Is Adrian Piper like me? Someone with ADHD? (footnotes after the jump)

'Think About It' (1987) Mock-up for billboard design, Rephotographed newspaper images, transparent foil, text, and watercolor.

'Vanilla Nightmares #12' above 'Vanilla Nightmares #6' (1986) 

'Portrait' (1983)

I made it to the last day of Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016 at the Hammer. This is an artist who I've always wanted to know more about ever since I learned about this club called Conceptual Art. In 2004 or so I was vaguely introduced to her piece 'Funk Lessons' presented in some quick, semi-contextless lecture in a studio class with other short art films which I'm pretty sure were Pipilotti Rist, and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (which I definitely remember falling asleep to while watching). They all came across as 'classics', but of all of those artists presented, Adrian Piper’s piece stuck with me because of its cutting sense of humor and I felt like there was a sense of urgency that there needed to be more work like it. The short clip I saw was immaculately edited, and it felt bootlegged. I couldn't get my head around the piece, but I loved it. Was she being sincere? Was it "ethnographic"? Were the workshop participants in on how she was using dance (and other strategies) as a disarming way to bring up racial politics?
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How can this work have so many implications(1), and yet it seems to be universally lauded as work that art students need to see?.

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For other artists reading this, where were you when you first came across the words "W H I T E    P E O P L E    C A N ' T    D A N C E" emerging and blinking slowly across the bottom of that video piece? It's quite audacious to combine racial politics, leisure and intellectualism (philosophy), but she speaks with such authority that it makes sense to follow along without questioning it. Or conversely, one starts questioning everything, or at least do a double-take; this is a principal feature to her work. 
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Now that I think about it, I was introduced to 'My Calling (Card) #1' at the same time, the ones that said, "DO NOT TOUCH, TAP, PAT, STROKE, PROD, PINCH, POKE, GROPE OR GRAB ME.” (On the back it also read in German, FASSEN SIE MICH NICHT AN.) This discrete interjection was not just the most direct strategy I’ve ever seen in an art piece, but even in life, I couldn’t think of anything that was so readily available to be clear about boundaries, showing others how this is done, and nodding to a greater politics behind all of that. For anyone who sees this card in a gallery you know that you’re not suppose to just talk about it as a passive work in a gallery, admiring the font or something, but you can easily imagine it being used and somehow know without any need for documentation, that it had already been used. Another stack also included the infamous card: "Dear Friend, I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark... ...I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me.” 

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Here was proof that art wasn’t just an interpretation or reflection of life, but it was agency of a kind. And it wasn’t just ideas that could float around without consequence, or to be debated in the wider sphere of critics, it was about strategies, and considering how to get through to an audience, not just what I thought should exist for its own sake.

 

This work was kindof near those business cards, I think it was an enclosed film-cannister like space with four light-box photos and audio headsets titled 'Four Intruders Plus Alarm Systems'.

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I was this 19-year-old sponge at a state school in Michigan and just from the documentation of Piper's work, I felt like I was in the presence of 'Real Contemporary Art' and I wanted to make work that was just as provoking and considered as those works.
For someone like myself who saw Art as an adventure for the mind and hopefully my life, this work made me think about the joy (and a brilliant dry humor) in clarity.

.I think I tried to look up more of her work online but I don’t think I understood how to look for it. What I came across was a wash of white walls, a NY/Berlin gallery aesthetic that felt clean, in conversation with other NY artists, produced for sophisticated gallery goers. (I also admittedly didn't fully investigate, who is this artist? where does the work come from?) 
I recall thinking that I’d just have to revisit her work and then I started to gravitate to artists who made pleasurable looking forms which alluded to deeper undertones such as Robert Gober, Louise Bourgiois, Ray Johnston, Bjork, Glenn Ligon, Judy Pfaff, Sarah Sze and Dana Schutz to name a slew.

The most exposure I got to an experimental practice was through watching PBS’ Art 21 and what was showing at major museums. I wasn’t hip enough to be into Jason Rhoades, Kippenberger, Yvonne Rainer, Jim Shaw, French New Wave Cinema, Ursula K. Le Guin, Andrea Zittel or Douglas Gordon.
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For anyone that does know my work, I find it amazing that when I had a chance to debut work outside of my undergraduate environment in Detroit, sans assignments, it seemed like my first work was informed more by her work than any of the other artists I’ve mentioned.

For an installation at Detroit Industrial Projects called "Projections" (2009), Materials: Vinyl lettering, projector, plastic sheeting, white paint, transparency roll and a print out of a NYT op-ed article by Charles M. Blow.Visitors were presented with a blank projection which they rightly assumed they could write their responses to the phrase "black people are less racist than white people" to be displayed pubicly next to the work. These comments would be projected on a clear surface that had been painted white. The conversation of what was being written became archived as the acetate was on rollers. Written responses ranged from inflammatory to flummoxed.

.More amazing still is how it had all of these elements similar to Adrian Piper works:

• a single line of provocative text
• Inserting literal news articles as excerpts
• Inviting people to participate and see all comments from other visitors,
• bringing to light an inability for most Americans to deal with the complexity/baggage of race and privilege. (also, a literal light source that lights up a screen)

and yet I hadn't seen those particular pieces of hers until this exhibition in 2018!
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It was rare for me to come across any of her work in person, except on one occasion at Hamza Walker’s 'Black is Black Ain’t' that came to MOCAD, but otherwise I was only able to see her seven-part sculptural series 'What It's Like, What It Is #2' (1991) or 'The Big Four Oh' (1988) as images online. So I was a bit disappointed when I couldn’t find these pieces at the Hammer Museum and instead I felt blocked in  almost entirely by wall pieces, impressive text and grids, not unlike seeing Charles Gaines logic-based works that had been in the Hammer previously. 
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I kept thinking to myself though, why does the "early” work that gets presented feel like it has to convey PROLIFIC with a certain level of awareness, as if to suggest that art (and every piece leading to a masterpiece) is such serious work? To me, all of the systematic approaches stripped out personal politics to the point where this work could have disappeared amongst other logic-based art of the time, if one didn't read the details. Work felt presented in a default  linear way (as if the artist was dead) where wall texts created a separate portrait from the actual artworks, one of an artist who doggedly brought together ideas and praxis.

