entering light
its been ten years of wanting to delve into this and it still haunts me so i feel as though it wont go away.
I still have fun, last night i sang in spite of ourselves by john prine and iris dement with my partner at a lesbian bar where they used to sell the best hand rolled sushi, and I made a lot of vag/na jokes too before we sang it was fun, we laughed a lot last night with everyone.
When I am not writing I am presently enjoying life and I can’t count the amount of times I smile and laugh at the smallest and genuinely hilarious things.
And when I come down here to write and what draws me in is not popular culture (no,no) and it is not the newest songs being released (i love hearing great music but i am not in any means racing to find it, i love surprises when it comes to that kind of joy) and I write about what moves me, and I create work that is serious, funny, strange, sad, things that share a lot of feeling/spiritual contemplations/ “conceptual” work “theory→physical” "experiential →physical… and I bring life to the things which are important to me to share, artists who I think I share in this kind of work are many of my colleagues which are to many to actually account for in one sitting, early in my career artists who moved me, who I see myself in
Ai Weiwei … when my father died I didn’t know what to draw so I drew what was in front of me which was a roll of paper, i kept this drawing in my journal for ages and i decided, when i found out you were coming to London to write a letter to you on this. I think about your relationship with your dad as I did with mine and it’s a humble thank you to all the work you do, the way we remember things and freedom to just be . I gave the letter to your wife because you were busy but you signed my little blue book of yours and you didn’t sign others new copies of books who you knew were just going to sell them on ebay lol thanks for recognising me. https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtisanVideos/comments/1et7wn/the_making_of_100_million_porcelain_sunflower/
https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-remembering-haus-der-kunst-muenchen-2009/
https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/human-flow
William Kentridge
your gallery in south africa was very kind to send access to a detailed/thorough catalog of all of your artworks at the time with your commentary and more when I requested information about Ubu Tells the Truth.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kentridge-ubu-tells-the-truth-t07481
here is an excerpt from a creative essay // poetic theory? I’m working on…
note before reading… warning that it mentions human violence/abuse
the title, camera, cats, and skeletons, is a reference to icons which appear in William Kentridge’s artwork Ubu Tells the Truth finished sometime in 1997 (the year I was born… which like in a Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, is a detail which may have been significant enough for me to want to look into this a bit deeper than if it were to be made during any other date. At the time I was studying international studies/politics alongside fine art in university, William Kentridge was an easy person to look up to. Today I thought about re-writing my essay on the visual semiotics of that piece but instead I thought about how it was in itself a mutation of remembering, something which occurs often visually in my work, I can only think it is a human way to process something which is threatening, violent, surreal . . . Kentridge ferociously hand draws each animated still and broadcasts his remembering and how he perceived his experience of listening to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission revelations via the radio as most South Africans had consumed the horrors via testimony of people who experienced and perpetrated this. the hand-drawn animation acts to physically anchor a memory during that time in his life when he was reflecting on it.
i remember as a teenager walking into a safe art museum, in a peaceful city, I walked into a dark room playing a film. I was sat down on the floor, got comfortable and the video began to play. it was of a child who seemed to be sitting in a concrete room with sun shining through the windows, and i want to remember curtains but I don’t know if that is real or not,,, those details aren’t necessarily important… what is important was that the boy was sat in the middle of the screen and I can’t remember if their were captions or not, I know for sure I could not understand what the child was saying verbally but I understood when the child described bombs and maybe guns, I can see the kid acting out slicing his throat (i can’t remember if this happened), I remember the boy talking to the person interviewing him and I could see this small child act out the way the bombs fell and I feel like more awful things were witnessed by this child but I can’t remember. I know it shook me for years and today I think about that little kid again.
