Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0605280756300.23350@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Track 16 Performance Text May 27 06
Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 07:56:49 -0400 (EDT)
Track 16 Performance Text May 27 06 (Real-time typing/improvisation laptop performance with A/V files. We had a fine audience.) ST this is an 'abrupt start' usually i begin outside a gallery context or in some other context, this is a difficult situation, after all the gallery's overdetermined i went to the Joan Jonas show today and for the past few days hope you saw it - by the way the image above is the Ukrainian revolution - anyway - the show was about memory and display and masquerade and gender but it was also about $180000, I think that's the right amount of zeroes, well that doesn' t matter but I'd have liked to have a copy of the DVD - artists tend to exchange dvds and poetry books (we're all fucking poor) and here within the institutionalization (love that word, it's like deterritorialization) of the gallery system we're barred, so damnit we should go ihn, but the show's closed and then - oh, the mp3's almost over - and make a bootleg of Jonas anyway if anyone has a bootleg we'll pay about ten dollars for it that's twice the new york street price - so - the doctor piece usually comes up later - somehwere about halfway through the piece - it just appeared early this time, i'm sorry, i hope it doesn't throw you off - it takes a while, I'm beginning but just beginning -- to sink into the images - that is, it's cranial - something will emerge, it might just take a while, please be patient and if not, well you've waisted only a little bit of time - every so often we try and _get on the screen _ = make some sort of connection - what this work is about, this work in general, screen images, that's all you're seeing here - connected with bodies in displayed or inconceivable positions - bodies appearing out of nowhere - bodies representative of empire - of broken desire - of things gone horribly wrong - if you read the history of the late roman empire - it becomes a history of chains, of tortures, of factions each intent on ravaging countrysides - it's not true people can live through anything - agriculture must have been destoryed - all for foreign wars - these were in - these were in main for the most part - Iraq - Persia then - toomany resources - what was going onat home - rome wasn't the ceneter any more - there were lots of emperors doing the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED bit back then - most of them were killed falling on their own swords - the Goths came in - other groups - that was about i t- now - it's about the same thing - different weapons -d own from the analog to the digital - things coming apart in pieces - inconceivable fucking -- bodies in untoward positions - there's no return - you just can't make heads like this can you? unless you're at war in which case you can make them any way you want - Azure (on the right thank god) is dancing - you can hear her footsteps - so what - so what you're hearing - what's coming through - is radio - radio waves - this show is about transmissions - emissions - radiations - pollutions - so you're listening - that's the radio - the white box - you can hear very low frequency radio - she's interfering with the planhte' planet's atmosphere - literally - changing the radio patterning - that's what you're listening to - this is the sound - all of this - of the field telephone - in the tent in front of you - connected to Leslie Thornton's tent in the other room - when the batteries are in it - I shipped the batteries - they exploded on the way here - i didn't know it - I unpacked them - my hands were covered with acid, well I thought, we should just LOOK at them - this is a true story by the way - I don't know if you're paying attention - oh oh the phone , the tiny phone in the tent, loves listening to itself, it can finally have a mirror, it can say - this is what I sound like, LISTEN TO ME! - across the country we looked for places to record very low frequency radio - you have to be away from civilizaiton, specificlly the power grid - the electircal grid which interferes with it - that's what we're doing - going wherever ther's not that buzz, that interfering buzz - in any case - and in this image - in this image - there's something taken aparet - there's - a distortion, tension in the fac e- the face can be pulled apart - whjen you play: 1. war 2. digital you can pull apart faces. Now I'm not saying that war = digital = botox nothing like that - but that all of these - it's like character trates - this is the conclusion of a silent film which I thought you might enjoy since th eonly voice here is my own - if yo haven't been in the trolley car - but first, notice the masts in the water - this is a sunken