two, Onymus
There's confusion or let's say, these are only notes. Let's say, she made a connection and I’m talking too much and she was eloquent. Knew what to say about fathers. Knew what to say about my father, who doesn't have anything to say.
In the light of a side room... his side room... not far from here... but nowhere now.
I had a father and she had one and nothing was wrong. With writing, it's all wrong and boxed glass and china rattled three hundred miles away. It rattled and I was rattled. She was talking about fathers and I was one. Could keep quiet, sitting in her father's armchair or on her bed. Topologies were topological and in the previous text, I refer to time travelling time.
Only one side of things... wandering around with a camera, getting nowhere most of the time, making do retroactively.
1
I could talk but not write and remember thinking about difficulties ahead. I don’t have to go back, but texts come first. Texts and the noise that accompanies listening. It's an impasse that began with having to read and write. It has something to do with talking and listening is painful proof. Love and work make some sense of the Freudian drive.
A child of three or four
suggests a nom de plume,
teeters
having to
read and write.
2
Onymus opens his mouth, but it's not enough. A transfer bid seems likely. Each world has boundaries and looking into the art world again comes next. He hoped there was time. Hieronymus Bosch possibly liked the Divine Comedy and telling a story or something like it would do. Onymus remembers wandering through M and S (in talking) and beach notes. He took a lift at Porte d'Orléans after waiting all day and was happily going south with two men and a woman. It happened forty years ago. And what happened next came as a surprise. It’s Onymus’s first surprise.
3
Pleased to get into a Mercedes, Onymus was all talk, explaining his predicament to complete strangers. He was on his way to Grenoble. Travelling with a broken heart. Hoping to stay with a fiend of a friend. She was pretty and he was moving on after one setback and would face another. People in the front spoke some English and the man in the back (sitting next to him) didn’t speak, but leant forward, being too big for the car. They turned into a forest and it was already dark. His heart sunk. The car stopped, people in front turned around and the large man put a large arm around his neck. The driver explained. They were stopping briefly. Would eat, drink and he would take his clothes off and lie face down across the man in the back. The woman said she’d wedge a baguette between his legs and he could reach around and grab something.
Leaning back, she had something to say... they were a performance group and stealing money from tourists was a sideline. They were acting out and he lay in the back of Mercedes in the back of nowhere. These were strange times and worse was to come. They were time travellers too and time travelling works in two directions, but things sometimes simply stop. Pausing was a possibility. She wanted the full picture.
He mentioned one broken heart and then another. Would happily join the French foreign legion and serve with Humphrey Bogart in Chad, but was getting older day by day. At some point, he'd walk back into Paris as Homo Sacer. Would remember trees on either side of the road and lost Charnwood trees, sometime later
4
It's possibly retroactive and the past sometimes changes the present. Events open and close. They could be dreaming in the back of a stolen car or something else was happening.
The past looks on.
I can talk, but can't read and write and anticipate an uphill struggle. I call it putting in for a transfer. Switching from one discourse to another. Only discourse can be the wrong word in digital times. The work of art has had to do with time travel for some time. Onymus was caught up in the back of a car or steal. Reference to reading and writing isn’t clear. I remember an impasse or disconnects in the talking text. I’m working on video called noise... and what I hear and don’t hear. It’s sometimes seeing something and words can become small islands. It follows a predicament or impasse and Onymus isn’t alone in a forest of trees. It all happens little by little. Onymus stumbles. Doesn’t mind stumbling. Knows some things simply happen. Time travelling synchronicity happens.
5
Having come across reading and writing, I’d like to do something with the phrase word islands, noise and the vacuous space of a passage, or a once upon a time walkway going back into Paris.
It's a tall order. Being hijacked isn't a laughing matter, but turning the real into subterfuge is timely. Some moments are pressing and some make holes, but a time travelling text in digital times opens up something else. Grenoble was one place and word islands are another. Noise is a name given to current video and noise is part of word island signifiers that aren't quite signifiers. I rest my case, but remember a daunting task. I'd never learn to read and write, but could mix things with artists in the back of a stolen Mercedes.
Onymus got out of the car eventually and I can take what I want from this occasion.
