Musings

It would have all gone to differently if I decided to ask for help,

but of course I wanted to haul things around the city and travel

through rush hour twice, to and from New jersey on the first

Friday after daylight’s saving time, in the year of our Lord, 2010.

One hour of extra light, a panicked inferno inside.

I wish I were worried about the show, about the hard work and

the viewer. I wish I were in the mental space to indulge in that

sort of thinking but I am not. I am elsewhere. With rum punch

in hand, two buses, one taxi, ferry and a subway ride, New Jersey

merged into Long Island City seamlessly.

March 19th, 4:30p.m frantic phone call to Scotty’s Taxi, 4:34p.m

another frantic phone call to Scotty’s, crossing green light, slipper

falls off. 4:50p.m Port Imperial ferry, 10 dollar tip to taxi man. Running

with slippers, board ferry, climb to the upper deck. I watch the brown

water turn blue once I forget I am on the Hudson.

Taxi to the subway, 50th street is a better option at 5:10p.m. E train

is on time. An Indian lady sits across from me, her eyes are like sand.

I stare at her unabashedly. Gallery space 5:25p.m, mac mini has fell.

Hands shaking, I find velco, tape and make it happen before eyes

descend on the work. Howard helps me lug ice up from Sage, I like

Howard.

Filled buckets, unwrapped platters, beer, ice, the island concoction,

grater, nutmeg, large knife, lime slices. I am elsewhere. People start to

trickle in slow at first then a deluge. What seems like a deluge, luckily

I have checked out. I try to answer questions and be polite. I guess people

are aware of the type of manners that must be exuded in times like these.

I see the work, it looks strong, I wish I felt like it looked. Familiar

faces start to spread before my eyes and I am happy to see everyone.

Genuinely, it is a big deal, but I am not here. I am with that man in

the plane moving south from home. I am praying for him.

I wish people would learn to not lean against artwork. I pry a

lanky fellow off of my text block and he looks at me with a hint of

disgust in his eyes.

Audacious.

The sun is sinking, Michael turns the music on. My i-pod is a

hodgepodge of eclectic noise; a Bob Marley will scrape off against

an Isis. I am hoping for it, at least then I could laugh. The background

is clear to me no noise, I pick up silence between the conversations.

The woodwork opens up and the intimate beings start colliding, there

is no shame present.

Jesse’s locks are tangled up in his red beanie, his carpals and metacarpals

fingering the pages I wrote for my father, it breaks my heart. Janyne and

Lorenzo dangling around the fire escape, Dagus and “our punkin patch

speak”. The countless others that would have been so proud of me, we

are separated by so much more than sea.

And tonight even in this presence-

I am absent.

Theresa and I

Interview with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, author of the novel Dictee.

We meet by the north side of the river in the early afternoon, two hours before

the sun has set. She is bathed in white lengths of silk and cotton. Her hair a tangled

mass exposed and cascading over her shoulders, its ends trails along the edge of

the blanket she has folded her self on. Through the tiny holes of the mesh that

covers half of her face her lips protrude, they are soft with flecks of dried skin around

the edges. She is conscious of this. I navigate to find her eyes but she avoids my

stare, while making room for me as I approach to join her. The wind is cool it washes

over us. We remain silent. I feel the heat from both bodies as the sun descends

slowly behind her. It’s light interrupting the tendrils of her hair, they dance together

rhythmically almost violent. I break the silence.

HB: Why here?

THKC: I like being near water. When I miss her I come to the water.

HB: Who is she?

THKC: My mother. She is neither in heaven or hell. I think this world has trapped her. No

rest for her spirit.

HB: Are you trapped as well?

THYC: I won’t call it trapped, I recognize it, this departure. But in many ways I am freer. I

can flutter around and bear witness to tongues that I recognize.

HB: So do you belong now?

THKC: I have never belonged, not even in death. I am less concerned now. No reason

to fight.

HB: French, English, Japanese or Korean?

THKC: Forever my mother tongue. I revolt against the others still. It pains me to intrude

on conversations at times.

HB: Do you want to know how you died?

THKC: I saw stranger and a gun.

HB: About as much as I know. Tell me about Joan of Arc?

THKC: I think we are both Martyrs. Martyrdom was the dream of my youth; if things were

different I would present my neck to the sword and whisper at the stake “Oh Jesus”.

HB: So you believe in God?

THKC: He is the only one that can resuscitate our dead tongues. I was never without faith.

HB: Dictee is the kind of study that occurs eons before the throat opens up to make a sound.

