West Virginia University performance text / July 27 2006


Somewhere there's a story in this - machinery of the body or interminable
mechanism of psychosis <> We begin like
this. We begin like this because the image stream is "thus." And it will
take a while to orient - from the playing with the images to the
performance. And except for this typing - there is no difference. Now I
feel embarrassed because some of you have seen sections of these alreaady;
I've been playing with the images for about forty minutes or so. These are
avatars placed into literally inconceivable positions. My name is Alan
Sondheim by the way nd I will be your guide for the evening. Or for as
long as you choose to stay. So as I was saying yesterday, with an avatar,
everything can be assembled or dissassembled - Here is the disassembly of
a vacuum tube in a scanner, digitally deconstructed. What is it that you
can do with machines that you cannot do with bodies? For one thing,
disassembly line - that is eachpart is independent of all the others.
Well, that's not true, but they'll stay that way if you unbolt them.

So one can move in ways that she cannot move, and remain in air outside of
gravity. EVERY HUMAN BEING IS THE RESULT OF INTERMINABLE SADNESS. These
images can be taken apart just like Al Capone. And these images belong
somewhere or anywhere and it's death that returns these bodies quickly
quicly to the position of the machine and its disassembly. So this is
about death, my work is about death, and the absence of language, that
looking out of the window at the last possible moment - and what is THERE
continuing in the midst of cessation - So these people can move butonly
for a short while. HOW LONG IS THE LIFE OF A DANCER? MERce is still going
strong into his 80s just choreography now. But I saw him dance ever so
slowly with a chair. And the chair with thick with the wood and if I'm not
careful I'll cove up all the exciting images again. On the right two
avatar cats with a human avatar perhaps from the Kojiki learning to ride
them in the midst of unfathomable winds. On the left avatar humans
hysterically presenting themselves AS IF they are on the scren within the
screen. On the right the recent Ukrainian revolution covered completely in
the main square in Kiev. On the left and right above - an occupation. On
the left an avatar-violation and that skin moving without tearing or
tearing without moving; to the right the neuraesthenic from the nineteenth
century, lassitude danced out in the middle, in other words disease and
strategies for moving around or through the body. There are times... in
the midst... of the dark wood which surrounds us... when we lose track...
give up... turn away...something has gone horribly wrong... perhaps this
is one of those times... as if the world has stained the world.... Someday
I will write myself... into nonexistence... This is my dream aloud...
uncriducoeurMIAO HOW.... at that point that precise point... between being
alive and being dead... I will divide.. and will divide and will divide...
there will be nothing that remans remains whole... then each segment, yes!
each segment! will retire all the others... the segments...

the segments will slowly disappear... outside of any database... not for
your viewing or my own... oh then things do or do not go together... you
see they lead us somewhere else... those faces on the left... modelled on
a book from World War One - a hidden book - photographs of the wounded - I
still have nightmares - and now in Iraq - people burned over ninety per
cept of their bodies. In this country, this was inconceivable. Not even
Vietnam... you have to go back to maybe Cold Harbor in the Civil War,
something like that... So this is about this is about empyre - and this is
a project - about the end of empyre - and this is a project - about a
certain kind of fury - this is about dance and the stain of dance - this
is about disease and the stain of disease - yes that too - this is about
an entire - a whole - encyclopedia of things! - yes, the encycclopedia
too! the encyclopedia as well! - faces collapsed yes in time - you can
reverse time digitally - double faces - aum and silent or a--- and um--- -
if you understand Shinto you'll get the reference - around Inari -
guardian figures - foxes - one with open mouth one with shut - the
electrical figuration between them - we're in the midst of the grid - the
power grid - it's all around us - you can hear the grid - the antennas
pick it up - the dancer moving around the grid - out in the wilds, well
not wilds but away from the grid - you can hear other things -

World War II was very beautiful... bombers going from England to
Germany... I imagine Iraq is very beautiful too...

In another minute this will look like a dance... a modern dance.. with
mysterious black figures and electronic music...

more dance and more dance... someting about Krishna here but I don't want
to go there -

these are segments of something called the swallowtail catastrophe -
bifurcation points - when there's a sudden shift in behaviour - when
anything can happen - but not "and usually does"

okaythis is Geneva - I'm flying the plane of the President of the United
States... on a bus... (bus + plane = speed of bus) - next to - somewhere -
an image of the tsunami - there's a proximity - about avatars - a nearness
- an uncanny element - you can't define it - they're close - they're
almost touching - and ye... yet... There are changes here... in gender...
positioning - there's a story but I don't know it... - not yet...

what's necessary now - some sort of climax - some way to bring this all
together - I'll find it - climaxes are usually loud - this one is embedded
- in the machine - the back of my mind - somewhere else not there -
somewhere with infantry - so the dancer - Maud - is the crankthat - the
crank that - that drives the map - bang bang bang bang - if she disappears
- the mapp - the map - will disappear - just wait and see - no I won't -
just wait .... damn, its still there...

the world is a mess...

let us give ourselves at the most another two generations...

dusts... radiations... at least you don't have to dream this...
thank you.