THE PUIJO HILL 3-DAY

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:12:19 -0500

"In the Palace of Excess Imagination"

NY Times 9/11/09

October is the month without gods the Japanese say,

But this is September, month of the equinox,

light and dark measured in equal measure.

Rational, balanced. A month of record lows,

but record highs, too.

And the tourists are back--

it took them years--filling the New York streets

with their small, democratic opinions.

And William Blake is here, too, in town at the Morgan.

Beautiful, demented Blake. Who is easily bad

ten times more often than Vermeer and Monet

and Warhol and Oldenberg (who are also in town)

put together. Blake, that heaven of one.

Who felt often like Job--underfunded,

picked on by God. If Blake had invented

the camera, he'd have documented his fuming

and called it a day. But for the Romantics

suffering as performance wasn't a concept:

Keats coughed, Byron limped, Wordsworth lay

in bed with migraine, Coleridge rehabbed,

Shelley was nearly dead swimming laps for the big race.

I know an artist going to Finland for the weekend;

for three days he'll walk Puijo Hill as an artistic act.

It's a kind of race but no one can tell who wins--

But in photos he's posed his friends wearing

racing bibs with numbers like 219 and 383.

He doesn't have 383 friends, but the ones he has

will be with him conceptually, suffering,

thinking of him at 5:00 p.m. Sunday, his final climb

in the brilliant, egalitarian Finnish light,

the last gawkers and talkers gone home for fish soup.

And he's hot and the shadows are long

and the gods of walking and conceptualism

and realism, the gods of silhouettes

and full frontals, and of history and sculpture,

and the gods of the two and three and fourth

dimensions will have deserted him, all packed

for October, already. What do they care?

And the first stars will surface then, and the sky

will finally match the depth of the ocean,

and the dipper will come out like a long-tailed "Q"

and he will walk home under the stars because

Walking is what he does--And without gods--

without irony--he'll say to the sky and the path

"Look what I've made. Isn't it beautiful?"

Barry Flanagan is dead today of ALS--

that nightmare suffocation, the body closing

and closing its rooms--Flanagan,

who forged those goofy hares sailing like supermen--

who loved pulling his airstream, the obituary says,

through the capitals of Europe, but who

loved sculpture more. Suffering is what artists do best

unless it's rabbits or women pouring milk into bowls

or walking or waterlilies--miles of them--

trailersfull of them that Monet drove to Paris

where a grateful French nation built

a house for them where they burn like stars.

And I sat there alone and godless once--

It was October, 1988--And I drowned in them.

-Keith Ratzlaff

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:55:19 -0500

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:14:05 -0500

Regin Igloria's web site

ANTI Festival

Zg Gallery

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:14:03 -0500

JOIN THE HIKE

Everyone is welcome to participate in the Puijo Hill 3-Day:

IN KUOPIO Friday, September 25-Sunday, September 27, 2009

The artist will be present at his base camp, located next to the Grand Cemetery: Puijonkatu (see map here) to meet participants on the hour at 10 a.m., 12 p.m, 2 p.m., 4 p.m., and 6 p.m. for each of the three days of the ANTI Festival. The last group hike will begin 6 p.m. on Sunday the 27th. Participants will be issued a bib number to identify them as an official walker.

ELSEWHERE Dates and times to be determined by participants

Those who are unable to travel to Kuopio or attend the ANTI Festival may choose to participate as an "at-home" participant. The walking course will be held at a time and location of their choice, for any length and duration.

Instructions:

1. Email a shipping address to the artist at: reginigloria@gmail.com to register for the event, or send him a message directly on twitter: @rvigloria. A bib number will be sent to you after your request is made. Please allow up to a week for the number to arrive.

2. Before, during, or after the walk, participants are asked to document their hike with a photo on location. The setting and context is up to you. Please have the bib number showing in the photograph for identification.

3. Send a jpeg of the photo back to the artist at the above email address. A souvenir embroidered patch will be sent to you once the image of your walk is received.

Registration is limited to 500 participants total for both Kuopio and at-home walkers.

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:14:01 -0500

ABOUT

The Puijo Hill 3-Day is a durational performance that uses walking as a means to explore one's connection to others. Based on athletic events organized to raise funds, develop awareness, and bring people together, the work asks others to participate in a group activity which defines its cause individually and personally. There is NO FEE and participants are encouraged to have friends and family join them for the event.

Chicago-based artist, Regin Igloria, takes on the task of hiking up and down a hill that runs along Puijo Ridge, the famous landmark of Kuopio, Finland. Over the course of three days at the ANTI Festival, others may join him on his walk, while "at-home" participants determine a route and setting of their own.

This project is part of an ongoing series of performance hikes done by the artist which explore movement found within the natural environment, mostly of the kind experienced among the privileged in the travel and tourism industry. The artist interprets the struggle, challenge, and opposition encountered in everyday life through physical activity. Like his drawings and 2-D works, these works embrace an athletic tone, as if taking on the tedium of training and exercising. He constantly asks, ‘How well, how fast, how long, and how much better can one handle the hard work...and is it ultimately worth doing?'