1st of September
I just got home from seeing The Brown Bunny. Vincent Gallo.
The woman beside me had brought her dinner to the cinema,for real, she
slurped and munched her way through some pungent foil wrapped thing and
sucked away at something in a brown rustly bag. Not conducive to lyrical
"poetic"cinema with dips in sound and enigmatic silences.
The film redeemed itself for me at the end but what a dreary journey to
the last half hour, literally, with Vincent Gallo, in his van, making
an easy rider-esque pilgrimage across america, back to california where
his love, chloe sevigny, we think, is waiting.Well noteriety informs us
he gets his cock sucked by her at some point so their paths MUST cross.Oh
god, Vincent Gallo, the cinema laughed en masse as soon as he opened his
mouth, like they had all gone to school with him and hated his guts. His
voice is terrible, he looks like a beautiful feline animal and then he
opens his mouth and provokes guffaws from the audience.
But, wow, some of it was just really exquisitely shot, there was real
beauty in the cinematography, stunning.At one point he’s on the salt
flats in a black van unloading a motorbike and its shot totally square
from the side and set against the pure white shimmering flats the van
and the outlines are obsidian. Amazing. Also, when he finally is in the
same place as chloe’s character daisy, there is real mastery in how
the camera focuses on their hair, very blonde and very black, the mangle
of hair when skulls connect. Chloe Sevigny is so photogenic and delightful
to contemplate, her manner, that’s how the film became watchable
in the end, because she has some humanity compared to gallo’s mechanistic
narcissism.She performed oral sex on him with real grace actually, not
that she was coy, she got stuck right in, the grace was in how you believed
in her.
He’s just kind of low key annoying.
Sunday I went on the anti-republican demonstration. It was magnificent.
I was there alone and took pot luck where I ended up but found myself
behind a workers banner, WE’RE WORKERS, UNITED, WE’RE HERE TO
STOP THE WAR. Three girls were there marching topless and I found myself
really noticing their halterneck/bikini tanlines from the back.It was
such a great march, so many people are disgusted by Bush’s presence
here, the atmosphere in the city is really odd, dysfunctional but the
politcial solidarity between protesters is really tangible. Yesterday,
I heard some noise and looked out the window to see some kids on bikes
with big balls of red wool, trying to make some kind of cats cradle woven
web between lamposts.. and then serious fleets of NYPD on bikes and more
with truncheons and more plain clothes and so on to get them on the ground
and arrest them. It looked like an art event, they had red wool, yellow
wool and feathers, and the cops were there in an odd proportion.
I video-ed the NYPD winding up the wool, in fact I had actually ran out
into the street with my camera but they sent me back.
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING.
I taped this guy
http://www.hamandenos.com/rncprotest2004/slogans.html
on Sunday because his mantra sounded amazing to me and his singularity
was really beautiful. 3.4 mb quicktime so not much use to dial up people,
sorry.
I saw a show Saturday night at Dietch space in Soho, on Wooster street.
The Freedom Salon.Works by AA Bronson from General Idea, Matha Rosler
and many others. A great screenprint of Sun Ra inscribed "What would
Sun Ra Do?" a la "WWJesusDo?" behavioural guidline.The
most interesting work for me is at http://www.appalshop.org
Appalshop is a community and media art centre in Kentucky.
RFK in EKY: The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project
"The Kennedy Performance Project, will be a real-time, multi-site
re-creation of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 tour of the region. Conducted
as part of a Senate Subcommittee on Manpower, Employment and Poverty examination
of war on poverty practices, the original tour occurred during the week
of the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam, and only one week before Kennedy announced
his candidacy for President."
(It was announced as part of The Freedom Salon.In the gallery a poster
went on to say that he was assasinated shortly after this trip.)
Monday, I met with Anne Barlow at the New Museum. It was a really interesting
few hours, the New Museum are moving in 18 months into a new custom made
space at the Bowery. Anne has great ideas around how pockets of that space
might be utilised in flexible concertina ways in relation to the main
body:; really concerned with new strategies of what practice can become.
Its like I was never away but I was and it was incredible. My last day
in Atlanta, I took a bus out to The Contemporary, it was a broody day,
the sky was chaos and while i was on the bus the torrent of rain started.
At my stop there was a salvation army thrift store so I ran in to buy
a rainproof coat and also, a hank of very fine mercerised american cotton
which was only 49cents, slightly discoloured from laying in the sun in
a window of a utility shop probably.
So I went round to the gallery but it was all shut up, I knew the curators
were busy, but I thought they might have a library or some leaflets I
could look at. I was peering through the locked glass doors, and a man
came out to have a cigarette. We talked for a minute and he let me in
to give me the guide to the last show there, and he was wearing these
very retro glasses and a particular shade of green shirt or sweater. On
the bus home, I thought, "Im going to knit that man a tie with this
Atlanta thrift store cotton." Ive started it, its very very fine.The
action of knitting him a tie isnt a la Sophie Calle, its more about wanting
to find specific opportunities to knit myself meaningfully into the places
I have experienced in America.
On the train home, as it approached New York and the skyline became visible,
the train stopped to allow sniffer dogs to board, big waggy happy alsations
and cops making jokes about "who’s got the roastbeef sandwiches?"
The train was pulling into Penn station below Madison Square Gardens where
the Republicans gather.
I really dread the thought of Bush hijacking another four years.
the image of the horse mrror is an object i saw months ago at the Museum of the American Indian in NYC. I had to go pack and take a picture of it because i loved it so much.
Now i realise how much its like the doors of the astronaut bar in Houston. Look at the project diary for weightless animals if youd like to see it its on the last page.
http://www.weightlessanimals.com
12th of september
yesterday I went to the Cooper Hewitt and saw furniture designed by artists,
there was a bed by Donald Judd that I would really like to sleep in.
I fly home tomorrow.its been a very specific kind of week, minutely considered.i
went on a boat and looked at New York from the water the way immigrants
would have seen it , the breathtaking city, a most visually generous and
bold place. Its very hard to have to relinquish this scale, to stop being
me in these proportions with these resources around me but its fantastic
to think of what I am taking home with me.
I am very thankful to The Scottish Arts Council for providing me with the opportunity to shape these dense months.
Page ten is blank.Thanks, this journal was a really enjoyable experiment.
some nails from brooklyn to end on, these objects never cease to amaze me no matter how many times i see therm glued on dextrous ladyfingers.
