Issuu

CURIOUS SIX

Levester Williams

SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE

ANTHONY IACONO

a no boundary proposal

T H E T WO S L I T E X P E R I M E N T

S AVA N N A H K N O O P

SILVER SUIT

Levester Williams

The title dreaming of a beyond serves as a double agent: it names the artistic exploration and marks my intentions to dream of a beyond. In terms of race, the space of a beyond reifies nonrelation, marks progress and propounds a sense of hope. Reading author Lindon Barrett’s Blackness and Value: Seeing Double prompted my curiosity of the legendary blues figure Billie Holiday. Barrett refers to Holiday’s autobiographical account in Lady Sings the Blues where she (alongside narratives of countless African-Americans) frequently cleaned Baltimore rowhouse marble stoops for white homeowners to make a living. Holiday transgressed the borders surrounding her identities (race and sex) through the act of situating herself on the very boundary of relations to exploit those signifiers for her gain: she recognized the white homeowners’ obsession to keep the steps “white and clean,” regardless of the cleanliness of the houses’ interior, and cunningly demanded more money. Hence, Billie Holiday and her original account become a critical site to move past the threshold of borders

without removing its temporal and spatial origins from any discourses. I take claim of Holiday in such capacity and, thus, confound the ontological site of authorship through my intervention (and interception) of cleaning the marble stoops in apposition to the excerpt from Holiday’s account. The stone that ornaments some Batimore rowhouses since the early 1900s is part of the US’s very foundation: prominent buildings and monuments, such as part of the Washington Monument, 108 columns of the Capitol in D.C., and others, are comprised of this same type of marble. Thus, such history reveals a conundrum: could we possibly reach such unknowable space of a beyond when racial relations are/were inscribed in the materiality of the nation’s birth? The confluence of the phenomenological experience of the installation and the visceral tones of the subject matter disrupt the temporal relief of the cultural contingency and present the significance of intimacy (and the intimacy of significance). In hindsight, a beyond is from the border.

dreaming of a beyond hand-scoured and hand-washed "Cockeysville marble" stoops from Baltimore, MD, audio voiceover from an excerpt of Billie Holiday's autobiographical book Lady Sings the Blues, carpet, fluorescent lights, powder-coated steel, Plexiglas, mixed media

Tar, an unnatural mineral mixture produced through destructive means, functions in Tar Ball, Double Up (Doubling), and Sulking as a sealant of the bodily residue left on the unclean bed sheets from a Virginian adult penitentiary. The tarring of such sheets presents a marking of both a material and spiritual force as the ephemeral— the (non)residue of bodies—becomes ensconced in the object's own materiality. Hence, the tarred objects sulks over the (im)plausibility as a mass of possibilities and of transcendence. /SOUL BOX/ functions as a material witness to its (im)material processes and transitional (in)aptitude. The toilet water from a Virginian adult penitentiary undergoes both a material transformation—infinitely changing from liquid to gas to liquid or solid to etc.—and a spiritual transcendence to ultimately become part of a life(giving) cycle. With its connotations as filth, trash, and waste, toilet water may be seen as the lowest end of a spiritual transformation: yet, it is still substance. Thereby, the transmutation of the material itself is a spiritual query of the life forces to reach unification with a spiritual, idealized world.

Tar Ball unclean bed sheets from a Virginian adult penitentiary, tar, flies, other media

left: Sulking unclean bed sheet from an Virginian adult penitentiary, tar, found mopstick, other media Double Up (Doubling) unclean bedsheets from a Virginian adult penitentiary, tar, found mopstick, other media

left: To hold us all dear unclean bed sheets from a Virginian adult penitentiary, poplar wood /SOUL BOX/ toilet water from a Virginian adult penitentiary, African Upside Down Catfish, acrylic tank customized to the volumetric dimensions of the artist body, steel, porcelain, water heater

Darkwater is an estranged (body of ) artifact from the site of engagement at the Franklin D Roosevelt memorial in D.C. At the section of the memorial depicting Roosevelt's funerary procession, I floated Cottonmouth (hand-picked cotton on plastic) in the shallow pool of water filled with algae. Thus, Darkwater is a translation of my performance and literally an iteration of memories. It remembers and denounces my performance at the site as it seeks to frame such. It also is an estranged artifact of the body as the Cottonmouth is indexical to the mouth as it is able to fit in one's mouth. These estrangements fracture the stability of memory. Thereby, the fractured moments between the objects' signifiers and its historical and performative connections to the site(s) constellate into a series of distilled images. Darkwater, in essence, presents the project of memory as an iterative reconfigurations of layered signifiers relational to one’s sense of body.

