culminations,

timofahler — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:37:59 +0000

aside from a few photo updates, this will be one of our last posts, as summer is dated to end on SEPT 23rd. it has been an amazing summer. in separate consciousness, three people in three different parts of the world {Mexico, England, Los Angeles} came together for a digital co-laboratory. In order to avoid the “just another photo vacation blog” connotations, we chose various elements and veins in which to operate in collaboration. drawings followed theme and then fell into each other, melting the monikers that at one time gave them a sense of separation. working together/apart affected the outcome of similar site-specific, performance-based, and 3-dimensional works; worlds apart became worlds collided through digital connection, our only source of interaction.

what was it all for. nothing. everything. something.

“a single event can a waken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. to live is to be slowly born.” Antoine de Saint Exupery

i like to think that we have no idea what kind of affect we have on anything, keeping us both humble and hungry.

Box of Rain (1999)

hopethurman — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 23:18:18 +0000

In 1993 there were so many homeless in Rotterdam that a local politician said well if we’re not going to build them housing we ought to at least give them boxes. And so the homeless box was created. Briefly it was distributed to the homeless citizens of Rotterdam, especially during inclement weather. Since then a shelter has been built for them. Only a dozen boxes remain, unused, in Holland. One found its way to New York and I was invited to live in it for a week. I chose to live at the corner of Madison and 73rd, under the watchful eye of Nest.
I bought a turquoise mat at Integral Yoga, a soft, spongy piece of foam to separate me from the chill of the sidewalk. Over this I would lay my royal blue sleeping bag.
My box is lit with a Coleman lamp. It burns a thousand hours, spays a sunny whiteness everywhere, and I’ve got a short book by Vivekanada and a mildewy collection of John O’Hara stories. I think I’m safe.
Have you ever slept on the streets of the city. I’m two steps down, the steps block my window so I can’t see out. It’s sound, the night, pure sound. My guard is across the street so I shove my arm beneath my head as if were home, and I am. I listen.
A rush of sounds, millions of them, cars-bird sounds, then a gigantic garbage cruncher from the restaurant next door and then a monstrous truck heading up Madison, raising the ante, yowling. Just unbelievable, as if it were competing with all the other noise. Then it stops. And everything’s utterly still. It’s two o’clock. A quick brushing sound that passes, a bike I guess but more wickery, creaking, and I want to sleep and I don’t look up.
Cardboard smells like dusty grass. It’s a membrane that keeps the rain and the snow away. It hides my identity. It’s practically language, costume. It’s so thin a home.
Midnight Run a voice yells, distantly. It can’t mean me, I’m struggling to sleep. Midnight Run. I come up through the seams of the box-I burst up on a smiling man and his round-faced son. We’re Midnight Run-do you need anything. We’ve got some food, coffee, socks, blankets-are you warm enough?
I want to tell him I’m not me, not it, not one of them-Is this your usual spot, he asks?
No…I’m new around here.
Next night, raining again. I nestle under the scaffolding around the building. It’s a good solid roof. The box is bent, my roof is pinched, the cardboard’s dented. The literature from the manufacturer says the box lasts a month depending on how you treat it. I brought some flowers tonight. Blue ones. I’m getting a cold. I’m in there with the clock and the book and the flowers and the different blues of the mat and the sleeping bag, and yet all I can think about is my heart. Inside a box you are supremely aware of the new layer of protection. One I haven’t mentioned is jeans. I’ve worn them day and night all week. They’re faded indigo, baggy, the right knee torn. They don’t stink, but have a damp human smell that feels like having a pet. I close my eyes, obsessed with my heart, opening and closing, it might stop beating. I’m lying on the sidewalk in a box. The downpour is tremendous and I know my box won’t survive this night. The red heart in my chest is squinting like a fist. I see green grass and I smell it, like a vision, and I think I’m dead but I realize it’s flowers, blue ones, that I smell.
I see my friends crossing the street. They’ve come to visit. It was raining hard. I put my little house on the sidewalk in front of 28 E 73rd and I placed the lantern inside and it glowed and my friends took pictures. I looked across the street at the guys in their boxes. All boarded up. I felt jealous. By now John and Kathleen are circling and critiquing the box. Who designed this? A student, a Dutch design student, Raymond Voogt. I could do better says Kathleen. Yeah it’s terrible said Jim, a designer. You would just make a little frame, something light, aluminum, and you would have a few hoops, you could just fold it over your arm. That’s a great idea, said John. I’ll make a drawing, said Kathleen. You should. Let’s go. Everyone’s standing shivering in the rain. We were here at the end cheered John, as I threw the box in the trunk of a cab. I was taking it home.

