures, affirms the always-present potential for creating and embodying new and ever more complex roles, opening up the space and capacity to sense and absorb their possibilities. [Portland, july 2014]F Stacy, is curated by Stephanie Snyder, John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, and Wynne Greenwood.
space in order to re-engage her groundbreaking band Tracy + The Plastics – in relationship to her most recent experimental video and installation, and object based work. This project and its forthcoming catalog was commissioned by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College with support from the The New Foundation, Seattle.
▲ Wynne Greenwood working in the Cooley, August 2014, Photo by Santiago Leyba
For Stacy, queer feminist artist Wynne Greenwood transformed the gallery space into a studio and performance
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Lisa Radon
Kristan kennedy: Where do we begin this interview? Zero or one? Lisa Radon: I mentioned to you that there is a section in a book I have on sacred geometry that briefly traces the invention of the zero and looks at the implications of this invention for worldview, for spirituality, for psychology, in addition to logic and reason (both go out the door when you start doing math with zeros.) Basically, when counting started with one, existing cosmologies took the beginning of the universe to be Unity, a oneness that is then differentiated, and further differentiated into everything that is in the world and universe we now know. Everything is/was part of one thing. With the invention of the zero—counting starting at zero— the author points out that at around that time in Hinduism (The zero was invented in India which I didn’t know. I’d thought the Arabic world, but they were the messengers.) the idea of the void or nothingness was introduced, and the word “maya” which had meant “the power to divide” began to mean “illusion.” You can see it’s just a very different way of looking at the world.
◄ Nether Largie Standing Stones, Kilmartin Glen, Argyll. Photo courtesy the artist.
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we know so much more than we know! And also, we've collectively forgotten so much that we have known in the name of a false concept of progress. I realized that my analytical abilities were powerful, but that right now, for me, focusing on integrating information rather than dividing it up into pieces (which is what analysis is great at) is the way I need to move forward. The two parts of me are in conversation all the time, but the integrator is in ascendence. I still never say “prove” though. Science!
If you are one with everything else, you belong here and are united with all of it. If you came from nothingness and have no sense of connection to all of it, you are separate and maybe alien. That’s just one implication. Anyway, I was excited to read this book because it uses math and geometry to get at ideas I understand to be the case, but haven’t fully articulated, even in my brain. It has to do with what art is and can do. It has to do with just being in the world. It informs how one might think about the natural and constructed worlds. KK: Do you need proof (mathematical, scientific, anecdotal) to believe in something that you “know” to be true? LR: I used to take a hardcore position, refusing to use the words “believe” and “prove.” Science, and I am a big science fan girl, avoids the word “prove,” and instead will say that the existing evidence supports one thing or another. And I used to think that if something required belief, meaning evidence could not be found for it, that it didn't merit further thought, essentially. But I realized that that position was a construct and not what I really... BELIEVED! Ha! I realized that I know many many things intuitively that inform the way I live, what I know about how things work and how we understand each other. I think, gosh,
KK: I often wonder about this concept of nothingness or a void… coming from nothing. It seems impossible to me for something to be empty of all meaning, substance or form—especially the world—especially the world at the beginning (and if we go back to Vedic science we are a part of that universe). It has always felt to me that “nothing,” as in “in the beginning there was nothing,” meant that there was potential for something... and potential is SOMETHING. LR: Potential IS something. I have come to think that there is no such thing as nothingness. When I was little and having a hard time understanding the infinite nature of space, I remember I was like, well, it can't go on forever. And someone asked, and what's at the end? And I said a brick wall. (We didn't have brick walls where I came from, so they were romantic.) And the someone said, well, what's on the other side? And I said trash cans. Many (most?) cultures have not said, in the beginning there was nothing; many creation myths begin with earth and sky. KK: Does your installation begin with earth and sky? Or does it arrive there? I ask this because both are represented in some way—sky as in pure air (or air that is being purified by your sculptures) and earth in the form of the rosemary bushes. and … When we first started talking about this exhibition which perhaps was our “zero and one moment”...
you talked about the things you were making or bringing into the space as “tools used to make (or aid) other tools.” What made you start there? LR: Interestingly, for me anyway, the answer to both of your questions is the same. I think: everything is one thing, or how about: everything is interconnected. If you start there, with the one, then it means that any introduction of a new object (or poem) (which could be considered a reconstitution of what currently exists) reorients the existing uniscape—reorients the relationships between everything that is. Yes, so there might be tools that might be useful for deliberately reorienting the relationship among things (and self and other humans as well). We’ve been making these kinds of tools for thousands of years. Also I like to ask what can objects do? What can words do? Why do this? A nice DeWalt drill is a beautiful object. It does work. It makes the user stronger and more effective. A lever is useful and beautiful, as is a henge. Earth and sky. This is nice. It is important to me (oddly because much of a poet’s method is metaphor) that the tools be real tools (do real work) and not metaphors. Materials became very important, grounding in ignis, aer, aqua, terra. I am grateful to you for pointing out that the flora is of the earth because I’d not been able to understand how flora fit into this fourfold matrix, just knew this rosmarinus had to be there. Also, I love invisible things.
an infinity increaser. This is what I mean about reorienting the uniscape by recombining or reshaping that which exists through various means. Actually grinding new facets on the diamond of the world and thereby altering the map of refraction and reflection. You can look at it in a flat-footed manner, making something from something. Or you can take a more abstract view of things and imagine the most unreasonable, illogical ways in which one might increase the (by definition) unincreasable. And that’s what I’m interested in right now. F
Lisa Radon’s installation INFINITY INCREASER was on view at PICA from September 11–October 11, 2014. Radon describes her installation as “A charged site. Ways and means.” “... various little ways of changing things.” A poem and publication, “Infinity Increaser,” was produced for the occasion. This project is a new commission by PICA.
▼ Radon standing with the Nether Largie Standing Stones, Kilmartin Glen, Argyll. Photo courtesy the artist.
kk: Can you speak to the title of your poem/publication and that of the show... Infinity Increaser and the stuff it is made of? words, stones, levers, thoughts? LR: Well it’s a deliberate misreading or misinterpretation of a concept in a nice book about Shinto that I have. The author means to say that man, through perceiving an aspect of the infinite, brings it into being. But I am more interested in the beautiful paradox of the two words and what it might mean that wo/man might actually be
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◄ continued from pg.
