Olivia Dunbar

Go fuck yourself

To cause to stand

Set forth as things (or persons) or the world.

The world means the age of man, whereas the cosmos means the delicate arrangement of making order out of chaos.

Chaotic man moves earth and dirt

Moves history

Regions

(Bodies)

And heavenly bodies are not the earth

Are not in contact with what is.

Immoveable mighty chains are cast

Without beginning and without end

Are passing far

The self-same place

(Abiding in what is).

Habitually resistant habits wait, they fall behind

We fall behind resistant parts are static states

Ecstatic states

When time is slower still.

RESEARCH MATERIALS ONGOING:

Kathy Acker - The Language of the Body; Blood and Guts in High School, Etel Adnan - The Arab Apocalypse, Giorgio Agamben - The Coming Community; Means Without Ends; Infancy and History; The Open, Georges Bataille - Visions of Excess, Walter Benjamin - Critique of Violence, Hakim Bey - T.A.Z., Jean Genet - Un Chant d'Amour, Lucretius - De Rerum Natura, Laura Riding Jackson - Anarchism is Not Enough, Lisa Robertson - Magenta Soul Whip, Cecilia Sjöholm - The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire, Sophocles - Antigone, Tiqqun - Jeune Fille; Sonogram of a Potential, Slavoj Zizek - Language, Violence and Non-Violence

Some things that I can think of:

Fruit Loops are called Tootie Fruities. Are colourful cereals sweet and dusty that are used to trace circles in black paint on the glass that frames a drawing of a hand holding darkness and a knife. Corn pops in an ashtray that are shades of yellow becoming slowly beige. The sugar seals them together, a mass of crusty cracks cigarette butts line the rim to form a crown stuck with peanut butter and below the ashtray is a garbage can.

It’s black with white and blue writing - “SUPER IN GENERAL” - a poem that goes like “Super in general, being gets desirable.” Peanut butter spread down from the top, dirt caked up from the bottom. It gets sticky when you heat it. Even body heat can start it melting I’ve tried.

Thinking about attitudes, ways that I can perform myself as an artist, or ways that my self becomes a performer. Or ways that the performance of the self becomes the performance of an art practice. Or I guess how do you do identify that you’re practicing or doing practice because what if the moment of identifying stops it all. Like this is naming. But maybe names produce sensation.

On the glass is painted “AIMLESS,” spelled out of cheerio shapes there are no centres only outlines. A second drawing can go with this, “BEYOND BEING.” I wonder what gets beyond being desirable. Or what can I mean without desire, or without having the desire to confirm my being. I want to be being beyond being being. Some kind of life force. Or maybe this is life. No everyday life, only intense life. Emile Benveniste contends that prose is secondary, poetry primary to language. Laura Riding Jackson makes a similar claim. So then I might desire to be. Maybe being is beyond being. Like poetry is beyond being language as poetry.

BEYOND BEING AIMLESS

A second set of drawings, “BELONGING TO ONESELF / DIVINE LAW OR THE LAW OF MAN” is a text work with three sections of drawn images - three tongues touching, a coiled snake and a log. BELONGING TO ONSELF is drawn in pink highlighter, with the letter ‘B’ ‘E’ ‘N’ ‘T’ outlined in blue. Belonging to oneself could be being bent, like twisted screwed or the mental condition of being deflected or turned. Altered from an originally straight or even condition. Disposition is a tendency of mind, an arrangement or an order. From the astrological usage “position of the planet as a determining influence.” So how to be disposed to unevenness. I wonder how these conditions are set up or actually how to sustain them in the context of The World. What are the conditions under which I might become a planet.

I’m listening to music on Youtube that my father used to play on vinyl in our living room. It’s really bad 90s music, but also classics from The Doors and The Beach Boys. I think Jim Morrison was his favorite musician. I felt like we were floating when my father used to play these songs. Turned up so loud I was afraid of the force coming from the speakers I would talk to him but he couldn’t hear me. Dicere is to tell digitus is finger dico is the root which means “I say I speak I talk.” Talking through your finger there are a few buttons you could press. Loudness informs my practice because I want things to happen in my body, and sound you can feel pretty easily. Like you can feel fingers.

Other sculptures are groups, like teams. A plastic woven bag says “SEE THE WORLD” and I made a painting of it with a cigarette eye above the text. It’s a vertical combination. The bag sits on top of a Styrofoam plinth that says “SUCK A DICK” which together establishes another sensibility or attitude – “SEE THE WORLD (SUCK A DICK).” Which might describe the desire to be a productive member of society. How can I contribute? The plinth is on the floor which is actually as a carpet cut out of a faux-tiled vinyl sheet sort of like an island with a tree branch sculpture taken from outside that has a plush burger toy instead of leaves. The burger has a smiley face and leopard print filing (this could be the patty). “CAN BE REDUCED” is painted in pink acrylic paint across its forehead - sort of hovers on the subtle fuzziness of the burger’s bun fabric. Then there is a jade stone, a drawing of BRUNO the dog a deflated volley ball a bottle sculpture some shiny paper and a peanut-butter/muesli painting with duct tape on cardboard. This is all leading to a large painting/wall “THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID” spelled with aerosol in green and red on a white background, sort of like a sideways gravestone painted on a sheet of composite board. On the other side “FORGET ABOUT IT” goes in black. The two sides know about each other but they’re on opposite teams but I don’t know what the game is yet.

Another is

“FEAR FLASHED STRAPPED ON SERIOUS MYSELF DOWN TURNED SALIVA MOUTH POSITIONED CRIES I WAS TYPICALLY TUGGED HIS MOUTH A MAN.”

And that’s pink aerosol italic upper case on a found door. In an ideal scenario it would have been a nice new sheet of thick wood but this is all I could arrange at the time.