Today's episode is presented as part of the Wignall Museum's
Home Edition, a series of curated artist
talks, workshops, and discussions featuring
artists and cultural workers.
My name is Rebecca Trawick.
I want to thank you for joining us today.
The Wignall Museum is a teaching museum
and interdisciplinary art space that introduces Chaffey College
students, faculty, staff, and community members
to innovative contemporary art, objects and ideas.
By fostering critical thinking, visual literacy, discourse,
and empathy, the museum seeks to enhance
the intellectual and cultural life of our community.
We want to take a moment to recognize that we're situated
on the ranch they took them the campus of Chaffey
College, which resides on the traditional and unceded lands
of the Tongva people.
We offer our respect to the elders, both past, present
and future.
Hello, my name is Roman Stollenwerk.
I'm the assistant curator at the Wignall
Museum of Contemporary Art.
Please visit us at our website at www.chaffey.edu/wignall
to access recordings.
We will send out and post announcements
to our email subscribers and social media
when the videos are available on our site.
Thank you.
And hi, everyone, my name is Andy Hadle,
I'm the preparator at the museum and studio
tech for the studio arts department at Chaffey College.
I'm along with Rebecca and Roman.
I'll be assisting with today's Zoom session.
Here's a brief breakdown of today's program.
In a moment, we'll hear from Cindy Rehm and Amanda Maciel
Antunes, as they present for about a half an hour
with the remaining time available for question
and answers.
Thanks, Roman and Andy.
As mentioned, today we have the honor
of having two prolific feminist artists in conversation, Cindy
Rehm and Amanda Maciel Antunes.
We invited Cindy to choose an artist
that she finds compelling to speak
with as part of Home Edition.
She chose Amanda, and we're delighted to spend
time listening to these two in conversation today.
Before they begin, I'll share a truncated versions
of their biographies with you.
And you can find their full biographies
in the program guide found on our website.
Cindy Rehm is a Los Angeles based artist and arts educator.
She serves as co-facilitator of the Cixous Reading Group,
and is co-founder of the feminist center
projects, craftswomen house, and feminist love letters.
Rehm's interdisciplinary practice
moves between drawing, performance, and video
to address the cultural suppression of women's
narratives and the legacy of hysteria.
Rehm's work has been shown at venues throughout the US
and at galleries and museums in Italy, Bulgaria and France.
Amanda Maciel Antunes was born in Brazil
and currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
She is self-taught and began making art
as a child with her grandfather who was a self-taught painter,
writer and sculptor.
Antunes uses painting, writing, film, assemblage, sound,
and performance to present conversations
between the polarities of self-hoods,
such as life and death, light and shadow, seen and unseen,
known and unknown.
She creates for and in non-traditional spaces
and focuses on responsive performances in dialogue
with both the history of the site
and the immediate landscape, incorporating
a broad range of media and often engaging all the senses.
Antunes's work has been included in exhibitions in Los Angeles,
Iceland and Brazil.
Nontraditional sites of note where durational performances
have been staged include a former World War II
military shelter in East LA, a historic theater
in a northern fjord in Iceland, pardon me, the Crowley Theater
in Marfa, Texas, a former dairy farmers
cottage in the high desert of California among others.
And most recently at the Mount Wilson trail
in the Los Angeles National Forest.
Please, welcome, Cindy Rehm and Amanda Maciel Antunes.
So before I explain what the current practice that I'm
doing in the National Forest, I wanted
to introduce you a little bit to my background
in durational performance.
I've started performing in Boston when I first
moved to the states.
By accident, I was invited by a friend of mine, [INAUDIBLE],,
another performance artist, to become her avatar in a gallery
as her body couldn't be there at the time.
She was stuck somewhere else in another country.
So I performed in her place, and it
felt very much like everything I've
wanted to create in the space and time
and it felt very natural.
So since that day, I began a practice
that I call it a memory practice or an oneiric practice
of performance, and I'll explain a little bit
of what that means.
But I reflect in some ways through performance
in the selective nature of memory
and cultural inheritance.
By that, I mean, what language means to the body
and how language perceives and interprets our present.
I combine in my performances and idea
of space in collaboration with fragmentation
that I find in the landscape.
Every performance I've done that's durational
have been in various areas of the remote locations, including
the National Forest in the middle of the fjord in Iceland,
where I've developed a relationship
with the community.
And through the community, I've received gifts, material,
and forms that I've used in performance in that location.
And I'll be showing you briefly some of the images
from these pieces.
This first one is called Memoryhouse.
Memoryhouse has been happening for three years,
and I've had six different iterations of the piece.
Every iteration is in a different location.
