And the beat goes on!

I love love love love! working with the Chuppers. I went down to practice tonight and did some poetry stuff with them - it was just flowing out of me - one about a girl walking back in time and being timeless and part of all things at once, and the other about a 19th century male prostitute who ran away to Paris to open a boy brothel - I'm not sure who these characters are or how they got in my head, but I like that Chuppers are channelling it all through me! I wish I could work with them longer - thinking cap on I'll have to collaborate more with these guys in the future - it is the FUTURE!!!

more Pictures From Last Wednesday Performance - Taken by Wenci Fan - Thanks Wenci!

Liz and Manny in the picture!

So what's it all about?

So, the cycle completes. I come to America for the Land Arts of the American West Program. Spend 2 weeks preparing, 2 months travelling, 3 weeks getting a show together, and now its all done. This blog is the archive and artifact of the whole crazy incredible experience that I don't even feel like I have begun to process. I know that being here and travelling through the West has fuelled my interest in the idea of displacement and borders. Wendover, half mormon and half budget Vegas...half Utah and half Nevada...El Paso, half Texas half Mexico, half El Paso, Half Juarez.

What does it mean to be stuck in the middle, placeless, torn, homeless, divided...

Tumble weed blowing freely across the west, an invasive species brought accidentally by Ukrainian farmers, migrants travelling with the wind, getting stuck in barbed wire, train tracks and lost spaces.

Barbed wire, farming, herding cattle, keeping things in their "rightful place", and keeping the unwanted out.

Phone booth, no phone, decommissioned, abandoned, no function, a liminal space along a corridor, once the sight of important conversations, once necessary, now a no-man's land, no one goes there anymore, lost space.

Film, girl sits by side of the road, screen goes blank, trains hurtle through the night - to where, from where - a busy bar, people put money in the juke box have a good time, all in a little border town, all in EL Paso, in a little old Barrio.

So what does it mean?

I guess it means that I have to work even harder to understand my aesthetic, to refine my aesthetic - My work is a far cry from minimalism, yet I'm constantly drawn in the direction. Performance, should I pursue it? I love performance, but does it make sense to any one other than me? Does it make sense to me on anything more than a gut level?

Photography, film, sculptural objects and performance - onward and upward, there an long way to go but the night is still young.

The night of the Performance

My tumble weed and barbed wire installation was under the stair well. I gave the Chuppers the audio I had recorded in El Paso, trains hurtling through the night. They had mixed the sound with clunky electronic beats. The guys had set one camera down the hallway on me and one on the tumble weed and barbed wire installation under the stair well. The images were mixed to appear on the wall next to where the audience were gathered. There were probably 50 or so people gathered together. Manny introduced the show and I started to stand up at the far end of the corridor. At this point the audience could only see me on the screen. As I made my way closer, the audience could see me, the installation and the projection. Some people were out of sight and they could only see the screen.

My flyers!

Performance with the Chuppers

Wednesday 7.30pm at the tumble weed piece, after the show!

Finished phone booth piece!

The piece can be found in the centre of the arts - northern corridor, nr the music department.

Dress Rehersal with the Chuppers

Under the stair well

my piece is installed under the stair well at pope joy!

Collaboration!

Met a fantastic arts ensemble who want to collaborate with me on my pieces!

We'll probably concentrate on doing a chupper audio and visual extravaganza with my tumble weed piece!

Phone Booth Installation Proposal and Flyer

Phone Booth Proposal: El Paso Film Installation

The work will be installed in an abandoned phone booth in first corridor on the northern face of the music department. The location has been chosen to be inline with the artist's previous work that explores the dynamic create by situating mixed media work within liminal spaces.

The proposal is to create an environment within the booth that recalls ideas explored as a participant of the 2009 Land Arts program. The booth will be filled half with sand, on top on the sand will be a television set which will play a film made by the artist in El Paso. The film flips between scenes of a lonely girl sitting by a freeway with images of a lively bar. The piece explores ideas of placement and displacement, belonging and dispossession.

The materials included will be sand, a retainer for the sand, a television set and a red light. The work will be solely contained within the booth and will not obstruct the corridor in any way. Sound will emanate from the booth and the power socket to the right of the booth will be employed to power the television set.

