Howwa We Ana - However We Wanna

I have been impossibly busy lately. It was "midterms" week; a-hahahahahaha! The show I'm doing with Dina goes up next week. No. This week Aaaaaaaaalkadkjsdkjsdf!!!!!!

Here is the image on the postcards with the press release following:


(Click on image for larger image)

Howwa We Ana - However We Wanna
A collaborative exhibition by Dina Danish and Farley Gwazda
text, video performance, sound recordings and drawings

October 29 through November 13, 2007
Opening Monday, October 29, 6 to 8 PM

PLAySPACE Gallery
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco
PLAySPACE site


In Howwa We Ana – However We Wanna Dina Danish and Farley Gwazda explore the process of getting to know each other through various forms of communication. The piece is structured by exaggerating the dialectic between SERIOUS and PLAYFUL approaches.

The SERIOUS is embodied in a series of Chaliffs (“tchay-lif” - a word derived from challenge and motive) which take the form of various experiments or games with strict rules and agreed-upon goals. These are defined by the media through which they are created and documented.

The PLAYFUL is embodied in the performance of these Chaliffs, the goals of which are perhaps impossible to achieve. The artists recognize miscommunication as part of the process and operate with a healthy disrespect for their own rules.

The artists had met only once before starting this project, and have since been collaborating through emails, instant-messenger, text-messages, YouTube and face-to-face communication.

Danish and Gwazda are currently MFA candidates at California College of the Arts and U.C. Berkeley, respectively.

Shadow Puppetry

Here is a strange and wildly beautiful shadow puppet show from my friend and classmate Lydia Greer. If you enjoy this look at her other videos as well at her youtube page.
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Making stuuuuuuuuff

Most of my time the past couple days )weeks?( has been devoted to Howwa we ana. I am lucky to be working with Dina - I am learning a lot every time we cross paths. Like today I learned that the 22 Bus fucking sucks.

But these past few days I have been actually constructing a physical object as well - it is a TELEPROMPTER (you know, the thing they put in front of a camera so that the news achor can read her lines while looking right into the camera). So, no, it's not really art, just a specific tool - non-homemade teleprompters are a little pricy - I saw one for $4500 bucks. The thing is, it is actually a very simple idea - a piece of glass works like a mirror to reflect the screen of a laptop with a camera hidden in a black box behind it (well, it's moderately simple...), but, the thing is, it requires a bit of precision construction, especially because it needs to be at least partially collapsible. I've been thinking a lot about what absolute marvels tripods are - they are so dependable and precise and perfectly balancy, and they fold up into tiny little bite-sized pockets of love. All the things my teleprompter won't be. But, ah well.

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Skillet died today. She was a woof-dog.

PLAySPACE show

I have been working on a project with my friend Dina Danish called "HOWWA WE ANA - HOWEVER WE WANNA." The title works as an example of the show's concerns. "Howwa we ana" is what Dina said when I asked her to say "you and me" in Arabic (of which Dina is a native speaker), but during the course of a phone conversation I misunderstood her (deliberately?) as saying "However we wanna." On top of that, "Howwa we ana" actually translates as "him and me;" a hidden layer of structural misunderstanding or intentional trickery that is central to the creation of the work. The fact that the content of the work escapes the narrow confines of the experimental space and spills out to transform real world conditions is, for me, what makes this an art piece and not just a communication experiment or a game between friends.

I have been describing "howwa we ana - however we wanna" as an exploration of the process of getting to know someone through a series of procedures or games in the mode of SERIOUS PLAY. This is a decent summary, but the meaning of the work is morphing to me as my methodology of making art is challenged by, conflicts with, and is added to by Dina's. I think the project represents a meeting of our two styles in a way that I can be proud of - it was not a gracious agreement, but more like the free competion of our styles in a market of ideas. Or rather like two puppies play-fighting.

I have been completely obsessed and deeply involved in this project, and I would like to share more of our results here as the show approaches.

For now, there is but one tiny placeholder at the website, but more is surely to come as we arrange the publicity materials for the show:
PLAySPACE site

It's __________ Accurate

1-
A. is
B. it's
C. 's
D. not
E. isn't

2-
A. sporty
B. scary
C. posh
D. baby
E. ginger

metaphor

I am thinking about doing something with this strange list of metaphors:

exhaustive lists of use of metaphor to convey meaning in language.

As you may notice, it is related to the work of George Lakoff, a Berkeley Prof. Not new stuff, but I was searching for a place to start this project of using wetware to design images - the starting point is kind of the most difficult thing for me.