User:Aitantv/blog2023
17.09.23
Amsterdam, Apartment 111-3, Grey slush blanket
Jean Luc Godard and Werner Herzog at the Eye Musuem. Gods of cinema. Geniuses of their time. Their time. But still exhibited, celebrated, honoured by the masses. Total mystification of their aura. JLG, in this biographical documentary, is at one point even said to be 'not of this earth, but rather a spirit'. This mystification one the other hand intentional and directed bu the auteurs; on the other it is something we 'the public' desire. To find demi-gods of these men who have magically bent the medium to their will. Disregarding all the influences they had, all the peers, all the collaborators. These are not gods. These are leaders, executives, producers. The artist is at some point like a CEO directing teams, the creative director making the final decisions on scripts, the accountant deciding really where the money will go. These entrepreneurial spirits must always keep their head above water. With their aura they continue to generate press clippings, soundbites, contraversy. The auteur provacateur is a product of the 20th century. Is this position still tenable? Is it even attractive? The convergence of artistic ingenuity and celebrity. Which one predicates the other?
I notice envy stirring up on me. To become like these lions is the goal right? To be CEO, creative director, head honcho of your own ranch. A big Warholian factory where all the minions exectue the big idea. The architect who simply faxes a list of instructions and blueprints. Or, like WeiWei, a political artist, a rebel, a heartfelt rebel, changing the world putting a small middle-finger up to systems of power... If aesthetics are dead, then why are these changemakers still putting out tangible objects that are (indeed) of aesthetic interest? In the end it's the same - an exhibition as the result of a period of production; a bunch of panel discussions, conferences, interviews to generate press around the work; everyone applauses the singular genius, no credit given to all the minions, all the art-workers propping up and executing on behalf of the CEO.
The studio run by the artist-chief in structure replicates capitalist organisations. Not in spirit but in the traceable contracts and dull economic exchanges. Also symboloically; who gets to do what when? It's not a free-for-all, as Steve McQueen said, the art workers or the crew still has to follow specific instructions. Why do artists kid themselves? Why do they kid the people who work for them, as if they can't sense their own exploitation? So what's the solution? Does the artist go back to making isolated as a singular genius. Instead of relying on a large assembly line, rather develop a tangible connection to the creative act and then, simply, hire out smaller freelance tasks where necessary. This sole trader model avoids the authorship issues that the Artist CEO model relies on. But why must an artist be humble? Why can't an artist be a captain of industry? An imperial might, a congolmerate brand, without pretending to be a liberal revolutionary? Say it as it is. Be aware of your position and the mechanisms that construct your pedestal.
13.09.23
Aparment 111-3, Amsterdam, steamy sweaty night
How do I not just not let become impregnated by the ideas and infrastructure of R. It is too late of course I'm already absorped, subsumed. I notice as an art worker that I'm handed so much responsibility but given so little recognition, credit, and money. Yet it's a job with so many advantages and privileges. In the Oval we are critiquing systems of inequality and rectifying them in the process - one meagre step at a time, but still steps towards... towards something better, a post-post-shit-fuck; when things are more appealing, more digestable, more green and clear. Yet at the Oval the systems of power are (by default) replicated. There is the appearance of radical critique and socially engaged action, but through quotidian exchanges systems of abuse, power, and exploitation become visible and instrumentalised. Worst still these moments of inequality are brushed aside, almost as if by simply acknowledging injustice and unfairness it is wiped away. Not so. You can still be an abuser even if you acknowledge the abuse. To be clear I am not in an abusive relationship. At least to the extent that I wouldn't make a podcast or write a novel about it. But I am in this virtual space trying to reckon with this feeling... of being John Malocvich (as J pointed out); of being in the mind of another artist, a more accomplished, evolved, rooted, and somehow wildly chaotic artist. How to carry that weight, to ingest, and absorph the knowledge without being subsumed.
It's about economy and systems of oppression. Its about ideas over form. Its about ideas. It's simply discussing and refining models over and over again until the argument is so sharp and clear that it is undeniable. It seems more like the exercises of a political economist than an artist, a worker you'd think who is creating aesthetically appeasing encounters. Economy as a subject, and economics as art. It was always speculation and 'modelling', social designs, games; the work of economists is conjecture, forecasting, guessing, and making self-fulfilling prohecies. artists make themselves brands. artists are brands and organisations, leading studios that somehow become bigger than the some of their parts. the employed freelance art-labourer generates ideas and contributes to the larger art project. in the trade of their intellectual and creative labour, they don't get a share of the artwork. The Oval is not a co-operative. You get the promise of prowess and recognition and the feeling that you are contributing to a big powerful important mission. we are on a mission together so if you are not adequatelt compensated, it is in service of the mission. but only the messiah gets the real acclaim. where are you left as the single unit of human capital, the art worker?
the artist is the producer, the director, the architect, the designer, the brand, the think. the artist has turns all instances occuring in their studio into personal intellectual property. the art worker's very soul (and supreme abilities) are dissected and removed from them in service of the owner-management. this is also the case with any private or public enterprise, especially when free-market economics is concerned. but in the Oval, capitalism masquerades as social-enterprise. we are all free and equal, but some of course more than others. in the end it is (and must be) the artist who gets the praise but also takes the bullet. it is a high-stakes game which sparks international conversation. it is glamorous and takes so much ambition. it is competitive and atheletic.
