WEBVTT

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<v ->I've always felt that there's</v>

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this very strong connection for me,

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between the thread of sewing 
and the line of that thread

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and the thread of writing.

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(charcoal scraping across canvas)

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(sewing machine)

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I certainly grew up doing a 
lot of hand work, needle work,

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sewing, knitting, embroidery,

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all of those traditional textile arts.

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I think the process is just really satisfying,

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but the metaphors that cloth offer up

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are really extraordinarily beautiful

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because every piece of cloth that we wear

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is made up of all these individual threads,

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whatever their weave,

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and that each one of those is still something

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that you can see,

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and the whole cloth needs each one of those.

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And so it's a social metaphor to me.

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It's actually very beautiful.

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The very first piece I did 
when I was in graduate school,

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I had taken a, just kind of generic gray man suit,

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and covered it in toothpicks 
so that the whole skin of cloth

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became like a hide. It looked like a porcupine.

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(ethereal music)

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<v ->(whispering) Find the 
linear broken below a human.

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I know for me,

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that relationship between the 
thread and the written line

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and the drawn line,

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it's about a really very fundamental act of making

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(indistinct whispering)

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that the relationship of the 
line that makes something

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is related to how we make things with language.

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<v ->(whispering) Certainty.</v>

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<v ->I think that I'm always trying to work</v>

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with words as materials,

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the same way I work with other kinds of materials.

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The project "Lineament," which is a title

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that comes from a Wallace Stevens poem.

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That flat two-dimensional plane of the page

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is made into a three-dimensional body

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because each line is lifted

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out of the book as if it is a thread.

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And that thread of text is run through the hands,

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it's tactile, it's touched, 
and then it creates a ball,

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which is the body of the page.

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So. there are all these places I see

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that there's this constant tie of thread as line

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and line as line of writing.

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Yeah. Now go down that way. Right.

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(crinkling plastic)

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I'm just gonna set up the 
pipes and then we'll bring the

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fabric over.

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Seven, eight, nine

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For me, working in installation

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is to work in relation to a particular place.

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You're coming in and you're, in some senses,

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animating the space

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and you don't know what that space or situation

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will do to you and vice versa,

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what you will do to it. (laughs)

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Like, you try to make yourself blank

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so that you can just pay 
attention to what comes up,

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what it makes you think of...

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What are the things you feel?

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All of those ways that your skin is a organ

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and is a membrane is incredibly smart,

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and immediately you walk through any threshold

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and, you know, it's... you smell.

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And you feel the temperature and the light

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and all of those things that 
have an enormous influence.

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(birds chirping)

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<v ->This particular building,</v>

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it's had 1200 people working here at one time.

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it's in an area that was sort 
of like a company town area,

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and it's been forgotten.

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And it just went out of 
business about three months ago.

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<v ->(whispering) So, it's...</v>
I didn't ever actually visit this building

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when it was in operation,

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but as a textile factory and house of production,

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that was now silenced.

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You know, the hollowness of that,

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the emptiness of that was very palpable.

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I'm all thumbs today with these strings.

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(indistinct)
Can you grab this string?

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<v ->I wanted to have one room 
be the room of the writer

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and one room be the room of the reader.

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And now they've become ghost-like suspensions

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of silk organza that sit side by side.

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So, they're identical in form.

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They're about 30 foot square rooms

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that are just suspended within the architecture.

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(metal clanging)
Yeah.

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<v ->Hey Emmitt, can you carry this over there</v>

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with the other pipes?

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<v Offscreen Male>Honey, he can do it.</v>
Don't, don't worry about it.

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<v Emmitt>Yeah.</v>

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<v Ann>There you go. And then 
within each of those rooms,

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there's a long 10 foot wooden table,

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and upon that will be a spinning projector.

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(metal clanging)

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<v ->With what Anne's doing.</v>

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Remember, she's not a traditional artist

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in the sense that it's a piece of painting

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or it's a piece of sculpture.

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This is something that people 
really have to reach for

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and break out of what they expect to see.

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And it's saying really to the people

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that there's more here

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than we even saw.

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And there's someone else that's seeing that.

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Here, Emmitt, you can help 
pull the projector. Okay?

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<v ->So right now, this is 
actually the section

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that's going backwards in the video.

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So it's the pencils, like, eating the line.

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(whooshing)

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Part of making work is to allow those things,

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perhaps that are always already there,

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but not visible to us

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and to try to make them visible

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in a way that they're experience-able.

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(whooshing)

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(crickets)

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(bells clanging)

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(indistinct whispering)

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(birds chirping)

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This Jeffersonian neoclassical building we inherit

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as a real emblem of an American democratic ideal.

