It's About a GAP

Aporia is one of those big philosophical words that gets bandied about a bit.

Literally it means GAP - a blank space between stuff. In relation to the big stuff of the world (the grand scheme of creativity and 'the sublime' TM) it's meant to evoke the gap between experience and explanation.

I make it sound so simple.

it's something I experience every friggin day right now. Writing is hell. even for a florid individual like mayhem.

At the moment I've been shutting myself away from art openings, from art, from immersion and experience in order to let myself sink into the gap - and hopefully slide across it into some state of articulated intelligence.

I DID go to the cereal promotor show last week - but strayed away from letting my feelings and joy of the show crystallize into words - ARTSWIPE has done a damn fine review instead.

I wandered past ATVP is it getting hotter in here and gazed wistfully at the video of artists on a ferry and thought of the harbour, and thought of the MCA and thought of THE HOURS, and quite intensely wished I could get down there to see the ECHAVERRA video "bocas de ceniza" which I RAVED about last year and is up there with the ten best things I've ever seen in my entire life for sheer heart-breaking brilliance.

But i haven't been down to see it - coz I'm trying to write a chapter and only interrupt my life for little political demos, little sexual demos, food, conversation, meditation, other essential things like dressing up and dancing...

Enough about me. each time I write - or try to write I slide into a scary gap where nothing makes snese and I can barely string a text message together. this gap - is aporia - and I'm slowly working up to a catalogue essay about paint/bodily extension/aporia and the shudder of contagion and possibility. My mouth waters thinking about it....

In the meantime - back in the ghetto it's all going off!

I've been intrigued by the use of 'underground' lately. My neighbour organised and 'underground' club night on the weekend - which all the neighbours attended. It was in some schwanky place in the CBD - which was so intensely and randomly different to anything I'd experienced that I was really quite amazed at this new culture that I was coming across. but was it underground?

Feeling overwhelmed at my sheltered little barrio life, I headed off back to the ghetto to hear some band with a rather kinky and frightening name and saw a bunch of naked people wearing mutant pig masks thrash around while someone set fire to their pubes.OK more accurately - I glimpsed bits of them - while chatting to lotsa people I ain't seen for ages - and feeling relieved to not be the most outrageously dressed person there. Is this underground? the people I knew weren't trying to be particularly posey and transgressive and we chatted about heartbreak, yoga, firends, family etc. - and mad projects like animating fake foetuses and performances involving shit and painting genitalia.... and it reminded me of that Raymond Williams classic essay, Culture is Ordinary.

Culture is part of the activities that people do as part of their everyday lives, that is a response to and a way of linking ourselves with the world around us. I like when hanging with the muso friends how they'll be strumming or plucking or blowing into something while watching TV or eating dinner - and me - I've always got to have my hands on something - drawing, scribbling, making, folding....

Culture is the stuff that bridges the unmentionable unspeakable gaps between ourselves and the world, between our bodies and other bodies - between experience and understanding.... and how bloody preachy am I today? I just don't seperate 'underground' culture from 'underground' living - and I don't like the thought of either culture or life being 'underground'. I guess my life is a world away form supermarkets, chainstores, consumer culture, gourmet beige product land... and culture is something I create rather than consume, but can't it actually be that way for EVERYONE?

and why would people go out and consume something they don't feel a part of?

that's my opening segue for the performance space's 'underground' fest this weekend: i've promoted it coz I recognise the names of the 'artists' and as lots of them hang doing collaborative stuff in the backyard or each other's loungerooms - I reckon it sounds like a *treat*.

Meanwhile SLOT has an interesting display of Clare Martins detourning "blockbuster of 20th century art" - aka miniature replicas on display in the window on botany road alexandria.

and NEXT Wednesday I'm even going to miss my yoga class to go the the opening of:
Distance Yourself at DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: 16 international artists:
Amber Phelps Bondaroff, Erin Bosenberg, Joy-Loi Chepkoech, Andrew
Fisher, Nikolai Gauer, Amanda Griffith, Stefan Hancherow, Bonita
Hatcher, Alana Hunt, Ryan Ling, Annie Macmillan, Gavin Maitland,
Kristy O'Leary, Shaun O'Reilly, Audrey Wang and Anna Williams.

WHEN: Opening: July 18, 6pm, Exhibition: Jul 19-28

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434
EMAIL: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: myspace.com/dontlookgallery
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Underbelly: public arts lab
100 Sydney artists and performers collaborating, creating and evolving over 10 days
3rd - 12th July, 2.00pm – 10.00pm FREE!

Underbelly: festival
Indoor winter music & arts festival with projection, DJs, VJs, performance, bars and cafes on Saturday 14th July, 12 noon - 11pm Tickets: $17/$25 pre-sale available thru Moshtix www.moshtix.com.au; $20/30 at the door.

CarriageWorks: 245 Wilson Street , Eveleigh

Underbelly: public arts lab and festival at CarrriageWorks from July 3-14 will bring over 100 of Sydney ’s fringe artists together for a ten-day public-access artist residency, finishing with a one day music and arts festival on Saturday July 14.

A social and artistic experiment of sorts, the Underbelly Public Arts Lab is about creating a space for Sydney artists to collaborate, exchange, rehearse and cross-pollinate in a communal environment, whilst inviting the public to witness and engage in this process first hand. From July 3 - 12 the lab will be open free between 2 – 10pm to watch and interact with works evolving daily.

On Saturday July 14, the Underbelly Festival will transform CarriageWorks into a massive indoor music and arts festival, showcasing an unpredictable collection of performance, music, digital media and art installation. As well as featuring performances and works produced during the ten-day lab, there will also be talks panels, DJ’s, VJs, live music, bars and cafes.

Artists include: Aural Adventures, Entropic, Kate Smith & Drew Fairley, Lynda Roberts & Ceri Hann, Meem, Miss Death & Jay Katz, Pig Island, Pixel Vision, Pork, post, Power Media Industries, Reef Knot, Stephanie Carrick & Sumugan Sivanesan, Tesseract, Tetronomicon, The Synaesthesia Collective, The Vespertine Project, Token Imagination, Trevor Brown (The Distillery) and more TBA!