A Letter to R

Noële Ody entering the Academy

Photo: Stephen Mathewson

 

Have you read I Love Dick – Dick is a person – by Chris Kraus? Basically, the book is consisted of hybrid love letters blended with essays and reviews.

 

I’ve heard your complaint about the fact that I’ve post almost nothing about Nora Schultz’s class When Sculptures Walk Out that you were a part of. You’re damn right! I was thinking last night how that has even happened, as it was my favourite class (I’ve written that in mail to the co-teacher Sam Siwe, approximately a week ago, and asked him not to tell anyone.) To be honest, I really didn’t like one of the students – that happens to me rarely –as she/they/he was so rude to me, but at the end I started to feel sympathy even towards her/them/him.

The class opened my eyes to another way of seeing what sculpture is. Besides Nora’s (Schultz) extremely cool approach towards sculpture (I mean we are talking about “walking out sculptures”, and seeing the virtual reality as a sculptural space!!), all the discussions in the class from Lacan’s id-real-symbolic to Julie Kristeva’s The Place of Horror attracted me a lot. I remember Nora saying that art production and gender questions intertwined with each other especially in contemporary cultural production. I so agree! Deleuze&Guattari’s notion rhizome was inevitably on the table in relation to identity politics, which at the end, is strongly bound to sculpture as well.

 

Actually, one of the reasons for not posting on time about the class was the fact that I was waiting replies from Nora (Schultz) and another artist-student from your class for the confirmation of interviews. Unfortunately, we couldn’t manage to meet w Nora, because of timing, but Matthew (Crookes) has written to me today so I’ll post about his blog that Nora pointed out last Friday.

 

I’ve realized that my eyes have been looking for you the other day, when I was passing by the café that you were a regular. Greeting you with a nod became a bodily habit that I haven’t recognized before.

Best,

G

p.s. I'm sending you some images from last Friday.