This was @atm__4ever at @once__removed 02 last night with @sofiiakmusic playing in the background.
I’ll have more to say in another post about this durational dimension of the exhibit beyond just “wow,” but for now, just enjoy the interplay of light and shadow. x
If @once__removed is an interrogation of impermanence, then @atm__4ever’s durational piece at last night’s opening of this second activation of a home destined for demolition is a searing indictment of time. You’ve heard of “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”—this is whatever that means for the ephemeral within the truly fleeting.
I first walked in on the performers perched on the countertops in the ethereally staged kitchen, an uncanny valley of a domestic space caught somewhere between a renovation and a crime scene. Or maybe that’s how the room felt when I was startled by their almost-inhuman gaze back at mine.
I continued to be surprised and low-key creeped out by their slinking movements across the whole house, silently appearing at the bottom of stairs and in the corners of my eye like a memory or a sinking feeling—it’s too easy to say “ghosts.”
I probably carried some of that vibe into the space with me, but the dialogue between their performance and @han__simm’s video of “domestic surrealism”—a spirit box within a box—definitely amped up the hauntological energy.
By the time we found ourselves downstairs, the “upside down” of a home made strange through re-appropriations of nooks and crannies became right-side up again; everyone jostling for space in hallways never intended for crowds became an audience, the windows turned into a screen, and for a short while at least, the haunting became a headline performance.
These moments downstairs were my favorite of the hour I spent in the house, and not only because it was a couple degrees cooler down there; I’ll post more photos of that next. x
More frames from @atm__4ever’s golden hour moment at @once__removed. x
I was let in on this secret of something extraordinary going on in Seattle by the kind invitation of @benirito and @izzyrinald into their Girl Closet at @once__removed.
It was paradoxically on theme that this was the space I felt the most in everyone’s way, blocking the doorway and clogging the hallway with my clumsy attempts at getting everything into my frame with a lens not quite wide enough for the cramped quarters. What do I know about girl closets anyway?
There’s one thing I do know, though: here’s an infectious love of play that is a counterpoint to the more cynical posture towards the image that I often tend towards. It’s not a love that’s naive to power; it knows (like, truly knows, not as a theory or a process of deconstruction) that the gaze is the opposite of immaterial—that it can discipline and crush, even at a distance. And yet, this play does not retreat into that comfortable story we sometimes tell ourselves, the fairy tale where images can be banished forever in an age-old cycle of bonfires and icon-breaking. It studies the gaze. It disarms it. It reaches fresh conclusions.
I say “study” as a riff on “imagology,” that term I appropriated from Milan Kundera: “Imagology! Who first thought up this remarkable neologism? Paul or I? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this word finally lets us put under one roof something that goes by so many names: advertising agencies; political campaign managers; designers who devise the shape of everything from cars to gym equipment; fashion stylists; barbers; show-business stars dictating the norms of physical beauty that all branches of imagology obey.”
It’s a good word. And if we are to take it seriously, that same roof over advertising and algorithms can also house girl closets, untitled film stills, and everythinggirl.com. x