To the Beat of Another's Heart

Two video stills from the piece Chris and I just shot "To the Beat of Another's Heart"

Video coming soon. If only computers weren't bitches.

An update

It is really strangely beautiful here today. The weather is by all means disgusting, damp and foggy, buut there are little rays of sunlight making their way through the fog and thick gray clouds. Because of this the skyline of the city looks absolutely stunning at dusk. The massive buildings feel transparent to me. Even though dark and gray they are outlined by thin dim rays of light that give them this lack of depth. Also very beautiful is the wind blowing through the flag a top the Brooklyn bridge. This is quite cinematic and lovely although it all feels a little sad. The change in weather is slow but pretty steady as spring approaches.

Chris will bite then kick

Here is Christopher's artwork (a masterpiece) based on Carly's sensational trip to the sydney royal easter show.

interesting comparison i read this afternoon

Looking through the art book The Art of Looking Sideways edited by Alan Fletcher, I came across these pieces of writing in which he described the memories of places and events he’s been. This is an extremlly interesting book that is a collection and harvest of various artists, thinkers, scholars and writers ideas and art that take a different look at art and thinking. I highly suggest anyone and everyone to take a look at it. …. These two ones seemed appropriate.

QUOTED TEXT:
“Impressions figments memories of places. How often has one seen a gem, an oddity, a surprise, a piece of information, an idea, only for it to dissolve in the memory to be forgotten. A visual encounter lost forever. Here are just a few of those I’ve kept and noted down.

Sydney
Cantilevered shop canopies; red roofed suburbs; corrugated iron; rod iron balconies; shovel shaped pavement corners; ‘walking trouser’ pedestrian crossing signs; half and full flush loos; bottle shops; overhead trains; Strine; the pale cream and barrel sugar Opera House variously referred to as “an old Olivetti Lettera 44 after an office party” or “broken Pyrex casserole dish in a brown cardboard box”.

New York
Custard yellow cabs, scarlet fire hydrants, a cacophony of street signs clustered on intersection poles. The city authorities are against feet: NO STANDING, NO STANDING ANYTIME and incongruously for Manhattan, NO STANDING EXCEPT WHEN HORSE DRAWN. NO PARKING signs come with qualifications; 8am to 11am TUES THROUGH FRI, 7am-4pm SCHOOLDAYS. DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING needs no qualification. Here are some others: TOW AWAY ZONE, RED ZONE FINE $185. SNOW ROUTE (looks odd in July), TRUCK ROUTE, CLEAR FIRE LANE, BUS LANE – BUSSES ONLY. All with arrows up, down, left or right, or both ways. “

the sydney royal easter show - i know you're jealous simone.

i wish i could take you all! its about as australian as they come, and the BEST day.

just wanted to share!

xxx

gratuitous sydney shot

taken from a Manly Ferry the day after I got back- I just thought the New Yorkers might like a harbour shot xx

new corpse: fallingdownandstayingstuck

my response to Eva's corpse of the young men, and her mention of taking the tickertape out as it distracts. I put it back.

giardia or something like it

hi exquisites, have been not so exquisitely ill for over eight days now.. and have just been told my tests show nothing and i have to do them again. hurrah.

However. in light of my previous inability to participate properly I bought a scanner (dodgy) yesterday so will attempt my maiden voyage on it tonight to contribute my corpse.

excuses are no good, but i extend my apologies for falling off the wagon since NYC...

jess

2/3 Terrible 3 Update

So this past week I was in NYC and had the pleasure of seeing Chris, Amy and Simone. Chris and I have an update! We've made a video with the help of Simone this past week.

With our hands on the pulse on each other's neck, Chris and I walked the sidewalks of New York City to the beat of each other's heart. It was tricky, its a bit silly, and we look like dancers. We videoed this and I will cut up all the different angles to create a video and post it as soon as I can so all can see and give us input. We will do it in Sydney as well and with Jess. Just imagine us all three wandering through Sydney to the beat of 3 hearts!

Tomorrow, 7:50 am, I get my four wisdom teeth removed from my skull. If anyone has cheery flowery sunshiney stories about how easy it was to get their own removed, please share them with me. If they're with any other tone, however, I save it. I don't want to hear it.

Miss you all! There is still snow in Maine and we're supposed to get another big snow storm tomorrow. Ugh when will spring arrive?

Corpse from Meghans

I find comfort and respite at night in the intimacy of my dreams and sometimes there I hover over the city to mark out the territory of my belonging.

