Work in Progress
This text is written by Mary Paterson, with memories by Simon Zimmerman. The text is a work in progress for Mary Paterson’s writing residency at the Live Art Development Agency. It was read aloud by Simon Zimmerman at Art Writing Field Station, curated by Very Small Kitchen, at East Street Arts, Leeds on Saturday 27th April 2010. During the speech, Simon was invited to insert his own memories into the text, and they appear hear as verbatim transcriptions of the words he spoke on that day.
I Navigation
Imagine that we are looking. Imagine that this is what we find – a series of resources labelled Unbound; 1 a metaphorical sheaf of published and commissioned paraphernalia connected to the suggestion of live art. Imagine that this website Unbound is the field of study.
Imagine that Unbound is one of my online selves. Imagine it is one of yours. Its archive maps our memory, its recommendations direct our thoughts. Its navigation tools choreograph the movement of our hands across the mouse pad and our eyes across the screen.
Imagine this: Memory isn’t fixed; it’s a kind of changing business, because neurobiologically they are now really sure that when you retrieve a memory, what you are retrieving is not the original memory, but the last time you retrieved it. 2
Imagine that we are reading our memories together. We are remembering them in the same place . When we retrieve them, our memories are waiting side by side. You can take mine and I will take yours, and we will both take other people’s. Perhaps I will speak words that belong to someone else, and perhaps you will remember this differently to me.
1
www.thisisunbound.co.uk. Unbound is an online shop for books, dvds and limited edition artworks, by the Live Art Development Agency.
2
Siri Hustvedt quoted in Alice Maude-Roxby, ‘12 Approaches to 12 Shooters’ in J. Maizlich ed., Marcia Farquhar’s 12 Shooters (Live Art Development Agency, London, 2009), pp. 177 – 189, p. 177
You’ll see, you’ll see. Look away. Let’s begin.
II Memory
I am watching a DVD made by the performance collective Black Market
Matt Hawthorne says that ‘the work’ exists ‘not as a physical presence but
International, which documents a performance that took place on 12th July
as an act of meaning.’ 4 I can’t remember for sure, but I think Matt
2005. The performance was a ‘multi hour performance act’ in which
Hawthorne was writing about text. He could just as well have been
‘twelve artists from nine different countries’ developed work in response
writing about performance, or painting, or buses. He could be talking
to each other, and to the event.3 The artists are the last things I see. First
about The Stoning of St. Stephen, by Adam Elsheimer, that radiant painting
of all, of course, I see the subjective choices of the filmmaker. Next, and
on copper that I used to visit at the National Gallery of Scotland when I
most strikingly, I see the audience.
was a student, which depicts the moment when a pale-faced boy commits his body to the death of another man.
For one moment, the camera rests on two performers working side by side. One is reading at a table, the other is looking at his own torso. But I am
The work exists not as a physical presence, but as an act of meaning. The
watching the woman with blonde hair who stares at the performers,
work is a social rather than a material event. So, when I watch the woman
holding one hand up to cover her mouth. Her other arm is wrapped
watching Black Market International raise a hand to her mouth, I am
around a child, who stares straight down the camera lens and into my eyes.
watching meaning come to life. But I am also watching a memory - a DVD of the performance, which is the distillation of the physical presence
In the documentation of a live event, the audience members are my
of the work and its replacement for the rest of time.
avatars. I explore space vicariously through their movements. I understand, from their reactions, what it’s like to walk between shards of
Let’s start at the beginning. What’s the first thing I remember? I’m in
daylight on the gallery floor, to be diverted by a series of bin liners rising
a erm ah second bedroom that’s more a kind of
to the ceiling, to stare at the man staring at his torso and not at the man
office and a place where things get put.
who is reading out loud. I follow the audience members’ choices – I have
with my uh sister who’s two years my senior and
no other choice.
erm has always been kind of destined to be the
3
Black Market International (DVD, 2005). Sleeve notes.
4
Matt Hawthorne, ‘Introduction’ in Matt Hawthorne ed. Degenerate Art Book (Arnolfini: Bristol, 2001).
And I’m
delegator.