Excerpt from Eileen Myles The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art
238, 239-242.

districto federal

timofahler — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:06:05 +0000

the fascination of what

hopethurman — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:37:27 +0000

What is it about preserving an enduring presence
Or more, the act of remembrance.
Can a body, anybody, do so much

cyclistas

timofahler — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:51:06 +0000

last wednesday and thursday we went on two rides/paseos. the “bicitekas” ride(wed.) and the “paseo por todos”(thurs). there is a different ride every night of the week, but because of traffic they start a little bit later than most public rides. DF has a very active bike culture, groups are separated by trade, gender, style, etc… this was a bit confusing to me seeing as how i am used to riding in groups aside from names until i realized these groups operate in the same way that the crews in the US do. so instead of the skid marxxx, or hellkats or mom riders, rat patrol, etc. you have the meditecas, bicitecas, las mujeres etc… there is no “hip” factor involved, these people ride because it is good for health, for anti-pollution policies, for less traffic, for transportation; it is an ideology, and not a fashion. In LA and everywhere else in the states we have lost these ideas, or lets say the popular culture has. getting your brand new fixie out on a weekly ride, or creating a bad name for cyclists by careless riding{present company not excluded} is prevalent amongst us. how come the 3rd largest population in the world can close down half of their city on sundays to allow cyclists of all types free reign on their busiest streets? all this being said, their is still alot to be done. bike lanes are few and far between, and if they do exist they are just as dangerous as car lanes. we are opening the first community cycling house dubbed the “casa bicitecas” in the centro/downtown, i happened to connect w/ them on the interwebs and now reside in the workshop loft as an artist in resident. this opportunity is available to cyclists/artists world wide, later this month we will have another builder from france visit and give a workshop as well. anyway take this as an open invitation, get away from yourselves and do something bigger than your own insignificance. this section titled “paseos” will have images from the rides we go on, and the community we have become a part of. besos, timo

what I am, apart from any effigy

hopethurman — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:02:52 +0000

“” I lend myself to the social game, I pose, I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, but (to square the circle) I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming object.

Ex Libris
Camera Lucida
Roland Barthes

watercolors by Olga Chernysheva

“el taller”

timofahler — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:27:35 +0000

In April i began to look for residency opportunities in Mexico City. After establishing contact with Areli from Casa Bicitekas i prepared myself for mexicosummer 2010. so i got here in june, traveled around down south and then moved into the shop/loft space monday june 26th. my residency with Central del Peubla and the casa biciteka began, and thus began part 2 of this amexicano’s summer. all photos and updates from this point on will be from the shop here in D.F., or from the other half of this blogsite in London. we began this project with the best intentions for global collaboration, in the end two remained standing. and so begins the taller category, spanish for workshop,pronounced tah-yer, part of the central del puebla organization and land of puro collaboracion.

apoala

timofahler — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:33:13 +0000

new page sacred place. see it also, new textures, new drawings, site explicit… actually just about every page has new photos

timofahler — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:04:13 +0000

teotitlan exploded on saturday

NEW STUFFS;

DRAWINGS

SITE EXPLICIT

LONDONESS

PARA ITZEL

EXPLODING TEOTITLAN

connections

hopethurman — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:43:23 +0000

these are translations between two unrelated scenes. the connection is invisible and a product of the assembled imagination.

Kuleshov effect.