BLEAK - a-n The Artists Information Company

Venue: O U I #2 BLEAK ACTIONS
Location

scatter v. & n.

v.t. Throw here and there (scatter seed; scatter gravel on road) ; cover by scattering (scatter road with gravel).

Bean left London (home) on the Thursday and at this junction, with this decision, between leaving and staying, performance happened. This ‘beginning’ is one from an infinity of starting points, staggered on a line of performance that seems to cut through her everyday life and so I see the beginnings, the kernels of this work, stretched and scattered all over the place, all over her history.

A chance meeting on a bridge in York happened on the Sunday (performance day proper). It was an accident finding her, and I think she felt accidently found too and so, on the bridge, another phase of performance begins to unravel.

She was wearing a black coat, with the hood up, scattered with white paint. She held masking tape off her wrist like a huge bracelet with a microphone trailing in the other hand. A small amp was attached like a holster at the hip.

This was the first (incidental) action I think I witnessed. A bridge wearing a hood held together by tape supporting a mic and an amp.

The second (incidental) action (that I shared) was a pre-tattoo herbal tea, slightly shaky (me not Bean) I was taking in her slightness and I was being reminded of that hard/soft thing that she has going on, that thing that she cannot help (because it is bio/graphical/logical) that makes what she does so un-heimlich (and no, she was not at home).

I see this image and try to trace back, she had been journeying and so I imagined her scattering and skimming along the motorway, in-between London and York, in between performing and not-performing, or forgetting that she was performing at all (and this was surely the point). The concept of the ‘image’ as destination is however surely not the point, it is the journey that counts; and I know this, we know this, BUT, Bean does make beautiful images. I know this is not her intention, and she will disagree with me when I use that word, I imagine her crossing them out.

These images are different, are clearly by-products of action, an action that goes out of its way to explore how to make work that transforms and that is not just an exercise in making images. And so I use the word ‘images’ with my usual caution and it is a cautiousness that I feel as I watch them appear.

I watched Bean appear some of the following images and they act as landmarks in a work where it would be easy to get lost. (get lost, remember we like this)

…London….York……a lay-by on the outer ring road…..a bridge…. a tattooists…a van…a march through York barefoot to a car park……masking tape makeshift shoes….masking tape makeshift bandage….small cuts on foots….small texts on palms of hand…..small voice on Dictaphone attached to upper left arm with yellow thread..small blade used to cut yellow thread…microphone arguing with pavement as it dragged between her legs…….a mic barking at an amp…an amp barking at a mic….left foot coloured in yellow careful not to contaminate the cut.

a. v. t. & i. Disperse, turn in dispersed flight, rout or be routed.

These images are scattered and I will turn the text back to them when and where I can. BUT the work is more than the sum of its visible parts and so I am writing about things I didn’t actually see but could not help seeing.

“Bean, I hope you don’t think I am psychoanalysing you, this text says more about me than it does you. I will keep going so that I don’t turn back on my (gut) feeling and hope that you follow me here.”

Deliberately they (the images) are accidental, they are scattered, scuffed, blurry and incomplete; this is a good thing, this is where I identify with them. I am scattered, scuffed, blurry and incomplete, but unlike Bean, I am too afraid to show it. I am thrown by these images, and at the same time I want to be thrown and to learn how to throw more. Laying more gravel on an uneven road, scattering more seeds into high winds.

I have to ask myself (because writing about Bean is writing about my self) what compels Bean (my self) to move, or any of us for that matter. Why is it necessary to be doing all of this stuff all of the time? Progressive time is putting our bodies under such strain. Covering this ground again and again, each time I make a performance I return to the same root, that is that it feels necessary, that IT IS NECESSARY. But, by what forces, conscious or unconscious are we necessarily routed? I notice that routed has rooted hiding behind it and this pleases me, it suggests a double bind, two opposing positions, one to stay and the other to go, to be un-fixed firmly.

How to be firmly un-fixed? Peter Sloterdijk suggests that our impulse to move is swept up in the ethics of modernity (Sloterdijk, 2009). And so, to be moving is to be doing (something) and to be doing is (apparently) productive. Whilst Beans moving produces an escape route from the awful tread of this machine, paradoxically it also performs the kinetics of modernity. So for all her scattering and escaping, her get OUT has perhaps been a get IN, unwittingly entangling and embroiling her IN the pace of our times.

However, Bean’s moving is not this, this passiveness to being swept up in the capitalist tide; hers is performed with agency and is initiated and directed by her own power, even if she is not entirely sure where she is (going). I wish I were brave enough, un-fixed enough to get lost too, to be lost and found on a motorway, a place to lay by, to disperse and to take flight.

v. t. Dissipate (cloud, hopes) ; (Phys.) deflect or diffuse (light, particles, etc).

She should have arrived by boat, it would have been messier, more true to (her) form, less direct and more wave like, less concrete. In fact, she did dream about crossing the water to get here, and, the GPS router, when sourcing a route from London – York, unconventionally took her through the sea. I don’t think that this coincidence is a coincidence, or the fact that we met on the bridge with the ~river~ easing its way underneath.

Whilst the performances texture was TOUGH, [getting a tattoo, marching through town, using razor blades to cut thread], her performances are still fluid, loose tongued and likely to be spilled. There is a contradiction here between performances that are [tight] and controlled and clean, so called ‘rigorous’ works that work; and ones that are … loose… and messy, a so called ‘sloppy’ work. But Rigour/Rigor mortis, something chimes here, I see rigor mortis hiding behind the facade of rigour (I should know I am well practiced at this), and we chase it because we don’t want a dead work.

