[-empyre-] Coda : Aviva Rahmani

Sat Aug 13 04:29:35 AEST 2016

Aviva Rahmani: favorite quote: 

"More recently, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and have been journaling the Feminist implications of my experience of the medical establishment on FB. I can invite all of you to friend me on FB. I have been tracking some of my progress thru that system. Most recently, I did a series of formal head and shoulder portraits, another form of data visualization, that presents me as a person living with the transformations to my body in a spirit of joy and defiance. In those posts, my point of view is that biopsies, mastectomies and chemo trivialize and isolate the devastating pain, damage to a woman’s self-image and body from cancer treatments, particularly to the brain (chemo routinely destroys brain gray matter). I have been making corollary connections between the issues embodied for me in this medical process, and the same issues on a continental scale, of habitats and communities being forced to cope with toxicity in the Blued Trees Symphony

My current thinking about the implications of working on the Blued Trees Symphony project, is that it uncomfortably straddles several spatial arenas, each of which has greater conceptual freedom in situ, than secondary presentational options. Those arenas include: activism in the environment, applying legal premises in courtrooms, and more recently, presenting artifacts from those spaces in conventional gallery venues. As an artist whose work is about holistically changing things on the ground, and effecting policy change, as I near the end of the Blued Trees Symphony project, I struggle with how to best represent what has been a continental scale installation in the confines of gallery spaces. Previously, when the work was assembled as an indoor performance, it was organized along symphonic and installational lines. It seems to me that performance works do engage an audience more directly than the observation of objects in a gallery, as will occur in the upcoming group show, “Earth SOS,” a group show that will open at the Flomenhaft Gallery Sept,15, I have mixed feelings about the interest in exhibiting the physical artifacts, as, photographs of the painted trees, the scores, and mappings that established copyrights for the work as sculpture. I find myself wrestling with how to present those artifacts without resorting to tropes that allow the audience to have a  passive, or even complacent relationship to the problem of the continued proliferation of fossil fuel systems. As an activist Feminist artist, I resist works that permit passivity in any way, and yet I know that contemplation is a whole other level of activism. That very point of discomfort is a familiar place for me as a woman, and possibly, exactly the most productive place to be.” 

http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2016-July/009217.html

Christina McPhee

http://christinamcphee.net

insta: naxqqsmash

> On Aug 12, 2016, at 6:51 PM, christina at christinamcphee.net wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Johannes wrote,
> 
> "Erin Leland wrote eloquently on how bodies are inhabited through a replication of body languages, and I found much resonance in this and wondered whether we can continue to discuss a bit,
> as our moderator, Christina McPhee, has not closed the debate yet?”
> 
> Johannes and everyone,  
> 
> Yes it’s true I did not have a chance to thank the guests for July 2016 on -empyre-,  Feminist Data Visualization.  I’d love to do so now by ‘replication’  of lines from thoughtful 
> writing that came out of this conversation. I will do so in a series of individual posts, which will hit inboxes over the next hour.
> 
>  I ‘ll post a linear text to academia dot edu soon and hope to find more outlets beyond that for this rather profound exchange.
> 
> Deepest thanks and respect to these people who gave us so much upon which to reflect in the midst of the chaotic stream of mediated death and life. 
> 
> Week 1:  Catherine D’Ignazio, Lauren Klein, Erin Leland, and Lee Mackinnon 
> Week 2: Katherine Behar, Fiamma Montezemolo, and Annina Rüst
> Week 3: Carolyn Castaño, Johanna Drucker, and Erin MacElroy 
> Week 4: Tif Robinette, Beatriz Cortez, and Aviva Rahmani 
> 
> 
> in gratitude,
> 
> 
> Christina
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> 
> Christina McPhee
> 
> http://christinamcphee.net
> 
> insta: naxqqsmash
> 
> 
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