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The analytical aspects of some of this work and all of the writing is probably important but it was not something I could indulge in since I only gave myself about two and a half hours to take in the whole exhibition. I’m sure that part of the dense reading is about Philosophy, (specifically Kant,) and even a trajectory that was aware of its higher calling: to be presented in museums for the public rather than private collections. I don't like this immature position I default to when faced with so much banal density that I impatiently want to rush past the archive-ish stuff to get to the meaty bits, so to speak. I’m trained somehow to look for an institutional glimpse of the small moment in their practice when it all clicked. 
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Where did this tendency to look for the narrative of 'the genius' come from? 
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I remember when I asked one of my professors in my senior year of college: what is the greatest aspiration of being an artist? (We could tell that she had favorites and they were not the students who made other plans other than being a full-time artist) My professor's candid reply to us all was this: if it's good maybe it might get purchased by a major museum.
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The curatorial labels suggest that Piper's big breakthroughs could be detected in an early piece where she documented herself being blindfolded and she walked around a well-known artist hangout, or maybe it was when she took ads out in the Village Voice wearing drag as the 'Mythic Being'. But I feel like I've missed something. How did she make the leap from her earlier body of work that was pretty niche with its avant-garde art codes, structure-based process and racially charged pointedness to being able to still cover the SAME ground, but with this casually otherworldly video, 'Funk Lessons'?
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Two early conceptual sketches that are about the essence of the mark making material itself, not an illustration of something. From the series 'Drawings about Paper and Writings About Words #???'

Work either made while tripping on LSD, or maybe it's just titled that, probably not a big difference either way.

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I think I would've really enjoyed being a K-12 educator right at that moment, leading a challenging field-trip through this exhibition. Perhaps the students would reflect that the importance of mind altering drugs was only equal to the ability to immaculately keep a sketchbook. Or more likely, I imagine having to explain why students ended up saying that the art teacher was inciting violence or that 'drugs are great for inspiration!' to the administrators/concerned parents...
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And to that point about being a good student of contemporary art, I can only imagine her subconscious influence on scores of other successful contemporary artists, i.e. the autobiographic content and aesthetics of the typewriter in early work by Frances Stark, the aestheticized viewing of a sub-culture seen through dance in Mark Leckey’s 1999 video 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore', any meta artwork that comments on a viewer looking at work becoming uncomfortable and self-aware, any visual artists who decided to pursue a PHD... 

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'An Open Letter to Donald Kuspit (Kuspit Strangulation Fantasy)' (1987)

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After finishing this part of Adrian Piper's exhibition there were 3 things that stood out, 3 thought provoking themes that I cherished the most:

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   "Adrian Piper's 1989 photomontage 'Un-Mutter #8' juxtaposes two provocative images. Both are reproduced from mass circulation periodicals that the artist adjusted to the same size and grayscale gradient. On the left is Jeff Koons's Artforum advertisement for his 1988-9 exhibition, Banality; on the right is New York Times photojournalist Peter Turnley's picture of a malnourished Somali mother and her child. Turnley's somber family portrait seems especially jarring beside Koons's theatrical shot of himself as a schoolteacher indoctrinating a classroom full of American kindergarteners into his art." - Kimberly Bobier
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1. I liked the subtle nods to education in 'Un-mutter #8', and what I think was a large 'fuck-you' to Jeff Koons shown as a Ken doll teaching little kids to be jaded, it was juxtaposed unapologetically with a forlorn woman holding onto a child with the intense text superimposed: “Fight or die”.  I like thinking about that piece and its relation to the four large chalkboards 'Everything #21' with the partially erased repetitive words "Everything will be taken away”. It reminds me about the  most important aspect of racism that we need to keep in mind, that it is learned. We think that it's just a natural bias because it's about forming an "Us" as a group and "Them" as a group, but more importantly, every part of bigotry is learned, which means that it can be unlearned, and that unlearning has its own set of pedagogy... maybe located somewhere between buddhism, anarchism, and feminism. It also reminds me of Emma Kemp’s mantra in an Earl Gravy piece that reads “DIE LIKE THE REST OF US. DIE LIKE THE REST OF US. DIE LIKE THE REST OF US.” next to images of ‘secret’ safe havens made for and by the ultra-rich.
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2. I like how Adrian Piper has always implicated the gallery viewer in a way that channels her personal and candid reflections so that her perspective is understood as authentic and reasonable. Comparably, I think about the conversation opened up by the #MeToo movement and how it starts from a place of vulnerability on social media, and then it relies on a power of numbers as well as the right people to stop looking the other way. And I wonder about how the conversation can be a sustained society pushing critique: recognizing when mainstream politics are still complicit, extending beyond predators that hide behind a system of power by wading full-on into feminist politics, confronting capitalism/patriarchy while still being a matter of care and camaraderie. It only seems like two years ago, no artists coming into or out of a MFA wanted to pigeon-hole themselves as a feminist artist, now I hear about Sarah Ahmad's book "Living a Feminist Life" almost every day, and now no one (including myself) wants to be called a social practice artist.
   
   Piper always puts herself one step ahead and talks about being other-ed as she describes a sticking point within the Women’s movement (see the partially typed out text in the caption for 'Political Self-Portrait #1' below)  and she gives an account of the kind of friction that is too sorrowful to become a meme. She has quite a few works where she describes being friends with people and it is a core subject matter of the work, and probably is a large part of her identity. In 'Political Self-Portrait #1' in particular, (it's a bit difficult to read when in front of the kids faces) the text about the tenuousness of friendship is very well explained, and I can't think of another artwork that brings this kind of nuance to the table.
   
   

   

   "The only women friends I have with whom this has not happened are either lesbians, or straight women who have stable relationships with the same man for at least three years. When I am around these couples I cannot relax. I have to be very careful about how I look and act. I am impersonal, assertive, almost butch with the man. I try to be polite and genial, but also to exhibit a special lack of interest in him. I barely look at him, and make sure I do not appear to be listening too intently to whatever he has to say. I never address my remarks to him alone. I feel uncomfortable and resentful at having to go through these contortions. But it seems to be necessary in order to get the woman to trust me. For I see now that most of my women friends will probably always subordinate our friendship to their relationships with men in various ways, and this forces me to do the same. I see why it is that friendship with another woman is so important to me, yet so fragile. It is because we have not yet learned genuinely to trust one another, in spite of all that the women's movement has achieved."

