nichola feldman-kiss and I stood in a crowded living room at a house party in December of 2004. The shirt was made of a some kind of petroleum-based textile. It tended to arouse people’s curiosity. It did hers. It also caused me to sweat profusely.

nichola touched my sleeve. We chatted for a few moments about the shirt and although the conversation was short-lived, I can still conjure the scene in my mind’s eye. nichola can too. She can recall where we were standing, our orientation in the room, exactly as we were. nichola is a contemporary multi-media artist. And it is in her nature to ask a strange man if she could touch his shirt.

The shirt-touching was actually one of several brief encounters involving nichola and myself from the past few years—random, unconnected, mostly impersonal sightings and exchanges that led me to believe that our paths were destined to cross again. The first had occurred earlier in 2004 when nichola made an appearance at the marketing agency where I work. She was borrowing the agency’s internet connection to facilitate her performance art piece, project molly. She created a streaming video feed from a head-mounted camera as she shopped in boutiques along Sussex Drive.

The fragmentary history connecting nichola and I seemed entirely in order when I emailed her a few months ago while fishing around for Guerilla stories. She was busily creating “Childish Objects,” a series of memory-based works re-examining her “bliss years”—halcyon days from early childhood when her family was intact and her creativity thriving. What follows is our email correspondence on the mercurial nature of bliss, presented in reverse chronology, much like the function of memory.

 

 

 

On 7-Jun-07, at 11:56 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

on saturday i had an opportunity to attend a conversation between Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass at the Winter Garden Theatre as part of toronto’s Luminato Festival
Leonard Cohen listens generously with his whole body yet i would not call him a conversationalist
his words are concentrated
sparse
he is a minimalist speaker
he provided sharp one word answers to highly contextualized reiterative and not so thoughtful questions
he seemed content to observe the densely egoed conversation that carried on irrespective of his contribution
to one question he gave seven words "so little to say, so much urgency"

the audience inhaled and exhaled his wisdom

thank you for the opportunity to reflect with you Tony
nichola

On 31-May-07, at 1:52 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

I am romanced with artists who reveal themselves
Louise Bourgeois Diane Arbus Anaise Nin Sophie Calle
the object the image the text the action – reflected self perception
in my imagination these women abandon themselves into impulse
i fear i am a voyeur on my impulse
i want to follow my inner strangeness dismantle my propensity towards self-censorship
it is probable that i have not followed my impulse into my work rather unpacked my flirtation with my censored desire to abandon myself

 

the public sleeping performance: 20 minute nap, 2006, Christie’s Auction House, NYC

 

On 9-May-07, at 1:06 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

Your piece is gorgeously written, Nichola, and it obviously took no small amount of courage. I was transfixed. I saw and felt everything happening. I tasted your salt, I think... Thank you so much for sharing it. It may be "out of context" but we decide what the context is for this dialogue. It certainly adds a wonderful sexual charge. Coincidentally, I just finished a book of short erotica by Anais Nin. It's called Little Birds. You'd like her writing. You seem to have Nin's gift for describing the rush and mix of emotions with a lyrical quality and a restraint that heightens the intrigue... I felt a little bit sexually intoxicated after reading your piece. I'm very curious to know about the other pieces in the show and how they interrelate.

I'm lucky to have you...

Tony

 

On 9-May-07, at 12:04 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

hi Tony
i am leaving to mtl in the morning to install my show at projex-mtl
i have assembled a few extremely personal documents for a new piece
the text below is one of them
the printed story will be mounted in a plain black certificate frame among other larger wall mounted objects
out of context as it is – will you tell me how you respond to it?
thanks
n

23 05 2003 2:40 am

we met in an uptown hotel
he revealed his delight with my beauty
the space between us was thick
it was a very thick space and there was a kind of vibration within it
i could kind of cast into it
we drank a scotch – i drank half of his
the last time was supposed to have been the last time

my senses were raw
photoshop saturated what used to be kodachrome
everything a little wet like asphalt after a rain
there was a little bit of salt on my perception not too much just a little
smell was amplified
touch was hard and barely there at all
and my skin danced the familiar dance

it took only a moment of groping to figure his way through the side zipper on Thelma's little black dress
weeks ago i had staged the outfit for this very occasion
highly suggestive – maybe once upon a time the silk was Japanese
strings of red roses hung like blood clots seeping through the weave
the dress was tight – a little too tight in the bound and hard to bend kind of way
the darts rested a little high above my nipples where the silk was stained with saliva

low in the back (my father often expressed his pride with my broad cut shoulders)
high across the throat – touching me a little too closely in the choky place that always reminds me of a distant vulnerability

we tore the dress in our carelessness
we fucked for hours
the kind of fucking that leaves the skin over oxygenated – swollen with arousal
the kind of fucking that leaves its memory on the body – chafing bruises and teeth marks too

there was no climax
and Thelma's little black and red silk dress was left badly scarred

 

 

On 8-May-07, at 2:33 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

It’s just past 2 in the morning. I can’t sleep and have just left my back-from-the-brink cat in bed alone to come write this. I had a nap earlier tonight and often when I do that I am up late.