News from Mea Culpa

hi all
so, brief, not very coherent update on what eva, meghan and i have been up to.

one of the first things we decided to do was to address the separation that the end of the intensive brought to the three of us. we are sending one postcard a day to one other person in the group about what our day was like. slow down the pace of life by having to hand write something, contemplate on what we actually did that day, and also the almost giving away of a part of ourselves, that we keep no copy of, unlike all our digital media. also the idea that nyc in some way imposes itself onto your life and can impede even the best of intentions to get things accomplished - such as simply keeping in touch with friends. meghan and i are even writing to each other, which turned out to be a good thing since we don't see each other too much now a days....

also, we have expanded our water ideas to include the land that the water touches in the form of sand. we are brainstorming new ideas related to this, possibly doing something with some form of sand castles, something transient, impermanent, etc. we are hoping to submit a proposal to a show in dumbo that actually addresses these ideas city, water, coast and all the other things that the three of us are obsessed with.

that's all for now. m or e if i forgot anything, please correct me :)

Meghan's response to Chris's corpse

So this is actually a one minute video with sound playing on loop. As soon as I figure out how to save a Quicktime video small enough to upload...I'll post it. I'm a little technically challenged at this point.

This is a response to Chris's black on black harbor drawing, which was a response to Jes's text. What I took from both was the muddy, everywhere and anywhere, a familiar form, and ghosts and the comfort and finding comfort of my last image. Water has been a strong theme for MAE Culpa in relation to the city. A wave seemed like a very simple way to reference the one million people that sweep in and out of the city everyday. The crowd bashes down on the island everyday and sweeps back over the bridges and through tunnels leaving only the promise of their return bringing another crash down onto the island the next day. The point of the wave pulling back from the beach and gaining strength for the next wave to form is much like the nightly rest and recovery Manhattan uses to prepare for the next day. It's the island's moment to breath and gain strength.

my home in a box

my response to amy's images in response to my images.

basically from jessie, to me to amy, the ongoinging theme has been destruction.

what i wanted to do from that is think about rebuilding, and building.

the last responses ive done have been in NY - the city, so i wanted this one to be very much about my home, and i love that we built our home and noone else has lived here.

ive recaptured that by building my house into a box, and played with interiors and exteriors, as the image is from the outside while its in the inside of the box.

i made the sky box second because i wanted to put something into the house that i built, and sticking to the homely theme i seem to have made - was inspired by my childhood when i used to collect such useless things like crystals, because i thought they were magic, and put them into little jewellery boxes that i'd make with cardboard and way too much glitter. the sky after all is the most magical thing, as its infinate and one can only imagine what its like up there.

so this response is about home, building and collecting. capturing...is there anything you can't capture and keep for yourself?

(ps. sorry documentation isnt better, will try again soon! also am planning on making some more.)

Amy's Response to Ash/Chris

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From Jacquie

This work is in response to Eva's image. When Eva responded to Jessie's writing, a particular description stuck with her, "and falls down and stays stuck and tries too hard and needs to be struck down and stripped bare." This phrase is very powerful. So I thought about this in relation to Eva's image of young men in the city idly staring at who knows what. I tried to imagine more and more what these men are so fascinated with. In my experience in New York, men on the street are often staring at/fascinated by beautiful women. They never grow tired of it. I then appropriated images from music videos in which beautiful women are featured and are objects for these men (in Eva's photo) to stare at. Women who may be perceived as often trying too hard, staying stuck as objects for the male gaze, and in need of being stripped bare of the stereotypes that confine them. I chose to use images in which they are shown from behind for the obvious reason, these guys are CLEARLY staring at their asses, and also to disguise these famous women keeping them anonymous like the men in Eva's photo.

Hugs and Kisses,

J

Chris' 41st Street

Hi everyone-

This is my response to Jacquelyn's image & words. She used an image of a church and wrote how people used "religion as a safety net and how dangerous that can be." And she removed the roof of the church to illustrate that.

which i then put it in the context of the church being all that remained of a full city block of buildings. So the religion is the only thing that survived all these various changes to the city - i.e. is the only literal thing that lasted on this particular block.

But I think that's merely an idea to think about and isn't even typical, after all there are churches being torn down all over New York to be replaced with luxury condos, that's something interesting too.

And the confusing bit in the center of my image is the approach to the lincoln tunnel, which cuts through the block, and was very hard to make sense of visually.

happy easter to all, I'm celebrating by sleeping in, as its now 2:15 in the morning