new york day 10

today's performance was a short one on e 14th:

the walk from my front door to the taxi

so i shot a video of my molecular atmospheric interference on the way to the midtown tunnel 

east sun is rising 

leaving the muck and mire

welcome peach fuzz sky

the last fragrance smelled a little off in the bottle, but it's a nice lime citrus with a drop of the bbq fragrance (i think the tar color of the bbq ingredient is what drove many of these concoctions for new york) and on my skin it dried down to a jasmine floral

 

new york day 5

i was thinking about this photo i took yesterday, and a translation system, the difficulty of mediation, of words having to describe or flesh out smells (or colors or forms for that matter, i'm reminded of the movie artemisia, where her teacher says, "we say too much in front of paintings")

so i decided to use the photo as a map for today's perfume

mostly citruses, a touch of floral, and vetiver 

and i loved the thought of a visual being a prayer too, a memory or a hope, and so i like the idea of that picture being the name, being the prayer, and taking the place of the words, knowing it doesn't always have to be this linguistic thing we partake in

i also love playing with scent and taste, so i tried a cantaloupe/chai popsicle and it was really wonderful in conjunction with the scent

after my performances i'm trying to make it through as many galleries during my off-times as i can take in one day, and went to a few today

i was struck by a show at the pace, titled social media, and penelope umbrio's work (she also uses craigslist, as i've done for a couple of other shows) and found a bunch of people having posted their tv for sale, and the reflections are very explicit! 

 one show i used craigslist for is coming up in reading, pa through billboard art projects:

saturday, october 22, 2011 from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.

location: route 222 and kutztown rd temple, pa 19560. See map

i found listings for people using their sense of smell in some fashion in their posting

i took their personal-screen digital declaration (most were in the personals), and am making it all the more public on the large-screen digital billboard:

new york day 1

i wore a spicy scent made up of floral notes with pepper, cade, and gardenia. i was reacting partly to the smells of garbage from yesterdays walk, and the cumin from carts i was passing.  i wanted something next to my skin that would provide a wall against some of the foulness of the streets

i saw a woman physically reacting to a momentarily wafting stench in our subway car of rotten grass and skunk from the afternoon's rain

one thing i did notice about the city today is the reticence to make eye contact, at least for extended periods of time. i'm much more used to connecting with the people i pass by, so that is an adaptation i'm having to undertake. that is also affecting my ability to hear conversation, as many people stop speaking when passing strangers

i chose to make my first prayer more of a poem, from a recording i did in the subway under 14th

as i researched some of the text transcribed from my recording, it turned out to be a list of panagrams, so i reworked them

 

 five frozen sphinx my 

boxing love of jackdaws wives

jump wizards quick chop

sculptural performance art

this is a site i will be updating during the performance from october 1-10th, 2011 during art in odd places in new york city.  i will be chronicling some of the developments as i go.

my work centers on the contrast between the visible, the ephemeral, the auditory—and the temporal marks of identity.  i characterize my practice as sculptural performance art.  i use my body as the purveyor of scent, and i collect language based upon the environment the scent creates, both in its transient presence on my body, and in its molecular interaction with the architecture and people present.  from these transactions, come visceral, non-representational self-portraits composed from text, object, and scent

here's my proposal:

For my proposed project I will be wearing a single garment for the duration of a performance, in which I will develop separate perfumes to perform with each day of the festival while walking 14^th Street between the banks of the West and East Hudson River.  During these walks I will collect language from literature, pop culture, and conversation on the street, culminating in text poems and fragrances composed as reactions to each day's experiences.  In addition, the garment worn during the performance will be crystallized in a solution preserving its use, but abstracting its form.  One geographical and historical location I would like to include in my daily walk is St. Mark’s Bowery, as I consider the need for ritual, and the logical rhythm that their Friday noonday prayer service inspired in my routine of walking.  As I think about how rhythm and routine work into life, prayer seems a logical place to go, and perfume is often referred to in literature as both poetry and prayer.  The connections are loose enough to be open, but bound enough to fall into ritual.  I am interested in documenting through the text I collect those phrases, which I will take from culture and define as prayer, whether directly referential, or someone swearing on the street.  I know my own personal rituals and prayer are sacred and profane often simultaneously. 

            The documentation of the performance will be in the form of marks made on my garment.  Wearing a single dress for the duration of the performance I will collect both the physical marks, but also the atmosphere of my experience.  Furthermore, the perfumes will mark the spaces I pass by molecularly entering the atmosphere leaving an ephemeral trail behind me each day, and I will further document my experience at the end of the day by composing the fragrance I will perform with the next day, based upon the previous one.  By the end of the performance I will have a collection of perfumes from each day of the festival, poems composed as text-based responses, and the dress, which I will crystallize and render abstract, as a non-representational form of self-portraiture.

            Since the project takes place on my body in a set environment, the installation/de-installation and maintenance are simply based upon my own body’s energy and endurance.  

For more information on my practice please visit my website:

juliabarbee.com