One Thousand and One Nights* appears through a myriad of guises and forms that frames a dialogue & facilitates experiences between people and art that encourages debate, exchange and collaboration reflecting the vitality, complexity and unfolding patterns of understanding.
*The Arabian Nights, also known as The Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: alf laila wa-laila), originally a collection of oriental tales in the Arabic language that developed into a powerful vehicle for Western imaginative prose since the early 18th century. The labyrinthine intertwined stories in The Thousand and One Nights are framed by a tale of a jaded ruler named Shahryar, whose disappointment in womankind causes him to marry a new woman every night only to kill her in the morning. The grand-vizier's clever daughter, Scheherazade, determined to end this murderous cycle, plans an artful ruse. She tells the sultan a suspenseful tale each night promising to finish it in the morning. This narrative device of delaying unpleasant events by means of arousing the curiosity of a powerful figure is a constant feature in the stories themselves. It is now believed that the collection is a composite work originally transmitted orally and developed over a period of several centuries.
The collection has a long and convoluted history which mirrors its complex narrative structure; one amazing story evokes another, so that the reader is drawn into a narrative whirlpool. The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques and various forms of erotica. Numerous stories depict djinn, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. The tellers and authors of the tales were anonymous, and their styles and language differed greatly; the only common distinguishing feature was the fact that they were written in a colloquial language called Middle Arabic that had its own peculiar grammar and syntax.
EPISODE V
ACHED GREW PRINT JOT
EPISODE IV
TELEPHONE BOOTH
EPISODE III
THREE OR FOUR WORKS
EPISODE II
A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME
EPISODE I
DONE TO A DEAD END & THE DEAD OR ALIVE SALE
Wednesday 6-10pm 8 Feburary 2012 / / / The Drawing Project, 3 Harbour Square, Dunlaoghaire, Dublin, Ireland.
Ached Grew Print Jot, as a kind of alternative space of creativity, interpretation, ritual and critique will be a drawing class in the form of an ephemeral, event-based character expressed and observed through music and other performances, film screenings, a lecture and hosting the launch of a publishing project, Household Words, an on-line / off-line publication that focuses on expanding the format of criticism head on with personality, authenticity and style. Ached Grew Print Jot and Household Words will be characterised by discreet shifts and observations in the spaces between people, objects and happenings.
The Three Calls / / / Mauritsstraat 36, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Telephone Booth is new a compact project space that utilizes two recently disused spaces in the Piet Zwart Institute, one a storage space and the other a telephone booth. Lee Welch's new work The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II takes the form of a parquet floor, paying homage to Frank Stella's painting of the same name, the floor consists of two identical vertical sets of concentric, inverted U shapes. Each half contains stripes of dark stained wood that radiate from the single vertical line at their center.
Thrusday 5:30pm 16 December 2010 / / / Mauritsstraat 36, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
One Thousand and One Nights is pleased to invite you to encounter Three or Four Works by Lee Welch, Lundahl & Seitl (in collaboration with Gemma Sharpe), Niklas Tafra (in collaboration with Enrico Glerean, Hannes Lewné and Rickard Strand) and Henning Lundkvist presented by radiowy.
Actually, I don't understand the whole concept of form and forms very well, nor the various ways different forms and genres get distinguished and classified.
Wednesday 7-9pm 13 October 2010 / / / The Banff Centre, Basketball Court in the Sally Borden Building, Banfff, Canada.
A Whole New Ball Game which will play host to the launch of ANAL, a modest black and white periodical along with props, performances and lectures in midst of a basketball game with players; Neil Bickerton, Mike Crane, Hirofumi Suda, Leigh-Ann Pahapill, Kevin Rodgers, Mike Schuh, Aislinn Thomas, Jan Verwoert & Lee Welch
Saturday 6-10pm 13 March 2010 / / / SD&G, Zwaanshals 243a, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Starring: Elena Bajo, Vaari Claffey, Bernhard Garnicnig, Sam Keogh, Rachel Koolen, Warren Neidich, Linda Quinlan, Edward Clydesdale Thomson
Based on a short story by Serena Lee
Title by Arvo Leo
Poster by Annie Wu
Script by Giles Bailey & Martijn in't Veld
Directed by Lee Welch
TELEPHONE BOOTH – The First Call
26 May - 6 June 2011
GLASER: Isn't it that there's no gestation, that there's just an idea?
[..]
STELLA: But we're all still left with structural or compositional elements. The problems aren't any different. I still have to compose a picture, and if you make an object you have to organize the structure. I don't think our work is that radical in any sense because you don't find any really new compositional or structural elements. I don't know if that exists. It's like the idea of a color you haven't seen before. Does something exist that's as radical as a diagonal that's not a diagonal? Or a straight line or a compositional element that you can't describe?
[..]
STELLA: It's just that you can't go back. It's not a question of destroying anything. If something's used up, something's done, something's over with, what's the point of getting involved with it?
JUDD: Root, hog, or die.
