Every Little Bit Hurts

303 East 8th Avenue Tuesday to Saturday Vancouver, British Columbia Noon to 5:00 pm PST V5T 1S1 Canada September 11th - October 24th 2015 Every Little Bit Hurts Zoe Kreye Lindsay Ljungkull Anne Riley have led to the complete collapse of Every Little society as we know it. In this reality, where violence has become the new Bit Hurts norm, Lauren Olamina’s condition as a hyperempath, or “sharer” as those Setting the tone. If you are so inclined, with this condition are sometimes you might accompany your reading called, is particularly complicated. of this text with the following video/ audio clips: Though the concerns of Anne Riley, Zoe Kreye and Lindsay Ljungkull’s works Brenda Holloway’s “Every Little Bit in Every Little Bit Hurts do indeed Hurts”: https://youtu.be/kZf_rppcnm8; seem quite far from the concerns of Butler’s post-apocalyptic science The closing scene of Claire Denis’ fiction novels, I’ve returned time and 1999 film Beau travail: https://vimeo. again to this idea of the hyperempath com/105411522; throughout the process of working on this show. For the “sharers” in Butler’s Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”: novels, their empathy with other https://youtu.be/wp43OdtAAkM. beings1 is not only felt emotionally, but literally felt in their own body. For now, hold those thoughts, I may In the novels this quality defines the come back to them later. But first, let’s essential worldview of Olamina’s take another dérive, and spend some character as she works towards the time considering the science fiction building of a new society, even amidst writer Octavia Butler. The central the ruins of what remains around her. character of Butler’s novels Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the I see a parallel in Butler’s imagined Talents (1998) is Lauren Olamina, a malady and the real world theory of teenager living in California in the quantum entanglement. This might mid-2020s. With a birth defect that is be a stretch based on only a few texts the result of her mother’s prescription I have read on the subject,2 but the drug addiction during her pregnancy, theory goes that certain pairs of sub- she is affected by a condition called atomic particles, like photons, are hyperempathy: a psychosomatic intrinsically connected regardless of condition in which one actually feels the the distance between them. In these pain, or pleasure, that one witnesses cases, any action performed on one in another. In the near future that particle in the pair would, more or these two novels are set in, climate less, instantaneously affect the other change, financial ruin, resourceparticle. Einstein refers to this as scarcity, and a host of other factors “spooky action at a distance.” While any real scientist would be quick to sculptures are rough, bearing the point out that properties like this marks of the hands that formed them. in the sub-atomic world can’t be Yet, through their abstract lumpiness, misconstrued as being immediately a body is visible, or at least suggested, perceptible in the world around us, in the empty space defined by the clay: I’m still interested in dwelling on a pair of legs, the cup of a hand, the this notion of a link between two bend of an elbow. What we are left entities across space. Extrapolating with is an impression—a physical from Butler’s narrative and my two- residue of a body that was once there, bit understanding of science, what the hollow of a form. resonates for me here is this idea of proximities, and the suggestion of In the gallery these objects are placed some kind of entanglement between around the room on blankets and foam beings across a distance that is blocks. The soft supports, neutral literally felt. palette, and the low arrangement of the ceramic sculptures suggest In science fiction, a writer works with an engagement with the body of the the possibilities of science, rather viewer: something beyond a visual than the realities of science. Kreye, encounter. Ljungkull, and Riley are all involved in an active imagining of the possibilities I first encountered these objects in for a form that extends beyond its Zoe Kreye’s home studio. As we talked aesthetic properties, towards an about the pieces, I examined the engagement between bodies. How can objects, first by sight, associating their forms contain relationships? What are shapes with the body, and then by the possibilities for a form to mediate touch, holding them against my chin a knowing of someone, or oneself? or wrapping them around my arm. I recall having first had a feeling of Zoe Kreye’s Our Missing Body is a trespassing, of being an intruder into collection of ceramic sculptures, an intimate space that wasn’t mine, movement, textiles, foam blocks and but after that came a more prolonged hand-drawn newspapers. Though sensation of closeness, and the sudden the movement in the work may not awareness of my body occupying be immediately apparent in the final the space that another body once product, elements of movement and the occupied. As ceramic vessels these body are present throughout Kreye’s were objects that contained both a process. The artist worked with slabs presence and an absence, facilitating of clay in her studio: pressing them a relationship between my body and over, around and in-between various another. Standing among the objects parts of her body. The resulting now, I see them both as mirrors, reflecting back on me, and as lenses degradation of the mold. Elsewhere, through which I can attempt to know the mark of the artist’s body is worn an other. I keep seeing Kate Bush in on the walls of the gallery, in the the soft-focused video for “Running residue of indigo dye tracing the Up That Hill”: dancing, intertwined lines of her body following a series of with her partner, yearning to occupy prior choreographed movements. A that other’s body for just a moment as video work, installed in the bathroom she sings, “Do you want to feel how it adjacent to the gallery, reveals a feels?... C’mon, baby, c’mon darling, Let camera as the lone spectator of the me steal this moment from you now. performance. Here, we see Riley C’mon, angel, c’mon, c’mon, darling, momentarily occupying an interstitial Let’s exchange the experience, oh…” space for a solitary action. Set to the soundtrack of Donna Summer’s “I As an artist with a parallel interest Feel Love,” the denim suit, the pulsing in movement practices, Kreye often disco beats, and the dim lighting take works with collaborators to develop us to the darkness of a lesbian bar. embodied interpretations to her ceramic forms. At Western Front, Riley speaks of the walls and closets these elements will be further explored that her queer indigenous body during two scheduled workshops in encounters. These walls and closets— which Kreye will guide participants in both interior and exterior—resist a close encounter with her work. and constrict her movements, just as she continues to push against them. The title of Riley’s series of work Continuing from the text above, Karen is taken from a text by American Barad asks, “If the two hands belong theorist Karen Barad, who writes, to one person, might this not enliven “When two hands touch, there is a an uncanny sense of the otherness sensuality of the flesh, an exchange of the self, a literal holding oneself of warmth, a feeling of pressure, of at a distance in the sensation of presence, proximity of otherness that contact, the greeting of the stranger brings the other nearly as close as within?”4 Barad goes on to explore oneself. Perhaps closer.”3 In the first of the mechanics behind touch at a sub- Riley’s works for this exhibition, she atomic level, explaining how, for a has arranged a pile of 62 plaster casts physicist, touch does not in fact involve of her hands holding themselves. any actual touching. Rather, what we Produced with a soft mold-making sense when we feel the pressure and medium designed to be used for only the closeness of touch is instead the a single impression, Riley poured into repulsive force of negatively-charged this mold over and over again, each electrons resisting one another.5 successive plaster cast showing the Like Kreye’s ceramic vessels, Riley’s plaster sculpture intimates a physical desire that burdened his character touch between two bodies that is never in the film, Riley’s works explore the actually there. The artist noted that in freedom of touch in a queer space, the repetitive making of the 62 casts, and what it means to be close but only she even began to recognize the hands “nearly as close as oneself”. as those of her sister, or of her mother. What do bodies know or remember Lindsay Ljungkull’s Darkness Silence of their histories? Riley’s mother is Touch (2006)7 is a 16mm film with live originally from the Fort Nelson First narration and music that is played Nation in Northern B.C., but moved to through a modified turntable. It is Texas where Riley and her twin sister composed of three parts: Brenda were born. Though Riley never lived in Holloway vs. Conflicting Systems of British Columbia until recently, in this Power, Attempting to Bridge the Divide, work, she suggests that perhaps she and I never really learned how to play never left, that she has always been (Does that matter?).

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