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this energy static or kinetic.? If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic–and this we know it is, for certain–then it is a
The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Nikola Tesla's Understanding of Free Energy An Article by Toby Grotz Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia – Southern Autumn of 1997 Abstract… Nikola Tesla used ancient Sanskrit terminology in his descriptions of natural phenomena. As early as 1891 Tesla described the universe as a kinetic system filled with energy which could be harnessed at any location. His concepts during the following years were greatly influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda was the first of a succession of eastern yogi's ◄
who brought Vedic philosophy and religion to the west.
MATISSE, PICASSO, AND GERTRUDE STEIN,
After meeting the Swami and after continued study of
with Two Shorter Stories, By Gertrude Stein,
the Eastern view of the mechanisms driving the material
PLAIN EDITION, Paris, 1933, FIRST LIMITED
world, Tesla began using the Sanskrit words Akasha, Prana,
EDITION OF 500 COPIES.
and the concept of a luminiferous ether to describe the
Pictured here are pages 120 and 121
source, existence and construction of matter. This paper
of Stein’s text, Many Many Women. It is
will trace the development of Tesla's understanding of
included here as a stand in for the concept of
Vedic Science, his correspondence with Lord Kelvin
“one” as mentioned in the interview between
concerning these matters, and the relation between Tesla
Kristan Kennedy and Lisa Radon (see p. 44).
and Walter Russell and other turn of the century scientists
Kristan Kennedy was introduced to the text by the Eve
concerning advanced understanding of physics. Finally,
Fowler when the artist visited Portland along with Math
after being obscured for many years, the author will give
Bass in August of 2014. The artists were in town to lead a
a description of what he believes is the the pre-requi-
summer session of Conceptual Oregon Performance School,
site for the free energy systems envisioned by Tesla.
or C.O.P.S., run by Patrick Rock of Rocksbox Contemporary
Tesla's Earler Description of the Physical Universe
Art. Math, Eve, and their students performed the text in
By the year 1891, Nikola Tesla had invented many
locations around Portland. The resulting documentation was
useful devices. These included a system of arc lighting
made into a video work entitled “Many Many Women as read
(1886), the alternating current motor, power generation
by Many Many Men.” Fowler was generous enough to point
and transmission systems (1888), systems of electrical
me towards the text, and in turn I am sharing a section of it
conversion and distribution by oscillatory discharges
here. Fowler has been working with the text in several ways
(1889), and a generator of high frequency currents (1890),
over the last year and sees this engagement flowing into the
to name a few. The most well known patent centers around
future. At the LA Art Book Fair in January of 2014, Fowler or-
an inspiration that occurred while walking with a friend in a
ganized a reading of Many Many Women read by twelve artist
park in Budapest, Hungry. It was while observing the sun-
friends (Math Bass, Lauren Davis Fisher, Anna Sew Hoy, Dylan
set that Tesla had a vision of how rotating electromagnetic
Mira, Hayden Dunham, Lauren Mackler, Cay Castagnetto, Mel
fields could be used in a new form of electric motor. his
Shimkovitz, Racehelle Sawatsky, Litia Perta) in conjunction
led to the well known system of alternating current power
with the release of her book the “anyone telling anything is
distribution. In 1891 however, Tesla patented what one
telling that thing.” It was also presented at Poetic Research
day may become his most famous invention. It is the basis
Bureau on March 8, 2014 by the artist and readers (Harold
for the wireless transmission of electrical power and is
Abramowitz, Laida Aguirre, Mariah Garnett, Lauren Mackler,
know as the Tesla Coil Transformer. It was during this year
Sylke Meyer, Litia Perta, Anna Joy Springer, Rachelle Sawatsky
that Tesla made the following comments during a speech
and Kate Wolf) and again on June 10, 2014 as part of LAND
before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers:
(Los Angeles Nomadic Division) with readers (Math Bass,
“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be
Zoe Crosher, Shannon Ebner, Anna Sew Hoy, Lauren Mackler,
driven by a power obtainable at any point in the universe.
Dylan Mira, Litia Perta, Rachelle Sawatsky, Erika Vogt, and
This idea is not novel… We find it in the delightful myth
Kate Wolf). Fowler is in process of making a film called Many
of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it
Many Women, the audio of which is a recording of friends
among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid
reading the text in their studios and domestic settings.
mathematicians… Throughout space there is energy. Is
48
mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” [1] This description of the physical mechanisms of the universe was given before Tesla became familiar with the Vedic science of the eastern Nations of India, Tibet, and Nepal. This science was first popualized in the United States and the west during the three year visit of Swami Vivekananda. Vedic Science and Swami Vivekananda The Vedas are a collection of writings consisting of hymns, prayers, myths, historical accounting, dissertations on science, and the nature of reality, which date back at least 5,000 years. The nature of matter, antimatter, and the make up of atomic structure are described in the Vedas. The language of the Vedas is known as Sanskrit. The origin of Sanskrit is not fully understood. Western scholars suggest that it was brought into the Himalayas and thence south into India by the southward migrations of the Aryan culture. Paramahansa Yogananda and other historians however do not subscribe to that theory, pointing out that there is no evidence within India to substantiate such claims. [2] There are words in Sanskrit that describe concepts totally foreign to the western mind. Single words may require a full paragraph for translation into english. Having studied Sanskrit for a brief period during the late 70's, it finally occurred to this writer that Tesla's use of Vedic terminology could provide a key to understanding his view of electromagnetism and the nature of the universe. But where did Tesla learn Vedic concepts and Sanskrit terminology? A review of the well known biographies by Cheney, Hunt and Draper, and O'Neil [3], [4], [5], reveal no mention of Tesla's knowledge of Sanskrit. O'Neal however includes the following excerpt from an unpublished article called Man's Greatest Achievement: “There manifests itself in the fully developed being, Man, a desire mysterious, inscrutable and irresistible: to imitate nature, to create, to work himself the wonders he perceives…. Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.” According to Leland Anderson the article was written May 13th, 1907. Anderson also suggested that it was through association with Swami Vivekananda that Tesla may have come into contact with Sanskrit terminology and that John Dobson of the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers Association had researched that association. [6] Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta, India in 1863. He was inspired by his teacher, Ramakrishna to serve men as visible manifestations of God. In 1893 Swami Vivekananda began a tour of the west by
attending the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago.