THKC: It was about a mapping of each guttural syllable, each provocation and stutter. It

was my desire to give voice to the parts of me that were choking and suffocating. It was

the permission I granted my body as female. It was remembering the mouth, and the

choreography of our diaphragms and heart. About learning to really speak for the first

time. It was a kind gesture to offer transparency, to absorb all color, motion and memory,

and tell the collectives story and mine.

HB: This choreography this dance of words you perform constantly moves about in time

and space, it is a little Diasporic dance. I can barely keep up with your steps.

THKC: I think you can’t keep up because you are practicing restraint. I use revisions,

gaps and diversions to talk, I want to expose the myth of ever understand

someone outside your being, needless to say someone outside your culture and

economy.

HB: But I understand you. I think I understand you. At times I am not sure. I understand

when you write, say, think: “You are moving inside. Inside the stillness. Its slowness

makes almost imperceptible the movement. Pauses. Pauses hardly rest. New

movement, ending only to extend into the next movement. You say this is how Heaven

should be. You say this is how it must be death. ‘

THKC: Memoryless, Dreamless. I can’t dream, I still have my memories. You dream, tell

me about the last dream you had?

HB: It came in bits and pieces, my sister I haven’t seen her in three years was

walking across a length of wood that separated one side of an old wharf from

its Plantation House. It was a beach we visited a lot as children. She kept going

back and forth between the wharf and the wood dock of the house. She eventually

walked into the garden filled with bougainvilleas and disappeared. I raced down

from the hill to look for her but couldn’t find her. I spotted her in a wooden rowboat

and raced to the end of the wharf, whoever she was with turned the boat around and

came for me. I got in, there were a lot of people in the boat hundreds in this tiny boat.

It was afloat before I got on but when I did we started to sink. Slowly. The man

kept rowing us back out into the open ocean. My sister was in the bow and she

was looking back at me, I remember reaching over and touching the water, it

was cold and had hundreds of hawksbill turtles. They were surfacing and diving,

fins touching each other. So many. I jumped into the water with them. The boat

didn’t sink.

THKC: Sounds as though you are far from home as well.

HB: I manage. I can’t imagine not ever dreaming.

THKC: You get used to it.

HB: I doubt that.

Silence

The sun is sinking behind her now; she has taken off the cloth around her face and his

now gesturing with its material between her fingers. Twilight is coming with haste; the

sky bleeds a confusion of reds, oranges, gingers, yellows, blues and whites. It cascades

into a crescendo of purple darkness. She unwraps her body from the white cloth and

gets up from the ground. She stretches her lithe frame and goes down to the waterfront.

She bends over and let her fingers disrupt its flow. She looks over to me, I walk to meet

her.

HB: What do you think about history, your story?

THKC: I think of it as a confused collage, multiple voices and inter-textual relationships, a

mix of quotations, translations, languages, images, its construction I liken to part auto

biography, biography, personal diary, ethnography, auto ethnography and part

translation. It all intermingles and become a suture of unmixed wholes. I am an unmixed

whole. I was.

HB: What’s your favorite word?

THKC: Love.

HB: You strike me as a romantic.

THKC: I don’t want history to repeat into oblivion.

It is now dark I can barely make out her frame before me. She sits at the edge of the

river, it is mossy and stony. It’s water cold; I bend down to roll up the hem of my trousers

and suspend my feet into the darkness. She is drawn into the darkness, then the white,

and the black. Her shadow moves across, dark shapes and dark light.

I am alone at the river’s edge.

bleusy

suffering through a lack of inspiration

after a couple of insane months. But today

Vanessa's photograph of her grandfather

is going to help light that fire i need

to go to the NYPL this week and find

some insane work on whaling.

going to dig real deep.

ICP Bard Group Show Snippets

you can see some shots of the fun times here

http://icpbardmfa.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/from-last-nights-opening/

love and light

A sense of place

I moved islands when I was born; I was placed in the belly of Motor Vessel (M.V) Edwina and headed south. She was red and long, white chairs lined her deck, putrid smoke exited her exhausts. When I was fifteen, she^* was taken to the windward side of the island and sunk. They welded holes in her hull and let the bottom and stern touch sand. She stayed on Mt. Wynne’s black shore for years becoming a haven to fauna until she was labelled defunct, an eyesore. They took her out to sea and buried her along one of the deepest crevices.

