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Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
15 March 2021 9:38am

Good week Tash, Catherine and John!

Starting with some notes:
I exchanged a couple of messages with Catherine. Since we are a small group, I am switching the assignment dates to Thursdays, with a feedback on Fridays, instead of Wednesdays + Thursdays. I want to accommodate Catherine’s work schedule so we stay together. So, this week’s assignment is due on THURSDAY 3/18 – with the contributions to your colleagues due on FRIDAY 3/19. If you can do any earlier is fine, but giving you some extra time, if you need it.

Start taking notes on your ideas for your project!
Regarding the assignment 2 — asking your colleague for a contribution, will be as follows:
– JOHN will ask CATHERINE
– CATHERINE will ask TASH
– TASH will ask NATALIA
– NATALIA will ask JOHN

Remember to draw upon what you already know of this person; see instructions for tips on your asking.

My email: ndcampos@gmail.com phone +1 917 449-0022

If you want your assigned colleague’s contact information to contact them outside this platform for more privacy in your asking, let them/me know!

Enjoy!

studioELLadmin
Author
studioELLadmin
15 March 2021 11:00am

Not sure if you are all seeing this formating shift here in this course session… Not sure why it is happening. We are looking into it.

studioELLadmin
Author
studioELLadmin
15 March 2021 11:13am
Reply to  studioELLadmin

FIXED! 🙂

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
15 March 2021 11:50am

love the audio intro to the week natalia! thank you! lovely way to engage with the asynchronous.

Last edited 3 years ago by j o h n r o s
tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
15 March 2021 12:47pm

Hi Natalia,
Many thanks for this. I have a few ideas for projects, but they are all up in the air right now and I am finding it difficult to zone in. Presumably the question I ask my classmate has to relate to the project I will do. However, if all my projects are up in the air, how will that affect the question? Does it matter if the question I ask does not relate to the final project I choose to do?
All the best
Tash

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
17 March 2021 5:40pm
Reply to  tash kahn

Hi Tash, I am sorry for the delay! I didn’t realize I had to sign up for notifications at the top of every comments section on each Session, so I was waiting for your post! Sorry, I am new to the platform.

Here I am!

Try really using this guide at the very top of Session 2

  • As mentioned in that guide, a useful tool is if you get stuck, undecided – use it really as a round-about :”as circular motions [driving/ walking] on a roundabout, one sight feeds the other. If uninspired about a subject, start with Locality; if unsure about Locality, set the Rules; if you set the rules but not sure how to proceed, choose some Tools; then go back around the circle; and so on.”

I mean this as a way to direct your attention to the specific elements already surrounding your ideas (or projects-to-be). Take notes on these items listed on the Guide. But try doing this to only a couple of potential projects.

Then look at these initial notes and see if you can choose what your assigned contributor could provide you with. Try to draw from what you know of [her :)] from the Introductions Session.

This could be from:
– a particular need you have (that you discovered through your notes — example: “I need a piece of text”, or a photo, or a drawing…

  • or a generative piece of material — for example: “aaah I ‘m stuck! I don’t know what I need! I wonder if my contributor could share something [she] knows about what birds have been doing differently in her area since the pandemic began” (I’m drawing an example from your recording below)

I am asking you to focus on just 2 potential projects because between session 3 and 4 you will need to move quickly to realization.

So for session 03, I would suggest you narrow down your options to no more than two, so we can all help you guide yourself to where you want to go.

Let me know if you have any questions. I am also available via phone Friday a.m. in NYC if you want to discuss anything: +1 917 449-0022

tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
18 March 2021 9:55am
Reply to  Natalia de Campos

Thank you Natalia.
Things have moved on a lot from Monday this end and I am getting reading to email you re my questions. I am also zoning in on potential projects – one is particularly gnawing away at me! Will post in a bit.

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
16 March 2021 2:18pm

THOUGHTS /
 
VIDEO — interested in the movement the choices of place, material, visual language. Are there references that I should be aware of? Regardless of references, the colors, actions, movement, abrupt score — all lent to a very interesting visual dialogue. 
 
READING / MAPS — thoughts of ownership… of some thing or some place not existing.
“the gap between image and lived experience”. INUITS — environmental mimicry, and throwing the maps made from memory away because the act of making was more important than the end result. Terra incognita (home… Antarctica). How maps about the same thing reveal different things about that place — world fights back from being ordered and recorded.
Surrealists’ 1929 map — parodied hegemonic motives of mapmakers. Directional — top and bottom – power structure.
 
