catalina 27

Engage in corporeal explorations of water through various ritualistic activities| dive, dance, photograph, paint, feel, shine light thru, project on ,

sound cymatics, humans are 75%95% water so the moon, pollution, energy(visualized thru sound/light) & things that affect water must affect us => clear visual mantras that can be applied to our own daily disposition

Water as a medium but also a medium  

serenity vs chaos : trust/stasis vs “control”

Translation (disruption?) of systems of stasis (balance, friction etc), as a result of immersion into medium

Personal histories/ relationships to water

Water in origin stories (maori?)// as a focus of mythology

Goddesses of Water – origin of life

Also a secular evolutionary origin of life – Disney fantasia water organisms – evolution animation

Land artists (art in which the landscape and the work are inextricably linked), Richard long “line made by walking”, ana mendieta earth bodies

Water is a truly autonomous medium that drives work, ala paul chan

bas jan ader

diaristic videos ala the active creation of a self mythology (LCD soundsystem)

freediving- hold for 4’33”

“For Daoists, experience is key. Knowledge is not knowledge unless it is embodied in the stream of lived experience. The daily practice of living is what crystallizes the learning into concepts and ideas that inform one’s external acts. The aim of knowledge is experience insofar as knowing some-thing substantiates a material reality for how a person comes to live as some-one. Experience, on the other hand, is the origin of knowledge to the extent that a person’s reality is the grounding where one discovers and learns what makes life matter—from the inside out.”

Against this, art becomes enlivened by internalizing the process that expresses the rest of what is real. By using the compositional struggle between what the artist wants and what the material is willing to be as the basis and principle for aesthetic development, art begins to follow another way. Over time, this internal tension transforms both the artist in mind and the matter at hand; it pushes and pulls the work toward becoming something neither fully intentional nor completely accidental. And yet by ending up being what it isn’t supposed to be, a work becomes something more. It manifests a reality more real than any representation can ever hope to achieve, because it embodies the irreconcilable tension that animates contemporary life itself. This spirit of irreconcilability is the telos of artistic form.

“This spirit of irreconcilability is the telos of artistic form.”

“Cézanne may have had this in mind when he said that the ideal of earthly joy is “to have a beautiful formula.”

Paul chan

our plan is to sail the caribbean and the southern atlantic coast of the USover a period of 8 weeks in a catalina 27. In that time, we will ??? a series of ritual activities inextricable from the seascape.

our intent is to engage in a long term, performative exploration of medium. and the way it disrupts or confounds experience and systems of navigation in a broad sense.

engaging in art as a form of release, escape, therapy.

(In the spirit of Paul Chan)to engage in practice that strives for irreconcilability of medium and maker, process and product. Discordance between experiential and teleological identity

"immerse" ourselves in

“To search for the potential truth of the romantic idea in the face of its obvious commodification may seem quixiotic.”

“The experiment lies precisely in the attempt, against these odds, to find out if the idea has any meaning or not.”  Another form of journey,

– P.D. Ouspenski

time space water

jl Austin – “performative utterance” //do smth w words ala Please Don’t Leave Me

emotions as self generative and motivators of other forces

The cosmogony of water

We, as all forms of life on earth, began in water. When we were born out of the warm red ocean, we made sure to fill our bodies with 75% water as a souvenir. We carry it with us, undergo rituals to maintain its divine level within our bodies. We make daily offerings in porcelain altars, and immerse ourselves in worship, appealing to its purifying power. It is inextricable from our existence, its essence has seeped into every crevice of our brains and our souls. We desire, over all, to reconnect with the source.

We propose an 8-week pilgrimage [journey] through the waters of the southern Atlantic coast of the US and of the Caribbean, during which time a long form, performative exploration of the medium of water will take place. The work focuses on the way water as a medium disrupts or confounds experience and systems of navigation in a broad sense. Physical meditations performed daily embody and explore the irreconcilability of medium and maker, through the motifs of body of human and body of water. Immersion plays a significant role in the form of the work in its conception and realization as we document, in several disparate ways, our struggle to (re)adapt to the physical laws inherent to suspension in fluid.

In addition to a video diary, exploring loosely the mythology of the trip, our plan is to undertake in at least two independent performance works involving attempts at reconciling (at least temporarily) the body and water in which it is suspended. The two proposed works also consist of diaristic footage of our attempts to satisfy this instinctual desire to reach stasis with an autonomous medium through a chosen practice. Freediving and dancing serve as mantras for meditation on sensation, suspension, and stasis specifically as a result of being a body in collaboration with, if not at the mercy of this partner. The hope is that these daily practices or rituals evolve organically into a thorough engagement with form and experience. Though the nature of this end will differ with each activity, and will ultimately respond to the process of daily repetition, tentative guidelines have been considered. The diving project, for example, comes with a self-prescribed goal of being able to reach 4’33”, whereas the dancing project strives to develop over time an advanced physical rapport with the water, affording a sense of balance between forces both internal and external.

Catalina 27 arrives out of affinity for the work of Bas Jan Ader, Ana Mendieta and the Land Artists, the writings and work of Paul Chan, intense personal relationships to water and sailing, escapism, obsession with the elemental gestalt of water, years of fantasy, and the unpinnable sense that the time has come to make this voyage

Creation myth

Water as an element/ meditation/body/ symbolic

Water as a medium whose relationship with the artist is irreconcilable /// physical

Diving/dance

At this point the two prososed works entail freedive//dance.

Specithe

Water is the partner

They say there is a rope that extends far beyond view. At its far end, it attaches to a bell that resides on the boat above. It is there as a precaution; as the diver pushes himself to go deeper and deeper still with each immersion, the diving bell’s presence is quietly appreciated. It is the promise of help from above, a fail safe against hubris. Every consecutive dive into the void stretches further downward; the rope follows. It is reality underwater, that the deeper one goes, the harder it becomes to ring that bell. The rope’s extended hand can be gently shaken near the surface, but in the void, the rules change and its scale begins to betray its purpose. The diver has to heave the rope yards at a time for that wave to travel up to the bell, yet dives deeper still…