Lots of help and questioning authorship.
Installation is in full swing. But it feels a bit different to my normal installations. I’m a hands on person, I’ve lots of experience of installing exhibitions, I’ve ‘tech’ed’ in the past for a few places. Often my installations are endurance, process-based production of work on site.
This isn’t. It’s a very technology-based install, which is different for me. There’s 2 ceiling mounted projectors, a camera, a lot of cabling, an imac (I’ve got one, long story), 6 flat screen tvs, and a media player. And I’ve got help. Lots of it from the lovely technicians at the Bluecoat who are so helpful and have SO much attention to detail. Then Alasdair who has done the programming of the software for me is arriving tomorrow – that’s something else that I’m hands off with. And for the video edit I worked with my friend Gareth who knows his way around after effects with his eyes closed.
So the questions rolling around in my head are about authorship, and the actual making of the work. I know that this is one way of making bigger things happen. Artists don’t always cast their own sculptures, or operate the camera in their own films, and they are still the author. This way of making something feels less comfortable than being in contact with something from start to finish as I would with a graphite drawing.
I also haven’t yet seen ‘the work’ as the work only really comes into being when it’s installed in the space with all the equipment – but that is probably the case when I’m making installations and interventions in the street, so maybe this isn’t as big a development as it feels.