proof of the principle did come until about ten years
During the three years that he toured the United States
later when Albert Einstein published his paper on
Atlantic, much the finest I have ever had. I was trying
and Europe, Vivekananda met with many of the well
relativity. What had been known in the East for the
hard nearly all the way, but quite unsuccessfully, to find
known scientists of the time including Lord Kelvin and
last 5,000 years was then known to the West.
something definite as to the functions of ether in respect
Nikola Tesla. [7] According to Swami Nikhilananda: Nikola Tesla, the great scientist who specialized in the
Brahman is defined as the one self existent imper-
We had a most beautiful passage across the
to plain, old fashioned magnetism. A propos of this, I
sonal spirit; the Divine Essence, from which all things
have instructed the publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, to
field of electricity, was much impressed to hear from the
emanate, by which they are sustained, and to which they
send you at the Waldorf a copy of my book (Collection
Swami his explanation of the Samkhya cosmogony and the
return. Notice that this is very similar to the concept
of Separate Papers) on Electrostatics and Magnetism.
theory of cycles given by the Hindus. He was particu-
of the Great Spirit as understood by Native American
I shall be glad if you will accept it from me as a very
larly struck by the resemblance between the Samkhya
cultures. Ishvara is the Supreme Ruler; the highest
small mark of my gratitude to you for your kindness.
theory of matter and energy and that of modern physics.
possible conception of the Absolute, which is beyond
You may possibly find something interesting in the
The Swami also met in New York Sir William Thompson,
all thought. Mahat means literally the Great One, and is
articles on Atmospheric Electricity which it contains.
afterwards Lord Kelvin, and Professor Helmholtz, two
also interpreted as meaning universal mind or cosmic
leading representatives of western science. Sarah
intelligence. Prana means energy (usually translated as
Bernhardt, the famous French actress had an interview
life force) and Akasha means matter (usually translated
with the Swami and greatly admired his teachings. [8]
as ether). Dobson points out that the more common
It was at a party given by Sarah Bernhardt that Nikola Tesla probably first met Swami Vivekananda. [9] Sarah Bernhardt was playing the part of 'Iziel' in a play of the
translations for Akasha and Prana are not quite correct, but that Tesla did understand their true meanings.
Lady Kelvin joins me in kind regards, and I remain, Yours always truly, Kelvin Thank you also warmly for the beautiful flowers [13]
The meeting with Swami Vivekananda greatly
same name. It was a French version about the life of
stimulated Nikola Tesla's interest in Eastern Science.
Bhudda. The actress upon seeing Swami Vivekananda in
The Swami later remarked during a lecture in India, “I
the audience, arranged a meeting which was also attended
myself have been told by some of the best scientific minds
artists, sculptors, writers and scientists of this century. His
by Nikola Tesla. In a letter to a friend, dated February
of the day, how wonderfully rational the conclusions
periodic chart of the elements accurately predicted the
13th, 1896, Swami Vivekananda noted the following:
of the Vedanta are. I know of one of them personally,
location and characteristics of four elements years before
…Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the
who scarcely has time to eat his meal, or go out of his
they were discovered in laboratories. These are now known
Vedantic Prana and Akasha and the Kalpas, which
laboratory, but who would stand by the hour to attend
as Deuterium, Tritium, Neptunium, and Plutonium. Russell
according to him are the only theories modern science
my lectures on the Vedanta; for, as he expresses it, they
apparently entered into a heightened state of awareness
can entertain…. Mr. Tesla thinks he can demonstrate
are so scientific, they so exactly harmonize with the
after being struck by lightning. He began several weeks of
that mathematically that force and matter are reduc-
aspirations of the age and with the conclusions to which
drawing and writing about the basic nature and make up
ible to potential energy. I am to go see him next week
modern science is coming at the present time.” [11]
of the physical universe. Russell’s family finally called the
Tesla and Lord Kelvin
to get this mathematical demonstration. [10] Swami Vivekananda was hopeful that Tesla would
William S. Thompson was one of the prominent scien-
Tesla and Russell Walter Russell was one of the most accomplished
family doctor to determine if Russell should be committed to an mental institution. The doctor, upon seeing the re-
be able to show that what we call matter is simply
tists and engineers of the 1800s. He developed analogies
sults of Russell’s weeks of work, said that he did not know
potential energy because that would reconcile the
between heat and electricity and his work influenced the
what Russell was doing, but that he definitely was not mad.
teachings of the Vedas with modern science. The Swami
theories developed by James Clerk Maxwell, one of the
realized that “In that case, the Vedantic cosmology
founders of electromagnetic theory. Thompson supervised
has not yet been determined, Nikola Tesla and Walter
[would] be placed on the surest of foundations.” The
the successful laying of the Trans Atlantic Cable and for that
Russell did meet and discuss their respective cosmologies.
harmony between Vedantic theories and and western
work was knighted Lord Kelvin. Kelvin had endorsed Tesla's
14 Tesla recognized the wisdom and power of Russell’s
science was explained by the following diagram:
theories and proposed system for the wireless transmis-
teaching and urged Russell to lock up his knowledge in
sion of electrical power. [12] FootNOTE- Grotz PACE
a safe for 1,000 years until man was ready for it. [15]
BRAHMAN
=
| |
MAHAT OR ISHVARA
=
|
=
Tesla continued to study Hindu and Vedic phi-
|
losophy for a number of years as indicated by the
|
following letter written to him by Lord Kelvin.
