Over the last few months A Constructed World have made an email… called Creative yuk… mainly as a way to think of some other form of address than social media. To begin to consider how to frame what-we-want rather than be subject to what a platform may want of or from us. This requires some different form or attitude to address

The first three editions of Creative yuk were sent to just 100 people, not so much key players, but rather people A Constructed World have had contact with and would like to have more.

The form is rushed and just a matter of putting in (with captions) recent pics, events, videos about our own interests and work, and to consider how that links to others, in the widest sense. It is unstable. A lot of people wrote back to the second edition, one saying that the formatting had dropped out and was not easy to read. Generally they seem to appreciate that the design is provisional and looks for some sort of shared attention with those who receive it.

The design is as Robert Filliou would say mal fait, badly done. The content is mainly what we are working on and with and how we are concerned with others.

A Constructed World has now been invited to produce Creative yuk 04 for the MUMA ONLINE program of 25,000 recipients and to think about, and join you in, what this (probably temporary) shift could or can mean?

Partition #15 Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VII, 2020, synthetic polymer paint, video paint, copper paint and inkjet print on heat transfer paper on canvas, 150 x 100 cm (left: Case Chiuse, Milan, right: Bivy, Anchorage)

Partition #15 is the partition (score, script, recipe, plan, pattern…) for the performance Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VII, presented at Bivy gallery in Anchorage, Alaska in March 2020. This seventh and final performance in the series Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VII follows versions made by Paola Clerico in collaboration with Marsèlleria in Milan, 2018; galerie Arena in Arles and Le Petit Verseilles in New York, 2019; and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, 2020. In a number of the previous iterations the devil character plays a dominant role, a neo-liberal demon who is finally absorbed so that we can enjoy hell-on-earth. In the final partition the devil is replaced by the Mostro, who is related to the view: a material monster of the unknown, the monster that-is-not, the monster that is whatever the other is.

Extract from Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VII, 2020 and Hobbes Opera (Dream), 2020, a performance with a six neck guitar and six players at Bivy, Anchorage, 2020

In 2008, A Constructed World made a performance with musicians and non-musicians at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux. At the end of the performance the six-neck guitar, which had been played simultaneously was cut into pieces with an electric saw and the drums smashed by the drummer. Since then the guitar fragments have been played by a couple of hundred people in events, exhibitions and workshops in the UK, USA, Australia, Italy and France. In 2011, for an exhibition and performance at the Musée de l’Objet in Blois, the drums were re-assembled and played by Rik Bas Backer, the original drummer. The last performance was at Bivy, arranged by Quinn Christopherson, where the fragments were played and the guitar re-assembled for the final performance with Justin Ferguson, Jesus Landin-Torrez III, Laila O’Sullivan, Sarah Richmond, Naaqtuuq Robertson and Alan Smith.

Philosophers (II), 2010, synthetic polymer paint, video paint, inkjet prints on heat transfer paper and cotton on marine ply, 30 x 304 cm. A group portrait of women thinkers and theorists who are amongst the key and unknown commentators making speech that expresses the urgency of our current epoch. In this work A Constructed World has revived the sayings ‘No need to be great’ and ‘Stay in Groups’ from a work they made while living in Torino in 2003. 'Stay in Groups' could stand for Donna Haraway's ideas about collaborative ways of living, kinship and working together. ‘No need to be great’ anticipates a post-human space of inclusion.

Post-performance documentation of Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VII, 2020, Bivy, Anchorage

Documentation of Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VII, 2020, Bivy, Anchorage

Ten years ago, after completing my doctoral thesis in philosophy, I began working with A Constructed World, incorporating my practice of making banquets and theoretical research work about the consumption of food. Why are these two processes, these two objects, of so little interest to art and philosophy? It is from this question that I attempt to construct a book that will be titled Métaphysique de la consommation.

J’ai commencé depuis 10 ans – après ma thèse sur la philosophie,
de travail avec ACW et depuis ma pratique des banquets – un travail de
recherche théorique sur la consommation et sur l’alimentation.
Pourquoi ces deux processus, ces deux objets intéresse si peu l’art et
la philosophie ? C’est depuis cette question que je tente de
construire et d’écrire un ouvrage qui s’intitulera Métaphysique de la
consommation.

Fabien Vallos

Extract from documentation of Jules Bernagaud's performance Le Serment du Trinquet, 22 February 2020, le Trinquet Village, Paris

Jules Bernagaud, Le Serment du Trinquet, 2020

Not so much a private joke, or to find solutions, or to be embarrassing, but to see what disagreements we can reach in this space as special as The Trinquet during the perpetual apocalypse. Your presence is prescribed, more than ever now.
Starring : Valerie Bernagaud, Thelma Cappello, John Fou, Julia Naman, Makessime Pinier, Jacqueline Riva, Madeleine Roger-Lacan, Maria Silchenko, Jules Bernagaud.

Il ne s’agira ni d’une private joke, ni de trouver des solutions, ni de s’embarrasser mais de voir à quels désaccords nous parviendrons dans un espace aussi particulier que le Trinquet en ces temps d’apocalypse perpétuelle.
Plus que jamais, votre présence est prescrite.
8 Quai Saint-Exupéry, 75016 Paris.

Erase Me Choir, 2020, soundtrack, 02:22 mins

Quinn Christopherson won the Tiny Desk music prize and was to accept the prize and play for the first time at the SXSW Music Festival. Due to the pandemic and subsequent confinement the Festival was cancelled. This sound piece is a tribute to the amazing Quinn Christopherson.

Stephanie Lin, Art Omi architecture residency, March 2020

Iridescence is defined as a color change from different viewpoints or angles of incidence from light. In animals, it can be a mode of visual communication for recognition, mating, and organizing groups. It can also work to camouflage. As a directional property, it is also spatial— this is part of a series of landscape interventions suggesting a way of being oriented in the environment through iridescent signals. Their surfaces waver from being almost unseen to highly apparent, bringing subtle direction to the underperceived areas of their park setting.

Hearing all sides of the story by the Franco-American collective The Big Conversation Space (Niki Korth and Clémence de Montgolfier), is an installation and series of events curated by Leslie Veisse at Paris Art Lab. This projects focuses on issues of oral history, access and dissemination of archival resources, and the role of people themselves in the making of this (hi)story. It is an invitation to hear the points of view of those who agree to take part in the conversation. Discussion and in-depth listening are collaborative tools that, through the degree of trust they pre-suppose, lead participants to become witnesses, autonomous and responsible. The questions, translated into four languages (French, English, Arabic and Portuguese) and materialized in the space on a conversation mat and on flags, lead us into a reflexive laziness, investigating our relationship to places, to space and to our neighbours. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, in a time where our relationship to space and others is radically altered, the show is currently closed to the public but images, videos and a participatory social distancing questionnaire are all available at https://www.parisartlab.org/hearing-all-sides-of-the-story.

Mostro, 2020, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 24 x 33 cm

Using feelings to get rid of feelings Part VI, Pamphlet #6.0, 2019. Made for the performance at Palais de Tokyo. Print file A4 recto-verso, vertical fold.