Something breaks... he puts something on and clothes... camera and bottle of wine are stuffed into a bag and limping back to Paris is part of the deal. It's one moment after another and little islands light up night and day.
6
Word islands make holes and beach notes is being hijacked and walking through a forest. Onymus is a hole, with sleeping lions and tigers looking on. Syntax is mutable, like video. Up in the air, like distant trees and forgotten smiles. Events leave something behind and syntax is tidal, passing through trees on the way to coasts. Coasting along. Brushing up on running away. For years and years. Matching texts and photos or texts and video, with word islands are all at sea.
What can I say?
She left photos and texts behind, lions and tigers... forgetting she could read and write.
7
Seeing words, I saw holes… hijacked, with trees on either side, trampling Marks and Spencers. Seeing endearments. Something put on, taken off. Unworn clothes eventually. A mirage, you say, like half forgotten stills.
And eventually something else.
I use the word mutable and am all over the place with a little syntax. Then there’s video noise or video called noise. Shuffling in digital times. Garbled, like a performative text and sets without exceptions.
And you might say, it’s not the same as learning to read and write. But small word islands and holes persist with texts and video. An entanglement that comes with small moments, memory and a daunting continuum.
8
I piece a letter together in bad French and know there will be no reply. Scramble between one rock and another and at least two moments. These moments are a sprawl. Texts and video don’t work and painting was a fossil some time before digital times. You imply you prefer one option as if there are still options. An index is lost in exception-less times. Memory fades, someone might say and the work of art is sometimes beyond Interpretation. I learn to read and write and perhaps you never saw my letter... put it in a pile marked patriarchy. Leonardo or Onymus aren't reading and writing on top of an iceberg or making do with a dream kiss, but something can be missed. Jouissance is bearable or unbearable and I scramble for an edge. It happens with sex, work and the cost of living and I can still hear Tarkovsky's refrain. The zone can be the first dream in curatorial dreams filled with Jérôme Savary's neglected animals and redundant museum workers.
9
At some point (and it’s often at some point), I’m on my own and feeling uncomfortable. It happens from time to time and I referred to disconnects in the last text. This time something seemed wrong and I don’t have to go far back to find everything going wrong. I remembered what the surgeon said and what happened to Ruth. Hernias are a problem following a subtotal colectomy and Ruth’s stomach blocked after too much tramadol. A doctor said she would write to the Marsden posing a few questions, but dismay proceeds less attention to work and not knowing what to do with the text called talking.
I’m easily ruffled. Or something empties and I do what I can as quickly as I can.
three, writing to a curator
Writing to a curator in *deschooling* digital times is something else. There is an urgency, but no obvious portals and addressees. Contacting an art world collective poses similar problems for the One-all-alone. In part two, I make the case for work at the end of an analysis. And the work and psychoanalysis both provide sets and exceptions, but despite this, writing to a curator or collective is problematic. With the text called talking, there’s the drive (which is a psychoanalytic category) and art and both depend on sets and exceptions, fifty years after the emergence of conceptually orientated work and one hundred years after Duchamp and readymades. Both anticipate digital times, but not current problems. Writing to a curator or contacting collectives then poses questions surrounding what Lacan eventually calls the One-all-alone. This figure at the end of an analysis may be isolated and the work is simply what it is, but putting it out there somewhere prompts my question. It’s a question because art world trajectories moved away from deschooling tendencies and badges and accolades are now somehow considered necessary. Art musters a cost that undermines new work and structures. The work accompanies what Giorgio Agamben calls homo sacer and an impossible position. The analyst’s silence is a feature of Lacanian psychoanalysis, but curatorial dreams follow talking. It remains a dream but prompts a question.
1
In digital times, my work is quickly a semblance (of work) and in a particular sense, it’s briefly work in progress or somehow archival. It’s inevitably time based and linked to voice and gaze (text and video). But it’s always instant, like something seen on my iPhone. Here memory and old age are a treasure and I’ve not forgotten May’68 and what I call deschooling tenancies that seem the antithesis of entrepreneuring art world generations.
It’s prompts a letter.
You will soon ask where the work is if what you see is a semblance and it's that exception and set that I mentioned before. It’s something else or work to come and not necessarily texts and video.
