limina, lumina,,. October 19 – November 23, 2024. Lindsey Harald-Wong, Narong Tintamusik, Catherine Menard, Daniel Schubert, October Anderson, Mayolo Figueroa, Kento Saisho. Group exhibition. 4478. Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 6pm - 9pm. _ _ Limina, plural of ‘limen,’ a crossing of a limit—a threshold of a crossing. At least doubled: a multiplied borderland, a multiple border…. A word from anatomy: lumina, (plural of ‘lumen’): “the central cavity of a tubular or other hollow structure in an organism or cell.” From the late-19th century: from Latin, literally ‘opening.’ Or, a word from physics, from Latin, ‘light.’ So a hollow, a light, or an opening. But not an absence—but maybe a pathway or passage. A connection between different parts or places (of a body). A medium: a movement between limits, between thresholds, between limina, a word from psychology: limina, (plural of ‘limen’): “a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived or is not distinguished from another.” From mid-17th century: from Latin, ‘threshold.’ A repeat horizon, a litmus test. An anatomy, a psychology, a physicality(, and a test): some opposed limits of (the study of) a body and its circulations or disturbances. Interstitial, in-between forms whose lacks form the limits of the other. A non-orientable tubular twisting, whirling, whorling, spiraling of one along the lacks and limits another, until it becomes the next one. Annihilated, illuminated. Se elimina, se ilumina. A heteroglossia (spoken like a spell). (“ limina, lumina,,”) A complex communication, between limina, lumina,, …. Already at the threshold of this exhibition is the place of an artwork (and the gallery itself) as a record, cipher, seam, or portal between op/positions of a body: between inside and outside, subject and object, self and other, surface and void, sense and nonsense, delirium and lucidity, hunger and satiation, life and death, night and day, (past,) present and future…. But these continual pairings tend to be sleepy, soporific sequences (recurring like dog bites (bad) dreams) that rest on inherited dualities, hypnotic habits, and regulated orders. On alreadies and over-and-overs. This is probably at least part of the reason why, in (global) contemporary contexts of cultural (art)work, social practices, and academic research, a between often appears in the place of a disinheritance or disidentification—a break—with conventional, traditional, or already-operational positions (or professions): inter-disciplinary, inter-sectionality, cross-cultural, trans-corporeality…. (Even the “post-,” “non-,” and “multi-” versions suggest something of a betweenness since they all still function to displace a practice beyond prior positions or singular borders.) Historically, habitually, these breaks (or bridges?) have produced hopefully critical perspectives and practices organized around hybrid identities and split positions, a kind of borderlands realized through a re-focusing on relations and complex connections between bodies staked at their limits and the linguistic, social, political, and economic systems they inhabit. Though, of course, turns of phrase won’t necessarily pull us from the rift they are pointing-to. (Especially when they remain locked-into the same master dialect(ic) of binary structures.) But maybe this work is symptomatic of a between as a power forming in the place of a resistance or insurgency, of a place on the verge of transformation or transition—of somewhere that refuses to stay-still. Somewhere elsewhere and otherwise. Something different and distant (while remaining… …right at the center, nearby). Sometime between altæred states and changes of phase. Something at its limits, on the brink. A passing or passage. (An eclipse.) An interval between or beyond event horizons: at the edge of energy and information (or apparitions). A hole with its brim as the abyss. Something liminal, luminal. Some limina, lumina,, Remaining at the limen, at the perforated threshold of these precarious, shifting states, how might we work with relations between more than one border, more than one (being-in-a-) body, multiple divisions and disorientations, more than one inside or outside (all while remaining between)….? Or, what would it be to account for a betweenness without only defining its equalized limits, without reducing asymmetrical doubles and (two)folds to the symmetry of binaries and dichotomies? (After all, there’s always already a 3 in a 2: a third part that parts, partitions.) Or, better yet, what would it be to work with both at the same time, with its limits (its lines) and its lacks? What would it be to work with betweenness as this interstitial, primordial process of producing distance and difference without reducing it to a null, blinking instant of forgetting? (And without reducing it to some kind of mystical fluid—without falling with its vertigo.) To work with a betweenness as a medium and material—a substrate or substance—as well as a moment and a movement. Initially (and ultimately), the exhibition keeps asking about the status of a between as a paradoxical place that structures a variety of relations: physical, psychical, structural, social, (al)chemical, political, spatial, temporal, historical.... Basically, what does it mean for something or someone to be “between” (rather than decidedly occurring on any particular ‘side’)? Where is between? What takes-place in-between (and what’s out-between)? Built with works that gather as they form, as they cross, the exhibition installs these questions and problems of betweenness by working-through the uniquely ranging im/materialities and bodies of each piece and their interrelations with others. While most of the artists are based here in Los Angeles, there are two artists from elsewhere: Harald-Wong is based in Malaysia, and Tintamusik is based in Texas. So, on a certain level this question of borders, crossings, customs, and distances is a practical dimension of the works’ realities and the exhibition’s position between heres and theres. And, in general, the pieces tend toward a performance of liminal, luminal—interstitial—states along every dimension of their production: materially, conceptually, technically…. Ranging between sculptural metalwork, terrestrial painting, frenetic drawing, resinous condensations (or plasticky indigestions), suspended (Thai) foods, nighttime photography, and clairvoyant durational (video and sound) work, the array of media supplies variable entryways to the paths of the exhibition (both within and beyond the scope addressed by this text—there’s always some light that escapes!). Folding onto themselves, many of the materials are reflective of their techniques and (conceptual) processes (and vice-versa): a