Chants Operations
One enters and exits through the same volume of space. Four women from four corners of the world are saying the sound of the letter "W". This sound volume is a gate, a rite of passage.
Four women's voices are chosen from the "W" archives. The "W" archives is an ongoing collection of hundreds of people from around the world. People are asked in public spaces to say the sound of the letter "W" in their mother tongue for 30 seconds in regular rhythm. If the person asked has no "W" in their language, they are asked to choose the "W" closest to them.
Four speakers are positioned in 4 corners of the entrance. The sounds of four women saying the sound of "W" rotate from one speaker to the next around the room. The individual voices rotate from one speaker to the next in a circular motion. This gives the person entering the slight feeling that the room is rotating. The room is rotating. We are nomadic even when sitting and standing because the earth is rotating underneath us Paul Virilio says.
See here next.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
see here next
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
one move dance
See hear next leaving 'see here next' behind you.
Enter a space of two twisted ropes twisted from bindings found on the floor of the Marcado in Addis Ababa. To move around them one or you must make one half turn with your body. You will return to complete your one full turn on the way out.
To practice one move, there are a few options.
Duck, or turn
around. Turn in
or out
or go under and then through.
A one dance two move piece.
A one dances to move piece.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
a line of thought
The blue polka dot blanket is lost have you looked here
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
Watch words twist in the rope
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
one move dance; view looking a head
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
one move dance; view looking B hind
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
NO twist far away
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
NO twist close up
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
you will return
to this line
of thought
View looking be hind as you pass to enter; view looking forward on your way back out
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
twist in Ethiopia
A video in three parts. A three yarn video.
Yarn (A): two young girls speak about how they collect discarded plastic bindings from the ground of the Mercado, Addis Ababa. These bindings are sold to two men.
Yarn (B): Two men twist the piles of collected discard into yarns. It takes roughly 9 days for one man two twist a 40m yarn. It takes 3 yarns to twist 1 line of rope.
Yarn (C): Two men twist 1 forty meter yarn into 1 twelve meter rope. That rope is the rope used in the swing in the second story window that you forgot about.
Loop.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
one book book store
A bookstore owner of 35 years is asked which book of poetry he would choose if he had a one book book store.
But you can't have a one book book store, he says.
After a while he chooses one book.
You buy the one book.
The first page you open to is the poem that
you break a part or apart line by line.
You fold pieces of paper so that they fit in your back pocket.
You write the lines inside of each fold.
To move the poem out of the book, you walk up to people in public space and ask them
(1) what each line means and
(2) where to go next.
In this way you make a spatial translation of what the foot notes.
You then open a one book book store in the exhibition and work all the lines of thought together into one poem that is published in another public print space.
(Poem on-going)
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
poem on going
head on
(view inside the 'one book book store' from far away)
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
poem on going
an approach
(view pretty close up)
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
inside of 'poem on going'
The bookstore owner in his bookstore holding the one book he would choose for the one book book store inside the one book book store.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
inside of 'poem on going'
Local reporters, artists and curatorial team at pre-'watch word' opening having coffee in the temporary café in the one book book store in the one book book 'pome on going'.
Everyone is practicing the 'floating sausage finger' move.
The 'floating sausage finger' move will be performed in the public art walk on the opening evening of 'watch words'. See a head.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
inside of 'poem on going'
Detail of different lines collected by talking with people over two weeks in mapping through language different spatial relationships of the city.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
inside of 'poem on going'
Detail of different lines of thought jotted into the one book in the 'one book book store'; notes and ideas collected each day during encounters with people over two weeks in different parts of the city.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
inside of 'poem on going'
Detail of some of the words watched while designing 'watch words'. From 'Solaris'. My wife Lynn watching German words spoken. My daughter Heart in the midst of babbling coos.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
'This is Hoeing' in a wall.
'This is Hosing' on line. (pdf)
'This is Hoeing' is a poem designed from a similar translation walking technique as 'poem on going'.
'This is Hoeing' was first published in the Chicago Review.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
two more poems in the wall
Poems published in WHR (Western Humanities Review) and Telephone Journal.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
View of the three different poems packed inside the walls.
The holes in the walls were made from removing steel rods deeply inset into the walls during the previous exhibition. The holes in the 'one book book store' were preserved and then shaped.
