HOMEBODIES, AWAY TEAMS This show was made possible is a two-part group show spanning by the generosity of many and Salt Lake City, individuals and institutions. We organized by L.A.-based artist would like to extend our thanks duo Earl Gravy. The show features to all the artists who shared their , video installation and work with us; to Jared Stefensen performance that explores the and UMOCA; Jodi Graham and numinous, the revelatory and the Utah Humanities; the Monticello cryptic as avenues for non-rational Welcome Center; the Monticello inquiry. At the project’s core is Earl Peace Tree Cafe; the Utah Gravy’s research into a premillennial Museum of Fine Arts; Utah State spiritual commune established in Archives; The Communal Studies southeast Utah in 1934. Association; The Westerner’s Society; Steve Gallenson, and Participating artists across both countless others along the way. shows include: Bridget Batch, Ana Weider Blank, Scott Benzel, We would like to say a special Dan Bustillo, Joey Cannizzaro, THANK YOU to Sue Halliday for her Christopher Cole, Nathaniel kindness, openness, and energy-- Cummings-Lambert, Audrey always--and to Doug Gerstner--may Davies, Cara Despain, Luke your glass be ever full, and may Forsyth, Earl Gravy, Maya Gurantz, we all meet in heaven half an hour Institute for New Feeling, Lazaros, before the devil knows we’re dead. Grace Ndiritu, João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Phillip Andrew Lewis + Michael Robinson, Kevin Alan Swenson, Jack Sabat + Sam Stringer, with text contributions from Travis Diehl, Peter Hong, and Adriana Widdoes.

Homebodies, Away Teams was conceived of and curated by Earl The Utah Museum of Contemporary Gravy, the ongoing collaboration Art, Salt Lake City: Jan 26 through between Emma Kemp and Daniel May 12, 2018. Wroe.

3 by a century, inverts the dilemma. considered normal, with an eye seeing. If we follow the trajectory MOONSHOT THINKING & In her book The Mirror of Simple towards organ preservation for of this thought, we might conclude Souls, which personifes Reason, donation-transplantation) and that such drastic straining to see UNHOLY ALLIANCES Love and the Soul and sets them cryonics (the study of biological beyond, around, further than what 1. in dialogue with one another, material at temperatures below is visible stresses the body so that Marguerite writes: “‘Ah, Reason,’ what is considered normal with it beams back a scrambled image, It began with a rope of dead says Love, ‘you’ll always be one- an eye towards preserving whole an encoded fatality. Could this dogs, one after the other every eyed (half-blind).’ For, to be sure, biological systems for future explain why Simone Weil sought to few hundred feet, quiet as one has faulty vision who sees medical intervention). The diference cut out her vision entirely and place sandcastles along a twenty mile things before his eyes and does is slight but vast: what it comes it beside her: “If only I could see a stretch of highway between Bluf not understand them at all.”1 For down to is distance. How far into landscape as it is when I am not and Blanding. What sense can you Marguerite, an inability to see the tunnel is one willing to focus her there.”3 She wanted her self to get make of it—ears, paws, tails fung beyond what is looked upon is fashlight? out of the way. like breadcrumbs from a moving symptomatic of ocular dystrophy, This disparity in focal You might say she succeeded, truck. I was not understanding. My a disease sufered by rational length explains why so many starving her body right out of the eyes, I thought, must be faulty. empiricists.2 cryobiologists resent cryologists. frame. There is a long, well But what about speculative The institutionalized scientifc In other instances, it is neither documented history of laying blame vision, that which is not seen by acadame (cryobiology) does not the body nor mind that impedes to a faulty body when it comes to looking but envisaged from within? put steed in that which it cannot a unique panorama. Consider outrageous vision. Cézanne, who A seeing which spans time and confdently see or imagine, this chunk of audio transcription painted ceaselessly every day often outrageous distances. The and therefore cannot yet test. from the fight recorder aboard of his life, wondered at the end stock market, for example, relies Cryologists, on the other hand, Apollo 11. Commander Neil whether his emblematic style might on such lengthy projection, a sort are making a wager in the present Armstrong, on his way to the be little more than the result of poor of psychic capitalism in which whose uncertain terms extend moon, is marveling at his newfound eyesight; whether his whole life had traders foresee relative margins 100 to 150 years into the future perspective: been built upon a bodily faw. with a clairvoyancy denied to (cryologists’ estimated timeline for And, Houston, you, might be Interrogating Joan of Arc in the consumers. viable patient recovery). They’re interested that out my left-hand Ornament Hall of the Castle of Or consider the diference playing the long game. window right now, I can observe Rouen, a physician-assessor between two associated felds the entire continent of North probed her dietary habits (one of research: that of cryobiology What dangers arise should America, Alaska, and over the meal a day, bread soaked in (the study of biological material we peek too far, too long? The Pole, down to the Yucatan wine), implying that her rapturous at temperatures below what is medieval understanding about Peninsula, Cuba, northern part visitations were the result of how vision happens articulates an of South America, and then I nutritional abstinence. 1 Porite, Marguerite;The Mirror of Simple inherent fatality: put simply, that run out of window. Marguerite Porete, a 13th- Souls, Chapter 43, p122. Paulist Press, something in the eye is changed “…And then I run out of (November 1, 1993) century French mystic, whose into what is seen, and therefore window.” execution by fre precedes Joan’s 2 See Anne Carson’s Decreation for ex- something in the eye “dies” in tended discussion. 3 Weil, Simone; Gravity and Grace, (2002)

5 Armstrong and his crew, traveling newspaper4 and recruited a band in science and medicine were of Organisms” produced in 1940.8 over 2000 miles per hour, are of homesteaders. Her commune raising questions as to the fnitude The digitized flm made the rounds peering down at something familiar provided a spiritual sanctuary to a of the human lifespan. As early on Youtube a few years ago, briefy from a very strange perspective. community of believers from around as 1813, physicians in Europe attaining viral status for its uncanny Their eyes are hungry for it—so the country who came together were considering the possibility of narration as Brukhonenko and his much at once! And then the rigid seeking eternal life. Spiritualism, “extracorporeal circulation” on the team reanimate the severed head frame of human construction re- in its purest sense, is just that: human body6 (experimenting with of a dog before reviving completely exerts itself. It severs the seeing, “The science, philosophy, and techniques to circulate oxygenated a second animal after its clinical just like that. religion of continuous life, based blood after clinical death) so that by death. Marie Ogden was a keen A visionary woman (whose upon the demonstrated fact of 1895, a Strasbourgian physician, observer of such biomedical special seeing came to an abrupt communication, by means of Johann Carl Jacobj, had engineered developments. In her writings she and unfortunate end) led me to mediumship, with those who live a perfusion apparatus employing would cite mammalian studies of Utah almost three years ago, to a in the spirit world.”5 At the turn of canine lungs or the pulmonary resuscitation or reprint articles of parcel of land at the juncture where the 20th century, the spiritualist lobes of bovine as oxygenators.7 A drowning victims returned to health. four states meet. This woman movement was anchoring itself riveting breakthrough occurred in Her theosophy, as it developed, established a homestead and across the U.S. and Europe. 1926, when Russian cardiologist promoted a blend of spiritual and activated a community of believers, The formation of the National Sergei Sergeevich Brukhonenko scientifc thinking, a proto-New Age housing them in roughhewn cabins Spiritualist Association in 1893; designed a temporal, extracorporeal ideology. that radiated from inner to outer in Madame Helena P. Blavatsky’s circulation device (he named it concentric “portals.” Marie Margaret comprehensive writings (Isis the “autojector”) to support life The aftermath of World War Ogden (née Schneider) was her Unveiled, 1877, and The Secret while the heart was intentionally I, resulting in bereaved masses name and in 1933 she loaded a Doctrine, 1888), along with the stopped in order to allow the desiring to commune with their small luggage crate into the back of founding of the Theosophical repair of pulmonary injury. (The dead, also spurred spiritualism’s her Ford T-Model, locked the front Society (which, in notable contrast contemporary cryogenics increased popularity in the door of her New Jersey dwelling to the mainstream Spiritualist movement would argue that they early 1900s. The rise in female and rumbled west. movement, professed a belief are simply taking this idea to its practitioners (a demographic Marie arrived in Monticello, a in reincarnation) undoubtedly logical conclusion.) You have shift peaking in the mid-to-late rugged chunk of desert land in consummated its visibility in quite possibly viewed one of twentieth century) appears to San Juan County, southeastern mainstream society, but there Brukhonenko’s later experiments correlate with socio-political Utah, on 28th September 1933 were broader catalysts behind the in the form of a 19-minute video needs: the practice fourished as after witnessing the landscape phenomena gaining momentum clip, “Experiments in the Revival a vector of female authority not in a premonitory vision. Marie when it did. It is no coincidence only as a rebellion against death was pragmatic. She purchased that concurrently, advancements 6 Julien Jean César Legallois. 1770—1814, and forgetting, but as a directive mining claims in the adjacent Paris, France. 4 San Juan Record, Monticello, Utah. Blue Mountain range, leveraged 7 Igor E Konstantinov; Vladimir V 8 Experiments in the Revival of Organ- ownership of the town’s only 5 Defnition of spiritualism according to Alexi-Meskishvili; “Sergei S. Brukhonenko: isms : Techflm Studio, Moscow, Internet the National Spiritualist Association’s 1930 the development of the frst heart-lung Archive: https://archive.org/details/Exper- constitution. machine for total body perfusion” ime1940

