posted :: Dr. John Hopkins
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

eight dialogues starts

The intro IRC test session was interesting. Willa showed up on her lunch break, Robbin, one of the PORT curators dropped in, and Terhi, from Helsinki appeared. There were some minor technical hiccups, but generally thing worked out. Josephine had some trouble, but it ended up that she was on the wrong network, and so couldn’t find us.

 

I stay indoors all day. Why is it that I don’t want to go out. I should. But IceLand has made me completely abhor being cold. Now, if it was 75F or hotter, I would be out. Shirt off, hat on. Sun screen on my poor over-exposed nose. But it is chilly out, and I can’t make myself go out. Whatever. I had dreams again last night, but they are lost in the brilliance of the sun rising up over Mingus Mountain across the valley. It is especially bright because of all the snow. Flagstaff, to the north got up to 40 inches of snow and is still held in that slow powdery embrace. Now I watch the Simpsons. What am I doing this for? My back is trashed sitting in the lab, I don’t have a good chair in there, and I think that is the main problem with my back. And so it goes. Fragments from public television:

His body is strong, and he loves it
The man looks across the gray floor and sees the end of his life
He calls her and says Mom I love you very much
He thinks about the moment he stops breathing
I feel so Light I feel so fortunate
Introducing the survivors I see all these things
My work is that Dialogue
I have I don’t think I want to leave, I’m only 42-years-old
Where will I lay down? Who cares?
Thank you for saying that to me I’ll remember that when I am wracked with pain An interesting, vital dance that will say everything I have learned from the survivors
Diagnosis does that
Fear is the place that I can stand where I can say I am here I love the blues, I love to dance I fear pain I want to cross over I want to cross over But I’m too small — Bill T. Jones
 

Adrianne posts me this excerpt of a review she has written about Blast for January’s Intelligent Agent — it includes:

_John Hopkins_, photographer and writer, proves an active theorist/theory activist as an artist. By arranging one-to-one conversations between himself and others, he performs “talking” events all over the world. John sees one-to-one conversation as the only form of revolution left in the world. John provided a series of dinners; one with each blast5drama Editor. No agenda or conversational menu was presented – creating an empty space between one participant and the other which, in turn promotes a certain discomfort, accompanied by a strong urge to flail about demanding criteria. But one realizes in time that the experience exists in a state of being without identification tagging, allowing something both natural and definitive to happen between people via talking. Because he can bear the consequences of not imposing any structure or rationale on an event, John’s work, in a way, evokes the genre of outsider art.
 

I am grateful that she takes the time and energy to not only support my work, but to actively frame it in within the context of her prodigious and ongoing experience in the arts.

 

Related posts: