andydelire

[andydelire]

Modulation Frequency - - acrylic on wood panel 5/5 #artwork #painting #midimusic #goodnakedgallery (at Cincinnati) https://www.instagram.com/p/Co3E8bPLPJ1/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[andydelire]

inside the Groove Box 🍓 painting on wood panel 11x14in #contemporaryart #acrylicpainting #midimusic #goodnakedgallery https://www.instagram.com/p/CofwDRoOECH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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“the idiot”

11x15in paint and pencil on paper

[andydelire]

09:00 I keep thinking about the streets in novels I’ve read. Places I’ve only been in my head. Faces permeate within, the background smells the daises pushing out of the cracks between the cobble stones. Within the door frames, wooden tables and lamps talk shop with the fog, of how to be visible in midst of fading. The windows afar hold the characters from the catalogue, sleeping until I think of them again. I anticipate a two-hour drive today, when I wake up I must go to the opera. So many rests to count, I only play in half the movements, sometimes I wonder why I do this at all. What an absurdity playing in an orchestra or dreaming in paintings... #artbook #musiclife #goodnakedgallery #contemporarypainting #operaticmysticisms https://www.instagram.com/p/Cllc_y2rTIT/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[andydelire]

Musical bodies

Weeks are flying by, we are already in Thanksgiving break, but since I’ve been thinking about music, I’ll do a little rant. 

Music is such a good example of Hauntology. It is both a memorial that can manifest physical reactions and be remembered, and yet it still feels so ephemeral. It can be both active and dead, existing and imagined, textile and aerial. Makes me think of cymatics, or those geometric shapes that appear when small sand-like materials sit on metal, and the frequencies change the shapes into mandala like symmetric forms. Molecules are musical in their very essence, in how they vibrate.  

[andydelire]

Made six short musical pieces this week, thinking on how to pair each to go along with a page in the chapbook... Feels great to be composing with musical notation, because people could actually play this someday. 

[andydelire]

In lieu of a studio update this week, check out this awesome lit mag called Black Moon Magazine—I had the pleasure of being interviewed as their featured artist for issue 8! This was both really fun and challenging to put into words what my artistic practice is like. I took a bit of a deep dive, while at the same time was aware that I can ramble on too much, so the interview moves quick but also gives a lot of details about my influences and creative process. 

Here's the link to issue 8

[andydelire]

The Uncanny

“The uncanny is located in the uncomfortable regression to a time when the ego was not yet sharply differentiated from the external world and from other persons . . . When something happens to us in the ‘real’ world that seems to support our old, discarded psychic world, we get a feeling of the uncanny. The uncanny is an anxiety for that which recurs, and is symptomatic of a psychology based on the compulsion to repeat.” —Mike Kelley

Based on this definition of the uncanny by Mike Kelley pulled from his essay, Playing with Dead Things (1993-04) this idea of déjà vu comes to mind. It’s such a funny term we take from the French, because the French don’t usually say it like that, I’ve more often heard, J'ai l'impression d'avoir déjà vécu ce moment, which means I have the impression I already lived this moment, not already seen, and often you’d hear it said like j’ai comme une impression de déjà vu, if they were to use that phrase. Déjà vu, is also used in French to refer to the banal or art that has already been done, in a sense like cliché, we’ve already seen that.

Just this passed year I released a book on my website titled, Alps On Repeat. It is a collection of interrelated short stories that all hover around this alpine village that the character keeps coming back to at the end of most every chapter. And for a while, during my time in France, this was my pattern as well, I’d live a chapter somewhere else, then something would compel me to go back to the alps and live in that community again. I developed such a fondness for a time, vibe, place that whenever too much time passed without seeing it, I become overly melancholic, and nothing seemed to live up to the great experiences I lived there. The book explores this repetition and at the same time shows that each time the character comes back, the place feels different in both small and large ways. The uncanny to me is both a familiar thing and yet something that is slightly off, or something that will never be quite as we imagined it to be. Sometimes I would go back to the alps and things would be better than I expected, which is always a nice surprise, though sometimes I felt that I didn’t belong or that I made a mistake in my ‘real’ life and shouldn’t have returned, because in a sense, it always felt like my life wasn’t advancing in any direction, it was four steps forward and five back.

