SEVEN: fatigue/excess/reality

For Piano and Beuys,
February 2010,
@Uncommon Territories,
Heaven Gallery


photo Younghwan Choi

Don't you just love Art School.

I do! I do!I do!I do!!!!!

Waking up in sickly sweat, to a sound of a deep male voice somewhere right near my left ear. Nobody is in the room.... heart pounding hard, eyes blinking strenuously, ears extended. What is it? Anxiety. Whatever for?Lights on.It turns out to be a giant buzzing black bumble bee, visiting my bedroom. I chase it out the open window. My furry visitor flies lazily away from me, buzzing into the fresh night.

Definitions have dissolved, form is dead, ideas are in excess, time is scarce, body-lucid exhaustion. Where did the weekend go and why don't I have a weekend? What is a weekend? Is it the end of the week or the beginning ?

Want to buy Gregg Bordowitz's book of questions,"Volition" from which he read at Outerspace last Sunday.

"Published by Printed Matter, Volition consists entirely of questions and contains 142 pages of active, mind-bending engagement with the reader, who is led down paths of inquiry involving art, meaning, philosophy, choice, happiness, and identity. Bordowitz organizes his questions into lists, paragraphs, and stanzas, which are themselves organized into five chapters: Questions, Topics, Aesthetics, Beliefs, and Morals. The resulting text is something like a spiritual guide crossed with an epic poem crossed with a transcription of the meandering thoughts of a philosophic insomniac, kept awake by such questions as "How can I touch creation as a principle without reproach?" and "How does gratitude unfold from virtue?" Printed Matter, Inc website

Live Lecture today at AIC:

Michael Fried

Books I couldn't afford, but bought anyway at the Art Institute's Museum's bookshops:

Michael Fried "Why photography matters as art as never before"
Yayoi Kusama "Mirrored Years"

Bargain table!!!! - Annette Messager, "Word for Word"

Papa on skype. He told me I do everything in excess. Absolutely everything.
All or nothing at all.

Go towards my fears:

*Fear of Piano?

*Fear of knives. Collect 1000 knives. Cover your naked self with them and sit in a corner of a space for 3 hours.

*Find a space. Cover half of the floor of the space with knives, half of the floor with white rice paper. Walk on the knives. Then walk on paper, leaving bloodmarks.

*Create a knife sculpture out of the 1000 knives collected.

*When collecting, document where each knife was found or bought and when.

*Series of knife cuttings/ drawings on paper.

*Fear of my body letting go of it's controlled functions. Peeing on my self in public:Action: water. drink. pee. 4 hours. installation.drink.pee.drink.pee.long table. water bottles. large glass water containers.pee into the containers. sound of peeing amplified by microphones and speakers.bright lights.

*Fear of being touched by complete strangers. small upright body container/booth for two people made out of metal and Plexiglas. I stand in it. one person at a time is invited to stand with me inside it. very closely to me, touching my body with their body.

*Kiss me in Chicago.
kissing booth performance. fear of intimacy?

*peep show booth. drop a quarter. I will show you art.

*Artists don't do sport.
do sport: badminton. make two giant rackets, giant ball. net.Inside a gallery. Invite audience to play with you.

badminton.
tennis.
swimming.
running - treadmill in the gallery.

*Fear of team sports. Volleyball with soft large furry balls. silk net.Inside a gallery.

table tennis.

Traditional Russian childhood sporting attempts:

ice skating (broke right wrist. broke left elbow.)
gymnastics.
ballroom dancing. (could never follow partner and repeat steps without making them up each time. )
ballet (pronounced ballerina as barelina. actually dreamed of being one. hated the training and repetition of steps, but loved the music and the stretching.to this day can do splits and many ballet steps easily.)


Untitled,
April 18th 2010
@SAIC performance space

SIX: hair/brush/lemon/forAlexanderMcQueen/13/bittersweet rest/memory loss/death by emotion/locking it in/burned/slightly touching

13 strokes for Alexander.
March 2010.
Performance for video.
@SAIC

Rejections: SAIC world less traveled grant.