7 against patriarchal dominion.9 marginalized women.10 Across the eradicating third person pronouns about petitioning Bloom’s bill to also Having made advantageous strides country, women were using a fuid, in favor of “friend.”12 The great include spiritualists and mediums.13 decades earlier, sufrage groups multi-dimensional identity as a strength of the saint, the mystic, the Meanwhile he mobilized coalitions found themselves, by 1918, back means of insurgency. spiritualist is their ability to connect of scientists and set about exposing in a conservative, post-war climate with a cosmic power that overrides the “charade” of spiritualism, all where an emphasis on restrained, For years, the “leaky” female the authority of an oppressive social the while increasing its notoriety in middle-class respectability body had been assailed for its order, making generative—or at public consciousness. narrowed opportunities for gender- permeability, its infrm partitions, least bearable—their time on earth. So while Mina “Margery” equitable progressivism. Less its tendency to contort or mutate, Crandon was throwing desks overtly political in its feminist but through an emergent mind- By the middle of the twentieth across her Boston room at the agenda, meetings held by female body practice uncoupled from century, spiritualist practices in whim of her deceased brother spiritualists aforded women governing laws of space or the U.S. were intersecting with Walt, all in the presence of the the means to exercise shades time, spiritualists deployed their commercial mediumship. So visible judicial Scientifc American research of informal authority in order to techniques to covertly embrace was this newly enterprising métier committee; and while Aimee leverage, where possible, more transgressive bodily acts. They that in the winter of 1926, New Semple McPherson, an L.A.-based potent reigns of infuence (let’s proudly presented a malleable York Congressman Sol Bloom radio evangelist, was courting not overlook First Lady Mary Todd body capable of manifesting a introduced legislation to congress a media spectacle after having Lincoln, who regularly consulted a plurality of identities, male and which sought to make fortune- been kidnapped or having staged female medium; or Madame Marcia female alike. An early precedent telling in the District of Columbia a her own kidnapping (consensus Champney, a famed clairvoyant for radical binary-noncompliance crime punishable by a $250 fne or undetermined), Marie Ogden was and horoscope reader who worked was Jemima Wilkinson, a.k.a. the up to six months in prison. While blazing a trail through the salt fats, closely with both Edith [Woodrow] Publick Universal Friend, who in the bill did not target spiritualists determined to leave Spiritualism’s Wilson and Florence [Harding] Kling 1776 announced that Christ had per se, an attack soon came in new sensationalism behind. at the Whitehouse). In New Orleans entered their body during an illness the form of Harry Houdini, famed and other southern regions, African so that subsequently they were magician and escape artist who By 1934, Marie’s Home of Truth Diasporan women promoted a neither female nor male, but “a holy was invited to testify on its behalf housed a little over 100 followers mysticism that was “pragmatic, vessel of Jesus Christ and God and before the House and Senate spread across three distinct living communal, transcendent and the Holy Spirit.”11 They renamed committee. Houdini, himself a quarters: the Outermost Point, holistic” as a means of religious themselves The “Publick Universal master of tricks, was determined the Middle Section, and the Inner activism powerful enough to Friend,” or variably, “All-Friend,” to expose what he perceived as Portal. Her closest confdents “make a way out of no way” for an industry riddled with crooks. In were the Peshak’s—Edith, Elmer, 10 Bostic, Joy; African American Female a courtroom showdown covered and their two children, who were 9 In her book, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Mysticism, Nineteenth-Century Religious heavily by the national press, he set Sister: Religions Dominated by Women Activism (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). 13 Jeremy, C.; “Empowering Passivity: (Oxford University Press, 1994), Susan 12 Sharon V. Betcher; “The Second De- Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the Starr Sered suggests that the high infant 11 For quotes from Jemima Wilkinson, see scent of the Spirit of Life From God”: 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing,” in Journal mortality rate of the 19th and early 20th the Wilkinson papers, a microflm collection The Assumption of Jemima Wilkinson. of Social History, Volume 48, Issue 2, 1 centuries contributed to female-led medi- owned by Cornell University Collection of Drew Theological School’s Journal of Mil- December 2014, Pages 341–362, https:// umship. Regional History, Ithaca, NY; 1951. lennial Studies, 1999 doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shu075

9 among the frst recruitments to like” and yellow. Fastidious in her cobwebs, discovered books relocate from their home in Idaho, observations, Marie eventually 2. (“Astrology and the Bible;” “Ancient selling their forty-acre ranch published these documents in her Numerology”), her notations in fve miles south of Boise and all newspaper as a serialized column In June of this year I stayed for pencil ghosting the margins. I covet their belongings in the process. titled ‘Rebirth of a Soul’— in several weeks at what remains these apparitions: a sharp, refective They came to Marie with the hindsight, a misstep which drew of Marie’s Home of Truth. There intellect; a compassionate thinker. understanding that she would unwanted attention to the largely is no one around for miles, but a On an earlier trip I sat for an hour attempt to cure Edith’s breast private community. By the mid- friendly groundskeeper shows up on the foor of Marie’s gusty cabin cancer. Over a period of six months, 1970s, only Marie and one loyal every couple of days to water the with a full moon elowing its way in. Marie practiced Divine Intervention companion remained, living in darling blue spruces. There is no It was halloween. In the exposed and healing practices on Edith’s solitude in the inner portal. Marie cellphone reception. No wif. Just rafters above a horned owl swiveled shrinking form. With meticulous eventually moved into a nursing a spatter of derelict cabins whose its head back and forth, blinking attention to detail, she documented home in Blanding, 5 miles from her wooden planks split-hiss as the occasionaly, cryptically, in a form of her process in a series of hand- Home, where she died in her sleep sun crucifes them. To reach the morse code. typed pages leading up Edith’s at the age of 94 in April 1975. The site requires driving some miles on expiration: last commune member, A.D. Miller, a narrow dirt road in the shadow of The truth is I’ve felt connected “Are you asleep?” came the stayed put until his death. In his fnal a sandstone formation known as to Marie since the day I frst whisper of Elmer Peshak, his voice, hours, he burned the remainder of Church Rock. Beneath it the baked stumbled upon her in the footnote as Ogden later described it, “full of Marie’s documents. earth is mud red with fssures, as of a lost article. Following the pathos and alarm.” Stacked inside a white silk box though a great terra-cotta pot had arc of her life—her background, “No, what is it?” beneath my bed are the xeroxed fallen in a mosaic of shards. The theosophical development, “I think Edith has passed on.” copies of former commune member air is a kiln radiating. And then and eventual role as spiritual “NO,” Marie gasped, “IT CANNOT Andrew Harold Palmer’s fnal out of nowhere by the side of the leader—has led to surprising BE.” recollections, scrawled on the back road a dead horse appears, or a investigative ofshoots. For of old black and white photographs. soft mound of suede disappearing instance, months spent observing On the commune, death was “Nov 10, 1981,” reads one, “75 1/2 itself. A clump of black hair in the Funerary Practice & Restorative not considered a certitude. Marie years old.” In darker pen, added breeze. In the desert it happens Arts classes at Cypress College, continued to administer healing later: “Now in 1985, 79 1/2 years like this. You accident into scenes, one of California’s few educational aids to Edith’s body, bathing it old.” On the reverse of a faded sidestepping potash lakes, baiting institutions that specializes in post- twice-daily in a salt solution and photo of Marie, Andrew had written: squirrels that nest in the couch. mortem cosmetics; conversing administering a tincture of milk Andrew Palmer the last survivor of At dusk a pack of coyotes heckle with Dr. Aubrey de Grey, famed and egg to nourish the fesh. this colony which is now a ghost each other as they zig-zag across gerontologist from the UK’s Oxford Throughout, she describes frequent town. I was there 2 years 1968- the canyon, tossing their laughter University and founder of SENS nose-bleeds. She describes 1970. 3 other men were were still from crest to butte. Against this (Strategies for Engineered Negligible the texture of Edith’s skin as it there then and 2 women, Marie + backdrop I transcribed every Senescence), a Silicon Valley shrinks and tightens around the her daughter Roberta. They are article, letter, and journal entry of research foundation dedicated to extremities, becomes “parchment- now all dead except me AHP. Marie’s I could locate. I batted “the application of regenerative

11 medicine to age-related disease,”— high on her head with pink ribbon. individual.”14 He’s gay. Supports In a manifesto written by fellow in other words, to curing aging and Diane follows my gaze. “That’s our Trump. Quotes Tolstoy in lectures. venture capitalist Bruce Gibney for age-related death; in collaboration youngest patient. A little three-year- He’s a contrarian. A disruptor. A Thiel’s , the central with Dr. Gwyn Madden, professor old girl from Thailand. Her parents chess campion. He bankrolled the premise is that social progress in in anthropology at Grand Valley come to visit on the anniversary campaign that shut down Gawker. the 21st-century is compromised State, devising a series of of her death, sort of like visiting a He has concluded that democracy by a lack of speculative creativity, mummifcation experiments to gravesite.” is not compatible with freedom, and a failure to harness for radical test preservation methods using would prefer to stand with the latter. global change the mammoth pig carcasses as proxies for the 3. “No Death, No Taxes,” a 2011 New technological progress achieved human corpse. Or think about Yorker headline quipped, but what over the course of the previous this: I spent Thanksgiving this year What logic enables us to the feature revealed was Thiel’s decade. Thiel and Gibney cite, as visiting the Alcor Life Extension invest such faith into vision? Who insistence on the “decline of the evidence of this shortcoming, the facility, a cryonics laboratory on the is #blessed with suprasensorial future—an inability to imagine.” collapse of contemporary science outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. Inside gifts? Who is cursed? Who Last year Earl Gravy was invited fction—that even our art has dried of an unassuming grey building— benefts? While it is true that by artist-curator Joey Cannizzaro up, has succumbed to well-worn one of several identical structures lunatic perspectives have propelled to partake in a project titled tropes that default to pessimism comprising the Scottsdale retail modern progress (the idea of “Mystic Hyperstitions in the Heart routed through fear rather than park—twelve stainless steel tanks the airplane seemed mad before of the Empire” in conjunction with optimistic projection, a trend they on coasters dominate a back someone proved it could work) it is IndyMoca. Cannizzaro’s complaint, trace back to the new wave, nihilist room. “Inside each of these tanks,” also true that the feld of invention is outlined in his curatorial essay, sci-f typifed by J. G. Ballard Diane (Alcor’s P.R. rep.) says, littered with failures. So perhaps the crystalized much of what Thiel, a and Philip K. Dick. No mention, “there are four bodies suspended. most surprising defciency of our fstful of futurists, and some radical however, of the vast unethical They’re head down, feet up— contemporary moment is evidenced left-leaning theorists15 have been wealth gap that perpetuates incase we lose liquid nitrogen levels by an empty boneyard—a failure arguing for years: that a lack of institutionalized impediments in an emergency.” Alcor currently to imagine at all. “We wanted plausible, positive futurist narratives to basic human rights, let alone houses 154 patients (not including fying cars, instead we got 140 in the creative sector fnds its direct unabashed fantastical thinking. pets) in a state of suspended characters,” ’s venture corollary in the petrifcation of No acknowledgement of their animation with the goal of future capitalist frm Founders Fund inventive imagineering in political, companies’ implications in the revival. The tanks are phenomenal. infamously lamented in its online social and [bio]technological realms. widespread, systematic injustices Towering cylinders that stand about manifesto. Thiel, a libertarian that cripple social-economic sixteen-feet tall. They are utilitarian venture capitalist and the frst 14 Peter Thiel Response Essays April 13, mobility, necessitating redistributive 2009 TweetLikeSubmitPlus. “The Education structures with a sci-f infection, outside investor in Facebook, is of a Libertarian.” Cato Unbound, 30 Apr. measures that can likely only be largely anonymous except for one a billionaire who stands against 2014, www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/ leveraged through democratic whose facade grabs my attention. “confscatory taxes, totalitarian peter-thiel/education-libertarian. First pub- government. No mention, either, Pasted on the front at about eye collectives, and the ideology of the lished April 2009 that this shattered optimism might level is a small photograph of a inevitability of the death of every 15 Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams. Invent- be tied up in austerity measures, grinning child. She has pigtails tied ing the future: postcapitalism and a world stagnant wages and market without work. Verso, 2015.

13 deregulation. But these are not prior incarnation? Ten times the company, founded by Thiel in the concerns of Silicon Valley’s commitment to its party ideals? If 2003, that specializes in big data Whether in response to Thiel’s top brass. These are pedestrian every “artwork” I made ten-upped analysis. It contracts with military call to action, or merely a reaction irks; earthbound issues that Alex da Corte’s “Eastern Sports”? clients, security and intelligence to the sly but ever-increasing billionaires believe can be dealt If every essay outdid Anne Carson? outfts, as well as large fnancial encroachment of his high-tech with through techno-salvation or The impossibility of it would no institutions. One of its research products, artist groups are else left behind altogether when doubt be thinning. But perhaps that tracts, Palantir Gotham, oversees beginning to mobilize in ways that they—the big leagues—leave wouldn’t be a problem either: so “Palantir Law Enforcement,” a do have the potential to renew town. If I sound bitter, it’s because strong is Thiel-Gibney’s conviction software collaboration platform art’s potency beyond endless I also know that Thiel’s argument that the pair launched a narrative integrated with the Los Angeles self-referentiality. The New Inquiry, contains at least a small grain of podcast, broadcast direct from Police Department, amongst an online magazine of cultural truth. Techno-utopians’ rejection their VC portfolio site. “Because others nationwide. Palantir’s and literary criticism, recently of timid propositions in favor of the stories we consume shape the software was designed to spawned an aggressive mutant what the Valley at large likes to world,” Gibney pronounces in his streamline data processing and ofspring known as the Dark Inquiry, call “moonshot thinking”—radical opening gambit, sounding himself expedite interdepartmental sharing “a project-driven collective of solutions to big problems—does like an artless Joan Didion. One capabilities, but more recently it has technologists, artists, writers, and deliver an efcacy absent in other could argue that this move—a played a pivotal role in “predictive investigative researchers convened sectors. This is especially sobering venture capital portfolio cum media policing,” the idea that historical to deploy a series of situated, given our current political modus platform—is above all indicative of data can provide clues as to where confrontational, rhetorically- operandi, which looks a lot like dark times. Season one, “Anatomy crimes might occur in the future. deliberate experiments through doing nothing. “You want to have of Next: Utopia,” features episodes Police personnel will say that software.” The group just launched a technology that is an order of on CRISPR/Cas9, a molecular Palantir’s crystal ball feature afords a provocative web app aimed at magnitude better than the next best gene editing strategy, as well as a them the opportunity to deter crime repurposing a technology typically thing,” Thiel regularly proclaims to “Stories” portal featuring essays prematurely, before it even occurs— deployed by (mostly) white, male, business and economic students and conversations on topics such an application of non-punitive social techno-libertarians, inverting its use across the country. What he means as “Who’s Afraid of A.I.?”, “Machine intervention bolstered by holistic for social good: cue “Bail Bloc,” is that every new product should Economy: What About A [Basic] social service support. Another an app that once installed, runs strive to be at least ten times better Universal Income?” and “New way to see it might be this: that by in the background of an active than its predecessor, anything less Realities.” assessing the future on what came computer and continually mines a is an unworthy endeavor destined Even more sinister than a before, the software is complicit type of anonymous cryptocurrency to fail.16 What would our universe foray into self-authored info- in the perpetuation of economic called Monero, exchanging it for look like if a political party pledged entertainment is Silicon Valley’s and racial injustices, dubiously U.S. dollars which are automatically ten-fold efciency compared to its surreptitious interventions into portrayed as statistical truth, whose donated to the Bronx Freedom multiple high-stakes fractions of resultant interactions are potentially 17 16 How to Start a Startup on News Ge- civic life. Palantir (named after (frequently) fatal. Policing | Backchannel.” Wired, Conde nius.” Lecture 5 - How to Start a Startup, the “far-seeing stone” in Tolkien’s Nast, 10 Aug. 2017, www.wired.com/story/ startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/ legendarium) is a private software 17 See: Harris, Mark. “How Peter Thiel’s how-peter-thiels-secretive-data-compa- lec05/. Secretive Data Company Pushed Into ny-pushed-into-policing/ for more info.

15 Fund and used to post bail for low- “folk politics”). DeepMind19, an artifcial intelligence the social contract). Their core income detainees. It will be projects Laboria Cuboniks reminds company with a near-mystical, message was one of unfettered like this, invoking Laboria Cuboniks us that to slow down, scale private ethics board and new, “freedom.” “Biology is no longer 2016 clarion call “XENOFEMINISM: back; to purchase expensive, public facing “Ethics and Society” destiny,” one key member wrote A Politics for Alienation” (a.k.a. second growth redwood forests arm. DeepMind are developing in an Extropian blog post, “we “XF Manifesto”) that rally against in Mendocino County and live applications for hybrid computing, can become whatever we want what the artist group perceives as in hand-razed, hand-thrown neural networking and deep to be.” This tenet of the Extropian “an outdated post-modern idea ceramic beauty is a possibility reinforcement learning, making dream was manifest through its that irrationality or impediment to for the privileged few only. I read huge strides towards, as they put it, frequent re-naming conventions. functionality was emancipatory.” an interview with Cuboniks a “solving the problem of intelligence.” Founder Max O’Connor shed Instead they call for an accelerated while back in which they cited A shadowy hermeticism encircles his Irish ancestral indicators and exploitation of scalable platforms; the now infamous quote by this company, as well as several became Max More (current CEO of for retooling, for subverting political philosopher Jodi Dean: others bound to Silicon Valley’s Alcor Life Extension Foundation). emerging technologies. “XF is not a “Goldman Sach’s doesn’t care most provocative overlords. Mark Potts became Mark Plus. bid for revolution,” they write, “but a if you raise chickens,” implying Their websites all look the same, Tom Morrow, an Extropian legal wager on the long game of history, that individual “back to basics” interchangeable in both design theorist who cofounded the demanding imagination, dexterity tactics are futile armaments and tone. Their prose is sleek and Extropian Journal with More and persistence.”18 Echoing against the growing stratifcation of well-written but its accessibility is in 1988, as you’ve probably sentiments of Nick Srnicek and global society under hegemonic- suspicious. Perhaps their afability guessed, is also a constructed Alex Williams’ Inventing the Future oligarchical rule. But would the is untrustable because behind the moniker. E.M. Esfandiary, an early (Verso, 2015), Laboria Cuboniks picture look diferent if everyone facade, one knows that they share futurist, went even further, legally attempts to furnish an instructional in California quit chomping the outgrowth ideologies with a less recasting himself as FM-2030, a for how best to evade the clutches meat simultaneously—and for hospitable progenitor movement of memorandum to his 100th birthday of neo-colonial, capitalist rationality good? Expansive, system-wide the late 1980s and 90s, one with which he hoped to celebrate (he while embracing, as practical, commitment is where Thiel and his the plucky name of “Extropianism.” died in 2000 and was suspended accelerationist methodologies. big data/big dollar excel. Silicon at Alcor’s cryonics facility). Their primary request, in keeping Valley is thus far surpassing most 4. At the height of the movement, with Srnicek and Williams, is other organizations with their ability the Extropians gathered for regular that artists refocus their activist to build and implement large-scale The Extropians were a fringe meetings at an Extropian-exclusive eforts on coordinated, systematic platforms for human behavioral group of individualists active at boarding house in Sunnyvale, operations rather than localized, manipulation. Fabulous conjurings the end of the twentieth century, California, a sort of HQ they reactive (and, they argue, and absurd disruptions now more united by a “philosophy of afectionally termed “Nextropia.”20 insufcient) gestures (what Srnicek often that not reside in the domain freedom” (or extreme, tech-centric “Just don’t call it a commune,” Max and Williams questionably term of the multi-national conglomerate. cyberlibertarianism) who believed, 20 In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the An example: ’s parent indeed practiced, distance from Hellmouth town is called Sunnydale, a 18 Laboria Cuboniks “XENOFEMINIST,” company, Alphabet Inc., owns limitations of any kind (including “generic California suburb” north of Los http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/20150612- Angeles, according to series creator Joss xf_layout_web.pdf 19 DeepMind, .com/. Whedon.