Darkwater algae from Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial in D.C., "Cottonmouth" (hand-picked cotton on plastic), water, fishing sinker, clear Plexiglas, coconut oil on plywood, pine tar, cast porcelain, tinted Plexiglas, fan blowing on clear plastic sheet

A (dis)Assemblage of the Gallery-Growlery presents itself as a site of a morphological exploration of language, sound, and objects in tandem with the irreducibly venting black expression. Venting, the black expression never fucking seeks wholeness within objects or language itself for it is a thing-in-itself. Its presence, affords critical reception to a residue of delimiting forms. Hence, the contention between physicality and acoustics—the visual and sonic—is the gallery-growlery. A gallery is not blank. It possesses material properties and is structured in ways that constitute it as a gallery. Collapsing, folding, expanding, contracting, compressing, depressing, a gallery is a fluid intermediary structured form. Even more, a gallery is a hole gaping for form and matter. Thus, a gaping hole exists and it must be filled. All growls eschew verbal objects for the manifestation of pure phonetics —the call for a phenomenological orgasm. A growl in a gallery is the growl. Levester fills the gaping hole through the growl and avoids falling alongside the Fanonian objectamong-objects. The growl unwinds this wholy crisis as the phono-presence stretches the discursive and existential limits of the Fanonian phenomenon. The space before/after/with/through the growl happens elsewhere from the site of growling. The growl (sub)merges in other subliminal subaltern spaces as phonic insertions occur in and through intermediary forms. So, the sonic does not simply rely on the transpiring object as more mediators exist. To growl for Form to form is the praxis for my bodily engagement where the sonic precedes and proceeds from the objects. Growling mouth. Growling stomach. Growling anus. Black voids. Black holes in space and time. All gaping for form and matter.

A (dis)Assemblage of the Gallery-Growlery installation view of performance, audio, and objects Audio in the installation is from a pre-recording of the artist growling in the gallery and edited into four audio channels.

left: to growl for Form to form wood, paint, aluminum, plastic, performance F.O.B.E. #1 buoy, wood, paint, transducer, speaker wire, cord, audio F.O.B.E. #2 foil balloon, foil, wood, paint, transducer, speaker wire, audio

left: Muahlin O Wand resin, foam, paint, vinyl, wood, pickle juice, plastic, metal, nails, transducer, speaker wire, bungee cord cover, audio next page top left: eschew or eschew knot silicone rubber, peanut can, transducer, speaker wire, audio next page bottom left: Oval End Oval the end of a 2x4, tinted Plexiglas, fans blowing on plastic, gallery wall paint

T H E T WO S L I T E X P E R I M E N T

S AVA N N A H K N O O P

Savannah Knoop’s The Two Slit Experiment is a sculptural installation and performance site that teases out the little-known history of Richmond’s Red Light District, active as recently as the 1990s, and home to various places of graymarket sexuality and commerce. That dormant past, now sanitized into invisibility by the institutional force of rigid VCU campus boundaries, is re-activated here, mutated equally by the artist’s personal experiences and private fantasies. What results is an evocative transmogrification of a “Members-Only After-Hours Club”, fusing a complicated choreography of money distribution systems with an expanding economy of movement, gesture, and interaction. Materializing this complicated design into a flock of props, various past, present, and imaginary realities are marked and made tangible. Surpassing the limits of her own desires, the artist invites a pole dancer, Jiu Jitsu practitioners, and audience members to inhabit the space with her, making room for a sociality that insists on the specificity of position and viewpoint but simultaneously welcomes random contact, be it through the flirtatiousness of a caught glance on the dance floor or the flare of violence in a semi-regulated space. Objects and bodies collide in an architecture built by fluctuating systems of access and exchange.

THE TWO SLIT EXPERIMENT Cast of Characters

II Erratic Ball II Eva, the weeping fig named by Eva from Diversity Thrift II Braided Plant II Wheels II Five Fifty foot Rubber Gaskets II ROYAL II Nasiha Rashad II Savannah Knoop II The Ground II 2 Two Slit Experiments II Gels II Three Tri-Ped Silk Organza Jiu Jitsu Uniforms II Sports Socks Lint II P-Nut Stage with Embedded Speakers II Pole II Skinned Softball II Two Work Stations II Several Coffee-Ground Dollar Bills II The Audience II Eleven Flocked Grip n’ Grabs II Six Diazo Prints II

THE BARE UNITS From the entrance, I watch the dancers flick money at one another as they take their turn on the stage, the drifting dollar bills serving as a visual prelude to the main event. It begins with a simultaneous prayer of shaking body parts: “Make it Rain”. The floor shudders in response to the stomp and sway of heavy-bottomed open-toed stilettos. How do I enter this fray? I wait and the room shows me how; a hand stretches into the pool of light eddying around the stage clutching a limp dollar bill. The wrist flick of an audience member. Over-handled. Overthought. Self-Conscious. Paused in the doorway, what sort of john am I right now? Entering the space, what sort of john will I become? And at the brink of morning, what sort of john do I hope to be?

