body politic (an ongoing space)

Visual art education revolves around a particular group feedback protocol -- often called the "crit." Lots of ink has been spilled questioning the efficacy and political implications of "crits" as a form of collective evaluation  and analysis (for example, see here ,  here , here , here , here , and  here ). This ink spillage brings us to broader questions about institutionality, authority, education, evaluation, aesthetic judgement, and group process. It brings us towards the question of what constitutes "constructive" criticism and towards various attempts to mitigate the potential relational violence of feedback -- for examples, see Liz Lerman's " critical response process " and the much discussed " feedback sandwich ."   As we move towards showing work and responding to each other's work in class tomorrow, I wanted to take a second to think about how we might approach feedback and response. We are in a graduate department de...

My practice is about Chinese (Tibetan) Buddhism. When I went to Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture as a volunteer teacher, my local teaching partner invited me to Langmu Temple which is one of the most famous Tibetan temples in China. There, I learned that Tibetan temples are colleges for those who believe in Tibetan BUddhism. The believers go to the temples and live there for a whole life until in order to become a master. However, in these colleges, the masters do not teach the believers Buddist texts: they do not have lectures or seminars, and what they do in the “class” is merely reading and transcribing the texts even without understanding the meaning (for most of the texts are linguistically translated). According to their belief, if someone has Pannindriya, he will be able to understand the texts without explanation. So I decided to write a piece of Buddhist texts (though not in Tibetan) everyday during this week with Buddist music. This is the link to one of the songs I list...

Here are parts one and two of videos of me making some art in my backyard in Litchfield. This is part of my venture into mixing painting and sculpture to create images the viewer feels they can "enter." Or to create new miniature worlds. I've been doing a few space paintings like this, combining insulation spray foam, drywall spackle, spray paint, and acrylic paint. I like the dual creation of outer space as the place where creation happens as stars are formed, destroyed, and formed again, and physically creating my own outer space. Both outer space and the space of the canvas hold the same limitless possibility- the ability to add on, to pull from, to give birth, to rub against, to rip and tear, to pull apart, to punch a hole through, to cover up, to go over, to build. I have always loved painting- the technique, the sense of pride of the created image. I hate feelings of not knowing what to paint or which direction to take the painting in. One of my art teachers once sa...

Sorry for the late post. My body really got the better of me these last two weeks.  Sometime this past spring, my therapist and I were talking about (my) internalized ableism and how it is that I came to know disability and what it means to be disabled. “Who have been your examples of disability?,” she asked me, or some question like that. This led me to think about several family members (including my mother and my mother’s brother, my uncle, both of whom have the same autoimmune disease as me). Then a few months later, I came to think about Victor. Victor was my cousin. He had been born with sickle cell anemia. He eventually died of complications in early 2000. He was 32 years old at the time. I was 7, just a month away from my 8th birthday. I felt tremendous guilt when I eventually thought of Victor and realized that it had taken me so long to think of him, that I had forgotten to think of him, that I had forgotten him in relation to this important, emerging part of my life. Tha...

 Here's a little voice recording. Thanks for listening! 

re-reading this feels like it was months ago -  i refuse your orange filigree an opportune refusal of every transient preoccupation  with the tantamount in everything always already foreclosed upon entering for being forthright is not a general expectation for arrival upon the stage of intimate relation i'm not apologizing , this is the way I say goodbye wordless and long standing the drapes settle around what wasn't said to be agreeable, desireable, or even ready for the next approbation, elision, or prevarication don't you see how pertinent the text on the wall is now that the building is destroyed? now that the story of architecture has a proper ending, an apotheothis, a long list of footnotes, beside annotated eulogies-for floors, bannisters, vestibules, counters, and miles of moulding. This is before glass so the shards stay suspended in the speculative cloud, exhausted by the anticipation of epiphany. I didn't sign the lease because i've smelled fraudulence be...

hi all, sorry it took me some time to transcribe my ritual notes. . . i may make an audio recording if that's something people are interested in or helpful.  xchip --------- movement/drawing exercise - wave formation have nearby: pencil and paper, water, 36 sq. ft of ground/floor - face a westward wall - find a comfortable standing position - feel gravity pool in your traps - the weight of your pelvic floor - sense the space behind you - sense the space in front of you - sense the space above your head_ up into space - turn your head from side to side - bend your knees a bit   - listen to your breath - find the balls of your feet   - press your toes into the floor - release your toes - let your tail bone fall - feel your spine extend - focus your sense of gravity in the balls of your feet - bend your knees a fews times - lets your arms hang - find your balance   - draw your heels off the ground slightly - let your heels down   - draw them up - let them down ...

 https://youtu.be/5P5519zVUGs Here is a little dance film I made exploring the question of sufferance in order to find both individual and collective meaning around origin and drive! 

