Material Transactions And The Stuff That Gets Stuck In The Psychic Filter

Paring down, excavating, and cultivating, with no plan on the horizon and a slowly shifting psychic landscape.

Scratch that. Make that a blur of a shifting landscape out the window of an airplane flying too fast to be in a holding pattern with no immediately clear destination; and in this dream of memories happening before the events remembered, a friend gave me a ticket and I forgot to ask where it was for. And then I asked, and she said we haven't decided yet, but California fell into the ocean so we probably should vote. We're just in coach so our votes don't really matter that much but let's think about it anyways. And we are sitting and thinking about where we would go, driving without current licenses in unregistered vehicles in tandem, circling around rural areas trying to get back to work and it is already 6 p.m. and it is hard to remember which direction the last leg of the commute was and I headed east by mistake and lost her again, and am in Yosemite and can't afford the entrance fee, so I loiter and place a call to try to figure out where to go now, it was an honest mistake but not a very convincing one. Thought this could never happen. I remembered so differently.

I thought you said California was gone. Oh No that was just a holding pattern.

In with the 30s/Out with the 20s

In..................Out..........
An attempt at moving into a new decade.


Vulnerability.......Gullibility
Hope...............Fantasy
Acceptance.........Resignation
Rock................Emo
Coolness..............Guardedness
Discretion..........Dismissive
Open plans...........Open book
Finality..............Certainty
1:1...................1:100
Collards.............Spinach
Cash................Cards
All Metallic.........All Black
Golf Umbrella.........Bubble Umbrella
Moving Forward.......Moving In
Mail Art.............E-mail
Floral Work...........Bouquets
Doodling...........Serious Drawing
Conceptual Drawing.....Journal Drawing
Preferred Collaborators...Preferred Spaces
All Hours.............Regular Hours
Variation............Moderation
House Guests........Live-Ins
Solitude............Loneliness
Communication........"Updates."
Gas money............Grocery money
Empty Wallet..........Stolen Wallet
Fate..................Charisma
Uncertainty...........Solipsism

scrabble

trouble set me free

from hawaii with love

LIVE WORK

11 February 2010
Dear Michael,

After having dinner with you last Monday, I returned home to find a note on my door from my landlord. This combined with some other things of late have led me to feel a strong and rather urgent need to vacate my life altogether to the greatest extent possible without losing everything.

If it may work out, could I possibly have your space to meet this end? There are some things that I need the space to work through, and would prefer to do so by working through a series of gestures of sorts, and preferably in a space that is domestic but as empty and as neutral as possible.... It seems that your space is ideal for this sort of thing. It is a little bit hard to explain, but I feel that some things may be resolved if I am able to concentrate on doing these actions that have to do with exploring different personas or tasks...

It is most important that this is your space and that I am able to occupy it freely for a full week. You and I have quite a formal relationship, and yet it seems important somehow that it is your space and that you are giving it to me for this duration.

Perhaps it is partly because I just can't figure out how to be very minimal, I have this sort of list of tasks or exercises that I want to do every evening that I am there. Grossly repetetive, the tasks may be partly a way to account for the time whilst avoiding going through the rote motions of the lists of activities that generally occupy and whitewash the hours outside of work.

I will document the sort of product from each evening in the form of a 20 minute video per night, and probably some photo stills, writing, and other ephemera.

Should you want or need to, you are welcome to stay at my place for that week, or if would make more sense-- you are welcome to use my space at some time in the future for a similar duration for whatever purpose you are in need of.

Of course, I am well aware that your landlord lives above you and that it is a residential space, and I will take quiet hours and other guidelines that you lay out into respectful account, and assume that if you use my space now or in the future that you will do the same.

It was nice to see you the other night, and I look forward to seeing you this Saturday.