CREDITS Performers: ROYAL, Nasiha Rashid, Savannah Knoop Costumes: Manon Sound: Rind Technical Savant (++): Laura McAdams, Jesse Burrows, Alexander Hayden, Ryan Crowley, Perrin Turner, Eli Gray Performance Documentation (++): Max Runko Photos: Sharon Hennessey, Terry Brown Et cetera Savant (++): Lee Relvas, Kendall Buster, Corin Hewitt, Siemon Allen, A.L. Steiner, Michael Jones McKean, Matt King, Shawn Michael Taylor

SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE

ANTHONY IACONO

Q: What is the color scheme of fantasy? A: The colors of Easter. Q: Your process can be confusing to understand from photo documentations, can you explain it? A: I began making these collages from painted cut paper about a year and a half ago. My studio rent in New York increased and I had to give it up. I was forced to figure out how to productively use my studio apartment as a living and work space. The work had to adapt to the situation, but I also knew that I couldn’t be mixing concrete or plaster in my kitchen. At the time, the challenge was really stressful, but looking back at it, this space restriction was really important for the work. I bought paper that was the size of my desk and began developing this collage process from drawings of sculptures I wanted to make. I sort of thought of them as glorified sketches for what would be 3-dimensional works. The drawings are made in reverse on the back of the the paper, then each piece is numbered and notated with the appropriate color. Each section is cut out, painted with rubber brayers and then pieced back together to make the image. I guess I spend more time working on the back of the piece puzzling things together than the front. It’s an indirect way of making an image and the process is very sculptural, so I find it to be a good compromise. Q: What is the nightmare on Crudités at Sunset? A: No cocktail sauce, obviously. Q: What is your favorite studio snack? A: Well, I’m scared to put anything in our studio refrigerator. It’s terrifying in there. So I snack on roasted almonds and candied ginger that I store in an air tight container in my studio. Q: And drink? A: I like a tall glass of seltzer water, with just a splash of cranberry juice. Just a splash. Not enough to actually flavor the seltzer, but enough to tint it the slightest shade of pink. It was Liz Taylor’s drink once she got sober. Q: The decisions you make in the lighting and framing of your subjects seem to be informed by photography. I also know that you often work from photos. Do you ever consider incorporating photography into a finished piece or showing the staged photography you use as source material? A: I studied painting as an undergrad. I was always very particular about the compositions and would take photographs of everything before painting them. After realizing that the photos were way more interesting than anything I was painting, I packed up my brushes and learned how to shoot film and the darkroom. I shot for a few years and then started sculpting my own props for the photos, then evolved out of taking photos and focused on sculpture. Once I started painting again last year, I went back to taking reference photos. This time around, I really tried just keeping the photos as references and not being as fussy with things. I make drawings from the photos and then start the painting. I like that there is an element of magic in painting that can't really exist naturally in photography, I use painting as a tool to illustrate these situations. I don't see the photos incorporated in the paintings much more than that. I still shoot film often during reference shoots, it's rare that I show them, but I'll create artist books from photographs that are interesting on their own. Q: What was the last song you danced to in the studio? A: There’s a lot of dancing that goes on in there, so I can’t remember what was last. But Midnight Magic, Luscious Jackson, New Order, Romeo Void are a few that are constantly playing on my iPod.

SILVER SUIT

concealed in metal shimmering silver suits reflect everything around them camouflaged by their surroundings they disappear from the most keen observers they glisten brightly blinding with refracted light from the sun’s rays on this particular day they wear clear sheets of thin flimsy plastic over their armor they are afraid of rusting in the rain they are afraid of settling in the dust

