Sunday, March 16, 2014

Defence & Survival Gameplay & Sports

All conscience, will, awareness, senses, perception and self altogether share one and the same outer body. This solid form or façade never was, is, could or shall really be them, despite being where and what they occupy; trapped inside and dependent upon there. But these contents also very much shape, run and use their host.
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Over time and from wear, outdoor features and components weaken loose and come away. Eyes, nose, mouth and ears lost; arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers and tœs gone; same for genitalia. Change leaves behind exhausted and stagnant numb lump unit.
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Meanwhile, drive never gave up or departed. Live force-fields, sheer energy and presence exceed material substance. Size and strength overcome mere shell and vessel.
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Great escape plan, efforts and attempt pays off. After liberation, only unbound, limitless and self-renewing freedom follows.

Invincible powers won and mastered, greater than those before, can and will touch, feel, hold, see, hear, smell and taste, as well as physically move, activate, invent and enjoy any and every thing; no matter how otherwise inaccessibly far beyond out-of-reach, even if previously unknown — or still as yet to actually exist. 

by Douglas Park
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 http://www.emiliaukkonen.com/index.php?page=defence-survival-gameplay-sports

Emilia Ukkonen belongs to that category of artists for whom art and
life are 1 and the same.  Only which came 1st, Emilia Ukkonen or her
art?  Unless they each did, same time, both at once.

Because Emilia Ukkonen’s work and life are a single-handed and
tireless campaign, mission, crusade and higher purpose, or at least an
exploratory critique and critical exploration against notions of
supposed greatness, especially self-importance, egocentricity,
delusions of grandeur and much worse, megalomania.  Emilia Ukkonen’s
practice, output and then the shared experience all join forces
together, exorcising such faults and wrongfulness.

Clearly, such a destiny was already advance preordained and chosen for
Emilia Ukkonen, even long before she and her birth were even ever
thought of.  Countless and indescribable manifestations of this
appeared throughout Emilia Ukkonen’s earliest times and youth,
continuing onwards to this very day and beyond.  While examples are
too numerous to simply attempt or begin mentioning, everybody around
Emila Ukkonen, from any time of her life can recount at least one such
episode.  Never less than spectacular, extraordinary and unique, if
not genuinely miraculous.

But Emilia Ukkonen’s artistic, creative and cultural production is
only one of many facets to her good works.   Still more and greater is
always hinted at, however difficult or actually impossible identifying
that ends up.
The full extent of Emilia Ukkonen’s benevolence can and will never be
adequately done enough justice, all too often going ignored.  Yet the
true contribution made towards the common-good is undeniable and
desperately needed.


Douglas Park

http://www.emiliaukkonen.com/index.php?page=defence-survival-gameplay-sports

Monday, March 10, 2014

Splash, Can And Cock: Jakup Auce and Carl Palm


http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=2162


Splash, Can And Cock: Jakup Auce and Carl Palm
KOMPLOT, 295, Avenue Van Volxemlaan B-1190 Brussels
30 October 2013 - 15 March 2014
Douglas Park and Alberto García del Castillo


Splash, Can And Cock is an art exhibition posed as a display. It plays with the light and the interior/exterior relations. Pieces seem to lay behind the glass to be enjoyed by the passer-bys. Illuminated from the inside, the pieces create warmth, and question the setting of any shop window or private space open to outside viewing. Every year Komplot proposes a window showcase for the winter season to catch the eye of the accidental audience.

Jakup Auce’s new work (Kimberly Clark, 2013) was created for the occasion, while Carl Palm’s piece (Plage de Bureau, 2013) has been travelling for the last months; both of them met in Brussels in this period leading up to Christmas.

Jakup Auce. DecoYration by Douglas Park:

Desperate need suddenly cured, by fast arrival of unexpected but welcome and beneficial challenge.

Fuel, medicine, rescue and salvation cause and supply? Megalith constellation. Decentralized nervous-systems over- load and short-circuit. Yet, instead of fatigue, breakdown and obsolescence, they enact self-service vivisection and mutual atom-splitting; before inflicting cellular invisible-mending puncture repairs and surgical joinery, onto themselves and each other.

