contemporary visual art – hassan sharif performance

8/8/2019 Contemporary visual art – Hassan Sharif Performance

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/contemporary-visual-art-hassan-sharif-performance 1/24



a body that I hardly know

But knowing it.

Nimble body, the then body,

from one point to another

penetrating the ropes, as following a map.

Ambiguity of the flesh

misunderstanding the sense,

the senses.

Negative films reverse the motion,

not the time.

3.

Washing corridor

Big squares, the pavement like

a bequest of past ages, unmindful.

Sponge and soap, bowed on the slabs,

the perfume breaks into the calm

Victorian afternoon.

I often desired to be an inventor

to create a recorder for scents,

fractals of experience.

Images, over the collective memory,

have unspoken privilege

Cristiana de Marchi Performance 2009



and the senses breathe impressions

to be erratic remembrance.

4.

Conversation in toilet

The composition of the picture, mastery of the past,

become urgency, in the time of cubicles and cabinets

shattering the space, and the decency of living.

Lost words have no weight.

Better the silence,

or allusions.

Rooms are cold, no exception, and cold filters

through the image, nor his body can warm mine.




5.

Nylon rope

Weighs, the time of absence,

like salt over fertile soil.

To tie up a free one,

and then abandon him without

restoring the condition of be-fore

shades with mystery

the very sense of belonging.

Of rush and fibre bodies mate

and like a rope, desire extends.

6.

Marcel Duchamp “Nine shots make nine holes”

A child, I built identities

for escaping the tedium of singleness

and creating alibis for later flights.

Belonging insinuates itself under




the skin, ungrateful.

Nine strokes left a trace

on my skin, a geography of lines

dilating over the time.

Careless, I wait for the impact,

astounded observing the wound,

as if occurring to someone else and I

only happened to be a witness.

7.

Body and Squares

Perfect the measure of the body,

corresponding to the rule,

untiringly explores

humanistic researches.

It doesn’t fear wounds, and free

gives itself up to the contact with

the least stabbing body




yet the most despairing.

The exile has lost the way back home,

after sunset feverish holding the key

that opens no door.

8.

Reading – Poem – 4 minutes

Vocalizing the time,

like a singer intent

on repeating the exercise

of the daily servitude

to art.

Perseverance of the desire

curdled low in the belly

and no fragment of infinity

can more than clinging bodies




9.

Sound of the act

The anonymity of the rooms

where words have anchored to thoughts

and opened out.

Brimful sound, syllables run after each other

sliding like water from the mouth

like bread driving the touch,

soft amalgam where briefly

handprints survive.

10.

Writing with water




Erratic is the word

and the trace lies in the body,

like a scar rapidly drying up.

To which order and rule

do we still want to submit to

though for the slight time

of writing?

Less than materials the skin absorbs,

permeable if not wounded.

Otherwise saturated.

11.

Recording stones

In the field of the memory

on the bottom of a hole mapped out by war

the thin shape of the woman still moving,

inane her effort to displace stones




erected by faraway men,

abandoned through the time.

It’s raining, only those

trying to protect themselves

notice. Rain pressing against

the glasses of closed windows

streaming through openings.

How many times have we been hugged?

12.

Swing

Offstage voice correcting

notes – over an ancient track,

reducing, removing

the un-essential, nearly everything.

Sounds, piano and forte,

like stricken metal

pierce through the senses.

A dawn of vibrations

creeps into the memory

and the swing goes back to




rise and fall until reaching

the greatest height

that of desire and estrangement.

13.

Coloured squares

Echo of the steps on the pavement

palpable also in dreams,

when the body is less guarded

and belonging is a fleeting feeling.

The direction of the movement

taught by urgency

or fortuitousness; rarer the sure

determinism of a sequence,

colours and numbers as manifest dictates,

but unwitting, for the rhythm.

Sleep, like a treasure,

defended.




14.

Sound

The shadow on the wall says,

about a place, precious details,

and opaque surfaces, like mirrors,

reflect precluded outside.

To deduct hours from the time

is the privilege of the ineligible

the one who does ignore, not the flow,

but its fractioning.

15.

Jumping

Summer day, like an agony,




to elapse. The old ruined house

a repeated invite eventually

unavoidable. Inside the stairs creak

under our children’s feet

hesitating in the faded dark,

interstices of the frames made a filter.

Back to the upper light, un-balustraded

balcony, the emptiness underneath.

You try to keep me, weaker than desire.

Jump!

16.

Jumping in desert

Set the distance

but unknown is the measure

resulting of reiterated paths.

each time the torture at leaving,

longing for arrival. The opposite

less true, though pretended

or assumed.




