018. ⬛Null Reliquary⬛
Hello friend,
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Long time no see. Or read? I hope all of you have had a restful couple of weeks slowly defrosting from the knuckle-blushing cold of winter. This particular newsletter has been germinating in the back of my computer for some time now, so much so that this is part one of two about a subject I'm very excited to share with you.
I've been thinking a lot about The Void. A sense of emptiness, a vacuum, spaces that appear to be hollowed out, gutted, marked by blank surfaces and carved out by shadows, negation, denial across individual consciousness and sociocultural landscapes.
When I think of The Void, I think of the deep sea. How 95% of this part of the planet we occupy remains unexplored. How, in fact, the deep sea is not empty at all. It's teeming with microorganisms, belching hydrothermal vents, all kinds of bleach-white fish that float within the darkness and hunt with bioluminescence, where there is no time of day or changing of the seasons, where the water density can crush our submarines before we even reach the absolute bottom of the ocean floor.
Enjoy.
TOUCH
IMAGE
My reading habits have been pretty sporadic this past couple of weeks but I thought I would talk about Haruki Murakami's
After Life. This magical realist book follows different characters over the course of a single night, all the way until sunrise. There's a girl who's fallen asleep but can't wake up, her sister spending time at a 24 hours Denny's, workers at a love hotel, and a businessman getting rid of evidence at his office. It's quite a quick read (I finished it over the course of a day), sliced up into cinematic vignettes and marked by the changing hours. This book definitely left me with more questions than answers, but I'm glad I can finally cross this one off my Murakami reading list.
A while back, I went to the Bronx Museum of Art to check out their exhibit on one of my favorite artists, Gordon Matta-Clark (of course, I got so excited that I ended up not taking any pictures of the works on display). If you're not familiar with this work, Gordon Matta-Clark worked in the Bronx in the 70's. He is most famous for his "anarchitecture", a radical, sculptural practice of cutting geometric shapes into buildings slated for demolition. Besides his more well-known pieces, I was fascinated by his images of graffiti across subway cars, chunks of building from his projects, videos of Matta-Clark exploring subway tunnels and climbing into derelict structures. Very informative, but it left me wanting more. The show is up until April 8th, and you can see more of Matta-Clark's work here.
LOOK
I'm thinking of Ben Vautier's 1968 piece, Total Art Matchbox. A Fluxus artist and self-described "cactus in the ass of art", Vautier was concerned with moving against artistic institutions, stylistic conventions, and the commercial art market. This iconoclastic piece is quite self-explanatory, reaching absolute artistic zero through this controlled container of chaos.
A few weeks ago, I saw Violet Dennison's piece, M.O.O.P (Matter Out Of Place), at the New Museum's triennial and her work has really stuck with me since. Over the past two years, she's been fascinated by posthuman thought and our current impact on the environment. M.O.O.P features Floridian seagrass, a crucial part of the ecosystem that's currently threatened by climate change and pollution. Dennison describes the process of the seagrass drying up and falling to the gallery floor: "In its very existence as 'dead', we perceive the seagrass shed more and more body. Death is a continual process". The seagrass is mounted with a scaffolding of pipes, a marker of plumbing's creation for human functions, yet its cleansing, sterile properties are dirtied by our history of ecological damage and extinction. I'm very excited to see what she creates next.
I remember seeing Richard Wilson's 20:50 in London's Saatchi Gallery and thinking I was looking at glass or a polished black floor. In reality, I was looking at thick recycled engine oil flooding the room. I'm not sure what I would've done if I knew that (the Saatchi website *LINK* recommends blowing on the surface of the liquid to prove that the oil is real). I absolutely love the idea of this liquid smoothing out and effectively erasing the gallery space it occupies through its highly opaque surface. How, when viewing it, you step into the v-shaped viewing alcove and it's like standing in the middle of a mirror. The piece is unfortunately no longer on display in Saatchi (it was acquired by an Australian millionaire in 2015) but you can find plenty of images and videos of the piece's old installation online.
Mass production is, in many ways, its own type of void, clogging up landfills as we hide and distance ourselves from our waste, falling into the background of our lives with its disposable nature. Tara Donovan wrestles with these themes in her sculptures and installations--including Nebulous (2008). This particular work is constructed entirely out of cellulose tape, manipulating the material so that it resembles NASA galaxy photographs, a microscope organism, a flattened out cloud, or mycelium smears of fungi. I love this piece's sublime quality, how it seems to grow out of the floor, spreading its emptiness up to the edge of your shoes. If you're in the Boston area, you can view Donovan's piece in the ICA's exhibit, "Entangled in the Everyday".
Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary is one of those artists that completely embody 'void' for me. Her versatile body of work concerns itself with the ephemeral quality of breath and empty space, manifesting in gorgeous installations and multimedia canvases. Inspired by physics, poetry, and Sufi ideas of divinity, many of her pieces contain Arabic words lightly drawn onto the surface like a kind of disorienting linguistic mist. "The universe is in a process of disintegration," she tells Lisson Gallery, "everything is in a state of erosion, and yet we try to stabilize it. This tension fascinates me and it’s at the core of my work". The image above is Between (2010/2011). You can view more of her work here and you can see a studio visit the Tate did with her in 2014 here .
In keeping with this idea of materialized void, I'd also like to include Ann Hamilton's sensory, large-scale installations to this conversation. Hamilton constructs environments dense with materials such as paper and fabric, in direct response to the architectural quality and history of the exhibition site. I love that while her use of 'blank' materials, such as white curtains and paper, would imply a sense of emptiness, this interview from 2016, about the way she plans her pieces, show how these seemingly simple works are in fact full of movement all kinds of hanging contraptions. The work pictured above is The Event of A Thread (2012) at the Park Avenue Armory, but I would also recommend looking at her Body Object photo series where she uses different objects and materials to erase her body. You can check out more of her work here.
LISTEN
I'll begin with a new podcast from WNYC, Caught. This particular show looks at today's juvenile justice system, how it got to this point, and you get to hear the story of teenagers caught up in different punitive law enforcement systems around the country. When talking about mass incarceration, the conversation tends to be centered around adults (understandably so), but we can't forget that children who are currently locked up and continue to be affected by different policing strategies as well long after they receive their sentences. I include it in this newsletter precisely because many of their stories fall through the cracks. In 2013, about 54,148 juveniles are in detention centers (40% of that population are in private facilities and this number doesn't include juveniles tried as adults). The United States currently incarcerates more young people than any other country in the world. This podcast has taught me a lot about our current juvenile criminal justice system, and it's very necessary if you're interested in learning more about America's (racialized) history of mass incarceration. You can listen to Caught here.
I've had Jenny Hval's song "Conceptual Romance" stuck in my head for the past week. I feel like so far I've been talking about physical emptiness but there's something about this tune that speaks to an emotional hollowness, unfulfilled desire. Hval goes so far as to describe it as "abstract romanticism". She sings: "I lose myself in the rituals of bad art, in failure / I want to give up but I can tell / My heartbreak is too sentimental for you". You can listen to it here.
Lastly, I recently revisited Kelsey Lu's 2016 album, Church. A professionally trained cellist, her songs, accented by her low, steady voice, floats through you with a dreamy somberness. I love the stripped-down nature of her music, the way her warm sounds tend to linger until they reach their own silence. You can check out a live performance of her music here and more of her tracks on her Soundcloud here. Trust me, like burrowing yourself into the cavernous depths of a fleece blanket, you will find comfort.
LICK
I ended up watching the 2010 documentary, Into Eternity, about the Onkalo nuclear waste storage facility in Finland for one of my classes and a week later, it's still on my mind. This film looks at not only the construction of the site (which is supposed to last about a 100,000 years which is when the waste stops being hazardous), but what to do with the site once its sealed, how to communicate what's in site to future generations and how to warn them about the nuclear waste deep under the soil. The director, Michael Madsen, interviews several people involved in the project about this issue of communication, and the possibility of creating warning signs for a future that might not have the same languages we do now. What starts out as a movie about nuclear waste becomes a philosophical musing on our existence and the waste that will outlive us. You can watch the documentary here.
I thought I would also include the work of Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths. This research agency is comprised of not only architects, but investigative journalists, artists, software developers, and scientists. They investigate human rights offenses around the world, from the Grenfell Tower Fire, airstrikes in Syria, and a boat of refugees left to drift in the Mediterranean. They're doing very important work right now, shedding light on events that either fall out of the news cycle or are covered up by those responsible. You can check out their investigations here.
I've also been digging into the CIA's "secret" (depending on who you ask) art collection in their Langley, Virginia headquarters. The CIA's website isn't particularly helpful since we know that the agency has purchased 11 works from art collector Vincent Melzac, and only one of them (Black Rhythm by Gene Davis) appears on the official site (along with other historical artifacts like clothing and equipment). Many of the artists in this collection are from the Washington Color School and the Abstract Expressionist movement. During the Cold War, the CIA tried to use abstract expressionist works as propaganda symbolizing American freedom and creativity (even though the politics of some of the AbEx artists would run counter to CIA ideals but ok). It's not so secret anymore (Hyperallergic reporter Carey Dunne got to see the collection in person) but the CIA still has not disclosed how much they paid for the paintings and you can't visit the museum if you're not an agent without special permission. In 2015, artist Joby Barron re-created some of the pieces in the collection and exhibited them alongside FOIA rejections and redacted documents she received. Museum director Toni Hiley continues to acquire and commission new works each year as a way to teach agents about their history. You can read more about this strange part of our government here, here, and here.
