boring energy generator ballchain friendship necklaces
trying to do everything at once, as usual
energy generators a la the orgone ones my mom’s best friend’s husband used to make in the early 00s, designed to save the world with their reverberations;
these ones are time capsules or place capsules, homeopathic, holographic in that they contain the multitudes, a la bugs in amber;
these are shiny found scraps in resin, held together, haptic poetry
ballchains in honor of my raver days, a quiet symbol of ravery
also the ballchain hallway at burningman annie and i encountered, swept ourselves thru, at dawn on the salt flats in 2005
friendship because it’s sometimes all i can think about, my friendships in their various states of vigor or decay, the tenuous links that hold us together, the memories, the shared experiences, the connections between us that can activate or fail to, how connections persist across distances, space and time
the times we spent together as silly-little capsules, little nests of nearness but never quite merged, always at a little distance, together but still at least a little apart
boring because i’m in boring, oregon, my hometown; i have a peculiar relationship to boring and to the boring, boring like boring holes and tunnels, boring like a yawning, a yearning, maybe a calming or a peace-space in an abstract way,
so in honor of all this i made 49 boring energy generator ballchain friendship necklaces, seven series of seven, thinking of rhizome’s seven-on-seven again, something about that exercise excites my sense of possibility, stays with me
also the scene in “there’s something about mary” where the serial killer waxes on about “seven minute abs”
i was always a bigger fan of 0 and 9 as numbers go but for this project, seven times seven felt right
do i still have 49 friends? did i ever? how many friends did i have on myspace?
i made seven series of seven boring energy generators each, each with a loose theme curdled or accumulated around a loose-knit friendworld, a friendzone, a type of friendships i want to honor and hold close, have held close
for each set of seven i gathered silly-little remnants that reminded me of said friendworld, the friends in that space, then wrote a seven-line poem as a reflection of and an offering to that friendship, cut it into seven lines, then submerged the poem-lines and the silly-little remnants in 2-part resin, molded them into silicone shapes, threaded them onto ballchain, gathered them together, over time until there were 49 to send out to my friends in the world (and a few more for Samimi)
here below you can see seven slideshows, each with eight slides, one for the poem held line-by-line inside the concomitant energy generators; the other seven for the aforementioned energy generators, each in a kinetic scan, kind of capsules in and of themselves.
- charming local field
charming local field, or, the gift of the gathering, late April 2021
this series comes from a walk in the field and stand of trees behind my house, the field i would walk across to meet jenie in middleschool, the field me, jenie, major, and tyler walked across the summer before sophomore year of highschool one night high on black pyramid, the field i know by heart. embedded in these energy generators are things i found in the field, beneath the trees: hawk feathers, foil from a birthday balloon, a chip off a golf ball, green tie tape, mole dirt; and body glitter from the stick of glitter tyler shoplifted me from Clackamas Town Center in 1999.
2. bad-kid corner
bad-kid corner, or leap second, safety third, early May 2021, made with leftovers from my beltane birthday party at Andrea’s house, when us friends-since-adolescence walked to the middle school across the greenspace and cut rowan branches off the nearby trees to wind red thread around along with our wishes for the next year, and tiedyed and bleachdyed tshirts together. these contain birthday scraps: red yarn, teal-dyed cotton, birthday-cake-flavored weed-cookie crumbles, crossword scratchoffs, rowan leaves, and more of tyler’s glitter
3. river/raver
river/raver, late May 2021, my two favorite venues to tempt fate & build trust in the cuspy 00s & onward; the casual dangerousness of ravery & rivery was always a draw for me whether I saw it as such or not, the near-deathness and the making-it-thru-togetherness, emerging on the other side both worse and better for wear. These ones have leftovers from my early raver days along with riverside groundscores from a trip to Dodge Park with my kid in Spring 2021: pony beads, elastic, gravel, bark mulch, crawdad claw, cigarette butt, daisies, bottle foil, and tyler glitter
4. alien radio
Alien Radio, or, Eugeneration, Eugene where I got to be friends with all the most beautiful & wild & weird women, always a bit unsure why they let me tag along with them on their adventures, all the established bonds and deep fam, Oregon Country Fair camps and Burning Man excursions and working at Ruthie B’s the feminist-casual tea shop and dancing frantically at 80s night at John Henry’s; and our own rituals, the bikini carwash and the Jesus sandwiches and the years just leaning into one another and going too hard or almost too hard, again that frantic near-death yearning. I dredged up some remnants from the archives to embed: carnelian beads & fluorite beads, cubensis, weed, an earring kt made, pine needles, denim scraps, burning man glass & dust, neongreen medusa’s makeup brand glitter from annie
5. doing other people’s dishes
These ones are in homage to all my work friends, all the ways that shared responsibility brings us together, all the strange bonds that I have built thru mutual reinforcement throughout my life. Especially during our era of social distancing, my current workmates (gruff as they may be) have been a strong social outlet, since we never much stopped working at the shop on the farm together. But in thinking of them I also think of all the friends I have made at all my jobs, from Paola’s Pizza Barn and Bi-Mart to Englishtime and AUW and LSI. The things in these objects come from my current job as a management assistant/parts chaser/central purchaser in the Hood Acres Shop at a wholesale shade tree nursery in Boring, where I encounter many appealing scraps and leftovers, industrial and agricultural remains: heat-damaged leaves, copper wire, spent lathe metal, printer toner, Brother labelmaker ends, and some tyler glitter for good measure
6. a flag that is also a pocket
i’m not sure how I made friends with so many artists but I think I know why 🙂 these are full of art scraps: fabric leftovers, seeds from Giovanna Olmos, lines from one of the things I wrote for Provision/Converge45, letter beads, shiny plastic cord protectors, glass beads from Garima Thakur, a qr code, more tyler glitter for more good measure
7. silly-little infinities
friendship is recursive, looping, returning-to and building-upon, as is this set of seven, made of leftovers from the other six, packing materials and things i forgot to put in: metal shavings from the locksmith, spent metal from the lathe, ballchain, old slivers of epoxy, bubble wrap, jewelry findings, sun-damaged gingko leaves, packing foam, and still more tyler glitter, for ever for good measure
❤ made with love in 2021 by Tori Reis