To expand on Mike Kelley’s quote, I’d say in that experience though, the feeling wasn’t always an anxiety based on rumination, but rather once I knew that new and fun memories and adventures were possible and even waiting for me in a familiar setting which allowed for me to feel myself and calm, I couldn’t resist going there.  

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My first guitar

Joel Otterson, Mighty Oak of Rock (1993), is an etching that depicts an Albrecht Durer-esque tree that shows a lineage of popular bands, with Led Zeppelin at the base of the trunk—it transported me to 2003, Chicago, I am thirteen. We’re at my uncle’s best friend George’s house. It is full of Gothic décor and Knight armor in the corner instead of plants. He asks if I want to see his guitar set up. We go into his library filled with War history books (he could draw the battlefront lines and strategies on a piece of paper of most battles in western history since Greek times). He plugs in his electric guitar, a purple Stratocaster with stickers on it, and turns on the amp. He begins stomping on pedals that changed the sound of the guitar. His playing was melodic, flowing, it put me in a trance watching his hands move down the fretboard and watching his foot warp the sound. I remember him saying, “this is echo, this is wah, this is tremolo,” and with each effect he’d play something that demonstrated how he could sculpt the sound of the guitar. He showed me a pentatonic scale and a D chord and handed me the guitar. I played the D chord and he pushed the wah pedal with his foot, and that was the first chord I ever played on a guitar. I told my dad about the experience and he bought me a knock off strat at Costco, something called a Pignose. He put his vinyl player and stereo in my room, and pulled out Sgt. Pepper’s and Zeppelin I, and said “this should get you started.” 

[andydelire]

dans le vide

Herko’s jeté out the window was described as a “postmodern dance” that began with him coming out the bath while Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C Major was playing. He concluded the dance with jumping out of the apartment window to his death. The complicated question in class this week was, how is performative suicide art? What kind of statement is Herko making by turning his own suicide into a performance? There is very little documentation on Herko’s life, to the point where only secondary sources are found in physical archives. Cruising Utopia (2009) by Jose Munoz is perhaps the most accessible information on him.    

To provide context to other artists who have attempted something similar, here is the famous Yves Klein Saut dans le vide (1960) photo. While this photo without explanation could seem like someone’s suicide captured on film, Klein was actually studying judo at the time and had a landing pad on the street (as to avoid injuries) that was removed from the photo during editing.

[andydelire]

This week my show “Draw by Zeros” is up in the Tabula Rasa Gallery. It never gets old watching the lights come on and the pieces start to glow and talk to each other, the room transforms into this harvested energy—things I’ve been working on or thoughts I’ve been having for years, days, minutes stick to the wall for a bit—the paintings are facing the drawings facing me in the middle of the room. I turn on the T.V and on comes the glitchy video. The gallery swells with an orchestra warming up and suddenly the spirits of my work can reach across the room and commune with each other, meet in the process and meet in the soundwaves, which serve as both a bridge and a tool to feel colors differently. All that led me here feels visceral and in this moment I thank the path I’ve been hiking. 

[andydelire]

Psychedelic Swamp

Week 10—Analog Horror

What is analog horror?

A semi-recent film genre that takes analog aesthetics and technology and uses fragments of realistic looking materials to tell a story or provoke a feeling often anxiety inducing or psychologically stimulating in a myriad of weird ways.     Today, the genre often is distributed via YouTube in short videos that interconnect into larger series, building a world through little bits of information at a time.

They often contain diegetic materials that go awry (when a sound or stimuli in a film is able to be heard/felt by characters). For example, Eckva is an analog horror film with early 2000s aesthetics that depicts a character who can gain access to a bizarre (fictional) T.V channel called Eckva, but it can only be tuned in to in a specific abandoned house.

