The line that binds also cuts (23rd March 2018)
Art Work conceptualized during a month-long LASANAA Artist in Residency by Mark Bechtel (New York)
“Is a blind man’s cane a part of him?”
Gregory Bateson
“Any past which is an “other” for us deserves to be negated. We could even say, it deserves to be eaten, devoured, with the following clarifying proviso: The cannibal was a “polemicist” (from the Greek polemos, meaning “struggle, combat”), but he was also an “anthologist”—he
devoured only the enemies he considered courageous, taking their marrow and protein to fortify and renew his own natural energies.”
Haroldo de Campo
This exhibition began between a lesson selling difference and a place with no address. For the first lesson, fixed lines were drawn and a prototype was produced, contingent until its death by reproduction. This is the standard form and a tribute to fidelity.
In what appeared to be a rehearsal of the first act, a second lesson was delivered, but this time as a parallel translation, a foreign affect. Cutting lines were drawn, splitting the redoubling of the act, and a mise en abîme is produced exceeding the frame. The original prototype, denied its completion and corresponding aura, is devoured to be transposed instead into a population produced at a place with no address. This is an open form that extends an invitation.
The show is comprised of a series of translations, deviations, bestowals, obstructions, and absences. As an exhibition, it is filled with images and objects, raw material, disparate histories, and yet unformed ideas – sustenance to be devoured again.
Mark Bechtel is a new artist in residence at Lasanaa and will be introducing his artwork and background as an artist, craftsman maker, and design educator. He is an Assistant Professor of Product Design who has been teaching in the undergraduate Product Design and graduate Industrial Design programs at Parsons School of Design in New York for the last twelve years. Disillusioned by the conditions of the art market, he crossed disciplines through self-education to join other disciplinary discourses as a means to return to art-making in a new way. During this time, he has held multiple roles in design education, including Interim Director for the Product Design program and Chair of the curriculum committee for the School of Constructed Environments. Additionally, other activities have included acting as a panellist for an exhibition, Private Choices, Public Spaces, by the feminist architecture collective, ArchiteXX, and presenting at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education conference in Los Angeles