Remains pencilled in / photoTrinks
Well I was pleasantly surprised when I had a look at the first results of my investigative project for the series "what remains" at defibrillator in Chicago... I had been somewhat dismayed at the technical problems we encountered ( aside from the sorry fact I couldn't be there myself) and had sort of reduced expectations... But no, it was quite interesting... The crew at DFBR8r had done a good job at installing the piece just in the passage between front and rear... So being part of the gallery space and at the same time the soul kitchen where artists congregate... The presentation being something in passing, an aside to the main events so to speak "en passant" as the french would say... Thus recreating quite well the memory of being out of class during lessons, so to say, sharpening pencils, as if that were an essential part of my education... And yes it was...
Photo TrinksHere too, the aside nature of the proposition, sharpening a pencil while passing by to get a drink or conversely, to see the next performance... And yet just as it is an aside, there is no pretension to a proposal... It seems to come when turning the handle of this manual machine that takes people back to when not everything was automatic. At the same time it's mechanistic and repetitive, grinding away at the troubles... Which is a very positive slant given by one of the participants...
C.R.'s wonderful befitting Beehive
( Ph. Angeliki Chaido Tsoli)
The setup was perfect... Perfect too was the get-up that C.R. - the artist hosting my piece had prepared... A veritable school teacher from the early sixties... Decent but light & airy blouse with flower decoration, and a wonderful beehive sculpture of a hair-do, slightly flamboyant but retaining a certain strictness needed to keep the kids on the straight & narrow... And yes, even though I had just mentioned this memory connected to the sharpener at school in passing... It is spot on: the beehive hairdo is also an original Chicago invention... And what is more... It connects directly back to the pomegranate... By way of Vinci... The creator of the Beehive was Margaret Vinci Heldt, and earlier I had made reference to the grenades designed by Leonardo Da Vinci... But per chance came across a painting by him depicting mother and child ( mary & Jeeez...) with a pomegranate... Well well...
So much for synchronicity and serendipity...
So, after hatching the idea to replace the missing shavings-receptacle with a hollowed- out pomegranate, an idea that was also spawned by some fluke connection made to the projects preceding this one... The question of how many seeds, the varying traditions and meanings... Well, I actually counted the seeds in this one, and there are 468 of them, and as of yet I have not found a number that coincides in some mysterious way...
In the meantime I have had word that my copies of the four remain-investigations are en route... Looking forward to reading about all the other findings... And in the meantime, remains are being gathered everywhere... Virus r no virus...
Keep well!
