Mirja Koponen
Invited to collaborate by Gerry Smith
♦ Writing around
Spatial collaborations,
Second (Epistolary) approach ♦
polyvocal account
How to foreground the relationship of the body to the resonant space? How to grasp a thickening of a cloud, or the sound that your thoughts make upon exit or the perfect circle that is visible in the imperfect one? The vibrations from our extensions are deafening and we need an ad hoc roadmap. On it we proceed to locate a temporary holding place for discordant elements and fragments of usable parts. This record is provisional, of course, and at any moment it can fail or vanish. We go ahead and call it a clearing house.
everyday environments:
– The table is dressed with flowers.
– Separate tickets for all entries.
– The army has begun to fight back.
– Not until Monday.
– July only.
The deep space is continuous in all directions, without edges or limits. It is yellow in colour, but that’s beside the point—a percept amongst sequences of other percepts. You swim in this space in a particular way, and I want to understand how that happens. Your movements seem incongruous with mine, and mine are stubbornly incongruous with the yellow space and its raw data.
‘whatever next I happen to’ > amounts to a > thread to follow.
There is a solace in moving across large distances on a miniature scale. For instance, the roughest tops and troughs shrink into a mere interesting texture under your fingertips. It is exhilarating to be able to speed up and halt at your will and take in the terrain like another kind of animal. One could get used to this kind of locomotion, propelled collectively but operated singularly. When deposited on any of the native points on this quivering atlas, we can only hope that some of the global intuitions prevail, advancing another kind of organisation within the matter around us. That goes for me as well as for you, I reckon.
certain curiosity > through the motions > define their own
Space
WE can do this by suspending the demands of
a particular practice, particular genre,
particular player, particular hand, particular hang-up, particular
stance, shake or mood, particular question, attitude or message, particular atmosphere, particular fault, particular truth or doubt, particular temper, particular cause or party, particular exposure, assumption or final outcome.
For this, we need to arrive at a position on particular >
A chance to read or hear what they have to say.
What, and they and say: our direction is provisional here also, and comes with a warning: caution when appropriating. The landscape is wild, or could easily turn so. Straddling dual loyalties, we can go either way, and also backtrack. The route is convoluted: the dulcet sound of ‘What they say’ obscures the serrated edges of transitional notes that will pivot us, or you, or me onwards, if we spot them.
experimental sites, gathering information on, and draw:
draw attention upon attention, hold it with attention.
Where we were headed was nowhere. We arrived in the resonant space.
This is where we pitched the clearing house, and held our high picnic.
The record that got us here is no longer needed and it will vanish, as will the circuit that gave rise to it. Still, my tackle for roving is renewed for now, and I thank you for that.
♦ ♦ ♦
Biography
Mirja Koponen is an artist and researcher interested in notions of space and place. Currently residing in Edinburgh, her videos, paintings and installations have been exhibited in UK and abroad.
In response to: Gerry Smith Spatial Collaborations