And we’re playing some kind of shop
always bodily. The possibilities of our bodies dictate the possibilities of
game although I’m not entirely sure what kind of
our actions, and therefore the nature of how, which is the nature of what,
shop game it is.
we perceive. Our embodied existence etches the world we perceive onto
I know that she’s the boss.
And erm I’m stacking some shelves and I take a a
the window of infinite potential. Or, to put it in more negative terms, ‘…
kind of plastic container that you store things in
what would my pain (bodily, emotional, mental and intellectual all at
that’s got holes?
once) be if it were not attached to my corpus? What would be the point of
It looks like it’s meant to be
woven but it’s not?
And I turn it upside down so
that I can reach the top shelf. stand on it it kind of snaps.
And w and when I
parents come in.
Well was it?
And when. I dunno.
was one parent but someone comes in. unhappy about this this damage.
Maybe it
And they’re
And w we try to
even sure if it’s me who broke the box or if
it was her!
I genuinely … that kind of conflicts
…fuzzy memory.
But that’s, that’s the first
thing.
Massumi, ‘to say that a creature’s perceptions are exactly proportioned to its actions. Its perceptions are its actions – in their latent state.
5
We could be talking about bus numbers, I could always see them.
I I’ve got now … terrible, kind of, short
focus eyes, but distance is great, I could always see bus numbers even a mile away.
grandmother Dora would always play a game where she’d get me to stand and see if I could spot our bus as they came over the hill, if I could see
actions.’5
Which means that perception is also
And er we would go everywhere on buses.
And one
thing I really remember particularly about bus journeys with Dora is that I used to put my teeth on the metal bar, on the seat in front.
Brian Massumi, ‘The Evolutionary Alchemy of Reason’ in Marquard Smith, ed. Stelarc: The Monograph (MIT Press: Massachussets, 2005), pp. 125 – 190, pp. 126-7
6 Amelia
So my
which one was ours.
Perception is always relational. ‘It’s an understatement,’ says Brian
Perceptions are possible
of free will?’ 6
My
blame it on one another, and now I’m speaking I’m not
consciousness if there were no death, no ultimate mitigation of the illusion
Jones, ‘Stelarc’s Technological ‘Transcendence’/ Stelarc’s Wet Body: the Insistent Return of the Flesh’ in Marquard Smith, ed., pp. 87 – 123, p. 117
And the
vibrations would kind of go through my head.
And
Body, perception, meaning, body, perception, meaning is a positive
and uh I’ve always thought of doing it on’b – they
feedback loop where lived experience begets lived experience. Or, sense
have those big kind of metal circular bars now? -
makes sense.
and and uh I’ve always thought about doing it, I always get tempted but then I think no, someone
Do you remember when we were in that large hall in 2005, walking
would just think there’s … a problem.
between the sharp patterns made by daylight on the flagstone floor, and we lifted our hands to our mouths, and we were watching the performers,
Perception is always relational and always bodily. Or, our bodies are, and
Black Market International?
our bodies make, sense. We make sense of our bodies by our uses of them every day. Alan Read says, ‘Everyday life is the meeting ground for all
‘The body actualises thoughts’ says Amelia Jones, 8 but how do I actualise
activities associated with being human.’7
your thoughts, if they don’t flow across my body? Memory must be the
Everyday I hold down the
pages of a book with my thumb and read the dense black print. The work
shadow of body, perception, meaning, body, perception, meaning. The
may be an act of meaning, but meaning is embedded in physical presence.
feebdack loop translated and displaced.
I crack the spine of the book so that I can bend it double and hold it on the bus. And not just in physical presence, but in continued physical presence. In the performative repetition of the everyday. In getting out of bed.
Making coffee.
Reading a book.
Do you remember when we get up, make coffee, read a book, leave the house?
And leaving
the house.
Let’s start at the beginning. What’s the first thing this text remembers? Sitting in the kitchen, watching steam rise from the kettle. Coming into existence word by word.
