Untitled (Sleep)
Dead Tired: Sleep Texts of Patty Chang & Thomas Devaney | Momenta Art | performance
music: Rosemarys baby/can we make slow motion snow angels?
movement: walking around together and separately following
laying down
round robin poetry
audience laying down, except older people, can stand or sit on the side
#########
T: So tired.
P: yeah, no
P: At the end of the day
T: The sleeping me and me that clicks into my hands.
the mouse pulls me awat from me
P: i love lucys baby is in the second story window tgh jngdp wd --> wagt tgh npd whpjdq the longer we wait the more whiskers there ll be
3/11 11:49pm
T: speelin ist the first to go in sleep xing
P: Seasonal friends say hi and go
3/18 7:45am
T: seasonings/ aren’t all/ only taste
P: Protract contract protract
3/14 8:35am
T: A Pro/Con A Pro Probe
T: hole blown in the ceiling a fountain of pain.
P: Warm places and a bucket not a good idea home safe textimg wakes me
3/10 10:50pm
T: dutchoven catches the leak, my stomach replaces the damp towels
P: Dutch i cant remember why
3/11 12:20am
T: Hope all these messages are going to you and not another person in phone.
P: Weird folk to my finger tips i will rate then for you if i cut them off
goodbye
3/10 11:08pm
T: Limb by limb, my arms and chest merge.
P: Mallards on auto pilot dont want your poetry handouts governor
3/13 12:33am
T: Mallarme on auto pilot rolls the dice &
once again we are all duck duck chocolate moouse,
but this time in French governess
P: Come to an edna
3/13 12:47am
T: ride on mutha....
P: Waves of garbage pass over me it feels guilty
3/11 11:30pm
T: Two hands and none at all. i can’t read what I havent written. Somehow this is all going to show up on next month’s bill.
3/12 2:15am
[BREAK]
P: I thought i was asleep for a longtime but it was just saving time
3/12 3:02pm
T: The constitution is silent on sleep and silence. Lullabye of Birdland Roy Hanes, Clifford Brown, Sarah V swing me to sleep.
P: I didnt floss and im not on ubu
3/11 11:39pm
P: My battery dying
3/12 7:12am
T: leg twisted under leg, the white tube socks of march are kissing cousins.
P: If i wrap me back up no one will every know i was opened
3/12 7:15am
T: so you’re wrapped & have always been wrapped. the morning is a spell.
Now I’m fucked on my txt limit.
P: Every night txtimg makes me hung over
3/12 7:16am
T: It’s easier to txt than to pee; you don't have to aim.
P: Im dying
3/12 7:18am
P: Biten by colorful snakes on my way downtown
T: Plastic snake bites are killer conversation pieces until you die.
P: I know
3/12 7:23am
P: There is a looping non-stop break crashing over me
reach for a replacement, try the straw hat invitation sometime
3/12 2:32pm
T: The bluejay hasn’t changed her fashion since the 30ths. She looks in at me dozing on the couch -- isn’t that enough?
P: Doing nothing but beating faster
3/12 2:38pm
T: Everything makes me pass out and the heart doesn’t always follow the body.
P: God damn the heart.
T: A cock crows inside me, I wake to pee
P: I thought tonight was just for resting. My hand a hook and thumb
3/13 7:26am
T: You fingers, your hands, the phone is all soaked in itself.
P: The fish head has come back from before shoveling it in with a hard hat
3/13 7:42am
T: Then the fish head said nothing tho murmured Don’t forget your keys
P: He was like rubber bloodless more like silicon giving nothing *i could cradle him in my 2 arms
3/13 8:54am
P: So not like real a bloody salivating shitting real person
3/13 8:57am
T: My arms, my chest, which is which?
P: Dropped down no knees all elbows. Abbreviate fortune
3/14 12:13am
T: One clock back/ one clocked forward/ no response not waiting for sleep
3/14 12:58am
P: Day is done Lying side lying back
3/14 12:21am
P: [In] the back room doubles as an office hosing off dread the dead
3/14 12:34am
T: up at three. cracked window the front room is freezing. avoid the dark mirror.
P: Reverberating back to my old self too much seltzer.
3/14 4:05am
T: No way of responding, even to the seltzer, music wasn’t coming from the woman upstairs but my head
3/14 4:21am
T: Small glass here the unseen part of us.
3/14 4:13am
P: Lets stay that way reckless above all
3/14 4:22am
[BREAK]
P: Do you know that song rosemarys baby i saw it in a v neck sweater
3/14 4:32am
T: Dreamy Mia singing. I remember the brightness of the early scenes, the rest is blocked. nothing not to believe.
3/14 4:37pm
P: Lights emit from the body a radiation relieved
3/14 4:45am
T: Three accidents in my sleep the last fatal or too close
wake in a strange room
3/14 4:04am
P: Its 444 just passed luckily
3/14 4:35am
[[BREAK]]
P: Spray painted, like the surface me a ying (of a wing)
3/14 9:09am
T: The other half of this text is missing, two blue arrows appear and disappear.