A B R A K A D A B R A

What is it to have snakes for feet? What does it mean to resyntax a familiar experience into something slippery, murky, and unknowable? Within a culture of feverish consumption and retinal impatience these are "fast" objects produced by the slowest means possible, a manufactured realism examining the relationship between consumer, commodity, and transformation. Mass-produced objects are carved in wood. Squashed cigarette boxes, Styrofoam cups, plastic and paper bags, all cheap detritus found on the street, are rendered in unlikely materials. Objects are preserved in varying states of decay set beside unlikely partners. A wool hat is slowly eaten by moth larvae. Countless images of corrals are preserved in salt crystals. A cast anvil made of an amalgam of melted tools rests on its own reflection. Digitally fabricated fictional brick facades lean against the walls of the gallery. Interior and exterior spaces are conflated. Symbolic objects are decontextualized and obscured. Windows are blocked out and provide little satisfaction. We peer in as outsiders. The longer we look, the more likenesses emerge. These are utilitarian objects, hollow containers meant to hold or prop up, yet they remain empty. They pierce through the ubiquitous visual bombardment of the mundane and time seems to stand still. An element of trickery is at play in this constellation of objects. Are they real artifacts from fictional events? Through the camouflage of mimicry they double in on themselves, props supporting something outside of themselves. Yet they always remain on the periphery. They are surfaces and skins that both deflect and refer, a continual unfolding of deception through perception. An empty image shell remains alluding to a latent utility that no longer functions. Recognizable forms are undermined and left in disuse. Closed and distanced, these quotidian objects are melted into staged monuments.

memories obscured by transparent hallucinations and the ink you spilled across the kitchen table. portable thoughts melting like old candlesticks and realizing you forgot to blow out the flame

memories obscured by transparent hallucinations and the ink you spilled across the kitchen table. portable thoughts melting like old candlesticks and realizing you forgot to blow out the flame 23

The Curiosity of Con and an Accident Known as Blue 8:39 If I were you (and some days I really wish I were) I would begin by locating a hole in the wall. Scan for seems seams or splinters on the surface. Perhaps it’s a small hole (left no doubt by a nail by way of the force of the hammer), or a crack (typical of all things old), maybe even a window (which I suppppose is a hole—just quite large and quite engineered). If it is indeed a window, try to look at it. (Not through it.) A surface on a surface reflecting. Everything in the reflection is always backwards. Back worlds and back words. Backlash and backdrop. Blur your eyes. 9:12 Forget the wall. The wall was just a prop. Here’s a better backdrop and backprop. Prussian Blue was discovered entirely by accident (twice). Its coincidental creation was cultivated by way of chance contamination. Originally intended to be red, the mishap color mistakenly emerged using the shells of the cochineal beetle. Google says this particular beetle is unique in its hefty production of carminic acid which is utilized to produce brilliant shades of crimson and scarlet dyes. But as chance would have it (and chance did have it) an unforeseen extraneous impurity (salt) caused the red to become blue. And so red came before blue. Chance always has it. 9:50 Blue was the successor of red not just in its making but also in its naming. As with most things it went unseen until it was named. Or maybe it wasn’t quite that it was unseen — maybe it was just overseen (if there is such a version of perception). Blue may have just been so ubiquitous, that to name it would have been down right redundant. Nonetheless there is a gap of several thousand years when blue did not exist until it did. Sometimes (maybe to feel less alive or maybe more alive) I try to imagine a time before there were words and before there were names. It is here that I would ask—Does the sky outweigh the ocean or does the ocean outweigh the sky? 11:16 I suppose naming proposes to offer a solution through distinction. But nonetheless is it: conveying a matter of density? Or concisely convening a density of matter? 24

Surely vey and vene are close relatives but they are connected and contradicted by the murky slipperiness inherent in their foremost con. 11:30 Blue masses concaving and mass blues convexing into constrictive black holes and concealing blue eyes, blackened. Always confiscating, conflating, and contracting into condensed concretized containers concocted either to condemn or to condone. A condition of constantly consuming the convictions of a contrived consensus. One can get a concussion just conceding to such conventions. And I confess I’ve contracted more concussions than I can conceivably count. Not by way of conflicting confrontations but rather through constructions of conformance and confluence. It’s easy to get congested in this concurrency of conglomerated currents. Convulsing contortions and contaminations congealed in the very pulse of what I thought I once knew. (If not conceive—than conduct.) Consider consecrating the condensation of your own breath, so we could converge continually. Is it possible to conjure such foggy conduits? 12:12 Maybe it's so slippery because “c” might just want to be “o”. Searching for that little piece its missing to become a full circle. But this is all off topic. 12:14 Back to our accident—blue. Now it has many names, but it’s still just as ubiquitous. Prussian blue for instance is used in blueprints, cyanotypes, and Carbon carbon copies (all methods of preserving, replicating, and allowing the dispersion of an image.) It’s always reproducing. 2:20 Someone at some point decided to break Prusschian Blue down into smaller parts. (I think this happens to all things that propagate too fast. Reproduce and be reduced. ie. Speedbreeding). Anyhow, it was shattered into one fraction of salt and one fraction of Hydrogen Cyanide. Blah blah blah. So what. Who cares? Well I do because HyCy apparently plays an important factor in the origin of life. And you may be interested to know that Hi C came into exist stance existence on the planet from an asteroid collision when carbon from assteroids mixed with nitrogin in the Earth’s atmostphere. So, the accident that is Prussian Blue, the overseen color we took

