Lapham’s Quarterly: Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard, New York City, 2005

I want to share with you something I’ve learned. I’ll draw it on the blackboard behind me so you can follow more easily [draws a vertical line on the blackboard]. This is the G-I axis: good fortune-ill fortune. Death and terrible poverty, sickness down here—great prosperity, wonderful health up there. Your average state of affairs here in the middle [points to bottom, top, and middle of line respectively]. This is the B-E axis. B for beginning, E for entropy. Okay. Not every story has that very simple, very pretty shape that even a computer can understand [draws horizontal line extending from middle of G-I axis]. Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don’t like to hear about people who are poor or sick, so start your story up here [indicates top of the G-I axis]. Read on

“Amanda’s show Tapping The Admiral recently showed at Le Gallery in Toronto.”

“Nedham reinterprets the especially cruel torture machine from In the Penal Colony and uses it as a tool to compliment an assemblage of specimens culled from natural history museums around the world. The utilization of impossible and elaborate devices, absurd in application, raises each animal to a site of reverence, where it is their wounds which beg to be deciphered. In the face of such custom cruelty, the machine comes to represent almost ceremonious sacrifice, positing each animal as martyr at the disposal of humans through the exaggerated gesture of individualized torment. Aligning each body with a different type of human preservation reflects Nedham’s interest in looking at the specimens not as objects, but as historians, each capturing a very specific story which can be read off of the body and in the context of display. The machines provide a place where the viewer can engage intimately with each narrative, suggesting alternative histories and opening them up to possibilities in the realm of the romantic and inevitably tragic.” (LE Gallery about the exposition Tapping The Admiral) Read what Amanda has to say about this specific exposition over at The Nedhamptons, her personal blog. Visit her official website.