billboard planning

object biography/ writing experiment

"One of the central ideas of the later sections of this work is that objects are not what they were made to be but what they have become. This is to contradict a pervasive identification in museum research and material culture studies which stabilizes the identity of a thing in its fixed and founded material form."[1]

The object is born. It lay patiently, heavy in its resting place gathering to it the weight and experience that only a lifetime of neglect, but also freedom, freedom of the grasp of man can bring.   It doesn’t arrive kicking and screaming into the world but rather through coaxing and gentle play. It is brought out of its decades of slumber in the rotting halls of a forgotten cathedral to the industrial might of its native land. Reverently plucked from the apparent chaos and confusion of those quiet halls, plucked by an intruder, a scavenger, one to whom these halls have no meaning other than that of a place normally to be avoided, one who’s very being is so young in comparison that they might as well still be in the womb. The object now disturbed sheds its thin camouflage of others skin, a coating that has served it well, saving it from the gaze of other such scavengers.

Then darkness.

The cramped confines are unnatural, uncomfortable, so unlike the wide halls of its home. The rhythmic crush and jostle of this tomb (for that is what it appears to be) wears new creases, deep scars running across its surface, cutting through the lines that have taken a lifetime and longer to acquire. The crush and jostle continue, another object is crammed into the space, the claustrophobia is overwhelming. The uncomfortable silence continues as they are pressed together, these two objects independent of each other in that until now they have never met, though have inhabited parallel planes of existence, identical, save for the separation of the ground of one is the roof of the other. The creases deepen. More are added, the crush becomes unbearable objects of all sizes, shiny rectangles bent and misshapen pigment stains trailing over their flowing inner edge’s the marking of their tribe, all taken by this thief, this plunderer, this trader in histories.

“I get the feeling that with this work a change occurred in my own approach to creating things. “Creating” isn’t about making something anew or producing something from zero. Everything is already given. I thought so that it’s the act of noticing something that’s already in front of you, or discovering something”[2]

The darkness seems to have lasted for decades, they have watched decades pass before, this doesn’t feel any different. They have settled now, into the order gravity and constant movement have deemed necessary. The movement stops and starts, the slaver has added no new objects for a while now, his need to steal apparently sated more than likely out of necessity than desire.

He empty’s his bag, the collection falls to the worktop to be sorted. It’s been a successful night. The dust still lingers over the items he has collected, smeared in some places where his hands or other objects have brushed against them. He sees too the new creases, and curses his carelessness, next time he won’t be so greedy, next time he will take a larger bag. He eyes appreciatively his selections admiring again his finds as he slowly untangles them from their fellows. They speak to him, these outcast objects, this detritus of the past. He sees the dust covered pages and feels the excitement of knowing he is the first person to touch these objects in decades. Slowly he cleans the dust away and starts to open the pages, eyes searching for what, he doesn’t yet know. He feels the weight of the objects, the weight that only a previous life could give. Hours have passed and his selection of material has grown. The objects themselves lie for the time forgotten, pages open, squares of negative space as obvious as they are unnatural. This new material, harvested from the ephemera of the factory floor he moves constantly, seeking the perfect configuration.

Slowly, the image reveals itself.

“When the past takes on a new relationship with us through the medium of images. There are things that exhibit a special power. This is the phenomenon generally referred to as “vestiges”. All Matter can become a vestige, but there are several conditions that need to be met. The matter must be transformed due to a force of some kind, and this transformation must remain for a certain period of time. Works that remain in some form or another could all be described as vestiges in the broad sense of the term. However, the chief characteristic of vestiges is that the thing that left them has disappeared.”[3]

The object is born.

It is born into the silence of an empty hall, a memory of a previous space lingers, but it is not this space. The space lies soundlessly before it, the white plains of the walls reflective, almost blinding in the light of day. What similarities the object sees between this and its previous home slip away. The familiar camouflage of dust and silt is gone, so too is the sense of seclusion. The setting is not all that is changed; the object feels a sensation of loss, but also a sense of having gained. It is no longer in isolation, no longer sitting quietly unobtrusive and forgotten; the thief has made sure of that. Images once confined to the objects inner pages are now displayed for the world to see. A line of text alien to it now titles this display of dissected parts; a border of black surrounds it, holding this disparate collection together much as the paste that now traps the object in this whitewashed cube.  The object is now to be viewed.

The space fills with people; the object sits well within it pasted to the centre of the wall. He, the thief, is pleased with his works. The objects, taken all that time ago have been fruitful in their offering up of wisdom and information. The questions raised are validation enough, “what does this mean?”, “are these real?” The new creases, this time a product of the wall rather than the jostle of a bag hastily over filled, reminiscent of the advertising hoardings of the world outside this space. His object, his Frankenstein creation will never know the elements of that world, its fate sealed to be stuck within this room until erased. 

The object dies.

The object lies still on the desk, once more discarded. New tears have appeared in its frail paper body. It lies covered again in a new skin, though not a covering natural to it and its fellows as the settling of dust was on that long forgotten factory floor. This new skin covers it entirely, blocking from view the objects new appearance suffocating it beneath the plastic tang of non-drip matt emulsion. The object resigns itself to this cocoon, for that is what it hopes it is.

“I remember my anger and shock when I perceived that the treasures I had rescued were being treated carelessly, ill-used, not given their pride of place; and then I smiled to myself at my concerns as I realised that even in my journeys to Mirror City I had abducted treasures from their homeland, placed them in strange settings, changed their purpose, and in some cases destroyed them to make my own treasures…” – Janet Frame, 1985[4]

The thief lays the torn remains of his creation down, not caring to stop strips falling to the ground. The object is now nothing more than old material for new work. The history created by its short period of life still not yet enough to grant it permanence among his collection of cut and pasted material. His attention turns to something new. Slowly he reaches for his knife…

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[1] {{28 Thomas,Nicholas 1991}}

[2] {{30 Naito Rei 2009}}

[3] {{31 Chihiro, Minato 2009}}

[4] {{28 Thomas,Nicholas 1991}}

Presentation/ writing

OK so had to do a presentation on Friday talking about our work and discussing our thought process etc. went OK despite not having prepared any notes etc before getting up and presenting. mad a power point show to go give me something to talk about and act as a reference point for both myself and the audience. They main thrust of my presentation was to be an outlining of the struggle I have been going through in the past month or two since the project space and how I have resolved to return to my previous process of making work as a solution to the impasse I have found myself at.

This has been underlined by the writing I am doing at the moment. Currently working on an essay assignment about an object biography, basically writing objectively about a piece of work or something similar that highlights a specific part of your practice, a sort of miniature case study. Started writing this in a very traditional format, arguing my case with questions and responses and quotes from various "certified" sources. I then decided to delete everything. This fresh start gave me the opportunity to be a bit more creative with the writing, allowing me to analyse a part of my practice (that of the collection of old information/ detritus/ ephemera) from a very abstract angle. I am happy with the results of this form of writing and will post it up once i have completely finished it.

In the mean time here are the video clips i used in my presentation the first is a snippit from John Berger's 1972 documentary "Ways of Seeing". The second is a clip from Frankenstein (1931) directed by James Whale

Naito Rei quoted in Art it magazine 2009

"I get the feeling that with this work a change occurred in my own approach to creating things. "Creating" isn't about making something anew or producing something from zero. Everything is already given. I thought so that its the art of noticing something that's already in front of you, or discovering something" - Naito Rei