Rhythm of Structure

‘Rhythm of Structure’ – which, with its cacophony of music, poetry, dance, and visual components was originally presented at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York from 2009–10, and which, at the end of last year was the subject of an exhibition at the Herndon Gallery, Antioch College, Ohio – could be looked at from several angles; from the happenings of the 1960s, from performance art, or from mathematics.

It runs the gamut from etched tabletops, rope configurations of (in mathematical terms) nine to the second power, to a graffiti quilt. Slam poets, high school art students and former U.S. poet laureate Mark Strand performed parallel to the percussive sounds of Brother Num, and the poetics of Karen Finley and the project curator’s John Sims segued into the experimental music of Greg Tate, critic and performer. The celebrated flautist Yael Acher made periodic appearances throughout. In its first incarnation the project was broken down into a series of events mounted over a year’s period. Groups of visual artists were paired with poets and performance artists based on themes such as geometry, socio-politics and conceptual theory. These themes were broken down into subsets of three: the Cartesian Math/Art Hive is representative of geometric concepts of circles and squares; You Lie, and The Square Root of Love, signify the socio-politics of how statistics are skewed and the dynamics of love relationships, respectively; and a Mathematical Graffiti Wall serves as a synthesis of mathematical ideas, presented in a conceptual framework. The resultant project included a traveling exhibition, catalogue and video – presented at the Bowery Club last November – all designed to present a kaleidoscopic view of mathematical concepts merged with the poetics of language, visual art and performance.

Mentored by Sol le Witt, Sims mines the fields of conceptual art in a myriad of ways. ‘Rhythm of Structure’ delves into the collective/collaborative realm of mathematics via staged performances that complement two dimensional and process art. Taking cues and parameters from Sims, artists such as Bob Holman, Shanxing Wang, Kristin Prevallet, Latasha Diggs and Brother Num respond and improvise through language and music. (Num’s music is the glue that holds many of the performances together; he is a percussionist that sees jazz and music in relationship to an equation or mathematical theory.) The dancer Pooh Kaye, for instance, responded to the work of Ken Hiratsuka; falling and tumbling to the floor from a seated position, writhing and cradling her body and then free falling again to the percussive musings of Michael Suchorsky. These collaborations bring to mind Richard Kostelantz’s commentary written in 1968 on the structure of staged happenings ‘Staged happenings differ from pure happenings primarily in occurring in a defined space, mostly on a theatrical stage. Otherwise the actions of the participants are variable or indeterminate from performance to performance; either chance operations or a flexible script ensure that events can not be duplicated… the audience is usually separated from the performers ; thus its role observational than participatory.’

The visual components in ‘Rhythm of Structure’ for the most part employ formalism such as works on paper by John Hiigli and Vandom Hinnant, both of whom base their works on graphic principles of geometry, such as the structures of the Isotropic Vector Matrix, and five concentric circles based on the Euclidian Theorem of two points on a plane, respectively. Other artists rely on conceptual underpinnings of how mathematics is used to collect data; for instance, Dread Scott uncovers the fallacious use of statistic to skew poll results. Japanese artist Ken Hiratsuka’s stone etching entitled Chained Universe (2002) charts the paths of an imaginary river and Paulus Gerdes’ meandering lines made of jute serves as a diagram of his theory derived from sona geometry, indigenous to eastern Angola, mirror-curves.

‘The Square Root of Love’ event presented in autumn 2010 featured Finley along with Sims. Their graphic interpretations of love through the equation sign, vinyl albums with pink centers and hearts contained in cubic grids were simplistically rendered. They bantered in performance through a private code. (Sims says, ‘What we are doing is co-mingling math language with the language of the heart… What is love really?’ Finley responds, ‘It’s a many splendoured things’ with a chuckle and the beat goes on.)

Sims is the ringleader of ‘Rhythm of Structure’ in the sense that Allan Kaprow, who coined the term ‘Happening’ in the ‘60s, suggested; akin to a baseball coach giving general instructions, and thus differing significantly from a theatre director or choreographer. ‘Rhythm of Structure’ is the most ambitious of Sims’ projects to date; it involves more than 40 performers and visual artists with each functioning individually and as part of a collective simultaneously. Sims’ works include quilts created in collaboration with Amish quilters, (Square Roots: A Quilted Manifesto ,2008) and controversial flags that reconfigure the flags of Israel and Palestine to construct socio-political commentary (Recoloration Proclamation ,2004-present). His Confederate flag rendered in diverse configurations using black liberation colours – Afro Confederate Flag (2004) – is an ironic motif in itself. Of note is another grand endeavour where he proposes to convert NYC into a giant clock.

An hour long video that captures the salient moments of each performance and accompanying art work was an outgrowth of the project’s presentation in Florida, the Selby Gallery at Ringling College of Art and Design in 2011. It opens with a poem by Sims that encapsulates the foundation of his themes; ‘In the beginning there was the breath of Nature Creating a mixing of all things mixable … To the advent of cycles, patterns and organic geometries / Whose role is to map the structure and console the lost soul of randomness… For the Connections and Patterns / That speak to the evolving rhythm of structure / That structures our reality with the Infinite and Finite Circles and Squares Blacks and Whites Trees and Roots…’

Sims attempts to convey a message that, in a very abstract way, links maths to art to life as performance. The overall impact of my experience of ‘The Cartesian Math/Art Hive’ a few years ago, in 2009, at the Bowery Poetry Club was that the project was a little disjointed. The relationship between the work and the performance was not clear. However, when the lights dimmed and poets such as Titiana Bonch and Ktidten Prevallet took their places it created a scene redolent of the Beat era of the ‘50s. The final poet to speak truly grabbed my attention. In the spirit of the Last Poets and contemporary spoken word salons, Faybiene Miranda dramatized her poem using only her voice – a fluid undulation of words half sung and spoken.

‘Rhythm of Structure’ sits in a long tradition of art salons, Beat era happenings, performance art and spoken word events and exhibits. Although this project began at the Bowery Poetry Club, the eclectic confluence of maths, performance and visual art has caught on at college campuses in New York, Florida and Ohio. Students from the Brooklyn Academy of Science and Environment tried their hands at the visualization of mathematical proofs and, in the project’s second incarnation, students from Ringling College of Art and Design helped to create a mathematically-inspired graffiti wall. We await the continuing evolution of JohnSimsProjects.