Pënz (it was pronounced pants)

December 28, 2008.

Last Night.

Linguist signs off with a song dance.

Remembering an Art Year.

Thank you Penz.

-Scryptkeeper, Linguist, Samiya, Night.

So, last night had me really thinking about one of the most intense art projects in which I've ever participated: Pënz (it's pronounced pants). Pënz (a word made up by us four artists) was a year-long, group art project that we did in 2008. It began with a gift of hundreds of 3x5 pre-gesso'd masonite tiles. "We" were four artists - two writers, and two visual artists. All of us multi-disciplinary, but each of us deciding to push our boundaries of art practice for this project. We divided the year based on a lunar calendar, which we then divided based on the Pënz calendar which we constructed. Each Pënz day was actually four solar days. Each of us represented a Pënz day whereby each Pënz day was divided into the four solar days as: MORNING, NOON, TWILIGHT, NIGHT. I was night. We also had our Pënz names based on our art practice: I was the Linguist, there was the Materialist (Wura Natasha Ogunji / Noon), the Conceptualist (Ana Maurine Lara / Twilight), and the Feeler (Senalka McDonald / Morning).

We each had to post "art" every solar day, and each of our Pënz days we had to create and post an art piece which we've done with our Pënz tile. One of my favorite was turning it into a teabag and letting it steep on the window. It really kind of made Pënz tea. Quite fascinating. The tiles, aside from us four, were also distributed around the world. I travelled a lot that year and so did a couple of others. We were based in Austin, TX, and they were left at random places for people to find, wrapped in instructions (which you can see on the blog). We took them everywhere. They were left in hotel rooms all over the country, on airplanes, in bathrooms, given to strangers on the street, used in performances, or just placed on performance stages.

We received Pënz back from all over the country, from Europe, Australia, South America, Mexico. Folks outside of the four were tagged as "GUEST" and we also had a running Guest (the Good Rev), and there folks who participated more than once. I was constantly amazed at the creativity that would be exhibited when people would find this tile, with its simple instructions, and participate with it. Another of my favorite Guest projects came from a guy who sold me shoes in San Francisco. I gave him a tile. A month or two later he emailed it to me completely recreated as a sort of Adonis of shoes in Gay Heaven. Another regular guest was Edgar Easter, who was a stuffed rabbit who became a kind of Pënz mascot. Him, I miss. :) (you can friend him on Facebook though - but be fair-warned: he's a drunken, chain-smoking mess). It was really an amazing project. The project is also currently the subject of a woman's PhD dissertation at Pitt.

You can find out more about the project, the calendar, and see the entire Pënz year by going to the Pënz blog which we kept for the entire year (the sidebar has all kinds of info explaining the project).

This is my last post as Night -- it wasn't my art day, so I just had to post some art -- my art was a kind of video sum-up (with a tongue-in-cheek reference you'll immediately recognize) of the Pënz year. It was really moving to have it end. Four artists, working together, every day for a year. There were days we HATED each other. Hated these tiles. REALLY didn't want to do it. Wanted to quit. It's a miracle that we kept our bargain and kept to all 368 days of the Pënz year. It was 2008 too ... quite a year. Anyway. You can check out the last Night post below. And check out the blog to see the whole Pënz year. Also - at the end, there was a lot of discussion of what to do with all the tiles. I really had to let them go. We also had a couple of dozen left over that hadn't been distributed. They all went to the woman doing the dissertation project, so I have no physical remains. I sent it down the river ... always working with that "greed" thing we're talking about. Pënz belonged to none of us -- we were just the morning, we were just the noon, we were just the twilight, we were just the night. The art was everywhere.