[..]
GLASER: Reductio ad absurdum.
STELLA: Not absurd enough, though.
JUDD: Even if you can plan the thing completely ahead of time, you still don't know what it looks like until it's right there. You may turn out to be totally wrong once you have gone to all the trouble of building this thing.*
*Glaser, Bruce. 'Questions to Stella and Judd, Interview by Bruce Glaser.' Edited by Lucy. Lippard. ARTnews 65, no. 5, September 1966, pp. 55-61
THREE OR FOUR WORKS
Whether you agree or disagree with what you will hear, we feel that none will deny the right of these views to be broadcast.
WEEKS: I think so. Brought on by the desire for the larger and larger audience… the bigger rating you can get… the more thousand… the more millions of people who can hear… and what are the common denominators? The common denominators today seem to be today sort of a low emotional … low common denominator of emotionalism.
First Act
In the Volvo, he turns the radio up while the wintry air of the mid-December day flows in through the window. I am in the back seat seating between two people. We are being driven around. I am not sure where we are headed. The moving scenery creates fragments of a story, a narrative. Looking around I see a foot bridge over a stream. I see these things from the perspective of no one. A sightless vision, as if one closes their eyes and imagines a large space. A dark space where I hold up my hand in front of my face which I feel but cant see. The car stops. I get out and proceed to the cafe.Second Act
BLVR: Maybe the question I have is this: Once you've explored a form, like the short story for example, do you reach a point where you think you've exhausted its possibilities, and thus have to move on? Or are you sampling many different forms before inevitably revisiting all of them?DFW: Here's an example of a question that's deeper and more interesting than my response can be. I know that the reason has nothing to do with feeling that a form's been exhausted. Actually, I don't understand the whole concept of form and forms very well, nor the various ways different forms and genres get distinguished and classified. Nor do I much care, really. My basic MO is that I tend to start and/or work on a whole lot of different things at the same time, and at a certain point they either come alive (to me) or they don't. Well over half of them do not, and I lack the discipline/fortitude to work for very long on something that feels dead, so they get abandoned, or put in a trunk, or stripped for parts for other things. It's all rather chaotic, or feels that way to me. What anybody else ever gets to see of mine, writing-wise, is the product of a kind of Darwinian struggle in which only things that are emphatically alive to me are worth finishing, fixing, editing, copyediting, page-proof-tinkering, etc. (I know you know this drill, and know the soul-fatigue of having to go over your own shit time after time for publication.) And it may be that in order to be really alive for me, a book-length thing has got to be different, feel different, than other stuff I've done.… Or, on the other hand, my whole answer here might be hooey: The new book of stories is not all that different, structurally, from GWCH, or from most other story collections.
BLVR: You mention this book of stories again, but we haven't discussed it. Did you want to talk about it?
Third Act
HUXLEY: Er...As technology becomes more and more complicated, it becomes necessary to have more and more elaborate organizations, more hierarchical organizations, and incidentally the advance of technology is being accompanied by an advance in the science of organization.WALLACE: The question, of course, that keeps coming back to my mind is this: obviously politics in themselves are not evil, television is not in itself evil, atomic energy is not evil, and yet you seem to fear that it will be used in an evil way. Why is it that the right people will not, in your estimation, use them? Why is it that the wrong people will use these various devices and for the wrong motives?
HUXLEY: Well, I think one of the reasons is that these are all instruments for obtaining power, and obviously the passion for power is one of the most moving passions that exists in man; and after all, all democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one man or any one small group have too much power for too long a time.
WALLACE: "In an age of accelerating overpopulation, of accelerating overorganization, and ever more efficient means of mass communication, how can we preserve the integrity and reassert the value of the human individual?".
HUXLEY: Well, this is obviously...first of all, it is a question of education. Er...I think it's terribly important to insist on individual values, I mean, what is a...there is a tendency as a...you probably read a book by Whyte, "The Organization Man", a very interesting, valuable book I think, where he speaks about the new type of group morality, group ethic, which speaks about the group as though the group were somehow more important than the individual.
But this seems, as far as I'm concerned, to be in contradiction with what we know about the genetical makeup of human beings, that every human being is unique. And it is, of course, on this genetical basis that the whole idea of the value of freedom is based.
And I think it's extremely important for us to stress this in all our educational life, and I would say it's also very important to teach people to be on their guard against the sort of verbal booby traps into which they are always being led, to analyze the kind of things that are said to them.
Well, I think there is this whole educational side of...and I think there are many more things that one could do to strengthen people, and to make them more aware of what's being done.
