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I'm just starting with a small security measure and then I will continue with the text that
I wrote for a Spanish magazine called "Exit Express." Then, I'll start to show the beginning
of a film I made last year on Easter Island.
The biggest censor is the brain itself. One example: over breakfast I stumble over an
ad in "The Economist" with the following text, "They were ***. They tied them and put cotton
in their mouths. Then they lit the cotton and burned them to death. Darfur victim's
names withheld to protect source."
That of course beats everything that happens to a feminist in Europe. That's really gross.
Why *** someone if you kill them anyways? Why don't you kill yourself if you produce
such a mess?
For a moment, I indentify with the victim. I look for the home page, www.savedarfur.org,
to see what I can do. Also, I do not like to do things on the Internet. Since we are
within the logic of a magazine, my eyes stumble onto the next article on the left side.
"Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Really Desperate Housewives. Why the number of women
who find it hard to focus, seems to be rising."
That of course concerns me. My attention span, even during meditation, lasts less than minute.
There goes Darfur and the woman burned to death. Those *** will continue to ***
and burn women because, as I learned from the article, as an adult I cannot get a hold
of Ritalin and since I don't have any kids, I cannot steal my kids Ritalin either.
I will continue to forget.
Anyways, originally I wanted to write about censorship that happened to my artworks. In
1994, the ARC Musee d`Art Moderne, Paris, confiscated my video work, "...". After the
opening of the exhibition, because it contained some slightly *** scenes.
For example, my breast being pricked by a pencil next to inter-youth, with administrators
of the art. And a bad French imitation of a female curator, who complained about the
size my drawings at the show, which were on a plastic foil on the floor and therefore
hindering the audience to watch the Delaunay paintings in the same room, with... pleasure.
But someone with a piece of cotton in their mouth being *** won't give much about art.
How many of the 3,500 characters, 2,000 euros, to mention the Darfur victims ought to make
up for artworks not being shown?
To fill up the space in 1998, Lisa Spellman from 303 Gallery from New York, refused to
show a large series of paintings of mine because the paintings had text quotes by... written
on them. Which one of her main artists, Williams, considered feminist.
Therefore too close to her words, so the paintings were not allowed to be included in the exhibition.
That way as an European, I learned in New York that in the art market, neither do women
necessarily stand up for women and that one feminist artist in the gallery is enough.
But who would care in Darfur even the women stayed alive? They wouldn't give a *** about
my paintings. Even if they had enough to eat and shelter, a nice husband and healthy kids,
what would a painting mean to them?
That only makes sense to who's familiar with an European art education tradition, censored
or just ignored. Why is it so difficult to stand up against other people's violence if
you yourself are non-violent?
Why is it difficult to be an activist if you're a non-smoker and don't drink and have the
best of luxury of being allergic? Will more people die of a violent death because I spent
my time making art?
Or will I save an intrigued, inspired next generation with my work from being violent?
What goes around comes around. Does it matter that some of my works have been destroyed
while I was still an art student and was working with garbage or is it just ridiculous?
And then in Darfur, humans are treated less than garbage. So why not start to respect
garbage in the West? Is garbage censored in the West? In India, you have a fruit stand
next to a pile of garbage. Everyone walks into the temples barefooted in spite of the
man who spits on the floor because there's no fear of germs.
Germs are not censored in India and it doesn't mean you get sick. Will I save someone with
this article because a reader... do not censor women, will go online for me for Darfur.
Will someone else be moral while I paint? If the social workers become painters and
I am a social worker, will there be more justice?
How much is 3,500 words? I cannot limit myself. If I really was a writer, a writeress, would
I feel censored by limitations of length? As a paintress, it is all right.
I lift the brush, a substitute ***, which is a right for a woman. When my substitute
*** gets censored, I'm pissed. It's hard to believe that anyone in Darfur would stand
up for my paintings because they wouldn't understand them.
Do I understand violence even after reading Susan Sontag? Have I been beaten enough to
understand violence? Or not enough? Why did the Nazis develop a killing machine to kill
the Jews and not the Jews a defense machine to kill the Nazis back.
Even if I could get a hold of Ritalin I would not take it. As living in a country left old
by the Nazis always found not fitting in the political statement. Garbage disorder, forgetting,
non-violence. The nature of a culture is exclusion.
As a member of an artistic community, at least half of what you do or think about gets censored,
otherwise it would not receive exposure. Art, even the most transgressive one, is about
fitting into a system of history and comprehension. The rest gets lost.
One has lived at least for awhile. Art has to be customized according to its audience.