Throughout the week I’ve been diving into Local 58 which is dubbed one of the more groundbreaking of the genre, but I wasn’t that impressed honestly until I hit Gemini Home Entertainment. This series nails the whole mis-en-scene with MIDI 90s music included. Each clip is like a bizarre Thomas Vinterberg home movie a la Festen (1998) combined with Dr. Dog’s Psychedelic Swamp vibes, which it never occurred to me, could perhaps be considered the first analog horror in the form of a rock n roll band’s concept album. Recorded in 1999-2000, Psychedelic Swamp (2001) follows the story of Phrases, who buys into a TV ad (similar to those in Gemini Home Entertainment) which here the product is really a means to magically make him go to a different dimension where he was told all his problems would go away, however, quickly he finds that the swamp is full of unsettling creatures and his anxieties only get worse. With the inability to communicate with the outside world, Phrases finds Scott Mcmicken, Toby Leaman and the rest of their Philadelphia basement friends via the airwaves, and eventually sends them a tape which needs to be decoded in the form of popular rock and roll music in order to be heard. The tape is a desperate plea for help and a warning message for the public to never buy into the Psychedelic Swamp advertisements because that place will ruin your life. Even just writing about this plot makes me realize more how scary that is and how the hyperdiegesis of the universe within creates both a realistic atmosphere while allowing the mechanisms of the form express themselves with no questions asked. The ads make sense, the MIDI music makes sense, the wailing cries from within, the wonky xylophones that act as frog’s lily pads, it’s all there like the color green on the walls of a sticky abandoned house, the faded wallpaper, the cut telephone line, the radio fuzzing in and out to an alternate dimension.        

Psychedelic Swamp exists in three albums and was performed in a play with Pig Iron Theater company in Philly.  

1. Released in 2001

2. Released in 2016

3. Released 2016, a few weeks later, and is a MIDI-fied version of the main tunes of the album.

A 2016 Dr. Dog contest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYB-xz5wZh8

The ad pokes at the itch to escape,“Reality is a scam for losers.”

So what is Dr. Dog trying to do with these 3 versions of the same album. One is lo-fi, janky a la Smiley Smile, Two is Hi-fi and poppy more rendered, and Three is a complete diegetic universe (like a day in the Swamp). 

[andydelire]

04:00

Draw By Zeros

There is something comforting about paint-by-numbers. For one, you don’t need an ‘idea’ of what the image is going to be, you simply buy the kit and begin applying color. The provided lines and numbers are cues that act as modes of possible expression—and their directions are useful limitations giving something to focus on, aesthetics to play with, subject matter to render.

However, these paint-by-number parameters quickly become overwhelming, and in my experience, after about 5 minutes of following the guidelines, I want to stop painting altogether (but the box says, “Fun for the whole family!”). I often wonder where does intuition come from? And from what I can tell a lot of it is based on prior experiences stemming all the way back to childhood. It is interesting to observe within me that many of the decisions I make in art are founded on musical approaches. Thoughts that sound like What note should I play to this Amaj7 chord? become iterated in visual form, which utilizes techniques I learned through improvising guitar solos—hovering a brush over a page is akin to fingers on a fretboard, just playing in a different type of space. Painting translates those melodic thoughts into:

<what color should go over this squiggly blob shape next to this other shape painted green next to this other shape lavender?>

Having the lines already drawn for me means that my expression can only be accomplished in the way I put paint onto the board, the varying level of messiness, the assembled feeling the blobs evoke, and my patterns of dispersing/arranging/layering color. In this way, following a schema feels both liberating and confining at the same time.

Draw by Zeros is the antithesis of paint-by-numbers. It is an outlet from an outlet, an attempt to take away the numbers from the kits— to start from nothing each time, to begin again without a readymade. It is a way I’ve taught myself how to listen and react to what needs to be put down on the page. Though, I should say, after some time of this parallel practice I am aware that there might be no escape. I still consume and think in my own boxes—I buy into ideas and materials. I purchase the paper, the drawing materials, and eventually I see repeated designs, thoughts, images, over and over, and limitations still exist in my imagination. My ability to create depends on these interdisciplinary, metaphysical modes and languages. And yet, somehow each attempt feels just as difficult and easy, just as poetic and new.

[andydelire]

On Felix Gonzales Torres

This artist talk came at a surprisingly timely moment for me. I had just been to the Art Institute of Chicago in late September, and saw Felix Gonzales Torres’ “Untitled” candy piece. I had vaguely heard about this installation in art history books, but when I walked in the room in Chicago I was immediately fascinated by the pile of vibrant candies. Without knowing the context at all, I was instantly transported to when I was a kid and would dump out all my Halloween candy on the floor out of a pillowcase. I read the statement and was taken aback at what this was signifying for the artists—the number of pounds of Torre’s partner, Ross Laycock, who died of complications of AIDs in 19991. What I saw as purely playful and trolling high-art in a sense, became somber, deep, and reflective. I had taken a piece without knowing and still had the overly sweet industrial lime flavor in my mouth. But notably, the Chicago Art Institute didn’t have all the information about the piece and was critiqued on Twitter that same weekend, which apparently has happened before because Torre’s estate doesn’t specifically tell galleries what to write about the piece, Torre’s only says that the weight should stay around 175 pounds and that the gallery can’t tell the audience that they can or can’t take a piece of candy.

