Sunday, March 18, 2012

Tune Up

image: from Tess Kincaid for Mag 109, by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Robert and Shana write: "We create works in response to the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology's failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition. Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand.

"Rich colors and surrealistic imagery merge to reveal the poetic roots of the works on display. The use of color is intentional but abstract; proportion and space are compositional rather than natural; movement is blurred; objects and people juxtaposed as if by chance in a visual improvisation that unfolds choreographically. At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations—this work attempts to provide powerful impact both visually and viscerally."

For the site ParkeHarrison.com, *click here*

Tune Up

You peel me back raw
just like you did the whole world,
revealing the gears
within my split skin,
me watching my life's blood flow
in red rivulets
from the razor's edge
of the embodied terror
I am left holding
in my bag of tricks.

The spanner you use to tune
me up is so cold.

Written for Magpie Tales, Mag 109. *click here*
March 18, 2012 3:53 PM


11 comments:

  1. nice man...i always love the research that you do, it def enlightens the pics...and nice write as well...vicsceral...could not imagine watching myself being operated on...or being cognizant enough to know the spanner was cold....

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  2. christopher, i find this sentence extremely interesting and...what? challenging. "These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology's failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition." i'm not sure, i'm kind of reacting emotionally but i don't think science or technology will ever answer the questions for us, nor should they. WE fail at answering the questions pertaining to our human condition. that or we are simply rejecting the answers that we don't want to hear. the truth is difficult and not precise, other than we live and die. if we want any further answers we need to get up off our lazy asses and go first to the natural world and then to each other, to human beings, interact for god's sake, and too, we must go inside the self in a quiet and reflective way. isn't it just like us to blame everything else when we don't do the spiritual work that needs to be done!

    jeez! humans!

    love to you))

    xo
    erin

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  3. the image and the poem are so viscerally connected...wow.

    that line ...." the embodied terror i am left holding in my bag of tricks..." i think i actually got chills when i read it. not to mention that cold spanner.

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  4. Nice write...the last stark line really clenches it....

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  5. Using the spanner wrench for the tune up - brilliant.

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  6. we need to get up off our lazy asses and go first to the natural world and then to each other, to human beings, interact for God's sake..

    I second Erin, but with the capital added. Lazy and entitled. Oh how we want everything to come to us. There is work that need doing...spiritual and otherwise.

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  7. besides working for it makes us appreciate it more, especially when it comes to reflection.

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  8. You made all the cogs and wheels in my mind whirr as I read this...thank you. :)

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  9. I could keep finding connections (love/pain, beauty/pain, earth/person, nature/soul, mechanical/emotional...) and bringing up my individual thoughts about them, but overall the metaphor/photo/poem combination works beautifully. Splendid from head to toe.

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  10. I like what you just said above so looked at my word verification, "aucomed ketact" - might prove I'm not a robot but otherwise? Not much going on there today ... alto' I agree with you, sometimes the words are eerie. As for your poem, I agree with Joseph Harker's comment almost in its entirety but especially the final line - splendid from head to toe.

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  11. the bag of tricks line was sublime.
    and thanks to the image, i could feel as well as read the final line.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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