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Dream Poem| Avery Mikolic-O’Rourke
“Dream Poem is a site-specific performance wherein the landscape of a recurring dream is transformed into the score of a generative video-performance. Text co-authored by the artist and G.A.R.T (an artificial identity composed of a collective web of digital automation systems) is used to trigger image and sound. As the text is developed through machine analyses of GAN-generated landscapes (themselves representations of the site; imaged through a feedback loop of GAN analysis triggered by the artist’s sketch of their dreamscape), Dream Poem acts as a set of abstract co-ordinates- a manifestation of the (meta)physical site through the senses. With each sight/sound triggered sequentially by the text, one can theoretically reverse engineer the system and ‘read’ the performance. This process of translation may reveal underlying patterns between mediums that otherwise go unnoticed, for a more intimate understanding of- and intensified connection with and between- the senses.”
“Dream Poem
A circular narrative bestows itself upon me
I can't help but cut the strings
The bell sounds as sweaty hands
Clamour and flash, hit solid
More than moments ago
A God ray from below:
Guidance.
A still life with a riddle:
Compliance.
A picture- standing on top and stilted, lifelike, cutting through cat
Tails and overgrown grasses, red with blood and black of water-
Describes the background of a photograph
Of a background, of
A sunset in the west
A body,
A picture,
A horse
Two eyes shining, very far away
Their sightline lower than the earth's curvature
A secret, spinning faster than a moon's collision course
With light of sun, morse code reflected: the world's first widescreen T.V.
Two eyes shining, very far away
And in these eyes a body rests
The body of this horse is ill (intentioned)
Three fast light zooms and a close-up: now we see
A proud faced woman, sitting, arms crossed and silently
(with dark eyes sweating life and pouring absent joy)
Kissing in a slanted aisle, wolf whistling
Reminders of a rigid schedule- penciled in with irony
Keep in mind these fine things
And tips for telling an old dog
(sleeping on a holy gate,
fixating on the plot)
New tricks:
With light from within- and some light motivation
History, and history's history
(for its part played in sequeled dreams must not be dismissed)
May be deemed unlikely, and
Of course, it may be fixed
"In-post"
The post-production of emotional processing
Is this world's most arduous invitation
To engage in self embellishment
Self-efaced improvement,
In the rhythm of
Rock-face erosion,
Mountains sliding into
Poison oceans
This cool pool of tears
From dusted face blows
On a silken handkercheif
That, hung up by one nail
On rafters- rotting out the window-
Blows in repetition too staccato for reality
I know now that where I am, I do not know
And am not found
Each night I end up here,
As hopeless as the morning of,
And, each night the fear grows further
From any source of fatherhood
Where did it come from- this new life?
In this old world, that disappears
As quickly as it calls to me
And kisses lightly with releif;
Heavy handed on virtuality
The silken flag that hangs and blows,
Off white in surrendured moments,
Given to conspiracy- red as violent
Acts begin slow and sedimentary-
Pulls at cracked dirt, catteracts
That trigger synesthetic stabs
As moonlight ripples over
Dirt and embossed verticals
Subsidiarity in light amplified at-large watches as a
Murder, cutting at the cat 's tail, caws and breaks apart
A black mass, thick as water, aged screaming,
Flows red at the beak
It's so strange
How a little bit can go so far
And now the body of a horse, painfully distorted
Like a folded paper- origami garbage heap of hair and flesh
Consumed by gnawing mouths and salted drops of ivory-covered in
A matted cloud of memory, knotted and sticky sweet,
Swiftly taking over as anxious tendencies compete for intimacy-
Small stabs of fog cut, quickly transcend, and zoom in close: now we see the fibres
Clawing at the face of Dog, sleeping on the gates of sunset-
A castle in
The background
A background in the west end of
A week-long torture session
A familiar sight
I have been here before
I have felt these stony passageways
Beneath my cold, bare feet
A row of portraits:
An old ghost,
A pale face:
An apathetic host
Picture: standing still atop a rod of light solidified, lifelike as
A Raphael, cutting at the tails of cats, grass
Red with blood and water black, as ageing tattles lash out
At what little life is left
A flash of blinding light appends, the tracks lift up as earthly
Views and sight-lines shift; as quickly as it comes to me
It places, to our great displeasure, a figure in the centre
Of an open, wide, and gilded slight of hand:
Endless water, red as stone and black as sun.
The final last-ditch-effort lifeline sinks over horizons, as
A cactus breathes in fire, of a many eyed triumphant father
More disturbed with his own action than the beast of their creation
Still, nothing can he do- there is nothing to be done.
A circular narrative bestows itself upon me
I can't help but cut the strings.”