"you have to make your stamp early", R tells me. "In Pop, stars make their big hits when they're young because, as J explained to me, pop is all about overcoming love; the guy getting the girl or whatever. With visual art your big splash can come later. But once you fifty your dead in the water. Forget about it." I feel this biological clock ticketing. I've got to be hot-blooded and urgent. Fling myself into danger. Get burned alive by Hezbolla or a live volcanoe. Can't make a splash from the comfort of my living room. Unless the idea is truly sharp magic. Something sitting right there all the time. Really in your face. Right under the radar. Hiding in plain sight. All that.
26.08.23
Attempt at an Inventory of Dialogues, Objects, and Incidents exchanged between a Guest, Host, and a Parasite beteen 17:07 - 17:51 on 26.08.23 at 24 Damrak
A was invited to an after-party at 17:00 - presumably one that had been justiculating for several hours, with guests lingering long beyond their welcome. As a welcoming gift to the host A bought one box of six magnum minis (no two boxes since it was a buy one get one free offer at the Albert Hijn near Amsterdam Cebtraal). A approaches hosue 24 on Damkring with his magnum mini selection. He rings on the door bell persistently and awaits entry. To his dismay no one in the apartment is responding. His anxiety levels begin to climb as he visualises the ice creams melting in his grey nike string bag, soaking his wet swim clothes from the swim earlier that afternoon. He calls S, an early-30s artistic director and long-term friend, multiple times to gain access to the party house. No response. After accepting defeat A sits briefly on the lip of a super-sized potted plant. He opens one of the boxes of magnums, selects the almond edition, tears open the wrapper, and (before considering the ethics of ingurgitating a portion of the gift) gladly consumes the product. S eventually returns the call. Entry to house 24 is granted.
The lock is unlatched and A enters the building. A clinical white light glows at the end of the corridor. A ascends three flights of a spiral staircase with light-wooden banisters to reach the top floor. A hears a low repetitive thump. M, a dark-featured but pale middle-aged man wearing all black, with a cap on backwards, opens the front door of the apartment.
M (distractedly): Hi, come up... Oh don't take those steps. These ones lead upstairs. A (apologetically): Oh yeh, sorry... I thought they both led to the same place. M (insistentyl): no that leads somewhere else. This staircase leads to my room.
A follows M upstairs to what appears to be a temporary home and a party den. 15 half-empty cans of beer, a neon lazer light, stereo monitors, several crumpled cigarette stubs and packets, a pack of mentoes chewing gum, a half-made sofa bed, a green valour chair decorate the sparse white room. A proceeds to the roof terrace where M embraces him.
S: this is the after-party. its been so long since ive done this. A: good to see you my dear
Numerous small-talk conversation starters are attempted between the new triangle.
M (): how are you? how was your day? A (): yes good... good. I swam with ducks in Twiske M (): you swam with ducks like physically swam with ducks S: I've know this guy for years. I feel like your judging us A (): Why would I be judging you. You're doing your thing I'm doing mine. S (): Yes but it seems like your judging us M (): I want to hear about the ducks. Like were they actually swimming past you and brushing up against you. A (): No there were just generally ducks in this geography M (): Yes but wasn't their also pizza in peoples houses? A (): So I should say I swam with pizza as opposed to ducks? I mean they were in my vicinity. It's like a network of canals, and ponds, in some marsh land and there are like ducks and swans and that sort of thing. M (): I've never swam with ducks. Was it like "bloolooloopp" when they came up to you
This sort of inconsequential blabber goes on for some time. A walks back into the bedroom to put his phone on charge.
M (conernedly): What are you looking for? A (): I'm looking for a charger to re-charge my iphone M (): ah there's one in the corner already plugged in. how do you like that? A (): nice
A plugs his phone in & instinctively opens the blinds and opens the revealed window. A grabs the green verlour chair to sit on the balcony. S: This is the after-party. ive known M for years can you believe it? you're both like my best friends in Amsterdam.
M stands up to see what's going on. To intervene.
