Parasomniac

Before I went to the gymnasium yesterday morning two large black cockatooes landed on the tree in my courtyard and proceeded to tear off pieces of bark. Walking in that artic wind was horrific and if it was 10C degrees it certainly felt like it was below freezing.

Leonie is back from Tasmania so we had lunch out of the severe cold and wind in a large bistro at the corner of Nicholson Street and then she accommpanied me to my appointment with the Sleep Unit at St. Vincent's hospital. After hour an hour waiting in an overheated waiting room (I had to strip down to my last layer of clothing), I was finally told by the neurologist that I was a parasomniac, meaning that I sometimes act out my dreams. Since the dreams are benign and I rarely hurt myself, I don't have to go through having to sleep overnight at the unit with EEG attached to my head.

Leonie and I had taken the lift up the six floors, which made me quite ill, so we walked the six flights down and headed over to Victoria's Secret that little coffee shop hidden behind a hedgerow in Victoria Street. She showed me some amazing old world collars she made using crochet and gave me a little book she'd crochetted right years ago. Here's an example of some of the pages.

Fnl.

More early appointments today and Friday so I'll be wearing five layers of clothing, plus beanie and gloves. Keep warm and happy folks.

FRANCIS OSOWSKI DIED

It is with heavy heart that I advise readers that Francis Osowski (the other half of FnL, Leonie Osowsky) died peacefully and pain free in the Palliative Care Unit of the Royal Melbourne Hospital at 8pm last night. I visited Frank in hospital on Thursday morning and read from some of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems, which he appeared to enjoy. I feel content to have been able to do that as we were friends for many years. Frank was born in Germany in 1947 and emigrated to Australia in the 1960s. He was a computer programmer before spending much of his time in the past two decades making unique artworks with his wife Leonie. Unfortunately he did not finish his translation of numerous works of Heidegger. You may find some of my commentary about the artworks of FnL at this link

FnL 2014

Frank and Leonie Osowki visited me yesterday - I hadn't seen them for over three months and much can change in that time. They gave me two of their tiny artist's books, one of which was called Secret Secrets.

This photograph I took of Frank, with that far away look in his eyes seems to exemplify, at least for me the words in part of the text. Infinite richness, abandoned projects continue to haunt by-way phantoms of illusions enigmatically revealing that which will not take place. But there were other evocative lines, such as Mistress Midnight arrives late that makes me always wish to keep receiving FnL's creative work. Click here for other blog posts I've done about FnL.

FnL + Free Will

Free Will (2012) FnL

I received in the post a few days ago, three little books (they are each about the size of two postage stamps placed together) from FnL - Francis and Leonie Osowski. The books are called FREE WILL Part1, 2 and 3 and each contains on the cover a photograph of various clocks at the University of Melbourne - Junction Clock, Bailleau Library; Star-gazy clock and Panopti-clock.  Each begins with an essay on Free Will and proceeds with a small amount of prose. Here's an example from Part 3 - the words are placed next to an image entitled abject, yet delicate:

rococo camouflaged

crostini with capsicum and

eggplant chutney

sea salt, almond and

pistachio chocolate snaps

will power masquerade

of a vodka bottle

in a slag-filled wheelbarrow

These little books, which contain small images and snippets of information remind me of one's I've seen from the past (although they were considerably larger) of pocket philosophy. I've made a few posts about FnL's little books and artistic works before, click here for one example, and here for another.

FnL + Poetical Enquirer 2012

Poetical Enquirer: FnL 2012

This is just one of the few tiny little books given to me recently by Frank and Leonie Osowski. Melbourne residents and makers of artists books.  The books are about the size of a postage stamp and this one has eight sides with seven pages of text set in what looks like 8 point font. The actual book is printed on an off-white paper, even though I have presented it in grey-scale. According to them the writing 'concerns the nature of dread'. Example of some of the text follows:

You've been waiting for a while in any empty tram - none, as yet, has appeared.
Outside. Dirt Mounds. A rusty circular saw blade. The remnants of a long ago abandoned service station.
The hulk of a vandalised car.
Broken banjo bobbins.
Responsibility in the face of ugly beauty.
A freshly emptied tuna can.

I've written before about their work, which may be found on this blog (click on link).

2010 Kodak Salon - Julie Clarke photos

FnL. Photo: Julie Clarke, 2010

Sydn'Nancy. Photo: Julie Clarke, 2009

Here are the two photographs I've exhibited in the Kodak Salon 2010 exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (exhibition is on until 25 September at 404 George Street, Fitzroy). They are part of the series: people in Melbourne. FnL and SydnNancy somehow belong together by virtue of their 'outsider' status. Frank and Leonie Osowski are friends of mine, but I don't know the man in the photo who was sitting by himself with his pet rats, Syd and Nancy in Bourke Street, Melbourne, when I asked if I could photograph him last December. I didn't go to the CCP opening last night. I couldn't stand the idea of having to see over 300 photographic entries amidst a huge crowd of people. I'll go today and see how my work sits alongside those of professional as well as amateur photographers.

