Scribbles from the cafeteria in the art gallery:
Nailclippings, breastmilk, milking the earth, body secretions sweat, packaged and sold, shipped over the world, women working, women masturbating women handjob on arms through holes in the ground fertilizationprocess, anonymity, repetition, teams, sweatshop, butts, tongues, a tounge sticking out of a wall a really fat black woman a really fat brown woman the obscene dough coming through the ceiling, managing the dough, handling, managing the body, shaping the body, condensing the body, creating derivates of body and labor for massconsumption, the butch woman truckdriver
Scribbles on phone late at night:
There is sisterhood, and yet, the numb and monotone process of making consumerproducts that range from complete meaninglessness to a sort of humoristic rebellion (see Tropical Breeze). In this there is recognition both of the fact that women make up the majority and bottomlayer of the labor force of the current economic system and of the need for cooperation and caretaking amongst these women. Actually even the bodies in space, the working body and the female body as a natural resource to be exploited, a hyperpresence in the working and worked body, as the [mother] earth is milked and the nails are clipped and processed....
These works are about the woman in contemporary society, for once not focused on the woman in the wealthy societies, and yet without the pitying glare that is so common (look at those poor people [read: complete 'other'] and their poor lives....)
The woman as a body, as a body - worker extracting her own fluids - hair or nails - using hair and nails to process the resource into products. Love
I met with an art critic the other day - she used to be my teacher once, and I was surprised and happy to see her again. As it happens she had given a review on the show just a couple of days after I saw it (I tried to find it on her website to link but it seems its not on there...) and, if I understand her correctly, she found it uninspiring/ frustrating (not-like) the hermetic nature of Rottenbergs works. The truth is that these works are extremely hermetic in the sense that "they don't go anywhere", whatever it is it just goes on and on, and the women seem (except in the odd case of the driver in Tropical Breeze) resigned to this destiny of eternal mechanical repetition. I realise that I like that aspect. There is no way out - its like scratching a scab of a wound. The wound being the conflict concerning the possiblity and own capacity to change, the scab being the hope?
Stockholm
13-02-19
My studio is the best place in the world I am so lucky to have this
