West Virginia University performance text / July 27 2006
Somewhere there's a story in this - machinery of the body or interminable mechanism of psychosis < Jerry should we begin like this? > We begin like this. We begin like this because the image stream is "thus." And it will take a while to orient - from the playing with the images to the performance. And except for this typing - there is no difference. Now I feel embarrassed because some of you have seen sections of these alreaady; I've been playing with the images for about forty minutes or so. These are avatars placed into literally inconceivable positions. My name is Alan Sondheim by the way nd I will be your guide for the evening. Or for as long as you choose to stay. So as I was saying yesterday, with an avatar, everything can be assembled or dissassembled - Here is the disassembly of a vacuum tube in a scanner, digitally deconstructed. What is it that you can do with machines that you cannot do with bodies? For one thing, disassembly line - that is eachpart is independent of all the others. Well, that's not true, but they'll stay that way if you unbolt them. So one can move in ways that she cannot move, and remain in air outside of gravity. EVERY HUMAN BEING IS THE RESULT OF INTERMINABLE SADNESS. These images can be taken apart just like Al Capone. And these images belong somewhere or anywhere and it's death that returns these bodies quickly quicly to the position of the machine and its disassembly. So this is about death, my work is about death, and the absence of language, that looking out of the window at the last possible moment - and what is THERE continuing in the midst of cessation - So these people can move butonly for a short while. HOW LONG IS THE LIFE OF A DANCER? MERce is still going strong into his 80s just choreography now. But I saw him dance ever so slowly with a chair. And the chair with thick with the wood and if I'm not careful I'll cove up all the exciting images again. On the right two avatar cats with a human avatar perhaps from the Kojiki learning to ride them in the midst of unfathomable winds. On the left avatar humans hysterically presenting themselves AS IF they are on the scren within the screen. On the right the recent Ukrainian revolution covered completely in the main square in Kiev. On the left and right above - an occupation. On the left an avatar-violation and that skin moving without tearing or tearing without moving; to the right the neuraesthenic from the nineteenth century, lassitude danced out in the middle, in other words disease and strategies for moving around or through the body. There are times... in the midst... of the dark wood which surrounds us... when we lose track... give up... turn away...something has gone horribly wrong... perhaps this is one of those times... as if the world has stained the world.... Someday I will write myself... into nonexistence... This is my dream aloud... uncriducoeurMIAO HOW.... at that point that precise point... between being alive and being dead... I will divide.. and will divide and will divide... there will be nothing that remans remains whole... then each segment, yes! each segment! will retire all the others... the segments... the segments will slowly disappear... outside of any database... not for your viewing or my own... oh then things do or do not go together... you see they lead us somewhere else... those faces on the left... modelled on a book from World War One - a hidden book - photographs of the wounded - I still have nightmares - and now in Iraq - people burned over ninety per cept of their bodies. In this country, this was inconceivable. Not even Vietnam... you have to go back to maybe Cold Harbor in the Civil War, something like that... So this is about this is about empyre - and this is a project - about the end of empyre - and this is a project - about a certain kind of fury - this is about dance and the stain of dance - this is about disease and the stain of disease - yes that too - this is about an entire - a whole - encyclopedia of things! - yes, the encycclopedia too! the encyclopedia as well! - faces collapsed yes in time - you can reverse time digitally - double faces - aum and silent or a--- and um--- - if you understand Shinto you'll get the reference - around Inari - guardian figures - foxes - one with open mouth one with shut - the electrical figuration between them - we're in the midst of the grid - the power grid - it's all around us - you can hear the grid - the antennas pick it up - the dancer moving around the grid - out in the wilds, well not wilds but away from the grid - you can hear other things - World War II was very beautiful... bombers going from England to Germany... I imagine Iraq is very beautiful too... In another minute this will look like a dance... a modern dance.. with mysterious black figures and electronic music... more dance and more dance... someting about Krishna here but I don't want to go there - these are segments of something called the swallowtail catastrophe - bifurcation points - when there's a sudden shift in behaviour - when anything can happen - but not "and usually does" okaythis is Geneva - I'm flying the plane of the President of the United States... on a bus... (bus + plane = speed of bus) - next to - somewhere - an image of the tsunami - there's a proximity - about avatars - a nearness - an uncanny element - you can't define it - they're close - they're almost touching - and ye... yet... There are changes here... in gender... positioning - there's a story but I don't know it... - not yet... what's necessary now - some sort of climax - some way to bring this all together - I'll find it - climaxes are usually loud - this one is embedded - in the machine - the back of my mind - somewhere else not there - somewhere with infantry - so the dancer - Maud - is the crankthat - the crank that - that drives the map - bang bang bang bang - if she disappears - the mapp - the map - will disappear - just wait and see - no I won't - just wait .... damn, its still there... the world is a mess... let us give ourselves at the most another two generations... dusts... radiations... at least you don't have to dream this... thank you.
