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comprises a range of works, including axial objects, speaking portraits, verbal objects, and axial landscapes. Among the works are: Confingering Figures (Axial Drawing Music 1), I Don’t Understand Language (Verbal Object 7), Axial Hands (Somamudra 1), Alana (a speaking portrait), and Pulp Friction. They aim to transport the viewer by way of the axial principle–sometimes abruptly, sometimes incrementally through a series of barely perceptible thresholds—from the realm of ordinary time, perception and expectations, to that of the axial, where figuration gives way to the configurative, and open process is the operant dynamic. To be at the threshold—the limen—of the emergent event and experience the possible release into singular presence.

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If the act of seeing something turns the thing seen into an object, looking long and hard at it can transform it beyond recognition—that is, beyond “object” into something closer to “entity,” which in some way talks back. Becoming openly configurative, it generates its own further nature. As William Blake said, “The eye altering alters all.” Perhaps the intentionally altered object alters the eye that sees it, reflexively performative, since, as Blake also observed, “We become what we behold.” “Objects” are perceptual, cognitive, and linguistic configurations. Neither fixed nor stable, perceived reality may be free to turn on an invisible axis. That objects—whether words, sounds or images—are only liminally what they seem can be frightening and disorienting, but when viewed consciously they become intensifiers… or perhaps intentional objects, instances of stepped-up intensity that reveal mind as excitable in its nature.

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axial objects

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In the axial object Confingering Figures (axial drawing music 1) (2005) (13 min. 07 sec.) fingers are holding graphite in the process of doing two-handed axial drawing, and in the actual process and movement they embody a configurative state somehow equivalent to the drawing itself. This embodiment of configuration (a state between figuration and abstraction) is visually and aurally accessible only under the specific intimate condition of video slow-motion, as a time/space-based art/music. By focusing below the frame rate threshold (30 fps) the piece exposes the otherwise invisible gaps between rapid actions and discovers its own strange beauty in which space itself is figurative and image is temporalized to the point of abstraction. Recorded on Amtrak train between Rhinecliff and NYC in 2005.

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The axial object Pulp Friction (2003, v. 4) (16 min. 19 sec.) comprises a non-narrative, material, bodily, performative engagement with art pulp (strange paper, specially created by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles for sound performance [for which she has used this video and title]). The result—“sculptural video,” “configurative erotics,” “abstract concretion”—effects a loud, frictive manipulation of translucently textured “sounding papers.” Intimate play as biomorphogenesis.

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axial hands (somamudra 1) (2007) (4 min. 04 sec.) comprises a non-narrative, bodily, performative engagement called Somamudra (an axial-hands practice created by GQ in the early 1970s). Developed for solo performance in conjunction with the poetic work Somapoetics (1973), it has subsequently been used over the years in performances with Gary Hill and Charles Stein. Intimate play as biomorphogenesis. Somamudra offered the first opportunity for the discovery of the principle of configuration as liminal image-formation. According to this view art can be neither figurative nor abstract but simultaneously open to both—configurative art. Performance, editing: George Quasha. Camera: Sherry Williams. Special edit for the Dorsky Configuration of “Axial Objects” installation in the 2007 Sameul Dorsky Museum one-person show at SUNY New Paltz.~~

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Training Light (axial drawing music 2) engages the act of axial drawing on a train along the Hudson River between New York and Rhinecliff, under the late afternoon light from the West, evolving in dynamic relation to the rhythm of the train and the play of light and shadow, where the “formal action” of light and shadow both mirror and reconfigure the drawing. Light shows itself as substance. This is an event of incrementally slow-motioning video not available to “natural” experience. By focusing below the framerate threshold (30 fps) the piece exposes the otherwise invisible gaps between rapid actions and invents its own strange beauty in which space itself is figurative and image is temporalized to the point of abstraction.

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speaking portraits

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Alana (a speaking portrait) (2008) (12 min. 06 sec.) is an axial portrait of poet Alana Siegel. Speaking portraits comnprise free-wheeling portraits of individuals engaged in “core discourse”—speaking that comes to fresh areas of deep concern to the person, a “living thinking” opening some kind of new speaking for that person. In this way it belongs to what the artist/poet calls “open poetics”—new language-making that arises spontaneously in the domain of direct discourse. Other work related to the larger speaking-portraits project includes art is, poetry is, music is, and similar works. These works are focused inquiries on particular topics—artists saying what art is, poets saying what poetry is, etc. Speaking portraits like Alana, in contrast, discover their subject matter in the process of intense dialogue.

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verbal objects

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In the work I call axial video there is a species I name “verbal objects”. It implicitly raises questions like: In what sense is a verbal construct an object? Do our verbal projections objectify reality more that subjectify it? Is language more like an object or a living organism? If the latter, is “understanding” language the truest or most powerful way of relating to it? In the video pair titled I Don’t Understand Language—a logic-challenging statement that some would classify as nonsense—the complexity of understanding in language shows up in singular ways, and the object status of verbal reality is axialized, freed-up in the core of speaking.

