Last week we had the MFA Mid-Residency Exhibition. For it, I decided to continue my investigation of text as art, the next step on from Fuzzy Pictures, and produced an MP3 of my voice, describing art encounters (see tumblr). I was thinking back to a conversation I had with Mentor/Genius friend and recalled 'Stendhal Syndrome', then I was talking to her about Freud's Apres Coup/Deferred Action and discussed this with Leslie Dick in relation to the work. I was reading Saussure and Barthes for Semiotics. Then I was reading 'Reading For the Plot', and pretty much all the above turned up the in first chapter. Which freaked me out. In the space of days everything I was encountering was repeating itself elsewhere. This can mean you are onto something and of course, it can be a red-herring. How does one recoup from such an overload? Well I went from a swim in the school's pool. I did that thing where you lie in the pool just looking up, floating. The sky was cloudless, and for a moment everything connected, before it dissolved.
I have that kind of tight feeling that I am not getting enough done, making art is taking too long, I'm making mistakes, correcting myself, taking time, but I want to go faster. I'm thinking about how I could apply for shows and send work out there into the world, but then I want things to connect properly before I do. My brain is constantly pushing and pulling me. I want to do this, I want to do that. I cry frequently...
Husband and I are currently house sitting in LA, for Kaucyila again, and I'm rather enjoying it. There is a buzz to LA; although motor-based, perhaps its more of a car purr. The LA buzz/car-purr is so hard to hear sometimes that it can feel like the act of hunting the buzz can be too daunting a task. Not so this time. We've had fun. I think we are really thinking about moving to LA for next semester. On Sunday I went to a screening of Liz Goldwyn's Pretty Things documentary film, exploring the lives of the 1940s-60s queens of burlesque. Of most interest to me was Goldwyn's subject position in the film - the film is cut with photographs she took of herself in collected burlesque outfits, learning burlesque dance routines in dance classes and from the queens themselves. It was very interesting, the research and area being rather aligned to one of my interest/areas. I bought her book 'Pretty Things' afterwards and spoke to her briefly, about emailing her. It would be wonderful to pick her brains. She was in conversation with Charlotte Cotton at the beginning too - Charlotte always being both lucid and humorous - with a new short haircut too.
Onwards with my artwork then, back to my ghost towns work - I'm counting down the days now to my Post-Studio cruxifiction on 14th November.
Husband has his down days, away from his home and friends, but this week he has been mountain biking and has been much happier, albeit with heat exhaustion! We got our car now, small engine and the seats go down, so he can put his bike in the back.
Yesterday there was a black widow spider underneath my door handle to my studio. I saw the red hour glass on the underside of its abdomen and everything.
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