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14/10/2009

Joshua Mittleman

castillo/corrales, Paris

They have overt meaning, though they're not the obvious one. Sure, black might have something to do with our conscience or soul, but that is not what I had in mind. Black to me is the absence of light, and I'm very concerned with light. And so black paintings were not so much that they were black, but that they weren't light. That's about all I can say now. But to me, that makes it all very clear. (Laughs)

In 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union initiated a series of lawsuits against the government of the United States. Using the Freedom of Information Act, an individual or group has the right to sue any federal agency to view official documents. However, the government is allowed to censor documents based on what it deems issues of national security.

Following the ruling of the court in this case, the government was compelled to release an inventory of videotapes depicting the enhanced interrogation (i.e. torture) of two detainees. Prior to its release, much of the inventory was censored, and the pages made available were heavily blacked out. The inventory confirmed the existence of 92 videotapes. It was later revealed that all of the tapes had been destroyed by the CIA.

Joshua Mittleman, for his first exhibition at castillo/corrales, will show a series of works based on the 8-page inventory of the torture tapes, a new development in his work that looks at the politics of surveillance and government through abstract and minimal forms.

Joshua Mittleman is an American artist, formerly based in Los Angeles, who recently relocated to Copenhagen, Denmark.

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Eileen Myles
Reading from The Importance of Being Iceland. 2009 Semiotext(e)

The thing I’m getting to is that a poem is nature. Part of my mind, that whirligig that sits by the window and spins. Continuous. I looked the word whirligig up and indeed, it’s a turning job. But I mean your whole life becomes a turning job, not just the poem. The poem is a little piece of that. The guy falling in his chair going:

I am a tree
I am a tree
I am a tree
And I took a piece of that.

Eileen Myles's collection of essays The Importance of Being Iceland, for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant is just out from Semiotext(e)/MIT. Eileen also writes novels (Chelsea Girls, Cool for You) and libretti (“Hell”) and many many poems (Sorry, Tree, Not Me). She ran St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the 80s. In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President. She’s a Professor Emeritus of Writing & Literature at UC San Diego. She lives in New York.

Opening Thursday 15 October 2009 6 - 10
reading by Eileen Myles at 8pm

castillo/corrales
65, rue Rébeval, 75019 Paris, Belleville
free admission

stampa

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