1
Silver spirals settle upon cement.
2
Circling Southern Exposure’s space, Spirited Probabilities spill into psyches. Still, consciousness slips away while staring at split seams through a split self that is yours.
3
There may not be an effective way to translate “astral projection” into English. The nearest translation may be through metaphor. That being the case, I have The Perfect Metaphor: translation.
4
Language is translation. Language is the translation of things. To take a thing and make it words is to recall the thing for oneself and to tell it for someone. Both the “recaller” and the “listener” attempt astral projection in the moment of articulation.
5
That is a metaphor as well as a translation, or definition, of astral projection (and in English, too). That definition may not be the one that practitioners prefer, but there wasn’t time to consult one for this piece. In conjunction with the idea of astral projection, a metaphor that often arises is that of the planes of reality. To be in two places at once can therefore be described as projecting oneself into another physical, or metaphysical, plane. When visualizing these planes, a topographical map is a metaphorical approximation.
6
“How to Be in Two Places at Once, Part One” is where I began the show because it was the first piece that I saw when I walked into Southern Exposure. It was actually the second, after “MRG Creative Group”, but that made Two Places at Once more salient because I was listening to George Pfau and Mik Gaspay talk while attempting to read “MRG Creative Group.” I was struggling to process “MRG Creative Group,” and I could feel that Mik and George were talking because they wanted to hide their belief that I couldn’t read. The more I lost focus and mentally migrated into their conversation and their brains, the harder it was to process what I was reading. By the time I moved on to reading Two Places at Once, I had been split for a while; projecting myself into George’s plane of consciousness wherein he saw into my mind clearly enough to know I wasn’t processing what I was reading but obscurely enough that he thought I couldn’t read. Then I moved to George’s installation and didn’t know whether I was supposed to turn the pages of his book, so I didn’t, as I imagine a person who is struggling to learn to read avoids books because they are scared for themselves and of the judgment of others.
7
The grounded spirals of Lisa Jonas Taylor’s “Portal” were lovely, if ethereal, the first time I looked at them. The spirals seemed a visuo-metaphorical manifestation of astral projection, and were presented as a sort of found-object mandala, but that was as far as I could get. In “Whitewashed,” I saw topographical maps and imagined another nod to astral projection, and comparing the two banners I saw a juxtaposition of Kali, goddess of destruction, and Milburn Pennybags (the Monopoly mascot). Whitewash Hinduism capitalism destruction. The steel cage of “Internal Structure” occupies the entire rear wall of Southern Exposure and features a ribcage dangling menacingly, and “Internal Structure” is intercepted by “Not the world, just myself” with its document holders disturbingly and dysfuctionally displaying photos of cubicles. Steel cages missing bars and carpeted cubes without doors could be planes of reality stacked (because what is a cube but a stack of squares?) or they could be the bounding of those planes. Minds wander in cubicles and prisoners’ imaginations can be their most powerful tools when deployed as a means of being in two places at once.
8
The spiral expands and passes near a point it passed in the past. “Don’t forget to check that out,” George points me back to “Gdazl.” “Can I turn the pages of the book?” I ask, knowing that George knows that I have already walked around the table and stool. George nods. Turning the pages, I find that George’s installation also exists in his book; white pages with black ink drawings of a white table with a black ink “outline.” In the drawing, the lamp’s chord tangles, grows, sprouts an arm, and maybe the arm pulls viewers in. The book spirals and draws the grounded spirals of the suddenly activated “Portal” into itself and the spiral keeps spiraling and Southern Exposure is spiraling and the zombies are back, and San Francisco is spiraling, and the earth orbits the sun as the universe spirals. I am back in George’s mind and this time he sees clearly that I can read and knows that I began to understand.
