{"id":119844,"date":"2018-01-08T13:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=119844"},"modified":"2018-01-08T19:21:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T00:21:58","slug":"tom-sachs-and-david-searcy-japanese-tea-rockets-and-switchblades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/08\/tom-sachs-and-david-searcy-japanese-tea-rockets-and-switchblades\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Sachs and David Searcy: Japanese Tea, Rockets, and Switchblades"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

\u201cTom Sachs: Tea Ceremony\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (which closed yesterday)\u00a0was a vast and complex exhibition of ideas within ideas about ideas, wherein the protocols of the Japanese tea ceremony and those of NASA<\/small>\u2019s space program are revealed to express opposed yet deeply similar understandings and even longings. There is a \u201cme upon my pony on my boat\u201d sort of yearning throughout this profound yet willfully childlike theater of imitation. Lucia Simek, an artist and the communications manager for the museum, and a friend of both Sachs and the writer David Searcy, arranged for the two to get together in the spirit of their weirdly similar interests\u2014rockets, Mars, Japanese tea bowls, and switchblade knives.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Part\u00a01<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Tom Sachs (left) and David Searcy (right) standing by Sachs\u2019s Big Cock<\/em>, a reconstruction, in red-painted 1\/4 inch plywood puzzle pieces, of Brancusi\u2019s famous abstract rooster.<\/p><\/div>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I had great doubts after just seeing shots of this piece in the press. It looked like easy ironies. I didn\u2019t realize this was after the Brancusi, I thought this was Jean Arp or something. But immediately, when I saw it in person, I came upon this thing that\u2019s just adoration. I thought to myself, This is a guy who does crossword puzzles with a ballpoint pen.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

(L<\/em>aughs.<\/em>) Thank you. I really appreciate that. My drawing teacher was Guy Goodwin. He taught at Cooper Union, and at Bennington, where I went. He\u2019s a legend at helping each person find their way into drawing. And for me, he was just, Draw it! And sometimes he\u2019d like smack me, not in the face but like in the back (Tom smacks himself in the back of the head<\/em>) just to kind of shock me, and to say, Just go!<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Well, he sounds like a Zen master with the whack on the head, you know.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah\u2014and so I went to Brancusi\u2019s atelier in Paris, measured it, built a form that was a quarter of an inch less than this and then just went. I\u2019m not skilled, but I just threw a lot of tenacity and care into it.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

How many pieces wound up on the floor?<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

A big pile\u2014but those scraps are sacred. I\u2019m very careful to make sure people don\u2019t sweep up the scraps. \u00a0Because, you know, you\u2019ve got the negative of it on the floor. So that\u2019s a good place to start with the next idea.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Wandering around, looking at everything in this show\u2014there are pieces deriving from NASA<\/small>\u2019s space program, tea ceremony, iconic modern art\u2014you almost always go for the artifact, the preexisting idea. You reproduce the idea. And it\u2019s about the idea. It\u2019s an idea about ideas. And I don\u2019t see the natural world appearing here at all except when you look at the ground. That\u2019s the world. That\u2019s the dirt. That\u2019s the rock. Is that your default?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tom Sachs, Pond Berm,<\/em> 2017. Installation view at the Noguchi Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

The ground?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

The ground like in there (indicating the next room, the Outer Tea Garden, where a faceted, gray, stonelike \u201cberm\u201d surrounds a koi pond<\/em>).<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Oh, the berms. Yeah.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a natural object. It\u2019s not an idea of the world. \u00a0It\u2019s the world.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Right. I think I\u2019ve started with the things I love\u2014like McMop Buckets (referring to his foam core reconstruction of a McDonald\u2019s mop bucket with ringer<\/em>) and modernist sculpture and spaceships. But then to go do nature is tough because nature is so refined\u2014it\u2019s so sophisticated and complicated and simple. But you know, if you look at that Noguchi over there (a large stone sculpture by Isamu Noguchi on loan from the Noguchi Museum to join Sachs\u2019s Tea Garden)\u2014<\/em>that\u2019s a found rock, he did just a very few interventions.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

The scholar\u2019s rock tradition, almost.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I think probably ninety percent\u00a0of it was just selecting the right rock and putting it at the right angle, and everything else was about ten percent. So, yeah, I think the way I\u2019m doing those berms is trying to keep it to the minimum number of gestures to still look like nature and yet not be too shitty.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

