LL
PARTIAL -Joseph Clayton Mills, Noé Cuellar-
(Another Timbre 2014)
Review by Patrick Farmer
Written during a stint at the 03 Gallery in Oxford, with David Stent and Neil Chapman, where we wrote our occupation. Note the occasion to write outside of ones spaces.
Against the partition.
- Straw hats.
- A sky blue cloche hat.
- A TV set.
- Numbered pegs against a wooden board.
- Instructions for a central heating device.
- A black and white photograph of a Bavarian family fancy dress.
On top the third shelf from the right.
- Various life-sized models of ball and socket joints.
- 2. Springs taken from a 20th century hotel lift. Made in Prague.
- Several faces of Parisian pneumatic clocks.
- Bergman’s Persona on VHS.
- A garden fork.
- FBI finger print card codes.
LL . . . . . Noteable of an interest in Proust.
. . . . . . An obsession he had toward owning of a photograph of the people he loved.
Pings an inside of a violin; in terms of my Marcelism.
Firstly, behind the bead curtains, and down (I assume) doubtless through a door left half open, a flight of stairs quacking like ducks; a milieu re-creating activity, grounded in steam and hum.
It didn’t ping straight away – of which I am grateful, I doubt I’d have been listening directly. Behind the bead curtains is an apt involuntary memory and I am excited as always to be able to speak of a confluence of choices underneath the recall.
Noted above, a stretch at the 03 Gallery (part of a former prison closed in 96). I had attempted to write a little about Proust and Wagner before I began to write a little of this here. Proust’s adoration of Wagner, it seems to me, was akin to statues rolling downhill. That’s all I got. There is no cause when listening, this operates a slight imbalance between review and reaction – operating under the condition that it occupy as large a surface area as is necessary.
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The ping drove into me in the form of a Boston Terrier called Marcel. I doubt I would have recognised him had it not been for Cecil, another Boston Terrier I had the pleasure to encounter whilst touring around North America several years ago. Cecil lived in Nashville. Marcel strayed around Brussels. Cecil humped every item of luggage, no matter how large he’d find a way on, that was made available to his tremendous horn. Marcel bumped into my left leg whilst I was out walking on the expansive Koolmijnenkaai / in all the time stared into this, our first meeting, a houseboat came and went, perhaps some Egyptian bean geese, and the lights of a vending machine blew. Marcel then slowly took to his heels, which I followed without thinking.
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I can’t quite remember where we ended up, he’s dead now. As is Cecil. Wherever we did go we went there several times. Each day I would wait for him to pass me on the Koolmijnenkaai, and taking leaf, I would trail happily in his slow wake, rarely looking up. He was left alone, and didn’t bother anything. It’s remarkable to think that such a small and aged dog could have walked the length of such an obstreperous city whilst avoiding harm. Though as I type this I find myself doubting its validity.
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The marks made initially harmonise with the bell of a typewriter. I am hastily running to the end of the line regardless of footwear or of how much I have to say in relation to where my listening is.
Our speed dislocates and there are several distinctions walking on its chippy veneer. Tonalities of species wander in a negligible side effect of cross-pollination, seeds and bolts fallen from a postulate of height. Likewise, several cups of water fall unchecked onto an impermeable exterior – pilling up and filling up the visible specks out in the distance.
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I like to think of a partial hesitancy in the postproduction, lending a hand to a conception of playful clay making. An upper limit sound of I love speech emerges that primarily thinks of bodily function, a matter of the void that all coffee drinkers learn to recognise.
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I followed in Marcel’s wake for the remaining week of my visit. Bypassing all sorts of exotic birds, grand renditions of the former colonial jerk, ruin and debauchery, miles and planks and estates of cedar – at any rate, I behaved myself in this game of cops and robbers, a-cock-and-bull-story of countless reproaches.
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In truth I had no say in the matter. His moves were so calm and assured, content to be subject to my object swathes of anthropomorphism. I could think of little else during my stay and struggled to put it all away months after the event that would keep repeating.
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On my last day we sat together in the doorway of a deteriorating greengrocers – the ledge hanging over our heads like an old man roused begrudgingly from his bed – for a long time, he said, I have been incapable of laughter. Marcel turned round and nonchalantly yawned in my face. Our ears beringed with fuzz.
