Friday, February 28, 2014

Found in the Attic Volume 1


It ain't no cansfull of uncirculated 19th century gold coins, but I thought this element from my 1997 solo installation at POST St. Sebastian Tom Sawyer Cathy Mishima Expo 67 was long gone, when I discovered it tucked in a corner of the attic while trying to staunch the flow of brown water onto my book collection and dinner table below... Disc®otu m’, 1997, soft double mirror ball, fabric, stuffing, optional motors, approx 40 X 30 X 24 ins. Me, from the JOAAP book FAILURE!:

"Descending in tandem from the rafters was the gender-corrected biorchid soft kinetic sculpture Disc®otu m’, a sack of mirror-encrusted fabric containing two motorized vibrating wads of material. I’ve always been puzzled by Duchamp scholars insistence that the title of his last painting Tu m' was an abbreviation of the French expression “Tu m'emmerdes” or “you’re shitting on (bugging) me.” As far as I can tell, it’s just a guess – it could be completed with any French verb starting with a vowel. Why not “Tu m’blank” as in “You blank me,” which, rather than sealing the tomb on painting because of some specific affect (irritation, beshitment, boredom), emphasizes (and probably expresses doubt in the validity of) the very hierarchical subject/object binary model of communication (and by extension reality itself) by which it achieves its agency. Disc®otu m’ in addition to presenting a disembodied teabag of Damocles that visually mimics the geometry-bound domes [Fuller geodesics played a central part in the installation's symbology], was intended to expand Duchamp’s contraction, doubling it with mirrors and subjecting it to seizure. Lazarus, Come forth!"
... and plenty more where that came from... 

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