My world shall be less traveled this summer.
Happy to remain in Chicago this July/August.

Possible trip to Australia.

Travel in USA
New York in May/June.
San Jose/San Francisco in June.

FIVE:Shivering in silence

Untitled,
18th April, 2010
@SAIC,
performance space

Constant rotation, dizziness, accumulation of satisfaction, momentarily achieved. It all goes by too fast.Time, Lust, Food, Hunger, Desire.Managed. Hurried.

Sunday shopping tomorrow, alternative endings on you tube, lonely spinning of old episodes, memory in denial of that happiness. Mother's voice on skype. Mama!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Emotion in sleep. I am thinking of dying my hair ? Blond. Mama, when did you turn your long heavy jet black hair into a short dirty blond shag?

Exhibitionist, masochist, sadist, control freak, submission junkie? Sharp objects. Who said I am strong? I withstand tooth drilling and pulling as a child with no injection. The silent stance of a monument to the unnamed and forgotten. It is Saturday night. Reading. Chantal Akerman. A week before Spring Interdisciplinary Semester critique. Nervous, oblivious, alert, tired and twitching. What will they think?

Cliches/ Unmaking of my artistry. Classic performance tricks, old chocolate birthday cake, blond wig. Face down in chocolate cake. Boring. Bored housewife. Once beautiful. Once admired. Domestic lonely goddess of a shadow of my mother. Bags of food, carried by my mother across town, sweating in buses , in stilettos, pencil skirts and silk blouses. My mother's body, given birth once. Her daughter's body, unwilling to reproduce, structured since birth not to enter the kitchen as to never be subjected to perils of that kind of wife. Do not get married.

The body living. A history of obsessive food behaviors, prolonged fasting, binge eating and drinking, smoking, sexual addictive behavior. The mechanical organism, projected onto the everyday. The other element, the Jewish mother. My heavy curly hair. Almond eyes. The banned truth. Heavy breasts, grown by contraception, puberty and genetics. Wide hips, un/childbearing, slightly embarrassed smile, stomach. Whiskey with pomegranate juice. I never get sick no more.

Collected behaviors on my laptop. The dangerously voluptuous body of my art greed. I want it all! When asked what kind of art do I do...um...I am...sculpture...performance...um..installation...I draw...take photos...video? what ?

Shows attended:

Version Festival Weekend Xpo/Free university lectures

Star:noun and verb , night of performances at Outerspace.

FOUR: Inhale/exhale/repeat

Untitled,
April 18th,
@ SAIC performance space











By Wednesday night I am a talking brain on numb limbs. The three exhaustively fantastically occupied 9am to 9pm days have an ability to slowly shape my mind into smoke. I inhale /exhale and repeat on a continuous journey of food on the run, sleep if I can, work on a a never ending loop. It is a pleasure.

THREE: Airy Excitement

Photo: Miao Jiaxin,
Rythm33, April 8th, 2010
@Basespace, SAIC

Third entry in my first week. I am in a state of airy flowery excitement. Addicted to listening to Eurovision songs on Grooveshark.


Saturday, site visit to Benton House, Version festival Expo coming up next weekend. ABC collective.
http://www.anotherbloodycollective.blogspot.com

Meetings to be set up with the artists. Sculpt Social, Wednesday.

Re:this project:(Questions of penalties have been raised. Adding to contract: Penalty: for each entry not submitted on any given week, an extra entry will be added the following week. This applies to photo and video documentation).

Sunday. In bed, writing, black coffee, home baked cookies by Santina Amato. Internet. Deadlines. Organization. Distraction: youtube. Many many things to do> paralysed. Searching for new opportunities. will not apply. Good to know.

Chicago Art Resource, NYFA, Transartists. Possibilities?
Rejections: Robert Wilson's residency at Watermill, Long Island, NYC.