   
   

   
   

3. This is going to sound counter intuitive, but I like how bad one of her latest art pieces is: 'The Color Wheel Series' (2000); with its overly digital features, and opaque context definitely couched in a specific Indian culture. It's refreshing because however dis-congruous its color palette appears against any other works she has in the exhibition, (I think the hear no evil, so no evil, speak no evil appears in some other works) it just made me feel like she's willing to keep finding forms for her interests, which means she takes risks and they don't always work out.
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   I like that success for her means always being willing to try and to put the odd works in the same playing field as all of the other pieces. I think it's more bold than say... making things consistently abstract, which let's just get the critique out there... I like looking at art such as Math Bass’ (whose wall installation is the first thing you see when walking into the Hammer in the lobby) or Laura Owens paintings, but these works seem off limits for them to be examined in the same critical way, since they don’t promise very much. The content on their canvas shy away from potential controversy, and I believe it's a symptom of the kind of non-risk art that is made when there is less public funding for the arts. It's prevalence shows how well it competes with other artwork for visibility in a marketplace that demands work to be internet/consumption/investment-ready. Unfortunately it really doesn't add anything to a conversation about feeling disillusioned or alienated by contemporary art../.... .... ......... ...
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   .Adrian Piper really likes being in the flow of making her work, and she really considers the viewer, frames our discomfort, complicates defining the gray areas, and relentlessly reminds us of all of the ways that sometimes we fail (where there's no good reason for not being better, or being more self-conscious.)
   
   
   
   

I ended my time at the Hammer Museum by sitting down and watching an interview with Adrian Piper on the ground floor and I had a revelation that I cannot un... connect-the-dots. (Much of the above was also further solidified by hearing her in her own words describe her practice.) There was a point when she was explaining Immanuel Kant where I became worried I was just going to tune out, in the same way that I did after reading the first chapter of her memoir when it starts going into the baggage of all the ways that Wellesley College drained her life. It’s a tough read.
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Adrian Piper was answering a question fielded to her, "What is Time?” She went into the intricacies of Immanuel Kant's conception of how we unconsciously create a conception of continuity that we call time. This switched a little light on my head because of something that Dr. Russell Barkley calls “Time-blindness” or ADHD(2). As she continued to speak about how time seems to allude her especially in terms of making art and forgetting to do things such as brushing her teeth, she was going into something that I think goes beyond her work on self-awareness. When she was describing how her life is punctuated by unfortunate requirements of life (chores, her professional responsibilities) she described a wish that she could do away with it all, those things that keep her from being in a constant creative state of flow, where time stops.
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I am not a doctor and am not attempting to diagnose, but I keep reading into the work and what she says about it with the filter of someone who has Time-blindness and I want to posit the possibility that if Adrain Piper had Time-blindness that it’s another opportunity to explore and connect parts of her work to her life, not to pass judgements whether it meant that a certain outcome was good or bad. I’m just so curious about something that has dictated a great deal of my life more than I could have imagined and from what we know about it, it has very complex implications(3), just like some good Adrian Piper Art. Also, I will definetely be going into a whole separate discussion about Time-blindness (ADHD) more(4), but I hope that this actually very theoretical claim may bring a very interesting context to Adrian Piper‘s output. 

Maybe consider this writing more as fan fiction than conjecture?
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.Also, how absurd would that look to "out" someone with a disability?
"Well would you look at that? Isn't that the politician who voted against the disabilities act of 1990... he's about to get into the car in the handicap spot! Look at that weasel, look at how he's leaning real heavy on his aides so it doesn't look like he need a wheelchair! That's pretty disgusting. This man is out in public all limp legged, can't even walk on his own, and he's sending young kinds to straight-back conversion therapy. We gotta tweet this! #LizardChiropractorPeople"
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I don’t believe Time-blindness necessarily leads to producing any specific quality of an artwork, those with ADHD are not a homogenous group, but I may be attracted to the kinds of tendencies fostered by someone with Intention-deficit disorder. I guess this is about camaraderie, what it means to recognize a quality or feel like I’m in a greater conversation with inspiring artists.

By talking about what I believe are patterns that emerge from what I can see and hear about her work, by extension it also gives me a chance to open up more about my own experiences and maybe even if she doesn’t have Time-blindness, I’d like to propose that this may be work that an artist with ADHD may find particularly moving because there’s something familiar about her decisions that is only ever referred to as an ‘otherness’, and I don't think we should be so quick to equate that sentiment with only race or gender. 

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Ok, and for the uninitiated, what is Time-blindness a.k.a. Intention-Deficit Disorder a.k.a. ADHD? I think this clip illustrates what I would like to get across about it rather than to have you watch a 2-hour video by Dr. Russell Barkley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=574&v=wGCZrq93pyg

Here's the clues that I kept connecting, where I have definetely felt exactly the same:

• She described that yoga was one of the only ways that gloriously calmed the incessant thoughts in her mind. I believe she did a hilarious impression of a chipmunk chattering to prove her point? I wrote a whole blog post about what yoga seemed to do for my ADHD.
• She described time philosophically, as a drag. Chores were a drag and at one point she admits to all the things she forgets to do when in the midst of being compelled to will art into existence, but also she wondered aloud why can't she just be left alone to do things at her own pace? She'd be creative all the time otherwise! 
• In one of the works I mentioned, Political Self-Portrait #1, the first passages are evidence that in her childhood moments are marked by the struggle to keep 'best friends' and there is an intensity with thinking about and describing the relationships.
• Work that shows a high amount of pre-determined organizational systems, and sometimes that information is also paired/contrasted with elements of fear, fear of being lost, making the strain apparent in trying to be as clear as possible about the feeling of conflict.
• When something interests her, she doggedly analyzes it, especially with others. From her memoir "Escape to Berlin”: she “behaved uncontrollably […] raising my hand every five minutes in every class meeting to innocently request clarification […] dumbfounding my instructors.”
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  Then there are the things that are less... clinical symptoms let's say...
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• She's really funny. 
• She has this common theme of being acutely aware of being on the outside, but it didn't always come down to race or gender...
• A super nuanced attention to how one presents oneself
• Super dense texts (which may be hyper-focus? but it reminds me of notes I've written just after taking Adderall)
• In some of her works she kind of presents to the viewer many bits of information that I believe are meant to be overwhelming, perhaps to illustrate a way she experiences the world.
• She conformed her entire work environment (by leaving the US) so that her work schedule would be as ideal as possible to how she finds herself functioning the best.
• She couldn't be satisfied with just one focus, she had to do art AND philosophy equally in great depth.
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This works is for no good reason missing from the MOMA catalog! It's an important relational piece: 'I Am Some Body, The Body of My Friends #1-18' (1992-95)

