Saturday, April 28, 2012

Ekphrasis

He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea's water,
and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness,
and on it all the constellations that festoon the heavens,
the Pleiades and the Hyades and the strength of Orion
and the Bear, whom men give also the name of the Wagon,
who turns about in a fixed place and looks at Orion
and she alone is never plunged in the wash of the Ocean. 
(Description of Achilles' shield from The Iliad, 483-489)

I saw this on my way home from writing this blog post at a cafe! Chillin on a street corner. Certainly a sign...
Ekphrasis. Sounds sinister. Like in the medical, hesitate to Google it kind of way. “But really it’s creative alchemy,” Caleb, the Classics PhD student, assured us. “It’s a dramatic description of art in a piece of literature.” We were circled around him story-hour-style. The MIMA space had been emptied of furniture, musical equipment, my paintings and the surprising number of lambskins that usually adorn its surfaces to make way for an incoming Pratt show. Only a handful of essential instruments and a lone painting, too big to shove into my car, were left standing.

When a work of art is described through another medium, it morphs and becomes a new piece of art in this form. Ekphrasis isn’t about exhaustively cataloguing the parts. It’s about translating the impact. One early, powerful example of this is the description of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad. The shield is hewn by the god Hephaestus after Achilles’ original armor is stolen by the Trojans and the death of his friend throws him into a state of mad bloodlust. The description of the shield’s concentric rings of imagery is epic, encompassing all of the senses. Within the bold, detailed metalwork, lutes and lyres provide a dynamic soundtrack; reeds sway in windy marshes; characters argue and marry, dance and chop each other to bits on the battlefield.

These stood their ground and fought a battle by the banks of the river,
and they were making casts at each other with their spears bronze-headed;
and Hate was there with Confusion among them, and Death the destructive;
she was holding a live man with a new wound, and another
one unhurt, and dragged a dead man by the feet through the carnage.
The clothing upon her shoulders showed strong red with the men's blood. (433-438)

These pictures are navigated much like a god from on high might effortlessly zoom in and out of the worlds below, moving close in to see a maiden collecting flowers for a festival and then zooming out for a panoramic view of the cosmos. Scholars and artists have tried to map out the shield of Achilles and, although there have been many interpretations, the scenes depicted within resist being frozen in a 2-D plane by mortal hands. Words are necessary to communicate the magic of an object made by the blacksmith of the gods.


Then Caleb announced that this week our song-writing workshop would stem from my painting. (The one left standing. Which was fitting because the painting is from my Outpost series and is about the last remaining thing in an environment hell-bent on tearing it down.) It would be our own “visual to musical” version of ekphrasis. We started by asking questions about the painting. Just questions, no answers. “Is it being built or falling apart?” “Is there any way out or in?” “What’s making the light?” “Who lives there?” “Are they happy?”


'Honey I'm home,' she said. The wind turned its mouth up at the corners.
This won’t surprise any recent MFA graduates, but these are not the questions that artists get asked in an academic or critical setting. More often you will hear, “How are the derivative, impressionistic marks in the bottom left corner detracting from the formalistic unity?” But these were refreshing inquiries and way more representative of the way I talk to myself about the things that I make. Then, each of the musicians came up with a phrase associated with the piece, set it to music and played it for the group. With all these melodic fragments floating around in our heads, we began to play, improvise together, build something in the spirit of the thing.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Playing the Building

MIMA and I met for the first time at Princeton. It was Indian summer and that Kingdom of Learning was green-drained and autumn brilliant. Universities are in their element in the fall – the pace is right. Unlike the stillness of winter or the silliness of the warmer months, the fall casts campuses with a dignified, wizened air. Princeton students bustled up and down the grounds, kicking up leaves like bio-bright plankton, wrapped in wool sweaters, clutching mugs of warm tonics.

