Emily Furr

I first met Constance when I took her book-making course. Because we were both from the midwest and used the cosmos in our work, we formed an instant bond. My art evolved a lot in that class, and I was so grateful she was available to be my advisor thesis semester. Constance pushed me in that final semester to be honest in my work and to not be afraid to use humor. Because I loved her sly smile, my paintings evolved to have a certain wittiness to them. I don't know if I would be the artist I am today without her. Thank you Constance. 



Emily Furr
MFA ‘18
www.furrvisions.com

© the artist

Rachel Valinsky

I’m not sure how I first came to Constance DeJong’s work but I remember the lead-up: Modern Love hadn’t yet been re-issued so I booked myself an afternoon at the Fales Collection archive (so luxurious to imagine now, with the libraries closed…), and wrested some precious hours from whatever other urgencies pressed on, to pore over Lucy Amarillo, Modern Love, and anything else of hers I could get my hands on. I was preparing for our first encounter: a “reading” I invited Constance to give at the Segue Reading Series (was it Spring 2016)? Of course, as I had yet to learn and would soon discover, Constance doesn’t read so much as channel, like a bard trafficking in memory as a medium.

It’s 2020 and hard to imagine ever not knowing Constance. Curious about what that might have looked like I returned to the introduction I wrote for her in 2016:


In Modern Love, Constance writes: “I’m after a total effect, wanting to see how it all fits together.” I carried this sentence with me as I read along, held the sensation of total effect as I watched her perform the text in a grainy black and white video shot in 1978 at Western Front in Vancouver. She recites from the book fluidly, from memory: the narrative travels through a circuit of encoded inflections, affects, and cues even the most perspicacious of listeners might only begin to unravel. I imagine the Yatesian palace erected to commit names, sentences, events and dialogues to memory—or did she even need to? In a 2003 interview with Tony Oursler, she writes: “I always said I’m just an instrument; I’m transparent, like a medium, the language passes through me. Which is a bit like saying I’m a recording device…I had a real connection to ongoing, language production in real time.”

Constance’s writing and performance explodes and exploits the sentencing of language: its shifting materiality, syntax, and semiotics and its communicability in real time, in the present time allotted to performing. A sentence as the time that language takes.

She writes: “Here’s the story. I’m in my room. It’s a long sentence: I sit, I stand, I drift back and forth between these walls, flitting over the floor boards, wearing myself to a shadow, comparing myself to the flickering gleams on the ceiling the walls, attempting to merge with the background, trying to become anonymous, hoping to stay forever in the total freedom of obscurity, I’m imprisoned, dreaming hard. This goes on for seven years. It was a long sentence.”


Turning back to this last passage, which had struck me already then, I witness it transforming, gaining with this new reading a bewildering relevance as I contemplate containment within the walls of my apartment and try to dream myself out of it for days on end. How to tell a story about time when we’re caught up in this long present? Constance’s capacious writing and brilliant, mnemonic enactments show us the way.



Rachel Valinsky, May 2020
rachelvalinsky.com

© the artist

Natalee Cayton

Without Constance my voice would be muddled and insecure. I write endlessly grateful.



Variation XLV

All my lovers of love love junkies connoisseurs fiends addicts experts were there with me.


Whales die and sometimes wash ashore just a baby boy by my hand.

She holds her chin before her eyes but that’s not what’s keeping her still. Her broad hand raises
Defiant eyebrows and landscape eyes fall open on
I’ll keep this puddle in your hand for us.

The extra limb and yet another between a flop and a pull she wields gravity on an aggressively giving she she loves. To kiss a kiss. Necks arch and flank. All the earrings and a necklace have even more to press.

Be
Hold
Pockets for hands hands replace pockets and a neck to hold looking. Green brown and hazel eyes in a three hand hold out for a walk in the middle drives and minds beginning to be braided long from looking from coming from the back and around again.


Few remind me that hes and shes are more. We spoke about it among the rambling. Today such a one is with me reminding me of her and her and him self.

For soft clothing thank
god, it’s not that serious
but feels like it is.

While the bar empties itself without will or conscious control she cuts her nails.

Shes searching for the difference between drunk and miserable. She assumes the posture of someone grieving someone in an ordinary stage of losing it. For hours she lies with the ashtray on her stomach. She lets wine slowly run over lips of glasses. She turns her back to you and becomes silent with another you. There and not there faces fall to blankets her arms grasp while her ass lifts and back curls over and over.

She is where.
Live life to write life life is full of words and lose some leaves to stay alive. There’s a woman in that tree and an excerpt full of portraits. Tell me again and again. “I can feel how open you are,” she says.

Situated in the confines of I wish I could read this to him. His death just before the virus must mean something. Why can’t we share him and her and her?

Let’s pay the rich to watch us eat!

Let me be a place.

A place you want to be. A future place that satisfies our desire to do more now or the island nestled between the legs of a giant goddess in a manner or way that could not be better when some earth work has been done. How does it feel mid sweep? Ample far reaching spreading commanding at the same time I’ll learn how you are different so full of grateful.

Slow excitement.



Variation IVX, 2020
Text

Formscore (Rules for Variations), 2012
Text


Natalee Cayton
MFA ‘14
www.nataleecayton.com

© the artist

Chang Sujung


Love Tooth, 2020
Sound
2 minutes, 37 seconds

Narrated by Lilian Paige Walton.
If available, please wear headphones.


Under the auspices of a love story, Love Tooth explores the connection between the mind and body with binaural sound editing. Using this technique, sound moves around the listener's head to mirror the sense of direction described in the narration.

Chang Sujung
MFA ‘17
www.sujungchang.com

© the artist

Peter Hoffmeister

It is always a pleasure to see Constance. Whether it is a quick hello before one of her classes, or an extended conversation, her words express an insightful disposition. She possesses an unmistakable wit, cutting away all that is superfluous, to reveal the essence of whatever is currently occupying her attention. She is a keen observer of her environment—a prerequisite for any artist—and is especially a great mentor.

When I was a student in the MFA program at Hunter College, I took all the classes Constance offered and asked her to be my thesis adviser. For some reason, she agreed. I felt particularly lucky because she is always in such high demand. Getting Constance as your thesis adviser is like winning a sweepstakes—you are lucky.

Something Constance has done for many of her students over the years, including myself, is to help us understand sound as an autonomous material. Meaning, we live in a sight-centric culture that values the seen above all else, where sound is often relegated to a supporting role, a device used to narrate the visual. After taking her sound class, I found myself truly listening to everything around me, paying closer attention to the nuances. This does not mean I suddenly turned into an artist who primarily works with sound—though I did work with sound for a part of my thesis—but the world before me was forever expanded, deepened with possibility.

Peter Hoffmeister
MFA ‘17
www.peterjhoffmeister.com

Thesis work with Constance DeJong:

Scrub, 2017
Audio equipment
4 min, 10 sec (looped)

Phantom Nation, 2017
U.S. government documents laser etched into plywood, indelible ink, Plexiglas, MDF, paint
Dimensions variable

© the artist