'one, after you'
It's something like it is now and gardens have always been wild. It's time wandering around with a camera and time spent coming up with a text called talking. All quickly archival... making my way between two discourses or the discourse of psychoanalysis and time travelling spin. With a curtain blocking something out. A caveat or self consciousness... having to put something into practice. Behind yellowing walls and ancestors that are never here. Then and only then are there what I call curatorial dreams, dreamt standing up next to unfinished sentences... with video as optional, during stay at home days.
In the last text, I came up with peopling a dream and mentioned a nom de plume in introductory notes... which was discouraged, once before, in a psychoanalytic setting.
Moses and the golden calf are a crowd and O n y m o u s sounds like anonymous and problematic subjectivity. I made do with isolation seven years ago and separating from the work possibly comes next. Not just selling it somehow, but selling it down the river. The work involves transference in a discourse that's not possibly psychoanalytic discourse and the time travel idea comes in here somewhere. It's not just listening and hearing, but Freud seeing Dora walk out of the door as well.
It's digital times and what an art world income can be in digital times... peopling dreams, with fiction turning towards video.
1
Opening lines are fictional. It's first lalangue, then fantasy and video is fictional. It's what's left of crowded dreams and a missing set, or acceleration following beach notes forty years ago. I'm on my own with time running out. Dante spelt it out, then O n y m o u s Bosch and Dora walking away. It's jouissance and the real or the drive with work running down. It's the time it takes to build up courage and contact someone, with a text out of the blue.
It's the now or never of now or never time.
2.
Things can be quite back to front and any timeline lost at the beginning. It was hot and not just hot and I was watching the time. It hadn't been like this before and this was a one off. It'a psychoanalysis and I'm an analysand and up against the clock again... saying something in the present tense. What I can say has to do with how something felt. It was very hot and planning got me passed stumbling. It was a performance and I don't have a problem with performances, but something drags. I drag behind and can't say where I'm going. Can say I felt the heat and it feels like something else retroactively. I stayed indoors for two days and these few days now feel like a follow on.
Or a letter in digital times and I've never known what Lacan meant by the letter.
Signifiers are retrospective signifiers and the present tense looks like something else. It could an exhibition, but we've grown out of exhibitions...
it can be work and love, or Freud's drive, having lost Dora, his first analysand.
But I'll stick to letters and an approach that begins with work out there, somehow. To little more than a description of one blisteringly hot day and what possibly surrounds it. I have an old text called curatorial dreams in mind, but that's all... a hot day and something to talk about.
It begins with something passé. It was passé when I mentioned it to Isabel, who might have seen the film. I crouched down next to a blushing tree a little later and used a video camera for the first time and this reference was already soiled. I could have said and might have said, I was stringing something together or stringing you along, then something happened jumping onto an iceberg in the last text. It led to a kiss or the present tense of one, dancing in the dark, next to two other dreams. It’s deja vu. I’d been here before. Was out of time, in the world without being in the world… telling Eli, who told Noa, who told half the world... the iceberg melted as I got off, with cattle disappearing, in just one session.
3
I want to write to you and say something about work. It took up space in a cavernous way and something touchy feely now happens with phones. As if playing around prompts rapport. Something is superseded and transference is an interesting word. With Lacan, demand and desire are part of the set up, but transference can be swopping one discourse for another. I want to a transfer and link what I know of demand and desire to an art world object looking or not looking back. It has to do with the work, not the analyst or analysand and a displacement that involves separation. Or having to let the work go.
With conceptual work and digital times, separation is problematic. The work involves proximity and the distance of forgotten passages or timelines as things fall away. I'm the work from time to time and the work's not me. Cavernous art world spaces are disappearing and digital archives are dusty.
Storage space is unfilled, but anxiety remains... I'll be lost and what remains is dusty.
At which point, something possibly intercedes...
I could say I like or see
something in your work
and flattery is obtuse.
Having just got to the end of a seven year text, I let go, but need help letting go. Want to a transfer and want to move from one set to the next. The work was demanding and now it's dusty.
In time, I might need help keeping archives at bay.
