translation of an écriture entitled : “LETTRE AUX SOEURS ET L’ANGE FOREL”

(in the last bit of translation I’d posted online, I attempted to split up the text so that it might read as poetry, rather than as properly punctuated text. in this go-round, I’m adding links to the references made in the text, that you might readily access it–rather than suffering through my explanations, or attempts rather).

LETTER TO THE SISTERS AND THE ANGEL FOREL

written commentary on the scroll entitled “Cloisonné de theatre”

Rosière March 4, 1951

Dear sisters to me and the friend the angel Forel

The passage of the Noel celebration and the new year is written in rose ink of Prégny and demure love.

You have sung in the church of Aloïs de Chandieu and paint a paradise of archangels like the crèche of Sans Souci (Wilhelmhaus) let us return there perhaps Quo vadis ô colombe immolated on the pyre would be all la do ré in chocolate (cream).  On passed by the Hotel Britannia in tourtes-Saint-Rosaire (d’être “tourte” also means to have an air of stupidity or aloofness), in awaiting the seat of the rosary of five thousand pensioned damsels. Again, the blue waltz on the first floor of the Polonaise Casino and the round France–farandole of the Rosière singing “rose des neiges” or “ô Corse jolie” the wives passing under their arms an arching floral battalion of paper roses or of multi-colored paper snow-flakes or they would throw to us ribbons in flowered Shako of Lichtenburg, embracing each couple under the mistletoe.  In the amorous train-bed of Ischl, a tiny extinguished Christmas tree, embroidered with roses in the crown of cherubim or white rose and blue peacocks on the bed of madame.  One was carried in the arms of the brothers in Jesus to the Mayens de Sion or to the market garden of Mont-Rion and its twenty thousand universal bazars.  A Blessed-child painted on a torte encrusted with egg and chocolate that cost no more than a kiss, what work, you abdicate before returning there.  Another time you take the joyous, widowed market-women to the midnight ball with the fireworks in its final bouquet.  What wedding celebrations you had…That the miraculous quest (also peach) of a Pope millionaire to replenish some five thousand francs of the robbery of a phonograph boutique on the condition that it become moneyed with rubberized paper.  Inaugurating the University built at la Riponne, the students resolved to illuminate or to whiten the sphinx in starch or of marble cut at the factory of Paudex.  Flamboyant entourages threw their 50 franc flowers, to the Beau-Rivage at the Vénitienne fête.  One believed it to be New Years.  One always voyaged by night in flowered gondolas… one cruised in the marriage car of Cérenville, lifting the Imperial manteau of the director Forel… I had ten theater pieces always at the beginning of the lady of Camélia in the nuptial bed also the nude virgin of the vintages of the bain du lac for when one was without an elegant robe in Paris of the queens of beauty on the flowered illuminated chariots in the coffers of the flowered betrothed on the lap of the king Toréador reinvigoration of the beautiful Corsica by Bonapart on horseback the monument of Montreux at the very idyllic equitation tableaux.  One recommends you to God, dear angel Forel.

last night, thanks to the impeccable organization skills of ms mia bailey (German/Australian artist in residence), i was able among a dozen other folks, to see the works of my neighbor Sara Beddington (British), and Manuel Graff (German).  Sara’s works you can see online here. She comes from a background in painting, her earlier works involving large-scale paintings of blasé landscapes painstakingly scratched along one or two sides to bear resemblance to film stills. Breathtaking! In her most recent works, she turns to video and labor-intensive drawing, snippets, “clips,” from present-made-history. In Manuel’s work, Duchamp’s notion of the inframince (the in-between) undefinable, ineffable, intangible (etc…) space is also center stage.  During his talk, I’d the strange notion it was so uncanny for me for my missing knowledge of some famous school of research.  Rudolph Steiner & the Waldolf school training, I’ve found online, have widely shaped Mr. Graff’s aesthetic and mode of research.  But even after reading about Steiner, and those artists more well known, also influenced by Steiner (Joseph Beuys for example), I’m still left without the “OH…now i see.. i get it.”  The case is not closed, in other words.  I think the beauty of his work lies in its availability to myriad of other readings.  From here, I imagine it’d be perhaps most interesting for someone fully schooled in the philosophy, anthroposophy rather, of Steiner, to see this work and appreciate it for its misreadings, or misinterpretations of that agenda.  What I mean to say is, that a body of work that purportedly relies steadfastly to a particular philosophy or anthroposophical underpinning, must in some places spring free of it; it’ll never be an accurate illustration of the concepts.  And in those places where it spins out of the scope of that thought it finds its most interesting moments.  Check out these shoes, for example. And to illustrate my point on the usage of mismatched, or inappropriate liasons between ideas and oeuvres, I’ll leave you with this video. Bon  appetit!

cheres amis…

it’s been a long long time . in the interim, i’ve been working in the studio (making THINGS) and for a while have been off-line.  as i’m gearing up for the next big text-post, i’ll leave you here with some images of the new works.

the first of these images, as yet untitled, is made of metro advertisements and found-styrofoam (from garbage diving mostly).  it’s marrying the two ends of commerce in the absence of the object sold (ie: the advertisement and the discarded packaging).  the installation images below are of its first permutation as a faux-building ruins.  the pieces are currently in storage until i’ve found a more apt assembly plan for them.

the second set of images are the first in a series of cutouts, the images for which are newspaper images of car burnings in France, some from riots, others from random banlieu fires set by teenagers.  by and large, these incidents are attributed to rioting foreigners, muslim immigrants, poor blacks.  in more than one case i read about the fires were in fact set by rowdy teenagers, bored in the suburbs… of course it’s not always the case.  one of the cutouts is on  black paper, the other is on white paper coated with cork ash (burned cork ala black-face makeup).  the would be print is the paper set beneath the cutout when i did the ash-dusting.  et, voila.