VEC.TOR MISSION | ARTISTSJOURNAL | INFO
 
 
 
Georgia Sagri - Saloon Meta, November 3rd 2008, 9pm <|>
 
 
 
 
Blake Rayne and Kerstin Braetsch
 
Do you like the poster? Do you like the song? We made it with Davis yesterday. It is so boring in the studio/home. With the cold and no heat and being so far away from the city. How can we call it? Saloon like Salon? No, just Saloon. The double oos look good close to each other: “Quick draw” and we made a poem for the poster that is an invite as well: “Double whiskey on movable furnitured eyes. Plane departs. Plane arrives”. Two artists are invited to give works and I will perform for them. The artists can give me instructions. Songs. Texts. Anything. It will be in different locations each time but this time is in my studio. It is the first one. How shall we install the two paintings? Blake and I met in his studio and we spent almost an hour to make two small pieces, talking a lot and not deciding which one I must use for the Saloon. It was the first time I actually got what he is doing with the folds and the paint. They are here in the studio all of these highly overwhelming personal procedures which then brutally through the stretching of the canvas and the install he will dismiss them all.
 

Georgia Sagri

 
I thought: “Is he pretending to perform masculinity?”

After we smoked, he stopped with the idea of making something with me and he gave me one big already finished canvas. It was a huge canvas. I didn’t even know how to carry that to LIC. He paid my cab. The same day in the evening I went to Kirsten’s and we talked, offered ourselves few glasses of wine and spoke for I don’t know how many hours about her work. We talked about painting, extensions, actual movements, machines of light and she decided to give me a bigger painting than Blake’s. It has always been an issue with painters how to control large surface and the bigger the painting the bigger the claim of control they control and yes, probably Kirsten believes in that. But then it is on paper and it is suppose to be fragile but it isn’t and then I need to hung it and it won’t matter if I fuck the sides because it will be cool because it suppose to look messy but why? Anyway, I will stop thinking about it. We need to bring some whiskey in the house, no cash, and we’re expecting lots of people. I bought synthetic fur for jackets and fabrics and I tacked it around Blake’s painting. The decoration makes sense because for now on the painting is fabric and I placed it on the floor. Then I bought purple silk ribbons to hung Kirsten’s painting. I made it to look pretty, something she always consciously rejects. I purposely didn’t cut the ribbons. I left them to fall down to the floor and touch the painting’s sides and back. A female painter should not make “pretty” work, but a female performer I suppose can use silk purple ribbons to install the painting. I didn’t have any instructions. I was somehow free to do whatever I wanted to but I needed help with the beats for a song I would compose live for the paintings. And then I thought to have the making of the song in front of this huge painting with the silver shape in the middle that looks at me and to step on the other painting and make it clear that remains a fabric to me, to hide myself underneath it, pull it up and cover myself with it and every movement it will happen at that moment.

 
When the performance started there were only three people in the room and suddenly some started to arrive.
 
Georgia Sagri
 
Everyone was helping. The space seemed very small very instantly and I felt there is no need for something to happen. Blake brought a bottle of alcohol he couldn’t drink. Kirsten was present. Adele, Allison, Jason, John, Emily, Walter, Nic, Amy, Liz, Jacob, Eric, Ilya, Tairone, Justin, Jeremy, Thomas, Charles, Viola were present and Clay had sent me in the early afternoon a one word text message. awesome. I asked from Davis to help me with the beats and the looping of the recordings. I also had on the projector this scene I love from Godard’s “2or3 things I know about her” but I would cover the lens of the projector and keep only the colors of the movie projected on the wall. I had also the aluminum foil to do sound effects for the metallic moon- that’s how I call Kirsten’s painting and that’s how I react with it- to come across the room.
 
Georgia Sagri
 
I used this foil to speak with the painting to make the painting become sound and reflection and to be outside of its surface, outside of its control.

I recorded the sound of the foil and I asked Davis, this time more aggressively, to play the recording so I can add another different recording on top of it. We did that several times, back and forth, trying to figure out what to do with it and then I asked him to make a beat. Some people were sitting on the floor very close to me while I was figuring out what to do next and I was not really succeeding. It was embarrassing. Some seconds after, this melody came up to my mind and I started to sing. I was singing words in my language that no one understood and it was such a relief to know that they will get the song only from the tonalities and the rhythms.

I danced on the painting and I covered myself with it. I was underneath an animal’s skin and inside its belly and then I would swing the other painting with my hand to let it move with its purple ribbons. The song was looping again and again. The beat was there. I will stop and do a few dance moves I didn’t know where they were coming from. It reminded me Hollywood movies, cabaret and musicals.