This one in particular was last year
in Joshua Tree in an abandoned cottage that
had been blown by the winds in a national storm.
Memoryhouse took-- this one called
Epilog was the beginning of the series,
although, it was the last performance of the series.
So the narrative here is very much non-linear,
which is how I also work with my practice.
Epilog when I moved into this house for a weekend,
I performed from sunrise to sunset non-stop
and for two days.
The idea of working with light through these walls that
were falling apart were very much a part of the process.
And I had as a guiding mechanism the change
of wardrobe black and white.
So black I became familiar with the nighttime,
and white I became familiar with the light during the day.
This one happened in Iceland.
I found this airplane--
I think a site for airplanes to land in an island
and they had the structure.
I used stick notes every day, every time
I walked by to remind myself of what happened the day before
and that's what you see.
And the stick notes guided me through movement
and performance of repetitive cyclical manner
through the time that I lived in this island.
This one was inside the World War II shelter
where I translated one single poem to 45 languages
and I translated it back into the original, which
was Portuguese.
In order to understand a series of conversations with myself
in adaptation as an immigrant, I translated this poem myself.
It's a poem that speaks to our idea of interpretation
and our idea of what does it mean to be a poet, meaning
an artist in the world that is repeats itself through history.
In this poem, I notice that every single translation
in other languages interpreted the word fingidor differently.
So people translate it into the magician, the illusionist,
the faker, the [INAUDIBLE].
Faker, to me-- in particular, in English,
the translation had a very heavy connotation.
So I kind of embraced-- took that translation
to illusionist, which felt a little bit more
like the original interpretation.
And then it led me to a performance
I had in the desert of California.
In 24 hours I walked wearing a parachute
in four different deserts.
A friend of mine Eric Graham performed a drone
and followed me with a drone lens.
And this is another iteration of before language inside Shoebox
projects downtown LA.
I performed for three weeks.
24 hours a day for three weeks from--
again, from sunrise to sunset.
This is the interior of the space where I've
used for those three weeks.
Part of the performance imagery that I collect,
I call them artifacts.
In some ways the performances that I've done
don't require an audience.
And if you don't have an audience, what is it there
to show?
Is there anything to share afterwards?
Is it just ephemeral?
Does it just live and dies there?
I've always questioned myself that,
and I don't know exactly what it means
to document a performance.
I create objects and I create artifacts
made from these moments in time that eventually
become the memory of this time in my life
or at least 24 hours.
So these are examples of memory compositions
that I take with between travels between my home place
and my current place of home.
And you can see them they're stitched together in parallel.
So I'm creating this parallel life
of memories in the solution.
This is another iteration of Memoryhouse.
The images on the right are stills from the video
in the film that I pre-recorded to play inside the pink house.
I build the pink house with scraps from a dumpster
scraps of wood from a dumpster in downtown LA,
and I covered it with dyed muslin.
Leads me to this piece, which will
introduce the idea of the National Forest
what happened here.
But this quote from Margaret Atwood
describes in many ways what I'm trying
to recreate within performance.
It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was,
because what you say can ever be exact,
you always have to leave something out.
There are too many parts sides crosscurrents, nuances,
too many gestures, which could mean this or that.
Too many shapes, which can never be fully described.
Too many flavors in the air or on the tongue, half colors,
too many.
The interior of Memoryhouse was recomposed
with fragments of the outside landscape, which
was parts of broken glass and parts
of the wall itself became the interior of the house.
So in some ways, I'm also trying to reconstitute and reiterate
the piece itself by creating my memories in the space.
Its endurance, and it takes so long and some people ask me
why do you have to perform for 24 hours, three days, three
weeks, 200 days?
I don't know exactly how long I'm performing for.
I allow the space to practically guide me into the time
and space that I'm there.
I give myself enough time to create a memory in the space,
because that first memory will guide me
into the present moment of moving my body
or of making something.
And in the time itself, it gives me enough memories
to work from the cyclical movement and experience
and activity.
In parts how it led me to this mountain peaks.
This idea of repetition and cyclical responsibility
and healing--
what healing, how the healing comes into place with that.
And I discussed this with Cindy.
I would love to open this up for her right
now if possible, Cindy.
Well, it's so beautiful just even seeing
these few images of your work.
And if you know anything about Amanda, she's quite prolific.
So there is so much work that she has made,
and I think it's really interesting seeing how she
transforms all of these materials
through this very kind of poetic aesthetic.
And I was really interested in talking
to her about this particular performance, which is ongoing.
Which I think it's quite unusual to get
to talk to an artist about a project
that they're in the midst of.
And a lot of times it takes time to kind of process things
until you're finished with the work.
