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.

May 15, 2010

I'm writing from my studio in the Bronx right now -- we can't be on the island on weekends yet. I'm working on editing videos and sketching and thinking thinking thinking. I think something might be developing out of it all. This is one of the first times I've worked in this way -- producing and developing the idea at the same time. Producing and thinking at once; laboring and reflecting. Well, not really at once, but alternating at a faster rate than usual. Or blurring the definitions of concept and fabrication more. I think that's what this blog is.

G texted me just as I was editing some video. I had been thinking of her so much today, because I feel like I really don't quite understand what I'm doing, and I think she could help me understand. So I called her, and we made a date to talk tomorrow morning. She makes me so happy! It was great to hear her voice. I told her I was so sorry for not having called. She said: "I know you're very busy over there in Jessica-land." And I was saying something about how I make myself feel so busy, like everything's a crisis, and then I can't call anyone or see anyone. I told her I was having trouble, in my life and the piece, with real-time communication. She said: "Having trouble with real-time communication! It sounds like you know exactly what you're doing." Thank you, girl. You just gave me my energy back.

It's a quiet spring night, and the air is the way it is on quiet spring nights. I'm feeling some joy in this work right now. It's one of the best feelings in life -- when you can work with a sense of confidence, or security, or limitation, rather than under duress and with infinite possibilities and endless tasks ahead. I was listening to my interview with Eddie today. I asked him how he felt and he said: "I feel like a slave. A free slave, but a slave."

May 14, 2010

It's awesome weather today. It's FINALLY warm out -- not hot yet; it's about in the 70s. It's moist, though, like summer. I love it. My studio windows are open. I went for a run this morning in the park and it was misty and overcast and just wonderful.

I'm feeling stressed about our upcoming studio visits -- I have very little to show in terms of objects. I was hoping I would have the room built by now, but I'm not ready. I need more time with the people and the recordings. And I need more time with the site. I think that is really what I need to know about -- it's a site-specific installation, after all, and the piece centers around the problem of place and displacement. The problem with the site is, I don't know what it is. NPS has given me a space just outside of Castle Williams, which is not my dream spot, but which I actually find very interesting. I think I can make a lot of it. The piece will change, but that's OK, since the piece isn't solid yet anyway. The thing is, it seems like the space they're offering me is currently fenced off and filled with dumpsters. Hmm. I was like, 'Is this right?!' I went out to look at it yesterday and at first was so upset, but then I thought it was pretty funny. In an insulting sort of way. I don't know if I'm supposed to say it, but I have this horrible premonition that the powers that be out here have a very different aesthetic than I do. Or maybe it's just all a big misunderstanding.

It's a fear in general, though. That those necessary and important to me resent what I'm doing. Or, there's this sense of confusion that is coupled will alienation. Or maybe the work just sucks. I overheard some women who work here on the island talking on the ferry yesterday on the way back, and it was so disheartening to hear the way they were discussing our projects. I'm not saying "they just don't get it," but a little more generosity of spirit, or a little more space before judgement would be nice.

But back to the Fear In General. It's more a fear of being misunderstood. As esoteric as things can get, I think the point is to be understood, and to understand. Or for me it is. I think. I hope. I tried to explain a recent performance to S the other night. He tried to understand, I think. But I had also recently looked up his ex-wife, who is, at least in my mind, about as opposite to me as could be. She is a publicist who used to be a dance writer who at one point I think used to be a dancer. And man, she has a very different aesthetic than I do.

So. Fear. It makes us withdraw from each other and push each other away and judge each other. Well. Glad I figured all that out. I'm on one of the last chapters in the Foucault, which is called 'The Great Fear.' He describes how the perception and treatment of insanity came full circle, when the insane were sent to live in sanatoriums that previously were built for lepers. Then and there developed a paranoia and general fear that these sanatoriums were filled with bodily disease and "bad air," which endangered the nearby towns, causing greater separation and a general sense of disgust and terror. It also was the beginning of a medical treatment of insanity -- not out of kindness, but out of fear of its spreading. F says:

" ... fear and anxiety were not far off: in the reaction of confinement, they reappeared, doubled. People were at once afraid, people were still afraid, of being confined ... But now the estate of confinement acquired its own powers; it became in its turn the birthplace of evil, and could henceforth spread that evil by itself, instituting another reign of terror. ... There prevailed, then, a sort of undifferentiated image of "rottenness" that had to do with the corruption of morals as well as with the decomposition of the flesh, and upon which were based both the repugnance and the pity felt for the confined."