17 More told a reporter at the time. Hungry. Clean the atmosphere. was less conficted: “Because there shares equally as suspect an “The very term makes us shudder. It Restore the oceans. Live in balance are no truly free places left in our urge for ideological purity for a implies common ownership.”21 with nature. Power the world world, I suspect that the mode for few. Balaji Srinivasan, Computer sustainably. Stop fghting.”22), it escape must involve some sort of Science lecturer at Stanford Tom Morrow proposed an idea is naive to assume that anyone new and hitherto untried process University and current partner in he called “Free Oceana” in 1998, outside of the 1% will ever have that leads us to some undiscovered Silicon Valley venture capitalist frm a community of Extropians living in access to this or any other “Blue country; and for this reason I Andreesen Horowitz, discussed artifcial islands at sea. It was pure Frontier.” Nevertheless, Friedman’s have focused my eforts on new his secessionist ideas recently fantasy at the time. But in 2008, missive that action has more clout technologies that may create a new during a speech to a crowd of tech Patri Friedman (grandson of famed than language might prove to be space for freedom.”25 entrepreneurs; free-market economist Milton true. Don’t tell people about foating We want to show what a society Friedman) started the Seasteading cities, he says, just go ahead and While early Extropians might run by Silicon Valley would look Institute, of which Peter Thiel was make it reality. The people will have considered themselves part like. That’s where ‘exit’ comes an early funder. A note from their follow. of a “global, placeless, timeless, in... It basically means: build an website reads, “The Seasteading limitless horizon,” (“There are no opt-in society, ultimately outside Institute is a nonproft think-tank Reading about this, I was illegal immigrants,” said FM-- the US, run by technology. And working to provide a machinery of reminded of artist Andrea Zittel’s 2030, “just irrelevant borders.”26) this is actually where the [Silicon] freedom to choose new societies “Indy Island,” a habitable, foating the recent charge to “exit” rears Valley is going. This is where we’re on the blue frontier. The most fberglass structure located in the its nationalistic voice in Brexit, going over the next ten years … successful foating cities can then 100 Acres lake in Indianapolis. with various populist groups [Google co-founder] Larry Page, inspire change around the world.” Zittel, in an interview, stated, “The advocating secession. CalExit, a for example, wants to set aside a The Seasteading Institute just idea of an island appeals to me brief call for California to disband part of the world for unregulated launched Blue Frontiers, an ofshoot as representation of many of the from the rest of the U.S. under a experimentation.”27 subsidiary, in a bid to execute values that we strive for in our banner of extreme progressivism To exit, to colonize, to remake, is their “Floating Island Project” via a 21st-century culture: individualism, staked to Western consciousness. partnership with French Polynesia independence, autonomy, and U.S. via lucrative design competitions, in- Cults, communes, religions, which will see the frst foating self-sufciency. Yet at the same cluding with California Institute of the Arts. utopias—they share a similar village complete by 2020. In spite of time, these are the same desires See: http://biodesignchallenge.org/ isolationist sentiment, an extreme declaring their vision “meta-political” that isolate us and lessen collective 25 Peter Thiel Response Essays April 13, envisioning of elsewhere or beyond. and presenting an auspicious social and political power.”2324 Thiel 2009 TweetLikeSubmitPlus. “The Education Sometimes, of better. Sometimes humanitarian bent online (“The Eight of a Libertarian.” Cato Unbound, 30 Apr. not. Most often, though, these 22 Blue Frontiers, www.blue-frontiers.com/. 2014, www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/ Great Moral Imperatives: Enrich peter-thiel/education-libertarian. First pub- maneuvers reveal a cavalier attitude the poor. Cure the Sick. Feed the 23 Art 21 Blog. “The Island in 100 Acres: lished April 2009 towards the wellbeing of the-left- An Interview with Andrea Zittel”. Retrieved 2011-06-16. 26 Martin, Douglas. “Futurist Known as FM- 27 Giridharadas, Anand. “Silicon Valley 21 Regis, Ed. “Meet the Extropians.” Wired, 2030 Is Dead at 69.” The New York Times, Roused by Secession Call.” The New Conde Nast, 14 Dec. 2017, www.wired. 24 See Silicon Valley’s recent attempts to The New York Times, 10 July 2000, www. York Times, The New York Times, 28 Oct. com/1994/10/extropians/. First published diversify their receptive audience base by nytimes.com/2000/07/11/us/futurist-known- 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/us/sili- October 1994 partnering with arts institutions across the as-fm-2030-is-dead-at-69.html. con-valley-roused-by-secession-call.html.

19 behind. Fringe groups in particular instruct over and over again that thrust their energies full-force into she “answer boldly.” the most outrageous, preposterous, And like Marie Ogden—whose own and controversial of social projects, application of interventionist healing the benefciaries of which are yet to cost her most everything, not least be counted. Writing this in January the community she’d risked all to 2018, it is clear, to quote painter build. Ultimately, Marie’s narrative and essayist Maciej Ceglowski, anchors an examination of human that “there is a bug in the operating desire; of women who risk their system of our democracy,” and fnite, present-tense selves in the the complicated politics of those hope of rewriting the concept of trampling full speed towards what “future.” might be considered the fnal frontier of human capability: that of revising the human lifespan— of preventing death altogether, will require collective and varied oversight from across society’s Emma Kemp strata. Jan 25, 2018 As artists, we venerate those who attempt to think/glide/ chop/soar through channels not immediately obvious or clearly defned; who are keen hunters of a foul-smelling, psychotropic perfume; who act like persons drawing water with a pail and do so consciously, and with compassion. We share solidarity with women like Marguerite who express no apology for trespassing male terrain in writing about the highest spiritual orders; like Joan of Arc, whose trial manuscript reveals a fearless Blue Frontiers artist concept rendering defance in the face of orthodoxy, citing correspondences with Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret who

21 23 build THE CREED build the house build the trees 15 over 3: build the community

1. In the beginning yoon tae and his sons isaac isaiah Then, on a leather pleather strip It snapped of boat under light bulbs (down) over milk diet honey at the end of a hymn pulpit teeth: I love you. 15 over 4:

2. When it arrived The adults drinks on hands we were in the late on the third closet strung up with bedsheet the and 7:00 sidewalk Philistines fnd us in the river rolling surrounded its wheels pulpit teeth: The tires I love you. coughed, eyes 3. slicked glossy He who gave his life to the Apostle Esther with shades, Deacon Yoo with white sheets paper it stood itself up plastering the nails that will plaster the walls that will plaster proclaimed: pulpit teeth 1. Love you. Paint with wafer paint with styrofoam, she started, 4. 16 by 12 inches the congregation that will build paint with glass looking

25 4x4x4 of yours? build the fence with pulp 5. 2 of each He and put his hand welcome (s) to the neighborhood on my shoulder on 7:33 2. and it hasn’t Floss the fber glass (left) since in the window, 6. going on, Finally sang: I had 3 of them bubble gum snap then and walked them the rock and roll music down numbers C#, D7 numbers numbers On that night, the escape route,

3. anoint the children Have you been lately? one by one asking, in soda pop 2 weeks ago and now today night, 15 over 5: will you please for me? 1. He is the knowledge and the glory and the truth 4. forever Hugo, In him: continuing, Amen when are you getting over that damn 2nd grade 2. Cousin told me they drank without believing and cold hit with a Dodge a week later

27 Amen. 9. (Lost?? 3. I heard if you beat the high score one-hundred The Piano will times, usher your way out) you unlock the secret level. Amen. 10. The blood that for binds the water in we us 4. Swallow a Warhead through your throat and covenant the it’ll plant its roots inside Amen then blossom, (underneath) 11. I promise I didn’t do it forever and ever Amen. Amen.

5. Stuck-- stuck there for 2 weeks. And you weren’t (there) Amen.

6. I heard, at the (end), him say the love will let itself in one day. Peter Hong, 2018 Amen.

7. Light blinked red. (blinking) (down)

8. (underneath) (underneath) the love seeped its way to me (underneath).

29 FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE HOME OF TRUTH

31 33 SOJURNER TRUTH J.H.R. MATTESON HELENA BLAVATSKY Abolitionist and Occultist, spirit women’s rights activist medium, and author called by God to who co-founded the preach. Theosophical Society ANNIE BESANT in 1875. Socialist, theos- ophist, women’s rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule. NELLIE SIMMONS MEIER Celebrity palmist. JARENA LEE B.1783 in Cape May, New Jersey, Jarena was called to preach by voices and AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON visitations, be- Celbrity Christian evangelist coming the frst and faith healer. female preacher in the African Methodist Epis- copal Church. Tuckaway House Collection, Indiana Images LEAFY ANDERSON JEMIMA WILKINSON MOTHER CATHERINE SEARS

Photograph of Mother Cath- erine, successor of Leafy An- derson, and her congregation at the Temple of the Innocent Blood, ca. 1929.

AKA The Public Universal Friend. Founder of the Spiritual Church Movement in New Orleans, HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLEC- Louisiana in the 1920s, a loose group of churches largely TION. based in the African American community.

35 CRYOBIOLOGY VS. CRYONICS

CRYOBIOLOGY CRYONICS

+ The science that studies + The practice of suspending/ the preservation of biological preserving biological material materials by cooling them to (whole organisms) by cooling cryogenic temperatures (tem- them to cryogenic tempera- peratures below -180 °C). tures in anticipation of demon- strable reversibility/reanimation. + Scientists working within a timeframe of testable hypoth- + Practioners taking action eses. now (speculative vision) in hopes of advanced technology + Proposed applicaions include becoming available in the future long-term storage solutions for to fulfll presently unattainable biomatter, i.e., organ banking goals. for use in organ transplant surgery. + Working outside of/beyond current testable hypotheses.

+ Proposed applications include whole-body/neuro reanimation.

37 On July 8, 2000, FM-2030 FM-2030 died from pancreatic cancer and On the opposite page is a was placed in cryonic suspension at photograph of FM-2030 (b.1930). the Alcor Life Extension Foundation You’re looking at a Belgian-born in Scottsdale, Arizona, where his Iranian-American author, teacher, body remains today. transhumanist philosopher, futurist, consultant and athlete (playing for the Iranian national basketball team at the 1948 London Summer Olym- pics). He came to North America for college, studying at the University of California, Los Angeles. By the mid- 1970s, Fereidoun M. Esfandiary had legally changed his name to FM- 2030. (He believed he to would live to celebrate his 100th birthday, and fought against naming conventions that he saw as rooted in a nostal- gic, collectivist mentality (ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, religion). “I am not who I was ten years ago,” he said, “and certainly not who I will be in twenty years.”