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(women speaking in phonetic code)

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And so, I wanted to engage that in the building.

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How do we deal with the stains of our own history?

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How do we take those aspects 
of our social history,

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slavery being the largest one.

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That we have a democratic country that was founded

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and based in slavery, and 
how do you talk about that?

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I felt like the only way to do it, perhaps,

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was very abstractly.

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This stream of intensely chromed fusca powder

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sifted down the walls.

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And it would catch on raise plaster dots

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that were fixed to the wall, 
spelling out a text in braille.

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And that text was edited from the poems

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by Charles Resnikoff.

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From the corner of each of the four rooms,

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there was a soundtrack

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of Lincoln's second inaugural address,

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which was really one of healing.

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It was translated letter by letter

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into the phonetic alphabet.

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(Women whispering phonetic code)

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(birds chirping)

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(door opening)
(door closing)

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Come on, Timmy. Let's go.

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(dog leash clanking)

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<v ->I live in Ohio and I 
moved back after teaching

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for about seven years in Santa Barbara.

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It is a very conscious decision to wanna move

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and be closer to my family who live here.

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This is where I grew up.

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(geese calling)

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it's a, kind of, a real comfort to come home

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and to work out of that place.

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And for a long time, my parents also really helped

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with a lot of my work.

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You know, my mother would sometimes fly out

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to work on a big project

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and my dad has helped on projects.

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And now increasingly they're...

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They provide me with that kind of backup

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that actually allows me

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to do the kind of traveling 
that my work has needed.

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I think that would be much harder for me

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if I didn't have all that.

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Do you wanna help change the film?

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<v ->You can't be a mom and have 
a child in kindergarten,

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and not have some other help.

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Hey Emmitt, do you wanna come see your picture?

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(mouse clicking)

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There's an aspect of my work,

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which is wanting to give voice,

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but my voice is not necessarily 
the voice that's here.

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I feel like my voice is maybe here and here.

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And so, how do I literally 
make the place where song also,

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as well as all other words, exits the body

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actually become my eye.

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I devised a way of making pinhole cameras.

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I put the camera in my mouth 
and then I unblock the aperture

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so that when I reopen my lips,

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I'm actually exposing the film.

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(footsteps)

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You know,

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you're never supposed to have 
your mouth open in public.

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This is like, you don't see 
people standing, you know,

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(laughs)
It's a vulnerable position.

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It's a place where you've relaxed

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and you've let yourself be open and vulnerable.

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(laughs)
Sorry.

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You ready?

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<v ->Um-hm.</v>

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<v ->Um.</v>

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<v ->It became very interesting</v>

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to register this time of standing quite still,

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face to face with another person,

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like soul to soul,

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and revealing something that's not, you know,

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the surface stuff that we 
usually allow out to the world.

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The shape of the mouth is very much

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the same shape as the eye.

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And the image becomes almost like the pupil.

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(bell ringing)
(dog barking)

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Good.

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So to...and sometimes invert the location

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of one sense to another part of the body.

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Those kind of dislocations or slippages is one way

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that we come to see something differently.

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(motor running)

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<v Female Voice>Looks like there's fire coming</v>

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off of your hand.

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<v Ann>Wow, look it.</v>

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Look, oh, totally magic.

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<v Maarten>It's a flat sheet of water</v>

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with soap on either side.

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And it's about a 50th of the 
thickness of a human hair.

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And when things get that thin, 
like oil slicks on water,

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they tend to reflect certain 
colors of light depending on

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their thickness.

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I just thought it would be interesting

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to try to see if Ann would 
be able to incorporate this

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in any of her work.

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...Which is part of the problem.

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<v ->You know, Martin sort of 
said, "I'm doing this thing,"

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and I...and then he demonstrated it.

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It's like, I, I don't know 
necessarily how or when,

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or what I would use this,

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but it's becoming increasingly clear to me

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that it's related to everything I've ever done.

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You know, it's the fluidity of the cloth.

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It's the way that you can take your hands

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and you can go through the membrane of it.

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Oh, I love this bubble coming out like this

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and the breath being made 
palpably, visually present.

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It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

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<v ->And I know when I'm making 
work that I have to...

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Like, there's a point where I can't see it.

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I can't see it in my head. And then, you know,

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there's that moment where you can see it

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and you think it might be beautiful.

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It's like it bites you, you know,

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and then you will go to all 
ends sometimes to try to see it

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(laughs) in fact.

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And of course it's always 
different or something else but...

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(ethereal music)