Its the break before the beginning of Phase Two. I’ve been struck down with inertia. I miss my sketchbooks, they are in the hands of the university for assessment as is all the research since October.
Today I dragged myself to the studio. I tidied up and moved things around and then I began the process of making paper from the boluses. There are 32. I have photographed each one in its jar of water. It is becoming a book in some way. It is a collection.
I am watching the TV series All Watched Over by Machines of love and Grace. I wrote on my book I AM ART MACHINE in November 2010. I expect that the possibility of mechanical actions will inform phase two.
I should look at presentation but this will be a less important strand for me at this stage. I want to contine to focus on process of making. Documentation should rise in priority. Photographic images will appear as objects rather than theories. It will be a period of making.
End of Phase One
I’m so tired now. Tomorrow I am going to Ireland for a few days. It will be an research free zone before I embark on phase two of the MA.
Progress
I had a call from Carla Moss today who is curating an exhibition at Greenbelt Festival this year. The theme of the show is text because it is the 400th Anniversary of the King James Version Bible. She called to find out if I’d like to exhibit a piece of work I made a few years ago. Unfortunately the work vanished in transit some time ago so we were back to the drawing board. When Leigh Clarke critiqued my work he joked about me eating the Karl Marx’s Capital Volume 1 which I’ve been reading. So I suggested to Carla I ate the bible.
I have been looking at paper as a material that symbolises the drive to create, to attain perfection, specifically looking at how I can this medium can be used not just for it’s intellectual messages but also as a way to understand and communicate concepts through the body. This has led me to begin the process of becoming a human paper mill.
Alongside this I have been researching how we document and present ephemeral artworks especially those created by the body. I’ve begun to use pinhole photography to capture light. I want to create a truthful image of light that allows for the imagination of the viewer to interpret the image. I’ve always feel that art does not exist without the presence of the viewer and images created by pinhole cameras come into a real existence through the eyes of the viewer.
The idea we have discussed for Greenbelt and the celebration of the 400th anniversary of King James Bible is that I select a passages from the text, read and consume it. During the process I will document the action with a pinhole camera. The negative image within the camera will then be developed and transferred to positive onto paper made from the chewed Bible passage. The resulting artwork will be a photograph of the action on the material used to create the action.
The title of the work will relate to the chosen passage, which I have not decided on yet. The obvious choice is Mathew 4 http://kingjbible.com/matthew/4.htm It works perfectly with the concept and goes on to talk about light and shadow which is what we see in a photograph.
I don’t think I would have had the confidence to propose an idea like this before I started the MA. I feel confident in my ability to embark on a challenging piece of work that I will be viewed by such a diverse audience. I’m excited and I’m only a third the way through the course.
The space has been altered and I have made a place to communicate. The conversation begins with me warning the viewer of the hazard of darkness. The door is opened and they go into the space I have made. They will see what they choose to see. Messages attempt transmission but it is up to the viewer to choose which aspects of these messages to pull into their consciousness. It is a collection of documents within a collection of documents. It the medium for an encyclopedia but it is undefined. There is evidence of text but it had been destroyed. By being present the viewer destroys the text further.
When they choose to exit the viewer is presented with a sheet of hand made white cotton paper and and a black pen asked to record their experience. My input into this conversation ends here and the viewer continues with their life. Maybe what has happened to them makes sense when they recieve a document outside of the context of the gallery and they remember our conversation. I await my next writer.
The show is almost ready.
Rather than displaying images I have chosen to create an experience for the viewer. I’ve blacked out the windows and covered the floor with found photocopies. Tomorrow I will add the unsettling sound of paper chewing and the experience will be complete.