several thousand years to actually see, allowed us to learn more about how life came to exist. Whatever. You might think we would value such a precious material. Expansively Existential should equate to Exponentially Expensive. But on the countrary Prussian Blue went into mass production as a cheap replacement of the much more expensive ULTRAmarine blue made from lapi$ lazuli . Prhoushan Blue is also used as laundry “bluing” to optically trick the eye into perceiving aged or yellowing fabrics as slightly whiter than they truly are. (Now we just use bleach.) Maybe bluing should be called newing when it reverses the effects of time. Cheap tricks. It can also be used as a catalyst to crystallize salt. (Salt being another precious commodity. Overseen in the cracks of our hands and the crevices of our bones. Humans have always built their communities around sources of salt or sources of water.) One can only hope to crystalize. 5:00 The last thing I remember was when you tucked a piece of waxy blue carbon paper in your pants pocket. The flimsy paper crinkled whenever you moved, smearing heavy with the impressed traces of your motion. Replicate remnants. Wrinkled residues. Repeat. Rub. Redo. That’s one way to reproduce. (20% of our body mass is composed of carbon anyhow.) I looked down between where legs should have been. What exactly is the difference between petrification and preservation anyway? 7:18 I envision preservation to be sleek and glassy whereas petrification might be decrepit, jagged, and hardened. Preservation is an active process. Ongoing, mediated maintenance. Whereas petrification is past tense. Compressed fragility in a state of stasis. Without a clock, we can only really rely on carbon. If you’re alive and you’ve eaten a thing that’s eaten a thing that’s eaten a plant (or maybe you just eat plants—either way) you’re consuming traces of carbon dioxide (and unlike us that shit just doesn’t die). Everything is always stealing carbon because it casts such long shadows. I want my carbon to preserve something good. That’s why I’m breathing hot and heavy on things I like. If I can’t preserve it—I’ll at least petrify it.

1. venn diagram ink on canvas 36 x 44 in.

10. radio / smoke signals acrylic paint on polystyrene dimensions variable

2. chair (detail) acrylic paint on polystyrene and wood 26 x 26 x 44 in.

11. yellow brick wall acrylic paint on milled polystyrene 96 x 4 x 192 in.

3. sand castles mixed media with dirt 24 x 36 x 72 in.

12. untitled sand, wax, synthetic hair, grass, wood and metal 32 x 38 x 72 in.

4. double bag it wood, Plexiglas, two way mirrors, acrylic paint on cast resin, and lacquer on copper 48 x 48 x 96 in.

13. the hat that had no rabbit milled MDF and lacquer 40 x 48 x 48 in. 14. déjà vu series (detail) cast polyurethane and dye dimensions variable

5. untitled concrete and metal 40 x 24 x 56 in. 6. on the other side of vision (brimmin’) wood, Plexiglas, two way mirrors, wool baseball hat, Tineola Bisselliella moths, fluorescent lighting and spackle 24 x 24 x 36 in. 7. trophy (lack series) mixed media and mortar powder 26 x 26 x 48 in. 8. waiting for sawfish to cut our canoe cast concrete, wood, Plexiglas, mirrors, tape and resin on camouflage shirt 36 x 44 x 60 in. 9. The particular blue of forgetting someone you forgot you knew acrylic paint on cast fiberglass resin and polystyrene 30 x 30 x 50 in.

11 26

15. white wash acrylic paint on milled polystyrene, wood, Fresnel lens, Plexiglas and digital prints 96 x 6 x 192 in. 16. the curiosity of con, petrified breath, and an accident known as blue mixed media 200 x 150 x 24 in. 17. meta meta meta cast aluminum (sourced from melted down contemporary aluminum tools including silverware, pieces of ladders, car parts, CPU heat sinks, and the backs of iphone1s) with mirror and Plexiglas 24 x 26 x 16 in.

