|CommonPlace Book | Kathleen Fox

For Conversations in Media

[fuckyeahexistentialism]

To those who do not know that the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.

Bertolt Brecht  (via eisbecherovka)

[quotemadness]

Nothing is more real than nothing.

Samuel Beckett (via quotemadness)

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Reflection on Nikita Gale‘s lecture

Nikita’s lecture for me comes back to fundamentals in poetry. In poetry, one of the way we understand a poem is by analyzing what the poet is withholding and disclosing. Nikita has found agency as an artist through these things - she withholds, she’s opaque. Nikita was a great note to end on for this semester because these last couple of months, I’ve really been struggling with the concept of withholding. I’m much more of a discloser/explainer/over-sharerer and my theatre practice things, I’ve been struggling with the concept of play. I  struggle with indirectness. I struggle with letting things sit. This semester was about becoming comfortable with the unknown; the opaque. Not everything is going to be accessible to me, not everything is meant to be accessible to me, not everything is meant to be accessible, period. And that interesting and important and unsettling and something I need to explore more as an artist, but seeing Nikita’s work let me be okay with the opaque. 

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

I have the right to be opaque

Nikita Gale

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Consent is commodified

Nikita Gale

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

You developed unrealistic expectations of repair

Nikita Gale

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

In this recorded sound work performance, a trumpet  one type of musical horn –  imitates car-related sounds; this performance comprises a series of perceptual shifts between figure and ground within an automotive soundscape – keynote or ground sounds (the hum of a motor) are speckled with soundmarks (the sound of screeching tires, the sound of a transmission shifting gears) and, in some moments within the composition, drift entirely into signals (the sound of a siren, the sound of an engine blowing out). Influenced by post-modern sound art and jazz of the 60s, the performance is consistently punctuated by the soundmark of breaths taken to continue playing the trumpet – a constant but mostly unconsciously experienced sign of the presence and limitations of the body in the process of producing the work itself. All of these sounds coalesce and disperse to produce a sonic landscape that oscillates between images of crashes, racing, bodies, and scenic transcendent drives.

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Desire is Data

Nikita Gale

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Reflection on Neha Choksi’s lecture

I had asked Neha after her lecture about the role of performance and liveness takes on in her artwork, since a lot of the final presentation of her work is a video installation. She talked about the necessity for her audience to watch the entirety of her work in order to have truly seen the piece. I guess the thing I was more interested in was why video instead of performance? Her work has a live-ness to it and I wish it’s presentation was equally as live. Like, why did no one watch her on the ice boat? Why did no one watch her de-leaf the tree? Why was the final format going to be video? Some of her work was for performance - like the dance and anesthesia, but I guess I’m curious how she makes the distinction between what needs to be performed live vs what needs to be witnessed through the screen.

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

“I love the sun and enjoy each sunset knowing the sun will return. The Sun’s Rehearsal, with its pristine monumental sunset imagery transformed into a peeling ruin over the course of the exhibition, is an encounter with a future loss, one which the sun stages daily, as if making ready for the very last time it will ever set. The curtained hollow is a stark reminder of and an anticipatory memorial to the moment of the final fatal sunset, beyond which there will be no human recollection of its beauty. Hynoptic and cyclical, dancer Alice Cummins’ performance directly engages the auratic installation of the sinking sun to ask urgent questions about the life of an ever-warming planet and the life of an aging body.” — Neha Choksi _______________________________

Neha’s work here has me thinking about the role of destruction. It brings me to Heiner Muller’s quote “"The main impulse in my work is destruction –– destroying other people’s playthings. I believe in the necessity of negative impulses." Neha’s work is not about negative impulses though. I’m not even sure it’s about destruction even though I think destruction is an element. Perhaps destruction isn't the right word, perhaps the correct word is “negative.” Neha’s work has something to do with lacking, like in this piece why does Alice destroy the sunset.

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

The day the sun dies is the day art disappears

Neha Choksi, (I’m not 100% sure she said this but it was definitely mentioned during her lecture)

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Don't establish aggressive tendencies in yourself

Neha Choksi, about not kicking the rock

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Ice Boat __________________

So Neha’s work, specifically on this project had me thinking back to Spenser’s work. I wonder how Neha uses task and time in her work. Waiting for the ice to melt clearly must have taken a very long time, but she had a task at hand and was strict with it.

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Aphorism: a pithy observation that contains a general truth, such as, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it.”.

[kathleenfoxcommonplacebook]

Leaf Fall shows a troupe’s denuding of a rural peepul tree over the course of a single day, leaving behind an autumnal sprig. The surviving leaf is made special through the day’s relentless process of subtraction, and it is this process of absenting and elimination that propel the emotive force of Leaf Fall. In Leaf Fall, I was interested in gaining access to that single last remaining leaf, in perceiving it in its singularity, and the only way to do that, for me, was to remove the presence of the other leaves. Similarly Petting Zoo/Minds to Lose was also about evacuating presence. The text spoken in Leaf Fall was generated through a poetic distillation of over 40 pages of transcribed interviews with crews, actors and friends.Leaf Fall is the second work in a trilogy on reticence, absenting, withdrawing, and disengaging. The other two are Minds to Lose and Iceboat.