READING / OITICICA — DANCE
Interest in dance, in rhythm — disintellectualization. Search for myth … reprisal of myth as a new foundation for work. I AM STILL UNAWARE OF THE DIRECTION THIS WILL TAKE.
Dionysian dance born of the interior rhythm of the collective = improvisation as opposed to choreography. Creation through the corporal act. The objects that create a different relation with the objective space dislocated away from the obvious — the already known. 
 
READING / CLARK-OITICICA — LETTERS
The object has lost its significance — if used, becomes mediator for participation. 
They are only to express a proposition.
Deflowered by the spectator (i first read this as devoured)
Killing the participant shows there is no anesthetization of participation.
Well nourished appearance of people / lack of repression / chance for destruction.
Interpersonal practice that leads truly open communication
Improvised corporeal dialogue expanding to a chain creating an all-encompassing biological entity = crepactice.

Last edited 3 years ago by j o h n r o s
tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
17 March 2021 7:49am
Reply to  j o h n r o s

‘Deflowered by the spectator’ is such a powerful sentence. Really says it all!

Last edited 3 years ago by tash kahn
j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
17 March 2021 3:10pm
Reply to  tash kahn

i like devour! but yes!

Catherine Harrington
Artist
Catherine Harrington
16 March 2021 6:54pm

hello! Natalia suggested that I post my description of two project ideas – these proposals were developed over the last month or so and submitted to the London Festival of Architecture, for staging events that would take place this June.
https://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/2021-festival/

1. Trees Talk
If trees are speaking with each other, what are they saying?
Join us for a participatory performance as we explore the ways that trees inter-relate and communicate, as they share resources and offer protection for each other.
This event will take place outdoors amongst the ancient trees in London Fields, where a small group of participants / audience members will be enabled to enact and re-create fragments of the trees’ hidden underground landscape of communication, with artists Bettina Fung and Catherine Harrington acting as guides and performers.

2. YOU SEE ME SEE YOU
Security CCTV cameras in London’s streets make us feel safe, cared for and protected. Or do they? Does CCTV surveillance care for us or control us – or both? Join us for this outdoor performance for this collaborative work of performance artist Mirei Yazawa and artist Catherine Harrington, which uses movement, dance and light to explore the spectacle of being seen via CCTV surveillance cameras. This evening performance will be conducted as care in action! The audience will be limited in numbers, to ensure a 2m distance between each other. The audience will be standing only – masks will be handed out before the performance commences. 

Although there could be overlaps between projects, I am going to develop Trees Talk. I have an initial discussion document ready to post (don’t want to be late this time although I feel like keep working on it more) – my understanding is that we post here but we can ask our colleague contributor questions privately.

Trees talk initial thoughts1.pdf
Catherine Harrington
Artist
Catherine Harrington
16 March 2021 7:30pm
Reply to  Catherine Harrington

Tash – do you mind if I email you re: request for a contribution? I want to speak w you about this first. (would need your email address)
John – happy for you to email me if you wish.

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
16 March 2021 7:48pm
Reply to  Catherine Harrington

sure thing… i got through the materials today and will start contemplating moves. i will email you tomorrow 🙂

tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
17 March 2021 7:43am
Reply to  Catherine Harrington

Hi Catherine, no not at all, my email is natasha.kahn@virginmedia.com
Love your trees project, have you read The Overstory by Richard Powers? It’s an epic, wonderful book and it stayed with me for a long while https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/23/the-overstory-by-richard-powers-review

Catherine Harrington
Artist
Catherine Harrington
17 March 2021 3:54am
Reply to  Catherine Harrington

Short 35 second film

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
17 March 2021 3:14pm
Reply to  Catherine Harrington

i love “trees talk” … such an interesting idea! would be lovely to see this realized in some way. 

CCTV makes me anxious! really intrigued to see how this performance might alert the audience and subvert the surveillance state.

OK… after seeing the tree’s talk .pdf… I LOVE TREES TALK!!! 🙂

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
17 March 2021 6:43pm
Reply to  Catherine Harrington

Thanks Catherine!
As I mentioned I will post my initial comment that I sent you on email here, as I think it could be useful for everyone to observe your initial questions.