ANAL
Issue #0ANAL CONTRIBUTORS – Andrew Berardini, Neil Bickerton, Mike Crane, David Deery, Chris Fite-Wassilak, FormContent, Kate Jackson, Andrew Kerton, Kevin Kirwan, Fermín Jiménez Landa, Serena Lee, Henning Lundkvist, Kelly Lycan, Linda Quinlan, Celia Perrin Sidarous, Garrett Phelan, Kevin Rodgers, Project Arts Centre, Mike Schuh, Sils, Leif Magne Tangen, Aislinn Thomas, Walker and Walker, Lee Welch, Lauren Wetmore and Wilfried Lentz Gallery
The Contents
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAWSo you want to reproduce the Kodak tungsten look of sunlight that's slightly crisper than late afternoon Northern Ontario Indian summer as it would appear through oak trees on an enclosed veranda facing south- west through late 19th century farmhouse windows, in a white cube studio with three-point lighting?Serena Lee discusses the plights of Lighting in Layers.
As you turn around, and make your way to the back of the gallery, a deliberate obstacle comes to mind. When contemplated, a sense of confusion and ease gather. The paradoxical nature of experience makes her stumble; luckily she landed yielding. Am Nuden Da & FormContent address the encounter through theSession_11_Press Release.
However, aside from living in everyday life and seriously doing science, people may and do like to play. Science may be a plaything and, in part, that is what my literature is. Mike Crane looks at the margin between science and storytelling through Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.'s interview with Stanislaw Lem in 22 Answers and 2 Postcripts, originally published in the November 1986 edition of Science Fiction Studies #40.
Musing over the audible capacity or sonic potential and effect of an image, Linda Quinlan was immediately struck by the rhythmic measure that materialises with the repetition of these two found images. Both images in Pottery Percussion present the technique, 'slam and bang' used by potters when blending clay. Further interests lie in considering how an image might somehow resonate in the ear and eye concurrently and in turn, hum in the recesses of the brain.
And how the light on the ceiling and the shape and texture of the shadows cast were absolutely complex and entirely stunning. Of course there can be no words for any of this until later. In Aislinn Thomas' text-based work WE SPEAK LAST looks at the moments between consciousness & speech.
So now it feels more like you acting out an idea of yourself—a freak who can never be with anyone for long, and in that move freezing both of us in jarring roles. In Each to each other dreams of other's dreams: a study in dislocation Chris Fite-Wassilak interweaves Andrei Tarkovsky, Fernando Pessoa, Will Eisner & a fictional protagonist with each identifying oneself with the suffering of another, in a passionate way.
Between i and f Joe Walker and Pat Walker invert the space between what might be English's hardest conjunctions with a gesture of minimalist concrete poetry.
Who's Afraid of Red, Green and Blue
Andrew KertonThese roles demanded bravery and dignity and they accepted their roles, knowing that these stories needed to be told. At the core of Andrew Berardini's Letter from New York lies a phenomenological pleonasm: the need to employ "the real" in order to re-present "the real".
Garrett Phelan's Reflexology foot chart, Dead or Worse, maps the emotional and social issues with a premise that if pressure is applied to these areas such work can effect a physical change in the body.
Mike Schuh's Left, architectural intervention functions as catalyst for questioning the role of knowledge in shaping our daily experiences.
Roussel hired a private detective firm to deliver his instructions to Zo, the illustrator. Zo did not know who had hired him nor did he know what he was illustrating, other than the short descriptions Roussel wrote for each of the fifty-nine drawings which were then hidden in the gap of the uncut pages. These instructions are followed to direct ones gaze to the myths of artistic innovation and originality being the impetus for Ulrik Heltoft's 43. A parrot on its perch seemingly talking to a passer-by. No other people.
I would never have been the guy to step up and imitate something so obviously not my idea, but of course, in this fame starved world we live in, where the idea of being original is less intriguing than any abuse you will never take… David Deery's take on The irrelevance of originality.
it was very close that a moment of inspiration made me actually produce the work, but I came to my senses again, opened my bag, took out the dicta- phone and switched it off before I boarded the plane. Henning Lundkvist thinks about "crossing the atlantic" or "a voyage over the atlantic" or something like that.
But back to the space. The white cube, without going into its history, had the notion of clearing out all unneeded or wanted disturbances - only the works, alone.Is this a beginning? Leif Magne Tangen muses on science fiction & the conditions of production.
Kevin Kirwan continuously documents what is around him, creating a narrative based in both fact and fiction. Untitled (Cat) considers the insignificant and places it alongside popular culture phenomena that have become ingrained into our collective psyche.
Using nature and references to pop culture Kevin Rodgers' Hole addresses romantic obsessions such as stalking and fan clubs.
A moment of collective euphoria exploded when the first person had the courage to take one. Fermín Jiménez Landa provokes his audience to practice stealing or vandalism in Mon/Fri Sat/Sun.
You can squint, you can stare, but these bridges, that you know are there, are not there. Or, they're just there. Just on the edge in the corner, glinting sunlight like a forgetting dream. Neil Bickerton wants an infinite lattice of invisibling bridges in Orange.
In Celia Perrin Sidarous' Lima & Hand and Window, Montreal one moves through an interiority and exteriority; the revealing of dog's ear passage along with what appears to be the opening of the window each being at the threshold of exchange.