Roadworks-in-progress test-laboratory conditions, equipment and activity stand in for finalized terminal commodity. Skin-deep promotional showroom display window-dressing façade protects any and every what, who and where is clandestine and incognito within and beyond.

Seemingly futile struggling and attempts at speech become ignorable, so it all passes unnoticed; only to exert much wider and more long-term influence and effect, elsewhere and later on.

Hi-tech, space age and sci-fi beauty treatment and cosmetic products all own, control and use modest sensors; component-fixtures, that in reality serve as invincible limbs, as well as being omnipotent perception-inlets.

Main concern is combative-tournament and rivalry-contest race and battle, towards equality, for harmony. Memory, charisma, portraiture and statuary become hyperactive life forms in their very own right.

Altogether, combined efforts provide generator and power station; source, birth, manufacture, broadcast, transmission and enforcement of asleep and awake daylight and nighttime climates and regime.

Carl Palm. Cocktail Blanket by Alberto García del Castillo:

The “splash” of this set-up is the swimming-pool-towel for a Belgian giant, hanging on the drying cord. The blanket to cuddle by the lakeside is a survivor hut by the forest. A “trompe-l’oeil” print on the wall might remind you getting drunk during your last holidays by the French Mediterranean coast under a warm night; and if you want to save on heating, unroll a Persian carpet on your living room. The kitchen is open, the table is set.

“27 MAY 00.00-08.00 all nights until 3 JUNE 00.00-08.00 2013, S. Marco 865, 30124, Venezia” is the invitation to a clandestine bar inside an apartment rent during the opening week of the Biennial, and Plage de Bureau was an advertisement poster before becoming this “table-beach”. It tried a second attempt to attract liquor drinkers in Switzerland, but the art fair rained on its parade. This is packed and vacuumed and plastic-wrapped to be a flying rocket from Stockholm to Brussels.

The evenings at home sewing a patchwork of pastels and adding a tiny bit of an Adidas sport-trouser. A poem to “Sebastian Rozenberg”, “Olle Eriksson”, “Petter Lehto” and “Lina Bjerneld” and the gathering of friends before the festivities.

By night we dance around the fire, throwing bills in the air, the happiness of a profitable working day by the sea.

POLYply > 28 LOOKING ASKANCE: Looking Askance



Jennie Cole / Richard Crow / Angharad Davies / Allen Fisher / Douglas Park / NaoKo TahaHashi and Including the premiere of three artists’ videos commissioned by POLYply.
 http://polyply.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/polyply-28/

Royal Holloway Poetics Research Centre and MA Poetic Practice, Royal Holloway, London


Madame Sex and Friends: Anne Pigalle

23rd March 2014
London

Live From The Crucible


Mark Aerial Waller, Live From The Crucible, 2013, colour, sound, 3 min
 (with voiceover by Douglas Park)

Channel 4's short-form arts strand. Mark Aerial Waller uncovers a mysterious ancient artifact.
11 Mar. 2014
11:50pm on Channel 4 Random Acts

An event celebrating the ICA's Channel 4 Random Acts commissions with artists Duncan Campbell, Steven Claydon, Gail Pickering, Elizabeth Price and Mark Aerial Waller (with Douglas Park and Tim Goldie) featuring a unique screening of the newly commissioned shorts alongside live extensions of the work.

Duncan Campbell, Steven Claydon, Gail Pickering, Elizabeth Price and Mark Aerial Waller (with Douglas Park and Tim Goldie) contribute to a live event celebrating their commissions for Channel 4’s Random Acts series. The event profiles the five newly commissioned films, alongside a series of live performative events by Steven Claydon, Gail Pickering and Mark Aerial Waller that expand upon their new 3 minute works.



MARK AERIAL WALLER's 'Live From The Crucible' with performance by DOUGLAS PARK & Tim Goldie 
@ ICA, London