Miriam Cahn
15 Nov - 20 Dec 2014
MIRIAM CAHN
Schlachtfeld/Alterswerk
15 November – 20 December 2014
LATE WORK
i call the piece kriegsschauplatz/kampffeld/SCHLACHTFELD a late work. when i used the term with a friend who is my age she felt incensed, offended and angry with me.
i had used the term proudly and pointed with a broad sweep of the arm to all the large already finished tree trunks lying there, had wanted to show her with this expression that i as 60-me would continue working these enormous hunks of wood by hand until my powers fail me, that i with my own two hands would strip, saw, carve these roughly man-sized bodies of wood with handsaws and carving knives, rob them of their skins like a modern marsyas with my instruments, penetrate their innards surgically
until the day my powers leave me (no-power-anymore-me))
that’s how long this work SCHLACHTFELD will endure, that’s how long i will belabour these tree trunks a long time hopefully at least as long as i have the power to carve and saw and cut with my hands.
lying there are the ones i have finished, lying next to one another as bodies i have worked and defined there as a field, these bodies lying spread about in the field on the floor of the space these bodies worked bodily by me beings, that had been standing trees and now are prone bodies, a battlefield of work, of bodies, of space. your body is a slaughterhouse, your body is a battlefield, your body is a battleground.
Miriam Cahn
Schlachtfeld/Alterswerk
15 November – 20 December 2014
LATE WORK
i call the piece kriegsschauplatz/kampffeld/SCHLACHTFELD a late work. when i used the term with a friend who is my age she felt incensed, offended and angry with me.
i had used the term proudly and pointed with a broad sweep of the arm to all the large already finished tree trunks lying there, had wanted to show her with this expression that i as 60-me would continue working these enormous hunks of wood by hand until my powers fail me, that i with my own two hands would strip, saw, carve these roughly man-sized bodies of wood with handsaws and carving knives, rob them of their skins like a modern marsyas with my instruments, penetrate their innards surgically
until the day my powers leave me (no-power-anymore-me))
that’s how long this work SCHLACHTFELD will endure, that’s how long i will belabour these tree trunks a long time hopefully at least as long as i have the power to carve and saw and cut with my hands.
lying there are the ones i have finished, lying next to one another as bodies i have worked and defined there as a field, these bodies lying spread about in the field on the floor of the space these bodies worked bodily by me beings, that had been standing trees and now are prone bodies, a battlefield of work, of bodies, of space. your body is a slaughterhouse, your body is a battlefield, your body is a battleground.
Miriam Cahn