unmakings

I've been looking at janet echelman's net sculptures today. i love the forms that the netted structures take and how they interact with their environment BY being transparent, whispy.

here is a piece in process as i develop the work for the show. as it stands now, the show is made up of 4 wall sculptures that extend into space, and 2 videos that depict two of them being distressed and unmade on small wall screens.

today i made the most gorgeous video i have ever made. it depicts the long mohair knit piece being broken down and stretched into topographical landscapes. recalling this (italo calvino, invisible cities-- trading cities 4)

In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia's refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

i ended up feeling like the concepts i wrote about for titles in my last post no longer FULLY describe what it is i am doing. this work is all still so new, and i feel like i need more time with it to title it. for the press release i wrote new work by silvie deutsch, i can always title it the right thing for my website/documentation, or even for the show itself, but now, just new work feels right. no use putting words i don't fully endorse behind something i've worked so hard on. the write up for the show is really really good:

On Friday, February 25 : Silvie Deutsch at Appendix Project Space

Opening Reception : 7 PM

Appendix presents new work by Silvie Deutsch, produced on-site during the artist's residency at Appendix. Deutsch conceives of manufactured objects as possessed of a life cycle that parallels and interacts with the human, dense with the inherent tensions of their creation, and ripe with the potential for rebirth.

Appendix Project Space is located in the south alley between 26th and 27th Avenues off of NE Alberta Street.

{photos/videos: 1 is janet echelman's target swooping ii (2001), 2 is my own new work, 3 is my newest animation video}