COCO GORDON / SuperSkyWoman / Biography
Born 1938 in Genova Italy. After 25 years in a Duane
St Tribeca NYC loft and 11 years in Huntington Bay NY. She also goes by the
name Coco Go, a.k.a SuperSkyWoman
Alison Knowles opened Coco’s
access to international Fluxus. Wanting to make her images in paper, they
collaborated, making 10 years of handmade experimental papers together leading
to the show Loose Pages at Emily Harvey Gallery, NY. For 5 decades Coco paralleled
Intermedia and fluxus circles with her Solo shows curated by Lucio Barbera,
Sandro Ricaldone, Rosanna Chiessi, Leonardi V-idea- Italy, Christine
Jones-Vienna’s KunstKanzlei and the Stadtgalerie. Coco used SuperSkyWoman’s
historic tuned in vision in shows at Sandra Gering, Gallery Onetwentyeight,
Art-in-General and A taste of Art venues. Emily Harvey nurtured her art future
in Italy & NYC. As SuperSkyWoman, Coco also originated Gruppo TIKYSK (Things
I Know You Should Know) in 1994 as a ready shelter for healers, artists,
experimental groups and her mud-woman, rock-woman, fingerprint in the universe
events. At the 48th Venice Biennale for Oreste she and her Gruppo
TIKYSK "Permed" 300 people’s heads, took part in the
"Bunker" project and the poetry section. At the 49th
Venice Biennale she contributed to the "Markers" street-hung Banner
project of the International Artists Museum with her SuperSkyWoman speaking
with the people dialog, “with speed and micro circuitry we have more time to
arrive too soon, Forget Coming". At the 50th Venice Biennale Coco joined
the "Wandering Library" curated by Doran Polak’s Markers 4 Project
with her book, The Infinite Bottom Line. For the 50th Venice
Biennale she took part in two projects, one for Alan Bowman boiling her
seven-pointed star paper to eat and brought Global Poetry Day to heal Ground
Zero in NYC with her action, "You are Poetry" engaging shopkeepers
and city workers for Karenina's poetry section. In the 51st Venice
Biennale she took part in Isola Virtuale curated by Achille Bonito Oliva with
her poem Our Time Hour Time, and the performative poem “Book of Water” by
Congelo. For the London Biennale’s draw__drawing she sculpted wild feet into
action. For the 2005 Istanbul Biennale she was kidnapped by Sassu's Gruppo
Sinestetico. For Agricola de Cologne, she was selected for the Violence
festival, and invited as featured artist for Self-representation on the
newmediafest.org site. For Klemens Golf she became a reporter for her home
place in NYC and Chappaqua NY, creating a three-month outdoor slide show
in Dusseldorf.
From a meeting at Matera in
1999, Congelo was formed by her merging Angelo Ricciardi of Napoli, Italy,
whose many events and books together were created, including one of 80
dinners, Il Pane Non Si Butta and Patented events. Congelo
is now placing barcodes on their encyclopedic correspondence, an edition of 5
boxed copies of which one is reserved for MOMA. Congelo took part in Jorge Luiz
Antonio’s Visual and Electronic Poetry International Exhibition in Brazil;
+ Congelo & Coco in the Mexico Experimental Biennale. She created several
works for Angelo’s Artline Do Not Cross published by 404
Arte Contemporanea, and joined many book projects. Coco performed
actions as SuperSkyWoman and exhibited In 2003 in a daughter/mother show with
90 year old mother Alisa, at the Pauline Oliveros Foundation's Deep Listening
Space Gallery in Kingston NY. She made talking medicine wheels for the CACQM
land art project in Quebec. She invented a watery Eyes Club meeting event
as a memorial for her good friend and conspirator, the late Ray Johnson: a full
moon gathering" at the Pollock Krasner House in East Hampton July 13th,
2003. For Luc Fierens she was featured with 13 SuperSkyWoman dialogs in his
project, "Cornucopia", became a howling SuperSkyWoman for his
Cooperation Project 1, and was "Jane Doe glissando" for his
Cooperation project 2. At Fun of Fun SuperSkyWoman pulled in a new tribe
to Dance her Matisse dance with the animals around her 9/11 in butter “Talking
Medicine Wheel” at the River Sile, while Congelo conscribed Renata &
Giovanni Strada into performing their political "Book of
Water". Coco has joined many Fluxus artists in collaborations of
their works and hers. She created artist books in editions, including Knee published
