As you work they leave

Other people in three studios:

“‘You know,’ Cage reportedly said, ‘when you enter your studio, everyone is there, the people in your life, other artists, the old masters, everyone. And as you work they leave, one by one. And if it is a really good working day, well, you leave too.’” (Robert Storr, pp. 59-60)

“The best ways to waste time in the studio are those that are unproductive and not related in any ostensible way to making art. I’ve fallen into a new way of wasting time, and it doesn’t involve the internet. My new activity is engaging and completely useless. I can’t tell you what it is; it’s embarrassing to me. I find a lot of what I do in the studio pretty embarrassing, but it’s no more embarrassing than what I make. I’ve never been able to work with people around. I don’t want to think about myself when I’m working. It is very hard to get into this state of un-self-consciousness, where I can get lost in the work.” (Rachel Harrison, p. 217)

THIRD WORD BIRD

I’m between poems at the moment

This month in association with 3am magazine and Maintenant the Icelandic Embassy in London is hosting an evening of readings by four Icelandic poets – Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir, Ragnhildur Jóhanns, Jón Örn Loðmfjörð and Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl – with responses presented on the evening by eight British poets. As one of the British contributors I’ve been looking at the work of Ragnhildur Jóhanns, whose interview was posted yesterday at maintenant.co.uk > poetry. Here’s an image of one of her poems:

The disruption and reassembly of her cut-up books brings to mind the line drawings I first wrote about here and here and later compiled for AS LINE. These line drawings – lines drawn between things and pages – are attempts to write things down, or keep them, in a way that words cannot.

Extract from AS CONDUCTOR (coda)

Stay perfectly still.

Let the animals keep watch, and let them watch one another. In movements of tail and ear and flinches of pelt let them steadily project between them the quality of risk in the air. Let them instruct by example, twitch provoking twitch, flight provoking flight.

Move slowly and maintain a loose hold of its limbs, and you can pose the body of a sleeping animal so it appears to be awake. With minutely thin supports you can prop its eyelids open and stare it into the forest blind. Stay down, let it dream. Let the dream direct the movement of its eyes.

Let the animals around believe the life of its sleeping eyes and incorporate its gaze into their watch. Let them project the twitches of sleep out onto the forest floor and flee the dislocated threats they seem to show. Let this go on.

Once, and by chance, let their pattern of flight perfectly correspond with the spectacle behind the sleeping eyes which, in a jolt of recognition, conceal even from the sleeper the instant of its waking. Let the animals continue to dart
as it follows them follow its stare.

Now.

Today: Homologue at Sideshow Artists Book Fair

For its contribution to INVITATION ONLY at SIDESHOW, VerySmallKitchen presents WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS KEEPING IT MOVING, a one day exhibition in response to a proposition within an artists book fair within an arts festival in Nottingham within unfolding networks of new, ongoing and potential collaborations and exchanges.

Featuring: Jonathan Jones/ The Sticky Pages Press, thwart; Pippa Koszerek, Top 100 and Spoiler(Glossary); C S Leigh, Syntax (London, New York and Tokyo versions); Achim Lengerer, SCRIPTINGS; Jill Magi, SMALL TALK SMALL BOOKS; Tamarin Norwood, Homologue and DO SOMETHING; Onomatopee, A Task for Poetry 1-3; seekers of lice, LOUSE FACTORY, QUOT and dumb show; Red Fox Press, C’est Mon Dada and Franticham’s Assembling Box.

For more information see the VerySmallKitchen site.

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Sideshow Artists Book Fair
Today: Saturday 30 October 2010 – 1:00pm – 6:00pm