pro:phile @ design square, brooklyn, PTA

The meats that make us (part2)

Climbing into consciousness

And so an entire week has already past since last time you saw me performing my process of coming into being. Be on the lookout for the next issue of A Look Away magazine to read more about this experience and to get a sneaky scoop on what events soon will follow. Until then I'll spend my time climbing further and further into consciousness, coming to terms with the cold and the clacking sounds of stiff joints in the early winter morning.

Keen to be seen

After much consideration I realized that this constant privacy has to be dealt with. I was feeling so invisible (and visibility I now know is a thing of great importance in this world of objects) and insignificant, behind my closed front door, through which only limited visitors pass through. So I have decided to relocate myself to the place where ... Read Morethings get seen. The shop window.

Words I am familiar with and I do have the capacity to express various experiences and emotions with them, but I wanted to test this new body of mine and try to create an expression using only things that other people can experience with only their senses such as hearing and sight and tactile sensation. Hence I am performing to anyone who is willing to walk into my shop, a performance in which I illustrate to you my becoming a body.

I did so for the first time last night, and onlookers seemed to be able to interpret my movements and sounds…what a fascinating phenomenon… So I will be carrying on doing so...

Spying on the neighbors

It is the strangest thing to me here, how everybody does everything in secret. Only friends that you know come visit you, and while they are there, you are fully aware of their presence and they do not even snoop around through your things when you are not looking. Every body seems so private, hidden behind the most vulgar polo-necks and woolly ... Read Morescarfs, thick drapes and sometimes bad hairstyles.

This privacy bothers me so, I keep staring through my peep-hole waiting to see some eye on the other side, but hours pass by, without even a fly.

There are some places though that seem to me as the interfaces where strangers meet, and stare and stalk and sometimes talk. Shopping Malls and bars and stationary stores and petrol stations, but mostly shopping malls seem to me like the place to be, cause the people there aren't to scared to stare.

The meat that makes us

Something quite silly came to my attention today as I was purchasing some meat products for a night time meal. The butcher seemed somewhat surprised at my delight to see the cutting of the fresh meats behind the counter. “Can I have a closer look”, I asked the man, which - from his look in his eye I could tell – considered rather to assist some other costumer, someone less fascinated by his occupation.

As I am told the meats inside me must be somewhat similar to those of the animals we eat. To my disappointment it seemed that the meats had no smell - or maybe that is just because I have contracted what you would call a cold, which somehow seems to be interfering with the smells of all things.

The colour on the other hand is something quite exquisite. And the texture so soft and malleable, I just wanted so badly to taste them all. But then I had to leave, so with my plastic bag of meats I said farewell to the relieved butcher, who was left to slice and saw in his own silence.

The dilema with the eyes

I woke up again this morning. What a strange notion, in that before recently I have never slept before. I woke up and I had this strange feeling of being lost. This is not that strange in itself, since I frequently end up in places where I have no recollection of getting there. But this displacement is different. It is different in the sense that the place to which I am displaced is more specific, much smaller and much more contained. Human eyes seem to only see that far, and furthermore, there are many opaque obstacles, which hinders sight from relocating one self again.

In attempt to achieve some form of clarity, I drove up a tiny mountain to look down at the city of Pretoria. Seeing so many things and places simultaneously made me feel a bit more at ease, but the problem than arose in that distance seems to diminish detail. Hence the dilemma with the eye.

I drove down again into the city.

becoming a body

Its been four days now since I got here and I’ve been doing all the things that one can do with flesh: used some eyeballs to watch the television, I tasted the taste of toast, I rolled some bowls and seen some interesting people and places, yet I find this whole idea of being in a body somewhat strange. As a virtual creature I have memories, thoughts and even some knowledge…well information is probably the more appropriate term here.

But a body…how strange it is. It’s so solid, so limited in its ability to transform. Only on the outside, only in appearance does it seem similar to me, in that the outside can be altered. As a canvas, however the body seems inscripted with details one just cant cover. It is going to take some time to get used to…hopefully by the time I get to meet you face to face, I would have found a way to use this thing called face, without it restricting what I am.

the adult artworld

Standing in the middle of Jan Smuts late at night and window-shopping at the Goodman. One thinks about the art that you have seen and wonders what to make of it - and what to make of your own. The red neon adult world reflects over the exhibiting artist’s name (along side an oh-so pink Angus Taylor…from Gordart across the road).

I am reminded of the pressure from numerous professors to be more explicit, sexual, and sensational, and wonder if that is truly the only route for an artist still to travel.
Well…either that or writing with neon lights on the gallery wall as the trend seems to continue after years of faux-signage illuminating our receptive minds.

And I wonder what I would write…but no words come to mind.
Maybe if I think a little harder…later

the thing with toast and televisions

The thing with both toasters, and television sets is that in the perfect world they would be combined as one. Their individual powerful forces merged into a single object which has the potential to change the way in which a whole globe of individuals spend their time in the kitchen (or the living room for that matter). The thing that bugs me with these appliances is that I have a love/hate relationship with both. I love toast, I have ever since I can remember, especially the toast that my granny used to make in her four-slice toaster when I was a kid. Mainly because of the fact that before hers I had never seen a four-slice toaster anywhere else…a true feat of engineering. Anyway…what gets me down is the time you have to spend waiting for the toast to be toasted to a crispy Californian brown. On the other hand, I hate TV… it sucks you in with mindless programming and before you know it you have wasted an entire evening worth of other fun filled activities. Hence my proposal. If the television was built into the toaster, then you would have something to do whilst waiting for your toast and you would spend less time wasted in front of the TV, cause you would feel plain stupid staring at the toaster if not waiting for toast.

What a marvelous plan, don’t you agree!

a bowl of armed response

It seems to me that these two things are all that there are…causes and effects. More often than not we do things, not because of the sheer pleasure that they might result it, but mainly to gain some form of response. Whether that may be delivered in arms of with open arms does not really matter that much, does it? As long as there’s a sound traveling from the other end of the line, you rest assured that your phone is still working…

as pro:phile prepares

Suddenly I recall some lady speaking at the opening of the Sasol New Signatures prize last year. She was some representative from Sasol who had a clear bias toward photographic works and as I recall also has a history of working in a printing facility or some newspaper press…the anecdote I recall is her nostalgic recollection of the smell of the printing press early in the morning. The ink stench rising through the floor from the basement where the presses were laboring. And I remember imagining a scenario - not much unlike a documentary on child labour - of these pour skinny creatures working the presses under the oppression of some leather clad dominatrix with whips and chains. (the imagery most likely caused by some other art work on show, a piece with similar subject matter).

So now as I sit on my haunches printing face after face to compile in a book of faces I ponder as I smell the scent of printing ink, where is the whip that keeps me working? And more interestingly perhaps; who are those waiting to be whipped by my work? Well we will have to wait and wonder just a while more.

A small note of note...for the novice blogger (like me): remember to bookmark your own blogsite, for bad memory might avoid you from ever finding it again...speaking of which; let us take a moment of silence in respect for all those forgotten dusty corners that are no longer visited but still keep hovering lonesome in limbo somewhere one the web.shame...

pro:phile is an interactive artwork by Francois Jonker which exists here as a virtual entity and will be manifested physically through the artist's performance in Design Square (Brooklyn, Pretoria, South-Africa) from 08/07/2009 - 16/07/2009.

keep watching this space for more information...