FM-2030 authored several books, fction and non-fction, outlining his futurist manifestos, all written in a style he callec “Unil- ang,” a fast-paced, no-fuss prose that sought to mimic the immediacy of the computer. “I have tried to Read more at http://archive.bidoun. approximate the rhythm of electron- org/magazine/19-noise/the-future- ics,” he later said. “Most books are takes-forever-becoming-fm-2030- too long, too wordy, too slow. “ by-benjamin-tiven/. Image from the F.M. Esfandiary Archive at the New York Public Library

39 efective doses of SSRIs. You can ozone layer is getting deeper. The earth is overcrowded and the seas ONE PILL, TWO PILL; RED never un-know a fact like that. train needs to keep moving or it will are dead; Soylent is a desperate freeze, along with all on board— ration made from soy and lentils. In PILL, BLUE PILL Eve Sedgwick and her friend the last human beings on Earth. the flm adaptation, Soylent Green, Cindy Patton sit on the rug, in the The plane needs to keep above even though the earth is over- Morpheus, god of dreams, stirrings of another crisis—early a certain speed or it will crash. crowded and the seas are dead, holds out two pills. Take the blue 80s, early Reagan, early AIDS. “I What if we knew for a fact that the Soylent Corporation claims its pill, you wake up in bed like noth- mean, even suppose we were sure the megachurch never planned to product is made from “plankton.” ing happened. Take the red pill, of every element of a conspiracy,” open its doors to food victims, or Corporations aren’t people so much you wake up choking in a pod of Patton says: “That the lives of that a cost-beneft analysis advised as corpses—bodies that have never nutrient goop, the bioelectric energy Africans and African Americans against repairing the 9th Ward levy. truly lived. Corporations are people of your and a million other human are worthless in the eyes of the Suppose we knew beyond doubt in the way that Soylent Green is bodies collected in the power coils United States; that gay men and that our leader is a racist and a people. of the sentient machines. Isn’t this drug users are held cheap where plutocrat and a liar, and the puppet the dream—? to take part in the they aren’t actively hated; that the of a foreign power; and what if righteous revolution; to cut through military deliberately researches we were sure that this fgure, the the illusion to the bone of truth; to ways to kill noncombatants whom grotesque embodiment of a dying have the extra-human powers of it sees as enemies; that people in patriarchy, is so angry that he’s the real? As Mark Fisher points out, power look calmly on the likelihood going to die; and so selfsh that he The Matrix is a movie about escap- of catastrophic environmental and wants the world to end with him. ing the simulation and smashing population changes. Supposing What would we know then that we the system, but inside the Matrix we were ever so sure of all those don’t already know? is where all the cool stuf happens. things—what would we know then Morpheus, in the Matrix, is seated that we don’t already know?” For Soylent by Rosa Foods, Inc., in a ruby red leather wingback chair. a long time, paranoia has been a nutritionally complete ready-to- the mode of both our politics and drink meal, is made from the two In the head of the train they eat our critical theory. The paranoid main proteins found in soybeans, sushi twice a year. In the tail they style: Our tendency to romanticize plus a full range of essential nu- Travis Diehl eat blocks of protein jelly. Among pathology on the one hand, and trients. Rosa Foods wants you to December 28, 2017 the insights that the rebels gain as deconstruct it on the other. Maybe know exactly what your food is they make their bloody way from it’s time to try depression instead. made of. They make no secret of tail to head is that their rations are An attempt: “The exact mechanism the fact that they use GMO ingre- made of ground and boiled roach- of action of SSRIs is unknown.” dients where possible, since the es. When the rebels reach the head benefts in efciency and envi- of the plane the rebel leader kills * ronmentalism outweigh the risks the pilot and takes their place. Fish The globe is heating up, sea lev- of harmful mutation. In the novel swimming in recycled water contain els are rising, the rabbit hole in the Make Room, Make Room!, the

41 43 45 47 AN ASSOCIATIVE RESPONSE self is perhaps thinner and more forward claiming Mark brainwashed Earl Gravy’s video work “The permeable than most, and yet I them. According to legal flings Divine Omelette” (presented in TO EARL GRAVY’S “THE DIVINE cannot lose it. I experience my with St. Louis County Circuit Court, the Los Angeles exhibition of OMELETTE” PREPARED IN PART body colliding repeatedly with the Mark implanted false memories of HOME BODIES, AWAY TEAMS in FOR THE UTAH MUSEUM OF fact of the universe: I get agitated, I Satanic and sexual abuse while October 2017) features footage ON THE EVE get nauseous, I experience vertigo his patients were under the efects from Marshall Applewhite’s fnal at indoor shopping malls. of hypnosis. Some patients were video missive, “Do’s Final Exit,” OF 2018 made to believe they had once which Applewhite recorded from In my memory, Castlewood participated in the ritual sacrifcing an upscale San Diego gated ON CULTS/WHETHER I WAS IN exists only in brilliant white fashes, of a baby. Others became community on March 19, 1997 ONE not unlike the experience of taking convinced they sufered from – just days before orchestrating a photograph. I remember piles multiple personalities. One woman one of the most widely publicized I am here to talk to you about of soiled hospital gowns outside said she later attempted suicide as mass suicides of the 20th century. Art, but frst I have to talk to you the weigh room, fertility statutes a result. Approximately two decades earlier, about cults. About Heaven’s Gate, and dirty fsh tanks, drool that Applewhite, known to his followers Castlewood, and the Home of collected in pools along my cheek Despite my presence at the time by his spiritual alias “Do,” formed Truth. About Silicon Valley, and and collarbone when I woke from in question, I can’t tell you whether the UFO religious cult Heaven’s about the Institute. First, I have to guided meditation sessions where Mark did in fact do these things, Gate, understanding himself to talk to you about God. I couldn’t remember exactly where just like I can’t tell you why years be an extraterrestrial delivered I had been led. I remember the frst later my friend Stephanie still blacks to Earth by God to fulfll biblical Whether or not I have previously time that I saw Castlewood’s then out from time to time and wakes up prophecies set forth in the Book been a member of a cult is clinical director Mark Schwartz, but outside in the pouring rain, worms of Revelation. In accordance something still up for debate. When I don’t remember where or when it crawling into her waistband. The with Do’s teachings, members of I arrived at Castlewood Treatment was that I saw him. I have only the more I search for Truth, hard fact, Heaven’s Gate believed Earth’s Center – a residential clinic for image: a white man with white hair defnitives, the more I come up destruction was imminent. Luckily, anorexics and bulimics located in wearing white linen. against my own wobbliness, the however, salvation was contained the secluded Missouri woodlands less and less I feel healed. All I can within the Hale-Bopp Comet, which of Castlewood State Park – I was “Mark thought he was God,” tell you is that day in Monterey Mark concealed an alien spaceship 18, malnourished, overmedicated my friend Stephanie quips years greeted me wearing dull loafers, no upon which they could hitch a ride and as they say, vulnerable. Here later, before I drive out to visit socks, and a worn Mohair sweater directly to Heaven – they just had I have placed vulnerable in italics Mark in Monterey, where he has that was piling. In my notebook, I to evacuate their human bodies to emphasize my suspicion of its lived in quiet obscurity since a wrote of the meeting: Since when frst by drinking phenobarbital. importance within the scenario series of bizarre lawsuits resulted does God drive an Acura? at hand. I have been vulnerable in his loss of licensure to practice Arguably, the most famous thing all my life. I am a writer, an artist. psychology in the state of Missouri. ON MATERIAL COLLISIONS WITH about Heaven’s Gate remains its The membrane between my Since 2011, a number of former THE SPIRITUAL WORLD aesthetic, which was broadcast self and the world outside my Castlewood patients have come on national TV upon discovery of

49 the suicides. All 39 followers died organized by Mark Sladen and in the subjectivity of an artist’s wearing identical tracksuits with Barbican Gallery in London. response to the world? Isn’t that “If you believe the human armbands that read “Heaven’s the diference between making brain is anything diferent than a Gate Away Team,” as well as a painting and conducting a machine, then what you’re saying matching black and white sneakers ON THE QUESTION OF SCIENCE science experiment? Between is you believe in magic!” he says – Nike Decades, fresh from the VS. ART collecting algorithmic data and laughing, nearly beside himself, but box. Alien lifeforms and interstellar choreographing a dance routine? not quite. spacecraft aside, it seems Do’s Not long ago I was sitting in on a The residue of our awful human vision of Heaven resembled life critique with Tom Lawson at CalArts hand? “If only I could see a landscape on Earth in the 1990s at least when Lawson raised the question as it is when I am not there,” the enough to include time and space of science vs. art. The work being I wonder about the artist of this writer Simone Weil brooded. for casual ftness in perpetuity. But critiqued was an untitled sound piece, about his noticeable (albeit the cultic look of cool California piece wherein the artist created unspoken) muscular dystrophy Don’t we always stand in the way? sportswear reveals itself as more eight diferent sound recordings of limp as he retreated from the achingly ordinary when examined the gallery space we were sitting gallery that day, and about how ON SPIRITUAL COLLISIONS WITH up close: According to a few in at the time. Noting an underlying consciously something like terminal THE MATERIAL WORLD mysterious members that survive interest in the point at which music illness might dictate the priorities to this day, Do appreciated a good and musicality fuse within our set within an artistic investigation. In addition to footage of deal; he bought the sneakers in perceptive capacities, the artist then I wonder also about the division Heaven’s Gate, also included in bulk. arranged and resynthesized these drawn by Lawson, about whether Earl Gravy’s “The Divine Omelette” recordings so that what listeners contemporary science is always is a sort of DIY re-staging of Nike’s sole comment on the experienced was a heightened so neatly detached from human reincarnation practices originally suicides was a statement issued to rendering of the gallery’s structural subjectivity, or if the boundary line developed by Marie Ogden, Adweek in 1997, in which company HVAC system difused back into the between our material and spiritual founder of the Home of Truth – a representative Jim Small called the space while it continued to make investigations is actually more short-lived Spiritualist commune incident a “tragedy,” before adding: more of the same sounds in real slippery than that. mainly active during the 1930/40s “It had nothing to with Nike.” time. It was almost like listening to a in San Juan County, Utah. symphony, but not that, not quite. It’s in instances like these that ON SHOES I can’t help but think of my father, Marie established the Home What no one seemed to be a technologically devout computer of Truth believing the realm of “Why can’t art be positive, able to locate was the artist’s own scientist who believes in Moore’s the living to be connected to the something as real as the wall or my stakehood in the piece, the soul Law as I imagine most Christians afterworld by an invisible cord. The shoe?” ripped from the body and ofered believe in the resurrection of souls of the dead had the power to up as blunt sacrifce, the not Christ. It’s his faith in the fact of choose whether or not to cut the - A quote from Katy Siegel’s 2001 quite that seemed to be missing. technology, the sturdiness that it cord and thus permanently pass essay (“Do It Yourself!”) on the “the Don’t we engage in art, Lawson promises, which restores his sense on. Alternatively, the dead could americans. new art” exhibition posed, because we’re interested of existential order again and again. keep the cord intact and remain

