Reimagining the site- sink as utopia , kitchen as T.A.Z, this as a revolutionary everyday moment

(wall man time zone, barrier to understanding like a piano play you break it dwon down down break it down like a wall a zome an d a man d- lthere is something there afterwards something beautiful ausde able a exchange can take place something beautiful something clean and clear life like we can get eachother now . Like, help me beak it down? That is the question the mission the beautiful TASK. And I would break down break down in the pursuit of it sommething to share share it like it matteres this it does .

And all I ask is the chance asking of everything. Free fall somehow difference keeps it where it should be drunk with out drink)

This work is, of course, on multiple levels. To ask 'what is radio's place in the domestic environment?', is to ask also, 'what is my place in that environment?' My desire here is not to …. unfold a study of easily understood platitudes or a+b=c, but to outright a sonicart piece that for it's maker, at least, does all it can to reinstate and celebrate (a situation, contingent to) chaos.

Hakim Bey (1985) states 

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin--your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.
 

When approaching a subject subjectively- (this is my degree, my ears, my hands in the sink, my listening environment, my voice- all in response) I start at this point. I am fortunate (a monarch indeed) to make art- privileged to be some educated, free to muse, to create from my wealth of experience- but I see that 'the love of other monarchs' might be understood as work in company? Sink Play seeks this- by exposing/exploring a shared but unspoken bond- full of politics, and as real and current as the elements employed in its service.

So, I use a radio show to  

Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.

A ephemeral event, rather than a plaque, to make the kitchen sink the throne room for 20 minutes- to reclaim that space as a site of potentiality, wonderment, realness, imagination.... 
 

I take Bey's advice and  

Organise a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.

  Yes indeed! Marking the boundaries of the missioned space- and oneself as the activist, and actioner within that space, demanding a recreation of angles of attention- a re imagining, if only in one's ears for those few minutes, the 'your' in Bey's sentence the essential ingredient your life- my life- what we have right here and now... 

Bey writes in CHAOS MYTHS, “If it does not change a life (other than the artists') it fails”-he claims if a work does not inspire a emotion of or as strong as terror-- (powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst) the work fails. How beautiful, but unpractical! (unpracticable?) He states that the only creed the Poetical Terrorist- one involved in living ontological Anarchy-cannot abide is the Taoists' total quietism, but..maybe Bey has missed the point- not to devalue Bey's very living very beautiful text- but postmodernism seems to express extremes, and then give up, limit, reject simplicity, become nihilistic in its extremity- as if, changing minuti is both pointless and powerless. I think the most powerful and constant moments (yes the ones filled with terror and wonder, when life is like being struck with lightning) are the moments filled with the most simplicity and tenderness.  The failure can only be in ever limiting what is achievable? (oh dear! Refusing to accept the only route for a woman/mother/householder to break the holds of conditioned mindsets is by extremity or osmosis- we must then supply alternatives ... raising children and 'making-do' in the world of practicalities and responsibilities is also living on a knife's edge... what we have to work with is as powerful...) 




 

This project uses multi sonic strategies- such as the field study, the interview, spoken word poetry performance, generated soundscape, to achieve as powerful listening experience as possible. Why not just record a washing up session, and play it out, thus subverting the value judgement of washing up being a waste of time and thus not worth broadcastable? ANYTHING IS BROADCASTABLE NOW. Sonic art is constantly re-representing sonic experience in ways that invite remaking angles of attention- we, listeners, have our ears open for the opportunity to break habits, to be involved in this project of realignment, to participate by responding. I don't think a field study alone would be of interest (to me)-unless maybe, if the work were to be located in a gallery with a audience predominately consisting of champagne sipping middle class white men, stroking their chins with their soft white fingers... “Is the washing up art? Hmmmmm...”

A poem can act as a spell & vice versa--but sorcery refuses to be a metaphor for mere literature--it insists that symbols must cause events as well as private epiphanies. It is not a critique but a re-making. It rejects all eschatology & metaphysics of removal, all bleary nostalgia & strident futurismo, in favor of a paroxysm or seizure of presence.
 

This work is made with a under-represented audience in mind- women at their sinks scrubbing pans- I wish to present a overlay that does not seek to bypass actuality (get your hands back in the sink!) but enrich it by underlining it- calling it out some, celebrating it by exposing its wonderment....

^{Helene Cixous, writing in 'Lemonade',}

<sup>“(because everyday the mystery of living occurs with its innumerable questions. But only occurs for those who remain in the region of mysteries. A region so troubling, excessively rich, almost untenable. Because it is difficult for us to bare the riches of life. An to live the inexhaustible vitality of the truly important life is humanly exhausting. And if you weren't there to help me enjoy it, living would be unbearable.)
Limonade tout etait si infini, Des femmes, 1982 translated by Ann Liddle 

This kind of writing is not a separate project to life- living should not occur only when the chores are done and you can dance all night at an illegal rave, pick up a book, attend a concert or rally or protest riot or sit down on the meditation cushion. 
Why should I be falling over? Do I have to remain sober to do the washing up?</sup> 
 

The TAZ desires above all to avoid mediation, to experience its existence as immediate. The very essence of the affair is "breast-to-breast" as the sufis say, or face-to-face. 

This radio work is assuming its listener (singular) is located in a action at a situation. Already, is this a impossible project? Might it be.... possible, to create a situation where face to face is not necessary ?  (What happens when a book is understood/read with Barthe's Jouissance? This is some physicalized delight that is traditionally even more 'accessable' and present through  musical and audio works, as in 'writing aloud'...) Is that a T.A.Z right then and there? And on the radio- if work is live, a offering, desiring to be shared, to break with conditional limitings of a medias' possibilities, can there then be a connection which is electric, a moment which supports the reclamation of singularity, a Temporary Autonomous Zone ? 

 

 cited texts:


Bey, Hakim ("Anti-copyright, 1985, 1991") T.A.Z : the temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism.  : Autonomedia, 2003. Brooklyn, NY

Limonade tout était si infini, Des femmes, 1982 translated by Anne Liddle in The Helene Cixous reader edited by Susan Sellers; with a preface by Helene Cixous and foreword by Jacques Derrida. New York ; London ; Routledge, 1994.