Writing Receipts

Abstract

My artistic research is seismographic. It is not that it, in itself, shakes, agitates, sways, quakes, shivers, excites, sparkles (etymologically-speaking). Rather, it's that its function is to serve as a recording and revelation of movement. Sensitivity is the way, but also, the point. The inspiration comes from art historian Aby Warburg (Germany, 1866-1929), who saw himself as a seismograph, his function, in his own words, to "serve the watersheds of culture." As I lay out the ridged grounds of my research, its sensitivity unfolds into a three-headed intimacy. First, the intimacy of the awareness of oneself and one's own agency. Then, the intimacy of the where and when I belong to, embodied, and connected to historical, theoretical, critical currents. And lastly, the intimacy of the traces that develop, the spewing, trembling lines that turn to texts. The three intimacies make my practice not only autobiographical, but autotheoretical. The texts I compose are processual rather than a result. Often written as stream-of-consciousness, these pieces feel like a record of not only a work-in-progress, but a body-in-progress, mixing genres and spheres of life. They crash and weave with other existing texts (read, found, heard); mingling, creating porous opportunities for encounter. Each crash leads to a new meaning, a new nuance. The juxtaposition (also Warburgian) is as important as the writing and reading. It feeds back other materials, in a rhythmic exchange. My research is therefore fragmentary, full of gaps, gasps, intervals, and cuts-if it does not bleed, it has no pulse.