M (): Are you really going to just change the music without asking? A (): No I was just seeing what the situtation is. M (): Yeh but you were for sure going to change the music. Right? Like you can't just do that. Maybe you can ask me first you know before you just presume you can do whatever you like. Like I chose this music for a reason you can't just mess around with it. So what is it? A (): It's Channel Tres Radio. Do you want to listen to it? M (): Yeh sure put it on... But like I can't believe you would do that, just go up to my laptop and presume you can change the music. A (): So are you sure you want to listen to Chanel Tres? M (): No actually I'm fine with this. You can leave this on. A (): Yes of course. Sorry to have messed with the music. M (): It's just kind of inconsiderate you know. Just walking up to someone's laptop like that. Like it's kind of a no go area. Like if I'm in someone's taxi I ask the driver before I open a window, because it's like his house, his setting. He controls the vibe. Here I control the vibe. You can't just do whatever you want and mould the space as you want it. A (): Yeh I think we have very different ideas of hospitality. M (): I'm very hospitable. I love for people to feel welcome in my space. It's very important to me. I really like for me to feel welcome in my space. I'm a good host. I want people to feel at home. But you're in my space and this is the vibe. If you don't like the vibe you can go somewhere else. If you like this vibe you're welcome to stay here. But you can't just go to my laptop and start changing the music. Like it's ridiculous. I would never go to the dj booth at a party and change what's being played. Like come one... it's not polite A (): I think you're really escalating the situation... Like this is not a club with a public dj, etc. M: You're really trying to modify this space. Like I don't underdtand why you're doing this. S: I don't understand.... what's going on here like I love you both to bits.... Like why is this like this... Like you're both my best friends (Milena head in hands the sun setting). M: Look I'm sorry. A: no I'm sorry. like we clearly have different ideas of the law of hospitality. you have your ways and i have mind. it was wrong to presume... M: I don't have like a law of hospitality... A: but you said I should ask you before i do things and intervene M: It felt very invasive for me. You can't just go up and touch someone's laptop. That's like unacceptable. I'm telling you as a friend. Like I have no problem with you. I'm sorry. You seem like a really nice person. It's like how Israel treats Palestine you know. It's just disgusting behaviour to do what ever you want in someone's house. A: So are you Palestine and I'm Israel? M: If a guest wants anything I want to give it to them. I want them to feel comfortable here.... A: Yes, could I please have a glass of water? Or could you tell me how to get a glass of water? M: Yes of course, I'll get that for you
A is stern and perplexed. Trying to soak in rays of sunlight before it is overcast or another storm erupts. He leans on S's shoulder and notices a yellow stain on her crisp white shirt. A is hesitant to say anything.
S (dramatically): We're just so fucking tired. Like it's been over twelve hours. We met at six am on the ferry and now its six pm.
M returns with a mug covered in pocodots filled with water. M (): I'm sorry I didn't have any other glasses. A (): No it's beautiful. Thanks for the water.
S lets her hair down. She parades and twirls at the end of the roof terrace. She's on the phone.
S (innocently): so what area is this? What's the address? M (): what do you mean? I don't think you should be inviting anyone else. Like what is this. You can't just do whatever you want in my space. Like not everyone is just welcome here.
M turns to face A while in the middle of disciplining S. S goes to sit next to M.
M: You can't just do that. You can't just do whatever you want with my space. Like it's just the two of us here having a nice time. A (): Wait are you talking to me now or S? M (): I don't know. It's just it shouldn't be this way. Like we're having a thing just the two of us and then you're just inviting people and doing what you want with my place. It's not really how it works. S (apologetically): It's my fault. It's my fault. I told him it was an after-party and he could do whatever he wants with the place. A (sober): She didn't tell me that at all S: I told him you can do whatever you want. Listen you two are like my two best friends. what is happening here? A: No she didn't tell me that. I just came here and acted how I usually would. So like what's the problem here? So I opened the window, I moved the chair, and I tried to change the music on your laptop. Is that the problem here. M (): I'm sorry you seem like a really nice guy but you can't just go up to my laptop and do whatever you want. A (): Look we have a very differernt idea of the law of hospitality M (): i dont have a law of hospitality A (): we have a different understanding of hospitality M (): you keep saying the same thing and talking to me like a TED talk. A (): okay i don't hold anything against you. but you have a radically different idea of what hospitality is. i no longer feel comfortable here as your guest so I'm going to go. M (): yes i think that would be for the best. this is the vibe of the place and this clearly isn't working. nothing against you whatsoever. you seem like a really good person. but this isn't working for me so yes you should leave A (): okay thank you so much
A shakes M's hands in a passive-aggressive sort of confrotational way.
A (): yes thanks again for this experience, i hope you enjoy your evening, im gonna go M (): yeh sorry again this didnt work out, blablabla
A unplugs his iphone, goes to the corridor, down the stairs, grabs his icecreams from the fridge. S follows him downstairs.
S: Ah i don't understand. we're just so tired. i'm so sorry. i love you so much.
S and A hug and embrace by the front door. A leaves the apartment and starts to descend the main staircase. S leaves the door ajar, lingering in the interstitial space.
S (): I don't know what happened. I shouldn't have invited you. It's my fault. A (): No it's fine like its super weird. its funny...
S walks down the staircase towards A.
S (): I just don't know WHY he's acting like this A (whispers): he's just a fucking coke-head.
S embraces A and comes close to him.
S (whispers): You're like a brother to me. I love you.
A walks further down the stairs. looks up at S between the banisters.
A (): stop being so dramatic.
A leaves the building.
Addional lines: S (): do you want some coke? Im gonna have some coke.
Post-analysis
- I'm getting interested in cultural exchages - and plurality debates with many different people talking and exchanging
- This scene could be filmed with S, M, & A, the real people implicated. It could be like a double-helix where there's a film within the film, and the re-enactment of the scenario would lead into a real life hostile hospitality (hospitility) given the inherently invasive challenge of filming on location with low budgets. Could also hire actors and attempt a comparison of the person v actor re-enactment.
- it could also just lead to a general discussion or debate between the peopke involved.