If it’s performative like the last text, then it’s acting out and resistance in digital times. This text is called curatorial dreams and the first draft began with neglected animals and museum workers. It’s the work of a text, but also a letter addressed to curators and collectives. It possibly takes in what the work can be when curator or collectives ask the right questions. The equivalent of a letter is sent.
If it's a proposal, it makes the case for an addressee or portal and in both instances there’s something to do.
2
If there’s already a product, there’s video and what hopefully follows it. Without a curator, collective and funding, I make do with what I can. The work is always exhausted or archival, but something further begins with my body. I can’t sit at a computer all day and trips to London are few and far between. Highlights are ancient cattle and sheep tracks and a beautifully overgrown, abandoned fly tip. My list reworks Lacan’s psychoanalytic discourses. With Freud’s drive in mind, I begin with sex and work, then make it as far as the cost of living (or capitalist discourse)... then homo sacer and tenuous existence. The latter has always seemed the case somehow and I refer to hospital time spent in an isolation cubicle in (the text called) talking. Homo Sacer rubs up against what’s left of a rim (psychoanalytically speaking) and work follows mishap and two versions of the unconscious (Freud, Lacan).
At some point, there is no theory and I’m on my own. Sometimes wandering around with a camera.
Afterwards, the work involves separating from the work, homo sacer possibly and something sent to a curator.
3
I assume nothing is given, but making a little sense of my world began early on. I felt loved and wasn't averse to time travelling sentiments. For Lacan, this is just one aspect of language, which sometimes seems less connected to having a body. Having a body came with problems that sometimes seem part of the make up of language. Listening makes room for something. And my father sometimes positioned himself far away and I did my best to go even further during and after time at Goldsmiths. My work is first biographical, then not at all. It’s sometimes intimate and sometimes theory or structure. This becomes much more the case after Isabel and my father.
And small moments, clips or passages undo testimonies, beginning again each time.
Is it enough?
And what's next with video
and signifiers?
4
A story. Onymus took instructions on this occasion. It might have have happened or it could have been a dream and dreams are ambiguous, bisexual, in between moments.
He was trying to help organise a festival. Someone who would later become quite famous stood behind him and he was on the phone, talking to someone who was already very famous. He hadn’t read this writer’s work and inviting him involved one precondition. They would have to meet first. The writer distrusted phones, had been tipped off and would turn being interviewed around.
Would meet him in a hotel room, if Onymus wore a pink bikini bottom under whatever he normally wore.
Onymus asked, is that all?
The writer said there could be more but didn’t want to overload the situation. Coming to the festival wouldn’t be going to any festival, but Onymus could convey what there was to convey. Could turn Goldsmiths corridors into a cat walk.
Turning heads, with a dangerously cropped head of hair, royal blue velvet jacket and a bikini bottom worn over the top of nondescript trousers.
Onymus put the phone down. Would do his best with a little transference. It wasn’t exactly transference, but changing places stuck. It was an idea that could be used later. Worthless elaboration was logical. Logical in digital times.
A story works best with or without video and that Goldsmiths moment predates an entrepreneuring generation and the decline of deschooling moments. It was all there in an interview that wasn't one. Onymus slips between two famous people and won't remember his lines. The rest is a downturn. One predicted by iPhones and Duchamp's urinal.
Both extensions of tireless bodies.
5
Perhaps few people noticed at first, but time stood still eventually. I could say time stood still for a while, but don’t know if that’s true. Wandering around with a camera and video then becomes part of a stasis. Nothing happens and if that’s not correct, what happened before happens again. Again and again and again. Sooner or later, I’ll go up the road to get some beer. Homo sacer is one take on this. It has to do with the drive.
Not just the drive up there but Freud’s drive.
Taking a camera is one way of not going over a text. It was a problem once before on the road to Damascus. Bhanu Kapil links vertigo and attraction and going anywhere with a camera works. Onymus is stuck wandering Goldsmiths corridors. Something else is happening now. I’ve Bhanu Kapil’s contention in mind and will go out with a camera again.
Texts and video are reductive... you can’t have one without the other in digital times, but writing is homely.
Christopher Sands, still, 17 August 2022
Christopher Sands, still, 12 May 2018
Christopher Sands, still, 1 December 2021