In the year of our Lord, 1985, my father put me on the counter of his first ship, M.V Pattree, which had a map affixed to its surface. It was blue and white, its lines obscured by the plastic sheeting laid over it to protect it from the elements, it’s edges curled from the increasing humidity. White turning yellow: faded, crinkled and salty. The bridge affixed with the permanent scent of diesel, rust and engine oil coercing over the cabin’s façade and seeping into the very composition of the lacquered plywood and hard vinyl changing its instruction, its nature.

We were out to sea, tossed between God’s billowing waves, back and forth; into and out of the strange aqueous that was no longer sky blue and placid, but angry, vociferous and unforgiving. It was dry season because that was the only time my father would let her walls protect us, some myth about the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, convection and wind pressure travelling west off the coast of Africa aligning to make the conditions perfect. The converging tides pulling and pushing us North, South, East and West, all at once.

This undertow ruptures the delicate history of the archipelago, redistributing and corrupting its parts, the sea’s violence pronounced, piercing and omnipresent. It consumed my ancestors in a gulp over a century and a half ago, left them like beached whales stranded on small topographic slippages. Barren and bare, they dispersed. Journeyed to find homes that would occupy the abandoned cavity left by the emblematic surge of the sea. Ravenous; they scoured lands putting roots down; they occupied the minutiae of expanding shores, of protected ports and harbours and of elusive ground.

* A ship is always referred to in the shipping/boat/sea culture as she. One of the first plaques in my house was a riddle that asked: Why is a ship called she: Because there is always men around her. This patriarchal view of understanding sea culture, navigators, explorers, whaler-men is still pervasive throughout our culture

2-0

Sciatica 2, Holly- 0

Untitled April '10

the island washes off of me

down the drain

into the arid dirt

it soaks the years up

radiating,

a russet hue on my face

bouncing off the moon at night,

while she sinks outside,

the line of the horizon;

yellow, not full

the arch twisted like

my full bowing brow,

straining to see her celestial descend

beneath the aqueous surface

still land is distant,

almost a dream

even though it sits coming

sprawling and open.

Interview with Jason Woolfolk

JW: Can you talk a little about your process of making the images

in your show? How did these images come into being?

HB: After battling for the longest time over how to relate my practice to my many

concerns socially and conceptually, I decided that I needed to dig a bit further to

get to the marrow of my curiosity. Photography and how I partook and fed off of it

really opened up late last year, I began looking at my families archive and really

thinking about the specificity of the West Indies, it’s culture, language and

historical importance.

I started the “Compounds” what you may refer to as collages late October 2009.

They began very didactic, very one to one in the ratio of text and image. I

collected and scanned images from a variety of sources, including my immediate

and extended family’s archive, historical books, objects specific to the area etc. I

spent a lot of time in the pictures section of the New York Public Library going

through folders of old marine architecture, whaling, slavery, Sugar and maps.

Symbols and iconography that were broad enough to begin exploring something

that was intrinsic and specific to my concerns and interests but also the broader

issue of Colonization and Anglophone rule.

They developed over time into these fragments and bits that started to move

without my implicit permission. Using Photoshop as a tool for the first time in a

really self conscious and intuitive way I approached each layer, each photograph

as a way for me to displace, veil and reveal information. I frequently go back to

see how edit one differs from what I consider being the assemblages that were

included in my thesis show and the evolution leaves me speechless. I return to

them for inspiration whenever I am stuck, knowing that they hold a certain trust

and a certain kinetic energy that I can learn from.

JW: Do you feel that you have two home bases?

HB: I think right now I do. I intend to give myself some time from my home country in

order to grow and reach my full potential as an artist. I have only had a very short time

to really delve into creating and so much as changed since September 2008, it would

be a tragedy if I fail to adopt NYC as my surrogate. I am giving her seven years!

JW: Can you talk a little about how you identify with and function in both places?

HB: I moved to New York city for the first time in 2001 right after 9/11. Funny enough

it called me then, I lived here till 2006 doing my undergrad in Communications then went

back home to Bequia, St. Vincent for two years. I worked as a Production Manager at an

Advertising Media Agency. After 6 months ennui set in and I started trying to really

consider photography and visual arts as an outlet for me. After two years the island

consumed all of me, so naturally New York was high on my list of places to return to.

It was hard for me settling back into the velocity of the city and of course the

degree. It was like hitting a brick wall but sometime at the end of my first year

New York began feeling really right, I began really understanding how the

currency and consciousness of images and histories collide. And right now I am

intoxicated by it, by the possibilities it offers, by its hunger, enormity and its rage,

mostly I am now addicted to the learning process. Metropolitan cities have that

dichotomy of being hostile and generous, really contradictory.

