Press Release: Marble on Marble
Material.
Marble on Marble
Consistent, structural, valid. All the qualities that imbue marble with patriarchy and make it a material that is distant from myself. I am finding a way to approach it. On the one hand wanting to insert myself rudely, blast away at it with pneumatic tools; and on the other feeling stunted by that approach. Why participate in that? The end result will be crumbled stone or maybe a likeness of something. Marble, although heterogeneous in its chemical make up, is not porous or collaborative in the way most of my chosen materials have been. It can feign malleability, subtlety, undulation. But that is a costume. Every time marble becomes a named thing rather then material be it a tile, resting body, an ornament on a staircase, it seems self conscious, embarrassed almost. Perhaps it is because the material and the form do not see eye to eye in duration or integrity so whatever form the stone is obliged to can only be seen in jest. A mass, homogenous and still. What kind of awareness can there possibly be within something so solid and full of itself? It is full of itself because it is consistent and has never been
otherwise, it simply formed that way. Recrystalized carbonate minerals that clumped together, mostly slowly, sometimes abruptly through catastrophe. This formation is mindless and mind numbing. I’ve approached this homogeny with itself, literally clanking marble with it’s diminutive- the play marble, and found that the resonance rang true. Like for a second the stone was conscious of its mass, it’s solid consistency, its occupancy of space. The marble tiles that I am aggravating with marbles are distinguished from other marble debris- pillars, garden sculptures, opulent lobbies, but, of course, they are indifferent to these designations. At the risk of humanizing that which does not care to be, I will say that the sound resonance gets to the heart of the material where as the form negates it. The initial clang is a delineation, it distinguishes the edges. Establishing this contour is establishing a containment. I imagine the reverberation from
the contact point is simultaneously a naming of the contained form and a punctuated blushing at realizing this epithet.
Space.
Game Tray
A game tray is a space for playing out of actions, relations, and intentions within set circumstances. The circumstances can vary, their limitations can reconfigure. Within seemingly rigid limitations are openings that show up as reinvented rules, which give forth new possibilities of inhabiting space and circumstance. The solace of games like this is the security and restrain of the activity within a delineated space. In the lean concave that is the play space
of the game-tray, what unfolds is the physical elements of composition, the cognitive rigor of logic, and the emotional labor of comparison between the game and life outside the game. A game-tray, rather then game board, is a shallow volume. This is crucial for containment of experimentation. It literally holds that activity while allowing it to “play-out” in plain sight. The space of shallow volume is an emotional space because that is when form evolves out of the
two-dimensional and fills out with breath. So the play that happens within a tray is not hypothetical or diagrammatic. Although compartmentalized, it occupies the same space as the player.
Object.
Spools
A Spool is an early cousin of the yoyo and the rosary- a pocket fidgets to put one’s wishful thinking and anxieties onto; talisman that one can immediately know how to hold and use. I carry it mostly in my left pocket and hold it mostly in my right hand. Why this is I am not sure but perhaps it is to distribute its presence more evenly. When holding it, I am immediately called to turn it, quick micro movements of synchronized fingers and wrist. Winding the line down only to wind it back up, only to repeat. To describe the purpose of this action is to describe the daily chores, with an emphasis on the daily, leaving out specifics or purpose of the chore simply because it does not much matter. It is the dailyness of it that makes it labor, yet also makes one’s body know it like a motor skill that it performs without awareness of effort. Once it is known and embodied to the point of muscle memory it becomes unclear if it is a support, a burden, a focus tool, or a reliable distraction.