This was an initial, very hastily jotted off email I had sent to Kaia before the talk she gave in SF last month. We had the idea to include it as part of an "in-process" exchange, though I confess it does seem rather too "jotted off" to me now. I had not been familiar with the work of Amy Balkin, for one thing, who is referenced toward the end of Kaia's talk (though I have since found the documentation of her projects quite amazing), and I think Kaia's very concrete grounding of her questions deserves an equally concrete response, which this little note clearly does not do. Nevertheless, I post it here now, for what it's worth.
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Dear Kaia, Sounds like you have a busy weekend ahead of you...leafblowers and bell-chimes and talks poems texts walks! I feel my imagination of your current projects like a foreshadowing delay or something utopian on the cusp of becoming concrete. Well, in any case, you're already there, in SF!
I read your talk on the B48 bus last night, as it made its slow way from Greenpoint to Lefferts Garden in the gleaming Brooklyn night, on my way to a meeting at the Belladonna office. I like what you're saying about tactics, and will be trying to think about that more in the coming weeks, between the jerk and grind. In terms of the difference between framing and distancing, my gut tells me there is something about the kind of space one is in that must co-determine the tactic. I mean, the high-density sign grove of the suburb/highway median or the grove of signs that has become the city itself, stretching its plastic bubble-time controlled-climate over the isle of Manhattan. Distance=Brooklyn? Is this distance merely aesthetic?
