the general anxiety surrounding

cyberfeminism

resulting in the reduction

of our work

to the question of whether or not we engage with the system

of course we considered total opposition to the main frame

or else contributed

in small ways to society

what was done

& even the badly done

was done exceptionally well

whether in ceramics or electronics when you think about it

being in touch all the time

was taking up

hell of a lot of space

i was edging towards my thirties

had to organise this material intellectually also spiritually started making these ceramic

plates

for my friends people I admire learnt some modelling techniques

for pots using

coil-building cross-hatching slip poems & potted histories

from scratch

i made a pot

my teachers were like wow it is a being

to me it was a kind of shelter precisely because i

could not be located

at the same time you know

i was having this embarrassment coming from was i a woman?

keep going though

i said to the clay

when it was dry & when it was wet i said

be fixed

the clay was cold the smell of river my hands dry because how are we talking about love?

it matters

someone pointed out to me

i was hoarding so many movies

which I found through the most basic

18th century search terms

like ‘GENAERAYT’& ‘PRINT’

because of failure

as an artist? or my body?

no no the visual material

another friend said you know

this comes from your body

it never occurred to me he was referring to my reproductive capacity

i don’t know if i felt more powerful then

or now

there is a part of me

that wants to be more radical

& another part that wants to give

presents to friends

there was this one manifesto

called Introduction to net.art (1999)

a series of instructions

on how to be a net artist

chiselled into stone

people either dismissed Introduction

or praised it as ‘a joke on community’

to the extent that it ‘dispelled any dreams

of having elided the commodification of art’ presumably because it was itself

an art work for sale was it ironic?

to me it contained utopias

i simply could not ignore

irony is supposed to be

a one off instrument

in the dramatic arts it soothes

by representing some happening

in such a way the audience becomes aware

of something implicit in the story

as an instrument it builds

complicity but look around

you are told to internalise the instrument

so you can become detached

so you can become objective

so you can become universal

there is a figure in Greek comedy

called the eiron: the dis-assembler

who holds the power to grab a pussy

by deliberately pretending

to be less intelligent than he actually is when this is done not to deceive politically nor to violate a woman

well that is art are all monuments

ironic?

to dismiss the plates is like saying

it is not important to fabricate worlds

that memory is not a pleasure endeavour

look at this one so pretty!

the first plate i made

worked into terracotta red

blues blazing through

a needle some seeds

the focus on inscription allowed me to push

my existential questions to the back of my mind i could finally sleep

i could finally work on clearing out a cupboard I was calling ‘the garage’

i could finally get on with

gathering together the very substance that

permits us to relate to one another

without moral bankruptcy

it was easy to track down

there are a lot of examples

in history it is happening now

i met with friends people i admire

& asked them to remember

think harder i said

tell me about the days

the words the music

the comfort the pleasure

the absence or pressure

of something we call care

that which permits us to

relate to one another without moral bankruptcy

i gathered what they gave to me &

the plates

people liked the exercise because

remembering feels nice

but then it was out there: the info

i gave the plates as gifts or put them

in a drawer it was beginning to take up

hell of a lot of space

i was edging towards my thirties

had to organise this material

intellectually also spiritually

M came round so I could show him his

he said oh gosh! I don’t know if I want to see it!

& his became the model for the general program

because it is beautiful

but not because M wanted his plate in his own home

B was shocked by the permanence of theirs

T still hasn’t done one & D never finished hers

when i did mine i did it wrong

& i invented it

i had to do L’s again

because i lost the bit of paper we did the drawing on

i think on the bus

maybe i threw it away

can you believe it

i berated myself so hard that day

for being such a careless machine

L did hers again at my request

but it was wrong

i had to add bits of information

things i myself had observed about her life

that were missing

i was amassing that which did not belong to me

the info was heavy the amount of energy

required to keep it cool

i was concerned they would surely break

in transit & i was moving around so much

i needed to return home

i started revising early net.art

came across writing about

post-internet art which i remember from

the tail end of a long party in London

bring your own crap website & your

commercialisation & its critique

was i thinking at that time about

irony? where the outside of this

elaborate joke was? either way

i stored these motifs of self-awareness

because

well i didn’t have a choice

perhaps there could be

something called ‘post-irony’

to the extent that detachment

& universality are revised like asking why

are we embarrassed or sad?

i’m genuinely asking you

i have some ideas

i take the plates out of the drawer

they are so

that blazing through

blue arrange them

around my body in an array

shake

my head i am so fucking obsessed

 with memory

are you (i ask them i start) are you

ironic? seriously

are you in this with me?

there they are standing alone

in a world of stone

they could respond & did

i thanked my friends for doing this with me

& if you want to make yours

i’m still here:

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/892779