Although Chumbacca, it seems, will not do any real work for the rest of the decade, others are still encouraged to use him as a model. The soon to be released Abestiedary is a perfect example: a book entirely about Chumbacca despite minor appearances of animals and letters. While each page displays a letter that underlines an aspect of Chumbacca's personality, this is not true, or rather it is true only of the pages on your left. There are no letters on the right pages (that is, the pages on your right, since it couldn't be said that any page of this book is not "right".) We could say "the odd pages", but that would be equally confusing. The other pages, then, show chumbacca disguised as different animals, next to a specimen of the intended genus for clarity. No matter how this sounds, the book is great. You may click on the right (and left!) images for a closer view that will nonetheless be barely a pathetic gllimpse at the aforementioned greatness of the book. You may also prepare something with osobucco, but in that case you should be careful not to lose the center of it (of the osobucco) in the process. It's very annoying when that happens. You never find it again.]]>
You can't always do what you want. You need four cuadrants, all that shit. Chumbacca got to a point in which whimsical didn't cut it anymore. He had to face reality, and therefore did what any grown-up person would do in his position. He took a year off. Most of it was spent traveling. Germany (again), the UK (again, again!), Venezuela, Argentina and, above all, Brazil. Here's a couple of movies of Chumbacca at a remote beach near Buzios, attempting to read German Donald Duck and merging with the scenery. Chumbacca has just returned from Los Angeles and will remain in Madrid until January 2006, talking on the phone most of the time.]]>
Some fish are fast, some fish are slow. Chumbacca, who's never read Moby Dick, is a shrimp. Should I try to explain?
In retrospect, Pygmalion was a bit depressing. I mean — it wasn't then and it's not like memories of it have gotten bitter. I still like all the people involved. But coming back to this after two months of doing other work, I begin to see more clearly why Chumbacca couldn't fit the current (and possibly perennial) partitions of the Entertainment Industry drive.
I have successfully worked against institutional and/or corporate consensus before, so I thought that could still be the right approach, but here's the difference: I knew what I was doing in those previous instances, whereas with Chumbacca, the key is not to know what you're doing. Chumbacca needs friends.
Another thing: Chumbacca's strength is in the margins. You're doing something else and Chumbacca happens to be there. Because he (obviously) can't substantiate his claims to fame, as soon as you direct the spotlight to him, all meaning is gone. This calls for a serious re-thinking of the process by which the commissions are assigned. "Works about Chumbacca" was a mistake. It's Chumbacca who needs to make the rules. He will.
We need more time. I'll be busy until the end of the month. Then we are all (Chumbacca included) going to London for the Holidays. Then I need to work on a script until at least February. There will be news by then.
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Sent this to the Core Chumbacca Group:
Dear Chumbacca Patrons,
I have no excuse for having disappeared during the past three weeks. Actually, I have many excuses, but I hope they won't be necessary. Life with Chumbacca is always unpredictable, and we'll have to get used to bursts of activity followed by days of neglect. Here's the current state of things:
Due to the (I think) well-founded specificity the project has been channeled into, I had to seize the opportunity to re-evaluate its potential during the German workshop. Some details are available at the Chumblog; others I will tell you in person. Other duties (Naptime, the Cardew script, etc.) prevent me from giving Chumbacca the time I'd wish for the rest of this year. I plan to resume Chumbacca activity in January. We'll see how that goes.
In the meantime, I've been working on a clear statement/proposal that I'll publish in the next few weeks. Here's the basic plan.
]]> The project should unfold in three separate stages:1.1 Test group is given basic directions.
1.2 Test Group finishes their work.
1.3 Online Test Exhibition is set up, presenting the model at a small scale.
1.4 Additional Test Experiences with groups of Children. Conference/Workshop given by Chumbacca on Conceptual Art.
1.5 Evaluation towards:
2.1 The Online Test Exhibition, along with statement and personalized elements of persuasion, are sent to selected artists who are not aware of Chumbacca’s existence (or mine, for that matter). Younger artists are approached individually with a set of directions catered to their age and interests.
2.2 Selected artists (adults and children) who react favorably begin work. This is a global stage, involving at least three continents (as already practiced during the Test Group process). Individual processes are documented, with emphasys in Chumbacca’s relation with each artist.
2.3 Successful works from the Test Group are added to the larger group; all artists finish their work.
2.4 Apocryphal Online Catalog is set up.
3.1 Apocryphal Online Catalog is basis/prototype for real-life exhibition, submitted for funding everywhere (even to those institutions who will likely reject it).
3.2 The process is documented. Exhibition is designed, included documentation gathered during 3.1
3.3 Chumbacca Exhibition.
Stage 1 is being carried out with personal funding. Limited funding is necessary for stage 2. Stage 3 will be excessive, and for that reason should be pursued.
We are barely at 1.2 now. Chumbacca has promised to call all of you sometime in the next month, to discuss details of what's been done so far. In the meantime, I'm signing off to work on other things for a few days.