- you would record it with the omni-stereo setup and then have a boom to focus on the dialogue - all the while having a repetitive techno beat in the background with 3 sort of sections that escalate according to the drama
13.08.23
Amsterdam, Sunny blue clouds
No clubs, no drugs, no drink, no smoke, no minimal monotonous techno with bpm as the only oscillator. Club culture here in the nordicos is not revolutionary. It is not the exception, the alternative, to late capitalism. It is an active component. Club culture is ticketed, taxed, policed, licensed, approved by the municipality for good reason: bread and circuses. Feed the people a short hit of pandemonium and they can carry on with their satiated work lives. A way to raise the hearbeat so the offie chair is more tolerable. A way to blow-off some steam and splurge to justify the career that occupies the work week. Club culture as a pragmatic component of (work-life balance-)neoliberal non-spiritual cosmology. Yoga as exercise, not spirtual practice. Therapists as pscyhological mechanics, not spiritual healers. Disenchantment is all pervasive in the Nordicos. A relgious lineage is suspect, archaic, rigid, naive, orthodox, an ethics with jars the well-adapted neoliberal nordic elite. Spiritual practice must be justified with recorse to rationalist argumentation. Magical thinking must be couched with physical explainations. Mysticism must be veiled by materialist science.
Gone is the possibility to wander and dwell in the unseen, the beyond-the-frame, the visual not seen, the out of field. Only what is in the field is acknowledged as factual. Discbelief is suspended to a great enough extent. How can we unlearn the demystification of the nordics? An intense rationalism is all pervasive possibly explaining the lack of spark, spontaeity, emotion. My generation gathers in darkened rooms to dance to repetitive, monotonous, binary beats. I feel a lack of soul, connection, more simply emotion in spaces that are supposedly presenting an alternative and a release, a space of communion. Where are our emotions hiding? When did we bury them? Whose corpse am I now wearing?
The soul as an element of the fleshy being - a part of and from the body. The spirit dislocates itself when the body stops functioning. The body as shell, the soul as ghost. The soul is yearning to develop inter-subjective relations with other souls. The body as wanting to dive into the flesh and yet also be apart, be protected, a holistic membrane seeking internal homeostasis. In the nordioc minimal techno club, bodies gently swoon like zombies, souls wanting to connect, mechanical binary beats lulling us into boredom that can be alleviated by mainlining drugs. Clubs as architectures that legitimate drug use and nothing more. Not scenes or spaces of exception but components of the very system they are claiming to challenge. Clubs are not exceptions but components of the superstructure. How else can the monumental design of global capitalism be chiseled?
Is the objective a foolish enterprise? Better rather to make a communal microcosm that functions according to preferences of that very community. Trade, exchange, barter, currency, have been around for too long not to be acknowledged as an essential component of human civilization. It is not something to be rid of or erased. Specific sets of individuals - perhaps whole communities, villages, townships - may seek alternatives and the task is for them (as nodes on a rhizomatic social map) to vibrate with sincereity in response to the cognitive dissonance they experience. What if governments were to provide space and support for such alternatives, offshoots, experiments? Like hardcore capitalism as the freshly cut lawn and non-commercial alternatives as beautiful exotic flowers that decorate the garden? Is the exotic flower to alien a species that it becomes a thorny weed to be snipped by the master gardener? [That reminds me I need to watch Paul Schrader's latest film 'Master Gardener'(2022)]
10.08.23 - 11.08.23
Amsterdam, MACA, Grey overcast
Scoring the Long Shot
'Scoring the Long Shot' is a participatory workshop which is concerned with the contemporary components of the cinematic image: sound and time. Cinema is a time-based medium and "the most important thing in film" according to the Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman. An admirer of Andy Warhol's mundane observational films - such as 'Empire'(1965), a monumental 8-hour static long shot of the Empire State building - Akerman later came to document the Chelsea Hotel in NYC in all its bare unflattering former glory. In Deleuze's 'Cinema 2: The Time-Image' he describes the transition of cinema from 'the movement image' which is concerned with action, kinetics, animation, to 'the time image' which prefers to dwell, pull-focus on quotidian architectures and the simple gestures of actors. Deleuze also describes the shift from the 'silent-film' - with intertitles and live orchestral scores that function as separate textual elements - to 'talkies' where dialogue is finally in sync with the picture. With the advent of the talkie a single sound continuum is created where sound is no longer an additional element of cinema, but it is rather a componenet of the visual image. Sound and image become intertwined, fused, an inseparable alliance which redefines the borders and language of cinema. Sound can dwell in the unknown, the 'out-of-field' and the 'visual not-seen'. It goes beyond the tight cropped borders of the cinematic frame. However wide, scoped, or anamorphic the cinematic frame is sound recording is a superior technology for capturing the spatial qualities of the field.
