Thursday, March 28, 2013

from wherever (9)


April 2004




K. A.
1302 Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

K.,

I think of our years together as an amber string, spooling itself in reverse. Time spans uncontrollably towards some point that is neither you, nor I, nor us.

I am in Baltimore for the weekend, and will be gone by morning. I can't recall your face any longer, although I remember the door to your apartment. Some surfaces continue.

A void at last,



M.

Enc. (1): the city above, the sky below / impossible reversals are possible



Wednesday, March 27, 2013

from wherever (8)







February 15, 1993




Karl Ambonvoid
1302 Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

K.,


I am staggering. My apologies are circling. I am in circulation. We are economies, substituting signs, forgetting as quickly as touching.

Vicious circles of fiction and sickness seem to follow me. I hope that one day you will understand why things have to be written this way.

Texts write themselves.
But you know this as well as I.



M.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

from wherever (7)






November 29, 1992




The Contemporary Museum
Mr. Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator
1610 St. Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,


Thank you for the correction regarding the dimensions of the St. Stanislaus exhibition space. Please don’t apologize, I realize that these details are out of your control.

Aside from the contents of the boxes, which will be displayed according to my specifications, I will be sending a mural-sized print of the photograph included in this packet, entitled “Self-portrait as line in the clouds” (1992). Installation instructions will accompany the print; it is important that the handlers follow them explicitly.

As is my policy, I will be unable to meet with the board of the Contemporary Museum, or to attend the opening. Please express my warmest thanks to the board for allowing the museum to host my work, and for understanding that these refusals are central to my project.

Your office may contact me if there are any further questions.


Sincerely,



Mona Nyous

Monday, March 25, 2013

from wherever (6)






October 21, 1992




The Contemporary Museum
Mr. Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator
1610 St. Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,


I have received and signed the documents you forwarded to me. Please find them enclosed. Should you need any more information regarding my preference in packing and handling companies, please contact my office immediately.

Also, please find enclosed the photograph you requested for your essay. I believe that it will help to explain the form of the work that you referenced.

I will plan on shipping the work to the Contemporary Museum office three weeks before the exhibit opens in March. Please advise your handlers that specific installation instructions will accompany each piece. We can discuss this further later in the winter.

Please contact me if you have any further questions.


Sincerely,



Mona Nyous

Sunday, March 24, 2013

from wherever (5)








October 15, 2004




Karl Ambonvoid
1302 Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

K.,


Your silence is the more frightening; I know that it contains a universe.

I’m used to my own obscurity, its opaqueness keeps me standing. I didn’t believe that the years would change things so much between us, that the air would harden into a solid mass.

Blanchot sustains me: “It makes me, nothingness that I am, like unto nothingness. In a cowardly way it delivers me to joy.”

Perhaps we are both cowards, hiding behind words and structures, sure that our allusions will eventually be able to breathe on their own. Or, in the simplest of expectations, stand.



M.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

from wherever (4)







October 15, 1992




Karl Ambonvoid
1302 Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

Karl,

In a certain way, the work has been eclipsed. Or rather, the eclipse has become the arc of the work.

Forgive my week of silence; I am used to choosing my words, but last week I felt as if I were in the middle of some terrible forced obscurity.  I keep expecting it to vanish, for my body to re-member itself, to disavow what it has learned.

Se souvenir. The remnant “to come” hidden within the body of the word.

Small deaths abound.


I will write more when words return.



M.

Friday, March 22, 2013

from wherever (3)







September 20, 1992




The Contemporary Museum
Mr. Karl Ambonvoid, curator
1610 St. Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

I’m delighted to know that St. Stanislaus will be available for the exhibition. Could you send me the dimensions of the space, including any walls that are available? Also, I’d like the exact address so that when I visit Baltimore next week I will be able to spend some time in the space.

Your observation about the morality of identity in my work was very perceptive; to clarify might ruin your exquisitely balanced writing. I could only add that the fluid, but essentially mechanistic (Sadistic?) nature of identity (something that Foucault suggests in his varied histories of sexuality) still seems to emanate from an outside. An outside that slips through the structures that attempt to give it boundaries.

Thank you for including the Valery in your last letter. I hope that you find my reply satisfactory. Words begetting words; lovers of discourse…


Sincerely,




Mona Nyous

from wherever (2)





September 9, 2004




Karl Ambonvoid
1302 Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

Karl,

The years between us are fleeced.
We hunters in parallel fields,
Finding courage in minor successes:

The stars opening,
Our verticality.
Words and worlds emptied;
The press of the middle
Against the tongue.


Yet, “the nothingness shows through,”
as you and your Valery might suggest.



Still,


M.








PS. I’ve included some photos from my new work
on language and economies. It’s a triptych,
working title “We Knew Him (Three views)”…

from wherever (1)






September 7, 1992




The Contemporary Museum
Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator
1610 St. Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

I think that I agree with you that it would work best for both of our schedules to schedule the exhibition between March and June; I will leave the specifics of dates up to you and your staff.

I am very much excited at the possibility of mounting the exhibition in the convent. As you noted, it seems as though my work would benefit from the overlay of that specific historical/geographic text. Let me know as soon as you finalize with the city and church, as I am anticipating incorporating (the corpse in the middle) it into my installation.

I hope that this finds you well.

