Ah yes, drinking in the alley. Good times.
Rachel posts picture on blog that Heather took on cellphone of Rachel taking picture of plaque while Rick films (off camera)
On the trolley, Rachel receives Godly visitation in the form of David Kodeski
Performance art? I'll tell you what I think of your stinkin'performance art. Now pass me some more of that champagne.
2 comments:
> Hi Rachel
Thanks for sending me the link to your blog. Here's my rambling response.
>
I came at this project entirely mediated through the electrical circuits of a computer, not entirely sure when or where it took place, or whether it is an entire fiction, for though I place total practical faith in the virtual world in many ways - shopping, Wikipedia, conspiracy theories, weather reports and the local zoo webcam, where a baby black rhino has just been born - in terms of belief I treat the Internet with the same degree of sceptical distance I afford to the Bible.
>
The blog read backwards, too, just to confuse me, so I had to scroll down to the bottom of each page through stuff I didn't want to miss, trying not to look at the text and pictures because i wanted to read the entire thing from its birthplace and enjoy the suspense of its unveiling, like trying to avoid hearing the final score of a football match you missed, but want to watch on TV later. Time travel, though. Cool.
>
So here I am floating in the gaps of this palimpsest of an artwork that exists in space, between spaces, in reality and in virtuality by mediation via the web. I now know that these commemorations exist in real time and space at real locations commemorating real experiences. I have experienced the emotional content of their occurrence, one step removed, through participants' personal writings and your own written commentary, tinged with slight melancholy amid the celebration of key events in people's lives.
>
> I am interested by this melancholy - there is a sense of loss here as well as celebration - these moments you celebrate are gone forwever and the plaques represent a mourning as well as a happy remembrance. The city is the ultimate metaphor for this impermanence of the human experience - built up, knocked down, wearing the marks of its market forces on its sleeve, managing our experience via its transport arteries, bus timetables and what is acceptable behaviour on its streets.
>
> But the sadness I speak of is also your melancholy. Aside from a couple of pictures - nice dress, by the way - and your early story about the seed of the idea, the artist seems strangely absent, simply existing as a shepherd for the experiences of the group and the individuals within it. Caring for them, gently leading. That's no bad thing of course. You appear here as artist and participant, sharing this experience rather than imposing it.
>
> All of these things have been articulated in this artwork. Also the transgression of simply fixing your artistic expression in public spaces which are actually privately owned, removed from the commonwealth thanks to the financial muscle of banks, clubs or even the town corporation. There are issues of freedom here, the right to roam, the ability of this temporary community you have created to express its innermost feelings publically by small acts of beautiful vandalism.
>
> It also sounds like you had a good day. I could almost taste the milk and cookies I imagined would have been waiting for you all in someone's kitchen at the end of the day - see the tired kids, chance meetings in the street, a conga dance line of people jumping on the bus to come along for the ride, it all had an air of hippy activism about it.
>
> I do wonder what would have happened if you had pushed this to the edge of confrontation with The Man, gotten yourselves arrested for expressing private thoughts through artistic public vandalism, but you know how I can get carried away planning the revolution on occasion. Banksy is the perfect reference point for this kind of action in reference to your work here.
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> You realise this is a project that should be planted in every major city in the world, don't you?
I would also be interested to see what you could come up with as a variant if you made the commemorations entirely personal to you. It would be like Tracy Emin's tent containing the names of everyone she ever slept with. Intensely private experiences worked out in public and experienced via a blue badge tour.
>
> You rock, Claff. You are a genuine artist.
> Jonny
>
> PS I'm changing my e-mail - adjust your address book
> to
> jon@means-of-production.co.uk
> Hasta siempre
>
I walk past your plaque in the alley on Carmen almost everyday and it reminds me that everything will be okay. More than just a commemoration of the past, it is a nod towards an imagined future. I can't imagine how delighted I would have been to find it on my own, with no sense of where it came from. I like to imagine that someone has, maybe those kids who are always hanging out in that alley on their bikes have seen it. They look like they're about 12, 13, 14--certainly it's a sentiment I needed to hear at that age. Anyway, the plaque is a sort of mediation on all the little interventions we can make in the universe, the insidious interruptions that affect us precisely because the are small and seep through the unguarded cracks in our psyche. I like this project because it is not about calling attention to the artist, it's about other people's stories, and other people's accidental discoveries.
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