The Appearance of Free Energy Or Why Free Energy has not yet Happened Comments, Possibilities and Socio Economic Implications Although Tesla did not accept many of the ten-
PRIMAL CREATIVE ENERGY |
+---------+ PRANA and AKASHA
THE ABSOLUTE
Although the exact time and occasion of their meeting
15, Eaton Place
ants of relativity and quantum theory and never made
+---------+
London, S.W.
the connection between matter and energy, he did
ENERGY and MATTER
May 20, 1902
recognize the possibility of free and unlimited ener-
Dear Mr. Tesla,
gy as demonstrated by the following statement.
Tesla understood the Sanskrit terminology and
I do not know how I can ever thank you enough
Can Man control [the] grandest, most awe inspiring
philosophy and found that it was a good means to
for the most kind letter of May, 10, which I found in my
of all processes in nature?…. If he could do this, he would
describe the physical mechanisms of the universe as seen
cabin in the Lucania, with the beautiful books which
have powers almost unlimited and supernatural… He could
through his eyes. It would behoove those who would
you most kindly sent me along with it: —The Buried
cause planes to collide and produce his suns and stars, his
attempt to understand the science behind the inventions
Temple, The Gospel of Bhudda, Les Grands Inities, the
heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its
of Nikola Tesla to study Sanskrit and Vedic philosophy.
exquisite edition of Rossetti's House of Life, and last
infinite forms…. [Such powers] would place him beside
but not least the Century Magazine for June, 1900
his creator, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny. [16]
Tesla apparently failed to show the identity of energy and matter. If he had, certainly Swami Vivekananda
with the splendid and marvelous photographs on pp.
would have recorded that occasion. The mathematical
176, 187, 190, 191, 192, full of electrical lessons.
We see that Tesla is asking a question, speculating, searching for an answer. If Tesla had developed
49
free energy sources or learned how to manipulate
Bruce DePalma, and others ever materialized? Perhaps
Nikola Tesla himself. 24 It continues to this day. Perhaps
space time and gravity, during the time of his most
because “easy things are seldom done for the same
the reason for the delay of wireless power transmission
public and productive years, (up until about 1920),
reason that impossible things are rarely done: no one
or free energy devices lies even deeper within the human
he would have had answers to those questions.
will pay for anything believed to be easy or impossible.”
psyche. Is it possible that we could compare the Tesla
[20] Perhaps because when we talk about power there
story to a biblical story? Bruce Gordan thinks so. In
known as the “Death Ray.” It was simply a particle beam
is more there than one would initially visualize. What
Gordan's analysis Tesla's attempt at building a prototype
weapon which he proposed in 1937 and was fabricated
we are talking about is personal power, national power,
magnifying transmitter parallels Genesis 11:1-9. [25]
under contracts with Alcoa Aluminum and the English and
planetary power, karmic power and the power of love.
Tesla’s most misunderstood invention is popularly
Italian governments. [17] It used electrostatic propulsion
The sages tell us that in order to enjoy power we have
“The message; human curiosity and technological derring-do makes God nervous; God de-
techniques and similar devices are being developed today
to let go of power, to overcome ourselves. As an example
molishes project, confounds language.” Gordan
by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO)
this author can describe one of his recent experiences.
further outlines the the scenario as follows:
and the US Army Strategic Defense Command. [18]
After a very successful symposium celebrating the 100th
“When everything is perfect, the right time shows up.”
year after Nikola Tesla arrived in the United States 21, a
[26] This is equivalent to saying, “Absolute knowledge
the infinite power of the universe as envisioned by
non profit corporation, 501(c)(3), was formed specifically
in the hands of one whose heart is not yet tender, would
Nikola Tesla. The question remains, why not?
to encourage and pursue research into the inventions
be a terrible weapon.” [27] We might postulate that
Free energy devices, if they are feasible, are not about
and discoveries of Nikola Tesla. Two years later, after a
technological developments do not occur until the planet
smaller faster microcircuits or a bigger better mouse traps.
second symposium, several of the founding members
is ready. The recent examination of the theory of Gaia
This is a technology which may revolutionize the socio-eco-
approached the board of directors with a proposal
credits the Earth with an intelligence. “Thousands of
nomic status quo on planet Earth. At this moment the big
to validate Tesla’s claim that wireless transmission of
years ago, by means of seeing, sorcerers became aware
pie is unevenly divided. One quarter of the population on
power was possible. Board members suggested that
that the Earth was sentinent and that its awareness could
this rock, the third stone from the sun, consumes three
permission be obtained from the FCC, an environmental
affect the awareness of humans.” [28] By implication
quarters of the yearly resource output. As one can easily
impact statement be filed with the EPA, and we should
of reciprocity the reverse could be true. The group or
deduce, from a brief study of world affairs, there are about
go form “our own non profit corporation.” It was also
collective unconscious is still struggling with the result of
three billion people who have just about had it with this
decided that since there was no procedure to cover
quantum and relativity theory. We as a race were ready
scenario. There are wars starvation and strife in every nook
research, the organization could not be involved.
for nuclear power, every thing was perfect and the right
So we see that mankind has not yet harnessed
and cranny of the planet. So what do we do about it?
Another goal of the organization had been to establish
time showed up. Soon we will have put the technology to
Spaceship Earth Needs A Flight Plan
a museum to be named the Nikola Tesla Museum of Science
Either we divide the pie more evenly or we make the
and Technology. We proposed that since 60–70 billion dol-
SO WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT IT
lars are given away to non profit organizations annually, we
FREE ENERGY: CREATING AN IDEA
pie larger. The first option requires that our standard of living must fall so that the standard of living in the third
had as good a chance as any other organization for obtain-
world may rise. The second option allows us to maintain
ing funding, for a museum or research. We reasoned that:
our standard of living while we help raise the standard of
“Since only 16% of the museums in this country
good use or abandon it to insure our survival as a species.
WHOSE TIME HAS COME Wireless transmission of power and free energy have not happened yet, perhaps we aren’t ready, perhaps the
living of under privileged nations. This we must do. It is
are science museums, this museum in honor of Nikola
Earth isn’t ready. Pogo said it best, “we have met the
our destiny. It is our responsibility. It is our final test.