Currently reading:
1.When Marina Abramovic Dies,A Biography, by James Westcott, 2010
2.Essays on blurring of art and life, Allan Kaprow, ed by Jeff Kelley, 1993
3.Naked by the window, the fatal marriage of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta, by Robert Katz, 1990
4.Writing as sculpture, 1978-1987, by Louwrien Wijers, 1996

Browsing reading:
1. The Lovers, exhibition catalogue by Marina Abramovic and Ulay, 1989
2. Out of now, the lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh, Adrien Heathfield, 2009
3. The Biogrpahy of Biogrpahies, Marina Abramovic, 2004
4. Have you seen the horizon lately, Yoko Ono, 1997
5. Marina Abramovic, House with the ocean view, 2004
6. Joseph Beuys, Coyote, Caroline Tisdall, 1976/2008
7. Fantastic politics, Art in time of Crisis,2007
8. Joseph Cornell's, theater of the mind, 2000
9. Tatlin, ed Larisa Alekseevna Zhadova, 1988
10. The bust guide to new girl order, ed Marcelle Karp, Debbie Stoller, 1999

Researching:
Essay: art history subject- time as event:
Chantal Akerman:
1. Bordering on fiction: Chantal Akerman's D'est, 1995
2. Nothing happens: Chantal Akerman's Hyper realist Everyday, Ivone Marguilis, 1996
3, Matter and memory, Bergson, 1970
4. Monuments and memory, made and unmade, Robert.S.Nelson and Margaret Olin, 2003
5. Merleau -Ponty, Phenomenology of perception, 2008
6. The way of love, Luce Irigaray, 2002
7. The unfinished system of non-knowledge, Georges Bataille, 2001

Pleasure reading:

1.Collected poems by Emily Dickinson
2.Andy Warhol: the philosophy of Andy Warhol , from a to b and back again

Attended Live Lectures this week:
by Ryan Trecartin
by Guillermo Gomez - Pena (lecture performance)

Watched:
Ryan Trecartin's videos online,
Snippets of Chantal Akerman's D'est online
DVD Movies:
Piano Teacher, Funny games and Hidden by Michael Haneke.

Overwhelmed by recent subway suicide bombings in Moscow. Relatives in Moscow, scared. Talk to parents.
No television.

New week tomorrow. Two weeks before Spring Critique. Preparation.
20 page art history essay. Performance in class tomorrow.23 min piece.
Documentation.Blond, wig, nightgown.

Continue Drawing practice.Drawing with: coffee, wine, urine, vodka, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, onion juice, garlic juice, olive oil.Body machinery, body mechanics, culture of trashy culture.

Small sculptures.Sculpting with: Stale bread, plaster, found small objects, found paper, glue, blankets.

TWO: alternative means of survival

Photo: Miao Jiaxin
Rythm 33





Regular 6 hours of sleep every night. Fatigue, body is in recovery every Friday, sleeping until 1pm.Waking up with a cloud of heavy anxiety hanging over my bed. Blankets over face. It is 2pm. breakfast, avocado and tomato on bread, salted. Black espresso. School? School. Train. Monroe station. Weather, spring. Art bash opening tonight. Cheese, crackers, broccoli. No alcohol.Marlboro cigarettes. Writing . Overly nervously excited . I will become addicted to this.

Rythm33:
Lemon juice squeezed onto my back. There were 33 objects on the table. 1. Toothbrush 2. lemon 3. empty vodka bottle. 4. bottle of red wine, opened. 5. purple onion.6. long stick.7.belt.8.a satin polka dot slip.9.birthday cheesecake with strawberries, cream and jelly. 10. a wine glass.11.one gold leather stiletto shoe.12. scissors. 13. a knife.14.a knife.15.black chocolate.16.plastic bag.17.lipstick.18.olay face cream.19.bananna.20.cord.21.string.22.garlic.23.hairspray.24.red nail polish.25.a tube of red acrylic paint.26.an old hardback book, history of europe.27.thin paperback book, notes from underground by dostovesky.28.tweezers.29. large safety pin.30.stale half of a baguette.31.sticky tape.32.sharpie.33.raw egg.