51 in communication with the living I have to return to the beginning The book is a remarkably I thought God was a thing of the world, wherein rebirth was thought again. Many practitioners within biblical, nearly 600-page tome. past. I didn’t know I’d be a writer possible using a combination the therapeutic community point I remember my roommate then. I didn’t know there were still of salt baths and milk and egg to the controversial self-help book Stephanie’s copy at Castlewood – people who believed. enemas. “The Courage to Heal” as the origin a 20th Anniversary Edition – which for beliefs about the existence of sat unopened for months on our ON SPIDERWEBS A writer as well, Marie claimed Satanic ritual abuse and recovered shared nightstand, collecting dust. to receive messages directly memories – or False Memory Stephanie never bothered with “[F]or fction, imaginative work from God through her typewriter. Syndrome, depending on who you “The Courage to Heal”, but plenty that is, is not dropped like a pebble As a result, Marie’s attempt to ask. The book was frst published of other patients did at Mark’s upon the ground as science may reincarnate one recently deceased in 1988 by Ellen Bass and Laura suggestion – including one woman be; fction is like a spider’s web, colony member, Edith Peshak, David, who ofer a series of writing named Hailie, a now tenuously attached ever so lightly perhaps, is surprisingly well documented exercises for individuals exhibiting recovered anorexic, the daughter but still attached at all four through regular installments a general set of symptoms of two nondenominational Christian corners… [W]hen the web is pulled of Marie’s newspaper column, related to childhood sexual abuse ministers. askew, hooked up at the edge, torn “Rebirth of a Soul,” published in the (eating disorders, depression, in the middle, one remembers that San Juan Record. anxiety, nightmares…), but whose In an interview with me, Hailie these webs are not spun in mid-air memories of which may have been equates Castlewood with a “certain by incorporeal creatures, but are In one such column, Marie repressed. kind of magic.” “It’s Mark embodied the work of sufering human beings, enthusiastically describes the in an organization,” she says. and are attached to grossly material postmortem discharge of blood It’s important to note that “That’s a really magical thing and things, like health and money and and excrement from Edith’s corpse authors Bass and David are also a really fucked up thing, just the things we live in.” as unmistakable proof of her both poets who were widely by nature.” soul’s returning presence, as if criticized for having no scientifc -A quote from Virginia Woolf’s “A the messiness of the body can be or psychotherapeutic background Do you believe in magic? In Art? Room of One’s Own” something entered into at will. before publishing “The Courage In God? I admit I don’t know much to Heal,” which quickly became a about the Bible. I grew up in Silicon REINCARNATION AGAIN (ONCE ON ART/NOT ART bestseller despite its lack of basis Valley in the 1990s, the only child MORE FOR GOOD MEASURE) on any accepted psychological of a gifted software inventor and “It’s not not art.” theories. The authors instead an ex-Catholic nurse. My father Look, this essay is almost ofer expressive tools to help used logic to protect me from the over and still I haven’t explained -A quote from Stephen Wright’s unconditionally legitimatize each terrifying myth of my self: He tried anything. Let me try once more: conversation with Raivo Puusemp individual experience of abuse, to teach me early that intuition at CalArts (June 2017). stating: “Writing is an important was just another subconscious It is Marie’s recipe for avenue for healing because it gives computation, that my emotions reincarnation we see executed ON MYTH AND ON MAGIC you the opportunity to defne your could be programmable. By the in “The Divine Omelette,” except own reality.” time I entered the second grade, artists Earl Gravy perform the

53 procedure on a raw chicken from Kroger’s, not a human corpse. Viewers might wonder if what they’re witnessing in the video is indeed an artwork or someone’s science experiment; someone’s science experiment or someone’s nervous breakdown. We see a headless body wearing latex gloves while performing crude, not quite surgical actions on the chicken’s lifeless form. Injections of milk and egg yolk are administered. A light bulb is placed inside its empty cavity and switched on. When at one point the chicken is packed full of hard boiled eggs, you start to feel itchy and uncomfortable – there is the nervous sense of trying to cover a hole back up, like a kid caught in a fower garden. Roy Orbison’s “Crying” plays in the background. There are no more words than this. We are hereby launched into the experience of our own loneliness by the material at hand. What can be more Art than that?

-- Adriana Widdoes, 2018

The Alexamenos grafto, c. 200. “Alexamenos worships [his] God,”

55 57 technical or precise or that requires an ing diferent ways to acquire new skills, AN INTERVIEW: GRACE NDIRITU intentional process, and so I was just because time is a huge factor. Learning Joey: Yeah yeah! And at the same WITH JOEY & DAN OF THE BFLG like, “Dan, I have no clue how the fuck on your own takes time, even outside time I think that the reason it works is to make anything with plastic” pretty a classroom, it requires resources. And that you have to let go of mastery and Grace: Today’s date is Nov much. It was also about how to get even if you have time and resources, it there is something really patriarchal in 26, 2017 and I’d really like to learn yourself to do it. Certain people really can still be daunting! the idea of mastery about dominating some more about the Best Friends like acquiring technical skills, enjoy the your environment and dominating ma- Learning Gang. So why did you start process of being alone and focusing on Grace: There is this sense that terials that is done through these tech- the BFLG? a kind of craft like that, but I really only D.I.Y. Is a very male, hetero-normative nical, precise, perfectionist processes. like learning that way in groups of peo- thing to do. That on a Sunday you go I love when things fall apart and I love a Dan: BFLG started on a Wednesday, ple. We started by inviting a bunch of to Home Depot and buy your power bunch of people messing with materi- over Happy hour at Barragans in Los people over and the frst thing we did tools. Even the idea of the art installer als in a room together and it not being Angeles. During a conversation about was just making synthetic and biode- is that it’s usually quite a male job and perfectly built or stable or… art projects and making things, we got gradable plastic in my living room with the reason that these jobs go to men is into the question of how to do things pretty much just whoever randomly because they’re usually better educat- Dan: It was a queer project from the that you don’t know how to do and showed up and it was afterwards that ed with regards to those kind of skills. ofset and whether we could articulate what do we do when we don’t have the we realized that it was a reversal of ev- the ways in which it was queering edu- skills to make something we need to erything that’s been happening in edu- Dan: I think it’s interesting that the cation or not, we soon came to realize make. Since we all felt like there were cation, which has become increasingly dominant narrative of D.I.Y. culture that we were putting into practice all things we wanted to learn, in general quantitative and obsessed with results tends to be assigned to men and these trashfab principles. Embracing and for our practices, we decided to and being able to kind of prove that specifcally to like, cis tech bros. And failure and shunning mastery allowed organize weekly gatherings where we you’re transferring a product to a con- for the most part it is! But to chal- us to actually learn in diferent ways. So could tackle something new and teach sumer-student so they can go out and lenge that a little bit, in terms of my it was completely non-normative from each other and just be very D.I.Y. about immediately use it in some way. We frst engagement with DIY, I think the birth! it. We came up with a name for it and realized that everything we were doing queen of D.I.Y. for me was actually we started that same weekend. The was almost this performative parody of my grandmother. My grandma and I Joey: That’s what I was trying to more we thought about what we were the opposite of that. And so it became would always work on really nifty craft- say, we cultivated an environment and doing, as we were doing it, the more increasingly self-aware that performing based projects together and even if we an attitude that enabled that to happen interested we became in its potential this anarchic, completely disorganized weren’t building a death ray out of a because everybody pretends that they to trouble how we are taught to learn education, was doing something more Fresnel lens, we were always learning are cool with failure and is like, “Oh things, focusing on a more embodied than just making it fun for us--that it how to make diferent things we saw in yeah you gotta fail to get to success!” approach to learning that could also was actually challenging the way that stores (like window display decor) but But then they create all these incredibly be collective and that did not rely on a we were expected to learn. on our own. I feel like my engagement rigid hierarchical structures that punish central fgure of authority who instructs with D.I.Y. might have been a little dif- you for trying anything risky and failing. everybody else. We stayed excited Dan: I feel like my background was a ferent, un-punk in that sense, but it still So I think the attitude of the BFLG is about it and we are still doing it. little bit diferent. In undergrad, I took holds roots in an underbelly of sorts. informal, kind of like a party or like we classes in painting, drawing, sculpture, always say: it’s like the teacher left the Joey: Yeah, I think it was like the and digital media. knew that if I wanted Grace: I think it’s really powerful that room and everyone went wild. least conceptual project either of us to learn a skill outside of the classroom, you’ve taught yourself D.I.Y. strategies had ever done at frst. I’m not some- then I had to take the time to learn it on so you’re not relying on a preexisting Grace: So that brings me to your body who ever makes anything that’s my own. I was more interested in fnd- [sexist] system. workshop. I think the title “Irrational