Bequia is in my marrow, lodged deep in my blood. I think everything about who I

am; intuition, strength and sensitivity were engrained in me by the lay of the land.

It is the foundation of my morality, which makes it easy to understand why I left, I

think you need to be removed from all that weight in order to look at what you

know with a sense of objectivity, my attitude to art and the simple act of creating

was being bogged down by cultural expectations and limitations: sexism, racism,

homophobia to name a few. It is however my foundation, my discipline and work

ethic operate organically because of that base. Both New York and Bequia make

my head spin and my heartache.

JW: In your statement, you mention, “genealogical research.” Can you tell me if

you found out anything really interesting about a family member that you didn’t

know before?

HB: My father exaggerates my mother doubts. It is interesting going over the

collective archives. I found out a couple things, how true they are, who can say? I

believe them!

1. We come from a line of Whalers/Pirates. The first being solider Bynoe who

some say got found on his way to Bequia.

2. In the late 40’s my mother’s father, my grandfather went into the business

of financing and building an old schooner with his family, one of the men

his Brother in law Frankie. Frankie was a wild man, one of those men they

couldn’t tie to the shore with rope, they had to weld him down to stay in

one spot. M.V Gloria Colita on route to St. Maarten, Grandfather changed

spots with Frankie because of some issue he had to deal with at home,

after they offloaded the cargo which was mostly ground provision,

bananas etc they decided to have a drink or two. Sugar Production in the

Caribbean was still at a high back then, so after a little too much to drink

and not enough ballast in the schooner they headed southeast. Homeward

bound. Wind and God’s water beat the ship into oblivion. Everyone perished

except “Brother King” who after three days shipwrecked at sea was

rescued by a Hawksbill turtle.

3. My father took photographs in his 20’s. This of course is the starting point

of Volume II in my collection To sea to see the sea.

JW: What are your plans for the immediate future?

HB: I am looking into different grants and residencies at the moment. I think it

is going to be crucial for me to maintain a rigid system around me once I

am done with the degree. My personality needs that push and that system

in order to really propel the creative process. So I have been looking into

some opportunities that will help me deal with material and materiality in a

more sensitive and ambitious way. I have been thinking about books,

papers, gels, mirrors, glass and alternative photographic processes. It is

strange because I feel as though my process and output just really aligned

in a really magical way to afford me some space to think about what more

can I do. I have also been thinking about form and foundation.

I am currently interning at A.I.R Gallery and I love the democratic

environment and the amount of really interesting people that pass through

the space each time I am there. It is a joyous experience for me, which

keeps me on my toes and enables me the opportunity to connect with

established and prolific artists. There is a discourse that surrounds their

practice and mine and we share frustrations, anxieties, philosophies and

life stories.

My main goal after school is to find a job. Isn’t everyone’s? I want to work

in an environment that will allow me to contribute my talent, heart and

mind in an artistic, social and cultural manner. I have been thinking about

not for profit spaces, community programs with children under 13, working

with new media and even arts administration. I am keeping my prospects

broad as I want to give myself the chance to explore avenues that are

hidden from me as well. I want to also assist Professors in continuing

education classes at the ICP and in the full time General Studies program.

Once I find my footing and language I may even want to see if I can try my

hand at teaching. It is after all in my blood.

Holly has just closed her show, 40ºN 74ºW / 13ºN 61ºW .

For more information about Holly and her work, go to: www.hollybynoe.com .

Letter from the Chair.

This year's class of thirteen artists concern themselves

with the intricacies and consequences of perception.

Whether it is through use of the symbolic "I" of their own

subjectivity, or through investigation of the perceptual

operations of the physical eye itself, these investigators

use the tools of photography to lay bare an uncomfortable

truth: that looking and being looked at implicate and change

us. Their imagery is wide-ranging: demolition derbies,

family archives, bodily fluids, digital constructions, wary lovers.

Their pictures and installations show moments of joy, anger,

peace, and squalor. But always there is the sense of people

acting and being acted upon, of a web of association and

emotion that continues to support and guide their work.

In their choice of photographic tools, these students are

free-wheeling—they've employed everything from the

pinhole to the iPhone. The resulting works take a variety

of forms: short films, printed broadsheets, books, slide

projections, and websites take their place alongside more

traditional photographic prints. What unifies their work is a

quality of human concern and intellectual curiosity that sets

them apart from their peers.

Nayland Blake

Chair, ICP-Bard Masters Program in Advanced Photographic

Studies

http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.2528647/k.9A64/Education_Gallery.htm