That said, this week we watched the artist talk of Elena Filipovic, a curator from Berlin says she made the retrospective of Felix Gonzales Torres work with about 50 artworks, then she asked other artists to change/evolve her show. Some picked totally different works and it was interesting to see the vast number of ways people get inspired by the same artist.

Here are a few notable moments and questions I pulled from the video: Secrets. The unspoken ‘rules’ of the gallery world. A sort of constitution is involved. Today it’s all about using available materials, otherwise, it's considered a bit fetish to go over the top with new stuff.

For example, some types of light bulbs are no longer legal in the EU, so what do you do when an artist used those back in the 80s-90s and now they can’t?

Conservation rooms next to contemporary art spaces

Materials on view in a different room:

“In a state of repose” which “Elongates the event”

What happens before the art goes into the gallery and after?

Does a sculpture in storage space make it no longer a sculpture?

What do you do with artworks that are given out in a gallery for free? Should I keep it, throw it away, or frame it? It’s a little crumpled…

White cardboard 12-point font times new roman, neutral default.

Question the little things in an exhibition…

Challenge of timelessness. The curator says no it was made in time, with imagined and real structures

A retrospective is not just paying tribute to someone or imagining what they would’ve wanted, it’s not just about pleasing somebody. Make it alive, done, and undone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLjMoo6dV_g

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“Have you ever thought to yourself, writing is cool, but words are just so reductive.” —Andy Demczuk, Mythos of a nonequilateral sound

How are audio plays on a labyrinth website full of color-changing GIFS of drawings, Youtube links, and bad poems a glitch? How is this glitching a reflection of the unexpected and how does it feel strangely joyful in that mode of expressed freedom, even as it uses the very technology and companies that cause or exacerbate many of these problems addressed? 

