Each artist will be creating a 3 canvas rendition of the Tower of Babble as well as 6 individual works.  The specific size for each part in the 3 canvas set is predetermined, with the smallest canvas at the top and the largest at the bottom.  The canvases in each set are attached to each other via ropes, which will allow the artists to do the expected Discord Aggregate thing – namely, switch canvases between the different artists’ sets and make 3 constantly changeable Towers of Babble.

Each artist has their own approach to the project and the juxtaposition of the various works will be quite effective.  A. Molotkov is working with technology for his 3 canvas set – I cannot say more for fear of spoiling the astonishment the viewer may experience.  Suffice it to say that the laws of physics are being bent but not broken.  For his individual 6 pieces, A. will be utilizing his digital images in addition to paint, and/or whatever else develops.  Cindy Lubar Bishop is incorporating her word mapping technique into her paintings and is creating evocative, compelling journeys for the eye and mind.  Pamela Zero is encrusting small objects into/onto her canvases and stretching the abilities of various adhesives. 

Leaving the 3^rd person behind, I must mention the sheer joy of working with canvas again.  There is a visceral thrill mixed with panic when confronted with a blank canvas, and though I planned out my 9 canvases in advance, the incessant, enjoyable confusion of working with paint and adhesive is addicting.  I find myself collecting small things, seeds, gears, dirt, and working them into the paintings regardless of whether they will be seen in the final version or not.  And the clean-up process - washing brushes endlessly as the water refuses to run clear – so very zen.  I missed this combination of vision and sweat, prognostication and compromise, technique and abandon.  Intention and illumination.

But when I say “Art is my god”, am I speaking literally or figuratively?  Do I supplicate?  Do I talk to it, do I ask it for favors?  Do I enter into ambiguous and sometimes shady deals with it?  Of course I do!  Do I dedicate my life to it?  Of course I do! 

Art has existed since before the times long forgotten.  It has not always been popular or profitable, it was forced to exile and starvation, but it has survived.  The elemental creativity dreams in the mind of any thinking creature, and those who allow it to awake – the Artists – become priests of this sole reliable and factual god.  Their ability to communicate to the rest of us is another proof of the fact that the god of Art is universal.  Some priests of the past have become my saints.  Those are the Artists who have left a tangible imprint in my emotional and intellectual world.  A lot of them are dead now, and I miss them like I miss relatives that I have lost – yet they are present in a more concrete sense than most people around me.  Some priests are alive and well.  They operate independently in all big and small places of this world.  They are not driven by a common dogma, for the religion of Art is not based on dogma – rather on the opposite thereof. 

The religion of Art is neither separatist nor sexist; its beliefs are not mutually exclusive; its rituals are neither demeaning nor serialized.  Its goal is individuality, not assimilation.  It accepts no standard.  Yet it offers what other religions fail to deliver – a meaningful spiritual world, a personal point of view, a wisdom, a cleansing of perception. 

I am one of the priests.  I was made a priest by my own rule.  As a priest, I am accountable only to myself, since I am my sole link to my god.  I will not compromise.  But what exactly does that mean? 

Some Artists will work only if paid for what they do.  Not me.  I cannot afford this attitude.  As a true priest, I will be creative for the sake of Art itself.  If offered, I will accept a payment, but it will never become a prerequisite.  And if I have to spend time to make a living, I will find time for Art as well.  Rest and entertainment are the two things only occasionally present in my life.  I live in my cloister, looking at the world through the window of my art.  I’m lucky in that I do not have to decide whether I should continue being a priest or not.  Once I gave myself permission to be an Artist, I will never be granted permission not to be one. 

The works of Art that time has so generously bestowed upon us talk to me every day, and I talk back to them and their authors.  Somewhere in a metaphysical space there is a center of all meanings – this is where my Art meets theirs, molding into an ever-changing conglomerate of thoughts and emotions.  It’s as real as the beating of your heart.  It’s one of the few things in the world that truly make sense.    

As a priest, what do I get for all this extra work?  If I don't get paid for it, there must be something that makes it worthwhile!  Well, where do I start?  A sense of fulfillment.  The ability to remain optimistic in the face of the fleeting time.  The childish joy and freedom of a child.  The intoxication of choice.  The power of a god.  For as a priest, I am a little piece of god.  I must act on god’s behalf and make its choices for it.  The more independent my creative process is, the more I help my god.  And it reciprocates generously.  As I dig for Artistic revelations in the remote corners of my mind, my brain becomes more and more adept as a link through which thoughts and emotions travel back and forth, from the past into the future, from emptiness towards creation. 

What on earth am I talking about.

The Intersection - the meeting of artists and those who whirl about them - the every 3 or 4 week happening that descends upon our hermitage here in Discord Aggregate land – that is what I am babbling for and because of and about.  It started last April, amid silent fanfare and invisible hoopla.  We opened the door and a small winged thing shot in, wedged itself in the piano keys (‘tween c# and d) and refused to leave.  “You are isolationists, too alone, out here on the edge of the known” it squeaked, in a voice reminiscent of mint jelly.  “You must away and find others of your kind, leave your home, your roots, pack your brambles and offshoots and off you go!”.

We would not go.  We could not go.  We listed our lists, we detailed our to-do’s, we mentioned our meandering ways and means.  We pleaded, begged, cajoled, coerced and compromised.  We agreed to unhinge the latch, open the windows, dust off the ceilings and straighten the walls at least once every 3 or 4 weeks to provide a huddled bonfire gathering for local creative souls.  Thus the Intersection started.  And artists have come, showing and telling, challenging and trumpeting, clear, compelling, confused, cacophonous, charming.  Painters, poets, writers, singers, composers, photographers, dancers, musicians, and those who know how to breath well.