May 13, 2010

It's another very cold day out here. I really want the windows open, but I think I'm going to have to close them. I want the smell of the sea to come it, but it never does anyway. It's gorgeous out, though, except for it being unseasonably cold.

I feel like I don't have that much to say -- Im ready to get to work. I want to start building, but I don't have the materials or help I need. I lost my glasses, so I can't drive a truck out here with the drywall and wood anyway. And on top of it, I just stopped taking my seizure medicine, so I really shouldn't drive until I know I'm ok without it. And that will take a month. I've been thinking a lot about the practice of medicating. People are very opinionated about it, that's for sure. I was sitting at a starbucks on the upper east side yesterday, next to two guys who, well, didn't fit in on the upper east side. Anyway, one of them was going on and on about how all the women over 30 in New York City are on psych meds. He was a total asshole, but he might have had a point, or something resembling a point. And he definitely didn't like women. Or psych meds. Or homosexuals, or white people, or homeless people. Or anyone, really. He was hard to sit next to. But, I was thinking - what is it in our culture, especially here in this city, that makes us so in need of calibration? And what makes the difference between being sent away for "correction" and doing it internally? Some of the answers seem obvious, but what I've really been trying to understand is what it means to quarantine or expel someone, or some problem. And, more so, what it means to draw attention to that practice, that problem, that someone.

Oh! There is a barge filled with garbage passing my window. It looks so cool.

Anyway, yeah. I'm thinking about how so much of my work has been angry and violent and about all the awful things is society. And I'm trying to understand what it means to show that to people, and why I want to. Which is sort of the inverse of expulsion. And if, perhaps, there's some other way.

May 6, 2010

I am writing this while sitting in the waiting room for the ferry. I missed the 10 am ferry by about 10 minutes, which is typical. But I REALLY needed that coffee I went to pick up around the corner. And, truth be told, I am getting a lot done sitting here in this room. I left a message with S about his connections on Riker’s and Randall’s. On Ward’s Island there is a psychiatric hospital “for the criminally insane.”

Last night I had the worst nightmare. In my dream, there was a serial killer who went around with his little son killing people by throwing them on the ground, planting his foot on their backs and shooting them in that soft mushy spot on the back of your skull, where the skull meets the spine. But before he killed them, he talked to them about how insignificant life was, how were are all so meaningless, how we’re all just going to die anyway. And he brought his son as a way of “teaching” him this truth. And in my dream I was thinking: yeah, sure, of course. But I’d still be screaming and begging him to spare my life. A says serial killers don’t kill because they think life is insignificant, but the opposite.

S called me back – the wife of his friend on Riker’s Island just gave birth and is still in the hospital. He says she’s doing pretty well and that it’s a big baby – over 9 pounds. I didn’t ask much more. But he said that she is waiting for him to call so that she can tell him we are coming to visit, and then can tell us when we can come. He’s been so helpful – he also has a contact on Randall’s Island and is working on getting me a visit there. But it seems he wants a date in return.

So now I’m out here – we just missed the rain beginning. They are still moving the sand today. I think they might have finished today, but I’m not so sure now since it’s raining. The sand will be so much heavier when wet, so I’d think they’d stop working until it dries.

I’m still on the Foucault, and I’m simultaneously feeling quite conflicted about this piece. I have all these video and audio recordings of other people, their lives, their rhythms, their work and rest, their spaces, but I don’t know what that says, or what I’m bringing to it. There’s not enough in it, I haven’t made meaning yet. I think there needs to be true collaboration; I need to open it up and open myself up to create a real conversation that is human and caring. And I’m trying to figure out where the art is in all of this.

F writes:

… representation within the image is not enough; it is also necessary to continue the delirous discourse. For in the patient’s insane words there is a voice that speaks; it obeys its own grammar, it articulates a meaning. Grammar and meaning must be maintained in such a way that the representation of the hallucination in reality does not seem like the transition from one register to another, like a translation into a new language, with an altered meaning. The same language must continue to make itself understood, merely bringing a new deductive element to the rigor of its discourse. Yet this element is not indifferent; the problem is not to pursue the delirium, but by continuing it bring it to an end. It must be led to a state of paroxysm and crisis in which, without any foreign element, it is confronted by itself and forced to argue against the demands of its own truth.