The Naked Soul at パシフィコ横浜 Pacifico Yokohama.

The Naked Soul by Syd Krochmalny
Thursday, July 17, 2014: 5:30 PM
ISA, Yokohama, Japan.



The video is a poetic and philosophical meditation on nakedness, loosely inspired by the case of Stephen Gough, 'the Naked Rambler', who spent over six years cumulatively in prison in Scotland for his naked walks across Britain, and who is now a prisoner in England. The inspiration for the video was the myth of the origins of justice or ‘The Naked Souls’ recounted by Plato. The video’s voiceover also includes texts from the Bible, Hume, Descartes, Mill, John Locke, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Merleau-Ponty among others all of which reflect on the body and nakedness. The video was first projected in Edinburgh's Old Calton Cemetery, which contains the tombs of, and monuments to, among others David Hume, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Muir and other campaigners for universal suffrage who were transported to Australia (the 19th solution to bodies out of place) on 10 May 2013. It was also shown at the Augustine Central Church in Edinburgh on the same day, in the School of Communication of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in July 2013, and was an official selection at the Oakland Underground Film Festival in September 2013. The story of the film’s projection, and the unexpected way in which it started to mirror themes related to Stephen Gough’s story incuding access to ‘public’ space and the fear and self-censure provoked by risk management practices in the university and other workplaces is related here:
http://redflag.org.uk/wp/?p=499

Speakers
Sarah Wilson WILSON, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
Rage Nathansohn, , University of Michigan, USA
Discussion

Map and other issues http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2014/practical-information.htm

The Origin of the World in Japan

XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology

The Origin of the World: Analysis, Representation and Performance

Wednesday, July 16, 2014, 4:30 PM

Faculty of Economics, TBA

Oral Presentation, performance and Film Screening

Sarah Wilson, School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom

Syd Krochmalny, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This paper focuses on an artistic experiment or performance, ‘The Origin of the World’, in which over a two year period, 50 male artists were provided with charcoal, paper and instructions quickly to draw a vagina (only) with no human or other model. 20 of the drawings were later re-presented in a video in which the drawings slowly morph together and apart consecutively to music. Later, the drawings and video were exhibited in a university space. This paper explores this process and these data from a methodological perspective, discussing their potential as both representation and performance.  First, the drawings were analysed interpretatively in relation to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and feminist critiques of the same. This analysis highlighted the notable lack of consensus in the shapes produced, the extent to which the artists stuck to or deviated from the instructions given, and the clues they provided as to the artists’ responses to the exercise (anxiety? disgust? humour?). This work raised further questions as to the nature of the data analysed and the potential contribution to such analysis of interviews exploring the artists’ perspectives on the exercise, its distance from their habitual artistic practice and perhaps their own gender/ sexual identities. However these data are also performative (Law 2009) in that they enact multiplicities, thereby interrogating categorisations and, in more general terms, illustrate the potential of such methods and data to provide an opening to the uncertain and less defined. Further the video itself constitutes an interpretation and interrogation of the drawings, as well as an aesthetic argument as to their significance, one in which conventional, commercial representations of female bodies become strange. The later presentation of the artefacts produced (drawings, video) in a university exhibition produced a further space in which to open dialogue, debate and alternative understandings.

Imagen: Syd Krochmalny, The Origin of the World, 2006. Last exhibited at University of Stirling, UK, May 2013. 

Black Market: A Thousands Artists for Sale

An exhibition of art works for sale; the viewers receive offers from galleries that describe the artworks in folders, detailing not only the name and career of the artists, shapes, colors, sizes, and materiality, but also include critical comments about the works, their trade turnover, and of course, their monetary value.

The physical architecture of the gallery (pillars, walls, railings) and the social architecture - permits, contracts, etc.- define who is allowed to participate in the transactions as dealers.

Thus, I propose to introduce 1.000 artists from Argentina arranged in a clandestine operation at Frieze Art Fair in New York City, intangible in an online database. The clients are given a space so that they can show a selection of their work and expose their current artistic situation and about their own creation. This is organized around pre-established item, which are completed to everyone. After a purchase is made, the buyer will receive the artwork in their mailbox.

