Ann Hamilton at Yokohama Triennale 2005 Mayumi Hirano

When the artist Tadashi Kawamata was appointed as a director for Yokohama Triennale 2005, there were only 10 months left until the exhibition's opening on September 28th. He took full advantage of this peculiar circumstance and organized a lively art show of 86 artists and collaboratives. I had a chance to work with Ann Hamilton for this exhibition, and I think her work at the Triennale represents the improvisational quality that the exhibition has as a whole.

Ann Hamilton produced her installation/performance at Yokohama Triennale 2005 through email correspondence with participating climbers. She had not yet visited the site but instead worked from photographs and a floor plan of the exhibition space. She says, "All work happen [sic] by finding the right people and being in response and in conversation."

After considering the documentation shown to her by the Yokohama Triennale staff, Hamilton chose to work with the truss that supports the warehouse ceiling. Her e-mail on August 18, 2005 notes, "I am trying to develop a simple proposal for a single person/climber to move around the ceiling based on a length of rope or the measurement of the ceiling grids." The e-mail continues:

at a length - say 50 feet .... the person will pause, to make the sound of an insect with a hand held instrument until the climber perceives that someone below is listening to the call .... then pivoting off that point to climb to another place in the ceiling and repeating the gesture. The pattern of the rope in the ceiling will in time become a map of listening.

Quote ends here.

With this first proposal in mind, Hamilton, a novice climber, began a dialogue with several expert climbers. Learning about a system called lead climbing from Justin Roth, she decided to simplify her proposal. Hamilton's e-mail on September 1, 2005 says, "I believe it is better to have the work be the act of climbing through the ceiling with a red rope in a shape that traces a circle in the ceiling." With the help of a local climber, Daisuke Inoue, this proposal was further adjusted to fit the specific peculiarities encountered while climbing through the truss.

Titled "line," the final proposal included two climbers and a red climbing rope. The climbers wore simple white shirts and headlamps. The climbers also had i-pod's strapped to their waists. These ipod's periodically broadcast birdcalls throughout the space. The sound was soft and subtle. Since Hamilton wished the work to be understood as an evening ritual, all the performances began quietly an hour prior to sunset.

The climbers ascend to the ceiling by following an orange rope. The rope connects a point in the ceiling with the sidewall. Upon reaching a starting point high up in the ceiling truss, they secure themselves with the ends of a red rope. The lead climber moves around in the ceiling first, clipping the red rope to pre-installed carabineers. This happens while the second climber sits in a small swing installed at the starting point, feeding the red rope to the lead climber. When the lead climber reaches the last carabineer, which is at the starting point, he has used the red rope to trace a full circle in the ceiling truss. The circumference of the circle is about fifty meters. The first climber descends from the ceiling after completing his circle. While on the ground, he is careful to keep the rope taut so that the second climber can follow his route. The second climber traces the same path, purposefully unclipping the red rope from the carabineers. When the second climber finishes, the circle drawn with the rope is gone.

In this simple gesture of "handing the line end to end ... of gathering and letting out gathering and letting out," one can feel a crucial bond between the two climbers. The climbers are connected by a simple line, through which they become responsible for each other's lives. If one climber falls, it is the other climber's body weight that prevents him from hitting the ground. Thus, the line drawn with the 12mm thick rope is a line that sustains the lives of the climbers.

Each climber’s trip around the ceiling takes about 20 minutes, and it is not an easy route. Fighting the slope of the ceiling strains both climbers’ necks. The L-shaped truss material bites into their hands. The circle is drawn with great intensity and concentration, but as soon as a circle appears its erasure begins. Hamilton notes:

I think this really is in some ways the care for me of the gesture ... to close or draw a circle, a form that embraces and connects ... in a social or in a political sense ... to daily task between people and a daily challenge in the global world of many languages, cultures, climates and religions.

Harrell Fletcher: The American War James Stanfield

In a recent project, Harrell Fletcher documented a display at The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The museum is a memorial revealing the atrocities that we committed during the Vietnam War - which is known in Vietnam as the American War.

Fletcher’s photography is purposefully amateur. The photos are of text and images framed behind glass, and - in an attempt to minimize reflected flash - they’re taken at peculiar angles. The wonky documentation makes the subject of the images more immediate.

In case it is unrecognizable as such, the following paragraph is intended as a compliment.

Fletcher’s project is hard to view as artwork. Its subject matter maybe too important to be understood as Duchampian reframing, and, unlike Pictures generation artwork, Fletcher has not really transformed the images into aestheticized art objects. Fletcher’s presentation is too direct for the discourse of appropriation, but this also means that I can mentally foreground the subject instead of experiencing an artwork. I will spend the next two paragraphs doing just that.

I first viewed the project’s website while at the office and had to stifle the impulse to weep. Murder and Savagery. Young Americans mutated into animals wielding weapons beyond their comprehension. There are not words vile enough to describe our aggression in Vietnam, but, foolishly, I’ll try; what we did was fucking monstrous and subhuman.

