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Half thought thought otherwise
loveless and sleepless the sea
where you are where I would be
half thought thought otherwise
Loveless and sleepless the sea
— from The Nonconformist’s Memorial by Susan Howe
But it says nothing. And one is as quiet
as if to say nothing moves me. Then
there is the chair. And one speaks of
the chair sitting at the table.
Scraping against surfaces, opening the mouth.
The object is a piece of thing before. One
shifts in a chair and opens the talk.
And the time it says nothing one moves.
The table is too long as the wall. Not
a thing but it stays and one opens
as a mouth will begin. Speaking of
the table, nothing but to avoid that
of the wall. One could return over and over
to the chair, the wall one is sitting at.
Least ways it says nothing. And the
thing is, it stays still before
speaking of. The object of nothing, even
speech.
“But It Says Nothing” by Clark Coolidge
(from his collection Own Face
A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence of signified death—a flat encephalograph, for instance—I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being.
I hate that I have to be a real person in the world.
[…]
I wish I only existed when people were watching and listening.
Why am I not just a concept?
Reading from my work-in-progress (To Be, To Be, Or Not To Be) at The Warehouse in Tallahassee, FL (July 10, 2012)
Part One: “Remix of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman”
Part Two: “Remix of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit”
(((psycho))) by Jonathan Mayhew
“I will not make any more boring Art” by John Baldessari
In 1971, Baldessari was commissioned by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada to create an original, on-site work. Unable to make the journey himself, he suggested that the students voluntarily write the phrase “I will not make any more boring art” on the gallery walls. Baldessari committed his own version of the piece on videotape. Like an errant schoolboy, he dutifully writes, “I will not make any more boring art” over and over again in a notebook for the duration of the tape. In an ironic disjunction of form and content, Baldessari’s methodical, repetitive exercise deliberately contradicts the point of the lesson to refrain from creating boring art.
Lieder by Cheryl Donegan (2000)
In Lieder, Donegan sets up a series of charged relationships — between artist and model, art object and artistic “gesture,” performer and viewer. The “lieder” of the title (German for “songs”) are the amplified squeaks of Donegan’s swiveling metal stool as it rotates. Donegan’s head is wrapped in plastic and duct-tape, her pregnant body swathed in a black garbage bag. Rendered anonymous, accompanied by the menacing noise of the chair, the artist becomes mechanized and impersonal. Gobs of brightly-colored paint are hurled at her from off-screen, underscoring the aura of threat and violence, which Donegan suggests is implicit in the relationship between performer and spectator.
Assistant: Alison Sall
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