by Porto Dei Santi Press, 2000 that also includes Anne Waldman. Coco’s own
small Press, TIKYSK, published Visioning Life Systems That Create
Healthy Resources and Transform Waste: Artists Work from Their Permacultural
Source (Water Mark Press, 2003) reviving her 1993 edition
Assembling, Artists Work from Their Ecological Source, Med Art,
NY. Coco’s books--Radical Food, Hip Hop Solarplexus, SuperSkyWoman and
TIKYSK: Permaculture Getting to Know You (Foot Sq Space,
1997) trace her progression into superheroine with an "action
plan". Dick Higgins rediscovered his alter-ego character
"Camille" in Coco. Her show of 36 ecozoic earth salt
installations, "il Sogno del Tempo" in Messina Italy 1990 manifests
the thinking of Earth Philosopher, Thomas Berry, while catching irradiated
potatoes from the marketplace of Messina into her floor installation to
underscore Berry’s cosmological exploitations. Coco’s art introduced the
dynamic Nature intelligence way of healing to create a surplus Permaculture
ecology, exemplified with her "Infinite Bottom Line" of grasses she
plaited from wherever she worked around the world, to “Kick up the Bottom
Line”. Martin Krusche's Austrian Kultur site published her many
SuperSkyWoman actions on his KULTUR web site as well as featuring her as Jane
Doe. Coco's poetry "Interactiv’s" and artist books have grown to
more than 100 books. In 1978 she began to use her paper instruments
interactively. From mid 70’s-early 80’s she taught many artists how to
create their own papermaking studios and equipment. Coco Go is known for
her 70’s forward handmade paper inventions one can enter, wear, sound, inhabit:
liquid pools, clothes, hammocks, feet & sounding instruments (drums,
rainsticks, pillows, shakers, strummers. Her famous John Cage’s post-Alphabet performances
inspired hairy life-sized piano sculptures that still morph as a series on
visual music. She’s been by profession a papermaker/ permaculture
designer/ publisher of Water Mark Press, W Space "Intimate" editions
and gruppo TIKYSK's artist book editions. COCO’s Artists Books have been
sold since the 80’s at PRINTED MATTER, NYC, Amazon and other online book
venues.
Collections: paintings,
installations, paperworks
Provincia of Messina, American
Craft Museum, Hobelix Libreria, Joseph Cornell Archive, Adelphi University,
Marymount Manhattan, Nassau Community College, UWO Weldon Library Ontario,
Otten Collection, Getty Center, Heckscher Museum, Univ of Delaware, Chiessi
Performance Archive Cavriago Italy, Jean Brown Archive, Franklin Furnace
Archives, Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive, Braun Collection
Germany, Robert Scott Small Library SC, Univ of Alberta Edmonton, Cozzani
Collection La Spezia Italy, Nuvolone Collection Genova Italy, Luigi Bonotto -
Bassano Del Grappa Italy, Joel Malin’s Duchamp Collection.
Artist Books in
collections:
MOMA Library NYC, Whitney
Museum Library, Fogg Museum MA, Museum of Women in the Arts Wash DC,
Smithsonian Museum, Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive, Provincia of Messina,
Univ of Alberta Edmonton, Spec Collections UC Santa Cruz, Brown University
Library, The Banff Centre Library Alberta, KunstMuseum Lenningen Germany, Getty
Center, Vasari Futurist Collection Sicily, Heckscher Museum, American Craft
Museum, Hobelix Libreria, UWO Weldon Library Ontario, Otten Collection, Univ of
Delaware, Chiessi Performance Archive Italy, Jean Brown Archive, Franklin
Furnace Archives, Braun Collection Germany, Robert Scott Small Library SC,
Cozzani, Nebbia e Nuvollone, Malfatti, & Bonotto Collections, Museo Del
Volo Padova Italy, Watari collection Tokyo, Umbrella Archive CA, El Archivero
Mexico, Vancouver Art Gallery, Swedish Archive of Artist Books, Art Institute
of Chicago Flaxman Library, Harvard U collection.
For Regina Vater teaching university in Brasil
I’ve organized for your
reference- there are hundreds I love-they all relate to each other in the
following categories: All Experimental and non-commercial
Time based performance
actions (various media)
Baskets,
also used as hats as casual performance
*Bush dialogs with SSW,
large panels on cloth, prints, perfs, book
*Eat Your Hat, month
perf crocheting hats set as food at table, My skin of myself & I eat hats.