*In need of a systematic routine of work. Diagram??? Diagram.

*Breakdown of My First Cultural Conditioning:

1. Music:singing/dancing.
2. Food/drink
3. Fables, stories, fictional lives, folk fairytales.
4. Cinema
5. Traditional academic art training
6. Still life
7. Landscape
8.Life-drawing
9.Literature:books
10.Fashion as aspiration to Western Fictional glamour.
11. Dostoevsky
12. Theater: Meyerhold
13. Mayakovsky and Constructivism
14. Politics:Soviet
15.Propaganda: Russian



work 0.001: Singing 1: a Russian eurovision song repeatedly. How many hours? Many hours. Start with one hour. Working with voice. Breaking down of my native language.

work 0.002: Dancing 1: Russian folk dance moves. How long? For hours. Start with one hour. Repeated moves, plucked from a dance learned in childhood. Which dance? I do not remember. Live or for video? Both.

work 0.003: Eating 1: dinner for one, buckwheat, borscht, onions, potatoes, herring, pickles, garlic, black bread, vodka. Crepes with cherry syrup for dessert. Black brewed tea. White tablecloth, white cloth napkin, crystal shot glass, crystal cantor of Stolichnaya vodka, crystal vase with one fresh red rose. Tea served in a glass, encased in ornate silver glass holder.
Eating very very slowly to the point of extreme jaw fatigue. The dinner should take 4 hours to consume.

work 0.004:

ONE: 7 days into prophecy

Photo Santina Amato
Rythm33, April 8th, 2010
@Basespace, SAIC

Ok. I'm in my Jesus year and in a "Terminal Degree", marching towards second and final year of my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This is a Year- long photo and writing Documentary Project to accompany my Thesis Studio Work. My Art and Life Practice. It is Time. Do or die!

Lets Go!
April 8, 1977, at 3 am-6am , Odessa, Ukraine - a birth.
April 8, 2010, at 7pm-8pm, Chicago, USA - re-birth.

Rythm 33. Re-enactment by Katya Grokhovsky of Rythm 0 by Marina Abramovic:

Guarding the Eternal Fire of the Victims. Standing still for hours, holding a heavy tired Kalashnikov in my 13 year old weak arms. White shirt, blue skirt , white stalkings, red pioneer satin tie around my neck. Arms slightly shaking, straight back, legs shoulders apart. Trembling. The Fire eternally sculpted. The children of Soviet Union. Born and escaped. As red wine pours all over my stiff back, I relax. Standing still in a long line, always small, always at the end of the line, by height, always insignificant, I shivered in my newly acquired fake Adidas suit. From Italy? From Turkey, bought on the Second Kilometer black market outside of Odessa. We hitchhiked there every Sunday. Second- hand Western Blue jeans. Oh, America. Fake Chanel singlets, bright neon leggings. Coffee ice cream softly melting, running down my hot, sticky cheek in sweet-smelling strips of happiness . Standing still and hardly breathing at 6 am in a summer pioneer camp, standing still, listening vaguely to That Hymn. Learning the Russian Traditional songs. All together now. Whispering words. Faking enthusiasm. Escaping, running. Running. Standing still, head down, scolded in front of a class. I did not do it! I did not do it! Blamed. Guilty. Standing still. Shivering in my silence. Sweet , pungent onion , cake, string, egg in my mouth. Knife in my face. He slashed our leather padded door. In front of me. I walked through it. These slashes remained until we left our apartment in 1992. A knife near my cheeks. I cannot handle it. I handle it. Fear of knives, fear of touching, fear of public. Standing still, they made me speak in front of a whole school. I almost peed on stage. The everyday smell of urine in the lifts.They paint my back with red acrylic. It feels sexually pleasant and relaxing, as if my skin is being licked. That first painting. Shaking. Holding. Keep it.