Re-fused compositions with refusee islands at Ana Lama Gallery, Lisboa’s unique boa, 2017, 21st of july?
I have never seen the object in actual stone.
Have you?
Most of us humans, have not seen the stone, and possibly will never view any other clue about this object that aren’t some forms of various documentations.
Is there an image-object made of stone outside the documentation?
Despite engaging humans mostly via secondary means referencing the object itself,
the stone of Ain Sakhri’s Lovers will offer a sensation from another human who lived during another time and place, some 9000 years ago, someone who has had a language and lived a culture we are probably clueless about.
Yet someone who has left an interval in stone.
A fine-lined rocky object between you, me and them – a them that even if wasn’t there at a london museum to see and view the actual object, seem
to have had a sensation from a shared familiarty of physical intimate togetherness among humans.
(and plausibly other sentient lives?)
Even if the story of this stone is that of a break that in fact doesn’t exist. or never seen in flesh –
I think it’s commonly agree-able that we can engage with the object one way, manner and other.
Even if the object did not have an image, even, in case there was a story, a narrative of the lovers’ pebble from Ain Sakhri, like descriptions of gods and godesses’ statues that are long gone into rabble – we may still engage with, have frictions through which memories, confabulations and even meanings escape into contemporary life.
Since documentation has it’s own sensations, own measure – like duchamp’s meter – all documenting does is offering a measure of itself.
The launching of Refusee Islands in Lisbon’s unique Ana Lama Gallery, 2017, July 21st, has a trace from partial recording of the launch.
However,
the story from, of and with the practice, the imagination of refusee islands, has a spec-range rather than mere documents to show it was.
A spec that ranges through time, space, places and contexts via imaginations.
Wonderments that evolve, some of which will begin to unfold from the next line.
Some say that to find out whether something has happened – or otherwise – we need to cross sources of information.
Many years ago, there was an island off the west coast of ireland that went by the name of Brasil .
Since a few sources that seemingly didn’t know of one another, somehow managed to confirm the existence of such an island that, between you, i and them – wasn’t there outside some maps and texts – perhaps a few seafarers crossed sources of information and concluded to plan landing for provisions on the island of Brasil.
Maybe some have perished in the attempt to locate the island?
Brasil_(mythical_island)
Some humans claim
that a way to tell of something’s evolutionary and developmental viability is to check if other humans do something similar – without knowing – at the same time.
Like 2 humans meeting and suggesting to one another in a synchronous manner to go into the same venue – are likely to consider that decision as if it was supposed to be – rather than think:
OH! Dear.. we both want to go into the same place – perhaps we better try to consider something else!
A culturally famous instance of such synchronicity that may infer some kind of viability has been the various DaDa moves at the beginning of 20th century. DaDa activities which occurred seemingly independently from eachother.
A lesser known cultural synchronicity with prevalently used imagery comes from cafe latte. Develped roughly at the same time and initally without knowing one another. In that sense, each such cafe latte images truly has to be done upon the creamy milk – since there’s a sensation of inner truth from their synchronous birth.
They say that there may be some cultural currents, streams of sensations, surges that ebb and flow, movements made of breakages yet to be and
yet to come noticed in life – interval connections that we sense and live with, yet acknowledge no knowledge to nor with.
Lets’ take a more concrete example?
How do we connect during this circumstance of all unprecedented swells of human refugees moving, seeking, needing homes? 2 good friends, H and A, whispered to one another around 2014/15.
They elaborated the matter and..?
The wonderment of refusee islands came up. Islands made of refuse for all the humans who are refused land!
Unknown to both A and H, there were some humans in California’s Silicon Valley who talked among themselves about making islands too.
Islands for the so called Tech Secessionists.
Humans who fancy attempting democracy no more. People who rather live out of the usa’s legal reach – and yet use the usa for doing their business. Perhaps,
in their eyes’ wondering minds, they too were refused a land to harsh a particular hierarchy upon.
To bend it to their tech oriented numerical gains and keep on top.
A contemporary version of
with islands and exploit-oriented technologies?
That happened around 2014/15.
Probably unfamiliar to tech secessionists and H and A as well, were practical developments at the time to help refugees coming via the sea into europe.
Help them land and find a safe and welcoming ground.
Can you please hold the above
in mind while
we consider something slightly different?
Say you live in 1939 and fall in love! Say
you and the said lover in 1939 decided to test that love and put it through the strains of marriage, got married on 1/09/1939, and
since you had no money, photographers didn’t come. Moreover,
since no one you knew wanted you to get married – you ended up inviting a few strangers to witness.
Now, lets roll time into the year 1963. 22/11/63 to be exact.
You are at home somewhere in South Africa, with a lover who has no idea of the 1939 marriage.
However, you share the information about the marriage and they ask:
where are the pictures??
Can we say that while there aren’t pictures of the said marriage, you may show them Other images – the pictures of a 2nd world war beginning on that very day, tanks rolling into poland as a visual reference of the marriage day?
..and then it may be said that the visual background of your 1/09/1939 marriage were these from ww2 breakout day?
Indeed, I think that in case the date 22/11/63 isn’t familiar yet, if you – any reader – check the date, some relatively familiar visuals may pop up. Images that could be said to come as an imagery background to the conversation mentioned above.
Such visual background may not offer a direct image nor a documentary evidence of the subject that is outside the pictures,
however they offer a period oriented idea and with certain contexts – possibly a relevance too.
Apologies for the rather dark examples from a war and a murder, however these come to forward
another dark background images that will, in a few lines – come to focus.