What it reminds me of is a certain kind of camera they use in astronomy\u2014they\u2019re all terrifically sensitive, and if you\u2019re looking at a planetary object or a nebula, then that\u2019s what you get, but if it goes to black sky it starts picking up its own static. You tune the gain way up to a place on an empty field and this is what comes out.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

So you just see\u2014what do they call it?\u2014the artifact.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah. It\u2019s like you\u2019re just looking at the world itself without idea imposed upon it. You get this wonderful\u2014as my wife who is an art historian knows\u2014Giotto-like late medieval ground. And there\u2019s this sense, speaking of Japanese tradition, that the idea is not really understood until it\u2019s imitated. There\u2019s this\u00a0sixteenth-century Korean rice bowl that\u2019s a Japanese national treasure. The story goes, the student of tea asks the museum curator, How can the Koreans know how to make such a wonderful tea bowl? And the reply is, Well they can\u2019t know. If they knew what they were doing, they couldn’t make a beautiful tea bowl.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s just by virtue of the Japanese regard.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Right, the regard creates the idea. And, I mean, your regard almost remakes the idea.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to understand what you\u2019re saying. I\u2019m very selective about the things that I choose to represent and make. But I never really thought about how that\u2019s quintessentially Japanese\u2014like stealing Korean rice bowls to make them into these kind of things.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a national treasure until you know it to be.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Right. And that\u2019s the job of the artist or the curator or the scholar or \u2026 I don\u2019t know how that happens.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know either. I don\u2019t know either. (Laughter.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

But I know that in the things we choose to represent, there are some things that work out better than others. And Marcel Duchamp, he\u2019s the guy who takes the urinal and puts it on the pedestal and says, Okay, now this is art. And that\u2019s regard.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Sure. Yeah, exactly.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

And then I don\u2019t know if you are aware of this word mitate<\/em>? It\u2019s a Japanese word that means using the wrong thing for the right reason\u2014or appropriation. I think that guy Rikyu, Sen no Rikyu, the\u00a0sixteenth-century father of the way of tea, was the first guy to do some of what Duchamp was doing, with that Korean rice bowl.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Well, it starts in the\u00a0sixteenth century with tea, and then there\u2019s the Renaissance. The moments of self-consciousness. Modern art is an exquisite perfection, or concentration, I should say, of self-consciousness. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s so easy to think, well, it\u2019s about irony. But irony is nothing. Irony is not even a gate. Irony is a vast illusion. You think you\u2019re getting leverage with irony\u2014you\u2019re not. You\u2019re just posing. The self-consciousness that occurred with that wabi<\/em>\u00a0thing\u2014the sense of beauty that celebrates the struggle, the simple and imperfect gesture in the making of a thing.\u00a0What\u2019s more impossible than to contrive to be absolutely honest and natural? It\u2019s almost the beginning of modern art, in a sense, in that moment\u2014that tremendous self-consciousness.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Well, I think that\u2019s a really important time. I think that\u2019s one of the reasons why I\u2019m so interested in the tea ceremony. And also, by the way, every samurai movie you\u2019ve ever seen takes place in that same period. Like, we don\u2019t really know anything else about Japan before or after.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from A\u00a0Space Program <\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I just saw\u00a0A\u00a0Space Program<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

And even if there had there been no tea ceremony in the middle of it, it would nonetheless have spoken very clearly to what happened in here (indicating the adjoining Tea Garden and Tea House<\/em>)\u2014I mean, to me, in the middle of this utsushi,\u00a0<\/em>there\u2019s this caution. The red-and-white-striped barricades. That\u2019s important\u2014the idea is startling. Be careful! Ideas are startling!<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Oh that\u2019s (laughs<\/em>)\u2014I never really put it together.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I just think it\u2019s terrifically important. I was standing there watching my wife participating in the tea ceremony for about an hour and a half, and all this calm is surrounded by this signal\u2014Be careful! Look out! Go away! Don\u2019t come any … Oh God, an idea! This is terrifying stu\ufb00!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tom Sachs, Tea Ceremony<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em> 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never thought about that.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Peacefulness is terrifying.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

It is.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

And the outer space and the inner space.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t they do a thing\u2014aren\u2019t there some tests where they put you in an orange room and you go a little crazy, so they put you in blue and green rooms? I remember when I was a kid, we lived in an old house and my mom was redoing my bedroom and said to me,\u00a0 You\u2019re old enough to pick the color. I was into the New York Mets, so I said, I want the walls orange and the furniture blue like the Mets. But I didn\u2019t realize I was buying into an orange room, and I must have lived in that room for a decade\u2014in this orange room, right? And I think maybe that\u2019s one of the reasons why I\u2019m so fucked up (laughs<\/em>).<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

