June 27, 2010

It is craaaazy out here on weekends! It feels like half the city is trying to get away from itself by coming here. I wonder if the island is big enough for all these people?

But my studio is cool and private enough -- it's a nice feeling to come out in the middle of this mass and then be able to sneak away and work when everyone else is escaping together. It's the inversion of the standard practice that makes it a real escape, I guess. And since my studio is just on the edge of the gallery space, I'm sort of vaguely observed by the visitors, which keeps me working. It's good.

So, it's been a while since I've written but it hasn't been a while since I've been coming here -- I've been coming out pretty regularly now that I am feeling better and my schedule is a tiny bit less hectic. I've just been soo busy producing stuff -- brick walls, sound files, etc. K, M and I moved 500 bricks out here last week for me to use in my installation. It was so much fun. But it made us realize how much labor goes into the littlest things. 500 bricks probably won't even make the room. So imagine how much work it takes to make a big room, a building, the pyramids. And it's detailed work -- each one has to be pretty carefully placed or the wall will topple higher up.

I have so much to write about, but I actually want to get to work. N is coming with a marine radio and a projector soon and we're going to to a studio visit. I need to talk with someone other than myself about my ideas.

But one thing that I've been thinking about, since the seizure -- or remembering -- is how we can be trapped in our own bodies. I was thinking about this when I visited Roosevelt Island and then was thinking about it even more when I was so limited by my injuries and illness. It was very restful when I could accept my limitations -- when I was really, really not well and couldn't do much. But then the process of recovering physical and cognitive capability/mobility was most difficult because I felt my limits so strongly. It was like hitting a brick wall -- I'm trying to work, I'm trying to go places, I'm trying to communicate and then BAM! I'm tired, or I just absolutely can't remember how to spell, or I'm just not seeing straight and there's absolutely no way to will myself around it.

So, back in the day, epileptics were confined with the 'insane' -- I'm not clear on whether there was an understood distinction between the physical condition of epilepsy and emotional/psychiatric illness, or if epilepsy was actually considered a manifestation of madness. It seems like there was a distinction, at least in France just before the revolution. I think in the US there was not. In any case, Foucault writes about how being labeled and confined as mad makes you mad:

"Early in the nineteenth century, there was indignation that the mad were not treated any better than State prisoners; throughout the eighteenth century, emphasis was placed on the fact that the prisoners deserved a better fate than one that lumped them with the insane. ... The struggle against the established powers, against the family, against the Church, continues at the very heart of confinement, in the saturnalia of reason. And madness so well represents these punishing powers that it effectively plays the part of an additional punishment, a further torment which maintains order in the uniform chastisement of the houses of correction. La Rochefoucauld-Laincourt bears witness to this in his report to the Committee on Mendicity: 'One of the punishments inflicted upon epileptics and upon other patients of the wards, even upon the deserving poor, is to place them among the mad.' The scandal lies only in the fact that the madmen are the brutal truth of confinement, the passive instrument of all that is worst about it. Is this not symbolized by the fact - also a commonplace of all the literature of confinement in the eighteenth century - that a sojourn in a house of confinement necessarily leads to madness?"

June 11, 2010

So, I'm finally starting to get back out here and back to the work. I had a huge seizure at the end of March and ended up out of commission for about three weeks. It was scary and difficult, but also very illuminating in so many ways. I feel and broke some bones, but the most important part was what happened to my mind. I had a pretty serious concussion, which, along with the seizure, caused some confusion, memory loss, and trouble with depth perception, spelling, math computation, etc. It was sooo strange. I think everything is mostly back now. But what was so amazing was this process of coming back, and of realizing what was valuable and what was not so valuable about what I lost. I have been thinking of this Elizabeth Bishop poem I love, "The Art of Losing." I think it's actually about attachment and how the narrator is trying to deny her attachments. But there is something about losing it that makes it so much more valuable, in a more tolerable way than if you cling to it.

I was so afraid of losing my mind. Literally. So much of my identity is tied up with my ideas about my intellect. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to teach, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make my work any more. But I also had this realization that I still would, regardless, and that there is something else that motivates me. I was very afraid I wouldn't be valuable to anyone anymore. My friends and boyfriend were so amazing in that respect. Actually, I was probably easier to get along with when I didn't have the energy or focus to be telling it to everyone all the time.

So it was pretty educational, I guess, to go through all this in the midst of this piece. I think I've started to understand a little more about what it means to be trapped inside your body or your mind, and how the two are very fluid. And also how lucky I am to be able to make my own schedules, to have my ambitions, to be able to try to be productive. Strange to see that as a luxury, but when you lose it, you appreciate it.

So I missed opening weekend out here because I was recovering from surgery. I missed the NYT, the press preview, open studios, everything. I was lying in bed in Manhattan watching the news show images of Governors Island, and feeling so trapped and frustrated. But it was sort of funny -- a total inversion of what I had planned. And I thought, ah ... I go through all this elaborate trouble to see what it might be like to be sick and confined and then this happens.

It's not the illness that was so bad, it was the possibility of not recovering. When you know you are healing, when you know you can make progress, it's ok. And the resting and separation was important, but isolation would have been the worst. I woke up from the seizure deeply, deeply lonely. It was a real feeling of desolation. I was scared for my body, but I also needed people around me for other reasons. So that made me think about how really awful it must be to be expelled because of illness, to be neglected or just without any people.

I guess in a way my brain is sort of self-taming. It gets pretty hyperactive and then shuts off, which isn't a great process. But it quieted me down enough to realize that I could do a lot more if I really were open to collaboration and exchange. Like, really open, not just from a theoretical relational aesthetics perspective. I think if I could do that, somehow this piece would have something to give.

I'm not totally sure what's next, but I think visiting and talking are the most important things for now. So, that's what I'm going to try to do.

June 7, 2010

So. It's been a while. And now I'm in a rush. Here's the short version:

All is well.

Then, a few weeks ago, my epileptic brain short circuits and I wake up in a pool of my own blood, with memory loss and broken bones. (Really.)

Then, I discover that my friends, family, and boyfriend are really really awesome.

Then, I spend a few weeks wandering around half-myself in and out of hospitals getting tested and put back together.

Simultaneously, I regain my awareness that I really love my life and my work and my mind and my body and would hate to lose any of it. But I guess I'll take what I can get.

Then, I get very afraid that I will never recover. But I do, and I am. And I finally sort of feel like myself again. Except a little humbled, and very thankful. I moved my dining table next to the window. I miss my studio. I needed the rest.

So I'm thinking even more and differently about memory, confinement, health, the body and the powers hidden in it, time and fragility, work, rest, freedom, identity, weakness, and how much we need each other.

And I was just looking over my writings about this piece and I think that the idea of exchange is what is really missing. There needs to be a dynamic conversation, a back and forth between the audience and the "subjects," in a real, literal way, in order for both sides to care what they're doing, seeing, hearing, experiencing, making. I don't know why I didn't see it before, but I see it now.