I've just re-read my previous post. I need to adjust what I said about siding with the victim as explaining my current attraction to Bachmann*. I am a huge fan of Bachmann's work and have been since the 80s when I read her for the first time. In other words, I have had a strong attraction to her writing since then. And this comes from her extraordinary writing which demonstrates great psychological and poetic strength (in the best sense of the word) as well as an ability to transform language into something so agile that I had not necessarily thought possible before reading her. You would need to read Malina, her novel, to understand what I mean by victimhood in her. In some senses she is all about the victim, in that she embodies (in her characters and in her tragic premature death) what it is to be on the receiving end of brutality. But at the same time there is such an extraordinary power and strength (again, in the best sense of the words) to what she achieves and it is this unfathomable co-existence of weakness and confidence that baffles me and is one reason for my enormous admiration for her oeuvre.
She also happens to be one of Hirschhorn's mentioned preferred authors.
*Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), Austrian writer, author of short stories, poetry, plays and a novel, Malina.
There's another blog post to be written which I don't yet have the wherewithal to compose. It's to do with looking and porn and what Hirschhorn (after Bataille) says about The Eye. And to do with siding with the victim (hence my current strong attraction to Bachmann) rather than with the perpetrator because it's an easier position to own up to. And it's to do with what Hirschhorn has to say about us all being both victims and perpetrators.
Porn and The Eye came up quite a bit in the discussion this evening. I was trying to formulate something but it's a long way off being a question yet.
The eye looks for the red, says TH.
I've been thinking about eyes and penetration.
And about those who feel assaulted by the banner.
And about a kind of resurgence of confidence I'm finding in myself about looking and showing.
All those old debates about the gaze and the gender of the viewer seem to be finding new relevance. And I've got a first year student who is making work investigating heterosexual masculinity.
As capitalism crumbles around our ears.
It's a good (exhilarating/frightening) time.
A good day.
Spent the morning making some work. When I had done what I'd wanted to do I got so excited I had trouble catching my breath. I made what I consider the most perfect piece of work I've ever made. I will show it at our open studios.
Then I went to said studios and spent the afternoon taking photos and putting up more banners and deciding what was going to go on them. In all (if I can get it all done before 25 October which is the first day of the Open Studios) I will have 5 new experiments of work to show.
What a good day it's been.
Then a talk by Juilan Stallabrass at Fabrica about Thomas Hirschhorn and 'The Incommensurable Banner'. JS was very good. Lots of factual information and background, a lot of which I already knew from my research but enough new stuff to keep it interesting. I was much heartened by seeing J there and having a nice chat with him about it all. We have arranged that he will come in to the gallery when I am doing one of my stints so that we can have more of a conversation about our thoughts about Hirschhorn's banner. I showed him my perfect piece of work and had no qualms saying I thought it perfect.
Brilliant to see some more of my Brighton Students there as well. Especially E and some of the first years whom I haven't met properly yet. Also exchanged emails with L at Sussex Uni this evening. She is going to bring their Visual Culture Society group down to the gallery to do a workshop with me in November.
Also spoke to J today who is going to come to see the exhibition and talk to me – and D has emailed me back to say that he will come down from Oxford too. He's doing a poetry gig on the South Bank for Modern Poetry in Translation involving John Berger so must find out about that.
All going well.
I'm firing on all cylinders.
Brrrrum brrruummmmm!!
I couldn't bear that picture of the gun being on my blog for longer than about an hour, so I've put a new picture up.
A visitor to the gallery on Saturday offered to bring in a picture of a fluffy kitten to stick onto the collective protest banner that visitors to the exhibition can contribute to. (This image was not donated by her but found by me online).
In amidst all of this experience I am finding that my ability to judge the tone of people's comments is weak. Did she really mean that a fluffy kitten would be a suitable counterbalance to the images on show on Hirschhorn's banner or was she being entirely facetious. It may seem obvious to you but at the moment I really can't tell.
It's the same with 'Max Loader' and his/her posts about the tin can (see below). To use a word like 'transfixed' to describe an interest in my discussion of 2- and 3-Dimensions appears to me to be rather exaggerated.
A gap has opened up in my interactions with others between their intentions and my receptiveness to those intentions. A widening which includes a muddying and mixing of friendliness and hostility.
But I can work with that. It's at the core.
Just some things I've observed over the past few days:
I heard a loud banging and when I looked down onto the street from a top floor window I saw a young lad, perhaps 12 years old, hitting a flint wall repeatedly with a long stick. Standing next to him was a much younger boy, perhaps about 6 years old, watching, motionless. The older boy was putting all his effort into attacking the wall although there was nothing to be seen on or around the wall that might have been his target other than the wall itself. When he had done enough hitting with the stick they both walked up the road a bit until the older lad stopped near a grass verge and with great concentration ground the toe of one of his shoes into the ground flattening the grass. He did this calmly several times on the same small patch of ground until he felt he had stopped the growing.
A tiny boy about 5 years old dressed in an immaculately pressed bright white karate suit flew by me silently on a scooter near the seafront road. Several times he measured out the breadth of the car salesroom forecourt with his two small wheels. The words 'avenging' and 'angel' came to mind.
Outside the Londis shop a cluster of adults laughing happily after their meal out in the Italian restaurant next door kept an amused eye on the two boys. Imitating computer game fighting these two were extremely skilfully raising clenched fists and pointed toes to each others chins without ever as much as touching each other and equally skilfully ducking to avoid the acted out blows. The sounds coming from their mouths were aping simulated explosion noises and imagined gasping reactions to violent hitting. "Ah", the adults' faces said, "look at the boys enjoying themselves".
In the park earlier this evening, three boys, around 8 or 9 years old walking conspiratorially close to each other. As I overtook them one was twirling a gun around his middle finger. Presumably a replica, but by the evident weight of its metal in his small hand, definitely not a toy. I stared long and hard at it in his hand as I passed them, as if to say "I can see what you've got, I've noticed you" but didn't say anything to them. A bit further on up the path I turned to look back at them. Looking slightly more agitated now, the one in possession of the weapon was stuffing it into his little backpack whilst his friend was saying something in a raised voice about his big sister.