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I also think it's interesting then to think about how she talks about her difficulty with the administration at Wellesley, and ultimately her quitting. I wonder how much of it may have to do with Time-blindness, and at the same time, I don't think it's crazy to imagine that another professor also with Time-blindness, perhaps lighter skinned, perhaps having some male privileges of not coming off as difficult, and perhaps they may find it easier to ask for more time off for their projects, get excused for their lapses or strong will, it's somehow expected that people fill in for them... I'm just saying that for those with Time-blindness, jobs don't have to accommodate the work place for a brain that works differently (it's merely a recommendation to the manager), and it can be both systematic racism, and an inability to adhere to a disinteresting structure that makes a situation untenable.

(update: As an example of certain institutional preferences where misogyny is both subtle and kindof not... Adrian Piper's retrospective meant to come to Haus Der Kunst has been cancelled and will be filled in by an older white painter from Germany. I think Adrian Piper should let some of her works continue to be shown just outside of that space as a kind of protest. One of the things I wanted to say earlier when I was describing how rare it was for me to come across her work, was that I wish her work was shown more often with works from other artists made around this same period so that her choices in contrast to other people's choices could be felt even more. This isn't to say that work should be put in competition with each other, but I think that good work continues to do its work when its context, say of otherness, is echo'd all around it. Et Tu Germany?)

Regular Exercise, Therapy, Meds, and Suzy Halajian

Suzy Halajian is one of the people I think of when I describe to someone that LA feels like the place to be1. Despite being in a personal art crisis that in part is exacerbated by LA2, there are a lot of brilliant people3 who have just decided to be in California. A lot of them happen to be writers. After living here for 4 years, it’s beginning to look manageable, like I live here or something. Little by little it becomes a less intimidating place. I am finding people that do this hard to describe thing… perhaps it’s some kind of intuitive way of working where intellect meets feeling meets being an adult. If the person is also humble, it’s like the LA version of Ikigai.

Names are a thing too though, so the first time Rachel4 mentioned Suzy it was in the context that this was the curator that was doing something different, much less parochial (I'm pretty sure this was in relation to who she curated at a show at LACE "I Can Call This Progress to a Halt”), and there was some kind of connection to being Syrian5... film is involved... and something about also having a sister in the same field. (Rachel and her sister Julia have been seriously collaborating for the first time, this year, to co-write a book6).

My initial reaction was that the context could only setup for an intimidating encounter; in that, all of the stakes of meeting/befriending this person would be totalizing. You can recognize in someone else so much of a world you would want to be in, and what if upon meeting this person for the first time, there wasn't a connection, no mutual interest? Or worse, what if they're kind of a dick? Unfortunately, my strategy, like others immobilized by general fear, is to avoid this possibility at all costs. When I finally cut that shit out, for me, sometimes the art that people set into motion, feels like a call to action, but a collective one. Like how I found myself at LACE because of the allure of some kind of artist writing workshop (as part of a series of events Suzy also curated to take place at LACE, this one led by Dylan Mira) that embraced amateurism as an access point through a creative block (similar to the Best Friends Learning Gang) and to also connect with others who may see themselves the same way and so not feel as isolated.

Or it could all be simpler than that, something about giving in to impulsivity or obsession, or to be more generous:  my curiosity was peaked. And it sounded like an opportunity to start and finish a piece all in one go, to selfishly make an artwork within another person’s artwork. At the end of the workshop, I gave Dylan all of the notes as the closing gesture. It’s only now that I realize that I have no idea where I put my copies of those notes. The only thing I have are some photos of carved fruit. I think the word was “sensitive”.

What is so astonishing to me about trying to find other writings about Suzy or trying to figure out what writing a piece about her would really be about, there are ebbs and flows of her influence on what I end up thinking about for months or content that overlaps between Rachel’s and my own practice, which is rare, because we do not make similar work at all. 

Coming into the LACE show, I played that name game recognizing: Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer, (who both have connections to Glasgow), and Phil Collins who I know is one of Rachel's art heroes. 

While in the space we got to watch Rosalind's 18-minute part docu-fiction-animation, part rhythm-as-meditation film "Electrical Gaza” about three times. I wondered aloud how does anyone get to catch good art films if you can't make it to the exhibition in such and such a country. I’m convinced this is a thing because we caught Rosalind’s work again in Kassel for Documenta 14, and Rosalind's contribution, a film titled Vivian’s Garden turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the exhibition. In the film, she captures long shots following a woman and her mother in seclusion where their whiteness seems to color "the rainforest" and "the help" and "the drama of time". I was magically convinced that the entire setup was fictional. So Rosalind Nashashibi presents a film depicting two artists that are also concurrently showing in the Documenta exhibition. But it’s unclear on whose terms people’s work and their identities are being laid out.  I mean, who puts in the art of an artist which is also the subject of a different work by another artist, which are actually two completely separate entities that don't share a context outside of the event itself? As it turns out, that was probably the main theme of Documenta 14. And to its credit, we fell in love with all of the peculiar dimensional collages made by Elisabeth Wild (the mother in the documentary), and we could feel the proof that there is at all times a plurality of art worlds.

A rant: To me, there is a sea of art films where it's a 50/50 crapshoot whether or not watching the actual 16mm film is not too far off from seeing a screenshot representation of it online, the film moves that slow. Sometimes it’s even worse, some film is represented only as a thumbnail image, dwarfed on a stark white webpage by the name of some kind of European Art prize. Does anyone else think that there's an absurd disparity in the proliferation of an emerging moving image maker’s name and the rare number of opportunities to catch a glimpse of their work? I know that this is mostly likely in part because I cannot illegally download such niche items, and Rach just got out of art school so she’s armed with new references, but I just want to point out that this is a large portion of what it means to stumble upon art nowadays.

rant #2: Also, how ironic is it that pets are often used to give a film a sense of humanity? What would you filmmakers do without all that golden B-roll footage of animals that is oh so necessary to set the pace?