Syd Krochmalny

May 8th 2014

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La Castidad en Arte BA Galería Nora Fisch

“La castidad”, de Roberto Jacoby y Syd Krochmalny, explora el amor platónico en un ambiente propicio para la sexualización de las relaciones, pero en el cual todas las comunicaciones están mediadas. El público puede conversar con los autores/actores, pero a través de la computadora, la cual se convierte en el túnel que conecta a la realidad con un mundo imaginado y romántico. El tema, a veces explícito, a veces dado por las circunstancias, es la castidad. Aparece como un contrapunto a lo que Jacoby describe como “una hipersexualización que domina la mayoría de las creencias y acciones humanas” y que no deja lugar al amor platónico, el “modelo filosófico fundante del pensamiento occidental”. Por Luis Camnitzer y Patricia Hakim.

Chastity by Syd Krochmalny and Roberto Jacoby

La Castidad (Chastity) is a video installation that can only be viewed by two person at the same time. According to the artista Syd Krochmalny and Roberto Jacoby, their video installation is "a fictional version of a realistic micro-political experiment that covers our entire life”. We explore a basic social bond different from sexual partnership and other than common friendship". They research on the "technologies of Friendship" has taken as its object of study the distance between generations, and between two men, like Philia and Eros, Socrates and Alcibiades, Gilgamesh and Enkiddu, David and Jonathan, Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, Bouvard and Pécuchet, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Komar and Melamid, Deleuze and Guattari and, of course, Laurel and Hardy. In these exemplary friendships, sexuality was an undertone that was a perhaps never consumed,. La Castidad has to be experienced in an intimate way, between only two persons, like " a conversation by two for two or like a loop binding art to life. Roberto Jacoby and Syd Krochmalny.

Luis Camnitzer

La Castidad, 2007

La video instalación “La castidad” es la versión ficcional de un experimento micropolítico real que abarca nuestra entera vida. Exploramos un lazo social básico distinto de la pareja sexual y diferente de la amistad común.
En agosto de 2006 iniciamos una práctica relacional infrecuente: por el lapso de un año pusimos todos nuestros recursos en común para convivir, formarnos, colaborar artísticamente y establecer reciprocidad y asistencia en variados aspectos, dentro de un marco de castidad.

Por lo general, el arte relacional actúa sobre grupos extensos y suele ser de compromiso breve y parcial. Con frecuencia las obras de tendencia política refieren a un Otro al que se intenta persuadir o modificar.

Nosotros nos proponemos como los sujetos y objetos del experimento. Para transformar al mundo transformamos nuestras propias vidas. Nuestra fórmula podría denominarse “comunismo molecular”, pues tiene como horizonte la comunidad de bienes y aptitudes pero también la fraternidad y la igualdad, así como cierta dilución de la división del trabajo (“cazadores por la mañana, pescadores al mediodía, pastores por la tarde y críticos literarios después de cenar” según la hipérbole de Marx).

Excelsos pares nos inspiraron: Sócrates y Alcibíades, Gilgamesh y Enkiddu, David y Jonathan, Sancho Panza y Don Quijote, Bouvard y Pecuchet, Gargantúa y Pantagruel, Sherlock Holmes y el Dr. Watson, Komar y Melamid, Deleuze y Guattari y, claro, Laurel y Hardy. En estas amistades ejemplares, la sexualidad fue un trasfondo que tal vez nunca se consumó. Muy por el contrario, hoy prima la convicción universal de que en el ejercicio de la sexualidad reside el secreto de la liberación humana. Foucault previno contra esta creencia hace treinta años. El pacto vincular que asumimos impugna este lugar común. Pero no el afecto, no el cuidado, no la caricia.

Esta investigación de las tecnologías de la amistad propone ahora operar sobre distancias, entre Filia y Eros, entre generaciones (cuarenta años nos separan), entre ser y representación, entre un hombre y otro hombre, entre vida virtual (digamos, second life) y vida corpórea.

Pero, más allá de estos postulados teóricos, aspiramos a que “La castidad” sea vivida íntimamente, como una conversación de a dos para dos. Como un bucle entre arte y vida.

Syd Krochmalny y Roberto Jacoby

shows:

Fundación Telefónica Bs As at 2007
MAC Niteroi 2007
Americas Society NY, 2007
Barocruz SP, 2008
Pinacota SP, 2008
Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2011

Credits:

Authors: Syd Krochmalny y Roberto Jacoby
Cast: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and Harry Avilio
Image: Daniel Rosenfeld
Camara: MArtín Romanella
Original Music: Gerardo Gandini
Edited: Mónica Gómez
Produced: Kiwi Sainz, FundaciónTelefónica and Fundación Start