I don't know how to introduce myself. Could say something about two versions of video, but an explanatory tone doesn't explain writing to you. It’s fresh and archival and one justifies the other. It’s an approach that begins with your texts or with a discourse that belongs in museums. Speechless and mostly unseen, wandering nighttime corridors, it’s approaching something and someone and separation is a problem. I respond and you mistake it for it for something else.
You say, I’m not the work and the work’s not me and following something up isn't hot pursuit (mentioned over and over again in a first text).
4
Writing to someone and a take on the word transference seem likely, but I'll begin with a tree this time.
She's a tree. She's the tree in her garden and I don't know what to say. It was a long time ago and I missed my cue. She didn't want to be seen. I see the tree and take time out. It's a bit late, but there are trees around here. And Isabel's tree moment is a long term prompt. It led to what now seems reference to jouissance. It was all too much, she was the tree and I'd wander into a papeterie a week later at the start of beach notes. Something was too much and I can be too much. I write too much and my equanimity looks untroubled. I take to the trees forty years later and talk about my work and writing to you is all about shared poise. In my case, it's all missing and working on a second text follows finishing the first version of first. It was Leonardo and an iceberg seven years ago and curatorial dreams are a chat up line that involves separation and absence. It's about the work and sometimes trees.
There are beautiful trees around here and they're what's left of Charnwood forest. Trees, fields with sheep and cattle and rocky outcrops that sometimes look like standing stones. It's what I have left of Ruth. Ancient cattle tracks and a text that took seven years, following cancer treatment and lots of moving backwards and forwards.
It was flanerie then and it is now, wandering around outdoors and indoors. Indoors then with Isabel in the tree and wandering around in between paragraphs today. It was too much and it is too much and work and love follow Freud's drive. It was sex many times before and work and correspondence are still somehow possible. Jouissance and Goya rolled up a carpet and taken down to the sea in the first version, is an elaboration looking backwards. It has something to do with Isabel's tree, something dripping wet in December and the same location. That one and this one, trees and houses made to last or houses made to last in digital times.
Isabel in a tree is a figurative moment. It comes about retroactively and makes some kind of sense now. We'd met in London, gone to Ireland and were spending Christmas near Bordeaux. She had something to tell me and put it off traveling on three occasions. It was punctuation, then far worse. Equanimity wasn't enough. I didn't have work and what I had looked like caprice. I looked for her and she didn't want to be seen... he was seen and unseen in a tree.
5
Stills and texts in art magazines fifty years ago were filling what's left of a cavernous space. An exception possibly next to a set that looks like psychoanalysis. Ruth's ambivalence was a miraculous thing. We got somewhere and were nowhere at all and nowhere at all is a sign of the times. She looked at first versions of video called s t a m p e d e and scrawled intentions on a calendar. She had things to do and I was making time for something I'd seen long before. The picture is flat, archival... rolled up in a carpet, mopping up seven seas. Correspondence is an idea at the end of seven years work and it seemed impossible or impassable in the first instance. What follows leftover work elaborates video and texts and I set out with an untimely disadvantage. I'll write to a few people, but my work remains unknown and based on form that is only hesitantly form.
It’s not longer questions surrounding projects and projections, the work possibly subsists between disciplines and forms.
In a library from long ago
or present tense of an archive.
6
Coming up with what comes next is interesting, but this short text gets its name from a series of dreams that followed the storyline in (the text called) talking. It happened with first drafts, then again writing up a first version.
Sheep play a part with current video (noise) and in a first dream. With psychoanalysis, discourse implies a premise and structure and with the work of art there’s something palpable and a transference that’s not necessarily jouissance. Artists are sometimes long gone. The digital world forces a mix and it’s not necessarily what can’t be said is video (Gerard Wajcman). Connections are made instantly and the present tense of an archive replaces cavernous museums. It happens too quickly and archives sometimes breathe fresh air. The dream at the start of a text isn’t fresh and I should be shearing sheep. The picture is one of neglect and museum workers don’t know what they should be doing.
