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In October 2006 MCB began creating the three blackboard panels that would become the Logocentric Playground , a "discursive site" that was installed at the American University Museum at Katzen Arts Center. The installation was conceived to incorporate "visitor contributions" in a participatory "play and reflection on the social construction of art and language."
This clip features MCB reading his original text that was written on "The collection" panel prior to the removal of the masking tape. The initial texts were written in a "bisection process that reduces visual recognition of the sentences." Each of the three panels of the Logocentric Playground would receive its respective original text transcription. |
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| In preparing the Logocentric Playground panels for the text transcription, masking tape was applied horizontally to the face of each board. This process required accurate measurement to verify a consistent and parallel "free space" between the tape "guidelines." MCB used a combination of vise-grips, straight edge and pencil to achieve this.
Music: Barbados by Charlie Parker's All Stars (1948). |
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| MCB talks about his "text bisection process" in the studio. The work progresses in alternate stages of taping and transcribing, with this particular artwork, Meaning is in the system, incorporating a muted wan-zi within the lines of text. (This work was reproduced in the Washington Post review of the TEXT exhibition.)
"The Buddhist wan-zi is an ancient symbol that signifies prosperity and good fortune, yet its meaning was transformed through its usage as the swastika by the National Socialist German Worker's Party. As the meaning of a word relates to its context so my use of the wan-zi in Meaning is in the system (2005) considers how the meaning of a symbol can change through its historical, cultural or political context."
- from MCB's Artist Statement. |
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| MCB working in the studio on The naked purity of thought (2006).
In this clip, a pentagram symbol is clearly evident within the work. Through a successive process of taping and transcribing, this symbol becomes partially muted by MCB's original text transcription. This mutability functions as a kind of "slippage" between cognition of the words and visualization of the sign through "absence.".
Music: Aria from J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould (1955). |
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| A detailed clip of MCB transcribing original text on Meaning is in the system (2005).
Music: Blue Steel by Henry Mancini (1959). |
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| In Los Angeles in late 1979, MCB performed a series street "actions" that functioned as a guide to "obscurism" as art theory. These performances were unannounced, guerilla-style interventions into L.A.'s urban sprawl and were documented on early reel-to-reel videotape.
In this piece, MCB articulates the position of "an obscure artist living and working in L.A." Ignored by the "art world" and Southern California's car-obsessed culture, he dangerously ventures into heavy traffic on La Cienega Blvd. to ritually sacrifice his "voice."
Original camerawork by Richard A. Meade; DVD transfer by Eric Gregory Powell. |
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