No longer is art and media solely a linear representation of ideas that progresses with cultural innovations, it is also rendered (in the public consciousness and internet) as an interconnected cartography of material and exists in syntagms of metonymic expressions and excavations. In harmony with Writing Machines (2002), “Materiality is content, content is materiality” (Hayles qtd. Kaye 75), for this Cybernetic Fictions project, I began working with forms and methods that I had never tried before to see if I could create a text that responded to both my visual art practice and my academic thoughts on how hauntology, performance, and spatiality are expressed and received between writer, artist or performer, and viewer. This reflection will palpitate instances in how my TechnoText plays with intertextuality, a myriad of material forms, and translation of images from other projects and writings to form a network of experiences. Inspired by the asides and stage craft of Middleton and Shakespeare’s plays in Renaissance theatre, the mythology of ‘the crowd’ interested me by its performative/recipient role as well as how it acts as a space of judgment, laughter, madness, drunkenness, sobriety, memory, violence, and praise where the media product is at the mercy of the crowd. With these concepts in mind, I read the one-man plays of Samuel Beckett which inspired me to try an audio play myself. In his play, Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), Krapp is the only character on stage, and he appears to relive past memories via his tape recorder and begins to engage with it in quasi-dialogue. I found the interplay between an apparatus such as tape, his memories, and his words in the present tense (on stage in front of an audience) to be a fantastic example of earlier electronic technology confronting traditional theatrics. The vastness and potentiality of Cybernetics is always at tension with literary forms (and language). Hayles’ definition of literature moving beyond its words struck me as relevant to this discussion: Literature was never only words, never merely immaterial verbal constructions. Literary texts, like us, have bodies an actuality necessitating that their materialities and meanings are deeply interwoven into each other. (Hayles 107) The audio play I wrote titled Mythos of a nonequilateral sound (2021), begins with an interaction between the main character, Roland, and a guitar. The guitar serves as a representation of an instrument but also as a medium to demonstrate the limited ability that our memories have in relation to analogue instruments, even if we remember scale shapes, chord forms, and note names on the fretboard, we can forget entire songs or even every song we ever learned. Roland then reaches for his phone to find a recording of himself playing guitar to prove to the audience (or himself) that he could actually play guitar. As he attempts to scroll to his recordings, he sees several depressing titles such as “December 10AM, lost the One” etc. Suddenly, a voice message from what sounds like Microsoft Word’s “Victoria” begins speaking. The eery robot recites bits from a past conversation that Roland had with his former lover about a breakup. The audience does not know whether the dialogue is recorded from conversations or if the phone was merely dictating text messages. Mythos of a non-equilateral sound is an audio play which comments on the idea of the absent lover’s departure from the person who is left alone (from the I perspective) as Barthes put it so well, the I becomes like “a package in some forgotten corner of a train station” (Barthes 13) where the absent lover is constantly receding away. The narrator (or the representation of both Roland Barthes and the I) is stuck in the Blackbox of the stage of his own mind. Another aspect of my TechnoText is the menu page where there is a ‘Join Us’ button as well as edited stock videos of a sunset with heart emojis and cooking channel clips. The videos looping on the homepage act as uninteresting, non-interactable windows of what is to come. The ‘Join Us’ button does not appear to work at first and thus the user is forced to scroll down the page in search for another link, where they find only the word Lo. . . a reference to the first word sent as a message via the internet as well as Werner Herzog’s documentary about the history of the internet Lo and Behold (2016). That link takes the user to said audio play, which is in the form of a video box displaying a floating curtain. The text itself shown on the page is meant to reflect the chaotic nature of thoughts occurring simultaneously as Roland is ruminating on love. The user is invited to listen and read along, or forced rather, because the audio play is intentionally recorded at difficult to hear volumes and contains competing sounds which assemble what Hayles refers to as noise. It is almost certain the user will be annoyed by the quality of the audio play and just simply read the text (I also omitted the user’s ability to skip around on the audio file, start over, or fast-forward). Throughout the first few minutes of the narrative, a stand-up-comedian-like voice is asking cheesy rhetorical questions starting with the phrase “have you ever thought to yourself. . .” as he goes into a musing on some mundane topic—meanwhile, the stage is being set for Roland, who enters in front of an audience, in a Blackbox-Beckett-esque manière. Roland’s first spoken line is “So. . . annoying.” Is he referring to the audience or the voice in his head? The music element adds to the overall rhythm of the words and reacts in an orchestral sense at times when the action calls for a stop or for tension. At one point the stand-up comedian Roland comments on the music, “This beat is pretty good, but it could be better. . .” alluding to the thoughts that arise when choosing a partner in a romantic relationship as well as the impossible nature of perfecting music or the written word. The music then transmorphs from real sounds, samples, keyboards, to a bizarre processed MIDI render, marking the ascension into the Green World, or a type of Fairy Land where, in Act II, Roland confronts an alter ego fairy who doubles as his inner writer persona and attempts to explain to Roland where he is—but ends up getting frustrated and wanders off—only to complain about needing a vacation (however, according to Barthes, writer’s cannot take vacations). Between the two acts of the play are a series transitional spaces, like an intermission at the theater, except time gets extended and numerous bunny trails are offered in the form of visual candy. The page with the multi-colored GIF began when I was in the process of Photoshopping a round of paintings. As I played with the Color, Vibrance, and Warmth, I noticed how specific lines and shadings on the images reacted to the adjusting parameters. I thought it would be interesting to film the image as colors slowly alternated. The resulting short video was uploaded into a GIF generator online. I took that GIF and copied and pasted it into my WIX web builder to create a space which could act as a transition. The images ‘fly in’ from the margins (seemingly out of nowhere) as the user scrolls down. I used cheesy animated stock features from WIX to call attention to the template choice/materiality and juxtaposed that with the use of ‘out-of-the-box-curation’. Once the user scrolls all the way down the page, an icon of an arrow pointing right appears. The user is invited to click on the icon which leads back to the homepage, only this time there is no Lo. . . link and the ‘Join Us’ button works (this is a reference to the idea of occultism of Western love and Andy Warhol’s exclusive club). Once the user clicks on the ‘Join Us’ they are sent to yet another strange page with a kitchen scene copied over and over. This kitchen scene represents a time when the absent lover and the narrator were together, enjoying a cup of tea. The URL is /tea-time and at one point included a soundscape which I deleted (an experiment on my own self, I still hear the soundscape in my head as I scroll). On the second transition page, there is a drawing of cell phone users on a train as a ticket checker walks by. This scene is in reference to Barthes’ comment on lovers and train stations, as well as a nod to how technology plays a role in the art of noticing and ruminating (the figures in the drawing are perhaps all the absent lover, leaving the narrator behind). Now the user is left with two options: click on the ‘enlarge icon’, which takes to a music video, a track called “Dada Gone Fauve” from AR for the Ears, which is a narrative chapbook and EP, and explains more of the backstory between Roland and his absent lover (in this case, named Julie), or the user can click on the ‘Trashcan icon’ which leads to a list of poetry. This ‘bad poetry’ can be seen as written from the perspective of Roland as he attempts to navigate a near future where AR exists everywhere around him and he can no longer tell what is real or a simulation: “I swear these insta-gen lyrics are getting so sad, Julie says, and then we both realize we have never actually met. The streetlights came on squeaking like a bike tire against a brake pad.” The list of poetry, as mentioned, are little fragments that often lead nowhere. The user is free to explore each link, until at the bottom there is Mythos 2, a link to the second act of the audio play. In Act 2 it becomes apparent (especially after watching the music video) that this is just another ‘song map’ programmed by coders—algorithms based on the narrator’s preferences and memories.     Works Cited Barthes, Roland. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. New York, Hill & Wang, 1978. Print. Hayles, N K. Writing Machines. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002. Print.