A-B-R-A-K-A-D-A-B-R-A A-B-R-A-K-A-D-A-B-R A-B-R-A-K-A-D-A-B A-B-R-A-K-A-D-A A-B-R-A-K-A-D A-B-R-A-K-A A-B-R-A-K A-B-R-A A-B-R A-B A

S I L V E R

S U I T

Steven Randall www.stevenrandallstudio.com poem on page 23 by Alexandra Manikas 27

STEVEN RANDALL

a no boundary proposal

the paralysis of revelation

the maleboge of propriety

forget the master's tools

like the tools of all masters they work too well

what ugly metaphors

call me ishmael ’s first wife

between autoethnography

and automatic weaponry

it wasn’t a courtship but i felt it

declared extinct

but he looked so kind

it is so foolish to love born prey

steve jobs is half syrian

steve jobs is dead

does consent written after conscription ever really console

i mean she liked it

primetime's little girl lost

where are the cyberbullies Taken Too Soon

because imaginary time behaves like a direction in space, histories in imaginary time can be closed surfaces like the surface of the earth

the earth from space

leyla mozayen

1. What does the good life look like? What constitutes a fool? Is it better to know or not to know? To relish in the security of certainty, the guarantees of empiricism, the solidity of fact and forethought, or to revel in wonderment, speculation, incertitude? Machiavelli told the prince to be like a fox, be like a lion. More importantly, he said, a prince must know when to be which. Knowledge is power; planning ahead is advantageous. (Be the ant, not the lazy grasshopper, said Aesop!)

But! Good things come to those who wait, and we find happiness - les petits bonheurs - when we aren’t looking for it. If we suspend disbelief then do we believe that the slow and patient accumulation of wisdom and material goods adds up to something worthwhile?

And so, what about the hedgehog?

The small ground animal, so literally the opposite of Western upward mobility, does anyone ever ask: are you happy hedgehog? Or the cock who refutes the jewel? Truly: what would a rooster do with a sapphire? Why no hurrah for the dirty, weary and wandering philosopher who rejects Baudelaire’s dandy? Is not Montaigne’s philosopher, who retreats from the world, the fool, while the humble farmer who stays in it and toils, the jewel of the earth?

2. I make up the time because I don’t really know what time is The Delphic Oracle, the Sphinx, and the Troll under the bridge speak in riddles that only the best, the most worthy can decode. To others, their words are lofty jibberish. I never understood whether they wanted to be understood, or, if like a bafflegab, they wanted to obscure themselves endlessly. Was their language to reach out, or to reach further in? Sometimes the world seems to be little more than a game of Barbie. The joke is that the prime mover is really my five year old self, arranging and rearranging things endlessly. Perhaps that is the great mystery behind the naming of things.

3. According to my father, as a child, I sang constantly. Usually nothing coherent, just sounds and whatever childlike burblings came out. Whatever these ‘lyrics’ were, they weren’t meant for anyone, it seems, other than my mouth. I imagine it was more about the experience of articulation of things I didn’t yet know or understand, not so far from the divine overtaking of a tongue experienced by a Pentecostal (sans the religiosity).

1-2-3 A-B-C recitations, fairy tales, fables, and parables tie language to knowledge and the pursuit thereof to morality and ethics. There is always a lesson to be learned about self-betterment: try harder, don’t do this, do do this. Do do made us laugh so much - it was the joke of kindergarten, along with knock knock jokes and other things that expire soon thereafter.

My father has a horrible sense of humor. He charms children and elders, but those inbetween are a lost cause. I’ve never understood how a person’s humor could bracket the spectrum but miss the middle - will we not reunite again until I too am old? “I’ve fallen behind, he’s gone ahead,” lamented Arkady’s father upon his return from university. (Timing is everything.)

A poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a baby tomato are walking. The baby tomato keeps lagging behind. The poppa tomato turns to the baby tomato and says?

4. The Sophist, or Kathy with a K As a kid, I adored my older cousin for the usual reasons: she was all I was not (and all I knew, even then, that I would never be). Taller, tanner, etc. Jeanne initiated me to much of the world that I would have otherwise missed, being 1. a nerd and 2. an only child. One summer she took to declaring things “crazy with a kaaaaaaay!” For example, me: “(some ridiculous childish story that is incoherent and I am now too old to even construct fictionally)”, J: “woah Hal, that’s crazy with a kaaaaaay!” I don’t think I ever said it but I loved it. I didn’t say it because I knew I’d sound foolish whereas someone cool would sound cool.

Along with the forceful injection of “like” into my vocabulary (in an attempt to become cool like the characters in Clueless) it was one of the first moments in which I understood that I could strategically position myself with my words. My language could become an aesthetic component, affiliating me with certain spaces, certain worlds, certain groups and simultaneously distancing me from others. Learning French in high school was one of the most obvious gestures I made in this vein. (vain?)

Years later it seemed that overnight all businesses that should have used c switched to k (there was a KountryKitchen that I bombed daily with my eyes). Jeanne moved onto other things, including, eventually, producing a child named Jett, a word which, in the native Swedish of her husband, means “goat.” K or c, c or k. Kathy with a k, crazy with a kaaaay: krazy. I wonder now: was this whole mythology, this monumental shift in my eight or nine year old perception, the result of my cousin reading a Krazy Glue label?