lightship off brooklyn - this is an `897 trolley - that's eighteen ninety seven - trolleys keep following me - they're the subject of this space - of bergamot - this is being moved - it's an electricla trolley - a book in the case - actually case two I think maybe not - in the room on the left - is called Benedict Arnold and is part of the Electrical Series - I think 1858 - not sure of the date - it's next to a very old 1897 or thereabouts telegraph receiver - these are I think maybe in the same case? as the spinthariscope which contains radium from 1903 just around when it was discovered - the thing still works - and in the next cage - older analog behaviors - there are slides, perhaps you've noticed them? of tuberculosis, diptheria, plague, I forget the rest - things that rot your insides out, parasites, dead men walking - I think the slides are harmless now - I hope so, I've been handling them - they've been leaking - it's always worth while: DOUBLE YOUR YODEL (this is an aside) (to what?) - here comes Azure and myself at home - you can see we're losing focus here - but at least, wow what modelling!!! - the performer on the right - she'll be out in a moment - she's not performing - she's tuning - the sound - is from work I've done - somewhere in NY - not NYC - somewhere else - it's Anja Schmidt - who - I think - can become trance/en-tranced/entranced quickly - you will have to wait - it's there - there's always smething in the ditgital domain - iv'e worked with dancers - continue to work with dancers - first, dance is something I can't do - I'm impossible, I can't move at all - I'm traumatized - it's like war - it's like Speer walking round and round the prison after the war - I admire people who can move - who are free to move - who don't worry about it - who don't think about it - so I hve these opportunities - it's as if the world were murmuring - somewhere else beyond slaughter - somewhere into water - that is Maud dancing below - she gets tired - she repeatss herself - she can't continue repeating herself - she falls out - falls over - falls into line - falls out of favor - what fascinates me - in other words - is always, everywhere, the inconceivable - what possibilities exist beyond possibilities - what nestings are possible - for example - within the tents - within the fabric of the tents - outside the realm - of any other possibilities - outside the realm of slaughter - if I could assassinate - if I had the courage - I'd put an end to things - but behind every killer is another killer - I admit freely here - I'm a coward - I'm afraid of pain - afraid of killing - I wouldn't know how - wouldn't know what I was doing.... - this is radio radio - this is antennta azure - this is the sound of atmosphere - this is the fury of wire - and this - moreso - this is Foofwa d'Imobilite - working the wire - the same wire - it's antenna connected to vlf to recording device to speaker back into room back into wire vibration - so where were we = within the analog realm of the real, nothing but slaughter: NOTHING but slaughter - within the digital realm of the real - REAL not VIRTUAL - nothing but REARRANGEMENT - tensor calculus - inconceivability - it returns to slaughter with a longer loop - this show is called em/bedded - em/bedded with slaughter, bedded with slaughter - embedded in Iraq - following the troops of Rome into Persia - into slaughter - into inconceivable analog torture - EM/bedded - that dash or hyphen of the typographical - dividing words - leading you on - crashing against itself - as if there were somewhere to go - there's nowhere to go - I do hope you like the show - why am I here at this point? - this is where I'd rather be - THIS is where I'd rather be - by the way we're NOT in the trolley car now - there are usually two more projections ther e- if you haven't wandered in - this is somewhere else - what I can do - while speices are being slaughtered (three to four an hour, the verdict's not clear) - I can combine things - just as here - as if babies could do that: think of it - babies can't do that - CAN'T do that - but dancers CAN do that - and I can't do much of anything - earl Earl Earl Earlier today I saw the Joan Jonas shhow again and - what was amazing, I thought, she's an artist, it's made to look easy, she's breathing that way - it's that way so smooth - kind of like Coleridge in fact thought about Wordsworth but that's another sotry - and then I thought - kind of like Coleridge - perhaps I should give up art altogether - at least this THIS kind of art - which makes no money and is CONTRIVED in relation to Joan Jonas - at least in relation to her =- and is orders of magnitue smaller than one hundred eighty thousand UNITED STATES DOLLARS - so then, well, I'd give away the dvds... that's US on the right, and PREFAB on the left.... AND THANK YOU FOR COMING AND HOPE YOU ENJOY THE REST OF THE SHOW -