Tesla will help educate the public in technological areas.
enemy and it is us.” In the Jungian view of collective
With the need for economic revitalization of industry in
unconscious, things happen when the time is right, we
on this planet, most of them are children. Nations fight
Colorado, 1986 is the time to begin supporting the scien-
get what we agree to. We need a flight plan. And that plan
nations, war is part of our lives. What drives our economy
tific education of our region. With the current statistics
must realize that:
in the western world, allows us to enjoy a high standard
showing that the United States is falling behind the world
of living, a life of leisure compared to our neighbors south
technologically, the effort to educate the public is becom-
of the imaginary line called a border? Many answers
ing more important, and the surge of public awareness
both economic, social, political, and spiritual can be
of Nikola Tesla’s inventions makes him an appropriate
given. We do know that the standard of living that a
namesake for a science and technology museum.” [23]
Thirty thousand people starve to death every day
nation enjoys is directly related energy consumption. Energy drives the economies of nations and Tesla’s
WHEN THE POWER OF LOVE OVERCOMES THE LOVE OF POWER THERE WILL BE PEACE [Source: Girls Lavatory, Boulder High School, Boulder, Colorado]
The board moved to table our proposal indefinitely. What had happened? Of the 15–20 people that had
Described as “Post Industrial, neo-technical, teen-age
life long goal was to make electric power equally available
started the organization only four remained as part of the
to all people any where on this planet. He continued to
governing body. Three of those members were opposed to
“So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it
promote his plan for the wireless transmission of power
research. The collective mind of the board of directors had
would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically
in the yearly interviews he gave on his birthday as late
become the antithesis of the momentum Tesla had gained
designed this planet….”
as 1940. [19] Electrical power allows on site process-
in his lifetime. Unlike the independent inventor and busi-
Nikola Tesla describing what is now known as
ing of raw materials. Electrical power can run pumps
nessman, the board was now composed of members who
Schumann Resonance (7.8 Hz) in “The Transmission of
from water wells in areas affected by drought. Electrical
were bureaucrats and paper pushers for Fortune 500 com-
Electrical Energy Without Wires As A Means Of Furthering
power delivered to the poverty stricken areas of the
panies. Tesla was a vegetarian, the board members all ate
World Peace,” Electrical World And Engineer, January 7,
world can make the pie larger, can help bring about the
meat. Tesla did not ask for permission to be inventive and
1905, PP 21-24. F
needed economic equality which is our birth right.
strike out on bold new adventures, the board needed ap-
Why hasn’t power been made equally available to all people and nations? Why haven’t the much touted free energy devices described by Tom Bearden, John Bedini,
50
proval from higher sources. The dichotomies were endless. Tesla's visions have been delayed for 89 years. The squabbling started with Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan and
graffiti.”
1. Ratzlaff, John, Tesla Said, Tesla Book Company, PO Box 1649, Greenville, TX 75401, 1984.
2. Yogananda, Paramahansa, Autobiography of
Times, September 20, 1940.
a Yogi, Self Realization Fellowship, 3880 San
20. Pawlicki, T.B., Exploring Hyperspace, 848 Fort
Rafael Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065, 1985.
Street, Victoria, B.C., Canada, electronic book on
3. Cheney, Margaret, Man Out of Time, Prentice Hall, 1981. 4. Hunt, Inez and Draper. Wanetta, W., Lightning In His Hand, The Life Story Of Nikola Tesla,
Omni Publications, Hawthorne, CA, 1981. 5. O'Neal, John, J., Prodigal Genius, The Life Of Nikola Tesla, Ives Washington, Inc., 1944.
6. Anderson, Leland, personal communication. See also Anderson, L.I., and Ratzlaff, J.T., Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography, Ragusan Press, 936 Industrial Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94303, 1979. 7. Nikhilananda, Swami, Vivekananda, The Yogas and Other
floppy disk, 1988, (Log onto the TESLA BBS at (719) 486-2775 for copy of ASCII text files) 21. Broad, William J., “Tesla a Bizarre Genius, Regains Aura of Greatness,” New York Times, Aug. 28th, 1984 22. Deleted 23. Grotz, T., & Sheppard, J., The Nikola Tesla Museum of Science and Technology submitted to the Board of Directors December 12th, 1986. [Available as an ASCII text file on the TESLA BBS (719) 486-2775] 24. Cheney, Margaret, Tesla, Man Out of Time, Prentice Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1981.
Works, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York, 1973.
25. Gordan, Bruce, private communication, 1988.
8. Nikhilananda, Swami.
26. Arguelles, Jose & Lloydine, personal communication.
9. Dobson, John, personal communication. 7. Dobson, John, Advaita Vedanta and Modern
27. Hercules, Michael, The Circle of Love, published by the author.
Science, Vedanta Book Center, 5423 S. Hyde
28. Castenada, Carlos, The Power of Silence,
Park, Chicago, IL 60615, 1979.
Further Lessons of don Jaun, Simon and
10. Nikhilananda, Swami. 11. Burke, Marie Louise, Swami Vivekananda in the West, New Discoveries, The World Teacher,
Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, India, 1985, p. 500
Schuster, New York, 1987, Pg. 120. Mr. Toby Grotz, President, Wireless Engineering is an electrical engineer and has 16 years experience in the field of geophysics, aerospace and industrial research and design. While working for the Geophysical Services
12. Grotz, T., “Artificially Stimulated Resonance of the
Division of Texas Instruments and at the University of
Earth's Schumann Cavity Waveguide,” Proceedings of the
Texas at Dallas, Mr. Grotz was introduced to and worked
Third International New Energy Technology Symposium/
with the geophysical concepts which are of importance to
Exhibition, June 25th-28th, 1988, Hull, Quebec,
the wireless transmission of power. As a Senior Engineer
Planetary Association for Clean Energy, 191 Promenade
at Martin Marietta, Mr. Grotz designed and supervised the
du Portage/600, Hull, Quebec J8X 2K6 Canada 13. From the personal collection of L. Anderson. 14. Russell, Lao. personal communication. 15. The University of Science and Philosophy, Swannanoa, Waynesboro, VA 22980, (703) 942-5161.
