This short film is an adaptation of a very short story by Fernando Sorrentino called“There Is A Man in the Habit of Hitting Me Over the Head with an Umbrella”.
My process of adaptation was an homage to writer Kathy Acker's methodology of ‘writing her own narrative’ into canonical works like Great Expectations and other texts written by men with male protsgonists.
With this project, I was interested in blurring the line between narrative and abstraction.
The film premiered at the PDX Fest Invitational in 2009 and went on to screen at Anthology Film Archive, CUNY Graduate Center, MMX Open Art Venue (Berlin), STOMPER (London), Kings ARI (Melbourne) and Rockland Center of the Arts (West Nyack, NY) and has had a rebirth in the Abortion Stories project at the Cindy Rucker gallery on the LES.
CONSUME (s) ME is a interdisciplinary project that encapsulates relational performance project into prose essay.
On the surface, it addresses the ethical problems surrounding textile production, consumption, and our relationship to what we wear.
It is also a piece about coming to terms with how varying feminisms maintain patriarchy and capitalism through the personal narratives of clothing swap participants and myself as I discover that my maternal grandmother was a garment factory work in Puerto Rico from the age of 14 till she came to the States.
Through nine essays, I retell the narrative of the investigation through ephemera I have collected over the years, (video interviews, influential texts & experiences, images/writings/audio from the CONSUME(s) ME "Store" which started out as clothing swaps that I held in friends' homes and at bars as places of research where I interviewed subjects on video and audio.
I threw a swap at the Brooklyn Museum as part of Heather Hart's BARTERTOWN project. Then, in September 2015, I put up the Store in collaboration with ESP TV as part of their ANALOG residency at RECESS (NYC) where we turned the gallery into a 'retail' space where only barter was allowed as a mode of exchange.
Each essay is named after the chapters in Anni Albers seminal book “On Weaving” from 1959 to speak to the interwoven nature of the narratives and issues at hand.
READING FROM “CONSUMES ME” (Segue Way )
https://www.mixcloud.com/SegueReadingSeries/cat-tyc-for-segue-reading-series-042929/
Shana Jackson Interview about Clothing Swaps
PRESS
http://weird-sister.com/2015/09/03/you-could-be-there-e-s-p-tv-presents-the-shop-poet-transmit/
This video performance investigates strength through the counterbalance of diminishment and performance. It vacillates between two spaces that one can describe as being strong : the performance of strength and the isolation that corresponds with being strong in a moment when others cannot specifically.
For the essay, I used text from my research about NASA’s testing on people who were asked to stay in bed for months on end to prepare for possible affect of life on Mars and a section of Katy Perry’s documentary when her husband asks her for a divorce before she is about to perform in a stadium in Brazil.
Sections have been performed at Babycastles, The Poetry Project and online.
FULL VIDEO HERE
This text was inspired by lines I collected from signs I saw at Occupy Wall Street and walking in a rally after the Trayvon Martin verdict in 2013.
For a performance I did at the Poetry Project in 2013, I collaborated with artist Eric Barry Drasin. I cut the text line by line and invited audience members to read them. As they did, Eric recorded and live mixed this to be played at the end of the reading to articulate the cacophony of emotions I was feeling while being at these events from a collective mindspeak perspective.
This performance was commissioned by Hauser & Wirth for their bookstore and I collaborated with Lea Bertucci and Scott Kiernan.
Poet Transmit engages in the connections between poetry, transmission, and performance. The project was launched by artist/curator Victoria Keddie and writer/artist Cat Tyc as a way to explore textual practice and modes of transmission to expose the potential of poetic projection and how it exists in expanded fields of time. The consortium of publishers, artists, poets, and transmission based organizations that we collaborate with all lend to PT ‘s mission surrounding transmission, kinetic dialogue, and process reflexivity. What transpires is a televisual poetry reading series that explores alternative areas of practice and reflects on its own methodologies involving the poetic practice.
Documented events are broadcast on E.S.P. TV’s cable access program on MNN (Manhattan News Network), as well as with Wave Farm Radio (operated in Acra, NY as well as online).
EVENTS
2015
Recess (NYC)
Poetry Project (NYC)
2016
Knockdown Center (as part of the Queens International for the Queens Museum)
Knockdown Center/MOMA PS1 Cold Open Verse exhibition in correlation with the New York Art Book Fair
SIGNIFICANT OTHERNESS is a five part podcast series hosted by me and my chihuahua, Agnes.
The first iteration was presented as an installation at Tanja Grunert Gallery in 2022.
This is Agnes's artist statement for the show:
My human Cat Tyc and I will be presenting the pilot episode of our podcast SIGNIFICANT OTHERNESS as a sound installation. My human wanted to give me this platform as a way to reciprocate for all the "emotional labor" I gave to her during quarantine. To build deeper communication during this time, we processed our lives together with the help of an animal communicator. I think she thinks too much but I do have to say I have enjoyed having this space to express my concerns for this troubling world. In this discussion, we give space for the somewhat hidden discussions around the pressures to mother on those who choose or choose not to, issues exacerbated by economic inequality, the failing US healthcare system, and pressing environmental concerns that push on views of futurity.
Also included in the exhibition will be two sculptures by me from known objects ie: dog toys because I am a firm believer in Walter Benjamin's belief that 'the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life'.
THE ARTIST WILL NOT BE PRESENT in the space as I do not enjoy the company of many humans but MY human Cat Tyc will be available to speak on my behalf and answer any questions.
Please do not keep her out late. I worry.
-- Agnes Tyc
November, 2022
A Conversation between Cat Tyc and The Friend about Significant Otherness, 12/22
