Sights and sounds from Scotland...

Lay Your Hands on Me - A Community Art Project

Into the Trees

Hi! I went looking online for inspiration and found some fabulous images and videos of forest installations. Here are a few things to nibble on as you're dreaming your piece(s)...



(Below) Sam White and Ayisa Wadud's installation "Forest for the Trees" at the American Steel Warehouse, Oakland
Link: http://oaklandnorth.net/2010/01/23/the-old-american-steel-warehouse-becomes-a-showcase-for-art/



(Below) "Dream Forest" installation by Alan LeQuire, Customs House Museum, Clarksville, Tennessee
Link: http://www.alanlequire.com/dreamforest.shtml




(Below) "Nature Factory" installation by Suppose Design Office, Aoyama, Japan
Link: http://lisastown.com/inspirationwall/2009/10/21/nature-factory

and also this

I was hungry for dance last night, apparently. While hunting around (what's up with all these hunger / hunting metaphors?) on youtube for the trailer for The Rain, by Pontus Lidberg (Headlands resident artist in 2008) I came across this one, which I like even better...

louise

I first encountered Louise Lecavalier in the mid-90s, when dance for video was becoming its own genre (vs. recorded live performances) and I was hungrily scrounging around for as much info I could find about choreographers working on the N. American - European circuit. I remember the first time I saw a video of La La La Human Steps: her strength, her fearlessness .. in some ways she seems more like an icon made flesh than a regular human. I never saw her/them live, alas, but she has always held a place among the collection of amazing dance moments that lives in my brain.

More at: http://www.louiselecavalier.com/index_en.html

From Wikipedia:
Louise Lecavalier (born 1958) is a Canadian dancer, known as one of the icons of Canadian contemporary dance. Lecavalier was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She began her professional dance career at the age of eighteen when she joined Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire. It was there that she met Édouard Lock. Lecavalier became Lock's muse in his company La La La Human Steps. With her mane of platinum dreadlocks, her physical power and her mastery of the full-body barrel jump, which looks like a horizontal pirouette, her image was a signature for the company. She was the perfect embodiment of Lock's frenetic and technically punishing androgynous aesthetic in works such as Human Sex (1985) and Infante, c'est destroy (1991).

when you feel the hit

My friend Kasey, a diehard fan of So You Think You Can Dance, visited last week, and we spent one Saturday evening watching clips from the show on our big projector wall. I must give kudos: some of the dancers are really phenomenal, and some of the choreography reaches that level where the kinetic and kinesthetic impact is so powerful, you feel like the movement is happening to YOU.

For example: (I recommend watching the video directly from youtube in order to see the full screen)


I once saw a dance performance by a choreographer named Robin Stiehm that was about abusive relationships. The piece built up slowly, until a moment about 2/3 of the way through where the male performer lands a solid blow into the stomach of the female performer, who falls and slumps.

It wasn't overdone. It hurt for days.

something in the way she moves

In our new space we have a very big white wall. When we came to see the place for the first time, I think the idea of having a projector showed up almost instantaneously when we walked up the stairs to the second floor living area and saw the immense vaulted ceilings.

We moved in. I started researching on craigslist, learning about brands, bulbs, weight, audible noise, and that for whatever reason the AE700U has a sharper picture than the AE900U, even though the latter is a more recent model.

One Saturday morning I woke up and was lolling around when it occurred to me to look on Ebay. Ach! an AE700U--for $200 less than I had seen it on craigslist. Free shipping! When does the auction end...? in 30 minutes. Shit! OK. OK. OK. drink tea. Calm down. Check bids: only one bid. OK. drink tea. Check newspaper headlines. Check bids. 9 minutes to go. then 5, then 2, then 45 seconds. I hit "enter" on my bid. Zam! Zamzam! Two other bidders come out of nowhere, just like me. But I won!

Wait for package... ... ... ... (!) ... ...

It arrives. All parts are present but the cord that goes from the computer to the projector: trip to Berkeley used computer store. And then:

Night. Projector fired. And this:



We watched it three times in silence. Our neighbor across the courtyard watched through his kitchen window into our kitchen window.

We showed it again at our second gathering on Sunday--the first video to inaugurate our Yumme drive in movie theater. After it played all the way through, the words showed up: "That happens every night."

That happens every night.