My cat stopped eating entirely early last week and after 4 days I took him to the vet. He was so thin and sickly that the vet was concerned he might not survive another night. He did. The next day we put the little feller on an IV drip to counteract the dehydration. His digestive system, delicate and wonky at the best of times, seems to have shut down completely. He had to be coaxed back to eating by squirting food into his mouth. He’s on cortisone and four different medicines. His normal energy has almost returned. He’s still weak and rail thin but it looks like he’ll live. He’s a survivor and he has been with me since before I moved to Ottawa in 2000. His name is Bone.

Not to overstate this, but if Bone had died, my identity would have been altered slightly. Strange but true. He has been with me through five changes of residence and several changes of girlfriend. He’s bashful, but scrappy. Sort of like me.

You think you know who you are but continuity in life is an illusion and identity is anything but fixed. Lately I’m testing, questioning, probing my self much of the time, largely because my life partnership ended in early March and my identity necessarily took a swing back towards solitude and pursuit of purpose. Which is good. I’m me again, only me is now different. Stronger and more tolerant; more resolved and authentic; less fearful.

Relationships can help you to understand yourself and they can warp you. Depends how much you bend for the sake of the relationship. Of course, the truth is you shouldn’t bend at all. Like your young friend says, Nichola, you should put yourself and your purpose out there and see who accepts you. That’s what my scrappy cat did and I accepted him, bad digestion and all.

I’m going back to bed now.

 

On 30-Apr-07, at 1:28 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

last wednesday i met a young man
at first glance he was just any other young man working his way through life as a driver / detailer at the car rental agency
imperfect teeth saggy  jeans and a company t-shirt
he drove me home
we jumped into a conversation about environmentalism, local business opportunities for an eco branded services franchises and independence
he was literate and aware beyond my expectation
he quickly assessed the direction of the conversation and declared his path
a student of social work – he wanted to help others who were now kids like he was
i dug into him in the same too many questions way my children find interrogating
his home was dysfunctional painful with conflict he an addict
an addict of what? i ask
whacha got? he replied
anything you can get? i ask
hmm, clean and dry 5 years
another young soul with barely 5 years to be clean and dry since
my throat tightens i breath in deeply
tell me why you started i say
you want the real reason? he asks
i want to look him straight in the eye but he keeps his eyes pinned to the road ahead
yes please i respond
there was a Jamaican woman who lived a few doors down
she had really big boobs – he gestures with his hands to indicate her largess
two hundred pounds each he says
when things became unbearable at home he would go to her
she would comfort him – she would pull his tiny body close press his cheek to her massive breast
she was warm she was soft her smell was musky she hummed to him told him there there and he fell into her
the first time he got high he said it felt just like that
i thanked him for his disclosure
the energy inside the small car intensified
i could feel it weighing down on my chest
i told him my story – i told him it was horrible to see the train coming down the track but be powerless to stop it
i told him a story of estrangement and anther of fear
he acknowledged the pain rising in my voice
once upon a time i knew a man boy like him
wow i said in this intense meeting of strangers we agreed time had placed us and our encounter had been waiting for our arrival
i changed the subject abruptly we both grew up in ottawa
me east he west 25 years apart
we floated through the city in a bubble of intense serendipity me looking out the passenger window trying to gather myself his eyes fixed on the road in front
will you join my children and me for dinner one evening? i asked
i would enjoy that he replied
my name is nichola i said
beautiful name he said my name is Allan A double L-A-N like the candy
we hugged he carried my parcel to my door
i looked at him as he drove away he looked back

it was a strangely summer spring day little buds on bare branches growing so fast you could almost see the time lapse

i saw him again the very next day we were close and awkward at the same time like we had known each other forever
like we shared a secret
like we had had a one night stand
are you always so open so disclosing so honest? i asked
yes he said i prefer people to know who i am and to choose me anyway

