EXERCISE ONE: DISPLACEMENT MAPPING w/ADRIENNE FOSTER

Displacement is a term used in psychology for the phenomenon of transferring emotions from one thing to another (this is a basic description of displacement, but it holds).  I’m interested in using displacement to shift the symbolic content that is generated in artworks to something that is not directly connected to it.  The subject, then, is not the object.  Or something…

It was said in class that it would have been nice to be able to track back to the source of the symbol, but I like that it doesn’t wrap up nicely, that it’s a map, sure, but a really messed up one, a map without coherence, much like the brain.  The map has a trail, but it doesn’t benefit anybody to follow it, because, you know, it doesn’t go much of anywhere.

Where does the piece begin or end?  I think it’s still going on:

RED post-it note left from the exercise near WSIU TV (photo taken 03/02/11), apparently too out of reach to be a bother to anyone.


EXCERCISE TWO: DURATIONAL PROCESS (OR: Durational Mason)

It is likely that I’m being cagey (or dull), but I really only have three short things to say about this piece:

1.  A mason jar is a symbol for preservation and duration, especially of food products.

2. As Americans, we shove oil our faces everyday (usually through the mouth).

3. We are mostly water.

The first time is always the slowest.  After that, the oil and water mingle and it becomes easier.  The oil sloughs off into the water.  The water becomes less like water. (POSSIBLY) UNRELATED: I have this idea to use Mason Jars to preserve one deep breath a day, one jar for each exhaled breath, but I think I’d run out of money buying jars.

EXERCISE THREE: A CUT UP

This is an appropriation of (what I feel) is a repository of rural desperation and loneliness: The m4w Missed Connections on Craigslist.  Being interested in applying an arbitrary structure to a pre-existing text, I used to following algorithm (or minimalist poetic seven-line stanza) to expand the obsessiveness and amplify the uncertain sadness that (I feel) is the manifest subtext here (the numbers correspond to the sequence of words):

12

123

12345

123456

1234567

12345678

12345678…and the rest of the sentence if there is one.

SO (E.G.):

I commented

I commented on

I commented on the tooth

I commented on the tooth but

I commented on the tooth but I

I commented on the tooth but I really

I commented on the tooth but I really wanted to talk to you.

Using my macbook’s txt to speech function gives a voice to the words of somebody who has decided to give up their ability to speech — the structure of the Missed Connections exchange is inherently desperate, if only because the one who posts is temporally and relationally separated from something they profess to want.  It doesn’t seem like a long stretch to claim this structure could cause neurosis, obsession, depression.  I think the txt to speech as applied to these stanzas is humorous because it’s mechanical and innately real at the same time.

EXERCISE 4.2: BENDING TECHNOLOGY

I took this as literally as possible, and applied it to the two most vernacular things I could find in my studio:

EXERCISE 4.3: A COLLAGE; PHARISEES PHONIES PHONEMES

I ripped apart a Bible.  Well, a paraphrased translation (which, according to the pre-modern part of my brain IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE THE INSPIRED WORD OF GOD); sorry to Eugene H. Peterson, but THE MESSAGE is not, you know, the same thing.  This is all to say that I will not be going to hell for this one.

To be fair, I also ripped apart The Catcher In The Rye. Holden Caulfield is Jesus in the part of the new testament we don’t see, the part where Jesus had the time to masturbate everyday, scam temple raffles, and threaten suicide because Joseph didn’t understand that (1.) Jesus NEVER would have broken the dining room lamp because he’s THE CHRIST, and (2.) Fuck Joseph.

Also, the prostitute part.  You do the work.

I imagine Jesus an extremely bitter teenager, constantly defensive, unhealthily introverted — far beyond precociousness and well into becoming a shitty bastard.  Look, the first time we see Jesus as an adult is when his family asks him to produce wine for their wedding party (which means they all knew he was miraculous and were so jaded about it that they asked him to save them a trip to the liquor store), and Jesus goes, literally (I swear), “Jesus Christ You People”.  And he does it, but he doesn’t really enjoy it — and he makes sure they know they’re imposing on his time.

ANYWAY.  None of this is in here, but it was the inspiration.

Using red and white spraypaint, SUPER 77 spraymount, matte finish spray, and ARM and HAMMER washing soda.  There’s some sort of buried violence that the text represents.  The pages have come loose, leaving gashes and fissures where they were once entrenched.  There’s both burial and exhumation here, a liminal space on the surface where it isn’t clear whether the text is to be read or covered over for ever.

For eternity….