I keep thinking:


that

happens

E V E R Y

night

Two years into the program, and finally one day...

At some point within the past two years the lightbulb went on about how artmaking is both an inner and an outer process: by working with materials, shape, color, form, words, movement, etc. on the outside we are also effecting transformation (thoughts, energy, ideas, symbolic representation, relationship to form, metaphorical associations, beliefs) on the inside. In making art I am remaking myself in some way.

What I hadn't really understood until two weeks ago is the piece about letting the materials guide the artmaking process. Wow. It's a very interesting moment when you finally start seeing what you haven't been seeing.

At the end of our Become Yourself housewarming party, a small group of us rounded out the night down in the studio making collages. I'm a fan of collage -- especially those that tap into a layer of visceral "knowing" (the best phrase I can come up with to describe our deep capacity to feel the relationships between symbols even if we can't describe them in language). I haven't done much collage, tho, most likely because up until this portal evening I've always approached them on a literal level: I want to make this, so I need pictures of this and this and this... But lo, on that night, after the singing, the champagne, the candlelight, the brilliance of spontaneous performances that gave birth to Inside the Artists Studio on our wee stage, something else was in motion so I just let the images do their thing. A beautiful b&w photo of a man playing a violin wanted to be carefully cut out, so I started there. Then there was the piece of blue paper with the little white dots that looked like stars that I had found on the street in Minneapolis - it wanted to be part of the picture too. And the photo of the dresses hanging on the line from Marin magazine. And the castle. I just set to cutting them out and waited and witnessed their self organization process. The violin man became the man in the sky playing music to move the world, creating just enough order so that the castle could have a manicured garden, and allowing sufficient freedom so that the dresses on the clothesline could blow in the wind and the flowers grow across the page.


A few days later there was another collage.


And then a few days after that I experienced my first consciously transformative dance rehearsal (let the movement make the dance).

To be continued...

I saw Inception and I said

Holy moly that's an amazing movie! The intricacy and precision, the complexity and detail, and yet also a compelling storyline about human frailty. I'm still in the wooing of it and can't quite see the snags yet (there always are some, aren't there?) but dang - that's the kind of oeuvre I aspire to... Does this not say it all? "Inception is a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind." (from the Warner Bros. website)

I'm fascinated by inner and outer architecture -- the spaces that we inhabit and how we experience them. I think there are a lot of parallels to be explored between the places spaces we (as individuals, as communities) are drawn to and the organization and contours of our inner minds.

Here's a trailer:

Hobbit home extraordinaire

A friend sent me a link to this website, which chronicles the building of a real-life, low environmental impact house in Wales. Built by Simon Dale and his father-in-law, "with help from passers-by and visiting friends," the home cost the equivalent of about $4,500 - $5,000 to build.

Miga

I was job searching a while back (yet again) and came across a very curious posting about a position at the Internet Archive, which in itself is worthy of a surfing meander.

On the archive site I found an entry on Miga, based in Granada, Spain, which describes itself as "a group of audiovisual creators formed in 2004" whose "purpose is to show on the net the more advanced proposals from the actual south of Europe scene. [...] Any kind of artistic performance is inside Miga. Dj´s, Vj´s, Live Acts, net art, graphic design, experimental video, photography and all electro acoustic media is part of it, coming together to develop, feed & expand different ideas and projects."

In addition to many downloadable audio and video files on their site (Miga is also a "net label" of experimental music and video/animation), I found this captivating video of a live multimedia "attack" on the Alhambra, (a beautiful, historical castle-like complex of Moorish architecture), which took place in December 2006.

Makes me want to get together a merry band of guerrilla artists (perhaps fellow Intermedians?), pack up the projectors and some kind of sound system and find a building in SF. Anybody interested...? :)

Just a moment

I used to watch Fame and dream of someday being in the right place at the right time where an anonymous crowd would suddely erupt into song and dance. Hasn't happened yet (not outside the club scene, at least).

Thankfully there's video to capture moments that one hopes might still happen in "real" life. This commercial isn't exactly a Fame moment, but, still, there's a sense of coherence and "shared-ness" in the montage of scenes...

Her favorite things...

My very favorite blog in the universe, as far as all things art / design go, is Cherry Coloured.

It's like an online treasure chest.