The walls are from Frederich Schinkel and date back to the beginning of the 19th century. The walls are filled with straw, pebbles, chips, leaves, other compact discard. The walls have a rubble stratigraphy. When 'watch words' ends, the walls will be patched back up with the additions of the poems as a wall edition.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
view upon entering the 'once read red twisted knot garden'.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
view looking back into the 'once read red twisted knot garden'.
and
view looking into the 'twisted knot garden'
upon returning to leave
or leaves.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
detail of one red knot thing in the 'once read red knot garden'.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
I'm glad I'm not in Indiana
Beginning of 'I'm glad I'm not in Indiana' knot in Arnsberg.
On three different occasions, a 80m and, two 40m ropes are twisted in public spaces in Arnsberg, Germany.
The rope starts twisted. Now the rope is hooked into some detail in a public space. A railing. The bench alongside of an old castle. A backhoe.
The other end of the rope is attached to a stick.
The stick is turned over and over in the direction of the original twist.
As the stick is turned over and over the forces in the twisted line are collected, stored in the rope. The rope knots. Snarls. Encoils into itself as itself. The rope is looking for a way to store the energy input into it. You can see and feel where the energy goes as it leaves you. You can see the form of your energy in the changing morphology of the line. You have some knowledge of knot being. You can enter into the line and nudge the line into a practiced typology of knots.
An 80m rope takes around 4 hours to twist into a knot.
Each twisted line is a very slow walk.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
a line of thought twisted PORK CLOUD ROOTKIT
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
a line of thought twisted watch words from another perspective
from another perspective I ran home
from another perspective Iran home
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
crazy dance
After twisting each knot each knot is slung over the shoulder like the corpse of a wild boar hunted in the city, and then walked through the city and to the Kunstverein as if a trophy, which each knot is not.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
interior view looking from the right side of 'the wall walls'
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
detail of 'the wall walls'
'The wall walls' is a 10m long paper architecture wall of the Chinese poem 'the wall' by Ai Qing.
Ai Weiwei was asked to choose one poem of his father, Ai Qing, that he feels is relevant to today and has a personal meaning to him. He choose a poem in Chinese called 'the wall'.
Designed from over 350 encounters, 'The wall' was walked around Paris for one week in and out of every place of business, the embassy, the visa office, and many public spaces in two of the 'Chinatowns'. The poem was translated from Chinese to French to English.
'The wall walls' was sewn together into one 33 page paper wall in Berlin by a shoe cobbler.
In order to enter the last room in 'watch words' one must walk around or under the wall.
Note: The last room in 'watch words' is the first room.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
each image is a line in a line of thought
80 slides as a on-going narrative which can be re-written for the first time each time.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
detail of 'each image is a line in a line of thought'
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
from the east side of 'the wall wall' looking west
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
watch words in Little Havana
View from in front of the photograph 'watch words' in Little Havana, Miami, a poem starting with Jose Lima.
Note: The poem from this walk was first published in the journal 'Puerto del sol'.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
knot in a window frame frame
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
view from the east side of 'the wall walls'
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
View standing in front of 'five views of Lajos Kassák'.
'five views of Lajos Kassák' was made by walking poems of Lajos Kassák' around Budapest, Hungary. The original starting poems by Kassák are images, drawings and text entangled into stories.
These paper architectures are 'urban scores'.
While traveling, poems from the country one travels to are taken out of the poetry anthologies of avant-garde poets. The poems are carried into and walked around public spaces. This is also a way to move through a place in ways unpremeditated.
The poems are walked out into different cities.
The lines collected on the papers from the encounters are sewn together and walk in and out of art institutions.
The lines on the paper are redesigned into poems which find homes in space of professional creative writing, art and architecture publications.
'To carry' is the English etymological root of 'translation'.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
On the other side of the wall with the 'five views of Lajos Kassák', the video 'HANDS'.
'HANDS' started with 'Hands' by Jonathan Burrows.
Together with Eric Ellingsen, a German sign language teacher was invited to watch a selected clip of the original 'Hands' and asked to translate each gesture into their equivalent words. These watched words were then lightly composed like light lightly composes. A space in between two roads in Berlin was then chosen to read and re-sign the choreographers piece into a Space Poem.
