Ruth notes
notes here
1.
Sighle unedited notes
RUTH BUCHANAN
Movement – to change the way you think/write/make Environmental factor on cognitive thought Installations to reflect the artists brain
‘No solitary beat’ – taken from a script viewing someone viewing – doubling/splitting the body viewer-performer-viewer (circuit) spatial to produce implication double the presence of the language – reading/oral/spatial Positions in hierarchy are not fixed Multiple points of entry Comes from exterior point – how art is represented pn television Mediating contact with art works (not old enough to be embarrassed) (not that much I’m a prude) (anecdotes lift the talk)(art speak – that sounds like art)(art look – that looks like art) contrasting -interaction, intimacy of listening and then other people entering in. this is a scenario not just an audio behind a curtain. The style looks slick and constrained.
Performances leading to producing space – stepping in and out of the work
The moment of ‘reveal’
‘Floorplans’ – ‘Conditions Drawing 2012’
versions of the installations, repeated motifs
‘Sculptor’
striped panel makes people walking past ‘jutter’ while other people watch
(art about art)
Matin Boyce aesthetic
(the audience there were kind of weird)(in another instance/place this might have been less clumsy)(heightened the awkwardness)(its started)(this is off the script)
presence being felt by absence. Intensification through implication Durational and spatial
TEXT
Reflect and entangle Context of the site Step out/in Unfolding A photo of a space encountered in the space Circuit We have seen before Mutual and contingegent Mirror creates a loop Logic of a circuit – relationship is particular/a trope Layering of description/personalties Curtain/archive are the same We choose to create a bussle This mirror is an object
The description – how can you get in the anecdotal research directly into the work.
What do you do with gaps
Insist on a movement
Not representational descriptions Within the text is political, gender, cultural discourse
What are the constraints of the institution and how can you mediate that Like having something to work against or push at
Not sabotage but tilts or shifts
When ruth initiates projects they work better (sometimes you can trick people into letting you do stuff – playing with their generousity ) though the work itself doesn’t look or seem outwardly critical. is it too dry to obviously provoke?
Co-opted. ( Isn’t the point to draw attention to this stuff though?)
(What is the motivation for drawing attention to the curtain?)
The institution absorbing the criticism and co-opting it. Repressing individual resistance by agreeing with it, making it fashion/marketing it.
Swollowed by their marketing department
In order for it to maintain its integrity it needs to be in a different place of astraction.
Abstract agency
Dispersing the agency
‘Last year at marianburg’
when reading yourself you can go back to it, filmic is being guided through the text. When you can’t control how the information goes in. the repetition works to reinforce the information
Film – Very dramatic and sinister. Like a Hitchcock film
Drawn back into the shadows
‘without a catalogue this would become a pathless land’
toute la memoire du monde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0RVSZ_yDjs
music changing the
attain a different signifigance when accepted by the archive
the appearance of communication
established
cornelia parker throwing stuff into the water
a way of writing which is a way of ‘spacing’
solicit an affect and exercise a change
different tones of writing/ qualities to produce different effects (radio 4 book this morning)
controlling element
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03j593b/Book_of_the_Week_The_Screwtape_Letters_Episode_4/
tone of the communication
how far can you push one word/idea into different things word-script-object-drawing
thinking the thing through something else
thinking is a form of moving
2
SOL UNEDITED NOTES
PT I steve reads introduction from Ruths gallery and Jan Verwoert then we will see work and there will be a discussion between steve an Ruth, space, time and archival elements will reveal how they interact with text or persona
ruths text;
a room a table a pile of fruit, a body.......
jans text in the metaphoric imagination the abstract and the concrete exchange places. -
"artists?" brain as metaphorical map - or rather the installation as something which cognates this breadth of information. sources. voices. etc.
no solitary beat - departs from a text/script about someone viewing someone viewing. installed 3 times. spatial constellations which split/double the body. and vassilates the viewer between being the performer and the viewer as you encounter it and yourself as a listening viewing body. as the text details this. implicates you as the viewer as a productive or performative element. - english voice with german translation projected. doubling the language as a reading or aural moment and the contingent diffusions of meaning form translation, presumable. the script is not meant as an illustration but that the acting of viewing it and the audio script perform a circuit and fold back into each other.
audio on headphones. various points of interruption to increase the sensation of your own bodily presence, that the audience views the other audience membrane you are multiplied as roles in performer viewer position hierarchy constantly shifts.