Sincerely,




Mona Nyous

Sleeping Minotaur Loop from Wes Kline on Vimeo.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

from "Red Doc>" by Anne Carson


Wife of Brain

we enter we tell you
we are the Wife of Brain
at this point you have little grounds to complain we say
a red man unfolding his wings is how it begins then the lights
come on or go off or the stage
spins it’s like a play omnes
to their places
but
remember
the following faces
the red one (G)
you already know (what’s he done to his hair) his old friend
Sad
But Great
looks kind
beware
third Ida Ida is limitless and will soon be our king
scene is
a little red hut where G lives alone
time
evening

WHY BIRDS HAVE no
arms–if you are human
you fly with arms straight
out in front and horizontal
to the ground. To give
least resistance. Of course
it’s exhausting. Don’t fight
it just do it says G to his
arms. He visualizes little
pistons all over pumping
him forward and this helps
for a while but the ache is
spreading from his spine
in every direction. Down
the ice fault pours a steady
cold channel of headwind
against him. He knows he
is slowing and probably
looks ridiculous. Am I
turning into one of those
old guys in a ponytail and
wings he thinks sadly.
Something skims his
cheek. He waves at it
vaguely. Predators. His
heart sinks. People talk of
eagles with a wingspan of
3 meters in the northern
regions. He begins to
imagine his own heroic
death as told by Daniil
Kharms. If the sky – but
now the air is darkening
around him and strange
vectors dive whizz swoop
– he gasps suddenly
realizing what it is. Not
predators. Ice bats! They
are blueblack. They are
absolutely silent. They
are the size of toasters.
And they are drafting him
down the ice fault with
eerie gentle purpose. A
spearhead in front and a
convoy each side. His
shoulders begin to relax.
Is there an etiquette for
this he should worry
about? Theoretically he
can gain 35% efficiency
by riding their wheels a
while. But it should be
some sort of exchange.
On the other hand theirs is
a volunteer intervention
and they do look tireless
despite all going so fast
there’s a smell of burning –
he is thinking this odd this
smell of burning when the
whole mass of them veers
around an ice bend and
arrives in a vast garage.

ICE BATS GO nimbly
and can stop on a dime.
Here’s how you stop. Flap
both wings downward
creating a vortex above
the leading edge of each
wing this allows you to
hover. Then flap once
upward to release suction
as you glide from the
flight path in an attitude of
careless royalty and
subside onto some ledge
or throne with neatly
folded fingerbones. G’s
descent is less fine. He
slams into the
blueblackness ahead of
him not expecting it to
stop. Or instantly
disperse. Each bat goes
whizzing its way into an
aperture in the back wall.
BATCATRAZ says a sign
nailed up there. G drops
to the ice floor stunned.
Clever of you to come in
the back way says a voice.
G looks up.

"In Love with You" by Kenneth Koch


I

O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance! Ah, but dearest friends,
Like forms, are finished, as life has ends! Still,
It is beautiful, when October
Is over, and February is over,
To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet
Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then
Reply (to no one), “Let’s go five or six blocks.”
Isn’t the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?
Aren’t my eyes bigger than love?
Isn’t this history, and aren’t we a couple of ruins?
Is Carthage Pompeii? is the pillow the bed? is the sun
What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight!
Is love what we are,
Or has happiness come to me in a private car
That’s so very small I’m amazed to see it there?

                                                       2

We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, “There’s a spider
Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.” I love you.
I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love
I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism.

                                                       3

Inside the symposium of your sweetest look’s
Sunflower awning by the nurse-faced chrysanthemums childhood
Again represents a summer spent sticking knives into porcelain raspberries, when China’s
Still a country! Oh, King Edward abdicated years later, that’s
Exactly when. If you were seventy thousand years old, and I were a pill,
I know I could cure your headache, like playing baseball in drinking-water, as baskets
Of towels sweetly touch the bathroom floor! O benches of nothing
Appear and reappear—electricity! I’d love to be how
You are, as if
The world were new, and the selves were blue
Which we don
Until it’s dawn,
Until evening puts on
The gray hooded selves and the light brown selves of . . .
Water! your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

critic at large



I wish to be a critic at large,
but how large,
and where -


at.





last night i dreamt that you had written a letter to me, on the surface of a stone in the middle of a desert.  through most of the dream i was hiking through a rugged, mountainous landscape, but i had no map, or clear sense of direction.  somehow, i stumbled onto the rock  - triangular, it jutted abruptly from the dry sand. 

i could see that there was writing on it, but it was blurred, and out of focus.  as is the arc of dreams, i woke before i could understand what was written.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

After Salo by Pier Paolo Pasolini


 

                   

Masters



 

                   

Storytellers



 

                   

Male victims



 

                   

Female victims



 

                   

Daughters



 

                   

Militia



 

                   

Collaborators



 

                   

Servants



  

                   

Written and directed by



  

                   

Northern Italy, during the

Nazi Fascist occupation



  

                   

we

Are we in a place where we can understand what has happened?


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Wes Kline Live Performance at Art Center South Florida


TAURIC SCHEMA #11-13

Multi Channel Sound performances, Jan 16, Mar 2, and Mar 17.

Expanding on the concept of the ‘archive’ of images that is explored in the show installation MINOTAUROCRACY, I utilize recordings from binaural and contact microphones to capture sounds at the site of the four Modernist houses and housing complexes depicted in the installation. The performance reassembles these sounds as edited loops, attempting to replicate an architectonic space using the sonic imprint of the buildings, their usage, and their surroundings. The performances merge the documentary impulse of field recording with more contemporary electronic music structures, suggesting a hybridity of use and aesthetics.

Download the first sound performance, Jan 16 2013, approx. 30 min (Tauric Schema #11):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dln4o5k380u1p63/Minotaur%20Performance%201.mp3?m


More info on the show:
http://www.weskline.com/page51.html




Friday, March 1, 2013

Robert Grenier on Natural Language

Some correlations with Heidegger's Was Heisst Denken?, different interpretations of the concept/word idea (eidos), and face-to-face meeting with what presents itself as continuing 'basis' for truth (11:54):

 MP3


via UPENN SOUND