The line linking two places

like an inclination

transcends control, and reason.

17.

Walking

Permanence of the shadow, after the body

goes away and observes from enough

distance to create desire.

Walking does not imply stopping

nor turning. Pausing the movement

as a dignified gesture.

Pauses are action.




19.

Throwing stones

It has multiple declinations

Strength, nor one root can suffice

to name exceptions

designated title to describe

what cannot, within rules, be inscribed

lying outside, sneering at

absolutory desires of definition.

For all the rules I have set

and imposed,

I beg forgiveness.

20.

26 squares

“Dive”. Writing does not say

the prolongation of the vowel,

the extension of the movement

- in time and space –




to a formal completeness.

It isn’t my mother tongue

the tongue of body, later acquired,

labouring the syllables and the aspirations

millimetrically shifting the limbs

to see the researched flexion

reflected by a mirror.

And then lose it at a glance.

21.

Spray paint and ruler

Room saturated with absence

like a poisoning excuse.

From the front balcony,

the unexpected scene struck my imagination:

it was the time of open windows

and phone calls at dead of night.

Now everything is order, and silence.

The sacredness of sleep like a wardrobe

which doors were cautiously closed.

I pull a cord taut between my hand and the wall




drawing its projection on the floor

a net created. Like my words,

between the lines.

22.

Digging and standing

Early morning - we used to wake up -

house suspended in the light. Like glass,

the walls betrayed our secrets.

Ointment jars suppurated by fragrances

inundated the waiting hours

until the following night,

the sighed time of escape.

That cautious excavation

of traces from past existences,

for not losing anything - how presumptuous -

after breaking, of earth ,

the seal.




23.

Removing cement blocks

Looking for a pretext

the actual lack of attention

attracted by alliteration.

Doubled, the fate,

the classical towered fate

sitting near the river.

Back to order,

like a clause to a contract,

the domesticated is allowed

temporary evasions.

The hugest weight, not that of lifting,

but of replacing the pieces.

24.

Staff of the project

Fetching castle, near the lazy river,




where northern shadows invaded the hall

- only the names still survive.

I waited for guests, but shunned

the contact, at some distance

nor habit has changed

the temptation to escaping.

Great Bach made an art out of it

which I do emulate and dissimulate.

Reluctantly present in the conversation

his very being here,

a recognition.

25.

Hair and milk bottle

You ask me if I fell down

- you do observe my body and

I have no knowledge.

Through a distance I answer

“I didn’t know how to fall”.

Falling is an art difficult

to learn, persistently




in apprenticeship.

So many more abrasions to come

before calibrating the fall,

how to detach the body

and the way of the contact,

or of abandonment.

26.

Library

Fullness, emptiness, void.

Attention first attracted by presence

then catalyzed by its contrary.

Noticing absence demands

to first experience presence,

the neatness of a naked wall

otherwise unobserved,

a simple option.

Always, in a room, eyes turned

to the window, what’s behind

my shoulders – whether full or empty - -

to be invented.




27.

Performance is good

The sequence of the postures

- each work a correspondence –

composed in the simplicity of the gesture.

At night, in front of a mirror-like window

I do verify lines and tangents

the body in tension, as waiting

for the touch of a hand, or a face,

emerging from darkness.

It’s a lie when we pretend not to appear,

the dialogue needs two poles

and words flow, through the body,

the unpronounced ones

as well as those repeated

too many times.




28.

Staircase

In between, doing and undoing,

so much like my daily experience.

The body paralyzed

unable to descend the stairs

unless mastering darkness.

You told me about light

and obscurity, how un-essential

the latter, defined in absence.

Yet obscurity is effective on the body

more than luminosity. Inevitably,

absence measures the intensity of a

presence,

I-II

Fingerprint (a long letter)i

Memories of the first prayers

bound with Christmas– someone asking

his enemy’s death, someone

asking only for himself.




Few have eventually left

the creed, for antithetical intentions.

Others keep requesting

kneeling their souls

for the brief time of a function.

In the lift, smell of melting

cheese spreading.

The well-mannered lady, inviting me

to taste, confesses: “I am totally obsessed

with cheese bread”. I refuse politely,

like I have been taught; instead

I would like to yell “I am

totally obsessed with him”!

But praying no, not even

for this love.




i This poem refers to two works, respectively Fingerprint and A long letter , joining them in onecomposition. Technically these two works belong to the category of the “Experiments”, but tome the performative approach is there prevailing.

contemporary visual art – hassan sharif performance

Documents