(after writing this I went on a search for the video and found it… Erkan Özgen Interview: When Language is Not Enough → https://vimeo.com/354654462 )
Kentridge references the absurdist play, Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, which also portray surreal caricatures and uses symbolic political dissidence, such as using the iconic swirl which we can read as the character being a literal asshole (not to mention he is shaped as a piece of shit or a dickhead, literally).. the swirl also makes me think of hypnotism and falling into the end spiral of gluttony which capitalism certainly beseeches (hope i used this right? it just came to me, i never used this work in my life) those with power/anyone who would be foolish enough to fall into such a trap (For example, in todays politics you can many people depict Donald Trump as Ubu Roi). In the animation we hear noise, sounds of bombs, and mumblings, without words, in black and white (literally) we can clearly see the understand the surreal violence which was/is an apartheid South Africa.
https://www.kentridge.studio/william-kentridge-projects/ubu/
https://vimeo.com/108244487?fl=pl&fe=sh
the essay is creative in the way that I am trying to not write this in a way that others would want me to write this. writing in the first person, as I am, is a creative choice, as is choosing to delve into dreams and imaginings that I have to support theory or memories/ primary source materials - a way to connecting those relations to a personal experience which is innately human i think (if our current dna allows such a thought or feeling to occur —another thing i’m considering is how biological our reactions/ personality/ choices are…)
what is the point?
this is a question where I broke down and cried when it was first asked to me. it was the middle of the day at the college and a tutor who spent a moment of their time looking at my last body of work, focus group, asked me this question… saying roughly that
there is about 6 different dissertations you could be doing in this one project, what is the point?
a question that sieved everything out of the sand I had buried it in
when I thought of the point, I didn’t care for it, I thought myself as pointless someday, what made me cry was I had been hurt badly and I couldn’t hide from it in ambiguity, there was no shrouding domestic/physical/verbal abuse, there was no shrouding rape. point was I kept note of everything, that the PTSD and memories of lighter kinds mutated into this, the point, the work. Could the work be the point? at this time it’s been 2 years about since I made the body of work… 2 years for it to hold a place for me to revisit. Could that be a point, for work to hold space until you’re ready to face it? I was just looking at pieces of a skeleton that haunted me, a clown head laughing at me. a point I could have made then would be that this is a body of artworks, fragments and mutations of rembering, made by a person who desperately wants to integrate with life, to be an ocean within it. and when he asked and I thought about it the tears fell and I felt emberrased and they were kind and patient, but im sure uncomfortable/worried like everyone else who has seen me like this before. I couldn’t answer what any point was then. i couldn’t use words, the words that I wanted to say felt scared to come out if they were ever near the edge of my throat.
i understand that my memories have changed, I remember some details vividly, important major facts about an event, I do not remember what colour shirt a major character wore, I couldn’t tell you how many clouds were around, I couldn’t even tell you how many light poles were surrounding me while I slept outside in my car on several occasions, I am not entirely certain about anything or believe I could ever make an accurate account about anything even if I had all evidence, even if I was a super computer/ picture evidence (i feel sorry for lawyers and investigators).
I recently read an inquiry of a security police who served as a somewhat authoritative figure during the South African Apartheid… this inquiry was headed by the TRC truth and reconciliation commission, this particular interview took place in east london where I did one of my residencies… and where many of these war criminals would retire… and it was incredibly frustrating to read, this person I feel in my heart destroyed evidence, but their is no way to know… he was accused on incredible abuse and no primary sources, not even his own memory would admit to what had been done… https://www.saha.org.za/collections/AL2878/b015750303.htm
. Though does it matter how accurate I am. In the moment it is an accurate account as much as it would be an accurate account in the next 10 years or as it just happened, the thought or memory itself lives in me and changes as I change physically and otherwise. I would like to think some memories will change, my body has begun to learn how to feel safe again, and continues to learn everyday with careful intentional thoughts. Somedays are better than others
and did his memory change to protect himself from the guilt. There must be a way even for horrific acts humans can commit a way for them to justify it to themselves. it is something i’m sure is studied about in matters of large organizational violence and the way it grows and perpetuates itself, like in many cases we see throughout history…
I was scared of facing the point and admitting to the point, for years I would not admit to certain memories happening, or hold them close to me, a secret to die with, but there are never really any secrets are there, especially when those secrets have happened to you.
…. and that’s all i’m sharing right now - I wrote a lot but i havent edited much of anything so it’s very rough draft… i am going to a beautiful wedding this weekend and maybe going to have a first casino experience. I’m going to play the slots and drink “free” liquor
considering points → MAKATON - CREATING OUR OWN LANGUAGE - USING ALL THE SENSES - LANGUAGE OF PRESENT
