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Project blogs
Memory at work in my process
By: Marie Kazalia
I'm working with visual memory and text
(rather than memory based in human figures and narrative)
Especially foreign writing--from travels in Asia
and visual influences of written Asian language characters.
Marie Kazalia
USA born artist
I have an interest in the possibilities of both maintaining and breaking the edge and Asemic writing.
Asemic writing consists of language-like marks unreadable as writing, so as to straddle the line between the visual and the textual. My Asemic writing is informed by my formal language studies of Mandarin Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China, and language studies at private language schools in Tokyo, Japan and in India. My stronger American influences on my Asemic writing reference everyday product package lettering past and present.
# 3 [25 November 2010]
Micro art projects; that aren't *my* projects, but I have been invited to contribute some small part to them:
MUBE, (the design museum in Sao Paolo, Brazil) Toy exhibit--the curator, A.F. who has an association with the ongoing Fluxus workings, invited me to participate in the Toy exhibit.
I was one of hundreds mailed the toy kit, which I have been painting off and on little by little over several days--fluorescent orange and yellow Flashe paints and applying decals of dingbats I create from b & w photocopies and acrylic medium (aka image transfers).
It's finished and now I have to photography it for their project blog, and mail the completed toy to MUBE.
It was a little bit of a *fun* project but a little bit more time consuming than I had expected, due mainly to my own chosen method of applying image transfers--which requires removing the backing paper when dry and can become labor intensive.
I'm leading up to the point of Fluxus and other *neo* art movements--neo-surrealism, neo-pop, the most despised by art critics : neo-Impressionism and RE-Modernists movement. The ongoing discussion online as to whether it is valid or not to keep a movement going after the originating artists are dead. Calling it *Neo* or *re-* riding on the coattails of success of others? (Personally I agree with the critics)
THe Fluxus people still refer to themselves as Fluxus, and think that they are still the original Fluxus movement since Ruud Jansen, considered one of the founding members, is still alive and active in these projects. I am connected with Ruud online, have mailed postcards to him in Amsterdam. Months back, I was asked to complete a questionaire on my associations with various mail artists for someone's PhD dissertation (which I did complete). But I consider myself ocassional and moderately associated.
Also I am thinking about the *homage* exhibitions and their validity for me.
I participated with submissions to an homage exhibition in NYC, for artist Ray Johnson. Does the fact that famous name artists such as Yoko Ono and Peter Schyuff contributed postcards sets as submissions to this exhibit validate ? Or that an entire set of postcards from the show (including mine) ended up in the permanent collection of MoMA, MoMA Wales and others?
I also sent a small piece to the Sol LeWitt homage exhibition at Mass Moca.
Still thinking about these things as I spend most of my time working on my own art processes.
# 2 [14 November 2010]
Also participating in
TINSTAAFL = There is no such thing as a free lunch
installation / text projection project
by Will Foster and Guyan Porter
at Subject to Change Without Notice
http://www.subjecttochangewithoutnotice.com/
[enlarge]
Marie Kazalia, 'kanji tag', mixed media on canvas--acrylic, Flashe, ink, June 2010. Photo: Marie Kazalia. Courtesy: Marie Kazalia. title: kanji tag artist: Marie Kazalia dimensions: 48 x 48 inches acrylic, ink, Flashe on canvas Date of completion: June 4, 2010 (one month to complete)
# 1 [12 November 2010]
My most fascinating fleeting memories (back into childhood) are textual--the large, colorful product packaging lettering, billboard lettering---that seems scattered through my thoughts just out of reach in cropped bits and fragments--
I refer to these writings that I draw and paint
as Asemic writing. Asemic writing does not intended to spell out actual words or even consist of actual readable letters or characters. I work from written language characters that have been abstracted in form, or cropped, reversed, or combined.