construction of industrial process control systems and designed and built devices and equipment for use in research and development and for testing space flight hardware. Mr. Grotz also worked for the public utility industry installing mini computer based pollutant measuring data acquisition systems in fossil fuel power plants and as a results engineer in a nuclear power plant. Mr. Grotz organized
16. First written by Tesla on May 13, 1907, for the “Actors
and chaired the 1984 Tesla Centennial Symposium and the
Fair Fund,” text transcribed from an A.L.S. in the collections
1986 International Tesla Symposium and was president of
of the Bakken Library of Electricity in Life. The article later
the International Tesla Society, a not for profit corpora-
appeared in the “New York American,” July 6, 1930, pg. 10.
tion formed as a result the first symposium. As Project
17. Tesla, Nikola, The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through Natural Media, Proceedings of the Tesla Centennial Symposium, Grotz, T. & Rauscher, E., Editors, 1984.
Manager for Project Tesla, Mr. Grotz aided in the design and construction of a recreation of the equipment Nikola Tesla used for wireless transmission of power experiments in 1899 in Colorado Springs. Mr. Grotz received his B.S.E.E. from the University of Connecticut in 1973.
18. Turchi, P.J.,Conte, D.,Seiler, S., Electrostatic Acceleration of Microprojectiles to Ultrahypervelocities, “Proceedings of the Seventh Pulsed Power Conference,” June 12th-14th, Monterey, California, Jointly Sponsored by the DOD, DOE, and the IEEE Electron Devices Society. 19. “Death Ray for Planes,” New York
51
Contributors
Wynne Greenwood is a queer feminist artist who incorporates video, performance, music, and object–making to practice, in the artist’s words “culture–healing.” Greenwood’s performances, installations, and object–based works have been included in exhibitions at independent and institutional spaces across the globe including: the Tate Modern, London; the 2004 Whitney Biennial, NYC; The Kitchen, NYC; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles; Soloway, Brooklyn; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and Lawrimore Project, Seattle. From 1999–2006, Greenwood performed the celebrated multimedia art band Tracy + the Plastics. Since 2006, Greenwood has shifted her focus to installation and object–based work. Most recently, Greenwood participated in Anti– Establishment, a group exhibition at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, and released the full–length music album A Fire To Keep You Warm. Greenwood teaches performance and video in colleges and schools in Seattle and across the country. MSHR is the collaborative project of Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy from Portland, OR, USA. The duo
52
publishes the journal EIGHTS. infinityincreaser.com
formed in 2011 during their involvement in the art collective Oregon Painting Society. MSHR explores ceremonial, cybernetic and cyborgian realms through interactive installation, analog synthesizer design, and ritualistic performance. Using blind probe–heads for hands, they feel out the space of the hyper–object chamber, exploring textures and searching for new hallways. MSHR is represented by UPFOR, Portland, OR.
Emily Roysdon (1977) is a New York and Stockholm based artist and writer. Her working method is interdisciplinary and recent projects take the form of performance, photographic installations, printmaking, text, video, curating, and collaborating. Roysdon developed the concept “ecstatic resistance” to talk about the impossible and imaginary in politics. The concept debuted with simultaneous shows at Grand Arts in Kansas City, and X Initiative in New York. She is editor and co–founder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective, LTTR. Her many collaborations include costume design for choreographers Levi Gonzalez, Vannesa Anspaugh and Faye Driscoll, as well as lyric writing for The Knife, and Brooklyn based JD Samson & MEN. Recent solo projects include new commissions from Performance Room, Tate Modern (London), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), PICA’s TBA Festival, Visual Art Center (Austin), Art in General (NY), The Kitchen (NY), Konsthall C (Stockholm) and a Matrix commission from the Berkeley Art Museum. Roysdon is a recently appointed Professor of Art at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden. emilyroysdon.com
mshr.info
Lisa Radon makes poems that may be publication, object, essay, installation, website, performance. Her books include The Plumb and The Wave (2014), Prototyping Eutopias (2013), An Attempt at Exhausting a Place (2013), The Book of Knots (c_L, 2013), A Reading (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 2012), Sentences on Sentences on Paragraphs on Paragraphs (Publication Studio, 2011). Her work has been presented recently in solo exhibitions at Pied–à–terre, Littman Gallery, and White Box, as well as in exhibitions at Hedreen Gallery and LxWxH, and publications for MK Gallery, Disjecta, and Appendix Project Space. Radon
Aki Sasamoto is a New York–based artist who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever medium it takes to communicate her ideas. In her installation and performance works, Sasamoto moves and talks inside the careful arrangements of sculpturally altered objects, activating the complex emotions at work in her daily life. Sasamoto’s works appear in theater spaces, gallery spaces, and landscapes. Sasamoto has shown in exhibitions at Mori Museum, Take Ninagawa, Yokohama Triennale 2008, Japan; Gwangju Biennial 2012, South Korea; Chocolate Factory Theater, the Kitchen, Soloway, Whitney Biennial 2010 at Whitney Museum, Greater New York 2010 at
MOMA–PS1, New York; and numerous other international and domestic venues. Sasamoto has collaborated with visual artists, musicians, choreographers, mathematicians, and scholars. akisasamoto.com
Jesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, and sculpture. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social development. Jesse has exhibited in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; Drift Station, Omaha; Spirit Abuse, Albuquerque; the Knockdown Center, New York; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; the 21c Museum, Louisville; and High Desert Test Sites 2013. Jesse’s work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Art Car Nation, Frieze Magazine and The New York Times. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, CA. Jesse Sugarmann is represented by Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR. jessesugarmann.com
Jennifer West was born in Topanga, California and lives and works in Los Angeles. Significant commissions and projects include High Line Art, New York (2012), 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium (2011); The Aspen Art Museum (2010); the Turbine hall at TATE Modern (2009), and she was Artist in Residence at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2011. Solo exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Essex, England and Vdrome.org (2014); High Line Art, NY and S1 Artspace, Sheffield, England (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Western Bridge, Seattle and Kunstverein Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2010); Transmission Gallery,
Glasgow, Scotland (2008); White Columns, NY (2007). West has been in numerous exhibitions internationally including Nottingham Contemporary, England; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria; Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, UK; Saatchi Gallery, London; White Columns, New York; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Drawing Center, New York; Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and Tate St. Ives, England. West has published 12 Zines that she gives away at her exhibitions. West was shortlisted for the 2012 3rd Annual Nam June Paik Center Award in Korea. She is an Asst. Professor of Fine Arts Practice at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the artist and MARC FOXX, Los Angeles. jweststudio.com
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 that differs from writing in a conventional sense in its focus on spatial experience, embodiment and activism. PICA will present an exhibition and produce a publication with the artist in November of 2014. As a poet Karl Larsson has published several books including Form/ Force (OEI Editör 2007), Nightsong (OEI Editör 2009), Parrot (Paraguay Press 2010), Poetical Assumption (Torpedo/JvE 2012) and Consensus (the Room) (Paraguay Press 2012). Karl Larsson is part of the editorial board of OEI, magazine on contemporary poetry and conceptual writing as well as Audiatur, a contemporary poetry biennale in Bergen, Norway. Solo exhibitions (selection): 2010: Parrot, Index, Stockholm, Form/Force, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, 2011: The Double of the Object is that I Desire it, Corner College, Zurich, of or before the forum, CAC, Vilnius, 2012: R,A,I,N (Consensus), Signal,
Malmö, 2013: Cut up, written over and eventually recovered, Nordehake, Stockholm, P?L (Consensus), castillo/corrales, Paris, Twelve Hours, Galerie Kamm, Berlin, Fox Mask, UKS, Oslo, 2014: Galerie Kamm, Berlin, Hamburger Kunstverein, Hamburg. Stephanie Snyder is the Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, a position she has held since 2003. A graduate of Reed College and Columbia University, Snyder is the curator of numerous exhibitions, including: Kara Walker, More & Less (2012); Bruce Nauman, Basements (2012); Terry Winters: Linking Graphics (2010); David Reed, Lives of Paintings (2008); and Sutapa Biswas: Birdsong (2006). In 2007, Snyder received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Getty Foundation, and in 2013 she received a commission award from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the CUE Foundation, New York. She is a regular contributor to Artforum.com. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband Jonathan and son Theo. Kristan Kennedy is an artist and the Visual Art Curator for PICA. She is represented by Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR.
Cont r i b uto r s 53
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Acknowledgements
Heather Lane,Cinema Project; Mack McFarland, Philip Feldman Gallery/ PNCA; Linda Kliewer, Pacific Northwest College of Art; Colleen Gotze, Greg MacNaughton, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Gallery, Reed College; Jeanine Jablonski, Fourteen30 Contemporary; SuperFab, Patrick Rock, Byan Seureth, Disjecta; T.C. Smith, Showdrape; Bill Boese, Morning Becomes Electric, Ace Hotel, Mark Spencer Hotel, lumber room, Tom Shipley, John Shipley Special Thanks
The PICA Board, The PICA Founders and Alum, Val DeanHardy Jr. , Kyle Raquipiso, Cedar Jocks, Gary Tyler, Emily Wobb, Carrie Galpin, Alex Luboff, Kevin Holden, Ryan Woodring, Lindsay Kline, Matthew Mulligan, Sofia Yarberry, Angel Roman, Malcolm Hecht, Katelyn MacKenzie, Colin Hough Trapp, Adam Haight, Mark Keppinger, Jeff Stuhr, Mara Indra; Holst Architects, Leslie B. Durst, Ryan Noon, James Marlow, Esther Park, Jane Kate Woods, Morgan Ritter, Gary Robbins, Container Corps; Neon Distributors, SOLOWAY, Axiom Custom Products, Dennis Scholl, my students past and present at Portland State University PICA Staff & Interns
Victoria Frey, Angela Mattox, Erin Boberg, Roya Amirsolymani, Beth Hutchins, Kate Merrill, Noelle Stiles, Sarah Yusavitz, Crystal Baxley, Robert Tyree, Beatrice Ogden, Irene Zoller Huete, Hannon Welch, Mauri Connors Curated by Kristan Kennedy Heather Donahue — Curatorial Assistant, Gallery Director Kent Richardson — Head Preparator, Exhibition Design Spencer Byrne-Seres — Preparator Eleanor Ford, Micah Schmelzer, Kayleigh Nelson, Juliet Perry — Visual Art Program Interns Justyn Hegreberg, Emily Cobb, Gordon Wilson, Eileen Skyers/ Resource Room Interns Bill Bose — Lighting Design Noelle Stiles — Editor Sean Schumacher — Publication Design Patrick Leonard — Editor at Large
