&Now 2015: Blast Radius

This is a collaborative performance that interrogates what Maurice Blanchot calls the “space of literature.” Through text, video, and sculptural/movement elements, our exploration evolves into dynamic interplay between visual and literary art (and artists). 
Writer Jared Green begins the piece centrally located at a writing desk that appears constructed out of e-waste and scrap metal; on the side walls are large-scale projections of book pages being turned very slowly (these are looped sequences from Abigail Donovan’s videos, Book 1 and Book 2). Working at a computer keyboard, Green attempts to compose an unbroken stream of thought on the subject of literary composition as labyrinth; his efforts to produce a textual structure are projected in real time onto the facing wall and floor. Simultaneously, Donovan incrementally removes pieces of his writing environment in order to construct an apparatus called “the orrery,” a hand-made projection machine that casts diaphanous three-dimensional colored images into the environment by beaming light through multicolored glass constructions. With each interruption caused by the process of assembling the orrery, the writing encounters a blockage, as in a labyrinth, and must adapt, change, begin again, fail, and find a new pathway, vying for space with the sculptural and visual art’s commanding presence. Initially antagonistic and then increasingly cooperative, the piece unfolds according to the logic of stretto—the device in the composition of musical fugues whereby a close succession of overlapping statements serves to fragment, intensify, and eventually sublate the subject—and moves toward an ecstatic fusion of word and image.