After guiding a group game of 'seeing as camera' - where I gave prompts such as "focus on a subject", "zoom in", "slide left", "tilt up", "dolly in"- I gave a brief introduction to 'Transcendental Style', a film essay and theoretical cartography created by film critic and writer-director Paul Schrader, who rose to fame as the screenwriter of Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver'. At the very center of Schrader's TS diagram is N. The NARRATIVE NUCLEUS encompasses the entirety of blockbuster entertainment cinema - Marvel Movies, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Jurassic Park, Jaws... Indeed Spielberg is responsible for calcifying the narrative nucleus as what we call 'movies'. THE TARKOVSKY RING is the outer limits of what most audiences deem acceptable in a theatrical context. As we migrate away from N (and beyond THE TARKOVSKY RING) the waters get murky.
[insert transcendental style diagram]
At the top of the Schrader's TS diagram is THE SURVEILLANCE CAM, spearheaded by Chinese documentarian Wang Bing, known for his rigiorously observational documentaries, such as 'Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks' (2002) a nine-hour epic filmed between 1999 and 2001 which details the slow decline of Shenyang's industrial Tiexi district. In the bottom left is THE ART GALLERY where you'll find avant-garde film artists such as the structuralist Michael Snow who questioned the apparatus of film itself or experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage who explores the material of celluloid to investigate a range of subjects. Finally in the bottom right corner resides the MANDALA whose contemporary darling is Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai auteur known for his meditative long shots. Weerasethakul dwells in the 'out-of-field' or the 'visual not-seen' in 'Memoria' (2023) a sci-fi-fantasy-drama where Tilda Swinton plays Jessica, a melancholic Scottish expat in Colombia who goes in search of the cause or source of a distorted BOOM she can't get out of her head.
For Schrader, what unifies the artists and filmmakers that fall under the umbrella of Transcendental Style is a preoccupation with the spiritual dimensions of cinema. Transcendental Style is foreshadowed by mid-century masters Ozu and Bresson, who chose stasis over dynamics, who dared to dwell in the quotidian in order to subtly reach a point of rupture, disjunction, and transcendence which uses the unreal, the imaginary. "The abundant must not overwhelm (too much religiousness in a film) nor be too sparse (not enough narrative); a film should set the viewer in motion by the end, asking them to enter the image, enter into the Transcendent" (Schrader 1972 p179). It felt important to imprint the spiritual lineage of the long shot on the workshop participants of 'Scoring the Long Shot' before diving into practical filmmaking.
[film still projection screen]
The setting of the workshop during Resonant Bodies was a 4:3 wooden-framed cotton projection screen situated in the front garden of Arteli Racha. Benches on a mound in front of the screen created an ampi-theatre. The intended aim of the workshop was to collectively score a long shot. The dramaturgy prompt: "The show starts in 10 days. The residents must prepare the backstage area for the show." Participants were encouraged to be 'models' (not actors), to commit to actions and tasks to prepare the backstage area. Preparing the backstage area might include moving a haystack from one area to another; erecting and organising some plastic tubing; taking a long-deserved coffee break; measuring the floor plan; and so on. The tasks were devised and selected by participants. I divided the workshop participants in two: filmmakers and audience. The filmmakers should produce and perform a score for the audience with the prompt in mind. The audience should pay active attention and prepare to offer constructive feedback. Once this round was finished, the two groups would switch. This swithching of roles was intended to break the dichotomy between audience/filmmaker. Participants could experience both the responsibility that filmmaking requires as well as the attentiveness that being an active audience member requires. As an audience member it's difficult to become a lethargic recipient when you're up next.
I think participants enjoyed this role playing exercise. How would we fair once the camera was swithced on? Now we were all filmmaker-models. We were all making a long shot together. I encouraged us (filmmaker-models) to dwell in the 'out of field' and the unseen. We had a stereo omni-directional audio recording setup. I wanted to collectively score a wide field of sound with a broad range of happenings, accidents, textures, incidents. The cinematic frame, in contrast, was a tight 4:3 image focusing on the projection screen with some spill into the space around it. The frame is always a crop/fragment/chip/flick/flake of an infinitely larger and chaotic whole. Sound recording is better equipped to deal with the spatio-temporal qualities of the field. The omni-directional stereo recording was designed to enhance this disparity. The omni-mics were live. The visual frame was locked. The camera's red record button was pressed. The boom microphone was activated and synced with the static camera. The score began scoring.
As the cinematographer (and workshop host) I could sense participant's awareness of the camera. Now time counts for something. The camera is the ticking bomb Hitchcock implemented in his plots. A casual gesture seems intentional. Every action must be pre-figured. Not free and loosed but somehow pre-ordained scripted. Not so natural anymore. Rigid, exposed, raw. Raw footage picturing raw souls frame after frame. We try to keep the camera out of sight, out of mind. But it somehow burns a hole through the moment, like a lazer beam cutting through the 'isness' of reality. We dealt with the insistence of the camera well; it's demanding protocols. We improvised. we subtly scored the sequence. Randomness and play allowed a sense of joy to enter the frame. K wrapped himself in a white sheet like Moses and tilled the soiled; N donned a tight black onesie and bewilderly stumbled from one side of the frame to the other; M sported a blue bucket on her head; L erected a tubular structure in the backstage area, maybe a semi-permanent prop for the show. When to end the shot? When the score has scored. All models have vacated the frame. Beyond the frame, several syncopated bangs on a piece of wood. The cinematographer yells 'cut'.
