Thursday, July 19, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Pop Smellers and the Spine of the Earth - Part 4
“I woke up today and something was
wrong. I knew this from the moment that
I opened my eyes. Perhaps even
before. I think that ‘wrong’ is the
wrong word to use, but what else could I say?
That it was incorrect?
Askew? Different?
Yes. I woke up today and it was different. I don’t know what was different, maybe me,
maybe the room, or possibly my bed, perhaps even the entire world. I couldn’t be sure though; it was too early
in the day to leap to conclusions; at least not while I was still in bed. I got up at this point, and that’s when it
struck me; cold and hard, rather like a fish with a claw hammer…I realised that
the world as I had previously perceived it was no longer valid, no longer
solid…no longer real. I had awoken and
was no longer absorbed in this supposedly ‘real’ sphere; I could indulge no
more in petty emotional or intellectual games; I could not even trick myself
with the idea of the material world. I
could quite easily see my dressing table in the corner of the bedroom but it
shone with an intensity that I had previously been unaware of, and yet in the
same instant of seeing the full glory within this piece of wooden furniture, I
was also able to see through its alleged ‘realness’ (though how a dressing
table could allege its own existence, I could not grasp).”
The pit of my
stomach had fallen like an elevator down a shaft. My mouth was dry like a camels’
bum-hole. I seemed to throb all over. I finished my pint and hurried to the bar to
get another drink. I was shaking and
disjointed. I ordered a brandy, paid for
it and returned to my table and continued to read. What the fuck was wrong with
me?
“It was, in
essence, the sum of our entire existence, yet it was all trickery and illusion. For all these years I had been duped by an
inanimate object. The rage flared inside
me. I wanted to hurt the dresser, as it
had hurt me. I wanted to destroy it for
humiliating me for so long; and I wasn’t even aware of it! It made me sick. It was typical of that kind of furniture,
perceiving itself to be superior, with its fine varnish and wonderful burnished
walnut grain. The harsh, grinding humour
of the dresser burrowed deep into my psyche.
It was just too degrading.
My anger was
suddenly replaced by a profound sense of grief and sadness. I began to weep. It was just so unfair! I had done nothing to deserve such torment. Especially from a piece of mere
carpentry. Oh, the injustice of it
all! Then came the terror; a sweeping
sensation that tore through the core of my very being; leaving my body empty
and shaking.”
I knew where
this cat was at. I too had been mocked
by furniture on several occasions. It
was one of the reasons why I avoided those furniture superstores that are
always advertising on the telly. I drank
a deep draught of the brandy, feeling its warmth spread through my belly. I looked around, noticing that the bar had
become crowded, and that a noisy chatter filled the air, smoke wafted around
me, and I realised that I hadn’t had a cigarette for some time. I drew one from
the packet and rummaged about in my coat for a light. I found an old box of
matches and struck one, inhaling deep and settling back into my chair. The
brandy was doing its work and the cigarette was fine. I noticed it was dark
outside and realised that I should be getting home to Audrey. My loins stirred
instantly, and for a brief moment I was awash with pornographic images of
myself and wifey. But I pushed them aside so that I might finish this
extraordinary communication from Zagley. I read on. “Devoid of reason; I had
been on the verge of destroying an innocent dresser, it had been a gift from my
mother too. What was happening to me? It seemed as if I had no concept of
anything – or rather; no thing – no ability to distinguish between good
furniture and bad.
But it didn’t
seem to matter because the way I felt was once again changing, the fear dropped
away and was replaced by the most uplifting and invigorating feelings. They
pulsed. They flowed. They cascaded through the very core of my being. I was
totally joyous, I was enlightened, and this I deduced, was due to the sight
that I beheld. It was the sight of my carpet.
Wondrous swirls
and whorls of colour, all manner of hues, tones and- did my senses deceive me? Were
there not tastes and flavours within my carpet? I could taste the beauty, I
could see the many flavours that my carpet gave off. Rich reds merged with
stunning blues, golds and silvers throbbed and spun, throwing up the most
bizarre yet delicious flavours. Somehow it was all too much, too erotic, and I
began to masturbate.