Note: Space Poem 'HANDS' was made with artist Thilo Frank.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
view from behind 'the wall walls'
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
view from just to the left of 'Twisted Method'.
'Twisted Method' is at the time of 'watch words' a 35 minute video and manual composed of various walks and actions performed around the world, designed by Eric Ellingsen with and for various institutions, exhibitions and classes.
'Twisted Method' is on going.
Note: Special thanks to the participants of the Institute fur Raumexperimente, in particular Christina Werner, with whom a chunk of these walks were initially hatched as a part of learning experiments.
Note: Special thanks to Christian Mono who helped edit this version of 'Twisted Method'
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
your conscious foot
'Your conscious foot' is an action which opened the art walk Kunstverein Arnsberg. Each person was asked to take off one sock. If someone was not wearing socks they were asked to wear the sock someone else removed from their foot.
It is very difficult to forget about your feet when wearing only one sock.
Note: 'your conscious foot' first appeared in a poem walked around by Eric Ellingsen and published in Telephone Journal, a copy of which is in the wall in the Kunstverein Arnsberg.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
watch your blind spot walk
'Watch your blind spot walk' starts from an experiment in which a person can see their blind spots. A hole is cut in a piece of paper. Simple parameters are followed to find your blind spot by orienting the paper and your arms to a relational distance particular to each persons eyes and brain. Each person is then asked to walk some distance while seeing their blind spot and holding their blind spot in view by seeing where the world in the hole disappears.
Note: You should be able to find examples of the ‘blind spot experiment’ by seeing on line. Look up.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
floating sausage fingers far away
One everyone finds their floating sausage fingers, they are asked to walk some distance through the city while holding the thing that is not there in view. When your floating sausage finger disappears, you are asked to slow down. Stop. Find your sausage finger. Continue at a pace in your own line of flight slowly holding your sausage finger in view.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
floating sausage fingers close up
To practice the 'floating sausage finger' move, orient your index fingers so that the tips are almost touching one another. Hold your index fingers close to your eyes. Look through the space of where your index fingers tips almost touch. Focus on something beyond your index finger tips. Slowly, move your fingers closer and further apart and, closer and further from your eyes until you see your index finger tips merge into one finger tip digit rounded at both ends. This is your floating sausage finger. You have 4 floating sausage fingers.
Newton had floating sausage fingers.
Newton wrote about floating sausage fingers.
The Jesus of Josephus had floating sausage fingers.
Mohammad had four floating sausage fingers.
Visnu had eight floating sausage fingers.
Looking makes the floating sausage finger you see.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
lay down walk
In the 'Lay down walk', everyone who feels like it is asked to lay down from head to foot. The person at one end of the line gets up and walks at whatever pace they feel like, to the other end of the line. They then lay down. The next person at the start of the line gets up, moves to the other end of the line and lays down again in front of the first person. Each person does this over and over again as the line slowly crawls through the city.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
holding your perspective walk
To hold your 'Holding your perspective walk', place your arms out to your side like airplane wings. Staying focused on what is in front of you, slowly move your arms back and forth until you arms disappear behind you cone of vision. Then rotate your arms up and down to define the edge boundaries of your particular cone of vision. Walk some distance through public space moving your carefully with conscious thought for preserving the edge conditions of when your hands disappear.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
learning the spatial terms of 'holding your perspective walk'
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015
lake soup
'Lake soup' is an on going performance which begins with Georges Perec imagining in his book 'Species of Spaces', turning Lake Geneva into a beef consume.
Eric Ellingsen sent the lines from 'Species of Spaces' to Alice Waters asking Alice if she would write a recipe to turn Lake Geneva into a beef consume. He then asked Arnsberg chef Olaf Baumeister to perform Alice Waters recipe using lake water from local Poppy Sea. Olaf translated Alice's recipe into the particular taste of Poppy Sea.
'Lake soup' was served at the opening of 'watch words'.
A small container of 'Lake soup' was poured back into the Poppy Sea the next day effectively turning the lake into a beef consume.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015: Lake Soup
the lake Lake soup
Know how in ‘what is life?’ Erwin Schrödinger says, "suppose you could mark the molecules in a glass of water; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules."
You are the lake soup we are all in.
Eric Ellingsen at Kunstverein Arnsberg 2015: Lake Soup