In Unrecorded Interview, Tessa Giblin tells the story of the Suzuki brothers spending an hour and a half in the Project Arts Centre, speaking amongst themselves and an Edirol, to decide what exactly they could infer from the artworks to the readers of ANAL, who have most likely never seen the exhibition about exhibitions.
I think that at that point she was willing to be like "You win, Universe. This is over. I just won't talk to him ever again." And she didn't. He never called, and they never saw each other again. Lauren Wetmore tells us What happens when Yellow and Blue Makes Green as told by Mike Schuh.
An inventory of objects which seems to challenge the spectators' memory and attention. Jacqueline Forzelius at Sils, a project space based in Rotterdam.
Now I know how looks milk, Lee Welch presents an exclusive new work in the periodical that explores the difficulty of translation, meaning and understanding.
Experiential consciousness, touted comprehension, blind faith. Kate Jackson embroiders drawings of person doing what person does best for a limited edition of ANAL's cover.
Based in Rotterdam, ANAL is an international periodical devoted to a playful discourse presented by forward-thinking writers, artists, critics & curators.
DONE TO A DEAD END & THE DEAD OR ALIVE SALE
by Giles Bailey and Martijn in't VeldThe characters:
RONALD: A Dutch man.
JOSEPH: A British man.
The time: The present.
The scene:
Scene: RONALD’s home on a dark evening. The Room is lit by a single lamp that hangs above the table. The room is minimally furnished, a bare wooden floor, white walls. A human-sized palm tree in a big tub is prominent to the left of the room, a replica of a painting by Jackson Pollock hangs on the wall to the right. To the centre right of the stage there is a round formica table with three chairs around it, all of light colour. On the left a liquor cabinet which is well stocked. Against the back wall is a cabinet with a record player, some documents and records.
The door to the room is half open.
RONALD and JOSEPH are seated at the table, RONALD in chair(R), JOSEPH in chair(L).
RONALD is reading a red-bound book.
JOSEPH rises and ranges about the room listlessly. He picks up a photograph of RONALD that
is lying on the cabinet. He stares at it.RONALD
(without looking up, remaining focused on his book)
What do I look like?JOSEPH
You look like a scholar.Scrutinizing it closely
Smoldering into the camera.
RONALD
(Still not looking up)
Do I wear glasses?JOSEPH
Indeed.RONALD
Am I waving at you?JOSEPH
Yes.RONALD
Does smoldering mean smile?JOSEPH
It means to burn slowly with no flame.RONALD
(finally looking up)
That is not a very nice thing to say.JOSEPH
(Hurriedly, to appease him)
No, this is a compliment, burning like the embers of the campfire...
He pauses as if summoning up the words.
the hot cherry of a rope set aflame... the coals of a sauna.
RONALD
Wow, you are making an effort to get me back in the comfort zoneHe closes his book and places it on the table.
OK, I am back in front of the fireplace. Now tell me a story.
JOSEPH
Sure.
RONALD
Feel free to dismiss the request if you feel like.
JOSEPH
No, it's fine.
He joins RONALD at the table.
Are you ready?
RONALD
I heard somebody say the other day “I was born ready." but apparently he still had to learn the words a little after that before he could say it. But yes.
JOSEPH
So, in the delirium of a drunken stumble through the Dublin night town the protagonists swam in the fearsome phantasmagoria of a warm, hallucinatory world.
JOSEPH’s telephone rings. He answers it and walking to the corner of the room conducts a conversation that is barely audible. Idly RONALD echos JOSEPH’s half of the conversation while he toys with his glass and leans back on his chair.
RONALD
Your keys... that is unfortunate... yes last time we came back from the meeting with alexis... you were there already... oh shit... yes i guess... what did they look like?.. hmm... yeah... that is weird no?.. you can’t...?.. ah shit... so... so but the but but... the door is open to the studio right?.. no yes... yeah... hmm... is there anything i can do to help you?
(losing track he looks over his shoulder at JOSEPH, straining to hear what he is saying)
At this moment actual life is living faster than the protagonist can speak.
Concluding his conversation JOSEPH returns to the table placing his telephone back in to his pocket.
JOSEPH
(taking a seat)
We return to the Dublin night town. A man,
RONALD
(interrupting)
Yes, please.
JOSEPH
(ignoring him)
The world,
RONALD
But perhaps you can pour me a drink. Before we start.
JOSEPH
OK, OK.
He walks over to the liquor cabinet and hurriedly mixes a drink. He returns to the table with it and places it down before RONALD.
Right.
RONALD
Great. Thanks.
JOSEPH
A man,
RONALD
(raising his glass)
Cheers to the dead homies.
He drinks.
JOSEPH
(aggravated by the interruption)
Yes, yes. Right.
He pauses, trying to regain the focus of his story
(with a big sigh)
A man, the world and a gramophone. The gramophone croaks incomprehensibly.
RONALD
Why are the man and the gramophone separate from the world?
