Back to Rauma

I'm back in Rauma, Finland, doing an artist residency at Raumars. I am working with two school groups to produce a puppet show. The project is a collaboration between the two groups and deals with concepts of environment, evolution and survival. Seventh grade students at Porin Kallelan Koulu have created a set of fantastical environments. Sixth graders at Rauman Freinetkoulu will respond with characters that have adapted to survive in these environments and then will create stories about the interactions of these new species. The performance is September 15th at Rauman Kellariteatteri, Pursikatu 3 at 18:00. The environmental models and supplementary drawings will be exhibited. 

Inthecomplex is planning two "esh" events. "Esh" is a gender-neutral pronoun. I created the new pronoun while completing my undergrad at Maryland Institute, College of Art, and inthecomplex is now continuing the project. We are interested in promoting the project in Finland specifically because Finnish language does not use gendered pronouns. The first promotional event is scheduled for September 10th. 

Player Piano Thorough Slave Always

Notes from the day:

Player piano

Thorough

Slave

Always in fog

Fog comes from triangles

Stalagtites

Even though the pancake might not turn out right

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Sitting on a float on the stoop

drinkin some saku

and now the sky is back and I swear

a fly just spit on me

That yellow smell of plastic and

I know I'm not at the beach and

the 500 people might think I'm a freak

but that's okay cause the two oak

trees that love each other will cover

me with drips and

I will always shiver in the cardigan from

a lost and found

The inflatable

whistles and luckily I know how to

say the last

e of mooste. 

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Fog the pattern and hue of an

accordion case and triangles that open

and close like a baby gate

I'm flat at the bottom of the bleachers

in the field house

A deck of cards in one hand sprays out

in a perfect arc that just echoes

Extragund... and notes on sleeping / swimming

Before I woke today, in the thick and thin of sleep, I made a new word.

Here is it's debut in letters,

Extragund [ek-struh-gunhd]

(n., American, 2009)

1. An allegory which includes false symbols as an abstraction device,

thereby expanding the amount of possible archetypal connections.

(example: The extragund made sense on many different levels.)

In my sleep, I wanted that word because I knew my friend Victoria Bradbury needed it to help describe her work.

I am beginning to gather documentation on another word that I started working on in 2002.

It's a new pronoun, "esh". Read more about it here, with images designed by Lauren Wolff.

I woke from the same bit of sleep with a slew of words locked in a jumble and I actually tried to say them all at once.  Before that moment of speech I had been dreaming that I was far underwater swimming and I could see everyone in town swimming above.

Notes I gathered while actually swimming yesterday:

One, two, three, four, breathe.

Uks, kaks, kolm, neli, breathe.

I've always felt safest in a lake. It has to do with the resistance.  And I can exert all the energy

I have, in all directions at once.  I can expand because of the resistance.  

Lore

Stories I've been told and now find myself constantly re-telling (which makes me a bit nervous

because I haven't done any fact checking).

It's the oral tradition of MoKs!

1. Once upon a time Estonians around Mooste lived many kilometers apart from each other. Then the USSR took over and built block housing which people were happy to move into because of the many modern amenities. People who kept their homes in the countryside were more or less considered country bumpkins.
2. There is a "nazi sculpture garden" (family- don't freak out) in Mooste (it's very scary and weird, documentation coming soon.) The creator is the ex-mail carrier of Mooste and he used to deliver the mail by bicycle in his fatigues, day in and day out. This continued until Estonia became a part of the European Union and they made him stop.
3. The old chest in my room is the original dowry chest of the manor.
4. The "community" gardens were created with no prior organization. People just moved into the field and started working the ground. The word community is avoided because it implies collectivism.

Pickles and Pigeons and etc.

There's a collection of bright melon flowers

growing out of the iceberg I see in my mind.

cadmium red light

cad yellow medium

and lead white, to be exact.

It's there along with 

the shrill bird sounds in stereo

(those exist somewhere on the outskirts of what I would most like to hear)

and a light fly biting my elbow, quick and sharp in real time.

The smell of my sweat climbs up, 

reminding me

that I need to get in the lake now,

and of a previous run through a chamomile field.

That made me want to roll in the grass and nap, horselike.

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The pickle truck is always going by.

It must be the only truck for miles, 

and I imagine the happily vinegared families

living free from fears of starvation this winter.

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I finally noticed the pigeons!

I know they've been here all along, but apparently my pigeon

radar has been set on low, regardless of the context.

Did the Soviets bring them in to populate the block housing?

An array of city apartments absurdly constitutes the rural village

of Mooste.

Were pigeons a subliminal device used to convince country folk

that they belonged to a bustling and modern collective?

Or is this the pigeon in it's natural habitat?

Proud, with phosphorescent and multi-colored plummage.

Beautiful, as they were at my first childish encounter outside

Grampa's dentist office in Chicago.

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People here know just how to get naked into a lake

quickly and discreetly.

That's a trick I'd like to learn.

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I want to run and

make helicopter noises and

throw sand like

those 3 medium sized

boys and one girl.

I have a feeling that their little

world would stop existing if I

tried to invade it with all my foreign agedness.

Pinturicchio's Portrait of a Boy, 1500

I found this print here at MoKs. 

Pinturicchio's "Bildnis eines Knaben"

At the beach I get drawn and quartered by flies.

I get all the kids.  The little ones are covered up and down with inflatables,

making their already strange shapes even stranger. Alligator head here, duck bill there.

The medium sized ones are full of energy and seem to always be on a

mission of some sort. Build, destroy, splash, cry.

And there are the big kids in the corner of the beach, by the treeline. They have skateboarding shoes and motorbikes. They are watching themselves intently while exuding their characteristic brand of sexual tension.

It all happens over and over every day.

The looks, the tears, the floats, the flies.

In Progress