For those interested, the photo of Frank and Leonie (above) may be cross-referenced with the piece I wrote about some their artwork, entitled 'frank'scunt' on my blog of 28 February this year.

frank'scunt

Futur Anterieur. F'nL. Photograph: Julie Clarke, 2010

Zo: Oculus. F'nL (2003). Photograph: Julie Clarke, 2010

frank'scunt - F'nL, (2006). Photograph: Julie Clarke, 2010

What would you make of an artwork entitled 'frank'scunt'? A book with a cover made from recycled materials - a piece of heavy iron (almost rusty) cut into an irregular shape, the points so sharp you'd be scared of being pierced. A 2cm wide piece of soft black leather and thin leather strap - a reference no doubt to S & M - fetish culture - bondage - skin. Inside the book several 2 X 2.5 cm close-up colour and B&W images of genital piercings - large silver rings enhanced with a bauble entwined with pubic hair and soft flesh. Pages with texts such as, 'I looove Paris in the winteer...' and 'Wearing crotchless trousers, a black leather bikey jacket, toting a machine gun, sitting then standing, then sitting again...', a page with a reference to the performance artist Marina Abromovic and Egon Schiele - artists who produced art works with or about the body.

I'm talking about an artwork produced in 2006 by Melbourne artists F''nL (Francis and Leonie Osowski) who Warren Burt referred to as 'brilliant collage artists and concrete poets', indeed he said 'I consider their 1999 'Almost Stalingrad' to be a masterpiece' (Warren Burt, 1999)1. How can Frank have a cunt - this vulgar term, which refers to the female genitalia - through body transforming technology to create the transgender, or purely in the imagination? I understand 'frank'scunt' to be an inversion, a series of images in which the female body represents Frank's queerness, the imaginary body schema located within his 'other'. And it's not a welcoming place. The cover, protecting the soft interior threatens to hurt you - is this another kind of 'vagina dentata'?

Frank and Leonie have produced many artworks over the years, most are held in the State Library of Victoria. I have about a dozen of them. What I find aesthetically pleasing about the artworks, apart from their political content is the tactile nature of the materials. Rarely soft, the covers of their hand made books are made from steel, aluminum, calico or cardboard. Once I turned the cover of one of F'nL's books and cut my finger on barbed wire or was it a piece of cyclone fence? I was worried that my blood would be seen by the bookshop owner, then realised that Frank and Leonie would have loved that the book had such a physical impact on one of its viewers. I'm not sure what the cover was made of, for they often use car parts, bits of scrap metal left on the road, old micro-wave ovens or car doors.

Although there is a alternative undercurrent to many of the artworks, most are born out of F'nL's limited study of particular works by theorists such as Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, Heidegger, Derrida, Bataille. Indeed, their Zo: Oculus 2003 is a homage of sorts to Bataille's 'Story of the Eye' and its references to fetish and religion. The soft-canvas book includes black and white photocopied images collaged onto white paper. In each, one single eye is held up against fragmented images of a church. Zo, plays between two words Zo (people) and Zoo (animals) - control and chaos. Their nod to Henri Bergson, time and intentionality is evident in Futur antérieur, a blue-tinted canvas covered book containing three compartments that contain recycled car panels and collaged paper. The images on each card-sized element alludes to the machine parts of clocks. Perhaps obvious, perhaps not, for these images of component parts are overlaid with a bird, a woman holding an umbrella and a pattern of color.

The texts are not easy to read but this is not important, for the pleasure is in the looking - unfolding the book cover, examining the contents - a kind of scopophilia - a sensual experience, one that is ultimately personal, for the books (at least the ones that I have) are quite small and easily held. It's in this way that F'nL invite an intimacy that you cannot find when viewing artwork in a gallery or just simply looking at something on the wall. Unlike Warren Burt, I don't see these artworks as 'avant guard. They follow a tradition set by artists such as Piero Manzoni, Richard Serra, Joseph Beuys and Robert Rauschenberg, all used found objects, all placed an emphasis on the uber presence of materiality. The artist books made by F'nL are engaging and very post-modern queer!

1. Burt Warren (1999). What Does It Mean To Be Avant-Garde in the Early 21st Century? Or,Avant-Gardening in November 1999.

For Nicholas Zurbrugg. The Australian Art Design Project

http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/site/papers/avantGarde.htm