Sorry, this is what happens when I haven’t written anything for a while. It’s not such a direct thing you see to simply be reminded of one artist or set of ideas and recognize it again somewhere else. What is profound isn’t so cut and dry, you find yourself just recognizing good work and seeking it out a little bit, like when you see the same kind stranger enough times at interesting events that you decide to ask their name, so that next time you can properly say hello.

Let me try to get back into the headspace of that LACE space… there was a 2x4 structure that took up a large central space, framing and offering seating for a series of film screenings. Modular structures like these always remind me of Alice Könitz' practical DIY museum, even though I’ve never actually seen it. To recognize similar structure strategies appearing across various unrelated exhibitions felt like some pattern or rhyme was emerging that had something to do with a space for and with people, perhaps something about Fred Moten and “the Undercommons”, something about how people in LA bring the idea of “radical” to the level of the everyday. 
Another pattern to when I come across something Suzy has curated is that it commonly coincides with a personal moment of newfound adventurousness. For example, on that day it was special because we started our morning with Yoga at the Hollywood YMCA that was literally just around the corner. Then we hit the Hollywood farmers market before spontaneously deciding to get into Dylan Mira's workshop at LACE. Synergy kept flowing and we didn’t get back home to Boyle Heights until the end of the day. Rachel describes Hollywood as one of her favorite places in all of LA. I think it’s because it’s actually walkable.

The first exhibition I saw curated by Suzy was Harry Dodge’s FIRST EVER solo show in LA at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. 

And by the way, shame on you LA that Harry Dodge had been here for 10 years before someone found a way to spotlight just his work. Let me guess, you were real busy.

I can't say if I was intrigued by that particular show, in part because I have this idea of the Armory as somehow being somewhat lackluster betraying whatever I think an Armory is supposed to look like. It’s more of a community arts center where you can run into a celebrity (like Carrie Brownstein) than being conducive to say, an open white cube space with enough room to build out enough spaces to host a retrospective, or a raw artist-run space conducive to super experimental tests. But it was followed up with another event with Harry, this time a talk and a series of screenings at the Pieter Performance Space where I’d previously caught AfterGlow put on by Aimee Goguen and Harry. 

I was so enamored by the talk because it was raw Harry, a mixture of watching him spend the time answering questions being fielded to him by one of their kids, and also having this Gung-ho affect with words, turns of phrases... Maybe it's like someone using language and theorists and ideas the way that a Dom would use leather for S&M, I don’t know. 

I somehow asked Harry if I could have the notes to his talk and for some reason thought it necessary to do some kind of Psychomagic act (to be fearless in making art) by finding an opportunity to emulate his cadence in public. I had found the perfect occasion, as I was taking part in Sara Roberts & Jordan Biren’s Readers Chorus that for weeks had been working with material from the Museum of Jurassic Technology and was set to perform various pieces throughout the MJT. It was all too easy to seamlessly replace snippets from when I was supposed to be reading a Borges inspired text with the speculative futuristic statements a la Dodge. No one noticed.

On another night, when I was enjoying a week of running into lovely people that I used to only see once a year, I attended an outdoor screening that Suzy curated. It seemed like many of us hermits decided that it would be most appropriate to come out and celebrate a big public screening of Aimee Goguen’s work. There was a swirl of names and confusing relations, something about Rachel Mason’s parents running an erotic bookstore even though they’re religious, a baker’s dozen curators all under the heading Dirty Looks, and another famous Bradford. 

In the numerous performances and series that Suzy puts on, there is always the possibility of witnessing a totally relatable vulnerable presence in the very same space as death-defying art making. In this case, there's nothing more joyful than watching Aimee turning beet red, attempting to hide in plain sight while being introduced by Suzy to a crowd of possibly 100 people all gathered on a backyard hill to watch porn-ish short films. 




 Seriously, what a night. At some point a cop car rolled through the connected alley in dead silence, almost unable to get through and somehow not during a suspiciously cropped scene. My view of the seedy shorts was through a bush of some kind watching a lo-fi video of two art-school aged boys forcefully tonguing each other while we all nervously giggled, enjoying each others company outside on a warm enough night. The films also seamlessly transitioned from some kind of looping video transition pulsing upward, as if an error in tracking was forcing the image to literally penetrate itself over and over. The music had been building up for a good three minutes and I was digging the very unlikely soundtrack before it dawned on me that I was now experiencing someone elses' performance (a rhythmic musical interlude by M. Cay Castagnetto, was Johanna Swan part of this particular performance? I can’t find any info7)

The most recent project of Suzy’s that I’ve made it to, where I’ve finally managed to say more than “hello” to her was primed by Neha Choksi's Performance/Research/Workshop. A bunch of like-minded artists were crammed into Actual Size, a display case of an exhibition space at the edge of Chinatown. Again Suzy’s show was the reason I was at a venue I’d never been to before, but also this was to be related to Neha’s foray attending school with kindergartners. Neha titled the event "Elementary Sympathy" and surrounded this meeting of the minds with large posters of photoshopped worksheets that she referred to as studio sketches. I'm pretty sure we all knew what we were getting ourselves into where you have an intimate space and someone is commanding attention under the guise of "a performance". It means that participation will be happening, regardless if you want it to happen or not, and the worst thing that could very likely happen is that someone just talks about themselves or gets hung up on a very minute detail for what will feel like an eternity. 

I both obsess over and am also very critical of work that addresses pedagogy, philosophies of teaching and learning. I don’t know if anyone would find my art education conspiracies very compelling, like how Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) was a ploy by the Getty to give teachers free teaching materials in order to influence generations of art consumers to see their particular collection as the defacto canon. I think the everyday relationship most artists have to art education is where it overlaps with something they do outside of a classroom: art therapy, social practice, activism or academia. Rather than seeing the position as a two-way street, it’s considered a rite of passage for savvy intellectuals, either in the honorable suffering of low-paid adjunct positions or as the cushy job given to those who reach the top 5% in their field. So often what is not talked about is the substance of art education itself in a way where we are complicit in the stakes that are involved, but often it’s a self righteous contention. Just another opportunity to boast what they know, which is annoying in an era where people are obsessed with data (where Moneyball meets McDonalds meets standardized testing meets state-sponsored propaganda) instead of... something about feelings... where vulnerable people, aka children, need assistance to find their place in the world, make friends, find pleasurable or meaningful work, hold themselves up to constantly update their moral compass. At some point when anything concerns us, we then blame the teacher. Again, for a country that is constantly privatizing public services that struggle to address systematic inequality, how fucking dare you.