JOSEPH
Agitated by being interrupted, glares at him.
RONALD
(hurriedly)
You can answer that later. Sorry to interrupt.
RONALD’s phone rings. He answers it and walks out of the room.
JOSEPH roles his eyes in exasperation. With clearly escalating rage he rises, takes the two glasses and book lying on the table and places them on the seat of the middle chair (M) . As if to remove the obstacle it presents he begins heaving the heavy dining table from between their chairs.
JOSEPH
(struggling with the table)
What the fuck?
The unaccustomed weight causes him to wince and the table topples over, crashing upside down.
Motherfucker! What the fuck?He hauls it to the back of the room by the legs and drags RONALD’s chair over to close the gap left by the table
What the fuck?! S.O.B!He takes his glass from the chair(M) and shaking his head walks to the liquor cabinet to make himself a drink. He sips in silence, a pained expression on his face.
RONALD reenters and sits back down on his chair seemingly unaware that the room has been reconfigured.
(accusatively)
I've lost the thread of my story.
RONALD
What does S.O.B mean?
JOSEPH
Son of a... well, maybe you can guess.
RONALD
I can.
JOSEPH
(with sarcasm)
Great.
Returning to his chair he sits and stares at the ground.
RONALD
But you were in the world with a gramophone or something?
JOSEPH
(looking up)
True.Silence.
(having reflected and gathered himself)
I remembered this: Though Twemlow is introduced to the reader as being like the table at the Veneerings’ dinner party, he comes to reflect a wise way of thinking.
RONALD
What is being like the table?
JOSEPH
It's a description of a character from ‘Our Mutual Friend’ by Charles Dickens. Actually, in the book he is described as being the table.
RONALD
Nice.
JOSEPH
Or specifically the leaf of a dining table.
RONALD
I think Raimundus Malasauskas once posed the question if a table could curate an exhibition.
JOSEPH
Did he conclude anything?
RONALD
He only posed the question. It was an interview. I can’t remember the answer.
JOSEPH
Was it in a specific context?
RONALD
A magazine, but I like to think they were probably sitting opposite of each other at a table.
JOSEPH
I see.
RONALD
The table being in the middle as a posed problem or theme perhaps… which directs a course for the dialogue.
A long pause.
RONALD
(suddenly)
Jeweettoch
JOSEPH
I'm sorry?
RONALD
You know the dilly.
JOSEPH
Um, I'm a little lost here.
RONALD
It’s some slang common in Rotterdam. Jeweettoch. Jay dilla, je weet.
JOSEPH
Care to translate?
RONALD
Je-weet-toch: you-know-right... what the deal is.
Abruptly changing the subject.
What are you having to drink?
JOSEPH
Vodka and apple juice. And you?
RONALD
(Admiring the illustration of people in Czechoslovakian national dress that decorate the side of his glass)
I don’t know but I do know that Czechoslovakian woman is in it up to her waist.
JOSEPH
(In incomprehension)
My word! Care to elaborate?
RONALD
(Ignoring his question)
Please, what do you mean with "my word"?
JOSEPH
My word is an exclamation. Like "my word!"
He mimes shock, his hands upraised.
Good heavens! Etcetera.
RONALD
Holy moly?
JOSEPH
Exactly. “My word” is a bit archaic. Nice though, right?
RONALD
(bewildered)
You want me to guess your word? pyramid!
JOSEPH
Good try.
RONALD
Shit.
He pauses.
It is probably the most archaic of all words.
(With enthusiasm)
Chair! I say your word is chair.
JOSEPH
(mysteriously)
It could well be.
Pause.
Actually, the exclamation “my word” comes from "upon my word" so that would be wholly fitting.
RONALD
Yes... Comfortably
JOSEPH
Upon my words. Though, I doubt that there is just one word... coming from beneath me.
RONALD
Now I still haven’t heard your story. Or have I?
JOSEPH
Oh right. My story was an adaptation of a fragment of another, A bit borrowed and perverted.
He stands and paces wagging a finger.
(with great self-importance)
I will parcel with the following: There is a diagram. Thus: He indicates a point in the air.
The man,
He indicates another.
The world,
And a third.
and a gramophone. A handsome triangle.
He draws a triangle in the air with his index finger.
RONALD
(playing along)
A very handsome one I must say.
JOSEPH
I'm not so sure, (and then reflecting) I'm not so happy with the man. He is a bit defined.
RONALD
(helpfully)
A person? A dog? A table? A discussion?
JOSEPH
(not listening)
Perhaps a reader?
RONALD
Another world?
JOSEPH
A reader, the world, and the gramophone.He redraws the triangle experimentally.
RONALD
OK it is your story.
JOSEPH
That is very gallant of you.
RONALD
What are they doing?
JOSEPH
Well... information flows between them I suppose. Really, the reader just uses them to locate herself.
RONALD
Who is turning the gramophone around?
JOSEPH
Well, the gramophone is just croaking back some history.