I was pulling on
myself, touching, tugging, I was being swept upwards on an erotic carpet of
colour that was beyond all description. I could feel my approaching orgasm; a
tightening in my stomach and a surge from the very core of my being. My mouth
was being stimulated by the vast array of tastes thrown off by the carpet, my
eyes drunk from the constantly charging warp and weft. I was on the edge, the
cliff top, the very moment before spilling my seed. But that all ceased
immediately when I caught a movement from the corner of the room and realised
that I was not alone.
I turned around
and found myself face to face with the most insane looking thing that I had
ever had the misfortune to lay eyes upon. Coupled with the fact that I still
held my now rapidly wilting penis in my hand, it was not a good moment. In
fact, I would go as far as to say the situation was very bad indeed. The
creature before me was obviously human, or at the very least sub-human; it was
hunched over and its hair was bedraggled, its eyes were wild black holes,
staring into me. I was filled with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. As I
put my cock awkwardly back into my pants, I realised that oddly enough the monstrosity
also had what I presumed to be its penis out and it too was attempting to stuff
it away. It was at this point that it dawned on me that I had merely been
observing myself in the full length mirror on my wardrobe door. Another piece
of sly furniture behaviour, and to think that i had been curious yet revolted
by myself! Oh! The degradation! The humiliation! It was too much. Why was this
happening to me? But it was too late, I had already begun the descent into
tortuous self-reflection, despite having no mind with which to process the
analysis of ‘me’. No mind.
No mind! That
was it! This was the reason for my strange sensations, the reason why I leapt
from one feeling to the next without rest. I had no mind and therefore could no
longer be real. I did not exist. It was all trickery and illusion. But how
could I grasp not the concept of having no mind without actually having one? I
didn’t want to think about that. I went out into the street in a vain attempt
to be real. A bad mistake.”
I stopped reading
for a moment. I too, was assailed by a strange sensation. My brandy was gone
and I needed another drink but my legs felt like jelly. I braced myself and got
to the bar without collapsing in a blubbery heap. I bought a pint of lager and
managed the return journey to the table. Gulping half the pint down
immediately, I paused briefly to light another cigarette with shaking hands.
What the fuck was wrong with me? I looked at the stack of papers on the table.
There were a couple of pages left before I’d finished this ‘letter’. I pushed
on. “If nothing was real in my room, everything outside was even less real. If
that’s possible. The pavement buckled and rippled like a grey ocean – I had to
concentrate with all my will power just to stay upright – yet all around me
people were going about their business as if nothing was wrong. The very sky
was drawn to a single point as if it were a vast billowing sail suspended by an
unseen hand, and all around me buildings towered upward, leaning at such
obscene angles that I could not understand why they did not come crashing down
upon me. And the noise! It whirred and hummed and shrieked like monstrous gears
grinding together; crunching, static like. It was driving me insane.
Perhaps this was
what had happened to me? I had awoken this morning and had become completely
mad? Surely it was the only possible explanation? I was once again gripped by a
dreadful sense of unease, the feelings of utmost terror overwhelmed me, coupled
with the noise; I fell to me knees, covering my ears with my hands and shutting
my eyes tight against the world, drifting into a black void that was once my
mind.
Drifting
backwards.
Back.
Blackness.
Silence.
Black.
Nothing.
Silence. The
original state.
Indeed! That was
a strange one. To perceive oneself as mad! What contradiction! What folly! But
what now? To experience great joy? To suffer? But what? For what? For all is
transitory. No thing is real for me for all is real to me. Just to see, just to
be, for a day, a lifetime, to be someone else, something else.
Perhaps tomorrow
I will be a clock. Or a hamburger.
Anything to
break up the monotony of absolute divinity.
God, I hate
being God.
It’s so boring.
And man thinks
he’s got it bad...as the alleged ‘Supreme Being’, the one and only ultimate
deity (HA!), I am alone. Who can I pray to? I get bored and that’s why I
invented man. A bit of amusement. I get
to experience myself subjectively, see the world through the eyes of others.
But it always
comes back to zero. Back here again.
You can only
trick yourself for so long.
So here I am
again.”