I made myself comfortably uncomfortable and decided to stick to my current M.O.8: Shut up. The very first thing she asked us all to do was to pick a word off of a post-it note that would stir up their earliest memory of school, undoubtedly a formative moment.9 As she puts it, there are moments in our art education that shouldn’t correlate, such as being able to render and replicate imagery and what it means in terms of developing as an artist or learning empathy. I recall reading somewhere that practice in mastery, can be the basis for intrinsic motivation, to see challenges as worthwhile. Supposedly once someone discovers how mastery is achievable and has the perspective to see what it demands, the plastic brain transfers confidence to the next set of related skills. Realism is probably some kind of easy way to detect if one is mastering something or not. How do I know when a conceptual artwork of mine is more critical than it was two years ago? I have to rely on external feedback from people whose opinions I trust.

The contributions of Neuroscientists seemed to be missing in the conversation replaced by philosophers, but at least there was some talk about etymology and glimpses of a history of art education. I was intrigued that the entire approach was new to me. Neha described what it really meant for people to become self-aware in cave drawings, and performing awareness for each other. I thought about something my therapist said about how “personality" is the very thing we create in order to protect ourselves from painful feelings, so instead, I said something about Prisons. Many times these kinds of events can turn into group therapy sessions, and there’s a reason they have a negative connotation, they’re efficient for an organization to dole out worksheets, but often they just a bunch of people who know they have problems outnumbering the amount of people who are objectively stating that they are not the ones with the problems. The conversation was lively enough, generous yet guarded, not being sure what to make of the propositions stacking up on each other, but trusting and liking Neha to handle the debates with aplomb.

At some point, Anu Vikram from 18th Street Art Center popped in and had a lot to say about what kids do and don’t notice (in regards to a question fielded to Neha about whether or not the Kindergartners are aware that she’s not quite one of them). But I couldn’t help but notice the stark contrast between the way that Anu was claiming something about Neha’s project and could communicate her engagement, and the way that Suzy hadn’t said a single word during the event. She contained a demeanor I associate with teachers, or people who have a really good “gallery face” as to not let their opinions affect people who may take any little reaction far too seriously. 
It felt strategic, like when exhibitions have deliberately left out the usual didactic signage, and me as the viewer is trusted to go beyond passive consumption into something demanding an active imagination, to meet the meaning halfway. I actually still geek out about this thing in Art Education called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) when talking with kids about contemporary art. To me it’s all about starting off feeling empowered to own one's own experience of art, not to have it mitigated/dictated by an authoritative museum voice.

So was Suzy not participating? If anything, her political beliefs and actions are understated. Maybe she thought that the  accompanying writing said everything that she would want to say, maybe she genuinely was taking in the experimental process that she had laid out and therefore all that there was left to do was it unfold. (I was first intrigued to write something based on the experimental format of the individual screenings alluded to in the writing she provided.)

(Image redacted10)

At the end of the evening when most visitors had left, I congratulated Suzy on this show and the others that she curated. She mentioned something about not being sure if the pedagogy links were clear, but I thought that Neha was meta-performing the voice and role of a hyper-facilitator where pretty much anything spoken is a useful segue.  It turns out she was collecting reflections and compounding them with her own as she reworked over the large printed posters, listening to the recording of the performance/conversation back again as if it was a Malcolm Gladwell audiobook. 

I just found out today from Aimee and from looking something up online that Suzy is going to be a little farther away doing a PhD (on writing about film?) at UC Santa Cruz11. Immediately I recalled when I took work off to catch a lecture by Helen Molesworth up at CalArts. I was so excited to hear her speak, but when she asked the students if they’d prefer just to field her questions (which I missed when Mark Bradford did this the year that Rachel was doing her MFA) or hear her read her latest essay on Manny Farber, a lone voice claimed “ESSAY!” and somehow irreversibly, a great opportunity was lost. Even at the very end, somehow it wasn’t made apparent that there wasn’t enough time, so some guy asked two questions (it’s always a guy) and then everyone had to abruptly leave the Bijou theater at CalArts to make way for another class. This was also only a few months before she was fired from MOCA. How close were we all that day to uncovering the kinds of everyday thoughts of someone who isn’t just some famous art writer, but is someone who really got under the skin of upper management in the Art World with a capitol “A”? 

It would seem that none of what I had to write was really a reflection on what I think Suzy is or isn’t doing that is particular to her as a curator, but I have these questions (not literal ones) about what it means that she curates often in queer circles which seems like an important political decision. I don’t mean to assume, but if like myself, she identifies as queer from the standpoint that it is a fundamentally important and probably radical basis for engaging in life, then there is something more to be sussed out  about why and what she programs holds so much weight to me. 

I think I’m done with the premise that a good art career/trajectory is one in which I get to be fully engaged in “interesting conversations” which is just a matter of privilege, not quality. 

But I want to believe that what Suzy and others12 are doing is to create a space of mutual respect in the in-between, the mundane, the complex, hard-to-describe layers. This creates a kind of faith in an expansive version of ‘normal’ where things happen regardless of hard categories (where we’d be expected to have to constantly re-perform), a real space is made for trying things out, or to highlight those who constantly take that chance. As Tam MacGarvey of GalGael said to our Detroit crew in Glasgow, (paraphrasing) “These ignorant developers, they try to sell us something sexy, but it’s not based on anything real. What we’re trying to do here is real, like Real Sexy.” I like this ridiculous idea of sexy hope. The kind that constitutes real work in building a replacement Art World (sure, one of many) in a MeToo era, where people’s actions (and energies) matter, the one that has actually made space for me and Rachel to embrace what we have to offer and to not have to work so hard13 to see our place in it all.

measuring with a bent ruler suggests having a different relationship to precision and accuracy, that there’s always apparent meandering, as it is a series of experimentally sequential exhibitions. The next one is this coming Wednesday with Kandis Williams.14

__________________________________________________
FOOTNOTES


1  
I tell people all the time that I’ve been doing a lot of self-sabotaging to my art practice since coming to LA, which then is always followed up with the question, “So are you going to stay in Los Angeles? Move back to Detroit? Would you have stayed in Glasgow after grad school?” and without missing a beat, I confidently reply that right now LA feels like the place to be. And this is one diaristic journey into trying to figure out what about LA does enable my practice.