MIMA is a creative collective that provides music workshops for kids with limited resources around the world. This was their 10 Year Anniversary and they were celebrating by bringing their music and methods back to their place of origin. I’d been recruited by friends to assist in transforming Terrace, the most hippie Eating Club (not saying much when you’re used to Oberlin’s Co-ops, the most hippie of which is constantly pushing the boundaries of the word), into a Living Instrument. Each room was to embody a different character of music: dissonance, consonance, rhythm and silence to name a few.

Laini and I getting dressed in the study.

I was cast as a dryad (ß favorite phrase ever) and was put in charge of the Bacchanal-themed entrance hall along with fellow woodland spirits Laini and Kate-Lynn (painter and poet respectively). Our job was to usher in the collegiate recruits, strip them of as many clothing layers as they would part with and cover them with body paint (!). It was the anti-chamber, the portal between the codes and protocols of university life and something more playful.

The gears of the Living Instrument were set to start up at dark, so we spent the afternoon taking stock of our room and the beautiful fall grounds and then combined them. We dragged in bags of leaves and branches and ornamented the windows and tables with drapes and garlands. Then we went upstairs to a stately study (leather couches and Viking-sturdy tables), threw the remainder of our scarves and clothes into a giant colorful pile, and went about wrapping each other up nymph-style. It was clearly a room that would raise a disapproving eyebrow to such a flurry of ladies’ garments. Other MIMA members were donning bright onesie bodysuits, sumo second skins and Mexican wrestling masks. There were definitely clothing items that never made it out of that costuming cyclone alive. I swear a grumpy armchair swallowed some of the more flamboyant items out of spite.

The line to enter the Living Instrument ran long around the side of the building as night settled in. When each person entered, they were handed a small glass of ritual punch before being lead into the belly of the beast. Inside, they were guided throughout the house and directed in different exercises by MIMA musicians. I would hardly recognize these team leaders when I saw them later without their war paint. I had to re-meet them when we started hanging out as civilians in Brooklyn. And still, their alter egos sometimes flicker across their plainclothes, Clark Kent-stylings.

In the afternoon at Terrace, there had been a bright, open sunroom where students breakfasted. But no light came though the glass that night and the space was filled with a giant plastic bubble that the recruits filtered into at the close of their tour. Inside, the ears met nothing but the soft whirring of fans that kept the ceiling afloat. It was the silence room. Signs were held up to take us through different breathing exercises, to quiet and focus the mind.

So then the masses cleared out, most likely funneling into the nearest frat party. The MIMA managers, dressed as all manner of mythical beasts, circled up around a blue-suited Martian who bounded around the inside of our ring, leading us in a chant that grew and swelled and exploded into a primal scream and then melted into dance. Wild lose yourself dance at the hands of DJs you could trust your rhythms to. Who would build the beat slowly and wait until you were just dying for the music to peak and then take you to an epic height and cradle your descent.

We dragged ourselves into the hotel lobby just before the sun came up, a molting mess of melting mutant parts and raw human skin exposed. Blinking fiercely and working to get our spines steady, we looked like we had just hatched out of some psychedelic cesspool. Dripping colors onto the beige linoleum. The man at the desk didn’t look up as he handed us our keys.

The next morning found us sprawled on Princeton’s Elysian Fields, drawing energy up from the plush grass underneath. Gentle bouts of guitar and yoga and conversation would start up and then fade into the sunshine as we worked ourselves back up to consciousness. And of course there was Terrace’s house-made breakfast buffet complete with everything. (Yeah, they had that. And those.)

A communal painting at MIMA's new space in Brooklyn.

MIMA music party and reception for my painting show.

So why the flashback to this musical evening a year ago? Well, as it happens, MIMA set up headquarters in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn this January (relocating from Brazil). And so did I. Their space -- exposed beams, white walls, high ceilings – plays host to all manner of jam sessions, teacher trainings, workshops for kids, dance parties, yoga classes and communal painting parties (that was me). It’s becoming my second living room and the hive brain that’s based there is a powerful, creative organism.

If you want to join in on future events, shoot me an email and I’ll keep you posted. I have paintings up now and we’re planning an epic Folk Fe(a)st for May 12th.

MIMA Brooklyn

MIMA Music