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What happened at Pygmalion? We should have stayed in touch with everyone during the workshop, but it was impossible; a faulty ISDN line kept conspiring against it, and the general tone of the lab didn't really ask for it. But also, the way things evolved, it seemed like we couldn't really do much in Germany, not in practical terms. As Chumbacca's project gets closer (at least in principle) to the art world, the entertainment business looks, oddly, much too theoretical for it. By this I mean that what we need to do at this stage is to keep coming up with interesting pieces and ideas, try them out, see what works and what doesn't, and the Pygmalion workshop could not provide us with much help in that respect. Not that it was their fault — we owe them the current direction of the project and that's more than I would ask from them.
On the other hand, theorising is not what entertainment people do best, and our mentor couldn't understand Chumbacca's view of things even if you draw him a map (which we did). So I basically took my time to read what I can't read at home: the thick Conceptual Art book by Alberro/Stimson (great); the Masotta anthology (cool); Julian Stallabrass' High Art Lite (bullshit). I also wrote, of course. There is a Chumbacca Paper soon to be published here, and we have a clearer proposal that I'll post next. Most important of all: we hung out with the most interesting people.
As for the "Industry" contacts, it was strange, for the reasons mentioned above — Chumbacca isn't really for them and he wasn't interested at all in making an effort to socialize. I did the dirty work then, and got many revealing moments out of it. Will comment about this in private. The final balance is, I think, pretty good: we have a clear idea of what we want to do, we have a clearer idea of where not to pursue it. As an additional bonus, I found that my high esteem of almost every aspect of Pygmalion clashed with my view that these programmes shouldn't really exist at all. I like these kinds of challenges. Further discussion on this, later, probably somewhere else.
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So we went to Germany for the second part of the Pygmalion programme. Maybe it was the weather — the fall finally settling in — but the whole trip was far less festive than the Kent excursion. Or maybe it was that I actually get some work done, despite corporate nonsense and some of my typical Quixotic seizures. Chumbacca enjoyed it. He liked the hotel in Berlin (spent hours luring insects into the sauna) and was particularly happy to meet the daughters (ages 3 and 6) of my friend Franz, at whose place we stayed on our way back. He didn't socialize much in Eyba. Not with the Pygmalion participants, that is: he's an expert on the behavior of German horses and squirrels. He took archery lessons. More than once I spotted him picking leaves and branches outside my window in the Schlosshotel and wondered if he wouldn't be happier in a rural setting, without the bullshit that comes with the fame he claims to be destined to. Probably not. It's just a vacation he needs.]]>
You never know but, apparently, The Chumbacca Incident didn't make it to the German deadline. They're in post-production and offered to send installments, but I declined. I'd rather have them work at their pace and enjoying it.
Not that there was a German Deadline as such. From the three still frames I'm posting here, however, this Kinofilm looks very promising. I wasn't expecting a coherent storyline (any storyline, for that matter) and it looks like and adventure movie. I'm dying to see it.
I sent to Kino the two tracks submitted by Gianpaolo hoping that the blind collaboration works. We'll see.
]]>Dear Pygmalion participants, dear tutors, I am sorry to announce that I won’t be able to attend the week in Germany. This is the last year of CEEA being partner of Pygmalion, that I created in 1999. The policy of the CEEA is currently more on continuous training for the French market than on international programmes and I have been asked to be present for the beginning of the courses here. You will understand that I am really sorry about it, it was a pleasure working with you all.
I wish you a fruitful lab and hopefully we’ll meet some other time in the (near) future ! All the best.
Séverine Gautier CEEA
Below is Chumbacca's reaction:
On the bright side, it appears that Coll will be stopping by at Eyba.
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Talked with Palvis about progress of the Chumbacca Search Engine, which is going well and will do more than search (image replacement is in the works).
It was clear to me that it would be called "Choogle", but apparently the domain has already been taken (either pre-emptively or as a corporate afterthought) by the true Google. Oh, well. We may think of something better.
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Having neglected some of my other (non-Chumbacca) duties, I learned that a certain deadline actually involved twice the work I had anticipated, so I decided to go to New York for three days and get it over with. Chumbacca could not be persuaded to stay in Madrid. As requested, our driver was waiting for us in the arrivals lounge with a card that only said "Chumbacca". I'm still kicking myself for not taking a picture of that. Other than that, there's not much to report about the trip. I barely slept, and Chumbacca did no work at all. During the day he stayed home in Brooklyn and played with Bennett (the cat); at night he went out with us. He's been asking a lot of weird questions after we watched "I Heart Huckabees".
Probably inspired by her dressing-up of Ms. Siebenstein (with Chumbacca's clothes), my daughter Miranda decided that she needed a dress-able Chumbacca of her own. Which was made in the old fashioned way because a) our iMac blew up today and I needed the Powerbook for something else; b) I'm sick of computers.
To the left, the Chumbacca drawing is carrying a bag, as expected. To the right, he's catching up with current fashion trends. (And also singing The Strokes, to my dismay.)
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The above being a bit too dungeon-like with all those spikes and stuff. It's probably for the same reason that he did this other version:
Here's a detail of the same thing, on the right, showing what I assume are the same collideascope you'd end up bringing home. I have many doubts about the details. I mean, the work itself is clear and definitely one of the best things we have so far, but I wonder about the right balance between violence and the chosen aesthetic. This latter example is more on the right track, yet I feel something's missing. This is probably due to the 3D renders — we need to imagine actual antique glasses and cups, etc in there and things get instantly better. It's unclear how you pick up theb object yet, but in any case it would be something like this:
