Last night we had a drinks reception for Crafting Space and were brimming over with people for most of the night. The structure is 4/5ths full and there are only spaces left to weave at foot level and round the back. It looks magical at night, it sparkles and has an ethereal quality, especially as you look through and see the outlines of people around it, reading, weaving, and talking. I am already aware of how soon it will all be over and feel a small pang of grief that it will be wrapped up like a mummy and kept in a dark space. However there is already interest in exhibiting it and I am determined to find a permanent home for it, as it is by it's very nature a public artwork which needs the eyes of the public to keep its vital energy alive.
Documentation is key to this intention, and it has certainly been well documented so far. Without it, the work will cease to exist in terms of where it can move to. The Crafts council are making a three minute film about it for their website and have had a photographer shooting Origin each week and Crafting Space too. Lili has been doing some filming in the space and has taken photos, a lot of which I have used in this blog. Last Saturday and this Sunday, a photographer David Ramkalawon , who documented the Loom exhibition at Goldsmiths, is on site and we will post up some of his images of the finished piece on the Crafts Council site.
And that’s only visual documentation. Aside from noting down reactions to the work and having a comments book, we are going to transcribe the entire body of ribbon texts onto paper and Philip , one of the volunteers who works at the Arvon Foundation (‘a secret river in the world of literature’) is going to create a Caligramme – a transcription of all the texts that makes a visual picture-of the entire piece. Since even permanent markers are lightfast and the texts will eventually fade, it’s an important way of preserving the narrative of this essentially live work. I like the idea of it fading over time, of returning to its original state, but I would like to see this happen in public if possible, and visit it like an old friend.
Every other person asks where they can see it next and come up with all kinds of ideas. Yesterday, my favourite suggestion was the Reading Room at the British Library, to function as a reading/resting/reflecting space – for obvious reasons, but also the neo-classical form of the structure echoes the form of the original Reading Room there. We will see what the universe holds in store for it. I feel a bit like a mother talking about her child today, probably because I have been away for two nights and am about to go and pick up my (almost) one-year-old son, Moses.