I copy a still taken at St Pancras in 2014. The man seems about to say something and it's a hot day, like this one, nearly exactly eight years ago.
7
I refer to a nom de plume in first notes and changing places in the previous text can be a corollary.
We were in the same place after radiotherapy, but this changed when Ruth's cancer spread. Unworn clothes was a response. It was unwritable. Clothes like most things quickly disappear, but I remember a cavernous opening walking through M and S shortly after Ruth died. Unworn clothes took up space at Ruth's mother’s flat, in her flat and in boxes in storage rooms. It’s now mostly gone and a text remains. The work takes up digital space, but (what Lacan calls) an objectality remains. I’m not the work and the work’s not me, but separation is a a digital conundrum
I move backwards and forwards between jouissance and desire... and it’s sometimes dialogue with other (sometimes dead) artists and writers. A nom de plume implies fiction and movement away from a testimony. Making space in digital times. A suggestion of something other than text and video. A cavernous space is earlier reference to museums and a play between archives and closed things.
8
A film can be archival. It sometimes shows recently lived lives and a seriousness that sometimes prevents opting out. The actors or people are wrapped up in something. It’s serious. It seems, we choose having a life sometimes and Chris Kraus refers to social practices (2018), sitting somewhere between badges, accolades and deschooling. Choice is a luxury. I have something to do with video and psychoanalysis and this text isn't (just) demanding. It can be if psychoanalysis is a paradigm, but the work of art prompts something other than bodily jouissance. The Lacanian parlêtre is one thing and museums and archives are another.
There is a rigour. Psychoanalysis is rigorous and artists can be serious. But something possibly begins with loss and the drive and what can’t be said or seen. It has quickly in the digital world and texts and video return to lonely moments. Something everlasting on either side of a standstill at the end of Freud’s drive.
9
I’ve been here seven years and loneliness isn’t part of a testimony. Jacques Alain Miller refers to the One-all-alone at the end of an analysis and I remember Julia Kristeva‘s use of the word abject fifty years ago. It’s sometimes the beginning of something, but passages in (the text called) talking often have to do with being alone. I remember doing my best to make sense of a theoretical text. I experienced loss for the first time and didn’t know what to do with disorientation. It happened over and over again and solitude was never solace. I was sometimes alone in relationships, but painful moments ran in the direction of psychoanalysis and what I sometimes call my own work. Texts follow a preoccupation with video and isolation poses new problems in digital times.
I write and wandering around with a camera sometimes seems less possible. Writing to someone begins with what I know of new work. It’s not the work of cavernous spaces and current trajectories have little to do with walking bare foot across Hampstead Heath in the mid 1970s. Some of us were on strike and current work often neglects structures and forms that precede the likelihood now of ecological and political disaster. The still above of the base an abandoned cattle trough could have something to do with with the first curatorial dream.
What I remember can be a tableau with neglected animals in a neglected valley. I'm about to shear a first sheep, museum workers are watching and there's nothing more. Or what's more leans on a transference to the art world or the world of museums. Discourse, in this sense, can conversation will long lost people who were once talking to long lost people. It's not unlike online psychoanalysis and long lost people are probably dead.
It's the long lasting defiance of the work of art. We're not just colonised by jouissance... if jouissance is always bodily jouissance. ZThe work implies communication, not hauntology
10
I remember using some kind of Polaroid camera to take photos of my body and reading Peter Handke’s Sorrow beyond Dreams. I was thirty and living in a predominantly women’s community in Hackney. Handke and my body seemed passé, but both instances anticipate more to come. I lost my father and parts of my body and was aware of Jo Spence at the time. It’s a landlocked moment. I was much as I am now. I didn’t know what to do with Isabel’s pain and changing places didn’t help Ruth. I'm landlocked without Leonardo in talking and Ruth’s storyline directions. I would like to take a still or come up with a clip. It’s second only to fentanyl during my sigmoidoscopies and two moments (now and then) have something in common. I made the most of what now seems like virility once upon a time. What's left, remained forty two years ago and cameras are addictive. I should spend more time with cameras and new people and that might have been the case way back in Hackney. There’s a moment at the start of Nuri Bilge Ceylon’s film Climates, where the director takes photos in Greek ruins, with his wife looking on. Stills precede coming up with clips somehow and hauntology in Climates isn't ghostly. A preoccupation with video was firstly a preoccupation with Ruth and I’m where I was forty two years ago. A timeline can be very long and picking up a camera can be picking up a camera after Climates some time ago.
