Page 43 - Studio International - November 1971

response of tissue under various kinds of barrier, a repellant for an ongoing force, the DO: Colour Application for Chandra was also
pressure, the effect of stress and shock to the spider. I wanted to have jurisdiction over a conceived along these lines, although there I was
nervous centre. I would really want to form that material, to expel it slowly, letting it get out of also dealing with language structure, the idea of
nail, and decode what was happening to it. control. There was a point beyond which the throwing my voice, getting information inside
ws: You seem to be quite concerned with a material could no longer be affected by any my daughter and then transferring it to the
continuum in terms of your own history, with momentum I might be able to build up. It was parrot—teaching the parrot to talk by means of
carrying around information with you. I think completely outside my power, and yet so close. her voice.
Vito is more involved with adaptation, making The videotape of feeding vibrations into a ws : This was a development of the piece you did
himself do things and changing his role. flexible surface and vicariously altering the for the Pier 18 show ?
DO: Real change interests me too. It is in position of the material interested me on the DO: Yes. For my show at the Harcus-Krakow
opposition to illusionism. As I've said before, same level. Gallery in Boston, Chandra learned six or seven
how can you justify working abstractly on land ? ws : What other things are you thinking about colours, which wasn't very difficult. I had
Earth cannot be treated in the same way that now ? originally wanted to teach her colours by
sculptors worked steel. One possibility that the 17
earth movement did allow was for the inter-
action with real-time structure, to tap into a
dynamic geophysical syndrome. Change was
central to everything I did in the beginning. I
couldn't think in terms of an arbitrary gesture.
As long as you were outside you had to forget that.
It would have been bringing in the vestiges of a
studio ideology. Abstract gesture stems from a
concern with a superficial surface. I don't
consider the pursuit of active change to be
particularly virtuous; it's just a choice you make.
ws : How did these concerns evolve in your
Micro-projection pieces ?
Do : These were proposals for bringing about
predetermined, internal changes in the body
which would be recorded through an electron
microscope. The idea was to stimulate an
alteration of cellular order, such as an infection,
being able to walk around knowing that your
body chemistry has been affected, and that you
are in control of it, for aesthetic ends—
constructing on a cellular level and documenting
it.
ws : Which pieces are you referring to
specifically ?
Do: The Saliva Sample tests and the Identity
Transfers, some of which were carried out at
Yale in 1969.
ws: Do you see any correlation between your
work and that of Haacke, who utilizes natural
and social systems ?
Do: In some ways. The residue collection
project in which I drove a car around Kearny,
New Jersey, for a full day after sterilizing the
surface, and then made a microscopic record of
18
the residue collected and the route travelled may flooding snow-covered landscapes with high
relate. But my more recent works incorporate an intensity lights, affecting her memory track
element of externalized manipulation. For so that the process of learning colours would
instance, I did a videotape in Halifax using have permanent associations for her, a tie-in with
manual vibrations as an indirect source of land.
energy. My hands were pounding a flexible ws: What is the connection between that idea
surface covered with gypsum, drumming on it and the Identity Transfers?
with both hands about ten inches away from the DO: The first of those pieces show my daughter
material. This was similar to Extended Armor, Kristin transferring the papillary ridges of her
and the fingernail project, basically dealing with thumb on to my thumb. I then transfer this
the control of a detached part of your body at a print to my father's thumb and he terminates
distance. This was most strikingly evidenced in the process by transferring it on to the ground.
Extended Armor, in which I was controlling It's a linear regression, going back through the
material once contiguous with my own body, members of a family until an impasse is reached.
material which I had produced organically, at Then at the Reese Palley Gallery last year, I
increasingly greater distances. made a glass slide of the papillary ridges of my
ws : How were you doing this ? right thumb-print in blood and projected it to a
DO: By blowing it. The hair was used as a three-foot diameter on the wall using a projection

'9'