T: amy re-enacts your piece with a big fan and paint. She’s up. I am not. Old pillowcase, I sink.
P: The clean smell is a restful one.
T: a yawning fit
P: the yawns spread to the bedspreads
T: A broom feel over and hit the floor
3/15 2:00am
[SHORT BREAK--COUNT TO 8]
T: Reports of a massive tsunami. Terrifying even knowing so little.
3/15 4:30am
P: Frighting. Down right terrifying
T: I wake no news the text screen glows a headache creeps like a cat over my eye
P: Still text
3/15 8:15am
P: Custard yawn
3/15 8:16am
T: bowl of cereal no mike no milk
P: Vomit suppress vomit
3/15 4:12pm
T: Working before work
P: Im up but not for long
3/15 8:26 am
T: I am up and could go either way
P: The phone feels like its become part of my hand vibrating up my arm i fall asleep it falls asleep
dead screen saver cross my face
3/15 4:09pm
P: Solarized pupils dilating skylight off!
3/15 4:19pm
T: Gravity. Right now shes untying my shoelaces lace by lace
P: Why are we always sleepy?
3/15 4:20pm
T: Hard to see how you’re going to get out of this day.
P: I know our bio rhythms are sinking
3/15 4:23pm
T: Cannot see them tho every May I sink lower
P: Landing strip lock law to armpit
3/15 4:25pm
(Rosemarys baby with snow angels) 30 seconds
T: Back into my low canvas chair. Blindly type this list. I worry I am not going to be able to work around it. the sleepiness is all out of whack.
P: Dont fear rest
3/15 4:40pm
T: Things to do while sleepwalking: answer your phone, ask a question about my old essay, bold and unbolt the bathroom door, fall.
T: I wonder if we are absorbing extra sleep. Dogs everywhere could be a part of this sleep deficit?
P: A cat passed my window
3/15 4:46pm
T: I have a papermate flexgrip pen in my hand poised to write and have no idea how it got there?
P: I put it there
3/15 4:53pm
[BREAK]
T: In between naps I ride my bike home
3/16 8:06pm
T: I write mostly w/ one eye, one finger
P: How long will you hold your breath if flushed down the toilet?
3/16 8:30am
T: how long will you go before you realize you have to breathe?
P: Legs too short knees touch my calves
3/16 8:53am
T: Need to shower.
T: I’ve never paid attention to myself asleep so much. I am fully asleep now and half awake. But how? One side of my brain is fully off--the dominate side (or no just now) - the Fully Asleep Me side has just kicked in, so now I’m simply half awake instead of half awake and half asleep, now I’m simply normally awake but the other parts are normal too. Not normal awake but normal half awake which I had to become to complete this thought. Otherwise I think could have stayed fully asleep to write which I almost did...and if said, as it is in
P: Never heard the buzz of my inbox so much
T: I miss bands w a bunch of horns
like the one w all those trumpets all hitting the same note
P: Already a million things have happened tonight
3/17 9:50am
T: those sunglasses, beards, high hats motherfuckers
3/18 8:24 pm
P:I have returned to the show this great great show next time its 60 minutes
T: Sleep reaserts itself I fold, a De chirico is the house dealer
P: Landslide stuck in my head
3/17 6:17pm
P: Cant get up for dinner
T: That first day of spring follows you everywhere, even into the dangers of dangers of this morning
T: I am small I contain platitudes, no get rich plans tonight. The noise outside stays there
P: Transylvania towers are all deep underwater
3/18 6:38am
P: Thinking too much they’re drifting farther
3/18 7:36am
T: ceiling collapsing, i don’t want to die here.
P: Enters from the yard wet footprints through the house and out the front door
3/18 8:08am
T: Assessing the messy and saying it is god
3/18 8:13am
P: Bacon strips on white rice
3/19 9:11am
T: The tenderness of the morning is already gone
I am to blame
3/18 8:18am
P: Dry humping on deck. My body is a pool of liquids.
T: big truck horn, my eyes close, again the fog horn, I do not move. deep maroon
P: Deep than before the last thing I saw before mums
3/19 9:10am
T: Oh those people who are gone now--they knew how to dream--and they didn’t have to go to sleep first to do it.
P: I though I typed in all my thoughts but its really a dream zanzibar without anyone noticing.
T: sonic devoice keeps mive away tho also drilling hole in back of head
P: My toenails always seem sore in the morning.
T: I believe in haloes.
3/14 4:41pm
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Untitled (Sleep) 2011, 3 channel video installation
A 3 channel video installation where I documented people either sleeping or resting the the place where they normally work.
Dead Tired: Sleep Texts of Patty Chang and Thomas Devaney explores artists' labor through free-floating apparitions between waking and sleep. Reveries, exhaustion, blankness, misspellings and misunderstandings. Cat naps and the fertile if anxious territory between an artist and a poet are the raw material from which Chang and Devaney presented a new performance. Performed at Momenta Art, Brooklyn NY