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Let's Get Engaged, 'One day I wasn't drunk and the sun was shining straight, my fingers on his face. I made him pregnant, our child would be the word.' ♥ What will be the terms? An artist, A curator, A writer, A this or A that. Entitling; to assign layers of importance with labels or to bring understanding and platform? Do they give transparency to operations or obfuscate the actual action? They indicate how to read moves and where and if even they are to be placed and inserted. In their wake certain structures of power and constructed networks form, from input follows out-put. A way of setting up borders to our work descriptions, this activity ends here, and there starts another. A set of guidelines or limitations to formats of engagement. The chronological linearity of the Bio - a projection into the dream of progress - is not the single organizational principle. The story of me separated into sections of education-work-bibliography-texts-recidencies-prizes-curatorial projects-collections... erasing specificity from a series of events, which may be better be told in any other way. This separation cutting off threads of kinship between activities, resembles an addict compartmentalizing life to control connections and prevent organic growth. Why sort this way and not that. Instead maybe a randomized alphabetical order, or perhaps every time you do something in a suburb group it together, maybe all items involving a person named John should be placed next to each other. What value does facts have anyhow when one trades in fiction. These are prefab structural containers to build identity markers firmly into the work - what about sabotaging their fixation on the sender. Why is there no mention of parent's occupation, an utmost relevant question in the old-days. Now we ought to ask for sexual preference or food allergies in a bio, IQ and # of sick-days might be useful as well, or a section for pets and post-cards - a bio with a flavor of Friendster. Sliding the discussion sideways, it becomes clear that authorship lies elsewhere. Authenticity is freedom of naming, performing procedure and system, opening up for possibilities of what can be. 'When modern accounts are rolling with its silent statement made, I lick the word from the tip of his tongue.' ♥ Collaborate, a state of dependence, a symbiotic grey-zone into yet another project. There is a cloud of belief in the inherent goodness of collaboration, but what if this felt beneficial activity essentially is a hidden soft kind of totalitarianism. Quite similar to frequent government action, where specific liability gets diluted and overruling actions are easily taken. In the name of community, democracy, and flat organizations, so many institutions, artists, and 'others' currently cover their work format under this label. We collaborate to left and right, quite undistinguished - always agreeing - thus veiling an exposure of difference of opinion.  'The new word for the modern is the second word for love.' ♥ Co-labor, what an insipient delusion, co- as in together, not exactly as in being a partner, or in a music performance, where who is in charge is divided up on percussion, base or voice. In intimate situations where personal responsibility cannot be transferred, such as giving birth - in labor - it must be appointed to the woman, co-laboration is not an option, neither is it on the toilet. Having sex, is it in fact a collaborative project, but with different roles? New forms of partnership have been instituted in Sweden, to give couples living together ('co-habiters'), equal rights to married couples. More recently 'särbo' ('separate habiters') was coined, corroborating their equal rights to parallel lives. Independent is a synonym for separate, paralelly are there other words? Why collaborate, why not separatelaborate? 'I won't be ashamed of language, as if it was my fault.' ♥ Classifying subjects shape each other with the aid of existing taxonomies. What if Geriatrism or Infantilism instead of hysteria over over-ripe teen-agers - that is immature retirees or diper bla bla? Any story can be told in the bio, now constantly looking 25, but why? Riddance of the anti-oxidants, go for 80! - the shock of the known and the old. No saying yes yes regardless, slide-sending whenever, wherever, to whomever, desperate for tabloid-like exposure. Targeted activity in lieu of hierarchal bed-hopping - save the fluids for some actual action. Rather than a names and titles factory, blissful senility or a small small world. Let's disagree a bit. In re-writing the world, let go of obedience to format. Let's get engaged. 'The new word for love is the new word for the modern'. ♥ ♥ Friday Hyvönen, 'The Modern' on the album 'Until Death Comes', Licking Fingers, 2005 |