Lastly, I recently watched Over the Garden Wall with my partner. This delightful cartoon is from the same people that made Adventure Time and the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (RIP). It follows two half-brothers, Greg and Wirt, who are trying to find their way home after getting lost in a forest full of strange creatures and spooky secrets. In the vein of Alice in Wonderland and the Brothers Grimm, each 10-minute episode is sure to make you smile (and maybe terrify you a little bit). You can watch the miniseries here.
CLICK
I've been reading into astronomer Vera Rubin, whose work in galaxy rotation curve discrepancies would provide crucial evidence to the existence of dark matter. While some of her research definitely goes over my head, I've enjoyed reading interviews from Rubin and learning about her wonderful career and legacy. In a 1989 interview with Alan Lightman, she says of her initial pursuit of a career in astronomy, "It never occurred to me that I couldn't be an astronomer." You can read the complete Lightman interview here, a profile from the AMNH here, and her obituary in the New York Time here.
Then there's this peculiar essay from Stephen D. Seely, "How Do You Dress A Body Without Organs? Affective Fashion and Nonhuman Becoming". He looks at the semiotics of fashion garments, citing Alexander Mcqueen's final collection and Rei Kawakubo's work for Comme des Garcons among others, portraying fashion as a potential tool for moving beyond the body, and subvert Western heteronormative binaries through contemporary design. Such an awesome reading of modern fashion, pulling from sources in philosophy and queer theory. You can check out the article on JSTOR here and if you don't have access to the site, let me know and I can email you a PDF copy.
Eula Bliss's narrative essay, "No-Man's-Land" (an excerpt from her book Notes from No Man's Land) takes us through the social construction of race from the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder to the streets of Chicago, imagined conceptions of fear, colonization, and gentrification in New York. Bliss's work deals with whiteness (it's important to note that Bliss is herself white), and its subsequent impacts across American society. I haven't read the rest of her book, but I do appreciate her narrative style, her turn from one historical moment to another, tied to the geography of the cities she lives in. There's definitely room for critique, but a history that cannot be denied. You can read the piece here.
When thinking of The Void, Robert Smithson's ideas of "Entropy", more specifically his essay, "Entropy and the New Monuments" and his interview with Alison Sky. Smithson describes entropy as "in the ultimate future the whole universe will burn out and transformed into an all-encompassing sameness", a kind of "energy-drain". He writes about the Minimalists, their solid works as "monuments...against the ages", and the suburbs and urban sprawl with their modern architecture as emblematic of an "architecture of entropy", moving towards a nullification of art itself. These writings provide an interesting new perspective on modern art, and much of Smithson's insight still lingers in examples today. You can read the essay here and the interview here.
Then there's the literary journal, Flag and Void. "To invent is to invent one's construct, to stitch a flag from the void" is how they describe their volumes, rich with language that seems to materialize emotion across the page, tangling up and unraveling revelations. You can check out their newest issue here (a personal favorite is Christine Scanlon's poems).
Then there's Jennifer Saunders's poem "Burnt Forest Specialists" over at Cotton Xenomorph. This gorgeous poem traces through ecological recovery after a scorching blaze. To experience her delicate latticework of language, you can find the poem here.
I'd also like to include manuel arturo abreu's essay "Embodying Survivance" at Art in America. abreu focues on Navajo artist Demian Dine Yazhi, specifically the way in which his multimedia work is centered in community organizing and the preservation of indigenous culture. abreu cites the work of Gerald Vizenor, who coined survivance as "an active sense of presence, the continuation of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name", moving beyond just survival to the strengthening of and reclamation of Native culture. In a country where Indigenous history and contemporary stories are erased, excluded from mainstream conversations, Yazhi is shouting his way out of this cultural void. You can read the essay here and check out his work here.
I'd like to close out this letter out with a fun poem by Anne Boyer, "Not Writing". If you want to want to see the language of negation in action, she's the one to read. "I am not writing a memoir because memoirs are for / property owners / and not writing a memoir about prohibitions of memoirs". You can check out the poem here. // The Greek physician Galen once wrote, quoting the work of Democritus, "For by convention color exists, by convention bitter, by convention sweet, but in reality atoms and void."
There are so many kinds of "void", operating at different scales, across different materials or ways of thinking. Ways to negate someone's words, someone's body, to negate your own.
While this kind of languages implies an emptiness, an absolute silence, more often than not, there is something there, something squirming with life within these negative spaces, something that needs to be read, shared with others, something that echoes back at you when you shout into the hollow darkness.
I hope you all enjoyed this week's letter. I'll be continuing this conversation about the abstract manifestation of voids next week too. What are some things that make you think of The Void? Is it somber or funny? A piece of music or a movie? Something you've read? As always, I love to hear your thoughts. Until next time ~
Love,
Ellie