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I Don’t Understand Language [I] (2005) (15 min. 49 sec.) presents 9 year-old Marie Uridia, born in the Republic of Georgia and living in Barrytown, New York, saying “I don’t understand language” in English and in Georgian. The sentence, like the Liar’s Paradox (“This is a lie”), is self-negating, yet has a non-rational logic of its own, especially when spoken aloud by a person. The statement is replayed 12 more times (eventually going below the frame rate of 30/sec.), each slowed down by 10%, then to 5%, then to 1%. The original statement of approximately 6 seconds at a speed of 1% takes some 8 minutes. At what point does the statement cease to be perceived as language (whereupon it becomes “logically” true but incomprehensible)? Liminality: There are thresholds, for instance, where one unconsciously begins to supply the meaning to what is heard because one knows it already, or where one stops doing that because the sound is interesting or odd or menacingly animal-like, even verging into the non-terrestrial. At some point the face is more “linguistic” than the sound, perhaps increasingly, as qualities become visible only under the artificial condition of slow-motion with its eerie beauty. If you gaze into the eyes in the slower speeds, you can see something like preverbal brain activity communicating below the threshold of cognitive registration. There are evidently micro-mind-events we never “see,” although perhaps they are unconsciously registered by the brain of the observer only to come forward as language in states of stepped-up intensity. Here they are visible, and art shows us something about ourselves that is literally inaccessible otherwise. (Original video from 2001.)

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Saying Sappho (invocation) (2006) (2 min. 13 sec.) shows people attempting to say the name “Sappho,” the Ancient Greek lyric poet from Lesbos (circa 630-570 BC), the pronunciation of which is speculative (here based on information from Charles Stein, poet and translator of ancient Greek). Performers: Laura Chkhetiani, Susan Quasha, Anna San Millan, Charles Stein, Marie Uridia, Crispin Webb, Sherry Williams. [Dedicated to the memory of Crispin Webb, artist]

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Tell Tale Heart (verbal object (2006) (2 min. 21 sec.) is an axial video of a Japanese woman (artist Chie Hasegawa-Hammons) attempting to pronounce the word “heart,” which does not match Japanese phonetics. The result axializes the English word by confusing it with near sound neighbors like “hurt,” “hard art,” etc., a tortuous texture of torturous process.

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I Don’t Understand Language [II] (2009) (6 min. 21. sec) with performers David Arner, Alan Baer, John Beaulieu, Jenny Fox, Jan Harrison, Alana Siegel, Charles Stein, and Sherry Williams, created for the occasion of “Talking Tongues and Other Organs,” a performance in Woodstock, New York, at the Kleinert Gallery, February 26th, 2009. The apparent nonsense of the statement uttered by eight adults (artists, poets, musicians, and an architect) is played out in various states of expression, performative of its own liminality between serious claim and absurdity—a sort of agonizing play as self-fulfilling prophecy.  It holds us at the threshold between understanding language and the impossibility of language. Many voices saying what even one voice can’t entirely say. The words become a voiced site of physical interaction around a charged axis, belonging to all as much as any one, and therefore none. Trans-comprehensible language momentarily passing through, and possessing, eight people.

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axial landscapes

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Diabole (an axial landscape) (2006) (11 min. 07 sec.): Recorded in highly axialized rapid movement of a small 3-CCD Panasonic digital camcorder suspended from a strap and dangled over a roadside scene close to the ground. The scene includes long red pods suggesting devil fingers. Motion is slowed below the frame rate (30 fps). Deep sound of camcorder brushing against things and other site noises slowed to a level somewhere between sub-audible and sub-interpretable. Full version of a work exhibited as installation (designated “Dorsky Configuration,” 4 min. 43 sec.) at The Samuel Dorsky Museum, State University of New York at New Paltz: June 23, 2007—October 7, 2007, “George Quasha: art is & Axial Works in Stone, Graphite & Video,” curated by Brian Wallace.

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Valley (an axial landscape) (2006) [Dorsky Configuration, for Brian Wallace, Curator], (7 min. 34 sec.): Recorded on a small 3-CCD Panasonic digital camcorder from a fast moving train (between Rhinebeck and New York City), facing into the light through trees and over the Hudson River near sunset; slowed down below the frame rate (30 FPS) and edited. Deep sound of train and other site noises slowed to a nearly sub-audible level. Short version of a longer work, created for exhibition as installation at The Samuel Dorsky Museum, SUNY New Paltz, New York: June 23, 2007—October 7, 2007, “George Quasha: Art Is & Axial Works in Stone, Graphite & Video.”

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Torque (an axial landscape) (2006) [Dorsky Configuration, for Brian Wallace, Curator], (3 min. 43 sec.): Recorded in high speed whirling of a small 3-CCD Panasonic digital camcorder at the end of a strap and in an arc of 360 degrees viewing trees from the ground to the sky and back around; slowed below the frame rate (30 FPS) and edited. Deep sound of camcorder whirling in air (lens cap banging) and other site noises slowed to a level nearly sub-audible and uninterpretable. Short version of a longer work, created for exhibition as installation at The Samuel Dorsky Museum, SUNY New Paltz, New York: June 23, 2007—October 7, 2007, “George Quasha: art is & Axial Works in Stone, Graphite & Video.”

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