Two days later I projected the resulting single-shot film 'Making the Show' on the screen we had filmed, in the front garden of Arteli Racha. The projection beam lit a path of misty rain. We sat like a tiny isolated village and watched ourselves performing to ourselves. We laughed and sighed, tried to pay attention, and mostly enjoyed sitting in this bizarre meta theatre projecting a mirror of our own efforts. Before the screening N amplified an album by Caretaker which attempts to translate the experience of dementia, the inevitable cognitive and psycho-spiritual decay of its victims. This affective album set in motion the emotional texture of my next workshop and project.
SCHOOL
The site-responsive performance began with a desire N & I shared to rave in a former soviet school in Chkvishi. After a few site visits my perception of the decaying ruin became clouded by melancholy and nostalgia. A huanted presence couldn't be denied. On the first visit a barking dog upstairs hinted at non-human intruders - or were we intruding? The site was rumoured to shelter drunks, druggies, stragglers, and misfits from the road and the local village. K, our host in Racha, warned us of the hazards and pranksters. The school was crumbling at the seams - we could easily fall through a floorboard. I was also wary of making an artistic intervention on the site given the stream of aesthetic artworks staged in post-industrial, post-soviet architectures.
I began to discuss scoring and gaming with the other RB residents. N still wanted to rave and not over-complicate things. I had an itch to attempt something of greater consequence and subtlety. I also wanted to avoid synthetic techno beats unless it was conceptually necessary. "You don't have to overcomplicate things", N advised. Rave felt like a good possible destination, but more like the end of a journey - a cathartic release. One evening E was playing the accordion accompanied by J's hydrophone field recordings and modular-synth samples. The accordion breathed like lungs. The instrument sounds like a collapsing clown which keeps lifting itself back up. Each inhale and exhale felt like a catharsis and nostalgia see-saw. It was the right instrument to catalyse an exploration of childhood encounters with pedagogy and early personal experiences of educational instutions.
After several impromptu discussions, the score of the site-responsive performance were beginning to take shape. E would lead a sonic meditation scored by Pauline Oliveros, the American composer, accordionist, researcher, activist, and sound artist. The specific score is succinct and beautiful: "walk so silently that your feet become ears". N would then facilitate a sensing exercise where participants would pair-up, taking it in turns to be blindfolded while the other guided them and described the architecture. This exercise would transition into prompted performative responses to specific classrooms. Play-time would rupture the score and allow participants to blow-off steam. A repetitive techno beat eminating from a classroom would invite participants to the rave, the final catharsis. "You don't have to overcomplicate things", I recall N stating.
[moodboard of school textures]
N, E, and I went to visit the school for a final recee one hour before the experiments were set to begin. We noticed some men smoking and drinking beer around a pick-up truck by the school gates. Their tiny dogs excreted tight bundles of shit on the cobbly road. We made our greetings and entered the facility. We began mapping the score on the architecture - what should happen where? I noted the light-gray concrete, the muted marine tones of the painted walls (cyan, navy, aqua, turquoise, seaweed-green), the bright orange neon chemical particles scattered in the chemistry classroom, the saturated red typography of some of the signage. This could inspire the color scheme for the outfits of the participants, so they might appear as a whole blending with the architecture to depict a microcosm. In theory I was prepared to guide the performance without filming or documenting anything. The filmmaker was already getting the better of me. The shot list was defining itself subconsciously. I was already framing the performance cinematically. Was I taking on too much? How would I juggle the roles of facilitator and filmmaker? We were nervous but ready to initiate the performance with the RB residents. As we left the school gates we encounter more men around the pick-up truck. A silver Mazda pulls-up and a sombre family get out. A crowd is gathering for a funeral taking place opposite the school. Suddenly a 'site-responsive performance' seemed inappropriate. In Chkvishi, a quiet secluded village in Racha, it's especially important to be quiet during the funeral procession.
SCHOOL was postponed twenty-four hours. I secretly welcomed the delay. In that time the score had to be simplified. I had to get the chips aligned. I let the plan ruminate. The elements were all there but how to string them together? The accordion was affective but what function did it play? Rave was fun, but a bit obvious? 'I don't know. It's just an experiment. See how it goes. Plan to fail. Failure is baked into the plan'. I woke-up early the next day as I often did in Racha. I sat on the terrace in the front garden and continued my black ink drawing of the front garden. I sat with a pot of chai and two cups ready to welcome an early riser. L came to me first. We started chatting about the score for SCHOOL. He introduced the possibility of using instructions, rules, prompts, cards, and other gaming strategies to help guide SCHOOL from within. The accordion, for instance, could become the school bell. The instruction: "when you hear the bell make your way to a classroom. If you're in a classroom make your way to the corridor." Marked envelopes could be used to designate which classrooms participants could enter. I decided to focus on three subjects: Maths, Science, Literature. Three subjects for three classrooms. Each envelope would contain a cheesy proverb to prompt a performance for that specific classroom, for example:
MATHEMATICS "Don't get mad. Learn to add." Add your explorations of this classroom together to create a whole.