Especially when you expressed initially that you were thinking of a possible way of bringing these 2 together – while also expressing that they are quite different topics.

I mentioned that they are both really interesting ideas. But indeed different. If you incorporate them into each other I wonder how surveillance systems would communicate with trees… and vice-versa.

I also wondered if you kept them separate, perhaps you could focus on developing a way to work in one of them that can be applied to the other project later?

As you have different collaborators on each, I tended to think more about the second option — but that is not to say that the collaborators couldn’t be brought together.

I am happy to see that you already made a choice!. It is a beautiful idea, the video you posted progresses nicely.

Sarah Everard’s case and the protests that ensued plus the police repression definitely give this a totally new dimension.
As you mentioned your collaborator is new to working with you , some questions to consider on process:

  • how are you starting ? Is your collaborator open to incorporating these new events? Or are you bringing this in only on your end? Have you both talked about it already? (If not, might be important that you consider these ideas of interconnectedness of trees and human beings and what could this generate in terms of social change before you start the conversation?)

I maintain my question, for your thoughts, to think at what point your collaborator comes into your [renewed] process (or if you already started together, how do the new events change/ affect the collaboration and proposal?)

Given the new [and horrible] events in the park — they make me wonder again how the surveillance might into come this…

The trees interconnectedness is hidden from view, you mentioned the “underground network of care”, which is such a beautiful image and delicate – but also strong to survive environmental damage and the seasons.

The surveillance is a network too — a malevolent one? The police state we are in.

The black walnut tree symbolizing this – how does it affect the care network?

You also mentioned some of the challenges — in covid times.

How could you propose a sense of intimacy to collaborators +. participants without touch or close whispers? Hidden messages? Do the tree roots touch?

As you have a clear site – that perhaps could connect to another (altar to Sarah Everard) – and a collaborator, a theme, on Saturday we can talk about your approach. How can we aid you?

Can participants be collaborators ahead of time – perhaps starting in the partial realization during this course?

How can they feel safe? This week safety also just took an expanded meaning for your project.

I am impressed at the proximity of the sites. How far are they in meters?

You look that you are deep into the process already. Approach will certainly define where it will go.

tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
17 March 2021 7:46am

Thank you Natalia for the vids and the reading. I got a lot out of both. Initial excitements from:

  • Oiticica’s participants get away from the drudge/grey of normal life when wearing his art. BEAUTY
  • Environment is transformed by parangolé (planting seeds, continually change environment)
  • A person who is inadvertently engaged with a performer is a variant on this idea. For example a butcher who sells meat to a customer without realising he is part of the bigger picture – that of, purchasing, cooking and eating meat
  • Oiticica’s disruptive events based on bacchanalian loss of self. FREEDOM of self-expression. Freer dance that is not choreographed can go on any journey – exactly like a conversation – there is no way of knowing which way it will go and it will always have a different outcome. A state of flux. Intuition. A letting go. No plan. Escape. Dionysan drunkeness
  • THE TOTAL ACT OF BEING, a total act of life. How do you get people to completely let go? EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE
  • An Inuk elder told an anthropologist that he drew intricate maps of an area from memory but had then thrown them away, because it was the act of making them that was important. I LOVE THIS
  • Roger Welch’s Generational pieces confront ‘the importance of a place not as a grand earthwork carved in the desert, but as a personal, spiritual, mental form we all carry inside us, a sculpture carved by memory and exposed by simple conversation’. Data arrived at by chipping away at the real place and leaving exposed the memory place
tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
17 March 2021 7:52am

A sound piece I recorded this morning

tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
17 March 2021 7:55am
Reply to  tash kahn

:

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
17 March 2021 3:15pm
Reply to  tash kahn

peaceful and not… there is a sense of the every day in the audio… so interesting!