I sat back in
the chair, everything in the pub seemed ultra-loud, ultra-garish. The music
pounded and the people laughed but beneath it all I perceived a very deep fear
and an even deeper sadness. I had to get out. I went home to Audrey.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Interview with the artist Daphane Park,
Artist. Anthropologist. Shaman’s apprentice.
Artist Daphane Park’s C.V is pretty full. She recently completed a three month residency
at Tasmania’s (or rather David Walsh’s) Museum of Old and New Art which Daphane
described as ‘luxurious and dreamy’. I caught up with the artist to delve a
little deeper into her life, her work and what inspires her to create her
fantastic (in the true sense of the word) works.
At the start of the year you enjoyed some
time at MONA, working on a Minnie Mouse/Quetzacoatl installation at the urban
community markets; what’s it all about? Daphane’s softly spoken voice drifts
down the phone line to explain “The partner of David Walsh, Kirsha Kaechele,
she and I have collaborated a number of times in the US, and she invited me to
come and conceptualise this summer market – it was essentially like a farmers
market – but more rarefied; just really beautiful produce; speciality cheeses,
and there were also some crafts and we
had some other things in the market as well.” She mentions ‘magic milk crate massages’
which conjures images of a dread-locked
crusty rubbing me down with a crate, but enough of my bizarre fantasies.
Daphane continues: “We wanted to use the opportunity of this market on the roof
of the museum to make it into an art installation – it’s sort of a strange idea
and a bit of a challenge (she chuckles as she says this) and I wasn’t really
sure how that was gonna work. But we looked at the footprint of the rooftop of
the museum and decided it could take on a kind of serpentine shape and then for
me that immediately, I thought of 2012 and the return of Quetzacoatl in the
Mayan cosmology, which I’ve studied and I thought it would be fun to sort of
take that theme on in my own way, and I combined that with this vision I had of
Minnie Mouse – I had this vision of Minnie Mouse as a healer – it’s sort of absurd
but after I had that, going into a meditation.” She’s quick to point out that
the vision wasn’t drug induced and I ask she gets asked that question a lot;
she laughs before explaining that some time ago she “...went down into the
subway and it was literally 20 minutes or so after I did this meditation...there
was this person in the subway dressed as Minnie Mouse, and this was on the
upper-west side of Manhattan - it’s not your wildest neighbourhood or anything
like that - so that was just an interesting coincidence.”
And what sort of materials are you working
with? “It’s mostly fabric, weatherproof-ish fabrics - not entirely weatherproof
- but I did use a lot of bathing suit lycra; stuff you might make a bathing
suit from, in these really wild colours and dance lycra. The winged arms that
terminate into these Minnie Mouse hands, these white gloves, these arms are
made of, I guess what you’d make an umbrella with? Like umbrella fabric? And
they’re feathery looking because the Quetzacoatl’s a feathered serpent. And the
fabric on the head is this stretchy lycra and there’s a lot of stretched
sequined fabric on the ears, which are really beautiful in the sunlight.”
Daphane adds that in her installation Minnie Mouse is “a bit of a gangster as well.” – A ganster
healer? “Yeah, she’s coming to steal time, she’s coming to destroy illusion,
and usher in a bit of authenticity.” Blimey. I would have thought with 2012 and
the end of days coming, perhaps Kali would be a more appropriate image instead
of a Disney character? “Minnie Mouse was more fun – and the other layer on top
of that is that David (Wallsh)has said, at least once or twice, that he sees
MONA as being a bit of a perverse Disneyland for adults. So I thought that was
a fun coincidence; the Minnie Mouse healer with her little hands...”, she goes
on to explain that “...the hands are made of casting powder coated aluminium - they
also act as ballast to hold the tents down - between markets, the little white
gloves stay on top of the roof so they have a dual function as little stools
that people can perch on, because sometimes the lines [for entrance to MONA] in
the summer-time and on the weekends get quite long - and they look kind of cool
too – these little hands sprinkled on the roof top. And they may end up in the
garden which is being designed by Kirsha later, or on the lawn.” She also adds
that “The teeth of the creature are made of gold-leaf ceramic with glass
diamonds – she’s wearing a diamond grill like what rappers wear.” Ah! Now I see
how the gangster/healer elements come into play...
