Spilling Ink

For this piece, I follow the calendar of the new moon, exploring each month through the recitation of texts, rituals, and organic themes specific to a particular month. Performances take place on a given day of the New Moon, completing a 12-month cycle, over the period of four years.

The project addresses the relationship of time and textual practices. I explore and transform biblical readings specific to a given month, and intertwine them with selected newspaper articles, biographic notes, sometimes fairy-tales and autobiographical writings. I am also working with an artistic team on this project: Francois Boue, an 8mm film-maker, who is creating a short film for each month; as well as Daniel Schnyder, a Swiss composer, who composes music for each month, based on the tradition of announcing the new moon by trumpet.

The first installation/performance took place in Salina, Kansas on February 24th, at the Salina Art Center. On that date, the lunar month of Adar begins. In Salina, I built a large scale installation within a traditional gallery space. Francois Boue's 8mm film was transferred to video and projected as an integral part of the installation. The Installation consisted of vinyl lettering pinned to the wall, selected objects were displayed throughout the space, animating textual references of the month, such as the golden calf myth, which tradition holds is where the festival of the new moon first originates. Outside the gallery space a female trumpeter announced the new moon.

Experience...

Visitors slowly entered the space, in which a young virgin (again a reference to the text in which young virgins are sought for the King) is seated at a table, red thread flowing from her back up to textual passages displayed on the wall behind her. The red string, a simple item that re-appears throughout my work resembles an umbilical cord, a unity to the mother before the construction of language. During the performance, Natasha (the young virgin) was drinking milk out of an ink bottle, as well as slowly spilling red ink into an open book, displayed before her. The milk signifies an attempt to be nourished by the text. Red ink is also a reference to the lunar cycle, of 29.5 days, the menstrual female cycle.

The Creation of Real Time Rituals As members of the audience where asked to read selected text passages, I wrote words with sugar, standing next to a cage holding two white doves, carriers of messages. This ritual asks that nourishment be brought to text and time, as well as calls for divine sweetness for the month. Words such as dream, light, joy, etc., where passed out by a manwearing a large golden crown, implying the upcoming Festival of Purim, a festival of masks and costumes. The new moon remains invisible; therefore celebrating that which remains unknown, unfathomable, very much like masks which play with the trope of the hidden and the revealed. Pencils and small pieces of paper where passed out, giving the audience a chance to look at the new moon and create there own messages. These were then passed to an unknown member of the audience.

The Salina exhibition was the first in a series of exciting, new experimental explorations. On June 21st, at 7pm, Hebrew Union College, just around the corner on West 4th street, will host the next event. Please join me there. All performances will be interwoven through an interactive web page. They will also documented in the form of an artist book, as well as video documentations. I am in the process of updating my site, give or take a week or two - please follow along at

www.nyu.edu/projects/haum