So I think some of these ideas are
going to be things that are happening in real time,
and perhaps this piece will change
over time, which I think Amanda is it's kind of--
I don't know that any of her work is ever finished.
Some of these projects like Memoryhouse
have been going on for years.
Even though they're not going on continuously,
they're not seen as like a finished project, which
I think is really interesting.
And so I've prepared some questions for us
to talk about this project, and certainly
if you have anything that comes up
as you're listening that you want to hear more about
or have a question that's related,
you can certainly put it in the chat
and we'll have time at the end to answer some more questions.
But I guess, I just wanted to start
because many of your works engage performance,
but I think in this way that it's very much about ritual.
And so I was curious if you could talk about
in this new performance just the different layers of ritual,
the journey to the place.
The actions that you're taking interacting with the cloth,
and also the documentation like all these different layers
that you're having kind of thinking about ritual
and how that plays out in other projects that you've made, too.
I think that goes back to my upbringing between both
my grandmothers.
They were both very much around ritual in the household.
Spiritual rituals was also very present in our households.
I had also the complete opposite spectrum of grandmothers.
One was an indigenous [NON-ENGLISH] woman
and the other was an Orthodox Christian woman.
They both belong to this idea of out
of body experience within space, but in a very different
polarizing way.
One to the extreme oppression of the body,
and the other to the extreme freedom of the body.
This has been with me my whole life
and I feel like in performance, the thing that attracted me
to this type of work in the first place
is the sense of ritual.
It was a safe place for me.
It was the right of incubation like incubating myself
in this role where the natural landscape is a part of me.
And I'm a part of the natural landscape.
It gives me the sense of belonging.
It gives me the sense of connection
to the space, no matter where I end up.
Also, the body and the mind of an expat
of a body of an immigrant is often
always by definition in transition,
in those I'm quite fit or belong in neither there nor here.
So this ritual to me in a sense, especially this mountain ritual
began--
when the pandemic's started, I felt
like I needed to connect with both my grandmothers.
I missed home and I think like everyone
else when the pandemic began, we've all
turned to family in some way.
Your grandmothers are both in Brazil?
They're both in Brazil and they're both still alive.
There was a need to connect with that.
I couldn't go home, I can't go home right now.
Nobody can travel.
It's still who knows what will happen in the next few months.
But this cloth begin to me as-- even
in the sewing of it, the stitching,
it was a matter of connection with them, as they taught me
how to stitch, they taught me how to sew, they taught me
how to embroider or how to fix my pants,
or how to fix a ripped shirt.
In the sense of stitching, too, is a very visceral feeling.
It's a satisfactory like I couldn't do anything else,
but to sew during this time and I didn't know why.
But I feel like after all this time,
I realize it's because-- once you put in the needle,
you can't go back.
It's a radical decision of just go with it
and you have to-- you can't really trace your steps again.
You have to just keep going forward.
Yeah.
And when we spoke before, you talked about the journey
that you take.
So you've been going to this location--
is it Mount Wilson trail the location-- off of Mount Wilson
trail?
It's off of Mount Wilson trail, and it
takes about an hour to hike up there
because I'm carrying also--
I'm carrying like a toddler on my back.
This cloth has become really heavy and it's grow.
Right now it's 60 feet long and it's just canvas rolled up,
and the backpack even changed through time.
I started with a little backpack and then
it grew to a mid-sized backpack and now it's
a giant cross-country backpack.
So in the sense of it, I'm also the weight
in the time that takes me to get there it's part of the ritual.
I don't record this time, this is the time for me
to dedicate to connecting with these words, the text
that I'm writing.
This mantra like space.
And the location has primarily stayed on Mount Wilson,
but I have been dislocated due to fires and due to lockdowns
during the pandemic.
Because this is a very small trail.
In fact, like going there it's not easy either.
You don't see a lot of people going up and down all the time,
but because it's so small during the lockdown,
they weren't allowed to go up there
because people can't cross one another without rubbing
the shoulder kind of thing.
So I've been sneaking in back there during this time as well.
Yeah.
And the text that you're writing that you're stitching,
you had mentioned that when we had
talked before that you think about that as you're walking.
Yeah, the writing is very intentional.
The writing-- some of the text is
a repetition of what I said before, but in a different way.
I'm almost trying to learn how to read again.
I'm trying to learn how to say things in the way
that I mean it.
Really paying attention to the words,
instead of mimicking them or borrowing them,
or taking them from someone else.
To me, it is something-- it feels
similar to learning a new language like when
I learned the English, you adapt to a sense of sound
and then you're just like a baby and then you start mimicking
and then you start saying, but you're not quite
saying what you mean just yet.