65 Medicine” sounds somewhat like an to produce certain works of art to get little bit more serious under the surface oxymoron because medicine is meant certain results. about the playfulness of it and trick- Dan: This might be like a good place to be a rational discipline that’s based sterness of it. I didn’t I plan to talk about to segway into some of our questions on facts and fgures. Just as D.I.Y. is Joey: I would just say instead of this necessarily, but when you were for you, Grace. Joey mentioned how meant to be a discipline where you being yourself that you can play several asking about it just now I thought about extra absurd it might be to do this par- follow physics and try to make things diferent roles and be several difer- how my mom and my step mom both ticular BFLG at a museum--because work. But the idea in your workshops ent selves, some of which will help had breast cancer and one of them, my we also do them pretty much any- is actually that you play and have fun. you discover things about your own mom, lived, and my step mom died. where, from Joey’s house to galleries If you succeed, cool. And if you don’t relationship to medicine and authority And my mom’s attitude was always one to actual classrooms--and in thinking succeed, cool. With Western medicine which then gives you more agency go- of really challenging doctors, walking of how location also changes how a you aren’t ofered that kind of [room to ing into those relationships. I know this out of their ofces if they wouldn’t work workshop is engaged with and thought fail]. Maybe in alternative medicine it’s a one workshop is not going to eliminate with her in combination with her alter- about, I am curious how you think of bit more like that, but Western medi- the problematics of Western medicine, native medicine and the processes they the sites for your workshops. Museums cine, it’s not supposed to be a gamble. and all of the problematics of authority wanted her to go through. For example, evoke a certain seriousness and cred- related to doctors and the medical es- she never wanted to use any general ibility so I’m really curious about how Joey: I think that last part that you’re tablishment, but it can change people’s anesthesia so any doctor who wouldn’t your work, on “Healing the Museum” saying is really important. Everyone relationship to that and make it feel let her do that was not a doctor she specifcally, fts within the context of the knows that the doctor’s not allowed to more malleable even in a short period wanted to work with; anyone who Museum. fail, the medical establishment is not al- of time, I think. discouraged her from taking Chinese lowed to fail, because the entire prem- herbs or doing bee-sting therapy or Grace: Well I guess for me the Mu- ise is that it’s been tried and tested Dan: I think we’re just trying to be juicing a billion carrots or whatever, any- seum is still one of the few places left in and proven and there’s a right way to troublemakers. one who discouraged that it was just the urban landscape that is a place for do it, and so you’re saying that there’s like, “Well good bye, have a good day!” contemplation. Apart from let’s say, the a lot more fuidity around alternative Grace: Exactly. So that’s why I’m And my step mom it really seemed park and maybe the church, everything medicine and that the expectation of also wondering how the BFLG, espe- like she was somebody who trusted else is basically about entertainment or mastery isn’t there in the same way... cially this workshop, can help citizens? doctors so much and was always in consuming. The Museum originally was How can it help them negotiate a someone else’s hands, and I really think a space where you could sit back, look Grace: Well because that’s the way complex world? How can it deal with that approach led her to not really ever at art and encounter diferent perspec- nature works, natural processes don’t the kind of forces that are imposing be fully making her own decisions about tives and diferent ideas. Just like in a have a tick-the-box goal. The way that and trying to control people? it. And I think that this can be said of so park, because of the efect of nature a mountain develops, a river forms or many diferent areas of society, not just on the human physiology, there was an a volcano explodes is not in a rational Joey: Obviously it’s a bit absurd. It’s medicine, but medicine is a really potent idea of slowing down, allowing us to ar- way, where things can be in a time supposed to be funny and supposed place to talk about it because it is life rive at diferent conclusions and maybe frame that we can control them. West- to be absurd: I mean we’re trying to or death and it’s something people are ask diferent questions. Museums have ern medicine is about trying to control do D.I.Y. gene editing with people constantly dealing with throughout their [now] become corrupt and distorted, the body, whereas alternative medicine who have absolutely no idea about entire lives. It’s such a strong authority have moved away from this slow- is actually about letting the body heal it. I mean like literally I probably have and it can have such a substantial neg- ing down process and instead have itself. Which is very diferent. So I think never even touched a beaker in my ative efect on people, that I think more become basically shopping malls or that your workshop is about letting life. We have absolutely no idea what and more people are distrusting medical sites of the spectacle. And the excuse people be themselves instead of trying we’re doing, which is the whole thing, authority and realizing this imbalance of given is always that the free market to control them or trying to get them but I think there’s always something a trust. means that we have to have tourism in

67 order to sell more tickets, so we need secretary, was on the board of MoCA, doing something very interesting and it ing that while having material things is to entertain people and [keep] building the Museum of Contemporary Art in looks kind of radical. But if they under- important, it’s not the be all and end all really expensive buildings or extensions Los Angeles, when he’s one of the stand the actual energetic power--then of everything and that power comes in on the buildings that only last twenty most evil human beings imaginable--he they [won’t] be a bargaining chip, if diferent forms. Just because you have years, and then in order to sell more literally made his entire career of of they’re not just doing something be- material power or you have power over tickets every show has to be a block- preying on active duty service mem- cause it’s a new [art world] trend, then a group of people it doesn’t actually buster show so it’s a vicious cycle. And bers’ families, and elderly widows, and they’re not just a sitting duck. They’re make you a powerful person. So, my it destroys the whole point of the Muse- defrauding them and kicking them out only vulnerable if they don’t know what whole practice and life, is my quest to um as being a space to have diferent of their homes. The people who have and why they’re doing it. make other people understand that ways of being and diferent thoughts, power are very nimble about how they they actually shouldn’t give their power otherwise why have a Museum? What’s move, what they can take advantage I feel Marina Abramovic, up until she away so easily to corporations and the point? That’s what inspired me. In of, and what they can appropriate. For made The Artist is Present, was trying institutions. Teaching people shamanic my own practice I was very interested example, Marina Abramovic is a great to see things authentically, but the journeying is radical act because it’s in going back to prehistory, and the frst example of somebody who has more moment Hollywood came calling, and a skill that you can’t actually control Museum being the cave, and we know or less turned contemplation into a Lady Gaga and Jay Z got involved her because you can’t control the results. now that in the cave there were many spectacle, and that was so attractive ego overwhelmed her own spirituality. I can give the same instructions and shamanic rituals going on. And that’s to the, whatever you want to call it, It’s what happens with a lot of peo- we can all do the same shamanic why we’re still obsessed with going Museum Industrial Complex. So my ple--they become distorted. [Sadly] it journey but the results will always be to see those caves and their rock art. question is, in what ways do you think seems that most people can’t handle diferent. And I think is unique in today’s What they were doing was so powerful, your project can resist becoming P.R. power as they think that’s the end goal. world where normally 1 + 1 = 2. With a that they managed to show us how we or propaganda for the global elite who But for me personally that’s not my shamanic journey, not necessarily. relate to nature; relate to each other and control a lot of these spaces? goal so maybe I sound naive, idealistic relate to the cosmos and this is still very or earnest or something like that. I’m true today. So [you could say] what I’m Grace: First I’d have to think about trying not to do it just for entertainment trying to do now is what those original freedom, because yes of course these either, like in the way that the New Age artists were doing in the past--trying global elites can take control of our world has corrupted Ayahuasca, where to slow down time through shamanic bodies, but they cannot control our it’s all about being high and having a ritual. minds, if we actively use all of our good time, or a kind of adrenaline rush power to empower ourselves through like Burning Man, [an extreme form Joey: I’m really interested in what critical thinking and having other ways of tourism]. I’m not really interested in you’re talking about, about the way that of doing things. I think that’s really im- that. I am more interested in doing it for the role and function of Museums in portant to remember that. The problem socio-political reasons. My sense of my society has changed. So much of that is when artists start working with eso- belief system is that I’m not necessarily Dan: Feminists launched a whole is structural for me; you were describing teric symbology or working with these doing things for the same reason other tradition of looking at art history as some of it, some of the logic behind kind of processes but they’re actually artists do things? I think it’s because an apparatus of exclusion and have it, and I think that the structure that not aware of what they’re doing, or of the way I was brought up. My mom perpetually wrestled with assimilation produces that logic has a lot to do with they don’t have a personal connection was an activist and I was introduced to into an infrastructure founded on the allowing the global elite to control the to it or they don’t actually understand the idea of critical thinking at a young omission of people across the lines of boards of museums. I’ve been strug- the power of what they can do, then age. Also as a child, I spent time in ru- gender, race, geography. But it seems gling a lot recently with this reality. I maybe they can be fodder for the P.R. ral Kenya with no running water and no like you’ve found a way to ofer a third mean, Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury machine because it looks like they’re electricity and so grew up understand- option which is the esoteric. Through

69 the esoteric, you can be both within polarization going on. And so because saw on the journey. And then the next result or force a certain way of thinking that same infrastructure while still seek- it’s a hot topic and very complicated, day there will be a public panel with onto another person, you earnestly ing to dismantle it. Does the esoteric, in I’ve been giving free meditation classes Kenneth Smith from University Texas introduce a technique that you know, a sense, escape that which is immedi- to refugees in one part of Brussels Medical Branch, Houston on Commen- or a tactic, and then you don’t try to ately politicized? and conversely workshops on doing a sality - the social medical benefts of control the end result. The ability to visualization processes called Feeding eating together and Corine Sombrun, a let go of control and let go of the end Grace: It depends on who’s using it. your Demons, to staf members from French shaman who studied in Mongo- result in both projects is actually the Marina Abramovic using her spiritual institutions in another part of the same lia for 8 years, talking about the healing politics of it, and it’s what resists dogma skills of meditation and communing city. Whether you come from an actual efects of shamanic trance, on trauma. and dogmatism. So that enables you, with others to sell cookies in an advert confict zone or you’re living in a post How certain parts of the brain light up for example, to bring scientists into a demonstrates you can use anything confict zone [ including the West] we’re when you’re in a trance and how you project that is about shamanism without in a corrupt way. But my sense is that all living with a kind of anxiety in the can create new neural pathways. And one having to dominate the other one if you know how to stop your mind, back of our minds. So what do we do that’s what I mean about the empow- or one having to be the correct answer; then you understand how to pull out about this? During trauma you can erment. This is why I like doing this they can co-exist because you are not of this [capitalist] structure and see the experience dissociation and then after project. On the one hand it sounds very exerting any kind of authoritarian control bigger picture, then you can see what post-traumatic stress disorder and that esoteric. On the other hand its using over the ideas that are happening, or on matters and what doesn’t matter and means that you always have anxiety Western medical proof to prove that we the people involved, or where they’re then you have more choices. How- about the future and depression about are able to heal ourselves. So you know going to go with whatever they end up ever, I wouldn’t necessarily position the past. So by giving refugees the it’s hopefully going to be very powerful thinking about. my Healing Museum [series of per- ability to calm the mind and doing weekend, especially when discussing formances] within feminist art history mindfulness techniques it’s allowing political subjects like the refugee crisis Dan: On the question of ethics, your even though it does tackle structural them to empower themselves again. which we’re all afected by today. practice draws from a lot of diferent sexism and racism and homophobia Conversely, by helping staf members cultural practices of medicine, with by allowing people to think diferently who work in those institutions to work alternative medicine and Shamanism, about these subjects. For example, at on their visualization skills to under- how do you address that? the moment I’m working in Brussels on stand that the right brain is very import- a new project with Thalielab Art Foun- ant to being a whole person, and even Grace: I ask permission from my dation called A Meal for my Ancestors: if in their job it does not necessarily guides or [teachers] as to whether I Healing The Museum. It focuses on allow them to be creative; by empow- can share certain rituals. And I question working with refugees and migrants ering them and understanding that they myself about what I should expose and also working with staf from insti- are also creative beings, I do believe and what I shouldn’t expose. I do think tutions like the U.N., NATO and the that they will make better decisions. about it [carefully]. EU parliament. So in this new project Thus, shamanism and meditation can I am trying to work with [both the] be used as peace-building and confict Joey: I’m seeing a through line or Joey: Can I ask one last question decision makers and the people who resolution tools. similarity between what both BFLG about rationality? I think that there is are afected by their decisions to do and you’re talking about right now, this kind of common belief, especially a shamanic performance. These two On Saturday 20th January 2018 I will Grace, as far as introducing a struc- among critical artists and conceptual sets of people never usually meet. They bring the two groups together [refu- ture and believing it/a way of working/ artists, that rationality kind of protects only meet when there’s a problem and gees and staf members] we’re going methodology has a certain ethics and us from the dangers of our “animal they defnitely never meet socially, so to be cooking together and doing a certain ideology in it. So instead of this side” or our unconscious side, right? that means there’s always some sort of shamanic journey and painting what we method of trying to control the end That you have to be able to rationally