I am thinking that maybe my ongoing bodily practice has something to do with telling the truth.  I am wrestling with incomprehensible linearity of time; seeing nearly everyone you know in one place to (ostensibly) celebrate you can feel quite overwhelming, the "I've known him since before he was born" people commingling with the coworker I met two years ago. Weddings are weird, but they are also catastrophically life-affirming. I am jumping ahead, but there is something about destroying the object that is my cynical isolationism in order to grow for someone I love. At my wedding I spent a lot of time thinking about emotional truths, and the weapons I and my brothers have developed to stifle feeling too much at any given time. This weaponry led a good 90% of my acting teachers to tell me I was "mysterious" which is another way of saying "you're closed off," though some people said that, too. In the aftermath of this (truly) wondrous occasion, we hud...

the incapacity of being   mother wife filmaker a student naif Profound  anything... with a head down hands writing cold in my spin i am afraid of terror Bolsonaro stop. point. a black pen writes in front of me and Bolsonaro doesn't leave my mind this is not a dream. a deep breath and yet there he is A laugh Is it his?  His photo at the newspaper his teeth laughing is he eating something?  us? this country? and me? here in US US is not us. Is Bolsonaro the entire country? my country? A sound of a feet in the floor.  A head down. A black pen. Eye closed.  a vibration of an iphone the light is stronger than it felt before Dis I got used to it? To what? To Bolsonaro?  I wake up today. Kids crying. "I don't wanna go to school"  Matias got hurt. And I kept going but he is there, like the monster in Aurora's wardrobe. 

Day 1 I play the music loud and I dance Day 2 I listen to the music riding a bike Day 3 I listen the music in the airport. 10 hours plane. Day 4 The film premiere. After party: roda de samba. And there the ritual happens. Day 5. Recording the performance. But how to perform a ritual that only happens in relation to others? https://vimeo.com/758533342 password: bodypolitics

hi again everyone. in the spirit of sharing, here's my writing sleeping writing from last class: loosen, loosen your grip, loosen your grip on yourself, somewhere there is a sphincter opening. no you don't, don't even think about it. you come in here and think you know everything but you don't, you're just...  he wants to lie so bad he wants to construct complicated architectures of untruth,  complicated falsities with no ground we have to let Idina Menzel go, we have to let go of what we wanted from her she doesn't have to do this anymore, she doesn't have to sing that song no has to sing that song, screens have been abolished, there's nowhere you have to be  the hum of an institution even when nothing is happening, the institution hums along there, a background drone, the ongoingness of social reproduction  the king's court is toasting to your success, you are the talk of the town, they gather around you cheers-ing in your honor, but you know that ...

 This started before we had the opportunity to create an ongoing bodily practice. I have begun to talk to myself with increasing frequency as I find it helps with just about everything. However, this a sporadic practice and I found that arguing with yourself is difficult if your regular voice represents both sides. So, I have begun writing emails to myself, always on a schedule send for 8 am the following day, using the two emails I have available. This also allowed me to separate my computer, specifically my emails, from their usual numbing temporality. It is a somatic experience that I have daily and, as such, a prime window through which to engage in a daily practice. Here are two recent excerpts, one from before we talked about the bodily practice and one from after.   Maybe I will post more but there is also the more interesting/concerning habit of walking over subways grates as an exercise in grave hope.  Dear Ro,  I think you may have a problem and I...

hi everyone. just a quick check in because blogs are antiquated and weird. please post your experiments as "posts" so then we can also include images and video if you'd like and be able to comment on each others posts and things like that.   some loose instructions for doing that:  1. respond to the email invitation and make an author profile.  2. go to blogspot.com or blogger.com (they will go to the same place) and make sure you're signed in and that it says "mystic bodies//body politic" on the top of the left hand menu  3. click "new post" just below that and create a post!  4. then go back to the view the blog itself, either by typing in mysticbodies.blogspot.com or by clicking "view blog" at the bottom of the menu on the left, to see other people's posts and comment and things like that.   does that make sense? give it your best shot? if making a post doesn't work, you can also comment on existing posts and things can get wei...

 Hi!

lygia clark, abyssal mask