It takes time for you actually to grasp the language enough
to really say something that comes from yourself,
not from the environment you are a part of.
So in this case, I say so much depends upon remembering.
So the stitches are also an act of remembrance.
I want to mark this time, and I want to say something here now,
which is has a sense of urgency in some ways.
Like, my grandmother used to tell me,
I have to tell you something now,
when she says that, I always like,
I kind of freaked out immediately like, oh,
something is wrong like what is happening?
Like it was some kind of wisdom, or it was something like--
Yeah, it could go either way.
Exactly.
--wisdom or recommendation for--
Let me tell you what you're doing wrong or else.
But, yes, it could go either way.
And there was always a moment of when
she said that I have to pay attention, it doesn't matter.
And there's a difference in Portuguese or in English,
too, but with the sense of hearing
and the sense of listening.
Hearing in the world as we're hearing things all the time.
It's noise, you're not necessarily welcoming in.
It's just there.
Listening, it's a part of you that pays so much attention
that you are taking it all in, and then you
decide what to do with that.
Well, it sounds to like that kind of listening
could also be related to something more spiritual,
right?
Or something of greater significance
that you're focusing in on.
And I think it's interesting that you're
referencing your grandmother's and talking
about this kind of domestic art.
And thinking about even like stitching and sewing
are often like very private actions that happen inside
in domestic spaces, and I'm wondering about your choice
to take this work into public.
And it seems like many of your projects,
there is this kind of intimate private gesture
that you're enacting, but you're doing it in this--
and even if there's not an audience there,
it's very different like being in the desert
or being on the mountainside than being inside your house.
So I'm curious about that decision of taking it
into this public realm.
Yeah.
I can bring back to also, again, language in the sense.
Like, in Portuguese we have two words for home, lar and casa.
Lar in some ways is what we call something
that you feel like you belong to.
It carries a sentimental value.
It carries poetry in the meaning of the word.
It doesn't have to be in architecture.
It doesn't have to be a wall of space.
It can be anywhere, as long as you sense that lar is there.
Casa is a geographic position, it's a location,
it's a residence.
When I moved here and I didn't understand how in the world
you didn't have a word for lar, I
couldn't find the word anywhere in English.
I had to find it in concepts and in actions and in spaces that I
felt that belonged to there.
So I choose open spaces that are not
my home, that are not necessarily even exhibition
spaces.
They are spaces I stumble upon.
They are spaces that I just happened to walk by or happen
to hear about.
Did a little research and found so much connection to it.
And that's how I start choosing these locations.
And so for this particular work, you
keep going back to the same place.
It's not a different location.
You keep going back to the exact same location.
Yes, as for as long as I've been able to go up there,
I'm going back to the bench.
There was a fire I'm sharing this image here,
a fire that evacuated us from this area.
And I wasn't able to go up there for about a month,
out of eight months I've been doing
this or even a little longer than a month,
a month and a half.
So after that, I went and found other locations
to just stitch on.
It was a little different.
It was a little bit harder to sink in and to find grounds,
but I found within this location that I could also
find space and time to do this.
And you are [? stitching ?] the date on, right?
That's what the one image shows that you stitched the number
of the day, numbers of days.
Yeah, at the end of the cloth--
each cloth has a beginning like a calendar period of dates.
So at the end of each cloth, I write down
how many days has passed.
Today's day 249, I think of stitching.
Yeah, I mean, that's actually the next question
that I had was really related to the duration
that it's been 249 days.
And if you could talk about how the kind of accumulation
and duration has impacted the work, I know obviously,
physically it's become heavier.
It now looks like this beautiful textile river
when you see it kind of flowing outward.
So it's obviously accumulated.
But I'm wondering if the content in the work has shifted
or the meaning, or is still shifting.
I know this is not like a culmination yet,
but I'm just curious about how the duration.
And the fact, too, that you're doing it on a daily basis.
So it really is a daily practice,
and so how that is impacting a work as you're in the process?
It's a daily practice.
And it is like a daily practice of let's say
a prayer of sitting there and intentionally surrendering
to this questions in my mind and I have
to answer them in some ways.
I think, it has changed, the cloth has changed,
the type of text I write has changed.
It has gone from finding a connection to being angry,
to being really sad, to finding other ways
to joy, and particularly to poetry in my life
in order to push forward.
And the text has evolved even in the writing
itself has gone from different types of typo and embroidery
techniques.
So it has changed in its physicality
too and the imagery.
In some ways, also the text takes a lot of time.
So each letter is about, I'd say 1 to 5 minutes,
depending on the letter.
And then a word takes a few minutes, and a sentence
to take an hour to even write.
The length of the text vary from day
to day like some days it is just a sentence,
another day is it may be a longer passage.
Yeah, some days it's just a sentence,
some days it's just a word.
I don't really have anything else.
Yeah.
The practice in this sense is this some people
call it a meditation.
I call it an oneiric practice.
It's almost like dreaming awake.
This idea of a dream state while you're awake.
It's a sense of regeneration within the body
and the space and the time that we're living in.
Integrating myself fully in this context of sewing, which
is such as could be is a craft.
And it's such a domestic practice,
but I'm also using it to say something that I believe can--
that won't disappear.
It's something that I can count on, right?
Yeah, I mean, and I think too it's sort
of like that idea of the ritual in any form
that it takes can open up that kind of meditation space,
or this kind of--
and I think a lot of--
I mean, I certainly identify that with that in my own family
like women were always knitting, sewing, crocheting.
And there was this way that it was almost like a way for them
to relax, even though they were producing and laboring.
It was a different kind of labor.
And it was also meant kind of like in this very
pure way with something they chose to do.
So that it was a more autonomous kind of action.
And I guess, what I wanted to ask you about,
too, is about the title, which you've already mentioned.
I've got to tell you something now like there
is this urgency in that.
But we as the viewer don't get to see what you're stitching.
It's very private, and so I'm curious
about the urgency of the telling,
or is it just more like you need to record it.
It's not really like I need to physically verbalize it to you,
but I need to record it in some way.
I'm just curious about that dichotomy
between the urgency of language and the privacy of language.
I think it comes to the spirituality of it.
I think I briefly mentioned earlier,
but it's this idea of how much do you
share with an intention of--
and how much is understood when you share
is another things, another layer.
So the moment I keep it private, it really is just up to me
to understand.
So there's not really a lot of pressure
with the surrounding in the outside realm.
But the moment I give voice to something in the public space,
I feel like I have to listen to it more as well, because it's
something that I have if I'm taking up
this much space in the outside, as people walk by
and they might see me.
I share this responsibility with them as well.
And how do people respond to you when
you're doing this performance?
Do you see the same people over and over again, or is it just--
There are a couple of regular hikers that I cross--
I walk by and now they recognize me or recognize them.
One is a bird watcher, we end up talking
and she told me there's over 200 species of birds
behind this house.
Wow.
Amazing.
There is a regularity there, too.
But for the most part, I go at different times in the day
when I can.
And the spot I'm in is actually not
quite visible from the regular path,
it's a little bit off the path intentionally so
I don't bother anyone.
And then the cloth doesn't go over any passage in any way.
But the people that know that bench is there if they walk in,
they will ask those questions.
Some have asked to take a picture, some have ask to--
this older men in the very beginning
ask if I was praying, which is interesting.
So you are in a way in your own and not necessarily
like a traditional Christian way.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is a prayer in some the sense of the spiritual connection
to the words and the space and the time of there.
Yeah, and it's listening.
It's part of the listening thing.
I think when we're trying to listen,
we're paying close attention to that part of us that
is unknown, that is not necessarily the cognitive self,
but it's the visceral self that can be invisible at times.
Yeah.
I think that obviously, they're just
kind of the generation of the text or the writing.
It's important and I know in a lot of your other work,
there's this misuse of language.
And also a lot of research and interest in female artist
and women's narratives and I'm just
wondering if you thought about how important it
is that this narrative is coming from a female body
or how that might impact.
I mean, obviously the use of this stitching,
which I think of as a very traditionally
female domestic action.
But I'm just wondering even about the kinds of narratives
that you're making is the relationship
between your gender or your interest in feminist art,
and the kinds of narratives that you are generating.
I think it's inevitable to really speak
to that in some ways.
I mean, this does come from my upbringing
with the matriarchs in the family
leading up to my experience as an artist in a female body,
and continuing with my education,
which I had no really traditional education
in the sense of the word.
I educated myself with free libraries,
and then accessing free libraries
I looked at works by women that I could find myself in.
It was more like a self-guided path.
And I do believe that's very much a part of how
I function in the world.
I also think the language that the role plays in this,
and the female narrative is very much intertwined.
There hasn't been in the history of our humanity enough texts
that tells the narrative of women immigrants in particular
that I would like to hear more of, read more of,
watch more of, listen more of.
All these narratives, I know they're there and they existed,
it's just not accessible necessarily.
And that is always in my mind, like,
how do you leave these narratives
behind for the following generation
to recognize themselves in.
[? Well, it's ?] interesting, it's like--
I mean, that is the part of the documentation that you're--
and I think it's interesting, too, it's like in some ways
this is a book, even though it's in this non-traditional form.
It really is this text, although, I
think it's interesting, too, just
thinking about the form of it that the way we might take
in a traditional book, it's very intimate and we're close to it
and we can kind of flip through it.
You would physically have to change your body movements
to take in this text and you'd have to kind of travel
through space.
So I think that's interesting to think about like if--
I don't know if you know, if you will ever show this
as an object or as something that somebody
could read the entire thing.
And you definitely you show bits and pieces of it
whenever you're posting, because you're posting this every day
right on social media.
So there's that other aspect that in some ways
that's also like another public ritual
where you're performing it and then you're documenting it.
And in some ways like social media
seems very like a very different kind of media
than this thing that's in nature very personal.
And I like that you're very fluid, I know that you've
done this with your other pieces too,
that you don't see the digital as, like, something that
won't fit with your aesthetic like you turn
your Instagram into this beautiful poetic document
just like you do with everything else that you make.
So that's interesting.
But I wonder about what you think
or if you've even thought about like if the textile would ever
be separated as an object, because right now it's
part of this process, right?
Part of this performance.
Yeah, I don't know if I'll share the cloth.
I mean, I haven't thought of it that far yet,
because it's still in the making and it's still not finished.
And once I finish, yeah, possibly I could let, you know?
I don't know how we would be read it so long.
I don't know how I would share it.
I think people would have to enroll it and walk on top of it
like a carpet walking through a carpet.
I haven't even gone back to reread it.
I don't even know if it makes sense necessarily.
I think it will read maybe like a poem broken parts
like with some new ones, but also leaving room
for interpretation.
Well, it's almost like a diary, right?
Like you're not editing this at all.
It's like the pure from your body onto the cloth.
So it is almost like a document of that day in some ways, too,
that it's not being edited or changed.
Yeah, I know.
There are even misspellings like I showed it
to a neighbor the other day and she point out a misspelling.
I guess I can't go back and unstitch that.
I think you could get some white out, get some white red.
You don't want to do that, you want the purity and the action.
And I think interesting, too, when you just
talked about if someone were to read it,
they would have to walk upon it.
And I think normally, when we think about art objects,
they're on a pedestal, their behind glass.
We can't touch them or breathe on them.
And in your piece you're actually dragging your art
object through the dirt.
So I think it's interesting that it's not this precious object
that it feels very--
and I think it's interesting.
It's not precious like monetary way,
but it is very personal and precious to you.
And I think that's really interesting.
Yeah.
I don't know if I could make this if I turned it
into a precious object.
It has to be a kind of mad like dragging through everything
I'm going through.
And also the quality of gathering and taking the stains
and taking the dirt and carrying it
leaves, and we found spiders rolling in there.
It's the combination of being outside,
inside that I very much relate to in this piece.
And it brings what it brings with it from--
It's very organic, right?
And even it's textile, it has like this dye on it.
And it almost just like in some ways like a skin
or a memorial in some way.
It seems like that it kind of keeps growing.
I don't know, I hadn't thought about that before.
It's kind of cool to think about the textile itself as a body,
you know?
And then the body was very small and now
you're carrying this very large body, and who knows--
I mean, at some point, it might be bigger than you are.
I don't know how you will carry it at that point and maybe--
it's interesting to think about if you just
kept doing this for the rest of your life
how big is that it would become.
But probably you won't need to write because it started
in this very specific way.
It started at the beginning of this pandemic.
We had talked about this privately,
but I wonder if you want to say anything
about how this piece will end, or if it will end
or how you even come to a conclusion
with a work like this?
I believe it'll end.
It'll end.
It has to.
I mean, the timeline that I'm giving
myself has been so coincidental with the historical landmarks
that are happening this year 2020.
I think since the pandemic began, a lot of other things
have happened in the social and political and scheme of things,
realms of things, personal.
Lives are changing, language is changing all the time.
I like that this piece in some ways is giving me a timeline
or almost like a sense of time because I'm losing otherwise
the idea of what time means.
And I know I hear this from a lot of people all the time
like today's already almost-- we're
like on Thanksgiving week like what it is.
This year went by so fast, but it's
the idea of subjective time versus our personal time
has changed.
Yeah, for everyone.
For everyone.
And I'm using the space in some ways
to kind of give myself this relationship with time that
has been structured.
And I have to go up there and sit and stitch and then
walk back.
That time is I'm stuck there, I can't get out.
It's once I'm in, I'm in.
Well, it'll probably be really strange to you
once you do stop the piece like that this is daily ritual will
no longer be there, but maybe you'll
start another daily ritual.
Maybe some other ritual that takes its place.
Yeah, I think it's just the possibility
of having this ritual being so like the idea of transformation
through one ritual, right?
Like the growth of the cloth, the shift of the text,
the colors have changed, the density and the weight
has changed.
I'm interpreting this--
I mean, processing transformation in some ways
and processing relying on this time
to be able to understanding something and question
that I have.
And sometimes I come up with a question beforehand
and then I go on the walk and then I
think about how to answer it.
And that has changed within me, too,
and how I behave in the world.
This piece is kind of in some ways
guiding me back in how I'm behave in the world.
Interesting.
Yeah, it is just like this very kind of solitary practice.
And you had mentioned earlier too,
about this idea of healing.
And so are you thinking about that as a self-healing
or are you thinking about that in this more kind of cosmic
like this gesture that would emanate out in some way?
Yeah, I think in some ways, we are carrying on so much trauma
right now, borrowed trauma, trauma from the news,
trauma from our neighbors, our own traumas.
The heavy content on social media, that's just
bombarding us with more trauma.
Everything seems to-- it's either toxic
or it doesn't grab your attention.
It seems that way like as we're living through this time.
And I wanted this to be in some ways shared
as a moment that isn't doing that, that's
doing quite the opposite.
That's having you kind of just sit
there and watch a woman stitch.
It's maybe not very fun, but it may not
give you a lot of excitement.
But it's a way to reflect upon that within yourself,
but I'm hoping--
Do you think rituals are often very magnetic?
Because we don't actually experience them,
and I think you're probably right that at this point
in time there is a real absence of that, like,
everything is so heightened.
Everything is so traumatic or I don't know.
I mean, I think there's something very beautiful
and magnetic about a person engaged.
I think both for the performer and also for people
who might encounter the piece.
And then I think even just encountering the documentation
of it like there is this quality of the body in the landscape
that just even seeing pictures of your performances, like,
I feel renewed in some way or I feel hopeful.
There's something hopeful about seeing
this beautiful text unfolding over the mountainside.
Thank you.
That's the biggest compliment you can pay to [INAUDIBLE]..
I'm sure lots of other people are having that experience.
And I think that's the great thing, too,
about you putting using social media, which is sometimes
taboo and probably not anymore.
But I don't know that we always consider it
like this place that's we're going to show our work
or exhibit our work.
And I think you do it so effectively,
and it also means that so many more people can experience
the work than if it was in like a more traditional art space.
Or even people who aren't able to access the work see it live.
And I think you do a fantastic job of documenting
the work, too, that you have really beautiful documentation
of the projects that you make.
Well, social media is that--
to me it's like another tool of access.
It doesn't have to be the devil in disguise and a lot of people
treat it in that sense-- like in a sense also social media made
a lot of what I have done so far possible because I've chosen
very--
just about every location has been so remote.
It's not like I rely on an audience to be there.
How I've done what I've done so far
is really part of the social media
is I've used as also even as a guide for me to archive work.
I use it as archival in some ways, like, I can track back
Memoryhouse over the past four years
through my Instagram account.
I can remind myself by using the right hashtags in the date.
So it's like an archive.
It's an archive in a cloud.
It's not a website, but I like it
that it functions as just an image archive nothing else.
I ask about social media too the other day.
I think it was over the weekend.
You posted an image of you in an alternate space.
You're not on the mountain, but there's some deer next to you.
That was like a magical image, you're like, yeah.
That's like Amanda is magical.
She's like Snow White like all the birds send it here.
I'm visited by deer--
I live really close to the forest,
so deers are around kind of all the time.
But they come around when I'm outside sometimes
and they just sit there or take a nap.
They have become comfortable around, which is I like that.
Well, it's probably true that you're so quiet, right?
That you're doing very quiet meditative thing and so
you're not a threat, or you're not
putting out that kind of energy up there.
I also learn that deer can sense.
They are really good with smells.
So if they crossed you before, they
will recognize your smell from afar.
Beautiful.
Well, do we want to open it up for [INAUDIBLE]..
I know we're nearing the end here.
It's great.
I'm sure [INAUDIBLE].
It's an opportunity to ask some questions
if they would like to.
So you can either put them in the chat or raise your hand
or just submit yourself.
I'm trying to see everybody in case to see a hand go up.
Lei, are you interested in?
Yes, I wanted to ask.
It feels to me as if this--
I was thinking about Vermeer making a painting called
The Lacemaker.
And the documentation over a long period
of time of a woman doing stitching work.
And how the Vermeer painting is a lots of layers
on top of each other durational, but the layers are invisible.
And about how Amanda's documentation
is like beads on a string.
It's each-- it's the duration is marked
by one image, one image, one image, one image, one image.
And that sequential that the way that the garment unrolls
is sequential in changing color and changing
words and things like that.
And also that the documentation is sequential.
Anyway, it was just a thought about how work is layered,
how work is hidden, and how work is revealed.
And I just wondered, it feels to me
Amanda as if your documentation is the art piece in itself
in a lot of ways.
What do you think about that?
Thank you, Lei.
I love that idea of documentation
is becoming my practice in some ways.
I do think it's because of the choices
I've made to perform in isolating areas
and what is there to leave behind, what is there to see,
what leaves--
what comes with me to the studio, what comes back around?
These layers is very much present
in my work like the example of Memoryhouse.
In Memoryhouse, I've carried the same window around
with me that belonged in every single space that I've been.
This window has been there, the same chair has been there.
There's this idea of reusing and continuation of material
that becomes such a part of the project
and then it lives as an artifact of this piece eventually.
So I guess in some ways I look at this cloth as the artifact,
but then the photographs of the process are also artifacts.
OK, it'll give it a kind of form.
To give you a kind of--
also to give it a memory really.
To give it a sense of looking back and recognizing what
happened so you can move forward.
Because memories are to me, there
are two types of memories.
There is illusive memory and then there is elusive memory.
There is the memory that I feel like is an indirect reference
of what happened, and there is a type of memory that's
just difficult to remember.
And I think in some ways society has found itself
in a place in time right now that I
feel like we are forgetting to remember a lot of things.
Or intentionally forgetting things.
And I wanted this for me to be a physical in an analogy of how
this is affecting us in the sense of how to record memory.
They are like benchmarks almost.
Yeah.
Great.
Thanks.
There's was a few more in the chats.
Who are the poets and writers who
enliven the way you approach and use language?
Oh, there's so many.
I don't even know where to begin.
Recently, I can say just right now I'm
really into the work of Anais Nin
because she used to live in this house that I'm in.
That's another story.
I'm working with her presence in this home that I live in
and I learned English with her.
Also, I taught myself with her diaries
in the beginning of moving here.
Hilda Hilst is a Brazilian writer
I've been reading a lot of right now, because I'm working
on translating her to English.
And various writers and, even some philosophers
that I've come to adore.
And then honestly, two musicians like I reference a lot of texts
through music.
I also like a lot of my meditation practice
comes through sound in the musicians I'm listening to.
I want to hear what they're saying
like Laurie Anderson being one of them is a huge inspiration.
She is a spoken word artist and musician and an artist.
Those are some of the many people.
Whoever ask that question can send me a message
and I'll send you a list.
I'm also part of a feminist book club,
and I learned so much from which Cindy is a part of as well.
We read primarily women in translation,
such as Clarice Lispector who is a huge influence in my work
as well.
We have-- yeah, sorry, another question
in the chat from Andre.
Yes, how does performance-- oops,
it just went off the screen for me.
Just one second.
How does performance art inform your poetry
of writing versus writing it alone at home?
I mean, how is it different in both places?
It's different.
Yeah, I like that question.
I never thought of it that way.
But I think writing poetry at home
feels more of trial and error kind of thing.
It's through practice and giving yourself
the time to sit down and write something down.
I also learned English through the idea of poems,
too, because it's so fragmented that I was easier to actually
learn a language through that.
And it's how I actually think about things in some ways,
the nonlinear narrative is in poetry.
When I'm performing-- it is not so much like a poem,
I would say, it's more like a mantra
of what I'm trying to say.
And eventually, might become a poem
because it's so many of these lines and repetition.
But it works more as a practice of a mantra
of saying the same thing over and over
and over in order to sink in.
All right.
Thank you.
We could continue to be flies on the wall
and listen to you too in conversation.
It's really fascinating.
So I want to thank Cindy and Amanda both for your generosity
and time today.
Really wonderful.
So I could ask both of you to put your either Instagram
or website in the chat everyone if you would
like additional information.
I also put the Cixous Reading Group in the chat
if anyone's interested.
We just meet once a month.
I know there are lots of people here who are from the group,
so that's really cool to see everybody.
But if you're interested in joining a feminist reading
group, we'd love to have you.
Excellent.
Thanks, Cindy.
We also ask that you complete a very, very short and quick
survey that will just help us in future programming.
Thank you again so much for your time, energy, creativity,
for getting--
helping us get a peek into your ongoing process, Amanda.
That's really wonderful.
And thanks, Cindy, for facilitating.
Wonderful as always.
So thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
Yeah, take good care.
Be safe.
Wear your mask and have a great Thanksgiving.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Ciao.