71 break down everything that’s going ested in being destructive for the sake when actually anarchy… well you know tor on topics they don’t understand, on in a piece, in a workshop, in an of being destructive. It’s not an anar- the anarchy symbol? The most famous emphasizing the process of learning event of any kind, in order to be able chist project. I’m not trying to play with symbol of anarchism, the A with the over the delivery of a quantifable result to act ethically. So there’s this way that people’s energy. But actually what I’m circle around it, is actually supposed or skill. Check out their past workshops rationality and ethics are sort of paired trying to do is still rational in that you’re to be an A and an O. It’s supposed to at thebestfriendslearninggang.info. in people’s minds. But the inverse of working with the other part of your brain mean “anarchy is order,” so it actually is this implies that irrationality is danger- but it’s quite systematic and there are about being more involved in organiz- Joey Cannizzaro is an undisciplinary ous and dogmatic, and I think that was rules you need to follow. For example, ing, more involved in communicating artist, curator, and critic. Cannizzaro, kind of proven to people throughout before doing the shamanic journey parameters with each other, not about along with Dan Bustillo, started The the twentieth century in all the diferent there is a protocol in which you’re not this libertarian self interest. So it’s Best Friends Learning Gang, an exper- iterations of irrational dogmatic beliefs, going to drink or take drugs or smoke interesting because what you’re talking iment in disorderly, amateur education. from commercial capitalism in the way beforehand so that your mind is already about to me really aligns with a kind of Cannizzaro’s work has been seen at that it uses irrationality to encourage balanced before you do the shamanic anarchist project of having people be The Hammer Museum, 356 Mission, certain destructive behaviors and self journey because it can bring a lot of more tuned in to themselves and their Machine Project, PS1, Centre Pompi- exploitation, to religion, most impor- stuf up. Especially for people who con- community and the people around dou, Flux Factory, Lancaster Museum of tantly, since that’s like the closest thing sider themselves rational it can be really them in order to be able to do things Art, 221a, ForYourArt, some times, and to your project. I think that people are confronting to their sense of reality, and that would otherwise be irrational and a lot of other places; he curated the in- really mistrustful of irrationality because there are certain protocols I try to follow be dangerous maybe. It’s like you’re augural show at MOCAM: The Museum it’s a foundation for a lot of these to create a safe space for this kind of like setting up a system that enables of Contemporary Art on the Moon, as exploitative systems that we know from work. [My practice] is the opposite of people to do that in a way that’s not well as Studio at REDCAT; and you can the past that we are supposed to have irrationally which is trying to undermine dangerous to other people or to them- read some of his words online at Tem- gotten rid of somehow. So my question people or trying to scare them. selves necessarily. porary Art Review, OnCurating, Radical is, what place do you think rationality Actions, Black Clock Blog, or in paper has in art making, in your practice and Joey: I really like that framing, that I Grace: So maybe I’m a secret anar- books. He holds an MFA from California in art making generally? And what was kind of falling into a binary of irra- chist! Institute of the Arts, a BA from The New would you say to somebody who is a tional and rational and that there are so School University, and teaches at Los rationalist--a really intense rationalist-- many things outside of that entire way Joey: I know you are. Angeles City College. who sees anything irrational as acritical of thinking that are actually the point of or even detrimental to a fact based what you’re doing. And I think it’s really Grace: And you’re both secret sha- Dan Bustillo is a Los Angeles based political project? interesting as well that you used the mans! writer and artist interested in deviance word anarchy as a negative descrip- and surveillance culture. Along with Grace: Well I wouldn’t say that my tor of this kind of abusive irrationality [Everyone laughs…] their collaborator, Joey Cannizzaro, they project is irrational. In the essay that because that’s like exactly the line of run The Best Friends Learning Gang, I wrote called “Healing The Museum” thought that I’m trying to challenge by ///// a pedagogical experiment in collective, I talked about non-rational method- thinking about this. embodied, and expertless learning. ologies like shamanism and medita- The Best Friends Learning Gang Bustillo’s work has been part of shows tion. Irrational implies, that it’s crazy, Grace: That’s very funny because I is a pedagogical experiment that held at The Hammer Museum Arts un-grounded, it’s destructive. Non-ra- knew you were going to say that. approaches education as a collective, Party, Machine Project, Flux Factory, tional thinking means that you’re using decentralized and undisciplined activity. Lancaster Museum of Art, 221a, ForY- your right brain and its [creativity] can Joey (laughing): Because people use The BFLG hosts embodied workshops, ourArt, and Harvestworks. Their writing be grounded. So I’m not really inter- the word anarchist to describe that called Amateur Hours, with no instruc- has been published with Temporary Art

73 Review, OnCurating, Radical Actions, Venice Biennale (2005) and Ikon Gallery, Black Clock Blog, International Center Birmingham (2005). Ndiritu’s essays on of Photography, nonsensical, perusal exhibition making and contemporary per usual press, viralnet, and contemp- culture; Healing The Museum (2016) torary. They hold an AA in Art and Edu- and Ways of Seeing: A New Museum cation from Miami Dade College, a BA Story for Planet Earth (2017) can be from Hunter College City University of read alongside her political essays; A New York, an MFA in Art and Technolo- Call To White America: A Response gy from CalArts, and they are currently to Donald J.Trump (2016) and Notes in the PhD program in Visual Studies at To a White Left World: Activism in this University of California, Irvine. Current Political Crisis (2017). https://in- dependent.academia.edu/GraceNdiritu Grace Ndiritu (Kenya/UK) studied Tex- tile Art at Winchester School of Art, UK; De Ateliers, Amsterdam 1998-2000, IMAGE CREDITS Delfna Studio Trust, London (2004- 2006), International Residency, Recol- 1. BFLG Workshop [archives] lets, Paris (2013), MACBA & L’Apparte- 2. Dreaming the Museum Back to Life: ment 22, Rabat, international residency The Inner Life of Objects (2017) (2014), Galveston Artists Residency, Texas (2014 -2015), Laboratoires d’Au- bervilliers, Paris (2016-2017), Thalielab Art Foundation, Brussels (2017-2018). Her archive of over forty ‘hand-craft- ed’ videos; experimental photography, Post-Hippie Pop-Abstractionpainting and shamanic performances have been widely exhibited. Recent solo performances include Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2017), Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris (2016), Glasgow School of Art (2015), Galveston Artists Residency, Texas (2015), Museum Modern of Art, Warsaw (2014), Musee Chasse & Nature and Centre Pompi- dou, Paris (2013). Recent solo exhibi- tions include, Klowden Mann Gallery, Los Angeles (2016), Glasgow School of Art (Turner Prize season 2015); La Ira De Dios, Buenos Aires (2014), Chisen- hale Gallery, London (2007), the 51st

75 LIST OF WORKS UMOCA Till We Have Faces, 2018 Cowfsh, 2011 Michael Robinson 16mm flm, colour, no sound, 2’25’’ Phillip Andrew Lewis Produced by Museo Marino Marini, Florence in collaboration with Lamu Palm Oil Factory, Kenya Pairing Altar of Eternal Subscen- Osaka Lights, 2016 (short ver- dence, 2018 sion) Joey Cannizzaro 16mm flm, colour, no sound, 16’00”. Christopher Scott Cole Coproduced by Aargauer Kunsthaus, Nathaniel Cummings-Lambert Aarau and SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2016 (Peacock) Mating Season, 2016 Tracing Board, 2018 16mm flm, colour, no sound, 15’28’’ Maya Gurantz Coproduced by Haus der Kunst, Audrey Davies, 2018 Munich, Germany João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva Geological / Genealogical Stud- ies, Great Salt Lake Area, 2018 Scott Benzel Next Saturday, 2018 Earl Gravy

Forever is Fluorescent, 2018 Kevin Alan Swenson **SECOND COMING EVENT** dimensions variable, 2017 (digital video); tickets, 2018 Silver Cord, 2014 Cara Despain Aerospace grade mirror polished stainless steel Lazaros BFLG Workshop, 2018

Principal Meridian, 2017 Healing the Soul of America: Nathaniel Cummings-Lambert Healing the Museum Performance, 2018 Jack Sabat + Sam Stringer, 2018 Grace Ndiritu

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