Improvised exhibitions of new drawings done during the Vs. Interpretation festival.
The Live Transmission attention and performative drawings are a record, performed in real time, of the vital movement of living beings. They transcend both figuration and abstraction. I draw methodically with multiple razor-sharp pencils and both hands, as time-based performance, executing a direct neural transmission from one human action into another. I condense movement into accumulations of graphite line, which combine the controlled refinement of classical drawing with the unbound sensuality of spontaneous gesture. Time- space coordinates for each drawing are described with precision in the titles.
The most immediate sign of life is movement. Live Transmissions render visible normally invisible or fleeting movement patterns through seismograph- like drawing done in real time. The pursuit of vitality carefully observed through human activity is drawn simultaneously with both hands and transmitted to paper. Following closely the intensity of each segment of an activity, the direction of a line as well as the quality of its intensity is transmitted. If a person makes a gentle movement, a delicate line is drawn. If the action followed is forceful or violent, a correspondingly vigorous line is made. This is done simultaneously and as much as possible without “thinking”. This is not automatic drawing, but its opposite, requiring great concentration and focus.
Begun in 1989, this temporal-spatial-gestural archive of human activity bridging the twentieth and twenty-first centuries now numbers approximately 3,000 drawings. A selected list of Live Transmission subjects follows: cooks, pastry chefs, noodle factory workers, secretaries, butchers, shoemakers, mattress makers, dancers; musicians: soloists, ensembles, bands, orchestras, conductors; poets, artists, performers, lecturers, incense makers, politicians, architects, doctors, psychiatrists, artisans, children, athletes, farmers and martial artists.