Beans work is not dead.

Yve Lomax says; ‘Let us finally laugh about those who called rigorous what was precisely their soft discourse. And let us no longer scorn what is soft – fluid ensembles.’ (Lomax, 2000) Bean is more Eva Hesse than Carl Andre and this pleases me. There is nothing efficient about the work, it is contingent upon too many variables and this is what keeps it (her?) alive. But, this contingency scares people, the non repeatable, non rehearsedness is terrifying. Yve Lomax says, ‘An ontology founded on liquid: are we petrified of this?’ (Lomax, 2000) [Petrified, frozen, rigor mortis] YES, we are too stiff, MORE ~ WATER~ PLEASE, like performance, the fluid form, water has the potential to evaporate and disappear.

Coincidently (or not) it started to rain as she arrived at the car park, just before she settled down to colour her foot in yellow, to reveal /small/careful/cuts/, feedback between mic and amp, repeat and repeat again a text held in/on her hand like a bird or spare change. Palms up and open, here fluidity really happened for real. The sea fell from the sky, the world was upside down; drops scattered and punctuated the ground. Falling (DOWN) we all got wet, but we were shimmering and we could see ourselves in the water, we could reflect.

v.i. & t. (Of gun) send charge, send charge, send (charge), in spreading manner.

Bean sat on the tattooist’s bed, hooded and eyes down. She had removed her shoes, (now in my bag) and instead her soles were protected, but only just, by strips of black masking tape that become stand in shoes. A dictaphone was bound to her left arm by yellow thread and was throwing sound out, the tense air was p u n c t u r e d and time was .punctuated. by a text, ‘deconstruction/construction, deconstruction/construction’. The text, both formed itself and un-formed itself at each repetition. There was a tension in the room that / cut / each time the needle found her skin, her inside thighs fall open and we see her wait, shoulders tight as the tattooist made his first mark on the inside of her lower leg. There was nothing violent about this or sexual, it was gentle, and he showed more signs of fear than she did. Bean was breathing calmly to save the pain, and we embodied this rhythm, falling in and out of the text sound and the breath sound and the tattooist’s needle sound, all sounding off at each other.

Then, she walked with such charge; the cling film wrapped around her tattooed leg was left flapping in the wind. With the microphone trailing between her legs she walked through the centre of our city, she and it skit the road.

She was followed and found mouthing off like a soft gun in the car park, repeating and firing textual rounds::::::::::::::::::::::

‘Frontier bound, boundary bound, branch of knowledge, discipline field, field of study, subject, subject area, subject field, wild wilderness’ (BEAN)

Rain was falling at the same time and was having the same effect, a rhythmic impacting on the ground. Useless water bullets dissolve on impact and are safe blank shootings. A yellow foot, a safe small cut, a text that gained confidence the more it was aired; I could have listened to this for much much longer. This is not usual behaviour for a car park on a Sunday in York, this is not usual behaviour. Why is this not usual behaviour, what if this was usual behaviour, lets make this usual behaviour.

(in p.p.) Not situated together, wide apart, sporadic, (scattered villages, garrisons, instances).

The elements of the work were not situated together.

The elements of the tattoo were not situated together and the tattoo, whilst visible on the surface, had such depth. Grosz says and I agree; ‘All the effects of depth and interiority can be explained in terms of the inscriptions and transformations of the subject’s corporeal surface.’ (Grosz, 2004). Bean had thought this inscription instruction through before hand:

‘Inner leg (my right, your left). Start at base of ankle/foot. End top of leg.

Please tattoo in your handwriting, without prior transfer – so freehand.

M168

M130

M89

M175

M45

M173

M20

M242

M172

M17

M122’

The marking of these (tattooed) instances were drawn out, they had fleshy spaces in-between. There is something strange here, something that I haven’t grasped yet. The tattoo is so permanent and therefore so at odds with the impermanence and unfixedness of everything else she does. This is something I cannot and probably will not work out, but the act itself (of marking the body) shows a REAL commitment to the work. Bean appears thick skinned but the ink spills and writes a paradox that pulls beneath her )vulnerable( surface.

~-brain, heedless person; ~-brained, heedless person; desultory, *~-shot n. & a., firing at random.

We are not mad (they just want us to think that) but I did caution her, do take heed when travelling. I repeat, do take heed when travelling.

Andre and his friends, so rational, yes, so repeatable, so cool and calm and collected. Give me Hesse, she really knew how (not to) repeat. Biomorphic forms formed out of such compulsion, to repeat, to keep on moving in a moving way. And so narcissistic and so wonderfully narcissistic is Bean. Logic is not necessarily a power of reason and so to her, scattered gravel images are reasonable, I repeat at random:

‘Frontier bound, boundary bound, branch of knowledge, discipline field, field of study, subject, subject area, subject field, wild wilderness’ (BEAN)

There is really nothing minimal about it, and so, to those rationalists, your metal does not fool us, your grids fabricate ‘an abyss of irrationality.’ (Krauss, 1997)

n. Act of scattering; extent of distribution esp. of shot; *~- cushions, rugs, etc., (to be placed here and there in room). [ME, prob, var. of SHATTER]

Cushions and rugs and home comforts, when you get in, SHATTERED. ‘Let us learn to negotiate soft logics.’ (Lomax, 2000)