A background narrative that, for me, will always come etched within the activity, the
refusee islands launch at Ana Lama Gallery on july 2017’s 21st day.
Brasil was an island that a few people may have thought they witnessed and that, despite all the reassurances that included maps – never came to be. Yet,
I think the very fact this Brasil island can come into discussions, it can be said to have a life inpite of never being in rocks and earth popping out of the ocean.
Like a marriage that happened in a nightmare’s forgotten dream, there might have been sailors who needed Brasil’s shores of safety during engulfing storms – and
together with the conflation of that island into something other than a story,
gone into the depths of oceanic forgetfulness.
Now.. Lets’ begin composing the bits into different part?
Still have in mind that at various times’ periods we may get developments beginning to evolve clueless of one another at that time?
Recall the way certain events may offer background images for occasions that escaped imagery capture?
Let’s cast our minds to Lisbon’s very special Ana Lama Gallery at the 21st of July 2017, during a warm summers’ evening:
Refusee Islands are about to get launched at the gallery.
Since A and H talked about such refuse islands in 2014/15, things have evolved.
Indeed, a version of such islands was launched from Rio’s Museum of Tomorrow a few months earlier.
The bits of evolution possibly relevant for this narrative became new realisations, that Imaginations have
their own realities.
Realms that desire imagination’s own wonderments rather than require implementations outside.
What?!?!?
for example,
Let’s resurrect the sailors who may have perished while needing an island called Brasil. What we have there is a story of people wondering stuff – imagining there is an island there that is OUTSIDE the imaginations’
realm. An island that isn’t made of and within an interval between humans’ minds –
but in other realms altogether. Realities that even waves who sweep onto Brasil’s shores, could sense in case such lands were there..
Therefore, Refusee Islands can be said to have evolved into
islands made physically of wonderments,
sensations that may be imagined and that desire that very imagination, these very sensations – to live.
Islands who’s materialities will have to alter radically if they ever leave the interval, the breakage that imaginations offer –
therefore, do not require such an exodus to offer life and one with a future!
Refusee Islands can live imagined.
How?
Let’s go back to Lisbon’s Ana Lama Gallery.
Date: 21/07/17
People slowly arrived to the gallery where an activity will take place – launching refusee islands.
While we may have familiarities with rubbish placed intentionally in galleries –
ie other than objects one critic or another may name: “rubbish!!”
– the language, the intelligence such art gallery rubbish offers has to do with ranges from contexts and meanings.
An excrement in one’s home toilet is different to the same object displayed as a historical artifact, and different still – when placed in a cultural artworld context to become an integral part of their historical narrative.
At Ana lama gallery we were about to open a different kind of narrative to do with art and refuse. A narrative in which refuse – anything that may have been declared as unwanted rubbish – came as a physical and space composing prop. A prop to charge imaginations with a way of wonderment – the refusee island way.
Therefore, by the end of the islands’ launching, we have re-composed the gallery space. Made the space inhabit islands of refuse – objects
that through the launch were to come interlinked with associated imaginal sensations, and
composed together based on their own refusal of one another, or otherwise.
The composition, the re-arrangement of the gallery space with refusee islands was in itself arbitrary. An arbitrary collection as well as connections and compositions, which may come refused to an outsider and therefore, a self documenting activity that may live outside memories and within
imaginations?
In preparation for the refusee islands launch at Ana Lama Gallery,
people were asked to bring refuse – aka stuff they need not, stuff to throw away, rubbish.
The throw-away stuff, the bits humans refused to keep, were given wonderments, imaginations as sensations. For example,
an un wanted orange peal may come as a sensation like:
pealed orangeness.
Or
a rejected plastic cup may live as a sensation such as:
cupped plasticness
while another such plastic cup reject, may sense an imagination as:
plasticed cup cuppingness.
… and so on.
(In the sound recording, such imaginations were shared in a portugese mixed with english. Mostly in form of:
Se (if) some-refused-object Sensau (Sensation) )
Humans in the gallery were asked whether they imagine A and B refuse-sensations to
reject (refuse) one another.
connect (not-refuse) one another.
or something we are yet to sense clearly.
Therefore, randomly, refused objects in bags were picked.
2 at a time.
and their associated imaginations were read.
Ones that refused/rejected one another – were placed together.
The ones that deemed to connect – not refuse – were placed apart.
And the refuse that was imagined as neither connect nor refuse another in a clear manner –
were placed on a windowsill, to encounter with possibly other imaginations yet to come.
That’s the context for the sound recording from the activity.
(an image of Pampelone beach, Saint_Tropez.)
Unknown to any of the participants on that very night,
there was a rather stormy time at the shores of Pampelonne beach, near St Tropez.
Refugees were struggling in the waves, and a group of local humans came to help. One of them was a philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle who in fact drowned that night attempting rescue children.
Since Refusee Islands evolved from discussions focused on refugees, and
since there was such a relatively known tragedy at the night of Refusee Islands in Ana Lama Gallery, and
given there were no images found from the Ana Lama activity, perhaps we could have
a background image?
The image a few paragraphs above, of Pampelonne beach, near St Tropez at a rather more tranquil instance that that of July 21st 2017.
I think
with the tragedy in mind, it seems we can sense the break. An interval that will never need to be seen nor come other than an imagination of this tranquil sensation filled with riskiness – a move into danger – that keeps calling and howling a deadly end into a needy desire that can not fail to etch an infinitly darkening wonderment inside?