multiple points of entry is a mechanism for "short circuiting" standard viewing strategies and playing out the constraints of theatre and viewing spaces and how they can be manipulated as less of an artist performed things. SR what is gained by removing yourself as the artist from the scenario
RB i came to performance from an interest in language and space. not from the body, etc. but using herself as a particular performing body for language and space and their interaction. she isn't comfortable using an actor here, it doesn't make sense she enjoys the constraints. the limit. the timeliness.
no interest in doing something about the liveness of performance, at an opening or in a large group space. became uncomfortable with the access infrastructure not being brief invites to perform at openings etc.
a couple of performances she felt pushed her interest in particular ways which left behind the mime-y spelunk of openings and non audience of people passing through
the line where over generosity (particularly with time and content) becomes an aggression - you have to stay for 3 hours.
wondered if it would shake things up in her production of space if she stepped out and let these questions of theatre , space and performance come to the fore when her body itself as agent evacuate. rather than mediating this all through the live figure of HER as the performative body.
SR position of figures which become present and absent in the text. fluctuate between varying positions of occupancy/concretion/reality
@strome. no solitary beat. [ 3 points with particular spatial marker. curtain, colour field or spotlight. 2 chairs in each with regards to the vantage over the rest of the space. doubling or splitting the roles of the audience listening becoming a performer for another viewer as they listen at another point. the circuit of viewing destabilises itself.
and punctuate the space and the meaning and the structural stability. utilises the point at which you become aware of being watched as you watch and the more global implications of these situations
FLOORPLAN
"conditions drawing"
originally made as the cover of the second edition of To the lighthouse, for showroom
using Virginia wolf as a key protagonist in the text somehow.
began to think about the form of the rug/drawing as a means of thinking about spatial organisation in another form. how to get these spaces and forms to work in the gallery space. and to think about them through time, in that the rug is a very time heavy production method. to rationalise these problems.
these things, these graphical participants, when passed through the demands of another form (in that they become book covers, or drawings or in fact the spaces they describe) how they alter and become reconstituted in meaning, etc.
HJ the solitary beat - did this come from a personal experience?
RB no, this was external, i was looking at examples of TV where artists and artwork was represented in TV. this break which maybe happens in TV where the private and seemingly public short circuit.NZ tv archive. - one clip was a group of school children visiting an exhibition of ceramics at a regional gallery - first gallery in NZ with an education officer, mediating contact with artwork as a message for school, early 80's. ED officer. "you can touch everything!" orgiastic thing of these kids rubbing themselves all over the ceramics and the teachers/ed officers reaction observing this [very specific scene somehow] wanting to unfold some of these thns, in the scipt a person is watching a group of people interacting/touching an object or something. 7 or 8, peculiar age, where not wild enough to be embarrassed but young enough to react that as though noone is watching, to get quite libidinal and sweaty.
SR how much did this libidinal thing translate?
RB not so much. it became more about a physical viewing. embodies an awkwardness or intensified sensation of BEING. would be surprised to hear of any orgiastic behaviour, but aimed for an intensity of sensation in the viewing - but not so graphic.
PE perhaps the contrast between building this intensity in the space of this very cold contained restrained environment and the intimacy/privacy of being on headphone/listening can by contrast build the sensualism. build the sense that this is a SCENario not just a curtain.
another piece at kunsthaus bregenz
"sculptor"
2 screens, 1 two way mirror. the other one used old cinematic technique with striped bands so bodies moving past would jitter, like a stop frame animation.
3 viewing points. all had access to a clip playing on a monitor. somehow filtered/disturbed/watched
woman artist being interviewed about her work in an installation of her work. - sound so low you just hear mumbling, no words. TV early 80's New Zealand. all panning shots of the journo and artist or static shot of a sculpture on a rotating plinth. pan/rotation/pan/rotation/pan/rotation with spatial setting wanted to repeat the establishment of this camera performativity
she sat live in the audience and spoke to them over a closed circuit wireless headphone. mediating her voice from within the body of the public
the script was in a way a narration of the monitor content and the experience/rotation within the space. first time using the logic of this multiple viewing points, multiple entries, her position as within the audience changes, the relationship is less charged more complex as a performer.
seated everyone individually to disperse them. she took them personally to a seat. clumsy somehow, in a way which would have suited another audience somehow. it may not have been as clumsy with an audience more willing to be taken and controlled, and less confused. also introduced the technology - put it on channel 1, here is how to turn the volume up. wealthy aged audience from geneva.
attempting to take the roll of the butler. disappearing into the object or the performance. there was still something important for her to be repeating the image of the artist walking through the space with another person. rather than an invigilator leading them.
power or control in oversupplying or undersupplying , in the presence or absence of the artist, where is the governmentally in the relationship. and surveillance model - a form of narcissistic panopticonism. and the possibility of substitute bodies where, i can watch this person watching me, and that could be reversed, that could be my body, that could be me. the roles of the durational and the spatial being flipped.
the internalisation of the police-man, in the knowledge that you are, or the sense that at any time you could be being observed. you dont just allow another viewer to perform to you, you become highly aware of performing in your own body and of the associated observation that requires
__________________-----------------------------
ruth introduces the floor plan.
SO.....
text (quite informational) written for print, the space doesn't exist any more. the floor plan/rug is for the space the text describes/perimeters.
as its written for print its informational in way which is difficult to present as a vocal intro. etc. and permits rereading or trackbacks, etc.
"make a case for movement, always of moving. start with a spec with a pattern set of uses of times with a rhythm... certain type of physicality here.
quite filmic - 'an angle, a curve, a wavy line.
draw a line through and across. sightlines, acting out concurrently
a photograph of the space encountered in the actual space. [repeat]
greeting an entry, a frame. viewed from a distance up close the photograph produces a circuit.
"a small room with tables organised in a group"
a mirroring emerges between the two, producing a loop. the drifts of the gallery
seen through the logic of the circuit of an encounter. the relationship is particular the relationship is trope
1 the relationship is particular - the curtain and the reading room appeared in the 50's / the boxing in of decoration, pilasters. - details of the institutional history of the space and its structure. modernising the physical and social gallery. (resulting in reading room and curtain, etc) - multipurpose curtain. - no info presented with them originally (in 50's) - categorised not as art or craft but in a weird category with the glass wall, the fire alarm, all sort of renovations. - current presence, position of curtain
2 the relationship is a trope. - archive and curtain appear as characters in this drama - become a trope. they are the same they are encountered as the same, a reflection and presentation of the other. - an organisational system through the curtain. a pile of boxes. § - they are they same because they rely on movement in order to function. a curtain that doesn't move is wall, an archive that doesn't move is a storage facility. draw a diagram of this - both - - repeats, repeats. production of its own taxonomy through ruptures through movements. - actions of use - pulling, pushing, etc.
- this mirror is an object. one which casts shadow and fills rooms. - an object that will not keep still -
to try to gather material she gathered in one frame and see a way to move forward. its informational in way unusual for her. the information original is quite scant > initially very clear intro to the space as it exists now, but as an occupied space (but without a clarity of function) its values not its particularities.
the place and personal relationship to it end up constructing the means for understanding relating it back. talk about the experience of seeing the photograph of the space, as it no longer exists. feeling a strange sense of vantage point, and sightlines through time. what to do with gaps, or what is a gap, and the material of the space and the possible, lost archived space. this did exist and now its the directors office, but im still somehow in both. writing as an exercise in naming something and relating or positioning against it.. taking a position before acting.
FLOOR PLAN and its relation to the text.
acts clearly as a floor plan. as it was circa 1958 (as in the photo) is this a way of embodying yourself in the space. producing an Addition to the archive. something on a movement. something extra to requirement but that would make the archive motive again. what to do with a gap/space/hole.
archiving of art gallery notes run by the same body as parks and rec. so shared budget meetings with zoo!
with the curtain. no notes for deinstall, transport or anything. perhaps as it occupies a weird mid space, its not categorised well. its no included in the collection. its status is vague. its just in a roll in a basement in the war museum (?)
something in the provisional description in th text is reflective of her awareness of the chase for the meaningful and the present - aukland gallery being particularly schitzo in chasing this meaning. ending up stuck between times. and becomes too complex.
thinking about how the archive works, through the curtain. using the curtain a s a gatekeeping character who mediates the potentialities for behaviour in the space. "think one think through something else"
an investigation of commissioning. as a curious relationship a curious dialectic. the organisational logic that appears in the narratives.