So were you living at MONA? “I had been
staying there some but I had a place in North Hobart and it was kind of near a
studio. There’s this really great artists space called 6a in North Hobart where
a number of artists work and I was doing some stuff in there and one of the
artists that works in that studio was helping me with the ceramic teeth, and I
was making the moulds for the hands there as well, and that was really close to
the apartment where I was staying. I’d sort of been going back and forth. Maybe
I was a bit of an experiment there? Though it was really fun and cool.”
So how did you enjoy Australia? She
enthusiastically responds. “Yeah, I made a couple of trips to Sydney and to the
beach at Marion Bay; there was a lot going on here and it was really lively, it
was a lively time to be there.”
You work across a variety of medias; painting,
sculpture, installation, performance, do you have a preferred media or is there
a decision making process for picking one media over another? She ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’,
obviously giving it a lot of thought, before saying “There’s not really one. I’m
always sort of painting and drawing and that’s a kind of meditation, in a way
in between other projects. I suppose I’ll just start formulating ideas and
those ideas lead me to materials that I want to work with and how I choose to
execute the entire project, whether it be a big installation, and I work with
musicians and I’ll have very specific ideas of the sound I want to go with an
installation and they will help execute that. I like to collaborate a lot.” This
brings us into a discussion on her collaborative work; speaking about your Superconductor
installation, a work inspired by a variety of alternative Western healing
technologies and shamanistic rituals. The soundtrack was provided by David
Marshall, Rachael Bell, Derrick Barnicoat. Would you say that collaborative
work is important for you? Daphane speaks of the freedom she experienced working
with these musicians; “I felt that was huge break-through for me, working with
those guys...there was something really nice about the way I would have an idea
for a sound and the collaborators would compose something and then we’d talk
about it and then it would shift and change and get more complex. As that was
happening, it was really feeding the ideas for the rest of the environment that
I wanted to create.”
Returning to the ideas behind the
shamanistic rituals, you went to the Amazon and worked under two shaman
dreamers; can you tell me some more about that? “I met one of them, my friend
Gloria in ’99 and she introduced me to her teachers, and it’s been kind of an
on-going friendship. She’s been teaching me all kinds of things since I’ve
known her.” At this point, Daphane becomes vague and elusive but she continues
nonetheless. “At a certain point, I think it was 2006, I lost the lease on a
studio space – I was working for an organisation that accessed studio space for
artists and we lost the building – and the lease on my apartment was running
out and Gloria has a really intense life; she organises a lot of indigenous
people and communities, sort of single-handedly, like fighting against a lot of
petroleum companies and she had a lot of death threats against her at the time,
it was around this time that there was a big shift and change in my life in New
York and so I went down to escort her to her uncle, to his land, which is
really far interior of Peru, she lives in Ecuador. And so we ended up living
with him and it really just ended up being a much bigger, longer experience
that I expected. I didn’t get back to New York till months and months later so I
ended up being in the far interior with them for four months or so.”
How was that for you, physically &and spiritually? “It was physically really difficult because I had to adopt an
entirely new diet and I did hunt - I went on a couple of hunting excursions to
see what that was all about - but when I was studying with them I was doing a
lot of fasting and eating very specific foods and then drinking a lot of tea
and plant medicines.” Was Ayahuasca involved? “Yeah, that was a big part of the
program.” She giggles as she adds “I really actually liked it. It’s very
powerful ...a lot of people have really negative experiences with that
plant...I don’t know if it was the time but my experiences were extremely
positive. Even if I was being led into a vision that was a little bit dark, it
was very enlightening. “ These were obviously profound spiritual
experiences for you. Are you OK talking
about them? “Yeah. It’s hard to describe. When you start talking about it too
much it seems more and more trivial; maybe that’s not it...” She ponders the
best way to explain the experience but concludes “When you try to attach too
many words to those kinds of experiences, it’s just something beyond words.”
