Primus Theatre

Primus Theatre

a diary of writing about art – pt. 1

From 1991 to about 1995, I was exploring various ways of making “hybridized” writing, which emerged from an interest in collage, concrete poetry, modern dance, and “total art” (environments, happenings, and performance) that had preoccupied me throughout university. I had abandoned the idea of being an artist but still wanted to participate in something I understood to be the exchange of meaning through art.

In 1993, I decided to pursue a period of study with Primus Theatre as I was interested in their methods, which seemed to me to embody hybridity. At that time, I was also interested in the cut-up writing techniques of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin that I discovered by way of Kathy Acker. I began experimenting with writing about art using ideas adapted from both sources. Essentially, I was trying to develop a method that would serve me going forward. Thinking about a specific work of art, I would gather images and bit of text and assemble them into collages on the pages of my sketchbooks. The point was to do it as part of my daily practice, part of the flow rather than something with specific or predetermined intent. Then using what I had assembled, I would write “through” it, towards that work of art.

I wanted to write to art, rather than about it. I found it difficult to write any other kind of text (as I had no burning desire to tell a story, it felt like writing simply for the sake of writing) and I wanted to say something about the way that art functions for me that wasn’t linear or left-brained. Unfortunately, the texts ended up reading like poetic fragments without any real structure. And I began to worry that I was not saying enough about the work itself, that the artwork was becoming subordinated by my own subjectivity when I had wanted to honor it. It was an enjoyable exercise but failed, I thought, to yield anything of lasting value. I was wrong.

Simone Forti Photo Credit: Isabelle Meister

Simone Forti

Photo Credit: Isabelle Meister

Simone Forti, Handbook in Motion

I’m reading Simone Forti’s amazing book Handbook in Motion, which is subtitled “An account of an ongoing personal discourse and its manifestations in dance.” It contains some diaristic biographical passages, photographs, drawings, and some discrete and beautiful moments like this one:

I held a large grasshopper in my open hand. It swayed from side to side as we gazed into each other’s eyes. We sustained this alignment of sight through an exact correspondence in our movements, which created a certain resonance between us. We danced together like this for many minutes. I had just saved its life and we were very curious about each other.

Jutta Koether, 20 Minuten/20 Minutes

You cannot just erase left-overs.
You cannot just erase painting.
Not, even with some radical operations, doing
them made leaving more left-overs. Action
and objects, which inform me know, make me saying I
know the idea of beauty still makes sense.

Paul McCarthy playing the cardboard tube.

Paul McCarthy playing the cardboard tube.

Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, and Hair Stylistics (Masaya Nakahara) performing at the Echo.

Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, and Hair Stylistics (Masaya Nakahara) performing at the Echo.

David Wojnarowicz reading from his book Close to the Knives

David Wojnarowicz reading from his book Close to the Knives

First post

First off, I must confess I am ambivalent about the whole idea of a blog. Seems like so much exhibitionism, as if performing one’s life/taste/talent. Who is the imagined reader of all this? Are there alternatives? What can this space be? — A place to gesture to the brilliance of others? A place to float? A way to write without writing? Is it writing? Let’s try it and find out.