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
17 March 2021 3:09pm

i am not sure about alot of the questions being posed. i also feel that if i was to engage, i would need it to be solo right now. simple. quiet. not because of comfort, but because of time and availability. BUT… i do want to consider all of this here.

possible site: my walk to and from the studio. cooper park? the corner of humboldt and metropolitan?

subject: action/conversation AND/OR routine/ritual.

locality: outside. park, public space.

mindspace: physical/public

collaborations: with the public. non recorded. happen then gone? the possibility to enter into a conversation. AND/OR the opportunity to be heard.

impact: not sure… human emotion? human conversation or interaction. maybe even non-verbal?

rules: sit together. talk.

tools: poster?/flier?

tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
17 March 2021 3:36pm
Reply to  j o h n r o s

I love the idea of happening then gone, Such an exciting thing. A moment in time that is then is not. And how much do you need to evidence it? What part is the work? I am really enjoying this backwards and forwards motion in my thoughts. Thank you for inviting me 🙂

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
17 March 2021 7:14pm
Reply to  j o h n r o s

Interesting. More questions then…

if you want to engage with strangers, it sounds like you will need to spend more time on the planning.

With a ritual or routine you may want a place where people are not engaged on their own rituals/ routines as they would in the park – so the corner sounds more engaging

but for conversation, you may find more people willing to engage in an area of rest of the park.

The above sounds a bit obvious but it may really depend on what the theme is —

  • action/ conversation – about what? will that be indicated on the flyer, poster, something you wear or hold?
  • routine / ritual – is it to call attention to an issue/ concern/ pressing issue? for you or for others, or both? How do you know that? What do you need to know about the public?
  • in a routine/ ritual: is it to externalize a feeling? Meditate while repeating a physical move?

If meditative, how would you engage people? If we turn too inward, you may disengage more (especially in New York?)

Are there elements to leave behind?

Is there a visual dialogue with where you are? How? is it in the space, on what you bring to the space, or in you?

I encourage you to further your notes – make a few decisions and see where they take you. if you don’t like where it takes you, then try the option you did not initially decide on. detour.

We will discuss your approach on Saturday.

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
19 March 2021 6:26pm
Reply to  Natalia de Campos

these are all very interesting questions… most of which i don’t know the answers to yet…

action / share one of your rituals with me… then i will act it out.
routine / is meant to be personal. not necessarily socially urgent. maybe more under self care? but also don’t want to put parameters on what people reveal.

at first, engage those that want to be engaged? but then maybe branch out… walk up to people and talk to them.

this could happen anywhere… regardless of the space, the space would definitely tell part of the story/be a part of the story.

more as this develops further.

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
17 March 2021 3:22pm

just sent my email to catherine… asking about routine and ritual. i am considering enacting others routines/rituals. let’s see. 🙂

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
17 March 2021 7:16pm
Reply to  j o h n r o s

great – curious as to why/ where/ how. to be continued on Saturday…

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
17 March 2021 5:49pm

Hi John, Catherine, Tash

Sharing here another link for Ivan Cardoso’s short film on Oiticica. Found a slight different version/ cut, partially subtitled! It answers a bit of your question on colors and shapes perhaps, John? With the words matching the poems?


Just for your reference.

More comments on the way.

Sent John a request for a contribution via email – on the idea of potentially turning a once in-person one-to-one interactive performance into a virtual performance on social media due to the pandemic…

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
17 March 2021 9:14pm

Two clarifications:
— as we moved the due dates for these assignments a day forward – you have until Friday March 19 to make your requested contributions (as the person requested – they don’t have to be posted here, unless it was requested that they be posted here).

The person receiving the contribution will decide if or what they want to share about it, or if he/she/they is/are telling us about it or not.

— Then read Part 3 of the assignment PDF and prepare it for Saturday.

To be clear:

  • when I said Reflect and “Answer 2 questions”, this is for you to prepare for the discussion on Saturday. You don’t have to answer these 2 questions in writing here.
tash kahn
Artist
tash kahn
18 March 2021 10:28am

This is my roadmap so far (I had to bribe my son to use his bedroom wall) and I feel this could go on and on. I have taken so many pictures of it today and each time I do, it changes and grows minutes later. Right now I am a little overwhelmed by it – but in a good way! It is essentially the contents of my head and although it looks a mess I am close to zoning in. So far my thoughts are:

– All the thoughts I have at home on my sofa (death, environment, equality, relationships with others etc, and I thank John for pointing me in this direction) I take outside and share with others. Be it on a wall, a bench… We have a conversation; a dialogue that works on improving the quality of the conversation. Perhaps I draw as a way of documenting. Perhaps I give the conversation a title (I did this exact thing this morning in the cemetery and I temporarily called it ‘Stirring curry’) and only document that. Perhaps there is no documentation. Perhaps I make rules and keep it to an hour or maybe there are no rules.