With a structured score, marked envelopes, everyone in site-specific outfits we assembled in the afternoon in the garden of the RB base. Similarly to 'Scoring the Long Shot' I provided an overarching dramatological prompt: "It's been a busy morning at school. You've just had your lunch break. It's time for two more classes before home time". [I've started to enjoy these self-reflective prompts. They deal with the reality of the situtation performers are subjected to and somehow puncture the tension in a productive way.] Walking was the first steps of SCHOOL. I started to document proceedings with my film camera: the participants walking in the village, and then walking so silently that their feet became ears. In theory the score (with it's gamified prompts, envelopes, instructions) would guide the participants, so I could simply hit record and capture chance encounters and gestures. Within seconds I fell behind the pack. I was sweating in the heat. I could only get shots from behind while we were walking. I wanted to guide participants, to host. Instead I was the cinematographer detached from the action through the intermediary of the camera.
[SCHOOL film still/s]
The camera is an interceptor of relationships. It cuts between people. The cut in the editing room cuts up time. Some Kabbalists believe that the camera can see into the soul. Every frame you take extracts a piece of the soul. The camera is a soul snatcher. Do you want to extract parts of someone's soul? Is your film worth that much? Immersed in SCHOOL participants guided eachother with careful steps and words as their partner was blindfolded. E started playing the accordion. The sound bellowed through the long concrete corridors, the interstitial space connecting classrooms where children presumably absorbed languages, sciences, prescriptive knowledge, and ideology between moments of attention and distraction. My camera led me to spontaneous interventiosn like when K started drawing with charcoal on the walls. In the Mathematics classroom participants added their parts together and engaged in dialogue about early educational experiences. The architecture (its history and presence) inevitably seeped into the consciousness of the participants. I was struggling to stay connected and atuned as I hunted for frames, shots, sequences, to later assemble. My mind was fixated on the output. To be facilitator and filmmaker simultanesouly is perhaps mutually exclusive. Are you producing a film or designing an experience? These medium correlate and negate. The camera (if used) must be acknowledged as an interceptor (a parasite) not an instigator of connection - not a facilitator of meaning - but an extractive technology for containing reality and interpersonal relationships.
N initiated the rave. They were hesitant to start it. The participants were fried. The rave brought catharis for the few remainers. The ones that left SCHOOL were fatigued. I gathered later that they felt somewhat bored and neglected - by the facilitator-filmmaker. A filmmaker works with subjects. An artist works with participants. A filmmaker turns an audience into spectators. An experience-designer turns the public into participants. Do you want to look at an image or be inside an image? This is not a battle between LCD screens and VR goggles. This is a levelling up of IRL over virtual. Being over representation.
08.08.23
Amsterdam, Home, Turquiose-Grey overcast
I tell J about visiting Oni synagogue after having confronted an antisemitic rupture only minutes early. Jews = gold: Jews control capital: Jews control the world: Jews are money and power: Jews are the parasites that find ever more inventive way of extracting profits from the world. Jews are self-victimizing. They can't take a joke. 'Why can't I make a Jew joke? It's part of the humor, aint it? I make Jew-money jokes with my friends." For some Jews it's okay - these confirmations of semitic tropes through self-deprecating humor. Self-deprecating humor as a currency of the clown, the comic, the wandering Jew. 'If my nose is too big and hairy, if I reak of anxiety and post-holocaust trauma, at least I can tell a good one-liner, at least I can be the diplomatic bridge between perfect strangers, I can be the butt of everyone's joke, the Jew, the great equalizer, "the Jews hate the muslims, the muslim hate the christians, but everyone hates the Jews"'.
Victim:benefactor :: Host:Parasite. These positions are always oscillating, changeable, fluctuating. Who is more intelligent? Who is cashing in really? Jews as userers because they couldn't buy land. 'Why are Jews so private? Enclosed? Separatist?' It's because in medieval europe (and more recently too) they were forced to live in these ghettos, yes ghetto from Italian derives from the segregation of Jews in the inner-city of Venice into slum-like quarters. In Amsterdam the Jewish quarter - forced segregation - makes for easier round-up get them on the cattle train. 'Why get all sensitive about the holocaust now? It's like not even mid-century.' It's hard to forget when there are mundane vernacular quotidian reminders of your misplace on a daily basis. Antisemitism not lurking in the woodwork, just right there sitting on your plate, like a shmeer of dijon during maincourse, just petit discreet antisemitism as a satsifying garnish to daily life. Culinary metaphors are useful vehicles to consider the distain for a globally scattered people who have too much in common and yet everything separating us.
Jews are shape-shifting throughout history: host, guest, parasite. There categories are volatile, oscillating. To recapitulate the status of Jews is forever being negotiated. That unsettled symbolic condition (complicated by the very real Jewish and Evangelical settlers in Palestine) creates negative space, noise, where confusion, blame, scapegoating can catch and spread. There's something sticky about antisemitism, it has a pleasurable salty sass. It's dark and mischievous but still palattable. It's like almagnac as a nightcap with a belly full of beer, it upsets the balance by such an insignifant margin that it goes unnoticed.