A pattern, a structure, which fits like an egg into another. There are people who do
not complain about systems, who accept the system they are part of. Skeptics of the systems
are poor ***. Where would we end up? Don't forget, you could have run away, as
an adult, you could have run away.
Do you never experience something that you do not want to believe? Does never anything
happen to you by accident?
The system will get you down. At the end, systems get everyone down. Just look at the
dictators. Every victim's memorial is also a memorial for the success of the perpetrator.
The archive is the one who is always winning. The archives survive, not the humans.
But the images. I was always an image. That's why I will always survive.
You cheap copy of yourself. You could have become somebody. You could have become a director,
only originals are archived.
Directors, we don't take copies.
Not in self-portraits.
Even not if you cry even more. The tears ruin the archives, soften the data. In the archive
there are only doctors, dictators, and directors, we don't take average persons. Those belong
to the sun and that gets thrown away.
Pain lasting for eternity. Amen.
Which history was the best art history? The Christians with their portraits, the church
decorations? Are the Jews who are painting portraits nowadays tracing back to the Christians?
Who is shooting? Who is responsible for the shooting? Do the cameras only watch or are
they creating wars? Who would see the conflict without the mediatization?
You amateur you, you beginner. It makes a difference whether one lies on the bottom
of the ocean or drifts on the surface.
I'm on the other side. I'm online, I'm printed. I'm talked about. Just not helpless anymore,
just not touched anymore. I pull the seat cover over my head.
You would have been 64 this year, which means too old for slapstick art. Marilyn Monroe
would have been 90 and you would of most likely have had a retrospective.
I have enough of that.
You have to shape yourself for the target group. Do you think as a seaweed, you won't
be cultivated?
I don't get an *** with you.
You are my doctor, that's why. You are everything: the chorus, the other actors that I know from
a stand up comedian from London. If you die, there are no others.
That's the... and the temptation to let yourself fall. That's OK. But to just disappear.
That's my job, to move and disappear. A mosquito. That should be enough. The mosquito in a blast
furnace or in the archive, or online.
On canvas you are better off. I recommend canvas to you, works out easier. Doesn't hurt,
makes sense?
Made of plants, in fact. Where does canvas come from?
Ask another archive. We don't have canvas. You are not applied. You are fine arts.
At art education I've tried as well as a professor, but institution dehumanizes the humans.
Why then do you believe in our institutions?
A minimum of freedom. Even amoeba want to move, to divide.
We have to put all this in to order. Amoeba on canvas. This is not our department. Wouldn't
you rather go into the museum of natural history?
Such a beautiful museum, but I don't want a mausoleum. Just forget me. That is OK as
well.
Forgetting doesn't work. A memo at least?
How does one know later on what remembering means? Here the clocks run differently. There
are no patterns. Dear..., I'm too sad to tell you.
With an order from the Kings you won't have participated in art history.
Tears are all right, but humor hurts.
That you can only permit yourself because nobody listens to you anymore. I have already
told Paulo Herkenhoff that not being quoted is an art form. The important thing is that
you get married to the estate on time.
Is documentation a redemption?
Look at the book of insects. The documentations of pupations and then corrodes to earth or
dissolves in water, drinking water. Salt. The ocean runs in cycles.
Can one store in here man's doctor? Conserve them? Is there an account for them?
There is an account for organization. All systems are built like that, even the human
one. All life is organization. You as an individual are part of it. The collectivity certainly
stores something. There's even collective memory.
Your kisses.
Are being remembered collectively, as an image. Picabia et cetera. More corny ones, I do not
even court.
One lives at the swimming pool, but not in a museum.
In a museum you can move as well.
One lives while sailing but not in a museum.
You can choose your behavior in the museum.
Roller-skating like... in the Louvre. One doesn't live inside of printed matter or online.
Nobody escapes from us. People will talk about you for centuries because we have archived
you. Estate, museum. And we're on the go? Disappeared? You're kidding!
Even Cherokees survive.
The cause will survive you.
Humans against metal, almost scarred too.
But you are not printed on tissues, as long as you are not a tissue like Monet, you can
forget yourself.
...
The goblet was gimmick. A McGuffin. The other stories I do not even know, just that one.
In spite of the Menora.
*** off with the goblet. One for all.
You cannot rewrite anything here. Period. Written is written...
Beginner, beginner, beginner. A rose is a rose is a rose. A goblet is not always fully
emptied. The empty bowl, the empty goblet. Is a glass half full or is half empty?
Or one doesn't have to find the Holy Grail. There's always a solution, a resolution.
In water, like a pill. Shall not ask.
Tea is an answer. Tea conserves. You're starting anew.
Never...