Vibes. What exactly are they?
At the risk of this newsletter slowly transitioning into a Solange Knowles stan account1, I want to begin this Transmission by thinking about what she was talking about in her song, Cranes in the Sky. In the first single from her 2016 album, A Seat at the Table, she sings:
“I tried to drink it away (…) I tried to dance it away, I tried to change it with my hair, (…) I tried to keep myself busy, I ran around circles, Think I made myself dizzy, I slept it away, I sexed it away, I read it away.”
The music video itself is filled with abstracted imagery; tableaux of black models set against a lilac backdrop, a verdant hillside, and arranged on a concrete floor. Solange herself dances over the mid tempo instrumentals, moving like some plant driven by the breeze. Very intentional and purposely obfuscated. So then what was the “it” that she oscillated around and also tried to run from?
It almost doesn’t matter. She creates an environment for you to enter where the specificity of the malaise is less important than the fact of its presence at all in your/her life. We all have an “it” and the it is without permanent form. So from an artistic perspective, the vagueness Solange employs is essential to our identification with the text she presents us with. It is what poet Rebecca Lindenberg, talks about in a 2013 interview2 when asked, “why write poetry?”:
I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you “have something to say.” I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say. Poetry allows us to hold many related tangential notions in very close orbit around each other at the same time. The “unsayable” thing at the center of the poem becomes visible to the poet and reader in the same way that dark matter becomes visible to the astrophysicist. You can’t see it, but by measure of its effect on the visible, it can become so precise a silhouette you can almost know it.
That “unsayable thing at the center” is what I think about when I think about vibes. It is the thing that eludes direct description but is accessible through innate experience. Perhaps clearly describing it diminishes its effect. Perhaps striving for it keeps pushing it further away from your grasp.
Language (spoken and written) can be a kind of trap when it comes to describing artistic intent yet we rely on language to bridge that divide between the artwork and the receiver. Endless catalogues, artist talks, lectures, interviews, newsletters (👀). Words can be inadequate to the task of communication and I think that an artwork should be a snail carrying its own language, syntax and interior logic (good poems can have you asking why they are like that). Of course, it’s not to say that artwork should not be met with rigorous engagement and interrogation - good poems can have you talking with your friend about why they are like that (bad ones too). I just think that the experience of art shouldn’t have to rely on the scaffolding of surrounding text.
Could you perfectly describe the experience of a sunrise, grief, ice cream to someone else? And even if you could, would it be worth it?
Vibes, with respect to my own artmaking, live in the difference between doing and saying a thing. A difference that is rooted in the truth of materials (a thing can only ever be itself), process (this is where I intervene and the point at which the abstract and concrete meet) and emotional honesty (first and foremost and lastly with myself).
I’ve been struggling lately with these three aspects over the last few months. I have been repeatedly frustrated by a recent drawing I was working on because trusting the process can be difficult when you don’t have adequate indication that the process is working. I think that I’ve been trying too hard to make a good thing. I will take a beat and see what happens when I come back to it.
This irregularly published newsletter is living up to its description and tbh, I’m very ok with it coming out when it comes out. Thank you for reading this far, here are some updates.
Shows:
I will be participating in a sound based group exhibition that opens on 4th October. Frustrations abound and yet there has also been progress/process in other parts of my practice where I’ve invested time to learn a new medium. This exhibition is the culmination of several months of weekly sounding workshops facilitated by Sophia Bauer.
“Sonic Mass”, 4 - 31 October 2024 @ Munyu (The Mall basement, Westlands)
<< the space is open from Tuesday - Sunday, 12pm - 6 pm >>
Writing:
#1 OPEN STUDIOS NBO
Back in Transmission 00, I talked about a conversation I had with Kenyan photographer Ian Gichohi and I’m very happy to share that that interview is in the limited publication #1 OPEN STUDIOS NBO. It is available for purchase and includes additional interviews and information surrounding the 2023 exhibition. Hit me up.
(My conversation with Ian is on my website btw - HERE)
I have additional writing that will appear in forthcoming publications:
Stedelijk x C& Editorial Fellowship Publication edited by Wanini Kimemiah
Kenyan artist Wanini Kimemiah is the inaugural Stedelijk x C& Editorial Fellow (2023/2024). In their open call, they invited contributors to think with them through poetry, essays, artistic research, visual art or any other experimental and hybrid formats about the relationships we have with the living world. They ask contributors to begin thinking from the question: “how does it feel to be outside in the natural world?”
I’m excited to share my poetry with you.
Are.na is a place to save content, create collections over time and connect ideas. Privately or with other people. (…) it is a mindful space where you can work through any project over time. It's a place to structure your ideas and build new forms of knowledge together. Each year, they put together a book of essays, interviews, and other writings by the people of Are.na. (…) In that way, the writings are another manifestation of the kind of thinking and research that takes place on Are.na.
The theme this year is “document” as in to record; to provide information or support; an official paper or digital file; a piece of evidence, a form of proof.
I’ve got something hot coming your way ;)
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Talk soon and all of my best,
Jonathan.
Online communities where enthusiastic fans congregate over a wide range of media, celebrities, and musicians.
Luxford, D and Nathan, J. (2013, April 23 ). A McSweeney’s Books Q&A with Rebecca Lindenberg, author of Love, an Index. McSweeney’s Books. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-mcsweeneys-books-qa-with-rebecca-lindenberg-author-of-love-an-index