sculptural painting with food that seems to present a suspended moment of digestion (a stuffed lumen, a full void, something in-the-middle of being processed); little balls of steel-shot hotly sutured into pointillistic contours that never really decide whether they are made of points or lines; still-sticky pieces of tape tiling themselves into a trace of its double displayed on the ground; a photograph of (the San Gabriel River at) night (that is, a light capturing the limits of what’s illuminated (and remember: a river is as in-between as the night, especially when in it (either one)); some landlike paintings hanging like a signpost at a crossroads; a yonic, cloven monolith that splits its visions between activity and an aftermath—an after/life; and works on paper that hold the imprints and traces of contact and crossings—papers that are the mediums as much as the marks made upon them, that are lifeforms as much as those who made them. Together, the works might demonstrate ways of presenting—not representing—interstitialities of limina and lumina without reducing them to any particular state, or any particular instance, of betweenness. They show limits becoming pathways, and viscera becoming husks. (And then they do it all again in the opposite direction, moving back-and-forth like a typewriter’s ribbon (like this text).) Eventually, working-through this middled place of in-betweens may also lead toward the contours of power and the borders of regulatory systems. By the fact of being a process of transition and communication (of difference), an in-between is a place of vulnerability—and opening-up—where ‘one thing’ often leads to ‘another.’ It is a place of action and exchange between instances, between bodies, between informations. And therefore it is a place of potential violation and violence, as well as a place of necessary change (of moving from one point to another…). It is based on what happens ‘in-between’ that lines of power are drawn (written)—and along these borderlines the organizations of systems are rendered and redistributed. As an economy. Or, hopefully, as an ethics (self-constructed (with others)). Or, maybe, as an aesthetics in the place of an ethics. Or as a site of becoming—of radical embodiments. As Maria Lugones says in her essay “On Complex Communication,” That is, to place ourselves in the limen, in a borderland, is to conceive of “ourselves” as not exhausted by domination. […] Indeed, as liminal we need to engage in a poiesis, a self-construction, an arduous and dangerous process. But to conceive of such “a poiesis, a self-construction” in terms of a non-dual or de-doubled betweenness would be to reconsider a borderlands as a non-binary mutilplicity or interstitiality, more than a hybridity or a mere split (of identity or position (nationality)). An undecidability that produces a series of differences and distances across or between dis/connected spaces and times. Between limits and hollows. Between limina, lumina,, Limina, plural of ‘limen,’ a multiplied borderland, a multiple border. A crossing, a limit—a threshold of a crossing, a word from psychology: limen, a repeat horizon, a litmus test. Where something begins its presencing. Lumina, a word from anatomy: lumina, a hollow, a light, or an opening. But not an absence—but maybe a pathway or passage. A connection between different parts or places (of a body). A medium: a movement between limits, between thresholds, between limina, lumina,, …. An indifference between a definition and a delirium—or, some snowdrifts and scarecrows With all this circling around what is being said, there’s still something difficult to define about an “in-between.” Despite its frequency and apparent necessity for saying and situating split or middled states, something seems to disappear in its place as soon as everything around it assumes position—like the distance between each of these letters, the difference between each of these words. But sometimes it seems like a between might be more immediately recognized. As the exposed framing of the gallery walls and ceilings: the spaces between beams, the gaps between 2 x 4s. Like the geometry of points, lines, and voids (or faces): a boundary, a line | as a writing or drawing between each side that gathers along its signing, its seaming. Or maybe the void (or the face) is an in-between. Or maybe the line was a hollow tunnel to begin with, a cut. Or maybe the points at the intersections are the in-betweens, only appearing at the crossings as punctures of perspective. Or, maybe, this indecisive turning from one place to another is a symptom of the slippery relativity of this liminal, luminal,, place. A limit or a horizon, a hollow or a pathway. A bounded burrowing. Dilating, doubling. In any case, to repeat and reiterate: as much as a in-between seems to defy categorization or containment, it is also precisely the position that makes categorization and containment (of something, somewhere, someone, or sometime else) possible. A way of accounting for in/distinction, change, movement (between limits); or, lapses, lacks, and gaps. It is a necessary act of documentation or recording—a record. And a process: a processing materializes as an in-between: a latent, unseen, or forgotten transformation. A productive negation, a negative magnitude (maybe). …But as I am already back to circling, there’s obviously some kind of vertigo creeping-in here, between a definition and the delirium it sets-off. At a first glance, or if only handed-over textually, these flashes are still stuck in narrative definitions and spatial imaginations (and metaphors) of an in-between; and an “in-between” is also a necessary structure of time and movement, a practice or process of material phases and shifts. But without an object at hand, without the act or performance of actually passing-through the exhibition, it’s likely impossible to overcome an imagination of an in-between—it’s likely not possible to work with this timing or temporality of a between as an interval. Without an object or some kind of bodily entanglement with the works, it’s all just snowdrifts and scarecrows, baby! (Dangerously gathered-up like unsown seeds by the winds, or deceitfully made to scare you away like a peckish bird.) And this work with limina, lumina,, requires an activation or activism (like keeping-track of these commas,,,), a direct working-along the object: the exhibition (and its populations). It requires the time to actually play-out: an interval of necessary distance or difference (between events) inflicted by time—but also by the gaze, or at the least an act of observation. (An act of going-to the gallery.) Image: Narong Tintamusik. "Digestate 6." Acrylic, aniline wood dye, Thai food ingredients, wastewater on wood panel. 2024.