The curator would like to acknowledge the following for their time, talent, and generosity:
emily roysdon, uncounted futures
TBA: 14 Staff & Crew
Perry Pfister, The Tiny Spoon; Rob Halverson, Neon Distributors, Jesper Strömback Eklund, Vivian Ziherl, Frederique Bergholtz of If I Can't Dance I Don't Want to be Part of Your Revolution: David Everitt Howe, Lia Gangitano of Participant, Inc, Liam Drain, Patrick Rock, Jan Dabrowski, Jacqueline Davis. Itai Erdal, Miguel Gutierrez, Keith Hennessey, Sara Jaffe, Bouchra Ouizguen, Andrea Stolowitz, Rhea Wolf, Elisabeth Horan
T.C. Smith, Bill Bose, Chris Rousseau, Cassie Skauge, Felishia Ledesma, Erika Osurman, Chelsea Petraki, Rebecca Carlisle, Mia Notling, Liz Calderon, Jake Sheffield & Team Delicious; Heather Hawksford, Matt Mount Merit Badge Co.; Sierra Walker, René Allen
lisa radon, infinity increaser
Gary Robbins, Container Corp; Neville Radon-Kimball, Molly Radon-Kimball, Oskar Radon-Kimball, Linda Radon, Flint Jamison, Emily Henderson, and McIntyre Parker mshr, resonant entity modulator
Eyebeam, Liam Drain, Axiom Exhibiting Artists
Aki Sasamoto, MSHR, Jennifer West, Jesse Sugarmann, Lisa Radon, Emily Roysdon, Wynne Greenwood jennifer west, flashlight
filmstrip projections
Peter West, Full Moon Cinematography; Ariel West, Finn West, Chris Hanke, Mariah Csepanyi, Vince Roth, Andrew Oran, Fotokem; Jay at Christy's Editorial; Walt Rose, Connie D. Moore, Maranee Sanders, Anita Pace, Jesse Mejía, Mark Keppinger, Sue Harshe, Marc Foxx, Rodney Hill, Marc Foxx Gallery; Micah Schmelzer, Kayleigh Nelson, Eleanor Ford, Leif J. Lee, Julie Perini, Bill Boese, Andy Powell, Dave Collins, Nicholas Musso, Super Fab; Evan La Londe, Chris Rousseau
publication
Special thanks to Sean Schumacher and Noelle Stiles for working on the design and execution of this publication with me and to Rebecca Carlisle, Robert Tyree, Patrick Leonard and Lisa Radon for editing. VISUAL ART CIRCLE, est ’ d. 2014
Jeanine Jablonski, Founding Chair; Daniel P. Winter, Founding Co-Chair; John Forsgren, Pamela Baker-Miller, Allie Furlotti, Linda Hutchins & John Montague, Sarah Miller Meigs, Jane Schiffhauer, Topher Sinkinson, Stephanie Snyder, Jeff Stuhr & Peter Kalen, Annette Thurston PICA Visual Art Program, Sponsors & Supporters
jesse sugarmann, we build excitement
Southern Exposure, Creative Capital, Liz Cohen, Cranbrook Academy of Art, High Desert Test Sites, Jeanine Jablonski, Fourteen30 Contemporary; Patrick Rock, Courtney Fink, T.C. Smith, Bill Boese, Chris Rousseau, Cassie Skauge, Emily Wobb, Jonathan Swanson, Bryan Seureth, Disjecta
My Love and Gratitude To
Those who show up. To The Visual Art Program staff and interns: Kent, Spencer, Heather, Eleanor, Micah, Kayleigh and my PICA family you make this real! To Patrick Leonard, still. To my family and friends and to those artists whom continue to inspire me, Tom & Winnie Kennedy, Kate Kennedy, Brendan Kennedy & Kenny Mellman, David Kennedy, Rob Halverson, Liz Calderon, Jeanine Jablonski, Evan La Londe, Topher Sinkinson, Nic Peterson, Philip Iosca, Jon Hart, Patrick Long, David Kennedy, Storm Tharp, Mike Blasberg, Arnold J. Kemp, Derek Franklin, Jamie Edwards, Chase Biado, Allie Furlotti, Ryan Noon, Mami Takahashi, Fawn Krieger, Jorg Jakoby, Patrick Leonard, Amanda Pedden, Lisa Radon, Clark Coolidge, Andrea Geyer, Karl Larsson, Tony Conrad, Paige Sarlin, Adam Sorenson, Alex Felton, Israel Lund, David Knowles, Owen Hutchinson, Keith Crowe, Brent Johnson, Sara Greenberg-Rafferty, Ramsey McPhillips, Luisa Guyer, Jessica Kelly, Kirk Kelly, Stephanie Snyder, Sarah Miller Meigs, Matthew Day Jackson, Laura Seymor, Rachel Peddersen, Sam Korman and as always, Kristy Edmunds, Ros Warby, Malachi and Ashby. To my community here in Portland and there in Brooklyn and Bovina, NY elsewhere.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts; Calligram Fund for New Work, National Performance Network’s Visual Art Network; Foundation for Contemporary Art; Dick and Lori Singer: Magnolia Properties, Stephanie & Jonathan Snyder; MK Guth and Greg Landry; Sarah Miller Meigs & Andrew Meigs; Kathy & James Gentry; Michael McManus, Mia Ferm,
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Additional support provided by Dick and Lori Singer, Magnolia Properties, and PICA's Visual Art Circle.
Acknow l edge m e nts 55
As round as an apple, as deep as a cup
Aki Sasamoto, Skewed Lies
Lisa Radon, INFINITY INCREASER
ne hancock building
pica, 2nd floor, Sept 11 – Oct 11
714 NE Hancock (enter @ NE 7th) exhibition hours: performance:
Sept 11 – 21: Noon – 6:00 pm daily
Sept 20, 6:30 pm & 8:30 pm (running time 45 min)
Sept 22 – Oct 11:
Tue–Fri 11:00 am – 6:00 pm, Sat 11:00 am – 4:00 pm MSHR, Resonant Entity Modulator fashion tech, Sept 11 – 30
Emily Roysdon, Uncounted Futures
performance:
pica, 2nd floor, Sept 11 – Oct 11
Sept 19, 10:00 pm exhibition hours: exhibition hours:
Sept 11 – 21: Noon – 6:00 pm daily
Sept 11: Opens 10:00 pm
Sept 22 – Oct 11:
Sept 12 – 30: Noon – 6:00 pm daily (closed Sept 22)
Tue–Fri 11:00 am – 6:00 pm, Sat 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Jennifer West, Flashlight Filmstrip Projections Wynne Greenwood, Stacy fashion tech, Sept 11 – 30 Curated by Stephanie Snyder and Wynne Greenwood performances:
Sept 16, 8:30 pm
douglas f. cooley memorial art gallery,
Sept 17, 10:00 pm
reed college, Sept 2 – Oct 19
exhibition hours:
exhibition hours:
Sept 11: Opens 10:00 pm
Tue–Sun Noon – 5:00 pm
Sept 12 – 30: Noon – 6:00 pm daily (closed Sept 22)
opening reception:
Sept 12, 4:00–8:00 pm Jesse Sugarmann, We Build Excitement fashion tech
As round as an apple, as deep as a cup projects are free and open to the public from Sept 11 to Oct,
56
on view:
2014. Various closing dates, performance dates,
Sept 18, 19, & 20: 10:00 pm
exhibition hours, and locations: pica.org