I like the poet Bhanu Kapil’s syntax and might write to her. It’s not a question of form but something else. She works between words and performance and in-between worlds interest me. The director Ceylan began with a photograph in Climates. Bhanu Kapil possibly begins with what can be said and performance takes a text somewhere else... and somewhere else is unknowable in catastrophic times.
11
I should write to someone and make sense of what sometimes makes sense beyond psychoanalysis and what Lacan calls jouissance.
Saying something in troubled times is difficult and Bhanu Kapil's words seem sometimes fresh. Saying anything after Ruth died was first impossible and a text called talking comes about following disconnects and impasse. Video was possible while Ruth was alive and the silence of unworn clothes broke me in two. I am where I am now and moving around Lacan, psychoanalysis and jouissance. If jouissance is a set, the work of art can be an exception and jouissance less colonising.
I know nothing really. Just perhaps that love and work are just one side of things and giving is optional.
My father knew,
I can just stop.
He knew something
and I should change my lens.
12
The work of art can be more than what Lacan saw looking over James Joyce's shoulder. Let's say there's a freeing up beyond post modernism and a surprising preoccupation with jouissance. Language changes and I'm already thinking of Bhanu Kapil, Peter Handke and Nuri Ceylan. Rules are broken and rules are sometimes unconscious in digital times. There’s theory and fathers or the impasse that comes with impassable work. There’s being heard and performance when it’s not acting out. There are sheep at the start of the video called noise and neglected sheep in the first curatorial dream.
A tableau unfolds.
I’m writing to you
and you may be dead or alive,
looking back
or looking forward
to digital form.
13
I listen to sounds in and around this house. With leaking eyes, snowdrops from the end of last winter… and detail, frozen, upright, on top of an iceberg.
It’s yesterday’s ice, you say.
Dewdrops not snowdrops and cavernous is a word used to describe museums... I’ve missed the mark... strayed into something you were saying... quickly forgetting myself, listening and not listening.
And you say, shut up.
Talking again, I say it began like this. On the way to an isolation cubicle and fall from grace, too long ago. Warm school milk with circling flies didn’t give me polio. There’s a cornet lying on my chest in warm sun, with flies crawling up nostrils. While you sung the milk maid song... finding your way out of children’s books in 1955... singing to flies and possibly ants.
I would do, bare chested, soon to be taken to hospital... falling out of bed... discharged (discharging), lying on a cold floor.
Wondering who you are.
You could have been the milk maid, smelling of ice cream and shutting me up is long overdue. You want to know if I really listen. When you press your tongue down into my throat. I won’t say no and won’t say anything. Will imagine what comes next and won’t be wrong. You press and press and I give way. Wouldn’t have done this once or twice before. Wouldn’t have given in. Like Samuel Beckett on a bad day, making do with one hole at a time.
I’d like to say something but can’t. Can’t because you say I can’t and have the advantage. I should say my prayers and say them to the ice cream goddess. Half apparition and half obsession, with what comes after Leonardo’s iceberg.
You say a cornet will do and I’m not so sure.
These sentences won’t do. Sent off too soon. Raw and performative because they’re raw. The word performative comes from the last text. Revised. But too bound up with structure and explanations. When structure is performative and an explanation. I want to go somewhere else now. Let go of an introduction. Run into what can’t be said.
The Garden of Eden is put up for sale, so they say, and I'm a commodity now. Having to work and having to love and never knowing when to stop. It began with a kiss at the end of the last text.
Christopher Sands, still, 4 August 2022
Christopher Sands, St Pancras still, 9 August 2014
Christopher Sands, still, 1 December 2019
Christopher Sands, still, 6 October 2021
Christopher Sands, still, 14 December 2019