GSA process events

“Aquarian late responses. A week passes and then come six exchanges in four days, the delay brought on by Aimar’s self-admitted ‘late replier’ tendencies. As an Aquarius myself, I identify with his difficulties opening up—the belated response a result of processing time as the Aquarian considers how much to open and in which ways to do so. I also find something of myself in Aimar’s admiration for Sands’ continuous ‘spilling out’ and the senses of belonging it inspires. Indeed, belonging (as both an affective and material condition) comes to the fore in these four days, from the gendered belonging coded by childhood toys, to the biopolitical belonging facilitated or violated by political conditions, to the (dare-I-say) queer belonging engendered by care-full attention to the capacities of those around us and the ‘bits and pieces’—a comb, an image, a name, a memory—through which those capacities make themselves known.” – MH studio note from ificantdance.studio

“I am more interested in content. As the season starts to change, Sands and Aimar’s exchange begins to take on more form. The possibilities and problematics of ‘queer form’, in particular, emerges as the content of their dialogue. Along the way, the form of their exchange becomes ever more unruly. Distinctions between what is ‘core’ and what is ‘supplement’ are nearly undone: trains of thought shift between email bodies and attachments, images being transferred across different platforms, or letters by post stamped with one date but entering conversation several exchanges later. The linear momentum of chrononormative time holds no sway here. An email time-stamped today can become the preface for an attachment dated two days ago; hyperlinks lead out; responses to a letter sent a week ago linger and mingle with new thoughts introduced an hour ago. These instances are clear reminders of the messiness of relationships—a messiness that emerges again and again in Gift Science Archive.” – MH studio note from ificantdance.studio.

“El ano tuyo. After much activity at the start of the fall season, things quiet down through October. The exchange picks up again about one week into November, beginning with a series of photos of Aimar emerging from el ano tuyo [your anus], a narrow passageway marking the end of a cave in the Basque municipality of Tuyo [yours]. El ano tuyo, as you could imagine, opens onto a discussion of sexual pleasure zones and control, which implicitly leads us back to the topic of queer form—as Sands suggests in his response to Aimar’s rite-of-passage photos, his work about sex is all painting, all ‘one big gestural stroke’. Here Sands disappointment with the rejection of an invitation to Adrian Piper mixes together with a discussion of control as lifelong sculpting process and the formal (or, perhaps, informe or formless) possibilities of the orgasmic encounter—sexual, textual and otherwise. The chapter closes with a 20-page essay by art historian Kathy Wentrack written on the occasion of the 2001 exhibition Double Trouble: Carolee Schneemann and Sands Murray-Wassink. In it, Wentrack traces the shared aspects of Sands’ and Carolee’s art/life practices, particularly their shared commitment to using lived experience as the basis for creative production. Wentrack’s text is an important reference point in the the development of a narrative linking second wave feminism with third wave queer (male) feminisms. Following the essay, Sands shares one last image, perhaps to make Wentrack’s point more palpable, more present: If we began with el ano tuyo, we end with a gold-plated vulva.” – MH studio note from ificantdance.studio.

“Missing Strands. The year is coming to a close, and in the weeks before winter holidays six more communiqués are exchanged. There is an attempt to wrap things up, even as there is full recognition of the impossibility of that—some strands will always stay missing, in the letters as in relationships. In a letter dated 9 December (though began in the week prior), the topic of queer form returns, this time with an extended quote from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in which she articulates her understanding of queer formalism. For Sedgwick (and, in turn, for Aimar), it involves a kind of fantastic imbuing wherein ‘… objects whose meaning seemed mysterious, excessive, or oblique in relation to the codes most readily available to us, became a prime resource for survival. We needed for there to be sites where the meanings didn’t line up tidily with each other, and we learned to invest those sites with fascination and love.’ And then New Year begins. It is marked here by a letter within a letter, sent by Sands to Aimar on the first day of 2021. The nested letter dates back much further, to 2015 when Sands wrote to Carolee Schneemann following their difficult meeting in Salzburg during the opening of Schneemann’s retrospective exhibition at the Museum der Moderne. In this moment of carefully selected over-sharing, Sands performs one final gesture of ‘spilling out’—Sedgwick’s description of the excessive, of survival and of the need for sites of messiness (where things don’t quite line up) seems to come alive on the page. For all of that ‘abundance’, though, indeed some strands will always stay missing.” – MH studio note from ificantdance.studio.