*Feeling my hands”:
first done in month long ’84 Looking at Carrot, used for Ear Inn poetry performance
with Sari Dienes, book ed of 25.
*Eating miners’ lettuce
in the burn, series self foto behind an apron reaching down like giraffe,
Pender Island Vancouver BC, ‘94
*Earth Air Fire Water
Disquieting seeds-variations, Dowling,
Messina, Hobelix, first
done as self-foto during Carrot perf Komoka Ontario next to a highway
*Finding tree root
flower of my birth, 2005, cast with paper, self foto with root
*Fingerprint enlarged to
2 rooms + painting as plan for show, performance to take back one’s fingerprint
on the universe, SuperSkyWoman book pull out page, pull & play, solo show,
Firenze outdoor stage
First
Online Art Com S.F. CA-newsworthy keyboard images October1991 11pp.
*Framed
news of day set high in trees 1961
50-50
for Duchamp action+three Canadian artists on Saturna Island-book
*LAM
&Carrot- perf actions poems write-overs actions book ed 25
4’33”
recording, Hops proj. commissioned sound work Steiermark
Loops
and Knots –perf & book
Piano actions –Sandra,
Vienna piano cutting perf & my operas FAMLI-CHGallery - Ontario, Messina
piano in tree, cleaning earth, wheat grows, video on harvestworks site.
Pollination of SSW, in
SSW book and show Genova italy, Gallery Onetwentyeight NYC ‘98
*Refugee
pc in CT-immigrantness
*Seeking
Water-Self foto representation
*Setting
Table Action on Cocktail party painting ‘65
Skywoman
discovery 1991-95, lineage in book, Radical Food
*So
Tired, Canada
*Splining
the infinite bottom line-primal places
SuperSkyWoman
actions- Da-da da stakes, Sandra Gering gallery…
Ecological/political
community-based projects
Long
lineage of Giving Nature its own voice in my work
Worms,
Bird Music, talking with nature
*9/11
in butter action in my studio, recreated in Italy, Kultur site
*Arboretum
Queriies-Asking Nature-
Austrian
flag actions
Bean
slit fotos(Carlo P)
Broken
glasses found collection
Bush
SuperSkyWoman dialogs
Bush
Amazon woven 14-foot shawl 1991 to calm president-indigenous practice
Butterfly
in genetic corn- action Italy, poem
*Chakra
readings- drawings
*Dead-on-Arrival
(DOA)
Duchamp- Coco as Mona
Lisa la Chimera, Ray as Mona Lisa
-Article
by Mark block
Elevator
pc Art in General sound mix Harvestworks with Al
Food-self
fotos, many series, actions, books, shows
Four-leaf
clovers collecting
Framing
reality
*Full moon event Casa
Malaparte- Rosanna Chiessi, fluxus
*Fun
of Fun Italy recycling actions-Matisse dance around my
9/11
butter installation with found nature
Gene
Splicing- pull out chromosomes over texts
*Healing-“Let’s
Perm” 3 SSW days at Venice Biennale with Italian healers
*Hello
health-Corallo Napoli show 2005- 4 floors
*Hops
works-the dreaming-the shoe found-the farmers-the
painting
with paper-the big arch over road-hopfield
sounds-the
war room- installation Gallery Klinger
Austria-the
book-Dream Bow revisited in Italy, SFAI
Iron
on mushroom and silkscreen birdsong pieces, even a coverlet for a collector
Leaves
love: for Jasa writing on leaves, and pc for Congelo
Masks
from nature-webs-sand, to wear, shows
*Minnow
trust-at River Spirit Arkansas - self foto
*No-More-Water
pieces -over the years, Dowling College gallery NY, Messina
Nuclear
pcs & poems- inulclear potatoes, mops, books
Raisins
Berlin new marterials, zeroing in pattern from 1965
Salt/earth-60X80meters,
replacing, rakings, rice falling+Le Onde show
*Seed
Music window piece Galleria dell Occhio NYC, installations Italy
Stairway
to paradise inverted, The __Reader
Subterranean
paper panels- Show in a Serra
*Talking
medicine Wheels- Mt. Tremblant
Tree
actions-
*Turtle
medicine wheels
Umbrella
parts collecting
Visioning
life systems 2003, permaculture life systems 1992
Windo©Peace
at Sohozat living in window
Women
Studio Workshop event in sprouts
*Wild
Feet-Impermanence project Vianello, +Exit Art
*Writing
on leaves-RE Italy
*You Are Poetry-Ground
Zero- day giving away hundreds of poems to neighborhood businesses and service
people, coming to terms with my injuries 9/11.
