Sandarena, arenasand is an obvious rip-off of Kurt Schwitters but different on one count. I needed to come up with a toponymical brand name to differentiate my personal space on the web from seven billion other users. Sa-As/As-Sa thus has a functional use. There is a specific function tied to the use of this name. To give myself an identity or at least to give an engine the ability to pick me apart from other cross reflective cross hairs of individual personal creative expression. The nose hairs of Democracy encourage poor taste.
At this point in my existence, I’m either halfway, two thirds of the way or at the beginning of the end or maybe I’m just here NOW. I feel the need to organize my work into its final categories an sa-as/as-sa is as good as anyplace to begin to codify. I’ve already (or perhaps) later I will discuss the multiple meanings suggesting by Sandarena...and how that piece ended on the full moon of December 2 2009.
Regardless the work will become codified under this marker because I am settling down-I am planting stakes, demarcating lines...from around 88 to 99 I used Grudgefuck as a name.
Grudgefuck represented my hurt and anger. Sandarena represented a mystical affront, a changing symbol: an incorporation and integration of my past into the present-map (Marietta Assembly Plant) doesn’t represent anything, instead it reflects the current obsession of assembling projects to generate income while infiltrating the post televised universe in a way that reverts back to the source in the form of sustenance.
Saying goodbye to Grudgefuck points out that I am different now. Instead of loudly proclaiming that I have a grudge and I intend to ‘fuck”-not in a sexual way but in a hateful, violent capacity. The loudness of the name was decisive.
Grudgefuck was too one sided. It shocked and reminded instead of allowing open flow. One either “grudgefucked” or got “grudgefucked”-beyond the initial titillation the idea went no where. Revenge is essentially a dead end structure.
Forgive me if I digress. Things are different now, how can they be otherwise? In the late 80’s I began to produce music under the name “Grudgefuck”, a moniker that described my feelings toward the recording industry as well as “cultural” society in general. After 20+ years I do not feel like Grudgefuck anymore. I do not feel the same sense of animosity or hatred towards society (or rather and most importantly) to myself.
The idea of Grudgefuck was to use entirely prefabricated pieces of music and then transform them according to its own limitations.
Furthermore, the name Grudgefuck was too close to my love for the extreme noise ensemble Whitehouse. It was/is too much of a rip off. But Sandarena/Arenasand is too pretentious. Perhaps I should just use “SA-AS” or “AS-SA” without further explaining. Or perhaps just the initials AS, or @$ or $@, (of pre-war fascism and I’m not interested in that). (the letters SA convey an image South Africa and I’m not interested in that.)
Sandarena/Arenasand is about information and communication. Sandarena/arenasand is a deliberate palindrome. Reaching into the past while extending into the future. If a memory can recall something that once happened then what happens tomorrow is just a future memory. Why can’t the future be accessed with the same thought process? The immediate answer is the actuality did not happen yet-but the yet is a future that soon will be relegated to the past. The present is only as long as it takes for the word to be said, to be uttered and expressed. Sand can be blown into glass. Sand can be tracked into the house. Sand can descend an hourglass. Sand can pass through the fingers or matt into clumps like a castle. An arena can be a physical place to attend performances or an idea of being “in the arena.”
Sandarena is a much more encompassing idea and illustration. It has the ability to contract and to expand to include a wide variety of expressions and activities.
How all the sand adds up into a shore on a beach. How all the grains can be examined as one (or two) how the tide takes from it and adds to it.
• sand (tiny grains that form a huge bank, together)
• arena (a place to watch events)
• (‘harena” was a Roman term for a space that gladiators fought inside,
the sand was used to soak up the blood.)
this is the symbol for sand or arena:
each granule of sand touches another grain. the arena is the forum in which the sand shifts.
a man praising the sky. The four elements plus sun, moon and spirit between them. Seven is the number of planets, seven is the number of days: as above/as below.
Sand arena is pretty arbitrary when it comes down to it. I needed a name that I had no previous connection to. A way of formulating a new identity (however transitory) while breaking with the past-a way to start all over again.
The past is completely dead now. The person that used to act in such ways is long gone, disappeared like old newspapers-like the form of the newspaper itself. Gone- a great relic of the age of railroads.
The artist creates a body of work and this body exists in tomes and images. Reflected upside down in the brains of an audience-the artist needs an audience to exist. A genetic fingerprint of a meme of an idea-but what’s an idea, what’s the idea? the idea, the concept is that through creativity a path to the heart can be formulated.
But I’m trying to close something. I’m trying to shut the door on my earlier work and move into the present. But perhaps sand arena/arena sand is not the answer. I was driving past the General Motors plant last night and I was captivated by the sign. I interpreted the words in my own reality as “Assembly Plant Marietta” and I thought that it had potential. Possibly I could become Assembly Plant Marietta in the near future. Just what the world needs another band.
