At one point the Disembody crew discussed posting all of our emails to the website. The idea being that this would make the process of building a contemporary work even more transparent, and demonstrate even more how questionable the idea of the artist in isolation is.

However, we opted against this. There have already been, and there will continue to be personality clashes on the project. There are almost 30 of us, that’s unavoidable.

One of my roles on Disembody is being a moderator for the clashing ideas. And email is often where these things play out. No matter how much we like the conceit of a completely transparent project, it’s self-defeating to take it to the point where people become uncomfortable discussing personal issues. Too much transparency would be a whole other project, a different experiment in group dynamics.

Having said that, there is a lot that takes place in email that it would be nice to share with the audience. For instance, as soon as I read this email from Elise to me and Skye, I thought it belonged on the public record. It shines a lot of light on how Disembody will come to be:

so - here are two edits for S/z.

In light of the upcoming editing marathon that is disembody i have started a training regimen. yesterday - i took what i had already done w/ S/z and tried to finish something in about an hour.

this is it:

http://www.eliseirving.com/videos/trainingsz1.mov

and then i watched and thought it had some major issues - so in about 30 minutes this morning i re-edited and came up with this.

http://www.eliseirving.com/videos/training%202.mov

still has some weirdness but i’ll work that out later…let me know what you think…

also - part of the reason you both are getting this is I have a couple ideas for disembody - these two projects are kinda going to bleed together in my mind - hope that is ok w/ you skye - but here goes -

* i tried to use the S/Z graphic the way TMZ preface and end all their clips - i am thinking this might be a good device for disembody - maybe between the days - wanted to see what you two thought of that…

* since it’s pretty clear alex is going to be the star of disembody ( sorry lee) i started to think about him as Phil Dick and the pink light of the VALIS that was beamed into his brain… kind of a crazy genius that is receiving instructions from somewhere “beyond” ( like maybe the SKYE - lol haha hahahah - god i crack myself up)

i realize this may only be apparent to me - but these kinds of little stories help me think about stuff…

allrighty. yeah.

elise

It’s likely that posting emails like this just shines a light on how self-absorbed I am, that I find even our email correspondence fascinating for an audience, but hopefully there is more to it than that.

Hopefully we’re building a history of fabrication for the product that will be Disembody. And we’re showing that process as an important part of the work. Process in many ways is contemporary art.

And one of the goals of the film Disembody, is to make a documentary that makes that clear, that demonstrates where art has been for the past century, while it’s myth has remained firmly rooted in a false sense of authenticity dependent on the individual.