S+ can you disengage the format of the bringing to being of the thing. is it possible to disengage the work (the curtain) from the structure of its possibility? brings them in as ghosts. removed from the structure that calls it into being........? RB a process of evacuation that takes place, in that the curtain IS gone. and this makes a space ruth can move into and occupy. until its gone it hard to understand watt she can do.. fill up the qualities that are absent.
to me this feels like last year at marienbad somehow.
ALICE use of institutional space - is this because these are the spaces that invite you?
RB no this has come from my approaching a space. my own initiative. so she has a particular freedom when investigating the historicity of the space. constraints or particularities of how these spaces operate and organise - how they mediate their operation. (or how to mediate this in fact ) she likes having something to move against, to push at. something agonistic. an almost physical engagement with the institutional structure. they are such specifically scripted spaces. something exciting to shift or disturb or interfere. not sabotage or secrecy, but a tilt or a shift. thinking of these institutional structures as a formal material.
the level of investment is greater when she initiates the project. it comes from an awareness of a weirdness. more investment in the constraints.
filling a hole they were planning on keeping - they had no plan to discuss the curtain or the archive. the plan was that this would remain a hole.
how to establish relationships yourself and the fall out if you accidentally set something in motion. and the ease with which things can be co-opted.
it maybe needs physical distance to retain agency. so needs to be shown elsewhere. needs the charge that comes from distance. "abstract agency"
last year at marienbad.
ALAIN RESNAIS TOUTES LES MEMOIRES DU MONDE
TEXT 2
follow on _from earlier text
numeric strucutre
again repetitive structure. this maybe particularly suits the spoken form.
1. conditions, this is a commonality. it may be helpful to introduce a method for situation oneself.
a room. a table. a stack of papers, instruments, a body, other objects and dim wisps of air.
suggested positions or parameters. communication rarely moves in straight lines, rather it collects interferences along the way
rather it is rather it is
2 conditions a turning away.
ian white.
still very provisional. the unknown coming though in a purely spoken description. the sibilance hush hush hushing
using onomatapaoec description as diversionary tactics. like a diagonal strike across a canvas which describes and is the mark a gush of wind.
a graceful turn. then the shape of that S. the freedom given to you as a hearer.
brush brush brushing. hush hush hushing.
that this is both precise and provisional need not be underscored. this is both precise and provisional
(repetition again)
3. or this. a condition
ursula bell.
"established is a good word, much used in gardening books, the plant when established, oh become established quickly quickly garden, for i am fugitive
cornelia parker, worlds which defy gravity. throwning "aloft" of a cliff
an interior and how it speaks of itself.
dim wisps of air. repeat. an interior and how its speaks about itself.
not about a particular place. but trying to produce a method for articulating a collection. how things come together. and how these decisions manifest and describe. as a language. trying to address a condition: the condition of collecting in this case.
it isn't necessarily key that its encountered under the control architecture of the exhibition or whatever but it carries with it the framing when its seen after. it carries the suggestion of the gallery or the performance.
Time' by Ursula Bethell
‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,
‘The plant, when established’ . . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive – – –
Those that come after me will gather these roses,
And watch, as I do now, the white wistaria
Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.
Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,
Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder
At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,
And say ‘One might build here, the view is glorious;
This must have been a pretty garden once.’
From a Garden in the Antipodes (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1929)
Ursula Bethell, (1874-1945), "New Zealand’s foremost garden poet." (ACCORDING TO THE INTERNET)
starting from scratch with writing is a terrifying point. but finding some point, some line, or a paragraph is great point of departure. and then EDITING. so therein originates the repetition.
emily dickenson
words set in a space - apparently whenever she had visitors she wouldn't see them, she would stand behind a screen,( a paragon?) but not see them, and would play piano from behind a screen.
in turning away from the person arriving it maybe increases the sense of being there I
writing as a way of literally being there. so does the writing become very performative. in that it solicits an affect, and exercises a change.
the point of encounter. and meeting. and that a meeting can only produce. in the other experiences of the work. and its repetition and mutability of setting its no longer performative but it carries a charge and it produces a new meaning in a new meeting each time.
