August 9, 2011
I arrived in Manhattan yesterday, and really have been far too happy to sleep. If you don’t sleep, can three days become the best day of your life?
I’m not sure what’s better than experiencing the fruition of long labor. When I walked into the gallery at the Museum (yeshiva university museum at the center for jewish history, to be precise) and saw my work lined up on its ends uncrated and in brown wrappers tied up with string (not quite string, I suppose), I just felt that the project has its perfect home. And this project, conducted over so many countries and under such frequent duress, seems equally delighted with the walls it finds itself amidst here in NYC. At the moment – more than a bit behind in sleep – it’s sufficient to say that satisfaction is sweet.
The best part: this is only the beginning. The adventures continue as more takes shape in the days, weeks, and six months to come (interactive/participatory installations! meditation sessions! performance events! oh my!)
If you’re going to be in NYC on September 12, please do come by the opening event at the Center for Jewish History (15 west 16th street, just off 5th ave) – a reception followed by a performance evening of my live performance works from the exhibition, held in the museum’s theater. My video installations with text, and music from the installations by collaborating composers Veronika Krausas and Isaac Schankler (who will be there (we hope to have composer Pamela Madsen at the closing event in January!)) as their compositions are performed by musicians Andrew Tholl, Nadia Francavilla, and Andrew Miller…also choreographer Alexandra Shilling and her dancers who are performing work for Sonderbauten, the Forced-Sex Brothel at Dachau series. All these pieces are part of my installation pieces Fossoyeur, Sonderbauten, and others. So fortunate to have such a gifted team of collaborating visionaries!
BUT! The vacation photos from uncle charlie’s vacation in florida? move over. here are the photos of installation day one! Day two means more lovely times with the installation team (marvelous people), the curator (marvelous person), the exhibition designer (marvelous person), security guard (marvelous person), coat check lady (marvelous person), water fountain repair man (marvelous person)….
The work arrives, in stacks of cardboard cases…waiting!
the interactive installation assemblage surface…waiting for the splendiforousness of rocks and stones and remington typewriters and poems and video washes to unfold and then to ensue and whatnot and so forth…
works out of sequence, laid on their sides, surrounded by construction equipment: this is what the photographs say means P A R T Y T I M E. Nothing says good times to a frame like a drill, it seems. And see those boxes of video monitors? That’s six. Six channels means happy happy in the world of arty-farty zeros and ones (ps… the walls aren’t actually blue.)
lo, how the pieces, they advance into tomorrow, where they will be fastened onto the walls as though hooks and screws are needed if they are to defy gravity and not fly up into an infinite universe. Wait, they ARE needed in order to defy gravity and not fly up into an infinite universe. (ps how CUTE are their little styrofoam feet?)
triptychs and diptychs and tetratychs, all out of order, sideways, ass over ankles, but neatly queuing in line for lady drill bit.nothing like a wee bit of unmitigated chaos to give the clue that something super-neat-o is going down in the plexi photo phantasmagorical playground….
and in closing, a huge enormously massive thank you to the particularly high-stamina angels who have midwifed this project to this place, most of all my husband Eric (and Spider and Ru and Mukanday and Avishai who sat on the work, ate the work, hair-balled on the work, created byzantine final cut sequences by clawing keyboards, and were neurotically supportive of my long absences on the european trail…). And also Zachary, Astrid, Mike Lee, Alessandra, William, Dorothea, Joanne, Paetrick S., Patrick H., Rafael, Veronika, Atalie, Martina, Lenore amidst many more, including my beloved extended family of residency fellows throughout the world, the foundations that have supported this fruition of dreams (Center for Cultural Innovation/CCI, Durfee Foundation, Puffin Foundation in particular), and all those folks at all the sites across Europe who thought it was wonderful that someone was finally paying attention to the botanical life of battlefields. Much love.
(visit www.quintanwikswo.com to see preview images of the work and exhibition)