It seems that your work attempts to
transcending time, space, and culture? I mention that it seems as if she’s trying
to ‘get everyone in the hammock’ together, a reference to her work Hammock
Mother, a part of the Superconductor installation. Again, Daphane laughs. “Maybe. I haven’t
really thought about it that way but I am sort of mixing it all up a little bit
but hopefully in a really playful kind of way. I like to do a lot of research;
study things and look at things from many different perspectives, and I guess I
do try to draw the similarities between things.” Themes of energy and meditation
seem to be repeated in your work; the reconciliation of opposites also seem to be important areas to you. Do
you see yourself as modern day alchemist/magician or artist-shaman? I making
her laugh a lot and she struggles to define herself: “I wouldn’t want to use
those words...I wouldn’t give myself those titles...” I push onward, so what
titles would you give yourself? She’s laughing a lot now. “I don’t
know...that’s tough because I think I’m not someone who likes to be pinned
down. I don’t want to feel limited. I think because of my background, growing
up in a really conservative and highly controlled environment, I just don’t
like labels and I just don’t like to feel limited by them.”
She’s happy to talk about her past and we
dip into this time in her life. Tell me about your child-hood. “I grew up in a
really conservative place; in Indiana, and I never really felt like I was from
there. I get along with my family; they were just extremely protective and it
was a very highly controlled environment so as soon as I could I just kind of
took off and began my own adventure, and for me, the first really big one was
hitching a ride to the border and then just travelling through Mexico and
Central America.” Did you have any aspirations to be an artist as a child? “It
wasn’t like I just decided I was going to be an artist but I was always
drawing; that was actually my freedom; with drawing and painting. When I was in
grade school I had this little studio area in the attic – and later, in the
basement – of our house. My neighbours and different people would give me art
supplies, which was really nice. They were very encouraging.”
Around the period of 1992 and 1993, you received
a Creative Research Grant from the Honours Division at Indiana University,
producing work derived from the study of the modern/contemporary political
cultural environment AND ancient Mayan cosmology in Meso-America. That’s a
heady mix. “Yeah, they were the two things I was studying at that time. I went
back to Mexico and Central America - there were still lingering wars going on
in Central America - and I visited quite a few communities; we went to refugee
camp in Southern Mexico, a Guatemalan refugee camp, and helped support some of
those people back into Guatemala for the first time. They hadn’t seen their
families in quite a long time so I was looking at both those things, they were
both interests at that time; the ancient and the contemporary political
situation.”
Did you find the refugee camps to be places
of the dispossessed – that whole loss of identity with people no longer in their
home towns? “No, I found that it was incredible how the community that I
visited had really maintained a sense of who they were and a sense of family
and they were really very clear; they didn’t even really want anything from us,
the visitors. They just really wanted us to tell their story so other people
would know what they had gone through, and they were incredibly resilient and
resourceful. The camp was full of all these instruments that they had hand made
out of found objects and reclaimed wood. It was pretty incredible.” Her voice
fills with warmth at these fond recollections. She also still sounds amazed,
all these years later.
Getting back to some of your more recent
work, the 2005 The True Originals exhibition; for me this work seemed to be
full of elementals, sprites and totems – a heady vibe of anthropomorphism – yet
in a lot of the reviews the word ‘sexual’ kept coming up. Do you see this as reviewers
imposing their own headspace on your work or was it a conscious act on your
part? “No, I don’t think it was a conscious act on my part; I think that people
always want to talk about sex so it’s probably more the reviewers.”
When I was researching for this interview,
I found that there’s a large chunk of your life and work that’s work
undocumented – why? “I guess it’s because I haven’t made a huge effort to take
all of the work that I made, slides and all that, and transfer it to digital;
people wrote about my work in South America but I think it’s all in Spanish and
it’s not something I can make links to online. I think it was all before the
web...” What?! A world before the inter-webs?! That’s crazy talk...
And finally, what’s next for you? “I’m
heading back to New York and I have a couple of projects that I’d like to see
happen; a kind of a big meta-collaboration with Rachel Bell, we’ve been kind of
construing something together.” The elusiveness creeps back into the
conversation. “I’m not being really articulate about this because I don’t know
how much I want to reveal...but basically we’ve got a project brewing but we
don’t really know where we’ll go or where the venue will be...”
Elusive. Fun. Playful. Just a few words to
describe Daphane Park and her work – but just don’t try and make the labels
stick.
Note: Daphane recently exhibited at AnnaKustera,
New York, at the Never Ever Ever Land exhibition, curated by Natalie Kovacs.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