 

daddy’s girl (18th birthday gift), 1980-2005 (baled brass bed and wood slats)

 

 

On 27-Apr-07, at 7:50 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

The irony in telling stories of myself: I both discover and obscure in the telling. I fictionalize my identity because that is the primary and most compelling method in my command. The more I believe the stories, the more I empower my personal mythology. But what else am I? I am something untouched below, beneath, beside, around, inside and between the fictions. I intuit this. I know this. So I peel away some layers, even as I add others, and the liquid product is ego, psyche, personality. The Buddhist way is to disorganize the personality, to crumble, de-fictionalize, and seek the universal self, the woundless innocent child, the pure energy, the pure mind, the big mind, and occasionally this is blissful, so quiet, so free.

But my thinking mind is fearful of such nothingness and nothingness makes
for rather blasé story. All art is story. Stories told, destroyed, and replaced without end. This makes for beautiful art. It's why sad songs are the best songs, why so many artists chew themselves up. Feeling is real as long as we only feel it. When I habitually recast my stories of humiliation it becomes a private theatre of the absurd and I shrink. My heart tightens. I haunt myself.

 

 

On 26-Apr-07, at 9:31 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

if are you on a quest – be careful
language is deception and truth too
there is no singularity only multiplicity
memory is fiction only feeling is real

we all learned that lesson before we were five
(daddy, why is the sky blue?
mommy, where do we go when we die)
unlearned by the time we were ten
(daddy, why were you at the train station with Mrs Jones?
mommy, why are you crying?)

(is the picture of wisdom the old man with a long beard – the large breasted Jamaican woman with a deep hug and knowing smile?
or the wide eyed child open naked and faithful)

teddy bear movie, 1977-2005 (video still)

 

 

i resist cynicism
i have yet to find a because in my work
i know there is no such stable thing as identity really definitively – yet i absolutely know i exist
in response to my question about revisiting reenacting rerecording Laurie Anderson told me "it’s always the same story, nichola…”
why no acknowledge this reality as has On Kawara with his thousands of date paintings and “I am still alive…” postcards and telegrams
i have grown bored perpetually arriving at the same question
i forge deeper into the recesses of memory in search of a new question
or no question at all
my focused meditation of the public sleeping performances is a purposeful quieting

we can look a lifetime for an origin without ever considering the dynamic context evolving dialectic prior history
we are both victims and victimizers – always
some of us victimize ourselves and some of us others – being more and less awake and (self) censoring

as artists and lovers and life seekers some of us dialogue with wounds – the trauma of childhood
stuck in a hall of Lacanian of mirrors
encountering an intended reflection – erupting signs dragging as words material shapes forms actions relationships and processes
bits and bites of time and place never landing here or now slipping away stripping away – bare naked

we are born free born open vulnerable trusting innocent curious
then we close down are closed down shut down the heart tightens
the wound is the colonizer – the soul crusher – advancing – censoring
i have cut through the scar picked at the scab encountered the wound
lived and relived with each next stage of parenting

analysis is a regressive narrative – a reverse chronology
knowledge is in origins – pre colonization
undo unravel go back and further back still go home
like this email conversation – the prior words found the recent words
and all of the words are seated in our first encounter

i knew my grandmother had died before i knew she was dead
how did i know that? i really want to know i how i knew that

who might the wide eyed open and vulnerable child have been before
her heart tightened
before the cut – when there was no scar – no scab to pick
is innocence recoverable?
if i can recover my bliss years then maybe i can open myself to
encounter the benevolent ghosts of my childhood

 

On 21-Apr-07, at 1:01 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

My hands, and my handwriting, are very similar to those of my father. It's kinda freaky and also affirming. My nose is very much my mother's nose. I don't have any children so I can only guess at your angst at your daughter's tightening heart, but I can remember my own heart tightening to family when I was her age. I became the lonely boy. Only now is it really beginning to open again. Is it merely because the child is determined to be separate from the parent and needs the emotional distance? Or is there some kind of resentment at work? Children can be harsh critics. Your bliss years seem extraordinarily powerful for you...  Do you feel compelled to recapture them in your artworks? They say as adults we continually seek to heal the wounds of childhood and most of the choices we make are reflections of such. But the bliss years are not wound years. Are they healing years? For most of my life I have been amazed at my mother's desire to somehow record everything that happens in the family and, more recently, to pass on family heirlooms and relics whether or not they were/are wanted. She is afraid that the past (and the memories) will be obliterated with the demise of the objects.