My excuse is I fell out of a tree. \u00a0Yours is much more interesting.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

You fell out of a tree?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, out of a tree.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Did you hit your head?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Awesome. \u00a0It so worked in our case.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Do you have time to come over?<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

That would be great. I, too, have rockets (in silly Russian accent<\/em>). I, too, have tea bowls.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Amazing.<\/p>\n

Part 2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Across town at David\u00a0Searcy\u2019s\u00a0place, standing before a floor-to-ceiling glass case of Japanese tea ware,\u00a0seventeenth\u00a0century to modern, several repaired by the traditional Japanese gold-lacquer process called <\/em>kintsuge, which Tom Sachs also employs with certain of his NASA<\/small> tea bowls.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sachs, Searcy, and Presto.<\/p><\/div>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I love your kintsuge<\/em>. Here is a very elaborate kintsuge<\/em> on a very undistinguished bowl\u2014it became the fashion in the nineteenth century to recover these old tea bowls as \u201cwasters\u201d from kiln sites and restore them as if they were precious. And the regard for them makes them precious.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Like we were talking about.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I\u2019m making the same tea bowl over and over again. The bowl that I\u2019m making now is for Johnny Fogg. He comes over, and it\u2019s too thick, too thin, too heavy, too light, too big, too small\u2014we\u2019re making this Goldilocks bowl. I\u2019ve made six hundred of them, but we\u2019re always trying to refine and I\u2019m getting closer and closer\u2014like the Fibonacci sequence, always getting half\u2026<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Or Zeno\u2019s Paradox.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Is that what it is? \u00a0Is that what it\u2019s called?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, you can only get half.<\/p>\n

(Drifting out onto the back deck toward a little observatory, entering the observatory through a tiny door<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tom Sachs (left) and David Searcy, in Searcy\u2019s observatory.<\/p><\/div>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of like the tea room\u2014you have to bend down.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

As you should.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of crazy to have an observatory in a forest, my backyard overhung with trees, but somehow, again, the struggle is part of it. (A large refracting telescope is the object of attention.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this thing, this book I\u2019ve been working on for a while called The Big Asian Book of Mars<\/em>. I\u2019ll just do a few pages, perhaps, a year\u2014big pages \u2026\u00a0thirty by\u00a0twenty-two\u00a0inch ink drawings. I\u2019ve got my little drawing table down here and I\u2019m peering at Mars through the telescope. I\u2019ve got\u00a0an hour between the trees at biannual Martian opposition and you got to paint the damn thing within that period of time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Pages from Searcy\u2019s Big Asian\u00a0Book\u00a0of Mars.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Cool.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not an artist, so it\u2019s always a struggle. But there\u2019s something about the peeking out from between the trees that\u2019s like peering at something through a hole in the fence \u2026 I love telescopes more than I love the heavens.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Well, there are three reasons people are into things\u2014spirituality, sensuality, and stu\ufb00. \u00a0(Laughter.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the final category.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Me too.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I try to squeeze something philosophical out of it. I have this idea\u2014it\u2019s very dear to my heart\u2014that vertical is only a special case of horizontal. That we think flat\u2014and your Space Program<\/em>, which all takes place on the flat surface of the earth is just gorgeous\u2014you get lost in that.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

You know, as much as I love the art work, it doesn\u2019t mean anything without the aspiration of the spiritual, and the sensual of course. Without those there\u2019s no point.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I think that we think horizontally. We live horizontally, and I think when we look up we just tilt the horizontal up in some strange way. But that sense of \u201cas above, so below\u201d\u2014I mean the whole idea of outer space is not that di\ufb00erent from that of inner space. You\u2019ve got the great emptiness up there and the great emptiness in here. And you\u2019ve got those working together, explicitly nested, you know, in the Space Program and the Tea Ceremony. To have those two things going on together, it\u2019s exhilarating and a little bit terrifying. (The group drifts back inside.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I heard that you have a switchblade collection.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Well, I have a few left. I have some\u00a0nineteenth-century ones, which are hard to find, upstairs. (Pulls a grungy old early\u00a0twentieth-century Schrade switchblade from a cabinet.<\/em>) This is the one that got me going again.\u00a0It\u2019s not a very good example. It\u2019s got a weak spring (sound of blade snapping open<\/em>) \u2026 clunk<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sachs and Searcy examining a switchblade.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recently become inspired because there are so many good modern ones that are out there lately. The one that I think is the best one is by Spyderco, and they make, I think, the nicest heavy good one. Like,\u00a0three hundred\u00a0bucks\u2014beautifully machined.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