Concepts Ideas Used: Serious
listening to Play with chance correlative consciousness, improv
and invention, paying concentrated attention, living it.
Bleach-Things
we pay for, thinking white, dead lakes, monoculture…
*Body
Books- Body skin pcs shown Dowling & book
*Bye
Buy- pcs 50+50, Tamara Lai works for “Sacrifice”
*Bush
Zen sitzen -my body calming bush- large ptings & Chance Actions- Cracked
brick, Pulp Pool pieces, tape
from
shelves, holes in wood
Correspondence
actions- Walkway1982 CHA, PK House,
Ray
J, Foot Sq Space mailings show
Copyright
legs, poems
*Cuttings-
from 1979-present Alison Knowles, BT Smith…
DOA
1983 RE, 1994 BMCC, Women & Nature, Safe Kill
Dream
Giveaway-Real Artways- 200 dreams-installations
Freedom
Wall-1980 using holes in my walls
*Future
of Hands and Feet-HI Video with Sandra Semchuk
Hammocks-life
size
denim & jeans
matrimonial
shrunken flax
hammock+ ties (stolen by organizer of show- Grumman Corp)
words to lie in
enter & fly
with web feet & hands
mentalita’ dell
aredamento with two square watermelons
hip hop spirit
double hammock
green
replacement piece with ties to hold in
two
hammocks stacked-Arnfels Austria
Hammocks
under appletree Sandra stuffing apples under bathing
suit
*Health-cakra
drawings, looking inside myself in piano, SSW
Dialogs,
TIKYSK books
Musics
Instruments sound pieces-gongs rainsticks,
shakers,
strummers, Matisse Dances
performed+
Alison Knowles with my sounding paper pillows & instruments, College of new
Rochelle
She
stole my idea ten years later for Drawing Room
I
Ching – Umbrella throws
*It-
Rockland Center for the Arts perf - Wall St Gallery LI
Swinging
chairs U of Michigan installation Remade from“It”
*Kicking
up the bottom line- show gallery 128 also timebased, coins fall out
of the dollar
Monuments
for Intimate Use-exhibition-book-separate pcs.
Music
Rooms- Messina, other shows & proposals
Pull
and play action-painting, installations Genova Italy, in book
Radical
Food- Manifesto, Vienna’s Kunstkanzlei, GreenMuseum
Safe
Kill-words in carrots -giving DOA to others- Dick Hggins
Seeking
Sustenance- self fotos- Vienna magazine article
Short
sight- Kultur site dialogs & visuals+ in book
Skin-1984
project sent to 12 artists use & perform actions
*Substitute
Abundance- self fotos, book
SuperSkyWoman-
Peggy Guggenheim pics mom & me perf
SSW
dialogs, many actions, shows, book
Tables
in paper, galls, wine holding pocket tablecloth
TIKYSK
born and introduced by critic Rinaldi
*Unframed
Intelligence- concept that gives nature power
food
on face Window pcs, Eating Tofu 7 pointed
stars,
metal boots in a reddened landscape-Attitude Art
Yarn/string writings
& actions- Yarn Fuck, simple movement of familiar yarn when cut, making
image that mirrors life- rifles on wall- yarn hangings Banff, Vienna, Crochet
pieces as drawings in space
Concepts Ideas -
drawings for
Guggenheim yarn throw
nest- moving up & down the spiral till filled in
Collaborations:
Congelo
(=Coco+ Angelo Ricciardi) projects & performances- Libro Di, Book of Water
*Artline,
Birthday Johns, MOMA edition, *Leafletting
Since
200-present-ongoing & artist books
*Golf
“my town” -projections outside for 3 months
Self-Representation
Agric -1958-present
Jane
Doe-Kultur site zany actions and dialogs
*Rita
D-book for Petit 100 Monkeys- poems
Anselm
Hollo 10 howls for sweet fifteen and I Ching
RJ
collaborations-boxes-paper works-letters-Ray tel. Calls-
How
to Draw a Bunny- am in the movie
Leiss
video for Ray J “Connections” am in the movie
Luc-“Cornucopia”,
talking mask, score & postflux booklet
*Roberto
Scala- lemon art
Sassu-Worn
contagion- in many Biennales
Karenina-
Global Poetry Day 2002
*Kohtopa
Mir- Russian- peace Office
Rol
-writings about art-NY reporter for art
Biennales & Festivals:
Bunker
Project, Butterfly in genetic corn field poem
London
Biennal-Draw__-Drawing
I
Sapori guide-Artways of Thinking guide/performances