2 
Here’s the link to “I can’t tell if I like LA… but I think I don’t like it?"
http://ceedric.blogspot.com/2014/10/i-cant-tell-if-i-like-la-but-i-think-i.html

3
I see this through a line of powerhouse writers, really defining entire genres or causes: 

• Joan Didion
• Octavia E. Butler
• Kathy Acker
• Judith Butler
• Simone Forti
• Fred Moten
• Maggie Nelson

4
Rachel Yezbick is my partner. We are in LA because she got into an expensive cult for professional reasons. It's based in Santa Clarita and is referred to as CalArts. Lovely People

5
Rachel is a quarter Lebanese, so like... geographically that's similar right?

6
Rachel and Julia’s book, so far untitled, will look at the politics of immersive experience from sensory ethnography to contemporary media in art (VR/AR). 


7
Alan Poma was there as well! That futurist Peruvian! Another one of those wonderful, hey-I-think-I-know-that-guy moments that makes a big city seem smaller. Fun story he told me when we first met: His girlfriend's cat once went missing and he had the idea that he should just used his trained ear to walk around some alleys just listening to the meows. He FOUND THE CAT!

8
My current Modus Operandi: Hold my ADHD thoughts to myself until at least two women have participated, definetely don't be the first person to speak, and I try not to be the last, and even then, unless I'm able to have a clear question (fuck trying to be concise, that's impossible) I only really have one job, let the feelings come as they are. Don’t forget to feel sad.

9
My word to trigger a story was “Self-Conscious” which doesn’t seem that far off from the word “sensitive” that I carved into an orange at Dylan Mira’s writing workshop.

10
Here is an undoctored image of Suzy. She said that the other photo was too embarrasing and that she looked too serious. So I asked her if she either had a silly photo of herself that I could use instead, or a childhood picture of herself being just as serious. See below:

11 

My friend wrote this comment in the margins when helping me edit this text, and I loved it so I'm putting it in verbatim:
“Why is this important? Because she will be far and you fear that means she won't curate more shows? Might be worth expanding since it also fits within the whole diary of a queer art crush thing”


12
In this vein I include 

• Tatiana Vahan’s "Bar Fund”
• Dan Bustillo/Joey Cannizarro's "Best Friends Learning Gang”
• A.L. Steiner
• Beth Pickens

13
Working Hard: That thing we do to avoid dealing with residual pain that comes from trying to impress our parents to give us more of the love we needed.
 
14
So I finished this writing back on August 26th, but I thought I'd wait in case someone might want to publish it, I'm going to assume... no. I may try to revisit this again if I can catch what Kandis ended up doing, but unfortunately I missed that final event. But maybe you caught it? How was it?

Letter of recommendation / unconventional testimonial for Joe Strider's Power Yoga

I haven't written anything in a while and I plan on posting something up that's new, but in the meantime, I found some older writing that I liked and felt appropriate:

I have had friends teach me yoga in college and my partner has always encouraged me to join, but I always had this vision that yoga was just for white people who were pretending to be Asian, and I also kind of wrote it off because there was this pressure to join my partner almost like a favor, but it didn't really click with me until I re-contextualized for myself what it really was.

It's a dark photo, but Joe is in the center there, walking his dog.

I have had a difficult time transitioning to living in LA and attempting my first ever 9 to 5 to support Rachel while she went to get her MFA. I didn't realize that the low pay rate combined with my being the only person making money and a hour and a half commute was going to exacerbate any of the coping mechanisms I had built up around my ADHD. This combined with anxiety and depression left me desperate for answers but I had less time than ever and my close friends were either back in Detroit or in Glasgow, and it seemed that any attempt at self-care really only kept me afloat. After getting healthcare via my job I was pointed towards a weekly anxiety and depression group session to further understand what was definitely beyond my own abilities to comprehend. It was one of many tactics. We moved closer to where I work, and I worked many long hard hours to earn raises. I tried to make sourdough bread regularly, I joined the YMCA gym, and I even took swimming classes even though I have an irrational fear of swimming. I was hell bent on being the best self I could be to basically learn how to love myself, not only the happy or successful versions of me, but to be my own good friend.

If you meet me, the way I delve into real conversation real quick may be one of the more obvious of my quirks. I wear my emotions on my sleeve but I'm also stubborn, I pull many all-nighters and crash before putting on art shows no matter how small, I still have lots of bad habits including constantly being late. I have built up a lot of symptoms that point to me avoiding feeling things, feeling sad, even though I would have claimed that, with rejection sensitive dysphoria for example, that I feel too much all the time. I think that a combination of really wanting to take this project of myself head on in an unprecedented way, plus medications, plus yoga, eventually talk therapy, has been a powerful, necessary regiment. At one point, Joe asked his students for a kind of testimonial, so the following is kind of one, done in my hyper focused ADHD story way:

The transition to yoga really started with taking stretching and meditation with more intention from dipping a toe in during the anxiety and depression workshops. I also developed searing sciatic pain from sitting so long at work which even flared up on the first day of those group therapy sessions. It was so painful I kept re-adjusting myself, until I actually just started crying from the discomfort. From that summer long Kaiser-Permanente group session I felt like there was so much more to do, and I built up a resolve to take self-care much more seriously because my mental health was at stake and I could see how it manifested in a bodily way.

For some reason I made a color version of a black and white hand out I was given. It reminds me of how bad I am at 2D design sometimes...

Then a big break happened for me, I found out that I had been accepted for a full artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center and they offered yoga classes at a discounted price. My job let me take four weeks off and it was 100% about giving myself as much time as I needed to get back into the rhythm of art making and whatever goals I had including just finding the time to organize my life if that's what I wanted to do.

This time around, yoga was easy to relate to it because of its relationship to meditation and everyone else seemed to be signed up to be doing it. My first class I was in my head but in a surprisingly good way. I remember making a goal to not look at anyone and in some ways my nervousness helped me to focus on just my own presence in my weak feeling body. I say weak because I was embarrassed when I would sweat after stretching. It just seemed abnormal, I've never been able to touch my toes, I grew up a little chubby, yoga seemed like it was for fit, confident people.