Arguments, absolutions, indictments and the ignoring thereof, expansion and elucidation, intention vs. method, vision vs. reality, technique vs. process, and above all, moments of connection, clarity, when the proof and protocol of art holds itself in abeyance and the courage to create holds court. Mineral water and wisps of thought, pretzels and puzzles mixed with possible perspectives, chocolate and charisma.  Chairs everywhere, books everywhere, art everywhere and where are you?  Amidst the chaos, a small reminder, a muttering in our ear of contact and connection, and a whiff of mint. C ¾ sharp.

The Full History of everything 

A. Molotkov

“The director remembers what happened in his own life (but did it? and which life?), the character and the charactress have been invited to the Dinner Party, the actor and the actress think about their Loved Ones, the audience is doing their best to comprehend, time stays still.”  This is a quotation from my article in our February 1999 Bulletin.  And this much still holds true.  Nearly everything else about my novel “everything” has changed.  I started writing it in June 1998 and finished precisely 3 years later, up to the day (mind you, this was not on purpose). 

The book was conceived as a description and an analysis of a film which is being made and shown at the same time.  The narrative happens on several levels.  The “inner reality” of the novel is carried out through the two personages, Goombeldt and Zungvilda.  They only vaguely guess that they may be part of a film’s plot.  The next reality level is that of the character and the charactress.  While still “fiction within fiction” entities, they are one step closer to the logistics of the film’s creation.  The actor and the actress constitute one more step up on the “reality” scale.  To an extent, the director is the focal point and the main personage of the book.  The audience reacts to the events on the screen.  As a reader, you find yourself checking and double-checking your own reaction as compared to that of the audience. 

As I mentioned in the old Bulletin, the original intention was to place the film on four screens.  On the page, they would be represented by four individual columns.  Yet, after some consideration, I decided that this representation would not be accurate.  While a film projected on four screens would be viewed in real time and the four concurrent images would be simultaneous, not so on a page with four columns.  It became obvious that a reader would actually digest each column separately, one after another, thus reinforcing the linear narrative structure.  Therefore, I gave up the plan to use four screens.  (I was glad I had when a while later Mike Figgis’s “Timecode” came out.  “Timecode” is indeed displayed on four screens.)

The stylistic palette of the novel has also undergone some changes.  When envisioning the four screens, I was planning to assign each screen a distinctly individual style.  Styles would then move between the four screens.  But after some text was written, I became convinced that using the four styles throughout the book would be too contrived an approach.  Besides, I felt like moving the focus further away from stylistic explorations in favor of content, whatever the content may be.  Therefore, when the four screens were dropped I decided to drop the four styles as well.  I wrote the rest of the book using a language that felt less artificial.  However, I did preserve the original sections, which, in a moderate dose, seem to fit in. 

One could say that “everything” tells no story per se, or that it does tell a consistent story – both points of view are applicable.  While situations do not unfold and events do not follow other events in a logical progression, the text is marked by a unique homogeneity that justifies the labeling of the book as a novel.  In addition to the Dinner Party - a strange pivot - the book employs various types of referential levels rooted both in the semantic qualities of the text and in the plot. 

What exactly do I mean when I say that “situations do not unfold”?  When exposed to the art of the 20^th century, especially the more adventurous parts of it, one inevitably embarks on the notion that a “straight through” plot in literature or film is, basically, a compromise, an easy way out.  The original essence of drama is in employing a character that the audience can identify with and then putting that character through a series of misfortunes.  The undemanding reader/viewer is sad when the misfortunes in question occur and happy when they are overcome – a connection with the audience has happened.  But is that art or craftsmanship on the part of the author?  (By the way, I do not wish to over-generalize.  As an audience, I do consider many works based on a straight plot to be valid art – I admire some of them.  However, as an artist I do not feel that I can follow that direction.)  On the other hand, can an event taken out of the context have an emotional impact?  I attempted this in “everything” – you are in the position to say whether it worked or not. 

So, as we see, “everything” is basically a lot of events taken out of context.  A wide variety of settings are explored (from crusades to space travels), justifying the title – yet in a way the situations are generic, as though taken from your own life.  Instead of characters, the book essentially operates with the possibilities of characters.  And out of all the possibilities, some of them incompatible, there emerges a cohesive whole – or does it?  Again, it’s up to the readers to judge.  I have spent so long either writing this book or wishing I had time to keep writing it that I have lost the ability to judge it.  Parts of the text were created, reshaped, moved, and multiplied so many times and have become so familiar that I can no longer externalize the book enough to gauge the possible perception of an audience.  The recipe for this novel is a very unusual one, and this is what makes it what it is – but it is no longer unusual to me. 

This is why I thought to offer the full text absolutely free to anyone who wishes to read it and to give me their feedback.  But I have already told you that. 

"Pamela Zero and A. Molotkov of Discord Aggregate invited me to come on board as a DA member April 1st of this year.  I loved their work.  I was thrilled.  I was honored.  I said yes.  They were very clear about what joining entailed, and I thought at the time that that would work for me and that I could keep on track with my main interests and be an active DA member as well.  After nearly four months, I have found that I need to go my own way in order to honor my  artistic process, which is quite slow, often solitary and non-computer oriented, and does not mesh with wearing the mantle of being an active, committed member of the group. I am therefore becoming a non-member of Discord Aggregate at this time.  I appreciate the terrific energy, effort and generosity it took for that wondrous duo to add me to their world, their website, to inform you of my joining DA, and now to inform you of my withdrawal.  I am happy to be continuing to collaborate with DA on various projects, and apologize for any grief my yes-to-no dance may have caused.  These folks couldn't have been more gracious about the whole thing, and so I bid them gratefully adieu."

                                                                                                                                                                                                            Cindy Lubar Bishop