There are a lot of custom makers who are making some extraordinary ones.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Those are great but they\u2019re too fussy.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I have a thing called Rock Steady from Japan that someone gave me and I\u2019m pretty sure you carry it if you\u2019re a yakuza, for when you have to cut o\ufb00 your finger. You take this thing out and \u2026<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the one …\u201d \u00a0I can see the TV commercial.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have to \u2026 \u201d\u00a0 (Laughter.<\/em>) Because it\u2019s, like, heavy and it\u2019s all I would use it for. I keep that in a drawer. (Sachs turns\u00a0to\u00a0<\/em>look at a massive, shiny-knobbed, 1950s National HRO-60 receiver.<\/em>) And is this a ham radio ?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah\u2014I love these guys.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Are you communicating?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

No, I don\u2019t have a license for that and all they talk about is their equipment and their failing health.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

We got \u2019em for the team\u2014pirate style, because of the Internet now. It\u2019s thirty dollars, eight watts. Totally irresponsible.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I love these things because they don\u2019t have all the filters. \u00a0You can hear all the noise in between stations. You can hear the ether out there. You\u2019re sensing the di\ufb03culty and the texture of the transmission. (Moving into the hall, there\u2019s a display of five <\/em>mizusashi\u2014large, ceramic fresh-water containers for the tea ceremony.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sachs and Searcy discussing Searcy\u2019s display of mizusashi<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Are those water containers?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, those are my favorite tea vessels. I love mizusashi<\/em>\u2014little buckets. That guy (indicating a rather brutal rectangular vessel<\/em>) might be pretty old. It might be like late\u00a0sixteenth or\u00a0early\u00a0seventeenth\u00a0century. Iga ware\u2014which is weird stu\ufb00.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

That\u2019s really cool<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

It looks like something you\u2019d keep your, uh \u2026<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Ashes.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

\u2026 waste plutonium in or something. (Laughter.<\/em>) Anyway, if you\u2019ve got time for one brief ascent\u2014come up. (Sounds of climbing a creaky spiral stair, then moving to a small display of three very old switchblade knives.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Nineteenth-century switchblades.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Oh, beautiful.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

The top one is Belgian, the one under it is French\u2014those are probably around 1850. And the British one on the bottom is about the same period, I think. But the idea that that switchblade gesture, that threat, was available\u00a0a hundred and fifty\u00a0years ago \u2026<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Must have been terrifying.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

You know\u2014just click. One thinks of that as 1950s stu\ufb00, that\u2019s Rebel Without a\u00a0Cause<\/em>. How do you do that dressed like those guys were dressed? What would it have meant? You know\u2014click. \u00a0It would have been worse, I think.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Well, you wouldn\u2019t see it coming.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah. (Laughter.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I\u2019m particularly frustrated that they\u2019re illegal.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Well, they\u2019re not in Texas anymore. You can carry \u2019em \u2026 of course you can carry bazookas in Texas, for that matter. (More teaware in an adjoining room. Perusal of a nineteenth century Japanese tea journal. Preparations to leave.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Nineteenth-century Japanese tea journal.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, well thank you for coming by. Oh, just one more thing (retrieving an old riveted aluminum suitcase and placing it on the bed<\/em>). This is my only serious rocket, although it\u2019s a little bit silly\u2014it\u2019s only a little bit silly. I mean it\u2019s not philosophical like yours\u2014but it\u2019s kinda (opening the suitcase to reveal swoopy-finned silver rocket nested in green foam along with gray plastic fuel canister and yellow launch control device<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Searcy’s unlaunched rocket.<\/p><\/div>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Ooh. Wow. Is that the one you were telling me about?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah\u2014this is the finest of the Friedrich Schmiedl Rocket Society production. (Laughing<\/em>) I think it\u2019s got all the appropriate stamping\u2014oh yeah, there\u2019s the date and all the stu\ufb00.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

