A Hawk and a Hacksaw w/ the Hangar Ensemble @ Leeds Trinity Church on 7/5/7

Were you to become this sound at this point you would never answer your phone.

A point all at once blood-saturated and mad histories, heaths and inky lightning-rent skies – the depth of harpsichord, clavichord, trumpet, a clarinet-saxophone, double bass resonating in the pews – the babble of party corridors you have dreamt of / wished for – the raised now – the intimation, un-detailed & not at all to do with – out up down & very away from the searching for – an involvement, a congregation swaying as it is made to become the opening inhale draw of the accordion – hey, there is no rave on the other side of town, you bring your where-is-it-and-will-there-be-anyone-there agitated walk here.

And there are belled ruddy jangling men hopskip dancing all around in the air, moustachioed tinkerbells who have drunk and fought fathers – many.

And it gets into this shambling blast of solo on solo where the sax becomes an elephant, the trumpet darts out, snapping, the double bass a great dignified brass tulip (string reaching down down to bulbous and then blown out root rivers, down), the violin meanders, courses, is the forward point of a river enriching its parenthestic and dark soil, the one drum a gorilla (wiv hat) beating chest, a rolling beat thru shamboling wood clearing filled sphere, meshy with overlapping solos rising.

dialogo oído (conversation overheard) viendo a (whilst looking at)Blowup por (by) Lyle Ashton Harris @BIACS, Sevilla, Dic 06



“Hombre, la cosa funciona
Man, the thing works

es como pegan.
its like they glue.

Ella es compleja ¿sabes? piensa demasiado,
She’s complex, you know?, thinks too much,

el vé a las cosas en blanco y negro.
he sees things in black and white.

Y funciona, la cosa.
And it works, the thing.

Estarán juntos para siempre,
They’ll be together, forever,

pero siempre…
but I mean, forever…

Pregunté a mi madre
I did ask my mum

una vez
once

si esta realmente contento con el.
if she’s truly happy with him.

Es que ellos se rompieron,
The thing is the two of them split up

yo que se, para un año,
for, I don’t know, a year,

ella estaba con un tio asi, intelectual, totalmente artista
she got together with this guy, an intellectual, a complete artist

pero al final volvió a mi padre.
but in the end she went back to my dad.

Me dijó que si, se lleno intelectualmente,
She told me, yeah, he filled her up, intellectually

pero nada mas.”
but nothing more.

(image courtesy of the Rhona Hoffman Gallery)

“the transubstantiation of the faecal matter into art.”

"It's shit."
"But it's also sort of art."
"No it's literally shit is literally what it is."
('The Suffering Channel' by DFW)

Martin Herbert's Santiago Sierra iv prises apart some of the ambivalences of an artist whose art is consistently in-your-face and at the same time points to its own inefficacy as politics.

The Lisson Gallery exhibited Sierra's '21 Anthropometric Modules Made of Human Faeces by the People of Sulabh International, India, 2005-06' a couple of months back and the piece did exactly what it didn't quite say on the tin. The 'modules' were blocks, 3 metres by one metre each, of cast, long-dry shit. Shit that had been carried by members of New Delhi's scavenger class (caste?), from latrines to dumping areas, in return for a wage. The blocks looked like old, oversized breezeblocks, grey and crumbling. There were fifteen or so of them and they were presented in a state of semi-unpack, half in, half out of their crates. The inbetween-ness of the bocks' presentation, not fully arrived but unquestionably for show, signalled the way in which shit changes, was being changed as gallery-goers walked around it, by its context in a commercial gallery.

Some critics say it's all very well being political, but what difference does it make to the lives of the people being exploited? Others draw back, have conceded art's inefficacy, and call this sort of work an exploration of the issues. Perhaps there's something Janus-ish about Sierra in that he points outwards from his work at something political, and at the same time inwards to his chosen medium and its limitations. If this is the case, Sierra's tropes do as much as any current practitioner working in the area where politics and art may and may not cross.