Istanbul
Biennale
*Mexican
experimental poetry festival (Congelo)
*Spain
festival Copliandia
SSW
perf all day 2X Venice Biennale with powerful italian
healers
4
Other Venice Biennale contributions, Markers,
Wandering
Library, poetry events, Peggy Guggenheim Museum Fluxus event
Art residencies:
2008,
& 2019 Emily Harvey Foundation, Venezia
1996
Djerassi, my Ms: Where Dead and Warm meet- residency as writer +time based paper burials
1999
SuperSkyWoman Let’s Perm, Venice Biennale, for Oreste
*2001,
Markers Banners Project, Venice Biennale, Israel, Hungary, for Int’l Artists
Museum
2003,
Markers 4 “The Wandering Library”, Venice Biennale, For Int’l Artists Museum
2000,
Banff- Tree installation/View a public art project-studio changes daily
1993,
Harvestworks recording studio time, URL site crated
*2002
SFAI -9/11 residency- bear-zebra-chakra installations
1998,99,2000
Oreste- Matera, Montescalioso Cena+performance 85 people, artists working in
the territory
Interactiv Books: *some
published- my most innovative work! using
Bioregional
- Zen - art content, one book involves others in collaboration to be made into
a sculpture by cutting and folding pages to create a circle:
Predates
the Fresh Cuts books of 2018-2020
correspondence events & books
*Pollock Krasner House-
2003 Coco RJ Full moon teary eyes club mtg & book
Laburnum poison tree
installation, Prison Walks, Tender wash rocks, Magic Cloth
Action books
&Project books
*Small
Italian Opera italy merging loops & knots found with huge procession of
paper through towns & poems about loss of enemies
*6
Dances for Paper Piano, perf at FAMLI Museum with red paper pool & black
piano pulp wet offerings, poetry in motion
*KNEE (GINOCCHIO), Porto Dei Santi
Press, Loiano, Italy August 2000 used as basis for Bush Paintings 2004-present
URL Sites
Tamara Lai site http://tell-a-mouse.be/sacrifice/terre/Terra.htm
Harvestworks residency grant & music piece &
site works
Agricola de
Cologne
http://www.le-museedivisioniste.org/exhibitionhall/2002/edition05/cocoself.Htm
http://www.nmartproject.net/cur/mirror/index.html
Karenina *You
Are Poetry
FFFO Fluxus http://xoomer.virgilio.it/n.waugh/secretfluxus/secretflux1.html
Art Magazines published
pcs
New Observations 116,
Artists on Art, Fall 1997, “Art Flora Fora Yr Right Actions”
Chapter page capsules
for The Eternal Networks (U Calgary Press) 1995
New Observations 106,
Bookworks, May 1995, “Handmade Paper Books”
Ear
Magazine - two issue 4-page piece on image scores by Cage, Corner, Higgins,
& Knowles played by Margaret Tan, 1983-4.
Older series: 50’s-70’s
Paintings
sculptures, sandcasts, pastels, cray-pas, prints, drawings,
*I
am woman series
*breast
series-Heckscher Museum Show
*under
water series- done as correlative unconscious knowledge
*animal
man series- prints and sculptures in stone
*cat
vigil series-pastels *peacock series *large poem series
lists from
90’s very active period
Sounding
instruments in paper- long lineage
Cuscino per sognare
Rosanna
Rosanna projects in
cavriago- guitar
Paper
Skin on my body took shape of me
Dream
shakers, pillow & coverlet -Japan
*Corallo
Napoli show- mapping clearcut stumps & Vesuvius, SSW dialogs, turtle made
from packaging paper, burl wood sounding instruments
*Matisse
Dance-Cookie cutters
*Pull
& play paintings (book SSW)
*Wax
melt action, iron-ons
*Local
Action Finding Balls & hitting tree for twigs, Hudson River photos
*Forest
pcs, clearcut photos They Give Us They Take Away long poem for Quileutes
*John
cage meetings, making his 70 Bday with pistachios in paper, then he had Bernie
Toale make food slices in paper for him
*My
pcs about Ray J in books
*My
book published for Ray J Cutesie Pi
*Performance
audio taped with flutes italy for Charlotte Moorman to give her - photos stolen
by Italian artist Kurt Hoffer
*Holes
in wall strips on holes in wall 1981
