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To
the artists
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Friends!
Greetings!
Given that we share the same small planet, it seemed like it might be a good
idea to meet. Histories proclaim different reasons for how we became
strangers. We could end it at that. But why? I want to know you. You are
beautiful- carrying words and ideas I don’t yet have the mind to understand. |
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To the reader
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Alexandros asked me
to speak for myself. So I do, yes, as an american and a foreigner in my home
in Athens. I also speak as a me: a changing, struggling creature on earth.
The questions of how one can define one’s self- while at the same time being
defined de facto by others based on some generic determinant- are at the
heart of an exhibition bringing a show of one national group to be viewed in
another nation. I think, for example, that Alexandros liked the idea that
I’m from the United States; that huge nation with some remaining ability and
will to wield its economic and military strength violently towards its own
imperial ends. A lion trampling the rainbow, and everything underneath. Our
idiotic current president proclaimed an axis of evil. America, naturally
lies in some purely good spectrum, while Iran falls into, um, evil. That
most of the world feels, if not the opposite, than at least that evil also
lies heavily over the US heartland, has not been a deterrent to a black and
white president. So here I am speaking as the voice of the American
Imperialist.
This is not how I wanted it.
I want to speak instead as an artist- my chosen, fluid identity. I insist on
this because, the problems that appear in the “art” context address the idea
of context altogether. An expanded definition of materials, space and time,
questions of seeing and perspective, and an understanding of differing
systems for determining value (good, beautiful), are the very tools we might
use to imagine, and truly create the world in a different way. Play and
possibility should enter into dialogues that have grown rigid,
unimaginative, and destructive. I will make my case for going, all of us, to
art school.
Instead of having to speak to you as the voice of American Imperialism, I
want communication over a different dimension where we are lovers and
collaborators in this large sculptural work called earth. We collaborate on
this sculpture already, but without consciousness, and it’s not taking the
shape it could. Let me explain what I mean by sculpture-
The huge machinery, the energy consumed to move vast, but not endless,
materials from one part of the globe to another. The digging, mining, and
sucking of essences formed over geological time. Enough of us pull the soul
from the earth to set it on fire. This is not what I had in mind: The
changing movement of water, new currents, lost ice- Solid to liquid. Too
much water and too little. The fascinating manifestations of heat. We set
off our global sculptural experiments and witness their consequences.
Consider the sculptural idea of potential movement, and stored or latent
energetic principles. Money, for example, holds value only through common
belief, and yet we let it move devastation and privilege around the world.
Meanwhile all the trivial deadly acts of consumption we participate in each
day present us with an ignored and yet graphic demonstration of arithmetic
and multiplication. I buy, you buy, he buys, she buys- and energy is
consumed, trash produced, and money moves along its unbalanced journey. The
exponential effects are just beginning to be recognized by scientists and
economists. Isn’t it interesting how many little acts together become a
catastrophe? |
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To
the artists
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How many
private acts of witness, of refuge, of condemned flowers blooming and of
gorgeous proclamations made to spite their condemnation, how many tiny hands
together become the joy of this world? I am dizzy with your courage. Will
you recognize this in me when you see me on the street |
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To the reader
Its hard to be inside a sculpture, to be a manifestation of it as well as a
participant. Its hard to get some perspective on what is going on. I think
we have to exercise our perspective-shifting capabilities. This is part of
our art. I want everyone to have the experience of being grotesquely foreign
at least once for an extended period. Not knowing how the door opens or how
to use the toilet are just a few of the choreographic humiliations to live
through. But far more profound is the acrobatics that slowly transform your
mind. The realization, sometimes painful, of a thousand unconscious and
rigid preconceptions of everything, never before challenged, that could be
shifted or even discarded. These include ideas about what is polite, what is
dirty, what is family, what is success, how one can or should live, and
even, why. Our thoughts are as solid as matter to sculpt, and have real
physical consequences for how we shape our world. To shift the center away
from your point of orientation requires flexibility. Altering your own
paradigms is a sculptural act.
It is imperative to try-because we are running out of world. There is no
longer the option not to reach with more loving hands towards unknown
centers. Turn the pages of this book slowly and synchronise your breathing
with the rhythm of another center. Just as each city carries its own sense
of time, so does each person, and it takes some time to adjust. Don’t panic. |
To
the artists
I drink your poison,
you try on my clothes, I notice how fat we’ve become- even our jesus, you
show me the way the cross dominates the night sky, you offer flowers, and
terrible records of the darkness of men, I enter your tiny camera obscura,
as if offered access to the interior of your body, you place yourself on
postage stamps and show me your mother, she looks more like me than you do,
all the moments of a life time recorded- the simple things and people
observed, how I cried when I met your father- and still you are hidden.
Maybe, friend, its the veil. Sometimes I forget I’m wearing it. When will we
finally sit naked together? Just little naked people and the infinite sky.
JenniferNelson
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