Artists:
rudy speerschneider, mostlandian chef
arthur bradford, writer
dave benz, artist
a.m. o'malley, zinester
northwest dance project:
sarah slipper, artistic director
lindsey matheis, company dancer
lloyd eugene winter IV, graphic designer/illustrator
sara guest, poet
corrina rep, musician
lynn yarne, artist
returning SHARE artists: gigi little, writer; sarah nordbye, graphic artist; noah nakell, sculptor; matt sipes, sculptor; margaret malone, writer; kathleen lane, writer
7:00, work begins. From left: Matt Sipes, Dave Benz, Noah Nakell, a.m. o'malley
Dave Benz' They Watch the Organ of Flight Escape
Dave: When I got the prompt, I built the box and the light mechanism in a whirlwind. The mechanism was built with a tiny motor and disks to form a shutter that would open and close to reveal a light over and over. The resulting mechanism generated a slowly pulsing light, which I associated with how organs are often cyclical in nature. To me, the mechanism ended up being a man-made organ, and the box was like a body.
We all like our organs, but I think that each of our organs has become strongly identified with its function and most basic symbolic meaning. I was thinking about how wings are the organ of flight, and I wanted to add a new layer of abstraction or mythology to that. I was thinking that inside the box, I would place a visual representation of a wing, a man-made organ, and a symbolic representation of a group of cells. Viewed in my mind's eye, the cells made me think of coptic jars, which are what the ancient Egyptians would use to store the organs they removed from a mummy. I liked the resulting pile-up of meanings. Organs and cells can be vessels. Organs can store cells. Organs are made of cells. Coptic jars are vessels made to store organs. Inside the box, the mechanism would shine a slowly pulsing light on the wing and the cells/vessels. I hoped that it would be visually interesting.
So the night of Share, I built the wing, and the vessels. Thinking of coptic jars, I gave the vessels legs and put ancient Egyptian headdresses on them. I gave one a crown. The wing looked great inside the box, but the vessels ended up needing more space, so I put them on top of the box instead. Placed there, they looked like a chorus in a play, and I felt that they needed some tragedy or drama to witness. So I built a final figure with wings, and arranged them all as if it was the last act of a play, and as if the winged one was different, or had been caught in the act of transformation.
a.m. O'Malley's zine she titled Heartbeat Breathlung
a.m.: sometimes, when I feel like giving up, I think of my heart and how hard she works for me--the size of two fists, the fierceness of a thousand.
Northwest Dance Project company dancer Lindsey Matheis performs a dance she choreographed with artistic director Sarah Slipper. Their music choice: Inuit throat singer Tagaq.
Lloyd Eugene Winter IV's An instrument only horror can wield,
Two works by poet Sara Guest
Health-wise I have a big pulse and hands like 31 flavors.
I eat tuna sandwiches in the bunkered garden too hot for other transcribers.
All of us fist our food and some of these sweeties come in at 8am still smelling of margarita.
You don’t have to be pretty or sure of yourself—you are the keyboard’s sweaty prisoner.
That jocular tech taps me today and I follow, brushing up against the orangey-lemony beakers.
He could swallow me, you know.
But he holds it up to the light—a tiny body removed an hour or so before.
Measure the nail on your ring finger: this body is smaller than that.
It’s got a blue eye solid as the sound of glass.
“That eye is like it’s looking at you,” he says.
“I know it,” I say.
This is where we start in on forever:
with our aborted jettisoned baby
in the basement of St. Joseph’s
where gross-techs meet high-school dropout transcriptionists
bring them flesh-toned baubles better than any ring.
Inside
You don’t see a capillary in a thousand sugary dawns because viscous puce-colored highways send you through one doorway and another and at 845 millimeters sentries pop up bloody as matchsticks and the Health Beat hollows your vision while the drumbeat gives you a push and at 790 you’re shot through, blue and goggle-eyed, as an angry heart cuts you into rough meat and at 600 a Salton Sea sits you down to Sunday supper of lamb and peas and chips and you don’t notice the ooze from the “walls” until dessert wine falls into jewel-toned mini-goblets and at 450 there it is again: the rough-cut liver like a pickled fin swimming in a pool of wantons and by 325 you’re singing your eyelashes away to interior Led Zeppelin because veins really know how to “get the Led out” and at 215 you’re a pelvis of bone-dried bobble-heads gummed with witch-hazel and something fried and/or fluted swishes by but you soldier down to 97 where everything narrows and bunk by bunk you make it heel to heel with 41 where the big reveal is a maze of rainbow roots the ends of which you’re sure you’ll never see until there they are white and empty and you begin to lament this trail like Oscar the Grouch laments the can feeling like stillness after sex has dragged you the final 5 because you’re flat-headed and fire-breathing and a filthy fluttery shade of toenail pink sailing through Neverland until you’re there.
Musician Corrina Repp based her song on the memory of swimming in the ocean, and the idea of "organs having memories of experiences of their owners"
Lynn Yarne's The Soft and Sometimes Silent "E"
SHARE 3 artist Matt Sipes' copper wire creations Eye Love You and Lady Parts.
this was so so so much fun! thank you.
ReplyDeleteMuch thanks to Kathleen and Margaret for putting together this event. Here is a link to John and Aleena's performance:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY9f7K8a0aQ