And it’s worse, because we’re still doing the American War: still killing, still profiting and still pretending that we’re helping. For nearly every devastating photo of our brutality in Vietnam there may exist an equivalent act of abuse in Iraq. The documentation - mediated by Harrell Fletcher but originally presented at The War Remnants Museum - not only recounts our cruelty in Vietnam but also illustrates the horrifying cost of our current and future military engagements.

The disruption is an opening Keith Gladysz

I made a quick visit to the new home of Smack Mellon in Dumbo today. A group video art show called Multiplex 2 is currently showing. Takeshi Murata's Monster Movie (2005) drew me in because it reminded me of recent thoughts on abstraction.

Disrupted technology, or the unsuccessful digital transmission is captivating. You’ve seen moments of slow pixel-freezing on digital cable. And corrupted image files from the internet. These are some of the most beautiful images of ‘failure’.

I find it very optimistic viewing a situation this way, because there’s room to drop success and failure. The firm grip placed on determining the outcome of an experience lightens, and the mixed signal can be enjoyed for what it is. The disruption is an opening.

Technology is the speed of progress and I find it compelling to watch it crash. Enjoy the mistakes as they slip into unexpected ambiguity, birth and brilliance.

While Murata’s Monster Movie doesn’t literally capture and organize these malfunctioned moments, it does recreate this effect by distorting each individual frame of video. The result is non-stop psychedelia that feels like four minutes of malfunctioning tv. This can be a little much, but it’s Murata’s rhythmic sense of editing and the soundtrack provided by Plate Tectonics that keeps this piece just on the plus side of chaos.

Multiplex 2 is showing through November 27th.

Crass James Stanfield

“…his cross, his manhood, violence, guilt, sin. He would nail my body upon his cross. Suicide Visionary. Death Reveler. Rake. Rapist. Life-fucker. Jesu. Earthmover. Christus. Gravedigger. You dug the pits of Auschwitz. The soil of Treblinka is your guilt - your sin. Master. Master of Gore. Enigma. You carry the standard of our oppression. Enola is your gaiety. The bodies of Hiroshima are your delight. The nails are your only trinity. Hold them in your corpsey gracelessness - the image I have had to suffer. The cross is the virgin body of womanhood that you defile. You nail yourself to your own sin. Lame arse Jesus calls me sister. There are no words for my contempt. Every woman is a cross in is filthy theology - in his arrogant delight. He turns his back upon me in his fear. He dare not face me. Fear-fucker. Share nothing you Christ. Sterile, impotent, fucklove, Prophet of Death. You are the ultimate pornography. in your cunt-fear, cock-fear, man-fear, woman-fear, unfair, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare. JESUS DIED FOR IS OWN SINS, NOT MINE.”
- Crass from the song Asylum

And with these lyrics from the first song on the first Crass record that I ever laid eyes on, I fell permanently in love with Crass. I was in junior high or early high school, and, since Nirvana was being played on MTV, punk rock was infiltrating my small town. I got hold of Nevermind and Bleach, then came some Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr. records, and not long after that Sonic Youth and Minor Threat, and then some Bad Brains and Black Flag, and on and on and on. But of all these punk rock creatures it was Crass – probably least musical of the above-mentioned bands – that really stuck. Crass’s Feeding of the 5000 was the first time I encountered left-leaning politics stated directly, a well defined DIY punk ethic, and – looking back - also served as my introduction to artwork with avant-garde pretensions.

When I finally got my own copy, I remember bringing it to someone’s house – a girl that I considered to be really smart – and asking her to go through it with me. She tried to entertain my enthusiasm, letting me pick passages from the liner notes to read to the beat, but obviously considered my infatuation juvenile. Nearly 15 years later I’m still just as juvenile because I still love Crass. I read the lyrics – and though some are kinda’ trite – I believe in the direction they’re pointing.

Now that the internet is around I’m able to look them up and find out a little more about them. It seems they became confused towards the end. You can read about them on Wikipedia. Here’s an excerpt:

“In 1983 and 1984 they were part of the Stop the City actions that can be seen as fore-runners of the early 21st century anti-globalisation protests. Explicit support for such activities was given in the lyrics of the band's final single release "You're Already Dead", which also saw Crass abandoning their long time commitment to pacifism. This led to further introspection within the band, with some members feeling that they were beginning to become embittered as well as losing sight of their essentially positive stance. As a reflection of this debate, the next release using the Crass name was Acts of Love, classical music settings of 50 poems by Penny Rimbaud described as ‘songs to my other self’ and intended to celebrate ‘the profound sense of unity, peace and love that exists within that other self.’”

Academic Art James Stanfield

Artworks are ritual objects. They become useful when viewed from a context that makes them so. Here the context is super reduced and super simple: the objects that produce the most money are the best objects. In my place and at this time, the idea of appreciation is tied in an exceedingly simple way to the idea of commodity.

Academic art (major). The Chelsea shopping mall is the academy, and the farce of serious language as a catalyst for the sale of ritual objects is the current hallmark of academic art. It is when language surrounding an artwork becomes more like a sales point and less like a belief that the art in question has become academic.

Academic art (minor). Reactionary to academic art (major), academic art (minor) seeks to eliminate art language completely.

Academic art. The pejorative phrase is abused. If used, it should mostly be directed towards decorations bound for Chelsea walls. But a better phrase might just be boring art.