DISCORDIA COURTYARD

LV 3, 37 SWANSTON ST

4 DEC 2021 - 19 FEB 2022

WED - SAT 12 - 5PM

For a catalogue please contact Elizabeth McInnes

director@discordia.gallery

i want to talk to you like machine

written on occasion of IchikawaEdward’s exhibition:

Today the fields are empty and silent

by daniel ward.

the old train on the new rail, as if lightning or the future
the time gorgeous metal
how you would not operate quite so well if we were not here
and here i am inclined to adjust my definition of symbiotic
or make a new word for you
or perhaps a word that confirms further your mystery
and if we are not here with you
although we wish to be
you would be still
and you would be heavy and
you would sit more surely
as we all do in the illusion of permanency
grand flicks between mystery and confirmation
and somehow to be unbothered there
along the line;
a real relic, a statue, a shrine to movement
almost how everything acts
in complete servitude
to a once kinetic
all momentum and eventuality
as the pretty cool victim of inertia
which could also be called life/animated/accelerating/surviving/skating on the rail
but now as we do not wish to, or no longer know how to, operate you
you are floored, still
so extraordinary
incredibly so and
left out as a site of wonder
to become something we instead
are left in, like rust but for the viewer
and to construct a world from this
or rather watch a world construct
in pure and illogical adoration
and age
always age
resting heavy in our beautifully flawed memory
and out of nervousness comes war
and from war comes solid and now unusable things
metal and much stone
and very tired bodies
for war is an incredible exercise in time and objects
machines and ideas
an incredible structure of mirrors
and much smoke; 50 thousand tiny cigarettes
lit but all close to death
but now
in this room
for at least a moment it is calm
for we are no longer here to louden or lubricate you
great machine
and so a day begins without the sounds of the suburban train
and the bomb sits in the stable
safe as a baby
the same baby that we wish to be in the world as
but are not quite so
sure, a little dreamer,
but for consciousness now
for an image of the self
everyone is dreaming
when the world is wonderful and welcome
and whilst it burns
we are dreaming also
train sounds remind us of life
they also teach us how we mustn’t now blame you
big brave metal pulled from your home and cleansed
by taste or business or art
or violence
indeed we should admire your resilience
your flexibility and your strength
and so as one dances death, with it
a maypole is constructed
and so the cigarette, which is now machine also,
is not the only instrument for learning pleasure
the lighter too is a cock
and the hand that lights it
this you must remember
turning
and do not be feared of this you find yourself saying
turning
for this is a mistake of many
turning
to suggest the object holds within it
evil, as if inside the metal
or within the hollow parts
for when we look at metal
which we do now
we look within it right now
and we look at ourselves
which is the most horrifying;
to face what is obtainable
and what isn’t
the always distorted representation;
our watery reflection
not quite what we are
but close,
for what we are
is the space between desire and regret
and this is not a solid space
quite like metal over the most correct
fire, until fully liquid
big metal when you were alive,
or perhaps when you were animated by our desires,
i would avoid you when i was
loose
and when interested in my body (which is to only temporarily be distinguished from the mind)
for i had understood you as the mascot to my
unhappiness
you were the market and the goods and the carrier
you were what i feared
but when you are dead and a shrine i quietly honour you
great done thing
big jacket, big bolt
i mean i could sing for you
kneeling to present oneself as in honour of
or in celebration to
or under
and so in vulnerability i could sing water
to the always moving
and distorted
in which
one does not simply know themselves
but in the mirror, which we know to be like dreaming or water, you are big and scary
for in the mirror
we see our fear of the future
and in the mirror we
face the growing regrets of our past
and that too is art, but art must also be that which grounds us, here in life water
and so the object dies to become our thought
and the thoughts die in the body
fairly quickly even
soonish and they are resting fair and heavy
somewhere in the stomach
and so life as the big deep learning
hello machine that is my body that does terrible things in the world
and beautiful things
builds its grandest desires and celebrates the greatest balance act
you are a life of dreaming
you are a life of such pleasant concern of which
can be ruptured at any moment
by machine
through the roof
imagine not writing about war
and about pain and greed
the more i write it
the more i think i might fight back
but there is unfortunately not one direction to move
that is not in replacement of the chaos
the longing feeling of falling
the learnt obsolescence of you dear reflection
of you, other mind
and great dancer
and we all want to fight somewhere
as a kind of chanting or singing
but how distracted i am oh sweet reflection
infinite star whose death i watch in the sky
or the mirror alike
oh humble hedonist
oh ant of the bulb
you have my every attention
you have my whole commitment
you have
the water
the water
the water
today the fields are empty and silent
in fact one enormous body
like our body, the mirror;
the most beautiful weapon we have ever seen
and our evil
as the great sum of our conversations with the earth
of disruptions and patterns, transferring of power
back and forth, mowing the lawn
and if we stopped killing ourselves we could finally mow the lawn
to sculpt a symbol of praise
be it to abstinence or humility or chaos
for machines exist as many gods
shaped like swords and regal adornments
many small celebrations and such great explosions
and so
machines are here in the inbetween,
moving as the product of life; between the fundamentals of
classical and romantic; the sexiest weapon you have ever seen shining in paradise hands
a mirror to the future imaginings of one’s stomach and crotch
within the confines of efficiency and precision
and logic or understanding or great design
as if magnets levitating the grand object of life
the great shrine sits
between fixing something and honouring its disorder
as mythology / as ideas / as events / and eventually patterns: incredibly loud events of killing and theft
so many in fact one can assume that the post-apocalyptic aesthetic of it all, of the firearm that we are, was simply to normalise
one’s own poverty or speak to its imminent and constant breaking
and oh the grandness of our collapse towards infinity
the inuterable power, surely, just to stand and look
today
there is nobody to kill
for now
in the water holds our spirit
the cool shining liquid
and we die as our contemplations of missing out or purity or mortality or survival or sport
but today, a beautiful day
it is birdsong that reminds us of life
it is air through dried grass
streams running but not seen, life abundant and rotating
and we
completely silent