Images Front and back covers: preparatory sketches for "Huh," oil pastel on paper, 2016 Page 2: studio shot, Brooklyn, 2015 Page 3: still from Huh, stop motion animation, 2016 Page 4: Needs, customized sterling silver chain necklace, 2015 Pages 6-7: stills from Is it better?, stop motion animation, 2016 Page 8: studio shot, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, 2015 Pages 10-11: studio shot, Richmond, 2015 Page 12: He whose talk is of oxen, dreams of oxen (Opium Eaters), wire mesh, papier mâché, steel, latex paint, glass, stickers, 2015 Page 13: Ffeee, oil pastel on paper, 2016 Page 15: The Sculptress, steel, epoxy, latex paint, chenille throw, 2015 Page 17: God how could you, epoxy, brass chain, latex paint, 2015 Pages 18 - 19: Le p'tit bonheur, customized espresso cups, 2016 Page 20: studio shot, Richmond, 2016 Page 23: Untitled, steel, steel chain, black enamel paint, 2016 Page 24: Wants, customized sterling silver chain necklace, 2015 Page 27: E riding along to Richmond, 2015

MONITOR

SHANA HOEHN

Monitor, 2016, video and sound, ORT 16:18 Physical appearance is encoded with invisible rules. How a body moves or remains still, how it is cloaked or exposed, how it is positioned within a space, all define how we arrive at knowledge through observation. This relationship is personal. Awareness of oneself as a seen object and seeing subject is something inherently human, and at the root of our ability to empathize. The cyclical nature of observing, creating images, and becoming images ourselves opens up a space of self-reflection. Observation and touch act as proof of an event or reality. Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, the cortical homunculus diagram, medical check-ups, and life drawing classes document a subjective truth. Viewing is never neutral, but rather an experience that is inherently biased and often patriarchal. Policing is implicit in the gaze and in the projected self-image. I consider space as 'multicentered', an amalgam of different points of view, each providing a different locus of reality and the impossibility of an entirety. In considering the limitations of a singular visual plane I accentuate conflicting points of view and offer a way of looking from outside of our bodies in order to enhance our understanding of our own bodily limitations as seeing subjects and 'knowers' of information. In my film Monitor, the viewer is unable to puncture the surface. Touch is mediated and rehearsed. Personal moments of contemplation turn into choreographed movements. Monotonous actions and affectless expressions rendered in washed out color seemingly rob characters of their very humanity. And yet, small acts of rebellion in the form of malfunctioning equipment, deadpan humor, and liberating body alterations break through the ennui to disrupt the constructed order.

Written, directed and produced by Shana Hoehn Camera Opertator: Shana Hoehn, Rodrigo Valenzeua, John Dombrowski

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INSTRUMENT TYPOLOGIES - The forms that lay before me are extrusions or excisions from a host. They carry the history of their mother-body, and they too are strange, independent organisms. - Do we become humanoid by nature or by design? - I try to imagine how the forms will weaponize, i.e. come to interact with my body. I have no negative space for their bulges and points, and my fluid would not sit well in those cups. - He tries to ease my anticipation and nausea by assuring me that these forms were made for me—based off of direct observations of ME or others like “me.” But there are limits to my form that you cannot observe. Only the tool can engage in this non-speculative discovery. “There is no geometrical relation of an absolute exteriority between a ‘causal apparatus’ and a ‘body affected,’ nor an idealistic collapse of the two, but rather an ongoing topological dynamics… a result of the fact that apparatuses of bodily production (which are themselves phenomena) are (also) a part of the phenomena they produce." (Karen Barad, Posthuman

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Performativity)

CONCONSTITUTIVE RELATIONS Bodies re-inscribe themselves into the environment, and vice-versa, with mutual affectation. - The environment produces and reflects the forms and interests of the body. - The body produces and reflects the forms and interests of the environment. - The body and its environment produce each other as forms of the hyperreal.

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Our cities have been sieged and destabilized. Now, foggy embryos aggregate and form a new body, welcoming the dismembered figures into a nascent symbiotic entity.

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When speaking of her myopia, or her “native veil,” Helen Cixous said, “She and Doubt were always inseparable… She never saw safely. Seeing was a tottering believing. Everything was perhaps.” When speaking of her myopia, or her “native veil,” Helen Cixous said, “She and Doubt were always inseparable… She never saw safely. Seeing was a tottering believing. Everything was perhaps.”The porous boundaries that make up our world create a persistent state of perhaps. Fluid slips from the brain through our nostrils and salts our food. Cartilage ossifies alongside a metal plate in my chin, and both crumble amongst the limestone, worms and sediment. We are ever spliced and reunited, our boundaries blurring in and out of focus. The scalpel, dangling from my belt loop, clinks against my keys and erodes my hipbone.

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p 4-5

Decentralized Systems for a Future Self (detail), 2015

PVC Curtain, pigmented resin, latex paint, glass rods, silicone rubber, stainless steel pipe tighteners, various surgical tools, facial massage rollers, metal hair clips, aluminum tape, blackberries, and plant matter 144 x 132 x 132 in

Decentralized Systems for a Future Self (detail), 2015 PVC Curtain, pigmented resin, latex paint, glass rods, silicone rubber, stainless steel pipe tighteners, various surgical tools, facial massage rollers, metal hair clips, aluminum tape, blackberries, and plant matter 144 x 132 x 132 in

Unfamiliar Intimacies, 2016

p 15

p 16-17

Kafka's Waiting Room (detail), 2016

Kafka's Waiting Room, 2016

VCT tiles on elevated floor 24 x 100.5 x 149 in

Resin and key rings Dimensions variable

Decentralized Systems for a Future Self, 2015

p 11

p 12-13

p 18

Infrastructures of Production and Remembrance (detail), 2016

Mixed media 34 x 96 x 48 in

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Decentralized Systems for a Future Self (detail), 2015

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FUNDAMENTAL UNITS RYAN FLORES

JOHN ORTH A FLARE TOSSED INTO THE ROOM

I have a depression in my chest that looks like a softball was tossed into wet clay. In the bath when the water rises above my ribs, it pools in my chest like a glacier lake. When Adam sleeps beside me, he drapes an arm over my side and curls his fist into the recess. Once I met a man down by the lake. He was not afraid to meet a stranger on an especially dark night but talked endlessly of his fear of alligators. He kissed me and unbuttoned my shirt. He ran his fingers over my hips and up my stomach. When he reached my chest, he retracted his hands with a start. “What is the matter with your chest?” he asked. “Nothing,” I replied. “What is the matter with your hands?” He was still holding them out from his body, elbows locked and palms towards me as if in a gesture of surrender. He dropped his arms heavy and dumb at his sides. On that especially dark night under the rustling of the cabbage palms, his head was dizzy with pleasure and with fear. When he went to touch my chest, his fingers met no resistance. At that moment, I hope he imagined his hands slowly passing through me, endlessly reaching into darkness, a slick reptilian slide from the bank into the black water below. I have a depression in my chest that looks like a softball was tossed into wet clay. When I was young, I would push mud into the gap to make viscous casts of the empty space. I make smeary objects, simulacra of the natural world, urgent and evanescent like flares tossed into the room.

CURIOUS SIX

Curious Six is the sixth issue of a biennial publication produced by students participating in the Spring 2016 Graduate Seminar in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. This year, each artist created a book drawing on their individual studio practice through image and text, employing various means of investigation. The range of contributions reflects the diversity of research modes and art-making processes in the VCU graduate sculpture program. Artists whose studio activities include among other things object making, video production, installation, web-based explorations, and performance, here worked within the confined format of the printed page. The result is a collection of twelve books, each embodying the uncommon explorations of the artists who collectively form the VCU graduate sculpture community. Curious is made possible by the generous support from The Dean’s Office of the VCU School of the Arts and The Department of Sculpture + Extended Media.

VCUarts

CURIOUS SIX

Published by the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media Virginia Commonwealth University 1000 West Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia, 23284, USA P.O. BOX 843005 804.828.1511 www.arts.vcu.edu/sculpture Seminar leaders: Kendall Buster, professor and Siemon Allen, visting professor. Individual artist book designs and images: Anthony Iacono, J. Avery Theodore Daisey, Ellie Hunter, Hallie McNiell, John Orth, Pallavi Sen, Levester Williams, Leyla Mozayen, Ryan Flores, Savannah Knoop, Shana Hoehn, Steven Randall. Artist book design consultant: Nicole Killian Additional portfolio photography: Terry Brown Layout and production: Siemon Allen, flatinternational © 2016 Department of Sculpture + Extended Media Virginia Commonwealth University. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the copyright holder. Fair users are of course free to do their thing. ISBN 978-0-9845865-3-0 Printed and bound in China by Permanent Typesetting & Printing Co. Ltd.

J. AVERY THEODORE DAISEY LEVESTER WILLIAMS SAVANNAH KNOOP ANTHONY IACONO STEVEN RANDALL LEYLA MOZAYEN HALLIE MCNIELL SHANA HOEHN ELLIE HUNTER RYAN FLORES PALLAVI SEN JOHN ORTH

ISBN 978-0-9845865-3-0