I can't explain away the disgruntled sensation that comes from a racist encounter. Your own 'liberal', 'open-minded', intersectional, queer, poly-hyphenate comrades looking you lovingly in the eye as the bazooka your heart. It tears a gulf between good people. Antisemitism's evolved to successfully dehumanize. Using it as post-woke humor doesn't eradicate the original purpose of the form. The medium is the message. The message of antisemitism is that Jews are less than human. As long as that is the case, the jury is out on who else might be considered an alien by the native species of our neoliberal hyper-pop global utopia: white folk.
07.08.23
Amsterdam, Home, Sunny with clouds
First day back to work, to the cycle, the hamster wheel, the assembly line batch production. My priority is to be productive with my time rather than remain dormant at a computer screen for the alloted labour time. I allocate myself phases of focused artistic labour/research to complete given tasks. I embrace morphological time; unlike chronological time according to the clock, this is a perception of time based on task. It's the how long is a piece of string mindset? "I'll meet you on the corner in the time it takes me to walk the breadth of the city". This changeability of time was an important feature of RB. Dinner preparation might take 4.5 hours. But every moment counted. & it may have felt like half the amount of time it took to get through a cicling session where we were encouraged to listen to one another's immediate thoughts and feelings. I'm still grasping for intimacy and community in my daily life. People are busy. Friends have prior arrangements. Society runs like clock-work, chronopolis. Time is measured by hours, minutes, seconds. Time is not relative. Time is measurable. I incorporate a more personal perception of time, that is relative and loose. 'Slow, slow, but steady' I focus on the task at hand.
The shot takes as long as it needs to elapse. The beginning and end of a gesture mark the moments of a cut. The static camera is a powerful tool to allow the audience to surrender to simple gestures and the pleasure of watching humans model. In 'Scoring the Long Shot' I hosted participants and gave them a brief introduction to slow cinema and Transcendental Style, two cinematic movements that fetishize the static frame. Together as performer-filmmakers we generated a broad soundscape that transcended a simple static frame of a projection screen located in the garden of Arteli Racha. A live foley soundscape was scored by the performer-filmmakers. The cinematic frame became a mere cropped referrent to this wide omni-directional stereo recording filled with rustling footsteps in the grass and performers tinkering with found metalic or plastic objects in the exterior. The output of this workshop was 'Making the Show' a one shot short film documenting the process, where performer-filmmakers were given the prompt: "the show is in 10 days and it's time to prepare the backstage for the audience". In self-referential social-realist style, the show was indeed 10 days away, and I considered the residency at Arteli Racha our private backstage.
But how was it recieved? 'Making the Show' was under the spotlight as we gathered in Kororti - a communal open studio space in Tblisi - for the event that we prepared as the public vinissage. I naively introduced the film as if it was a succinct narrative short worthy of the audience's full attention. Our visitors were forced to sit through eighteen minutes of ordinary people walking back and forth with a smattering of random actions and gestures. They were probably better off eating the aggressively delicious food prepared by the hostile chef with a mischievous moustache N.
06.08.23
Amsterdam, Home, Grey overcast
I have returned from Georgia. Landing on my feet. I'm grasping for community and searching for it in the living rooms of millenial friends close by. The Netherlands is a cool grey steely geometric orderly rigid up-tight planned governed sort of place. I feel a sense of homesickness setting in as I look back on Georgia. A magentic pull from my body towards that geography, some sort of genetic map attempts to superimpose itself on that landscape; a negative layer looking for its postive, an etching finding its relief (wikipedia.etching).
I found a sense of home amongst the RB residents in Racha. This temporary community quickly formalized a schedule for domestic chores; a morning meditation and movement routine to create space for spontaneous creativity and emotional releases. Circling - the group act of attentive listening where we shared our immediate thoughts and feelings - was a tedious and challenging process. To sit with the concerns, grief, and complexities of others was a draining process. My body would be fully activated and ready to plough the day, but after circle it felt heavy, tired, and sore. These interpersonal emotions are weighty. The physical manifestation of heaviness equates with the gravity of the human experience.
I want to re-create (a slither) of this group field. My perception became a field of possibilities rather than channeled towards a specific point. Drawings became broad and almost fish-eye; film shots became mere crops of a wide omni-directional foley stereo soundscape; feasts were scattered with berries, salts, nuts, seeds, and oils, making a maximal taste mouthful of every bite. A de-centered approach to living, where the I was no longer so autonomous, produced a becomingness where process had a greater value than output.
I low-key mourn for my Georgian friends. Long-lost sisters, ex-wives, distant cousins, long-distance pen pals, a forgotten university colleague. They each occupied a position of familiarity from the very first encounter. I circle back to the body, and where the body finds its restplace. Is it climactic, cultural, social, cinematic, political, textural? Is it about colors, hairy, beauty, textiles? Is it to do with culinary tastes and satiating a void within with edible harmony? A sense of homeness in a foreign land. An uncanny belonging and being-with in the carriage of a Metro from Dezerter Bizaar to the micro-district of Gldani. Every grandma had a sparkle of Bibi with a soft comic gaze, a moth-scented wiry wool cardigan, badly-dyed hair, over-plucked eyebrows, and powdery doughy palms. Where do I go from here? Can I stay here in the cold steely grey grindhouse? Can I tolerate this clinical tepid womb?