And so you put the sugar and potassium chloride (actually nitrate<\/em>) in here?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, everything unscrews. It\u2019s not the sort of thing you want to get on the airline with, although I was able to get on the airline with a much larger and more dangerous-looking one that I took to Black Rock Desert in Nevada in 1990. What you got in there? (imitating Texas drawl of ticket agent<\/em>). Oh it\u2019s just a rocket. Oh, okay, uh, yeah I guess it\u2019s okay\u2014what do you think? Yeah I guess its okay, just go ahead.\u201d (Laughter.<\/em>) Those were the days. But this one, now I\u2019m not so sure I want to fire it anymore. \u00a0I\u2019ve had it for so long.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Oh, it will be so much nicer when it\u2019s all dented up and stu\ufb00.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

It would be! \u00a0It would be, but I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s going to come down through a cow. I was going to shoot it in West Texas but couldn\u2019t find a rancher who was willing to endanger his cows.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

(Holding the rocket horizontally<\/em>) I think it\u2019s going to come down like this.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Nope. I\u2019ve checked the center of pressure. I know how it\u2019s going to come down.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

So, why do you think it\u2019s gonna \u2026 (silent balancing and contemplation<\/em>).<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

(In stupid Russian accent again<\/em>) Eez no center of gravity. Eez center of pressure.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

How does that work, how does that work? Explain to me. \u2019Splain me.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Well, you, uh\u2014this is how I do it.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve already put too much weight back here\u2014this thing (the machined stainless steel exhaust nozzle<\/em>) is very heavy, heavier than I intended. So the center of pressure is a function of aerodynamics, so\u00a0tie a string around it (at the center of gravity<\/em>) you know, tape it, and swing it around and see which way it faces.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

So it will come down through a cow.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Yeah, it\u2019ll come \u2026<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

I mean, the worst case scenario, the most expensive cow in the area.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

I like cows. I don\u2019t want to hurt it. I\u2019d feel terrible. It might take days to die. Could be a performance piece, I guess.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

And also\u2014what about you?<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

Well, what are the odds, if you stand right at the launching pad? What are the odds?<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

Well, there\u2019s Murphy\u2019s Law.<\/p>\n

SEARCY<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not a real law. Murphy just made that up. Because he was bitter.<\/p>\n

SACHS<\/p>\n

But I guess if you have a helmet \u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sachs and Searcy, in Searcy\u2019s downstairs study.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

All black-and-white photographs are by\u00a0Peter Salisbury<\/em><\/p>\n

David Searcy<\/span>\u00a0graduated SMU with a BFA in painting in 1969. He is the author of the novels\u00a0<\/em>Ordinary Horror\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0Last Things. Searcy<\/span>\u2019s first book of non-fiction,\u00a0<\/em>Shame and Wonder, is a series of interconnected ruminations about life, longing, obsession, the inner workings of various beautiful machines, and childhood dreams of space travel. He lives in Dallas, Texas.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tom Sachs’s work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and has been collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art,\u200b\u200b the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, San Francisco MOMA, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Major solo exhibitions include SITE Santa Fe (1999), the Bohen Foundation, New York (2002), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2003), Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, and Fondazione Prada, Milan (2006), Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles (2007), Lever House, New York (2008), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2009), Park Avenue<\/a> Armory, New York (2012), The Noguchi Museum, New York (2016), Brooklyn Museum, New York (2016), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2016). Sachs lives and works in New York.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (which closed yesterday)\u00a0was a vast and complex exhibition of ideas within ideas about ideas, wherein the protocols of the Japanese tea ceremony and those of NASA\u2019s space program are revealed to express opposed yet deeply similar understandings and even longings. There is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1067,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[10564,32372,32382,24768,4726,32370,10207,32381,32386,32374,32373,32377,32385,32371,696,32375,3231,9465,32384,270,32383,32380,32379,32378,14494,27356,32376,23078,32369],"class_list":["post-119844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-bennington","tag-big-cock","tag-blackrock-desert","tag-brancusi","tag-cooper-union","tag-dallas-nasher-sculpture-center","tag-david-searcy","tag-friedrich-schmiedl-rocket-society","tag-george-pompidou-center","tag-guy-goodwin","tag-jean-arp","tag-johnny-fogg","tag-last-things","tag-lucia-simek","tag-marcel-duchamp","tag-mcmopbuckets","tag-museum-of-modern-art","tag-nasa","tag-ordinary-horror","tag-paris","tag-peter-salisbury","tag-rebel-without-a-cause","tag-spyderco","tag-the-big-asian-book-of-mars","tag-the-guggenheim","tag-the-noguchi-museum","tag-the-space-program","tag-tom-sachs","tag-tom-sachs-tea-ceremony"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJapanese 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