[andydelire]

This week was productive for me artistically. Tuesday I had the group crit. I learned a lot about the way people perceive my work. I intentionally supplied a confusing and academic sounding artist statement, just to see what would happen. I confused even the professor and found it quite amusing that he brought out the “How Not to Write an Artist Statement” book and said I could be an example in there. but also the risk didn’t seem to pay off because the work was taken as underwhelming, perhaps incoherent. Interesting words came up, pathetic, parodic, outsider art... all of which I was going for, hey I got into grad school applying with paint by numbers and not a single art class under my belt for crying out loud... So yeah, I’m glad the humor, sheer absurdity of my work is coming across at least. 

Hearing indifferent, or critical opinions about my art was hard, maybe because the thoughts that I had feared were validated, or maybe because I disagree or feel frustrated that something that seems so clear to me, is convoluted, weak, or not coming through to my audience. I know, I know, a well written description of what I am trying to do conceptually would help ten-fold, but I am also torn with the idea that I don’t want to steer people too much. With this in mind, I will try to hit a balance for my upcoming solo show (which is fast approaching! October 27th at Tabula Rasa! Please come!) and write a more detailed, relevant text to accompany the art. There will be a lot going on in this show, I am truly stoked.  

But back to the crit--along with a line of last-minute hung drawings and paintings, I had a soundscape playing of an orchestra warming up. Most people didn’t seem to get why I played that sound, but I was trying to get at the pre-language, pre-form vibe (as I think I mentioned in my last post). When I listened to it while looking at each piece individually I liked the association and environment it created, but the group crit is not the ideal place for sound art, I am coming to realize. People want to see each drawing with its own scannable soundscape, and I like that idea, who knows? For now, I have come up with a new idea, I don’t want to say too much, but it’s based on the 24 hour clock, a day in the life of a fictional character, and am really excited for it because it will combine all my mediums: drawing, writing, film, sound. Oh also, these stickers came out great! I like seeing my work remediated into something that can be used on everyday objects. Who would’ve thought! Thinking about starting an Etsy shop.  

[andydelire]

On Doreen Garner

The video of the week was Doreen Garner Sculpts Our Trauma (2018). It highlights an intense project that involves creating bodies out of materials such as silicon, pearls, crystal, glass, beads, which are meant to look realistic and at the same time signify specific conceptual ideas critiquing the brutally racist practice of Dr. J. Marion Sims who is considered to be “the father of gynecology.” The two-person show titled “White Man on a Pedestal” involved a public performance which in a way reenacted the horrific procedures that Dr. Sims would have done on black women. The performers look ritualistic, cult-like in their demeanors, they are wearing butchers’ aprons and lights are flashing with an unsettling psychedelic soundscape and projection of the stereoscope camera traveling through the sculptured body. This piece relates to Hauntology in how it addresses racism, medical experimentation, and sexism in past as something not only present, but still ongoing in today’s world. It feels dreamlike, yet also very formal and sickly mechanical, logical in a mindless do-as-your-told sense. It brings to my mind the words this is not okay.