Karin Bolender

Interesting intraspecies art. 

Karin Bolender

 "The Gut Sounds Lullaby installation frames layered sites where gut-sounds phenomena fold in with questions of presence and invisibility in forms of intraspecies being-together. Odd to think that gut sounds are something we seldom attend to, even as their presence signals life and cessation equates to death. Living gut sounds surprise us with their immediacy, bubbling up bigger questions of bodies’ unknowns, along with the ways we manufacture ontologies through the boundaries we draw between inside/outside, human/animal, and self /other. Gut Sounds Lullaby seeks to blur some of these boundaries, pressing our ears to their seams to listen for what hums on the other side. We will invite listeners into the presence of an intricate and intimate auditory mesh, where real-time equine gut sounds are wired into and amplified by the layered resonances of improvisational electronic music/sound collage and an invisible but present human fetus, who we presume will be listening on the other end of the intraspecies transmission wires."

Sound and Scape

 For some new proposed work- I need to create a soundtrack for performance- I'm interested in repetitious sounds created by the body- heart beat, breathe, stomach sounds, joins, sneeze, yawn, hum, sing, tongue click, snore, sniff, kiss, hands clapping, cough, laugh, hiccup, whistle, sigh, whisper, shout, snap fingers, tap feet, etc. 

Most specifically sounds that are uncontrolled. 

Some influences: 

William Basinski influences all the compositions I make at this point. Disintegration Loops specifically. 

Or phasing found sounds- Steve Reich "Come out"

Henri Chopin- La Digestion

Swallowed Microphone amplifying the sounds of the gut. 

Rust: What the hell is it doing..

 I've been using rust for a while in my work, not knowing the chemistry exactly behind or history. I've picked up a book called "Rust: the Longest War"by Jonathan Waldman . It's a narrative based history of rust/corrosion. Ferrum corrumpitur- " latin for Spoiled Iron. One section discusses how the Romans understood rust as being "metaphysically, that the benevolence of nature had inflicted the penalty of rust to limit the power of iron, thus making nothing in the world more mortal than that which is hostile to mortality." Pliny the Elder. 

When iron and copper are placed together- the copper will cause the iron to rust. I'm thinking about how I might use this in my work- maybe intentionally weaving copper and iron wire together to see how the rust process works- it also causes a small electrical current- not enough to power anything but it could be an interesting aspect of the work. 

The copper will slowly "eat" away at the iron- preserving the copper but destroying the iron. I'm not sure metaphorically what this means yet but it is curious. It's the opposite of a symbiotic relationship and stands in contradiction to 'chasing symbiosis' which I often find artist and designers looking for in their work. 

What Came Before-

 Artwork/Artists that use objects in performance:

Morris "Site"

Nick Cave Soundsuits

Pina Bausch

Chris Burden Big Wheel

Tanya Aguiñiga

Joseph Beuys

Speed and Time.

Hijikata performed by Day Matsuoka

Bruce Nauman- space as limits

Body as Object

Yvonne Rainer

Performance Craft

Indira Allegra

Blend of Objects, ideas of craft, and dance

Deborah Valoma

Body as tool in performance

Janine Antoni

Play and objects

Performance/Dance and Objects

 I'm trying to work out- my approach to performance and I've found an interesting intersection of Minimalism and Dance- 

Sites of Subjectivity: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and Dance Author(s): Virginia Spivey

This article in the "Dance Research Journal" outlines a connection between Robert Morris and Yvonne Rainer. The idea of Minimal Sculpture's connection to Dance. 

"She relied instead on interruption and repetition, devices she had used before, to break the flow of

the piece. As Rainer explained, "both factors were to produce a 'chunky' continuity,

repetition making the eye jump back and forth in time and possibly establishing more strongly the differences in the movement material... Interruption would also function

to disrupt the continuity and prevent prolonged involvement with any one image."

Viewers were thus denied the power of the extended gaze and forcedt o focus attention on other components of the dance, such as the interaction between body and object, or the body's movement itself. 

Morris linked his use of objects to determine dance sequences to his methodology in making sculpture:

“Finding ways to get the body moving--and having this movement be generated by the manipulation of objects so that the resultant movement became the dance was the challenge... pace the comparable a priori methods involved in construction to generate my sculptural objects of the early 1960s. This new structural armature opened up the making for me on both fronts-i.e., a kind of automation that foreclosed the expression involved in the toe (dance),or adding a 'expression' pointing little more on the left (sculpture) offered a new freedom. “

Thus, for Morris, objects used as props helped him solve the problem of intentionality in artistic-decision making. Accordingly, he believed the process of art-making no longer to be a conscious individual undertaking the interaction between artist and materials could yield a final product without any visible trace of the artist's presence. 

Wool Waulking. Fulling

 I've been aware of Waulking Songs since graduate school but not able to think of how they might impact my work until recently- these rhythmic songs and dances could become strong elements to pull or build a performance around- not so much the songs or lyrics but the structure and visual quality of things lining up and being in unison- also the obvious connection of the material I have been using in my sculptures. 

Originally, fulling was carried out by pounding the woolen cloth with the fuller’s feet, or hands, or a club. In the Scottish Gaelic tradition this process was accompanied by Waulking Songs, Scottish folk songs which were sung to set the pace.

Typically, this was done with tweed fabric- due to the course nature of the wool after weaving with it. Fulling it partially felts the wool down to soften the fibers and shrink them down in a more matted structure (combination of weaving and felting) This is very much what I've been doing with my sculptures- hadn't been thinking about how the process could be more on display in the work- and performance gives me an interesting opportunity to explore how the felting can be apart of the work rather than a process used to create the end-result- I've also been thinking about the safety of doing this- Using traditional methods of Fulling- combining the sweat and agitation of the performer in the process of creating the sculptures or augmenting them as the performance carries on- I would take a considerable amount of performance to do what the machines do for me in my work- so I think it might be more of a poetic element in the work. The Waulking Songs also help to provide me with ways to compose the sounds I plan to have the performances set to. 

Currently, I'm thinking the performances will be done with 4 performers, each working through a set of "stretching/strengthening gestures" of their own choosing in the first half of the performance- I'll leave it to the performers to connect the sounds they are hearing to the gestural set of options pre-decided- over time the sound will direct the performers to be working in unison/rhythm with each other- much like Waulking, also the improvisational nature of the lyrics typical of Waulking leads me to want to lean in more for the performers to develop their own movement sets. - I'm thinking of it being similar to Limiting orders or structured freedom (Nottingham). 

Exercise and Cancer

 As I have been thinking about how I'm planning to develop performances for wearable pieces- I've been thinking about the daily/mundane actions or gestures that could be used- This brought me to consider aspects of the healing process when diagnosed with cancer. 

Recent research suggests that exercise benefits most people both during and after cancer treatment. It can help manage some of the common side effects of treatment (see below), speed up your return to your usual activities, and improve your quality of life. The evidence also shows there is little risk of exercise causing harm if care is taken and professional exercise advice is followed closely. For some cancers, exercise may even improve treatment outcomes.

https://www.cancervic.org.au/living-with-cancer/exercise/exercise-overview

I think these simple stretch gestures will make up much of the formal language used in the performances. 

There is a large variety of stretches and strength training that could be very interesting if explored as a series of gestures performers could select from and experiment with-