RONALD
Is the reader both spinning the gramophone and the world to find his own position?
JOSEPH
(with uncertainty)
It's hard to know. I don't think she can spin the world. What do you think?
RONALD
I think he can give it some good can of whoop ass. To make it loose its mind.
JOSEPH
(irritably)
Don't you think that might be a little futile? The world looks huge from here.
RONALD
(picking up his book again)
Depends on which scale you look at it.
JOSEPH
That's true, but I can only talk about the view from here.
RONALD
(opening his book)
Sure but I don’t want to be sitting in the corner where the punches are falling, water spilling all around you know. Shit gets apocalyptic.
Pause.
(putting down his book)
There is record behind you. It is called ‘The War of the Worlds.’
JOSEPH
Oh, yes?
He walks over to the record player, locates the LP and puts it on. They listen for a while.
My step-grandmother has a record player that is a huge piece of furniture
RONALD
And the only record she plays on it is War of the Worlds?
JOSEPH
I used to pay it a great deal of heed because it had all the VHS tapes stacked upon it. I suspect it hasn't been used for 15 years. Minimum.
RONALD
Nice. Where is it now?
JOSEPH
(ignoring the question)
And I doubt she owns ‘War of the Worlds’. Have you ever heard the Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’?
RONALD
That is not the radioplay or?
JOSEPH
Yes.
RONALD
Unfortunately I have never.
JOSEPH
It's meant to be great. Did you hear that when the Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ was broadcast people thought it was real and it provoked genuine panic.
RONALD
Yes. Great. A great example to show the influence of media on people... or basically how you become totally familiar with a surrounding which then can totally mislead you
JOSEPH
But I don't think these surroundings were that familiar, because it was a time where radio was still potent in this way
RONALD
I don’t know, is it happening now? It is a known unknown.
JOSEPH
Totally uncertain.
RONALD
Opens his mouth as if to interject.
JOSEPH
Shh, I'm waiting.
He listens intently to the record.
I'm pretty sure it's just a record.
RONALD
(with sarcasm)
Thank God. OK now you need to do it on a bigger scale, but still to mislead some leading press agencies can get you quite far. I think... Even it just shifts your world for a tiny bit.
JOSEPH
(looking at the table, hand on chin and with great seriousness)
Maybe you could do it with Twitter somehow.
Pause.
Did you hear this thing about Rage Against the Machine getting to number one?
RONALD
No, but now I don’t know if you tell me trues or lies.
JOSEPH
No, one hundred percent true. Christmas number one in the UK. ‘Killing in the Name of’. All because of Twitter and Facebook apparently
RONALD
Wow... Hmm.
He returns to his book and they sit together in silence.
Curtain.
DONE TO A DEAD END & THE DEAD OR ALIVE SALE is supported by the Piet Zwart Institute - Willem de Kooning Academy & Fonds BKVB.
TELEPHONE BOOTH – The Second Call
Wednesday 7:30 pm 8 June 2011
"Originally we thought they might have found a new horizon, and had been double-crossed by the company, or else they'd faked their deaths so they could continue the investigation under the radar, but now this other time zone means we must start thinking in completely different directions."
A new work by Serena Lee, Loud and Clear, a performance for voice, video, walkie talkies, and interrupted visibility. Real-time becomes unhinged in this long-distance fiasco, as we are doomed to track a shifting horizon with outdated equipment and no reliable means of measurement. Everything rests on the hope that on a clear day, you can see forever.
TELEPHONE BOOTH – The Third Call
Wednesday 7:30 pm 6 July 2011
“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we‘re alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments.”
–Don DeLillo, Point Omega, 2010
Fergus Feehily’s paintings, which are very much made things and at times are not actually painted at all, offer a complex experience, where what is held back is often as important as what is revealed. Feehily’s increasingly improvised painting practice is both nuanced and quietly insistent.
ANAL
The ContibutorsAndrew Berardini is a writer in Los Angeles who has recently contributed to Frieze, LA Weekly, and Art Lies. He's currently Senior Editor at Artslant and LA Editor for Mousse. Previous curatorial projects include original exhibitions with Camilo Ontiveros, Dave Muller, Bruce Nauman, Yoshua Okon and Raymond Pettibon. He recently penned a monograph on artist Richard Jackson forthcoming from the Rennie Collection.
Neil Bickerton is an artist. He lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.
Mike Crane is an artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City in 2005, and has since exhibited his work in the US and abroad. He has participated in Residencies at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami and the Banff centre in Alberta, Canada. He has held screenings and exhibitions at Anthology Film Archives in New York, the Colony Theater in Miami, The Bass museum in Miami Beach and Manifest Gallery in Ohio. He is currently working on an experimental narrative feature produced at the Banff Centre.
David Deery is Low Fidelity funny. The "street artist" of stand up. The Cardboard King. The Burrito kid. Nerd master. Pimp of the ping pong palace. Class clown. The Dork from Ork. The most famous unknown comedian of all time and talented couch surfer extraordinaire. (thank you spell check) I like to cook, paint boobs, and make music.
Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer, freelance critic and independent curator, as well as a part-time cheesemonger. He is a regular contributor to ArtPapers, FlashArt, Frieze, and the Visual Artists Newsletter Ireland, as well as writing for ArtReview, Art and Australia, Circa and online for Artforum. Recent curatorial projects include Simile: Lucy Conochie at Studio 1.1 in London, and the Hayward Touring group exhibition Quiet Revolution. www.growgnome.com
Kate Jackson is a visual artist based in Canada. She recently finished a 3 year artist residency at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Her work has been shown at numerous galleries across Canada and internationally and is part of many private collections. Jackson has received awards for her work including The Artist Project Untapped Award 2009, The Helen Frances Gregor Scholarship -2008, OCC Scholarship-2008, and Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition Best in Show - 2007. Jackson studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design in the Material Art and Design Program (1999-2006) and also the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1999). She currently lives in Banff, Alberta.
Andrew Kerton, born London, 1981. Graduated with a BA in Sculpture from Brighton University in 2003 and attended de Ateliers in Amsterdam in 2004/5. From 2008-9 he was co-artistic programmer at independent performance and live art space, Miss Micks, in Kreuzberg, Berlin. He is a founding member of Keren Cytter's touring dance company D.I.E Now (Dance International Europe Now) who have appeared at Tate Modern, London; The Kitchen, NY and Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Andrew works in video and live performance and is currently based in Berlin.
Kevin Kirwan was born in Dublin, Ireland 1985. He studied at the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. He received his BA in Fine Art in 2009. His work explores the narrative possibilities between people, places and things. By continuously documenting what is around him, relationships form between image, video, object and sourced media. These connections between seemingly inconsequential documentations create an arching narrative that in turn eclipses the individual fragments. The narrative, based in both fact and fiction, investigates the peaks and troughs of human experience from internal to external. It considers the insignificant and places it alongside popular culture phenomena that have become ingrained into our collective psyche. His work has been shown frequently over the last three year in shows including Gracelands I am Sparticus 2010, Dromahair, Leitrim (2010) ‘Everything is so superb and breathtaking...’,Basement Project Space, Cork (2010) Bouvard et Pécuchet, Lighthouse Cinema, Smithfield, Dublin (2009) Salon Temporary Space, Halifax, UK (2009) PROJECTOR, Four Gallery, Dublin (2009). He recently curated Six Works Daniel Gustav Cramer, Goethe Institut Irland (2010). www.kevinkirwan.net
Fermín Jiménez Landa. Pamplona, 1979. Lives and Works between Valencia and Barcelona, Spain. Some of his solo exhibitions are Ahora todos los chicos están llorando, Centro Huarte, Pamplona (2009), Actos oficiales, Espai Montcada, CaixaForum, Barcelona (2008); and from his collective shows; Antes que todo. CA2M, Madrid (2010), INJUVE, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (2006 & 2009) and Entornos Próximos, ARTIUM, Vitoria (2006). Graduated in the Fine Arts faculty of Valencia, he also studied at the Anotati Scholí of Athens and has attended workshops with Robert Morris, Esther Shalev Gerz, Rogelio López Cuenca, Daniel G. Ándujar, Francesc Torres, Jon Mikel Euba, Douglas Ashford.
Serena Lee is a Canadian artist based in the Netherlands. Touring cultural politics and value systems, in the key of pop vernacular, her practice encompasses moving image, sound, bargain bin objects, performance, and text. Most recently, she has presented work with the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and along the Vistula river in Warsaw. Serena holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, and certification from Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music in Piano Performance. She has been active with Canadian institutions such as XPACE Cultural Centre, Gendai Gallery, the Images Festival, and InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre. Currently, she is a resident of the Master of Fine Art Programme at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.
Henning Lundkvist lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. He has presented his work in museums, galleries, theatres and non art-related spaces throughout europe, as well as in the Middle East and in South and North America. In 2010 his work was exhibited in several group shows, as well as in solo shows at Lumiar Cité (Lisbon) and Public Surface (Stockholm).
Kelly Lycan is an installation and photo based artist residing in Vancouver, Canada. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and her Master of Fine Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. She consistently investigates links between market culture and visual culture. How value is created and how it shifts through system of cultural capital and consumer culture is relevant to Lycan’s practice. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in Canada and the US. She is also a member of Instant Coffee, a service oriented artist collective that builds social structures, where ideas, materials and actions are explored. Instant Coffee has exhibited Canada, South America, Europe and the USA.
Leif Magne Tangen, born 1978 in Reine in Lofoten, Norway, lives and works in Leipzig, Germany. He is a funding member of D21 Kunstraum Leipzig, its first curator and currently co-programmer of its Film series (titled Reihe Experimentalfilm). He is former director of PIEROGI Gallery and of the Fotogalleriet Foundation in Oslo, Norway. His largest project up to date is the science fiction novel PHILIP (written in collaboration with Mark Aerial Waller, Cosmin Costinas, Rosemary Heather, Francis McKee, David Reinfurt, Steve Rushton and Heman Chong).
