Ewig Gruen

Tochnit Aleph presents Dorothy Iannone's Ewig Gruen. Edition of 270. Full color cover and inner sleeve by Dorothy Iannone. Dorothy Iannone was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1933. She attended Boston University and Brandeis University where she majored in Literature. Since the beginning of her career in the 1960's, Dorothy Iannone has been making vibrant paintings, drawings, prints, films, objects and books, all with a markedly narrative and overtly autobiographical visual feel. Her oeuvre is like an exhilarating ode to an unbridled sexuality and celebration of ecstatic unity, unconditional love, and a singular attachment to Eros as a philosophical concept.Dorothy Iannone talks about Ewig Gruen. "When I was living in France in 1975, I made an audio cassette singing some lines from a famous German song: "Wenn keiner treu Dir bliebe, ich bleib Dir ewig grün, Du meine alte Liebe, Berlin bleibt doch Berlin." (When no one stays by you, I'll remain forever true, my old love, you, Berlin will always stay Berlin.) Maybe the song was on my mind because I had just received the news that I had been awarded a DAAD artist grant for the following year. I was home alone that evening and, after painting for some hours, I decided that, since I still had a lot of energy I would make an audio cassette. I set up my simple equipment on the floor by my bedside. I didn't have any particular plan when I started to sing, but somehow, as I went along, I began caressing myself and my voice changed according to my feelings. But yet despite what I was feeling, the discipline was to keep singing those same four lines. The voice itself expressed the stages of sexual arousal. Shortly before orgasm, I was almost completely breathless and could hardly continue repeating the lines between gasps, and then suddenly, as the orgasm began, my voice became really strong and loud, soaring into the air for some moments before subsiding as I, very softly, managed to utter the concluding lines."