bord

_{bord in Marcus Bastos & Patricia Moran, Audiovisual ao Vivo, intermeios, 2021, São Paulo, pg 76/77 and pg 78/79}

 

My commentary

 

It occurred to me that the figure I used in NÓS, 1975, can be inserted in the figure of the letter d. Reverting the d it becomes a b, so it can be said that d is a not b.

b or not b.

The notes of this reflection were developed on the images that became US (performance) and generated other pieces, such as the Untitled (série Nós), belonging to the KADIST Collection, where it appears with this title, or Nós em azul e Ponto Cruz (Nós in Blue and Cross Stitch), belonging to the MACS, Museum of Contemporary Art of ​​Sorocaba, São Paulo

With the help of Mallarmé, Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (pg 3 last verse), I wrote bord. Visual Poem, as they say.

 

In parallel I went further and imagined seven movements in S8, of 7 seconds each, of which I made 2 and I have an unfinished third one. I gave to the sequence the name ou  to point the passage from one to another variations of b or d. 

 

Of course, the elaboration of the set is more complicated than that and I counted on the lively conversations on MacBeth and Hamlet, with Vilém Flusser of who I was assistant at the time.

The first sequence, bord is a personal reflection on the possible connection between "to be or not to be", Shakspeare and "penché de l'un or l'autre bord", Mallarmé.

 

The first sequence, bord, is a personal reflection on the possible connection between "to be or not to be", Shakespeare, and "penché de l'un ou l'autre bord", Mallarmé. 

 

bird, the second sequence, is linked to the play MacBird, 1966, by Barbara Garson a North American activist, politically leftist. It must be said that at the time activists were calling for a new world order, the "Age of Aquarius". They fought for human rights and against the Vietnam War. They lived among government plans to send men to the moon, what happened in 1969 and the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. His successor, Lyndon Johnson was married to socialite Claudia Alta Johnson, nicknamed Lady Bird. Enormously empowered, Lady Bird got into Congress and, it is said, influenced the decisions of  her husband, the president.

In an anti-war speech in Berkeley, California, Barbara Garson mentioned the first lady naming her Lady MacBird in allusion to Shakespeare's MacBeth couple and wrote the play Mac Bird parodying the Bard of Stratford-up-Avon (I like the sound bardo/bord proximity).

The author denies, peremptorily, any allusion to the death of Kenedy having been commissioned by Johnson, under the influence of his wife.
In the Grove Press edition, 1966/67, the first of 8 illustrations, by unidentified author,  shows an undoubtedly caricature of the Johnson couple.

 

The parody is remarkable:

"Fair is foul and foul is fair

Hover through the fog and filthy air"

(MacBeth ato I, cena I)

 

"Fair is foul and foul is fair

Hover through stale and smoke-filled air"

(Mac Bird ato I, cena I)

 

The unfinished bed occurred to me by watching a staging of Macbeth, during scene I of Act V.
Under the influence of his wife, Macbeth kills Duncan to succeed him. Lady MacBeth alone on the dim stage, without scenery or sound, frantically rubbing her hands as if to wash it, whispers: "There's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come. Give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed” (cena I, ato V. pg 3 em sparknotes).
To bed sounds like too bad. 

 

I started the  sequence bed and left it unfinished due to other projects that took up time and equipment.

_{Gabriel Borba, 2019}