Sincerely,
Katrina Lamb



16 February 2010

Michael,

I forgot to tell you-- I got your address mixed up last weekend and got off at 19th. I was wandering down your street and called a couple of people (including you) trying to find the address. Eventually I gave up, took my shoes off, and followed this interesting piece of red ribbon, figuring it was as good a use as any of the early afternoon.

Katrina

http://michaelzheng.org/LiVEWORK/past_events.html

jewelry for hookers pt. 1

morning commute

REPEAT COMMUNICATION

A demonstration of Repeat Communication carried out 24 January 2010 for Poets Theater.

http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/2010/01/and-then-this-final-installation-of.html


Guidelines to play REPEAT COMMUNICATION


1. For this exercise, you and your partner (of choice) will read stanzas (or lines, depending on the length of the poem/participants' preferences) back and forth to one another.
2. Repeat one stanza (or line) back and forth until an audience member buys one or both you and your partner a round of drinks.
3. If one person gets a drink, that person may move on to the next stanza/line, but the other must wait to move on until you/s/he gets a drink.
4. Participants in the piece may choose to get your selves drinks as is appropriate, and may progress onto the next stanzas/lines in this fashion.
5. I recommend using a favorite poem that you or your partner longs to share with the other.
6. The game has ended when at least one participant has finished reading the poem, or when neither participant is able to go on for the following reasons:
A. One or both participants becomes too inebriated to continue.
B. One or both participants run out of drinks and/or money for drinks.
C. Boredom.
7. Though not a disqualifying issue, breakdown of communication may become inevitable.

17X17: A Series Of Lists Of 17 Things About Living In The Mission, Part I.

17 Ways To Become A Mission Hipster Artist


1. Arrive in San Francisco from the anywhere but here, as you do not have a very strong accent except NYC, in which case you will always be the person from New York who relocated to San Francisco.

1A. If you visit San Francisco from eastern states or Europe, or anywhere else in the world, it is cool to accept a kind of limited engagement in a variety of milieus as long as it is temporary.

2. Eat burritos excessively when you first move here.
2A. Make fun of newcomers 1 year later for being so obsessed with burritos.
2B. Become obsessed with food trends.
2C. Make your own kombucha.
2D. Befriend someone that raises chickens.

3. Have certain San Francisco idols: quasi graffiti artists, bad boy artists, and experimental writers and filmmakers.

4. Attend art school.
4A. Possibly drop out of art school.

5. Create a tentatively-stable living/working place to live in the mission. “Tentatively” means that the following series of events could cause you irreparable damage in terms of being able to ever get a below-market-rate place in the mission again.
1. Building is probably going to be condemned.
2. Landlord is aging and when they die the building is sold.
3. Co-op is rented not owned.
4. Roommates do things that may lead to eviction.
5. Your lack of income may lead to eviction.
6. You do things that may lead to eviction.
7. [Accidentally] start a fire.
8. You sublet your apartment to do a residency and your subletters refuse to leave.
9. Your very public break-up forces you out of the neighborhood/city/state/country.
10. Your landlord finds a loophole to the lease and legally evicts you.
11. Your boyfriend/girlfriend/colleague works for a tenants rights organization and this somehow backfires.
12. The master lease holder to your place raises everyone's rent in order to cover their and a tenants rights organization does an expose which leads to eviction.

6. Host concerts in your “space,” preferably to make rent.

7. Have some story that involves escorting or hair modeling.

8. Make work that will never sell. Examples include:
8A. Performance art.
8B. Ink drawing.
8C. Typewriter art.
8D. Photos shot in Balmy Alley.

9. Make “street art” or “outsider art” whilst in art school.

10. Try to sound academic.

11. Put down academics.

12. Put down Dot-Com-ers.

13. Develop strong opinions about Burning Man and discuss them loudly at your neighbor's/employer's Burning Man parties.

14. Date someone of a gender you do not usually go for.
14A. Experience genuine heartache over said person when things don't work out.
14B. Date a quick succession of people that are not logical choices for you.
14C. Become jaded about love.
14D. Move in with your life partner/get married two years later.
14E. Put down young jaded hipsters.

15. Become socially alienated.

16. Join a gym and/or get a pet.
16B. Decide to move and donate your pet/ship pet home to your parents to take care of while you do some soul-searching.

17. Put your possessions indefinitely into a storage locker, either because you do not have a stable living situation or because you have become homeless.

open the curtains of your heart

Walking past churches, doors open. this vast amount of internal real estate, the most anywhere, really, in the city, except for malls. yesterday and then today, we will walk onwards and try to forget again.

excerpt from interview

M: I am aware that your 2007 exhibition at _________ was criticized for being overly diaristic...

K: It was. Yes.

M: So... Do you not see that as being problematic?

K: Well, I mean, yes and no. The self that gets created to put into drawing or video, writing, performance, etc, you know, ... it is a Self that is highly formalized...

M: You mean fictionalized?

K: Well, I guess in a sense. I actually did mean formalized.. Using one's self in their practice always brings up the question about where the line between fiction and reality is. Memory, you know, becomes quite evidently subjective...

M: It seems that you run the risk of being seen as being victimizing by striving to make your self so vulnerable... and/or you could be seen as being quite narcissistic for dwelling so much on your feelings and experiences.

K: I know.

M: Is that a concern?

K: No. I feel that there is a real need to not shy away from being able to relate to people on a human level; why can't I use the medium of performance to express these human experiences?

M: Why performance, then? Why not something that allows to to have it to be more to do with The Human Experience and less about you?

K: Suppose I like the range of challenges that are particular to performance as a genre. Having grown up doing a lot of theater, it was sort of weird in grad school to feel this pressure to make work that is highly formalized and has a conceptual edge... There is this assumption that in doing so, you will be at a safe distance from making work that is drama and will be able to eek out a Truth...a reflection of your authentic self... What happens when you blur the line and at times lose sight of where that line is?

M: So you're saying you don't know what you really feel even though you make work that is highly emotional and very personal seeming?

K: Don't we all go through processes of trying on different reactions to things to see what fits?

M: Some people might see that as being kind of hasty or fickle, and then you say that you don't actually feel the feelings that you perform--so you're projecting a persona that is hasty, fickle, and which lacks genuineness?

K: I feel that there is a lot to be learned from allowing room for having more than one thing going on at any given time. In the space of a performance piece, there is more room for that than most of us are permitted in our real, everyday lives.

M: We were talking earlier about Gilbert and George, who showed at the De Young last year... What do you think about what goes on in their "real, everyday lives" in terms of emotional ambiguity or authenticity?

K: That is a question I think about every day.

in................................................out

In................................Out

A Partial List For 2009

Cult-Run Restaurants..........Destination Restaurants

Food Stamps.....................Discount Cards

Bootlegs...........................Netflix

Line-Dry..........................Dry Clean

Car Camping....................Couch Surfing

Text Messages.................Phone Tag

Art Sex...........................Role Play

Music Videos.................Video Art

Blogging.........................Journaling

Pattern Breaking...........Processing

Junker Cars..................Rental Cars

Internet Radio...............College Radio

Container Gardening..........Community Gardening

Ativan...............................Alcohol

Community Service............Escort Service

Side Jobs.............................Freelance

Borrowed Clothes.............Borrowed Cash

Insurance........................Acupuncture

Farmers Markets.............Corner Markets

Political Irony...............Political Apathy

Political Scrutiny..........Political Irony

The New York Times........The Onion

Day Jobs........................"Career Moves"

Attending Classes..............Teaching Classes

Therapy............................Advice

Studio Visits.....................Group Shows

Santa Cruz.........................Sausalito

Day Hikes.........................Days Inn

Circuitous Narrative Art.......Circular Floor Art

30 Degrees Above...........30 Degrees Below

Holding You.....................Holding On

Happy When It Rains

there are different kinds of things going on than what I told you on the phone