I invite you into my private world, but you are also not welcome there. We can meet at the top of the hour and make love to the land but you won’t understand the language I speak, and so, don’t expect to cum. When you come over, be certain that you know I have children and they are both mine and not mine and when I ask you not to touch them, I mean it, but also can you please love them in ways that allow them to survive? I am unsure of what 9 and 3 mean exactly but I understand that numerologically 9 is sacred and 3 is really just 9’s children divided out of its body and into their own existence, but when combined, they once again become 9. If you follow my live stream, you’ll know what I mean with all of this, and so like, subscribe, and follow to learn more. Also, there is a password and some of the images aren’t mine and so I blur them and the children, who are still not mine, but I get their consent as they pass through my body. And you should know, this is not the real me.
9/3 is a feminist intervention, digital reimagining, and 21st century meditation by Erin Scott inspired by Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 parts which was presented at the New York Reuben Gallery in 1959. For Kaprow, the original showing of this work is considered an artistic failure. What is often misunderstood about this body of work is the exhaustive textual component which held diagrams, directions, poems, essays, random lists, transcribed conversations, and more. This textual body is much more substantial than what was presented as the 18/6, and lives on as archived documentation. It is this documentation that more actively engages the thin line between art and life, which Kaprow’s happenings would continually seek to dismantle or reveal throughout the 1960-70’s.
9/3 is a videopoem sequence and a series of interactive occurrences that inhabit the often-invisible space between art and life, creating a voyeuristic moment for the viewer as they watch the intimate and every day of children, bodies, land, languages, and personhood. At once elevated in language, images, and metaphor, the poems are also deeply personal and biographic, playing off elements found in documentaries, home movies, and social media content creation. We feel the real and yet see the contrived and we want it all to last, but inevitably, everything fades into a memory or a story we hope our children will tell their children about how we tried to live and when we failed, what we did in the aftermath.
Every piece in the exhibition appears multiple times across the different mediums. Scott invites viewers to find the interconnections across form, content, and time, and to build the story for yourself. On January 20, January 27, February 3 from 11am-4pm, join Erin Scott in the project gallery to play! Erin will be set up in the gallery with video equipment, projectors, writing materials, an orange shroud, and a kaleidoscope, and opens a generous invitation for anyone to join them to make your own videopoem. This age inclusive event allows anyone visiting the gallery to write, record, and edit your own video with assistance from Erin. Using elements of Erin’s exhibition, such as the projector and orange shroud, participants will make new videos which poetically and visually respond to and play with the ongoing exhibitions in both the main and project gallery.
Come as you are and plan to spend a half hour (or more, or less) playing in this process-led making experience. Dependent on how participants feel, the final product can be emailed to them for private viewing, or they can contribute their videopoem to be edited into the ongoing public exhibition 9/3.
Erin Scott’s exhibition 9/3 will be on view in the Project Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from January 19 to March 2 2024.