Listen and Explore


This exhibition Is titled:

An untying

– public speaker having twins (school model), the baby was born a boxer.  

painted bodies,

a clean sheet

blue tarp.

On the right waste

Thankful all the time.

Jesus,

picture books, cut outs, living.

stories.

many yesterdays…

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I pushed open the door.

I paused.

My eyes were closed.

I opened them.

the door shut in my face.

It was locked.

It was dark.

I listened against the door. A sound – getting closer.

A light moved under the door and flashed uncontrollably.

I got on my hands and knees.

Then I fell unconscious.

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I: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey as an artist?

H: Why, who’s asking?

I: How did you get started with your artistic career?

H: I was born. Where the hell are you?

I: What medium or style do you primarily work in, and why?

H: What’s going on?

I: …

I woke up, and the door was open. And the light coming from the other side revealed the stairwell behind me.

A lost child

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I couldn’t see the bottom.

I walked up to the door.

Thida’s voice: “Oh Welcome home”

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H: Anything. Any – (I can’t move)

I: Where do you draw inspiration for your work?

H: Ideas.

(Shocked. Forced to give a wrong answer, or did I choose?)

H: I want to leave out of here safe. Tell me what to do.

I: Can you walk us through your creative process, from idea to finished piece?

H: I – I have something like that in my pocket. If you would just allow me to – (where did this come from?)

Construct… [Destruct, reconstruct (mostly pending, but started)]

Nothing is sacred.

Embrace Imagination. change. And notice connections doing whatever you can to explore.

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Sudden and strong gusts of wind forced me back into the stair well.

I grit my teeth and held on to the rail.

The door slammed shut.

I rushed back and opened it again.

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Can you just let me go?

(Fuck that hurts.) …

(silence)

(The pain doesn’t persist if I’m silent. But no questions? can’t control. I need control…thoughts.)

 

8 hours later

 

Embrace what you cannot control and use it.

Make actions based on new ideas with enthusiasm.

Allow for organization to come naturally.

Appreciate disorganization - unexpected connections occur.

Accept the sadness of loss and move forward.

Listen to others, then do what you want based on your ideas.

Collect and archive – in whatever way makes sense in the moment.

Resist conformity

Search for process and try to change.

 

The questions kept coming, until H forgot they were trapped and speaking to anyone at all.

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What happened to her, where is she?

I stood still.

It was a hallway that felt like a moving train going in the direction I came from.

Wood doors with brass knobs lined the walls in both directions farther than I could see.

A narrow horizon - endless copies.

It was black above, and where I came from was gone.

I turned my head and looked back at the stairs. Then, after a brief thought, looked forward and took the first step.

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The Untying being’s aware of the borders trapping them inside and desperately seek understanding, and solidarity.

They are all tied up.

addicted.

peaceful.

They Risk themselves for a chance to learn something real.

They are holograms - dust particles in the air of a distant world, molecular beings connected into one,

They want to be untying.

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I struggled as the hallway raged.

The doors came and went on and on.

I walked for ages looking for an end.

None.

Stop. Breathe.

I looked left and reached for a door.

Locked.

The door opposite - I grabbed the knob but it melted away leaving a hole.

Thida’s voice: “Don’t look”

But I did.

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(A new voice - Voice 2)

Untying death ritual.

They appear. Come, ever present, genderless and all tied up, bashing things together.

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I saw a man on his feet hunched over, a light from high beating down on him.

Long wet and black hair covered his face.

He was in pain.

He was naked and skinny.

His arms wrapped around his body like a strait jacket.

His hands clutched two bloody spikes piercing his skin from his spine.

His blood snaked down his body. A crimson puddle at his feet - strapped to the floor. 

He started laughing like someone had just told him the funniest joke in the world.

A clattering sound, like rotating gears, from underneath –

The floor slowly descending, I looked on, and Right before the man’s image, and laughter dimmed to the point of vanishing, he snapped his head upward, and our eyes met even from that distance. That dim laughter becoming a faint deathly scream that quickly turned into silence.

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They are ravenous.

They ponder elegance but question its merits.

They are the infinite jugglers always adding pins in a never perfect performance.

Revolutionaries, wanting to change themselves and what they see.

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I stood up, fearful; confused, upset. I kept walking until I could no longer.

no end

too frightened

motionless, staring up, flowing with the movement of the hallway.

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They hope for reality, for what it is.

A fate yet to be discovered.

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I noticed, after staring at the dense black of the ceiling - a movement – a slight one, moving forward.

A gas veil.

I propped my foot up on a doorknob and grabbed the edge of the wall. The brass started melting, but I was able to push off and get to the top.

blind.

I got down and crawled in many directions, trying to get through the maze of ledges.

After what felt like days of silence and struggle, I hit an object.

I grabbed it.

Sturdy.

felt safe, so I held on and stood up.

It was a ladder.

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We interrupt this program to ask, what does the mannequin see as it breaks through the glass?

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At the top was a cellar door.

unlocked.

Through it I found myself in a storm, surrounded by a forest teetering from side to side.

I wrapped my arms around a tree.

Thida’s voice (don’t go)

I started to climb.

Many times, I nearly fell, but I got to the top, and above the canopy I saw the forest sailing on an ocean of broken glass.

Then a vision – I was sitting in a crowded church.

All unfamiliar faces.

No one was speaking but a crying child.

The preacher, ten feet tall, emerged from behind the pulp.

He proclaimed:

an immense bolt of light struck the tallest tree, consuming it in a fire brilliant enough to settle the skies and sea.

I carefully climbed down to a forest brimming with strange life.

Potted plants spiraled up tree trunks for a drink of the liquid honey dripping from the canopy. When their bodies filled, they formed spheres sending the liquid down through their vines and converting it into a technicolor mist, spraying over the forest floor.

I saw snakes with golden eyes, and one with red. I saw a young coyote pup with fur like a kaleidoscope suckling the breast of a mother bear with the inside of her skin on the outside.

 

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Untying the unfathomable knot, a slow and grueling process, requiring acceptance that it may not be possible, and that it might not exist at all.

 

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I saw an eight-legged man and an eight-legged woman standing together forty steps in front of me. They stared at me with infinite amber eyes.

I took a step forward, and they took a step back.

We moved around bush and branch in a frustrating dance through the forest.

They never looked away.

And then we came to the end of life and the beginning of the ashen desert under the burning tree.

I stopped.

They stopped.

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Find the one knot that will untie them all – that will do it. Seems unlikely. I do hope though, whether in this life, outside of it, or after, for some interesting answers.

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I was forty-one steps from the fire.  

I convinced myself that I wasn’t making them move, that when they got too close, they would abandon the dance.

I stepped forward, and they stepped back without hesitation into the fire.

I stepped back but they stayed still.

Their skin evaporated revealing their golden bones, and their eyes melted from inside their skulls.

I ran forward.

And when the last remnants of their bodies melted away the fire shot up and became a pillar of the sky.

I stood five steps before it, bowed my head, turned around, and walked backwards into the fire as those before me did.