Page 40 - Studio International - November 1971

3, 4
Reading Position for Second Degree Burn 1970
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Preliminary Test for 65 feet Vertical
Penetration 1970
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Micro-projection 1970
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Material Interchange for Joe Stranard
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Kansas Ground Mutations
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Aspen Ground Mutations 1970
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Protection (Dogs) 1971
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Wound 1970
12
Micro Projection: Identity Transfer
Gallery Reese Palley
13
Thumbprint—Erik Oppenheim, age 9 years

And these are the insights which pulled me ws : I saw your body becoming the place in that
away from my previous concerns. Most of the piece. Was that also true of Reading Position for
new projects reinforce my interest in precluding Second Degree Burn?
the objectification of energy through exterior DO : That was a kind of inversion or reversal of
material. Understanding the body as both energy expenditure. The body was placed in the
subject and object permits one to think in terms position of recipient, exposed plane, a captive
of an entirely different surface. It creates a shift surface. The piece has its roots in the notion of
in direction from the creation of solid matter to colour change. Painters have always artificially
the pursuit of internal or surface change. With instigated colour activity. I allowed myself to be
this economy of output one can oscillate from painted, my skin became pigment. I could
the position of instigator to victim. Take the regulate its intensity through control of the
phenomenon of grabbing : instead of grabbing exposure time. Not only would my skin tones
clay, you grab your stomach. For the first time, change, but its change registered on a sensory
instead of imposing form manually, you are level as well—I could feel the act of becoming
resemblance to my wrist. Shortly afterwards, I feeling what it is like to be made. You might have red. I was tattooed by the sun. You simply lie
did the Wound series, which began by using a felt your hands picking up a piece of wood and down and something takes over. It's like
scar on my leg as a historic catalyst. Again, the stacking it, but you have never felt what the plugging into the solar system, communicating
focus is upon direct contact, similar on these wood felt. with an element.
grounds to Backtrack but engaging a past event. ws : What other works expressed these ws : How was the book chosen ?
The aim of the Wound series was to correlate a concerns ? DO : I thought about that for a long time. I
specific body surface to an exterior location. DO : The fingernail project was prior to these. considered a book about burns, about treating
When my body met the land, the scar which was There was an installation of my detached nail burned tissue. Then I considered a book on
formed became a permanent record of the wedged between some gallery floorboards and tactics because I had been reading about attack
transaction. It was also a testimony of the viewed under a stereo microscope. Our bodies diagrams, marching diagrams, which is a
downward pressure exerted by a ten-year-old are constantly generating material, building completely different part of my work which I
body. What also occurred was a displacement; surfaces, changing physiognomy. The fingernail don't want to get into now.
the body falls to the ground, the leg makes project was a method of tapping into the body's ws: Well, could we talk about Two Jumps for
contact with a sharp rock. The rock is not productive cycle. My first approach to this was Dead Dog Creek?
changed—the external material does not register intuitive and dealt with a sense of scale—the fact Do: That's about a particular place in Idaho
the transaction. The leg, the tool, does. It's like that this minute part of me would constitute an and it grew out of the concerns of the Wound
pounding a nail, not to merge it into wood, but exhibition. Looking at the nail through the series. After several trial jumps on regular
to make an impression on the hammer. The scar stereo microscope made it appear intensely terrain, I made a series of standing broad jumps
is a potent recapitulation of a point in past structural, a brutal protuberance, emanating across Dead Dog Creek. The width of the creek
history. For me activity on land is charged, not from a sea of lacquered flooring. Also included became a specific goal to which I geared a bodily
passive like processed steel. Land holds traces of in the installation was a sound track of the nail activity. The conditioning resulted in two
a dynamic past, which the artist may allow to tapping on the floor, vestiges of a sound made successful jumps. You can then speculate upon
enter his work if he so wishes. impossible to duplicate due to the severance. The the tie-in between the specific energy
ws: What are some of the broader repercussions fact that this material once part of the artist had distribution dictated by a land form. For a split
of these insights ? been introduced into this vast space and existed second, a physical tolerance was fused with an
Do: In a sense, I am creating a system that as an installation excited me. It also incorporated exterior location. I did the jump twice and
allows the artist to become the material, to a transaction, since a splinter from the floorboard succeeded both times. That place was now
consider himself the sole vehicle of the art, the was inserted into the same finger, so the act, as it embodied. I then returned to New York and
distributor, initiator and receiver simultaneously. were, cancelled itself out. repeated the jumps for my show at John
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