Perhaps this is also a function of parenthood. Is it? Now that my parents both live overseas, I sometimes feel like a kind of orphan and I ask who the fuck am I? But I also think I would be asking this question under any circumstances.

 

On 20-Apr-07, at 3:12 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

my dad made a lot of photos and 8mm movies too
last monday i dug out our family collection of little yellow self addressed Kodak cartons stashed away with my accumulation of blissful memories
does it ever happen to you that you see your own in your parents' handwriting?
i dusted off the old Revere (1946)
still functional after many idle years among the increasing number of
childhood fetiches that punctuate my home decor
family detritus gathered by gift appropriation and outright theft
over time becoming redefined as art
the Ravere was a gift to my dad as an expectant father from his mother too far away to touch her grandchildren
perhaps she bought it 2nd hand in London enroute from Berlin the one time she went back to Europe after the war and the last time she would embrace her own mother now confined to the new Deutsche Demokratische Republik

together we watched a few specially selected reels

(wishing to write fluidly candidly unselfconsciously about my efforts to preserve my 13 year old child's innocence joy and
affection through the new angst of teen years and family dysfunction – but my
heart is tight
i want to write about how she comes home every other week with her heart more closed than the last time
about how desperate i must seem to her as i work incessantly to pry her back open – no doubt closing her more
i really did believe that sharing the bewildered little girl under the photofloods of my own childhood would help to surface her tenderness
that was monday – by sunday night she acquiesced – monday morning she left
today she is back again hard and protected)

my father was a dedicated photographer of his children – he gave the three of us camera vision – my daughter has it too
circa 1968 i saved a vast number of Bazooka Joe comics to buy my first camera
i fancied framing my shots on the diagonal

(you described to me your hearing and i to you my sight)

 

Bazooka Joe camera offer, 1968

 

On 19-Apr-07, at 8:22 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

In my early teens, I spent a good many evenings at home on my own. My father was often away playing music and my mother worked and had an active social life. My sister and I were of different ages and different genders and led different social lives. Being a bit of a brooder, I didn't mind the time alone and those evenings contributed much to the "lonely boy" ego-concept that I harbour to this day. On one such evening I was attempting to prepare a snack for myself called Pigs-in-a-Blanket, the thing where you wrap Pillsbury dough around a hot dog and a slice of processed cheese and bake them in the oven. I arranged 3 or 4 of these on a cookie sheet, stuck them in the oven, and forgot completely about it. Several hours later, when I re-discovered the snack project, the Pigs-in-a-Blanket had become something else. Not quite blackened, they had shriveled, partially flattened, and dried to hardened husk. They were literally baked onto the cookie sheet. I was somewhat amazed with this unintended science project: There was some odd beauty in how the transformed things were arranged on the cookie sheet. So, rather than clean up the mess, I converted it into "art." I propped up the cookie sheet in a prominent spot in the kitchen and wrote on a small piece of paper, "Food Art by Tony Martins" plus a short, contrived artistic statement. I knew my mother and sister would discover my creation in the morning and be amused. I, meanwhile, would save face.

On 17-Apr-07, at 8:48 PM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

ok Tony
see you tomorrow at 9 pm
nichola

On 16-Apr-07, at 8:55 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

great idea!
let's talk
i am doing the public sleeping performance at Dows Lake in ttawa on july 1 at also got a show coming up in mtl with projexmtl (former ottawa artist Louis Joncas and his partner André Laroche)
but i would love to co-write too – a great way to get to know each other a bit
did you see this nyarts interview?
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6757&Itemid=199

let's talk
nichola

On 16-Apr-07, at 12:02 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

Hi Nichola:

How are things?
Are you up to anything fascinating lately?
I'm sniffing around here and there for potential Guerilla stories for the
June issue.
Any ideas?
Ever considered writing a piece yourself?
I'm a collaborator by nature -- let's talk!

Best,
Tony

On 4-May-06, at 9:37 AM, Tony Martins wrote:

Hi Nichola:

Many thanks for your encouraging note. Your reference to "clarity, rigor, and intensity" was appreciated in particular!

I'll certainly add you to our distribution list. How'd you stumble upon Guerilla? We have another great issue in final
phase of production now, so watch your email for for a "now live" notification.

Best,
Tony Martins

On 4-May-06, at 9:10 AM, nichola feldman-kiss wrote:

hi Tony

I have just stumbled upon getguerilla.ca
i was suitably impressed with your the clarity rigor and intensity of your writing not to mention the very worthy subjects
if you have a mailing list please do add me to it

nichola feldman-kiss