WISP
the work is the noise. its not the signal. its not the channel of communication its the vibration in the meeting. in communications theory this is degenerative, but in the work here its productive, somehow. some interruption and some production shaking.
sets of conversations
that things are noisy as things, and they don't keep still, and that they can enter another form. that the sculpture can become a text, can beam a video, can become a voice piece, can become a performance.
thinking as a material practise. - as well as making - in order to think through this [x] its necessary to weave it. or to write it. or to .........
using the curtain as an editing tool to order the negotiation of the space.
it blocks and opens, its durational somehow, the transparent one particularly And by extension then the sibilant swish of the brush brushing, operates as the semi transparent mirror character within the texture of the verbal (texture of the text) and its position at the middle point, and bookending the temporal heart.
it operates the durational space that a semi transparent mirror could.
that things can perform or act in a variety of register. that these can shift or swist. or be renegotiated. the agency of the work beyond the capacity of the author/artist. that the work WORKS, that it has a job.
inclination in that to a multiplicity and how the spaces between these works and forms and materials creates a noise that has its own work. and that they don't exist as translations, but that they have their own material space. that they are positions of transformation. not translation.
the aloe - katherine mansfield. published in the page by page published/edited form and the manuscript (each page beside one another) splitting of the public and the private setting.
my emily dickinson
susan howe. writes into it. as respond, commentary, expansion. its not reflective, it projective/productive somehow.
emily dickenson and the acusmatic voice - the voice without a body.
3
Vasilikis diagrams
4
Sri's notes
5
Susanna's Notes
Steve’s Class November 21 2013 Ruth Buchanan
Compiling a text to negotiate a work, as a way to sort through a work in progress.
Space and time
A persona that haunts the work
Maps or diagrams of cognitive brain – the description of an artist’s? brain
No Solitary Beat: An encounter of a viewer viewing someone viewing
Setting up a situation of doubling—where the viewer is the performer and the subject. points of encounter and concealing. hearing but also viewing but also enacting. Creating a moment of implication.
Possibly a producing form/body.
That the viewers position or hierarchy isn’t fixed.
coming to performance not because of an interest in the “live” – rather language etc. not wanting to be the performing body.
when does generosity of the viewer become aggression of the artist in performance?
Think through one problem with another form.
On the idea of how the viewer watching the viewer came about: How art or artwork can be presented through television
80s art TV shows as inspiration,
Panopticism? Narcissism? not about surveillance
Understanding how the entrance and the exit work
Writing text to be read as opposed to being written for print
A vantage point, sightlines and timelines, looking at a photo of a place that doesn’t exist anymore and yet I am still occupying that room. what is a gap? the space as well as the material that is encountered there.
carpets as floor plans
The curtain could be the gatekeeper? Permanent fixture…everything has to pass through the curtain
Thinking one thing through something else
Following the life of an object
The material can tell you more than you know, i.e. the exercise of writing and what comes out of that
Something to work against…to have a stronger conversation with. a physical engagement is important.
not sabotage but tilts or shifts, in terms of institutional structures
how easy it is for things to be co-opted.
Points meeting, touching, maybe even turning away
choose an image to think about a word
not writing descriptive things about work…the writing is the work but it is a work that is working out while it’s made.
I never start from scratch
carrying past projects with you in your pocket
the condition of collecting
a fugitive thing.
two turned away figures facing each other, photo of woman and bust at Auckland museum
bust as trope of collections
self plagiarizing
curtain as threshold, defines intimate space but also performance/staged space
entropy. they are noisy as things and they will not keep still
thinking as a material practice, one that is as valid as making
the curtain without movement is a wall and the archive without reading is a storage facility
Alex's notes
Ruth Buchanan creates a circuit of encounters in her workshop.
Ruth encounters her own text in the setting of the small project space. Her text then encounters the confinements of the room through the resonance of her voice. Her text now exists in the room as its own entity. The floor plan that she has knitted encounters the table farthest towards the door in the small project room. It encounters the space that exists to the left of the doorway. To the left of the entrance of the small project room. We, the audience, encounter the floor plan. The floor plan creates a movement around the tables that we sit at.
Ruth presents a photograph of the space of a room that doesn’t exist anymore. An archive of a gallery space c. 1958. A gallery that once existed in ’58. Yet Ruth is still in the space where the room should exist. The space now exists in the small project room as we pass the photograph around the table.
Ruth has re-encountered her material in the realm of this workshop. In the same way she originally encountered the material in the specifics of a certain space. This circuit of encounters and re-encounters that Ruth has initiated now exists as the functionality of the room for the time of the workshop, and the reason for us being in the small project room on Thurs. the 21st.