Previously I thought that everyone listening to a person giving commands and saying Indian words was akin to the embarrassment of being brought to square dancing by my parents in the super white suburbs and that someone was going to tell us to do-see-do.

But in this context it felt sacred, and the words spoken matched what I experienced in Vermont: that it was a safe space FOR me.  Even though I knew everyone around me were artists, I had just met these strangers and it made me nervous to look around, and I pretended as if I was doing my regular stretches and didn't want to be bothered by other people. I was in my head, but it was different... when I had been going to the gym I would somehow still be upset with whatever had been going on that day that I struggled to deal with, like, where were these endorphins I was promised? There was nothing rewarding about exercise, just constantly pushing myself in vague ways; to try to run a mile without stopping or do a full lap across the pool, it was always about getting to the end.

When I got back from Vermont I bought a yoga mat and tried to carry that place with me in my head. I needed to find ways to continue what I had built up in myself that made pride in myself seem practically tangible and at hand. It helped that the YMCA had a reduced rate for us as we easily qualified for it so it didn't feel like a big deal to choose between swimming, a sauna or yoga as opposed to getting a full on commitment to a yoga only studio.

Joe's class was the first one I had ever attended back in the “real world” and Rachel came with me. The first thing we noticed was his music and style. Although he wasn't playing Tool, he mentioned it a bit off handedly, and I knew that he probably yoga'd the fuck out to Tool. I remember being warned that some instructors go full on and rock out in some strange Americanized bro culture and so I kept in mind that it would be one of many classes I would try. He acknowledged that we were new and immediately I was satisfied with the amount of helpful direction and hands on adjustments he gave so that we really understood and could feel the foundation of what each pose was. I sweated a lot, and thought that I had learned a lot, and would probably come back next week. Rachel didn't like it so much. We both were probably really judgy.

At some point recently we passed a 1 year mark. (this writing is being revisited another year later) Joe and I had gotten to know each other more when he offered to be a hiking buddy to the class. I took him up on it as I still had not figured out a way to explore LA comfortably on my own. It felt like it came from a generous place and it felt rare to get an invitation from strangers. Compared to other instructors, we always knew that there would be two consistent things that would happen in his classes: we wouldn't accidentally hurt ourselves, and we would be building up our strength (core work, focus, self confidence) Joe is a great teacher, always focused on training everyone on how to be careful. He's very sweet, he shares, and he explains what is at stake.

In Joe's class I really came to appreciate the concept of “practice”. For some reason I thought of it as a misnomer, as in... not real life, but practice for the real thing. (Is that your whole breath?) But practice had a different connotation with the way that Joe described it. Practice could be something more vulnerable in its imperfect state, and therefore it was generous when out in public. Practice also meant something more personal, and somewhat more satisfying than just showing up. It meant an awareness of improvement (perpetual beginners) while also downplaying the pressure that one actually had to be improving.

There was a respect for mastery (especially so that one doesn't get hurt) while at the same time he often vocalized his skepticism towards the programs set up by so-called masters. Sometimes Joe rhetorically says, why ain't I rich like these gurus? It'd be awkward to respond in the moment because we all know he's rich in other ways that make it a privilege to be in his classes, he has integrity.

Joe had mastered the theatrical aspects of leading a class, holding attention to the process that should take up ones thoughts, rather than my usual overthinking. His voice seems to follow through with the attitude that there are thoughts worth pushing out and that directives can become routine. And he did all this from a place of care and love. He overemphasizes producing embarrassing yoga noises and is the silliest person in the room so that there has never been a point where I stopped in a self-conscious way and thought, why am I making humping motions in a room full of strangers? He sets a solid expectation that you will listen to yourself, but he knows how to really deliver it with another important messages, perhaps one of the hardest lessons to stick to in life: don't take everything too seriously, get a buzz...

Joe developed a natural all-levels power yoga as a safe space, an encouraging place to feel ready for challenges, a place to show up when you don't know where to go mentally next, that grounds the head and body together to the here and now. Perhaps it shouldn't be overly relied upon, but it really has been a productive place to be when I want to work on baggage that settles somewhere into stiff joints, or wanting to channel frustration into something productive. There is never a time that I don't leave the class feeling capable, more reflective and rejuvenated, which is interesting because often I don’t really want to show up actually. But I know that it's like a reset button, a clean slate, setting the stage. It's so effective that I find it hard to associate with the same person I was an hour and a half ago, dragging my feet thinking 'do I really have the time for this?'. But he always makes sure that you give yourself a hug and thank yourself for showing up, and I always feel it. Another one of the words (it's probably more of a phrase) that he uses often comes to mind: effortless... On the other hand, it could also be called Fuck-Yeah-Yoga, but perhaps that would turn some people off before they really gave it a chance.

I think there are times where we wish that we would get more out of life than what it seems like we may put into it (especially in capitalist America) but here is an old practice that does not require complicated stuff. It's just one of those things that the more you put into it, the more you get out, specifically in the form of self-care. I don't actually understand now how people would deal with mental issues without yoga... I guess I could say the same about art. But unlike even making art, which can be everything to me, it feels like I transcend my ADHD. And it's not about trying to understanding everything, but rather working it out as if the worries could seep out in drops of sweat and negative thoughts are wrung out in the moment that one gets into a stretch and reaches their edge. I also like how Joe knows that this is a great way to do much needed maintenance on the organs that are in charge of keeping the imagination fired up.

Joe lets it be known that it's nice to see you, and can let you know how far he can tell you've progressed. He does little acknowledgements to those who he gets to be familiar with. It's uncanny how the classes will change from one to another and yet feel like exactly what I feel like I needed to work on, perhaps my shoulders were sore from sleeping funny, or I am a bit sluggish, somehow he seems to read the room and adds nuanced variety. A computer guided session won't change things up, won't acknowledge you, won't help you to go at your own pace, won't even make sure that you're doing it right. And yet Joe encourages yoga to happen, even if you don't make it to his specific yoga classes. Our bodies and our health are too important to make secondary so he's always made it clear how important it is to find a way to do yoga somehow. And I know, even if he's not right there with a class, that he's given me a lot of tools to feel things clicking right into place. He has helped to replace bad habits with really good ones.