While I certainly was Grudgefuck for awhile I later became Sandarena/Arenasand. A piece of sand in a vast arena. A small molecule touching others, moving with the wind. A piece of sand in the arena and an arena comprised of sand. The Grudgefuck particle has become integrated. My contempt and hatred has become modified. The notion of sand, as a part of the whole rather than the sum of the whole has also become integrated within my personality. Today I am interested in moving away from just being a granule.
The idea of ‘apm’ is three fold. Marietta indicates my home, assembly indicates that I am building my work and the plant signifies it as a living being. A piece of art designed to be integrated within and without.
Each granule of sand touches another grain. The arena is the forum in which the sand shifts. The sand arena is the idea of a medium sized half bowl theatre. Each creative project, every cultural gesture is represented as a grain of sand placed inside the bowl. The granules are visible in different parts of the auditorium. It isn’t until the arena is filled that patterns are discernable from the air.
Marietta assembly plant is an idea. It was an idea that I had then I deleted it. I just started another blog under the title “assembly plant Marietta”. (Oh great, another blog, sign me up, I’ll follow you if you follow me). I think I’m gonna put up my photos of Marietta there. Maybe I don’t know. Maybe I’ll make it the home for Enoch.
Enoch is the “label” I starting putting cassettes out under in 1988. Eventually I put out two or three tapes and a couple of CD’s. Assembly Plant Marietta
Has a better ring to it. I can just use APM.
I can use APM for everything. I want to have everything under one roof. Aesthetically, spiritually, conceptually. SA/AS wasn’t going anywhere. I just didn’t feel it and I don’t think I ever did. It was a transitory piece. I’ve undergone a lot of changes since I first started using the logo and name eight years ago. Manufacturing cultural work, growing if water and nurtured, the name of my home.
I imagine that I’m a fortune 500 company that has been lured to Marietta cos of the tax breaks. I agree to mention the city in my advertising to establish an identity. When you think of Marietta I want you to imagine all the great avant gherkin cutting edge art being made here. A change in the heart does not require new clothes but it can always use new vocabulary. After all: “it is the hour of the feast of Ra-Hoor Khuit.” An adopted home town always sings and signs on the bottom line.
The sandarena arenasand project resulted in the creation of ten booklets, all original xeroxes depicting assemblages of my graphics in editions of 10 or twenty. That was all right. Of course I created the blog. It was unfocused for a very long time. Today I have a much better understanding of what I want to do in cyberspace. I made a CD-R of an old distorted recording of heart’s “magick man” and I gave it away to about ten people. It was actually a Grudgefuck recording from Jersey City in the early nineties.
I had mail, bank, light, life, love, liberty.
The goal is not to get published at any cost. The goal is to abide by agreements made before sending an article to a publisher. Oh that’s right; it’s all about me (you). Of course it is. Why would I agree to a creative act void of self-interest? The delusion of crowds?
I did that ripoff/homage to On Kawara where I sent out two postcards everyday saying “today I listened to...” I did that for about nine months and I wrote a long essay about the project called: “the door was open and the wind appeared”. That piece worked out well, I kinda forgot about that. Maybe I should repost that with illustrations.
About the plane/plank working. On Halloween (2006) I designated the end of my second year in my house. It was the third plane where my reality, consensus reality and reality coincided. The idea was to make my world come alive with concentration. And it plainly worked because the plain plan had me out on a plank. The ‘k’ was added and in parentheses because it is the eleventh number of the alphabet. The restart of the sequence after ten and of course being the magick letter.
I illustrated this as a poem: plan(k)/plan(e)/(3) Y. The last letters of the poem when written vertically as ‘key’. That was the key. A plan that walked me out on a plank which lead to a different plane. I made a rubber stamp with these words and I included it on piles of correspondence. (I made another more explicit stamp that read: “plan: 3y, plank/plane, working”.)
And now a year later I have to concede that it worked. It opened up a new set of rules and new scope of the landscape. That was three years ago and now I’m conceding that it meant nothing. It gave me another mystical distraction in the midst of the sand arena, arena sand piece.
“the door was opened and the wind appeared”: invocation
“Jucifer Rising”: rebirth
“Psychotropic of Cancer”: propaganda
“Scrimshaw”: tactics
I’m going to a rock club tomorrow to meet with Jucifer. I’m going to bring a stack of copies of Jucifer Rising for the band to autograph. Which means that tonight I have to start rubberstamping and numbering copies for them to sell. But at least I’ll come back with some copies that are signed so I can autograph them. The reason why the book hasn’t been aggressively marketed is that I’ve it wasn’t finished. It was conceived as an art piece and it needed all the elements, ooh of course I could have done it differently. But the year of 2009 was one long nod.
I can’t say that sa/as was a failure or a success. It was the conception that I worked under from 2002 to 2009 and it served its purpose. The place I’m at right now is very promising. Though I have to cum clean round.
an elastic arena of sand shifts gently in about an hour to accommodate each circular spectator perfectly round