7 Alan 8
Read, Theatre and Everyday Life: An Ethics of Performance (Routledge: London & New York, 1993), p. 1
Jones, in Smith, ed., p. 92
Brian Rotman says: ‘Alphabetic writing, like all technological systems and
with, but you will keep them with you, because right now, they are
apparatuses, operates according to what might be called a corporeal
everything.’10 Memory is a gesture like meaning.
axiomatic: it engages directly and inescapably with the bodies of its users. It makes demands and has corporeal effects.’9
But it is not the same. The body may be the basis of perception and the locus of meaning, but when it comes to memory, it is a form of para-basis:
Our bodies, which give meaning to everything, are changed by the way we
parabasis. Memory stands alongside meaning and asks me to remember.
record meaning. We exercise our fingers on the keyboard and structure
Which means that virtuality is ancient. At the same moment that we
our thoughts inside the web browser.
scratched ‘I’ into stone and made it stand for ourselves, we made another self to stand beside.
When meaning is spoken, when it is heard, when it is written down using the alphabet or another kind of technology, when it is glimpsed on a
We could be talking about when I used to play a game with
television screen via a spinning digital disc, when meaning is shared or, in
my grandma Dora.
other words, when meaning is remembered, it is remembered in a gesture,
always had good eye site for distances, terrible
like meaning.
for short now, but at a distance I could always
And, er I’ve always had uh I’ve
spot things off and so my grandma Dora would ‘Throughout our lives we drop people off,’ says Gareth Howell, ‘and
always get me to stand
retain a lasting image of them. Not a real image, but an image of who
stare at the top of the hill and try to spot our
they were and how they made us feel. Gangs break up and friendships
bus before it got to us and uh I rem I remember
fade. The gang you smoked Bensons with outside Spar aren’t the same
sitting on buses, and there was the metal bar, and
people you spend weekends barbecuing and discussing mortgages with.
I used to rest my teeth on it, and the vibrations
They probably won’t be the same people you discuss your grandchildren
would go through my head, and sometimes I think about doing that now.
9
Brian Rotman Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts & Distributed Human Being (Duke University Press: Durham & London, 2009), p. 15
10
Gareth Howell quoted in Gob Squad, ed., The Making of a Memory (Synvolt Verlag: Berlin, 2005), p. 103
outside the bus stop and
So, we used to play this game with my grandma Dora
sure that the top shelf has enough product on it.
where we’d stand outside the bus stop, and stare
And we’re worried that we can’t reach it so we
at the top of the hill, and we’d try and spot the
look for something that we can stand on.
bus as it was coming towards us.
nearest object is a plastic container.
And we’d um we’d
sit and rest our teeth on the metal bar, and
it upside down.
sometimes we’re on buses now and we get the urge
cracks.
to do it but don’t. If the body actualises thought, then when it comes to memory, the body is not just the feedback loop but also the decision that interrupts the system. Like the relationship between perception and potential, where the thing perceived is ‘a particular, need-oriented selection from the experience of the multiplicity that is its inexhaustible complexity as a thing “in itself”.’ 11 Memory is defined by need. It is a choice, etched onto the window of meaning. It is her choice - the blonde-woman who raises her hand to her mouth.
You recall we’re in erm a room, it’s a second bedroom and it’s used as a storage space for all kinds of things and we’re um with uh our older sister she’s two years our senior and she’s uh she’s she’s delegating tasks in a shop that we’re playing in in an imaginary world, and she’s asked us to make 11
Massumi, ibid., p. 129
And we climb on it.
And the So we turn
And it
Do you remember when we were watching a DVD of a performance that took place in 2005? We jammed the windows open in that warm study room. We were transfixed by a woman holding a young child.
The work exists not as a physical presence, but as a digital disc and a colourful screen. The work exists as an act of meaning, enacted across the body of a woman whose gesture is derived from her body through meaning, and returned to it as memory. We are talking about a memory of an act of meaning enacted across a stranger’s body. The shadow of a gesture, watched in a warm room with the windows jammed open. The shadow does not always share the shape of the event it remembers. But it does share the shape of the method of remembering. An image from a faded snapshot. Words written on a page. A gesture coded onto disc and flattened onto screen.
We are talking about a bus ride. We are watching a DVD of a performance. We are reading a speech. We are borrowing words.
III Release
Whose memories are these?
What do you remember?
Did you remember the same things as me?
Did you turn away at any false memories?
Did we connect?
Can you feel me physically?
Very Small Kitchen 2010 http://verysmallkitchen.com