(This email exchange appears
on the MARN list serve. It's as if, somehow, a private exchange was published
on a public list.)note:
"MARN" is an email list designed to serve the Milwaukee artists' community.Once I lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and this was intended for one of the "Gallery Nights" they regularly have there. It was written in the hope that it could attract a group of people willing to work on it. It didn't happen, but I retain the calendar as I wrote it then. The idea was that the work would involve many different places and extend over several months. It would be theater, but also similar to role playing games on a computer. Please do not follow any of the links here. They don't work.
What follows here is vague and incomplete. In part, this is purposeful. It is an experimental, improvisational work and meant to be open ended and subject to change.
The idea is this: a group of artists, working in different disciplines form a collaboration to produce a kind of exhibition/performance piece/theater. Each member of this group, working alone or in collaboration, agrees to produce work of their own interpretation of a series of four chapters and according to a timeline extending from September 1st to Gallery Night on October 24th. There will be a final performance piece on Gallery Night at the Kunzelmann-Esser Lofts, Second Floor Gallery, that will attempt to bring together what has occurred in the intervening time.
As a whole, the work has both virtual and real components. The real parts are the different works done by the participants. There is no official place that will exhibit these works, rather they will occur as signs on street corners, installations on vacant lots, … works of the manner and place imagined by their authors. Where possible, the individual works will link together. This is done by clues within the work that will lead a viewer to other works, and by the record formed by characters researching the occurrence of these events across the city. These characters exist primarily on the web and form a part of the virtual component of this piece. These researchers act as a sort of chorus in a play, providing a kind of story and commentary to events, as well as providing a context for works produced in later chapters.
The four chapters are:
The following script might give a better idea of what is here meant by these chapters, but by no means is it definitive. It shows how some of the elements of the piece might work together. But, in the actual doing of the work, everything is set to mutate and respond to circumstance. Participants are encouraged to do what they wish, within the constraints of their interpretation of the chapters and the timeline. It's a little like a musical jam. Players will need to listen to what others are doing. There is a time to take the lead, a time to play support to another. Participants will need to keep in tune.
Chapter 1 (September 1 - Sept. 22) Yearning for the Beloved
Imagine Marc. Mara is gone.
Examples:
September 15th - the
first email.
(This email exchange appears
on the MARN list serve. It's as if, somehow, a private exchange was published
on a public list.)
note:
"MARN" is an email list designed to serve the Milwaukee artists' community.
Original Message: You need to let this go. It's all gone too far. There are people right here, right now, that love you and need you. Don't throw this away. Please, just drop it, and move on.
Reply: I can't do that.
September 16th - another email.
What's with the soap opera? I didn't join MARN for this. I don't have time for it.
quote: Original Message:
You need to let this go. It's all gone too far. There are people right here, right now, that love you and need you. Don't throw this away. Please, just drop it, and move on.
Reply:
I can't do that.
September 17th - more emails.
Re: no time.
Lighten
up.
September 22 - email
Original Message: I can't believe you did this! I never want to see you again.
Reply: I can't explain. Go here. Maybe you'll see.
Here is a link to "The Blogger".
(The links in this script are not active. The record of "the Blogger's" investigation is a track of the different works made by participants throughout this piece.)
Blogger's first entry - September 19:
OK. I'll start here. I'm a freelance web designer in the backwaters of the Lake Michigan Megapolis. One of my clients gives me a call and tells me that the site's been hacked. Turns out its one page and an easy fix. I don't want to know how. It's not my job. I want to know why. It's just strange. Here's the hacked page. I've taken out references to my client. (The page shows a picture of a gas kiln in full fire. Superimposed over this image is the face of a young woman. A series of numbers are interspersed with the text of the caption.) The face and the change in the caption -- that's the hack. Look at the numbers: 6499715. Looks to me like a telephone number, but what's the area code? It's not local (262).
I'm on a mission to find out what this is all about. I plan on keeping track of my investigation with this blog. If anyone wants to help, or if someone out there can tell me what's going on, please post.
People in Milwaukee who dial 414-649-9715 receive this recorded message:
Hello. Welcome to## Marc! ## Si usted habla ## Marc! … punch 3 ## (phone sound) ## Marc! Marc. Oh, Marc. You need to help me. I'm trying so hard, but … but I can't say. Marc? I'm losing focus. There are times when I can't see you. Help me Marc! The book. Remember, the book. They're not …### , Marc, they're antennae. Marc, I …### (dial tone).
September 24 - Post to the Blogger:
It's in Milwaukee. Try 414-649-9715. I'm sending you an MP-3 of the message in case it's been fixed.
September 25 - The Blogger:
Weird. Here's the MP-3 of the phone message. It probably won't be this way at that number much longer. Antennae? And what book?
September 22 - Installations.
Begin construction in Milwaukee of altars/antennae. Clues and speculations regarding "the book". (Imagine contact with an unknown realm. Imagine the form of this communication device. (See: Post to the Searchers' forum, Sept. 30th)).
