{"id":23,"date":"2008-05-16T08:28:28","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T22:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/?p=23"},"modified":"2008-05-26T19:58:22","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T09:58:22","slug":"august-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"august 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"I<\/a> 
\n\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

I WANT TO BE LIOELN DOOLSN an account<\/strong>
\n
\nOnly one and a bit days to go<\/a>
\nMikala Dwyer
\nDarren Knight gallery, Sydney.
\n28 june \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 23 july 2005<\/p>\n

I WANT TO BE LOIELN DOOLSN
\nperformed by Justin Butcha, Grzegorz Gawronski, Tom Isaacs, Jum and Ben Terakes
\n28\/6\/05<\/p>\n

published
\nVOLUMEVERYTHING<\/em>
\nchapter Delirium<\/em> selected by Bianca Hester
\nCLUBSproject<\/a>
\nMelbourne, 2005<\/p>\n

[download pdf<\/a> [1.2MB] or read full text below]<\/p>\n

Turning up to an opening can inspire a moment or two of presentation anxiety. Approaching the entrance you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do what you can with your hair, straighten clothes and hope there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing stuck in your teeth. Crossing the threshold swells this hyped exteriority, the work suddenly a dim pretext for your arrival to play a part in the galaxy of interactions, signs, signals and social insincerities that greet an exhibition into the world of interpersonal relations on its opening night. Though the gears will change quickly, the moment you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re afforded to assess the situation (who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s here? who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not here?<\/em>) from its \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcoutside\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 swiftly collapsing as you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re swept into its overflow with a hello, an observation, an exchange. Becoming suddenly of and integral to the human context field of this artist, this exhibition, this gallery. Depending on how at home or in good company you feel inside this \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinside\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 there might be flashes back to that outer rim (glancing eyes, things said and unsaid<\/em>), as a roomful of people go about interconnectedly generating and processing a meshwork of messages and meanings around, about or beyond the artwork they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to see.<\/p>\n

Funny things were happening at the opening of Mikala Dwyer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOnly one and a bit days to go\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Planted into this given theatre of interactions seemed to be a cast of players acting at subtly externalising and frazzling these edges of personal conceit and consciousness. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t obvious at first, and remained slight enough to be unsettling even when you \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgot it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d come in, done all of the above (tempered by use of the bar), started looking at the work and noticed someone was looking at you. Two people actually and more like staring. Two of a number of young guys you half noticed weaving amongst the jam of people, all wearing cut-off jeans, bare feet and black t-shirts reading\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

I want to be Loieln Doolsn<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unsure of this staring business (what do they want?) <\/em>you give them the slip for the other room and hopeful safety of friends (what was that about? what were they saying?<\/em>). But soon realise, doing some observing of your own, that as long as you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the room there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be no avoiding them and their curiously placed attentions. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll sidle up to you, admire and finger garments and bag straps, talk softly amongst themselves (ooh, it looks expensive… how much do you think she earns?<\/em>), about you but not to you. Spooked by the proximity and scrutiny you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try turning the tables and spotlighting them, or holding the eye contact, staring them down at their own game. But it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help much. You feel self-conscious all over again, and likewise alarmed and amused that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taken this most featherlight of interventions to disarm and disrupt the very codified, prescribed and implicitly understood means by which a body of people of mixed acquaintance will behave in each other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s company at an opening.<\/p>\n

Now you get it and you relish observing how others respond to these roving gestures and attentions. If any a room was ripe for social experiment it was this one – top heavy with dealers (keywords: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcVenice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBasel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122), leavened with students and soundtracked by rampant children. Men didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem too fussed, finding it mildly unusual to be complimented on their dress sense. Attentively dressed women were ripe subjects left teetering between flattery and frustration, struggling to manage the elasticity of the boundaries these physical exchanges overstretched and realigned. A prominent collector recoiled in horror and pretended whatever it was hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happened. Two women approaching a gauntlet-like checkpoint two of the boys set up by perching either side midway up the stairs seemed awfully confronted and asked someone else to charge through ahead for them. Whilst a hyperactive posse of young girls, recognising the guys sense of playful purpose, made it their business to chase and monster them in return – upstairs and down, running, squealing, weaving wildly between artworks and people in a raucous girl\/boy pursuit.<\/p>\n

Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLoieln Doolsn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122? An artist at the opening who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gone to college with him and Mikala reminisced that Lionel Doolan was a memorable character from the first incarnation of Sydney College of the Arts. Apparently the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckind of guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d wear a velvet suit (with bare feet) in the height of summer. These days he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s living in China, and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI want to be Loieln Doolsn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 as we experienced it seemed to have evolved along a collaborative chain of command – from its remote devising by Doolan, in situ instruction by Dwyer and free interpretation by its performers. Meeting one of these performers at a different opening later that week as himself, it was curious to hear how the experience of the performance had been for them, and more so the extent to which they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been instructed. The loose but central objective seems to have been to route attention away from Dwyer and the artwork during the opening, deflecting onto viewers the sensation of an intense or awkward visibility.<\/p>\n

That these new pathways subtly heightened the patterns of exchange operative within the larger social body was fitting in a space dominated by Dwyer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSuperstitious Scaffold To Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (2005). A crazed ad-hoc superstructure of propped and lashed together poles and branches – part of which clattered to the floor on the night, that even more fittingly no one seemed to notice or mind – its chaotic propositional architecture effected a neat analogy to the tenuously aligned machinations of interconnectivity brought into play by \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI want to be Loieln Doolsn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

lisa kelly.
\naugust 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I WANT TO BE LIOELN DOOLSN an account Only one and a bit days to go Mikala Dwyer Darren Knight gallery, Sydney. 28 june \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 23 july 2005 I WANT TO BE LOIELN DOOLSN performed by Justin Butcha, Grzegorz Gawronski, Tom Isaacs, Jum and Ben Terakes 28\/6\/05 published VOLUMEVERYTHING chapter Delirium selected by Bianca […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.studiononstop.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}