Preparations for the show! Tumble weed and barbed wire piece

This is my studio, Chris and Kenza's garage. One of my pieces is intended to be installed in the basement floor of the arts centre at UNM. Its a bit of a bureaucratic night mare and is taking a lot of head space to get approval from the powers that be. Basically I want to wrap tumble week in barbed wire and install them under a stair well in the building.

My proposal:

Stair Well Installation: Barbed Wire and Tumble Weed

The installation will be installed under the stair well on the main steps going down from first to basement level in the Pope Joy hall. This location has been chosen for 2 reasons. Firstly, the artist is interested in working within the pre-existing architecture of spaces. The space under the stairs forms an excellent structure reminiscent of Robert Morris minimalist sculpture. Secondly, the piece itself will be constructed from barbed wire and tumble weed and the location will evoke the idea that, like in disused and abandoned spaces throughout the west, tumble weed blows in and gets stuck. The use of barbed wire within the piece also relates to other concerns within the artist’s work regarding borders, spaces where access is allowed and denied.

Underneath the stair well there is a steel border delineating the space directly under the stairs. The work with be contained entirely within this space and will not infringe on the passing corridor spaces around the immediate vicinity. Should the tumbleweed be considered a fire hazard the artist would be happy to meet with the fire safety officer at the site to do a risk assessment and to contribute to costs to include extra safety measures if necessary.

My 2 Installations!

I propose 2 installations for the up coming show

1. A tumble weed and barbed wire installation to be installed in the building

2. An installation in an abandoned phone booth to house my El Paso film

El Paso

We had so much fun in El Paso. We spent 4 days designing and installing a huge 200 feet x 6 feet stone mural, in a little mexican barrio. I got interviewed by the El Paso times see the link click EL PASO TIMES to see the story. Whilst here I was facinated by the fact that El Paso is a border city, Juarez, Mexico being the other side of the town that was once one city, and is now divided in two. Driving through El Paso made me think of what Berlin must have been like before the wall came down.

Otero Mesa

Such an amazing landscape - Otero Mesa, under threat from mining companies...

Gila Wilderness

Spent a lovely few days at the Gila Wilderness...didn't take any pictures! But it was so beautiful, we camped by a river, really near some hot springs and bathed several times a day - wonderful!

Walter De Maria - Lightening Fields

we aren't allowed to show (opps I mean take..) any pictures of the lightening fields - shame it would have been great if I could have photographed that 12 shot 180degree panarama of the fields at simultaneous full moon rise and sun set, it'll have to live on my hard dr...I mean imagination...

Click here to see images -
http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/lightningfield


Walter De Maria's Lightning Field was quite a profound experience for me. We were allowed to stay the small lodge house owned by the Dia Art Foundation. A beautiful log cabin made from salvaged wood from old log cabins in the area. The night we spent there there was an incredible full moon rise and a glorious sunset simultaneously. Over the course of the 2 hours or so that this was occurring the poles turned from being almost imperceptible to silver and gold,. like arrow spears.


It reminded me of the last line of Philip Larkin's poem, The Whitsun Weddings: here's a link to it online - it has so much reference to light and expectancy that I couldn't help think of it at the lightning fields
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178047


Some muses from my journal whlst walking round...

Making space place
Something s happening here
I am happening within this place
Alignment leads me to anticipate
I am urged to comply with the promise
Soon I start to need it
Compulsion marches me on


Space has become place
Look the plane
Look the scrub
Look the clay soil
Look back how small is our dwelling
Here I am and here I am and look here I am again

How wonderfully perfect to be dead on line
This field of pawns is disarming
Whom are they poised for
Part of whose game
What do they want from me?
I am reduced by them, less than,
Enhanced, more than?
Imperceptible earlier, look how bold they are now.

Cibola - El Mal Pais

The next stop was Cibola, a high desert site which was literally below freezing at night and hot enough to burn during the day. We spent several nights on this site. The first couple of days we went hiking around. The place used to be inhabited by indiginous tribes from the 9th - 12th century. The common practice was to make pottery and discard it around the site. Amazing the hillsides are still littered with these beautiful pot shards. It was like walking around the most amazing museum, to be able to pick these things up and feel them and see them and touch them, and leave them behind for the next group of lucky explorers. We also found bits of old tools and arrow heads in the area. And lots of pictographs and pectroglyphs - pretty AWESOME.

I loved my camping spot here in Cibola. I decided to camp a way a way from the group. It was a full moon rising whilst we were there and at night, my little spot on the hillock was bathed in glorious moonlight.