– I contemplation all those thoughts outside, by myself, in a meditative state. I am interested by Oiticica and his ‘total act of being’. I like the idea of paring things down to such an extent that maybe the simple act of contemplating is the work.

– Another idea is using my road and its inhabitants, getting them to recall history; asking them to photograph from inside out with my polaroid camera (still thinking about accessibility Natalia!). Essentially the history of Wellfield Road documented through conversations with ‘collaborators’

– Take one photo/record one sound piece at the same spot en route to school every day

– Guerilla gardening behind breakers yard fence – sweet peas, seeds. Maybe passersby will notice; maybe they won’t; maybe their reaction/lack of IS the work…

Something that has been playing on my mind is the documentation/which bit is the ‘art’?/If I don’t tell people it’s art is it not art?

Images in order:
1 My roadmap
2 A drawing I made in the cemetery this morning whilst in dialogue
3 The breakers yard
4 My road

IMG_2527.JPG
08478151-9C94-4167-947E-A3A909A3542D.JPG
Breakersyard3.JPG
IMG_2491.JPG
Last edited 3 years ago by tash kahn
Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
19 March 2021 12:59pm
Reply to  tash kahn

Tash – what is the breakers yard? I see it in the 3rd photo – but was unclear if it is a public or private space — could that fence be used temporarily?

Natalia de Campos
Prof
Natalia de Campos
19 March 2021 1:46pm
Reply to  tash kahn

All the ideas are very interesting. I particularly keep thinking about your initial impulse of knowing what’s behind other people’s own quarantines that you expressed in the first week.

Your idea about the road you live in , and the inhabitants – if you decide to go in this direction- brings so many interesting questions.
Could you introduce yourself to a few and ask them to participate?
I love that they could potentially give you their own interpretation from the ‘inside out’.

How would you do that interaction / collaboration? Knock, leave a message?

What would you say : about you – about the idea — about the collaboration — about the results.
Would you show it? Could they see it? On their way? Online?

Could they give you a glimpse of their own choosing of the ‘outside in’ too?
How could you hand out the camera safely and get it back?
Can you provide safety materials (example – gloves, or plastic, or paper towels; so they feel cared for?

This sounds like it has great potential to bring your first two ideas in too — relate to your initial map, meditate about the map; materialize it, through others’ hands and your own?

The act of being externalized?

Where is the breakers yard in relation toy our street’s photo? Or is it in another region?

I am not trying to direct your thoughts but it feels like your map is already taking you to specific places — even if meditative, it can externalize your thoughts in these particular places.

In your map — this question about documentation comes up strong, especially at this moment:

  • “If Ukeles didn’t [document] would she just be a cleaner” — As it relates to “art” is your question, isn’t it?

I relate it to her other project, and especially now during the pandemic, with the sanitation workers: aren’t sanitation workers artists, too, perhaps of another sort? What makes their art? What makes it different from Ukeles?
If she were just a cleaner, if she weren’t an artist framing it as art, would the activity of the cleaner cease being art?

Another example that I relate this question to is Paulo Freire’s example of the construction workers. I return to page 287 of Freire’s interview, where there was the ‘bad” translation of the word “brick”, which is funny and ironic that it was badly translated (Finkerpearl explains that Freire couldn’t review – my sense is that Finkerpearl missed Freire’s pronunciation… :).

There, Freire talks about the stenciled word “tijolo” in a painting by former Education minister, broken out in 3 parts ‘ti jo lo”. He also talks about the word being a foundational, a “generative’ word for the literacy program, a very “present” word on the workers routines.

I wonder if after the word had been used for literacy, and learned; if the everyday “foundational” work of these now newly literate men, building the foundations of houses, wouldn’t have been seen differently — as art making: by themselves, and by society too, including the Education minister, who years later painted this canvas that Freire discusses as a potential work for discussion for more literacy programs. Are the houses the documentation of their art? Only after their learning of the words?

This is a very interesting discussion when we talk about engagement and collaborations – and I think your map is starting to touch that.

j o h n r o s
Prof
j o h n r o s
19 March 2021 6:21pm
Reply to  tash kahn

goodness! i love these tash! so exciting. will be very interested to discuss tomorrow.