Cardboard sign, hand-written in watercolor:
If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.
September 26 - Post to the Blogger
Here is a photo of something. Maybe it's related to the message. The structure is in an abandoned lot in Milwaukee. (Photo of an installation).
September 27 - The Blogger
The telephone number no longer works. Here is the MP-3 again of the message as it was two days ago.
Someone sent me this photo (Photo appears to date from the early 1900s. It shows a group of people standing on a sidewalk outside a city building). Look at the woman third from the left in the back row. Here I've enlarged her image and superimposed it on my hacked web page. The resolution on this old photo isn't great, but they appear to be the same.
September 28 - Posts to the Blogger
The first image, the one on the web page, looks to be in color and contemporary. If someone wanted to doctor a photo, it's much easier to make a current image look old than to make an old image look current. I suspect the second photo has been manipulated.
The Etheric Searchers' site:
(This site introduces another tool for recording the events as they progress in the piece. The introductory words look something like this:)
That which we long for in our deepest yearning, we call the Beloved. This entity does not have it's home on this physical plane, yet it can enter this limited reality that we know. It passes like a wind through a field. We may see the Beloved in another's eyes, but for one reason or another, it passes on to a different manifestation. Often we will cling to that which we know, that which holds our memories, but there the Beloved no longer resides. Eventually, our recognition of the absence becomes unavoidable. Who knows which pain is greater, striving to hold to that which is not or facing our abandonment?
Take heart, the Beloved moves, but never disappears. The day will come. It will surprise you as it looks to you from a different set of eyes. Or, if you are fortunate, with a different set of eyes, you will see.
(the forum on "the Searchers'" site begins:)
Moderator:
Some strange things have appeared in Milwaukee of late. Here is what we have so far:
Here are photos. The dates given along with the images refer to the time the image was taken. We believe these things were produced before the appearance of the first of the "antennae". (These are photos of some of the works made in the "Yearning for the Beloved" chapter.)
What do we have here? This may all be a hoax, some sort of elaborate joke. We must keep in mind this possibility. But, there is also the possibility that we are witnessing a convergence of spheres. For centuries people have described the etheric realms in terms of energies or vibrational frequencies beyond the common perception. Just perhaps, our electronic age has opened a bridge. Perhaps, this is the new era. Perhaps, two entities have made contact across the barrier of ages. This we must explore.
Sign on cardboard hand-written with water color:
At birth we woke to dream in
this world between.
What then shall we say is real?
By chance we took the forms of men
From a thousand possibilities.
We stumbled on the treasure of the holy law
The seed of all salvation
And then with thoughtful hearts we put our bodies
In these thin and ink-black robes.
September 30th - Post to "the Searchers'" forum:
We need to consider the possibility that these recent events are someone's idea of a joke, and, if we take them seriously, we open ourselves and our ideas to ridicule. That given, I say that we cannot know the power that acts. We think we do one thing, but what happens may be something quite different. So, regardless of the motives of the author of these events, let us consider them from our own vantage.
In the telephone message, Mara tells Marc that she cannot focus and needs his help. She mentions a book and tells Marc, "They are not [unclear], they are antennae." We then have a number of objects constructed in various places in the city of Milwaukee. Let us say that Mara is an entity no longer in a physical body. She has found a way to contact a person on this plane, but to maintain this connection she needs "focus". Are these "antennae" then focal points for the etheric dimension? But the objects we see differ greatly. Are they all operative? Or is Marc (and we don't know whether "Marc" is an individual or a group) searching for "the book" and experimenting, trying to find the one object able to touch Mara? If we can find that object, could we gain the physical proof sought for so long by our ancient search?
Chapter 3 (October 8 - October 17) Across the Reflective Pool
as above, so below
Sign on cardboard hand-written in watercolor: This needing heart has no name.
Installations:
Imagine the mirror. It need not be glass. A palindrome mirrors words. A couple dancing mirror each other's movements. The mirror is a circle.
October 8th - Post to the Blogger
I found the photo! It's from a long out of print weekly called "The Worker", dated 1923. Here is a copy of page 3 of the July 13th issue. Her name is Mara McGuire.
October 9th - Post to the Blogger
Look at this - Mara McGuire's obituary, 1926.
We mourn the passing of Miss. Mara McGuire, age 26. It can truly be said that she died of a broken heart, for those that knew her say she was not well since the passing of her fiancé and true love, a Mr. Marc O'Brien, of the influenza a year ago. She is survived by her mother, Alice, and sister, Mary. The dove has flown.
October 12th - the Blogger
It's happened again! The same page, hacked. Here it is. (Superimposed upon the image, these words:)
Deep within this heart, there is no you or I, there is only this longing. Also here, I am with you, always. One heart. Forever.
Chapter 4 (October 13 - Gallery Night, October 24) The Beloved in Flames