Quinlan's preoccupations pulsate with a rigour, pouring over subjects that land in the vicinity of art making, spaces close to its mode of entry and the timing of its arrival. Much of her time is spent considering the tone set at entering an artwork and thinking about the rhythm that keeps you buoyant until the time for meaning to step forward and something tangible to seep through. Her work stands as an invitation to examine our deep interiority and the tenuous border that binds thought to utterance. It drifts out to the edges where the speech that escapes us hangs in the air, bridging the distance between one and another. Linda Quinlan was born in Ireland and is currently undertaking an MFA at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. Recent exhibitions include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, AutoItalia, London, the Glucksman Gallery, Cork and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. Selected residencies include, Picture This, Bristol, Fondazione Ratti, Como and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Celia Perrin Sidarous is an artist working in Montreal, Canada. Celia holds a BFA - Major in Photography, from Concordia University. In 2008 she was awarded the Prix VU - Jeune Photographe, in collaboration with the Consulat général de France à Québec, as well as the Gabor Szilasi Award in Studio Arts. Her work has been presented in Montreal, Toronto and Hungary, and has been published in periodicals in Canada and abroad, notably in Australia, China and Italy. Her latest solo exhibition, Trouées, was presented in late 2009 at Les Territoires Centre d'art contemporain in Montreal. She was most recently selected in the context of the Magenta Foundation's 2010 Flash Forward competition. In 2010-2011 she will be spending some time as an artist-in-residence, in Banff, Canada and in Eastern Finland.
Garrett Phelan (1965) is based in Dublin. He has developed a distinctive art practice that directly engages the audience with immersive, ambitious site-specific drawing projects, FM radio broadcasts and sculptural installations, with a more recent return to animation and video projection. What unites his work generally concerns itself with the grey area that occurs as information, experience and influence are assimilated yet a final position has not yet been found. Phelan took part in the Manifesta 5, European Biennial, Spain, the 32nd Art Basel Statement and recently represented Ireland at the 4th Auckland, Triennial, New Zealand amongst many other international exhibitions at major venues including Project Space, Amsterdam, ICA, London, P.S.1, MOMA, New York.
Kevin Rodgers is a visual artist whose practice draws upon provisional formalism, political subcultures and the rhetoric of radical individualism. A 2008 graduate of the master of fine arts program at the University of Guelph, Rodgers is currently a doctoral candidate in art and visual culture at the University of Western Ontario—one of the few programs of its kind in Canada. Rodgers has shown in several group exhibitions across Canada, the United States and Belgium, including shows at Artspeak, Vancouver; and the Stride Gallery, Calgary. His solo exhibitions include Goodwater Gallery, Toronto; and an upcoming exhibition at Galerie Tatjana Pieters in Ghent, Belgium (December 2010).
Mike Schuh is an artist living in Chicago. His sculptures, videos and architectural interventions function as catalysts for questioning the impetus to make meanings of the world and the role of knowledge in shaping our daily experiences. His work has been exhibited at GOLDEN (Chicago), the Sullivan Galleries (Chicago), Boots Contemporary Art Space (St. Louis) and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, among others.
Aislinn Thomas currently lives in Toronto, ON. A recent graduate of the University of Guelph, her multidisciplinary art practice includes video, performance and text-based work. Aislinn is the 2010 recipient of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts C.D. Howe Scholarship for Art and Design. She prefers quiet mornings and tea.
Joe Walker and Pat Walker started collaborating as Walker and Walker in 1989. In 2005 they co-represented Ireland at the 51st Venice Biennale. Shows include I’m Spactacus, Gracelands, Dromahair, Ireland (2010); Ill heard, ill seen, Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery, Reno (2008); Northern Lights, Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy (2007); ‘Til I Die, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York (2007); Looking In While Looking Out Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville (2006); Presence, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London (2005); RHA Gallery, Dublin (2005); Time's Arrow, Rotunda Gallery, New York (2005); Floating ip, Manchester (2003); Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2003); How Things Turn Out, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2002); Are We There Yet?, Glassbox, Paris (2001); Propositions, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia (2000).
Lee Welch is anal retentive.
Lauren Wetmore is best known for her contribution of performative sculpture to the inaugural, and sole, episode of O. Verily productions’ reality television show The Suffering Channel (2004). Her practice is characterized by a combination of extreme technical skill, an interest in monumental subject matter, and a commitment to unusual materials; namely self-made biological waste products. The success of her first solo show, Veterans of the Private Evacuations (Bilirubin Kunstinstitut, Berlin, 2000), was over-shadowed by the World Health Organization’s closure of her second show, Petitio Principii (Galleria Coprophagia, Barcelona, 2006), due to “public health concerns.” She lives and works in the Stonborough House, Vienna.