Vocalamazing

A few months back I applied for a job with the Kronos Quartet (didn't get it), but it did inspire me to scour YouTube for videos to learn about them, and I cam across this short documentary on their collaboration with Tanya Tangaq, an Inuit throat singer. It's fascinating - not just from an artistic standpoint but also from a process standpoint...

Steampunk!

The term is new to me, though the style is not totally unfamiliar - being a fan of the time-travel look myself. But I had no idea that this had caught on to such a huge degree, as described in a recent article in the NY Times. It's a curious thing when art takes over life...

Is this what dancers do?

I've also been contemplating the question that someone asked after my piece on Tuesday:

"Is this what dancers do?"

Rather than attempting to answer the question, which I could never do completely, I wanted to share links to a few videos by my favorite choreographers:

Low, by Donna Uchizono
This tango-inspired piece was created while the company was in residency in Argentina. I saw it performed in Minneapolis and spoke with one of the dancers afterwards who had not been part of the original production. She said it had taken her two weeks to learn just a few minutes of the choreography because it was so intricate. This same laser-focus on small details was also part of Uchizono's recent piece In Thin Air which was presented at ODC Dance Center in SF this past Winter.

Wet Woman, by Mats Ek
This piece is performed by Sylvie Guillem, who is a superstar dancer with the Royal Ballet of London. Mats Ek's work could be described as classical ballet, slightly skewed.

I'll add more...

Whispering trees

The images from Robbyn's presentation on 3D/installation art have stayed in my brain since Tuesday. I'm really interested in the aspect that has to do with creating spaces that evoke a specific response. I loved the photos of the Cardburg event and Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau.

One memory of an installation art experience that is imprinted on my brain is from back in 1996 or 1997 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. I don't know the artist's name, but someone had created a small forest in the stone courtyard in front of the museum, with row upon row of fir trees - not decorated, just plain. As you walked through the trees, there were voices whispering "Merry Christmas" in different languages, and you could smell the scent of pine. I remember it being quite magical. Not very universal from a cultural standpoint, but quite lovely.

A couple years ago I also heard someone describe an experience that sounded pretty intense: It was at a world's fair like event, somewhere in Europe - maybe Switzerland. They had created an installation in a huge square structure where a small bridge led out to a wooden boat in the middle of the space. The boat was surrounded by water and there was a constant thundering pour of rain. The intent was to simulate The Flood, as in biblical. The woman who described it said it left her speechless. I will try to see if I can get more info...

The ways that art stays with us

About eight years ago I saw a Wallace and Gromit film by the Aardman guys. Before the main feature they showed a couple short films, including this one, which features the song "My Baby Just Cares For Me," by Nina Simone.

There was something about this 5-minute film that delighted me. I don't know if it was the song, which I had never heard before, or the goofy little cat who falls in love with the sultry cabaret diva kitty. For some reason the film has stayed with me all these many years and I kept thinking I would so love to see it again.

This morning it dawned on me that that, as is true for so many things these days, someone, somewhere has probably posted the film on YouTube! And sure enough, there it was...

...watching it was an interesting experience. After eight or years or so of this piece living in my memory bank with fond associations, it was completely different than I remembered. Still cute, but with out the utter charm that I seemed to remember. Which makes me think of the legacy of art: sometimes it happens that we find a way to keep the piece alive in a way that is close to the original -- we play the same song over and over or have a print or a photograph that we can look at repeatedly. Sometimes, as with live performance, or an aesthetic experience of some kind that just "happened" and we were in the right place at the right time, all that remains is the impression that the experience made upon us. Perhaps in these types of experiences, we become artists, too: adding to the work by embellishing it with our own associations.

Maybe sometimes it's better not to watch something again...?

Hard day, but it's really nothing comparatively...

It has been an interesting couple of weeks here. Too much on the brain. But whenever I get in this space I think of Bill Shannon, aka CRUTCH. This guy is amazing. Truly amazing.

Seonna Hong

Today at the small library in Stinson Beach I found a pot of gold! People often drop off books to donate, and also sometimes stacks of magazines that people can take for free. In a cardboard box by the door was a stack of Artforum magazines, just quietly waiting for me to adopt them and mine them for all sorts of ideas.

I'm going through the first one page by page now, surgically removing images I'd like to use in my 2D self-portrait. I've also come across several intriguing artists, including Seonna Hong.

Her painting "Retreat" is pasted above.