10pm

I spent some more time drawing the paper ‘nuggets’ today. I still don’t know why I am doing it, maybe I’m just filling time.

I made some drawings today. I was trying to figure out what element of my work was the work. The act, the photographs, the chewed objects, the drawings all contribute to the work but what is the artwork?

Making the drawings in my studio gave me the chance to observe and to reflect on the paper eating. Having spent this time I believe that the act of eating is the work and the other elements are contributors. I had no spectators for my act just my home-made camera. Although I set out on this process keeping documentation as a priority the subject/object that I am documenting is still the most important aspect.

I left the film into the Kodak shop this morning, it’s due back on Wednesday. Shooting film is always a risk but the flip-side is that you create an object as well as an image. You can hold the image in your hands. In it’s physicality it becomes exclusive.

I had a call from a sculptor friend this afternoon. She’s been working on something and after many hours of work it broke. She is making optical illusions and photographing them. Making the objects to create the images takes time and expensive resources. The artwork is a photograph of the placed mirrored object. She was concerned about uploading them to websites because they can be viewed, downloaded and printed by anyone. Is this a problem? Does it help promote your work or does it devalue it?

In my work, how does documenting it change what it is, especially if it is a live event? What happens when the spectator is the camera? Is the documentation the work? Can you just dismiss the presence of spectators who add their own presence to the outcome of the work?

I had a chat with Demeter who has a space next to mine in the studio. She too works with paper. In response to my questions which were asked in relation to how I present what I am doing to the university she suggested that all of the elements could be individual works. She suggested I took advantage of a group of people and use them as spectators. Eat paper with them. It’s probably the best way to explain what I am doing rather than to show them documentation, which I can also do. I expect it will be uncomfortable as the next presentation is a group crit with Leigh Clarke. I’ve not been to a group crit as yet so I don’t know the protocols. Maybe I will reherse it at the studio.

I’ve cut my mouth. Nobody witnessed me eating 32 sheets of paper sat on the floor begging the film to end.

I turned to Ericka Fischer-Lichte to help me justify my actions.

‘When Beuys spent three days living with a coyote, or when Abramavic wrapped pythons around her body, the artists relinquished whatever limited control they might have over the course of the performance. They created situations which made predictions about the performance’s further development difficult, if not impossible…The artists exposed themselves and others to an uncontrollable situation created by them and thus made the spectators aware of their shared responsibility in the event.’

I had no spectators. They couldn’t stop me when I forced more paper down my throat and gagged and choked. I chose not to stop myself but to use the length of a strip of film to determine how long I would continue. The camera was my spectator. A camera I had made myself from a matchbox and gaffa tape. I constructed my own spectator. I was the subject, object and perceiver. It exists of me and for me.

Autopoiesis – self creation

Self-reproduction.
The process whereby an organization produces itself.
Self-producing systems, where a system can be a cell, an organism and perhaps a corporation.

…a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components that: (i) through their interactions and transformations continously regenerate the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realizations as such a network. (Maturana and Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980), p.79



A lot of bad news this week for the arts but despite all that I managed to get an interview for some freelance work with a local arts organisation.

I’m still reading the interview with Christian Boltanski. Luc has now joined the conversation and talks about justification and the affair. I may need to read it again to get to grips with it.

I’ve also decided to postpone the Mino residency application until next year. I need to keep focused and stop letting myself get distracted. I’m going to go ahead with the eating paper without an audience ‘as a relic’ to use Anton’s term. I need to keep remembering to do and not get stuck over analysing.

Despite that: the problems with eating paper is that it I have made it too complicated. It’s got too much attached to it. I’ve killed it before it exists. It’s forced and contrived and becoming not art. Why have I spent so much time making ‘not art’?