This page presents a narrative of the very earliest concerted actions by Knowles Eddy Knowles.
As we wrote in the catalogue for the traveling show Dabao / Takeout (2013):
The story begins in China.
You formed in the organic mess of School. Such a beginning contains both ambiguous and unambiguous aspects: the former, because you don’t know where it will go, the latter, because you are all in the same place, responding to the same pheromones and stimuli. It is different from being of the same place; you have already left home and are in the process of defining yourself in the heady environment of transaction and transformation. You wonder: what are the limits of School?
Soon after, you literally broke apart out of touch and smell’s reach into the contemporary virtual condition, some allegiances intact and a new acquired laptop. Not to give the impression that locations don’t matter, but they don’t filter down to a common denominator. Except for your own language, to some degree; language, that state between realized and unavailable, forthcoming and withheld, utterance and parole. The formation of a common language, in its infancy, bases itself on abstract situations, where the formal schooled elements carry past their coherency into a communication model and enclave resembling something like a general intellect stir-fried in a medium-sized wok.
Action Figures Action (2004)
this proto-Knowles Eddy Knowles work started with the purchase of action figures from global chain Toys Я Us in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Placing these toys under our clothing, we then commando scrambled around the snow-glutted moats encircling the Citadel, an old military installation in the centre of Halifax, working up a good sweat. Finally, we returned the action figures to Toys Я Us.
Models for Monuments (2004)
The models, made from detritus from art school trash bins, involved no grandiose titles or dedications. They functioned as monuments to the notion of monumentality itself rather than any particular individual or institution.
Subsequently, Knowles Eddy Knowles crept clandestinely into the vacant presentations room of a local architecture school (at the time it was called TUNS) and inserted some of our own makeshift models among those of the students.
Egg Dock (2004)
an action carried out in Kitakyushu Japan to try and coordinate simultaneous docks made from a naturally standardized material available in both locations Knowles Eddy Knowles occupied at the time.
Informal Architectures Residency Studio at the Banff Centre (2004)
Egg dock research in Banff.
Sphere Write Here at the Other Gallery, Banff Centre (2004)
Questions from the Archives, presented as part of the exhibition One Brief Moment at Apexart, NY (2005).
With each exhibition they realize, Apexart publishes a brochure with interviews or text written or chosen by the curators. Knowles Eddy Knowles collected all of the questions from all brochures and asked them again, with their contexts removed, without any answers. The questions played randomly and at variable intervals.
Excerpt:
Lil’ Babylon (2007)
Lil’ Babylon was conducted within the frame of artist Yvette Poorter’s residency project “Dwelling for Intervals” (Knock on Woods). Knowles Eddy Knowles spent a week inside of Poorter’s portable shed within Tent – Centre for Fine Arts in Rotterdam, NL. We used the opportunity staying together to develop models for mutual living and working.
