Ian Kiaer: Endnote, ping

This film uses documentation from a lecture by Peter de Bretteville on his own work (November 14, 1979) refilmed on an i-phone. The images were then edited, cut up and repeated in conjunction to the audio track which is a recital performed at the same occasion by designer Coy Howard of Peter Schjeldahl’s poem To Pico. Further information on the film : This 8.5-minute film by Rebecca Méndez Studio accompanied the exhibit A Confederacy of Heretics at the SCI-Arc Gallery (March 29-July 7, 2013). Consisting mostly of Coy Howard's 1979 recitation of Peter Schjeldahl's poem "To Pico," accompanied by quotes from the original 1979 Los Angeles Times reviews by John Dreyfuss, manipulated video clips, still photographs and work by exhibit participants Eugene Kupper, Roland Coate Jr, Frederick Fisher, Frank Dimster, Frank O. Gehry, Peter de Bretteville, Studioworks, Morphosis, and Eric Owen Moss. Creative director: Rebecca Méndez; Producer/Writer: Adam Eeuwens; Designer: Pauline Woo ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

This set of works has 3 main avenues of enquires : Michael Marder ‘environmental thought’, Samuel Beckett’s, short story Ping, experimental West Coast architecture from the early 70’s. The work of the philosopher Michael Marder, a proponent of ‘environmental thought’, which considers plants as living beings that possess their own forms of subjectivity. Marder’s work develops a critique of anthropocentric empathy towards plants. In preparation for the work, Ian has been visiting and making drawings in the prefabricated greenhouses at Oxford Botanic Gardens. Samuel Beckett short story, Ping, (1966) an embodied space where repeated words defy a linear reading in favour of something more spatial, material and rhythmic. "Ping" is a short story written by Samuel Beckett written in French (originally "Bing") in 1966, and later translated into English by the author and published in 1967. In ‘Ping’, Beckett restricts his vocabulary to around 100 words, although the story is approximately 1,000 words long. David Lodge has described it as: "the rendering of the consciousness of a person confined in a small, bare, white room, a person who is evidently under extreme duress, and probably at the last gasp of life." a hypnotic flow of words the meaning of which is initially utterly obscure. But persevere and patterns emerge: “moderate or good, occasionally poor later”/“white walls”, “one square yard”, “white scars”. In both cases, we soon realise we are within a system of words performing very defined tasks, albeit ones only understood by initiates. Quick City : West Coast experimental architecture. initiative Quick City, organised by architects Peter de Bretteville and Craig Hodgetts in Los Angeles. Focusing on temporary structure and inflatables. These works are development from an on-going project - Endnote, tooth; that Ian has been working on since the show at the Henry Moore Institute in 2014 and most recently for my show at MAM Paris, that presented propositions in the form of paintings, models, and fragments with a concern for certain ideas apparent in the work of Frededrick Kiesler. The architect developed a critique of formalist approaches to design and display in favour of increasingly biomorphic solutions and structures found in nature. The title refers to Kiesler’s “Tooth House,” a marginal project that relates to his more extended ‘Endlessness House’, where he drew upon a convergence of ethnography, science and magic to develop notions of dwelling. These particular works use the scratched, marked and stained surfaces of bus stop screens to prompt the emergence of the painted image.   FULL SCRIPT : Form the restless nervous uprooted visitor You inform him that where he has come to is a joke on him And you’re not kidding You do not care You look uncared about You look unintended, uncalculated, uncomplimented by anyone ever until this moment You look to be the forlorn historical accident that you are You’re like a side street with Elephantitus You’re a great place for a murder You’re a great place for the murder of an obscure transient person By another obscure transient person You are without remorse, remorseless You are innocent with the innocence of a homicidal moron