Dear Ira and Ric,
Sorry to mix up your quotes.
An example of collaborating toward a "third issue" might be a month's
workshop I gave a few years ago in Zurich on perception. The means was
performance, the participants all disciplines. One was Madeleine Hirsch, a
geomorphologist, with whom the discussions on the nature of observation and
its relation to the observed were very exciting. And the works that came
out of the series were exciting and surprising.
To your other question, Ira, I think that there are difficulties of context
in the poet producing "gallery-standard" writing. Responses to my written
piece "Cells of Release" as part of an exhibition ranged from looking at
the physical written object without reading it ( with the reaction that it
was "fun" because it kind of festooned the prison exhibition site -
actually it was a long poem on imprisonment and torture), to (the most
common response) reading the odd line and assuming that the reader had "got
it", to the few who read large enough amounts to get that there was a
different kind of space/time inside the text. The getting-it reaction,
though annoying to a writer, is I suppose from the visual art habit of
seeing whole - it's an interesting question what visual art resists that
response. If anyone can think of anything I'd be curious - can't think
myself now before running to work.
And sorry whoever thinks I'm accusing THEM of wearing tweed. Of course you
the young and cool weren't wearing tweed,more like anything from a yellow
and black superfly hat to a velvet cloak, and some of us haven't bought new
clothes since, but there was definitely an estweedlishment somewhere around
the potweedry societweed, no, or am I confusing this with my father?
What's wrong with tweet anyway?
I do have great memories of London in the 70s too, freezing in the unheated
concrete Film Coop watching hour after hour of single-image experimental
films, for example. I sound cynical but I loved it. I can just never
separate the two sensory memories. There was a feeling that art was very
alive and essential then. Thanks for bringing up the Stephen Cripps
machines (a machine blowing hot air up inside a wedding dress), and Annabel
Nicolson's wonderful moments (sand poured from a pail, or her turning
herself into "the famous walker" by sending press releases to small towns
saying that she would be sighted there, and then sometimes being sighted);
Carolee Schneemann was also in London then. And Anthony McCall's films
where the light shaft from the projector was what was to be looked at,
creating a sculpture in the air as people smoked.
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