continued from post 58
Also I like that it might just continue as a word of mouth project and that people will pass on a message to different people and that it will become whatever it wants to become, and it can either grow or disappear. I like that it will just exist as an idea. I think what I will do is at the end see how many postcards or letters there are and then ask people to send their address and then send them a postcard with a letter asking them to add something to the work and send it on to someone else who will do the same thing. I should maybe set an end-date of maybe next years book fair for the work to return.
Last year I took part in the Travelling moleskine project where artist were given a sketchbook asked to contribute to it and then to pass it on eventually filling the book up and sending it back to the the project organiser. Of course many did not make it back and got lost out there but a greater proportion of them did continue their journey. I think the success of that project was because of the book as a transportable, sharable object that does not belong to one person. Mass produced for the masses. I like that.
‘It seems to me that there’s no real change in art, in the subjects, which remain the same. There’s no change in the way of looking. There’s no change in the purpose of art which is to create emotions and make us think.’ Christian Boltanski in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist 2009.
Last night I dreamt of a book, maybe more of a zine, photocopied with text and images which would accompany my work for this part of the MA, most likely I have been influenced by my involvement with Leeds Artist Book Fair. I have some issues with Artist Books. I like the idea of presenting things in book form so that they can be handled by people read whilst in transit (where I do most of my reading), passed on, left behind, shared, taken away from the gallery or museum or artspace and into the world of the viewer transporting them into another place. But I am less fond of the book as object or sculpture, static and placed. I think this is because then then limits who can experience the book. It’s not likely to appear in a charity shop or left on a bus. It becomes too precious which i don’t think the book should be. I think it should be the means of communication that is easily transported shared, not possessed and owned. For me a book is a symbol of knowledge that can accessed by anyone.
Now I’m wondering what I should do with my work at the book fair. The postcards and letters people have sent are currently displayed on a gold trolley, i’m not sure why this was a decision made by the curator.
I feel so liberated by this project. All I did was create the idea and recipients of the email choose whether or not to get involved. Then with the discovery of the lack of letterbox I have left the collating of the mail in the hands of the staff of the sorting office in Leeds and in the hands of the curator to collect the mail everyday. The presentation of the work is also out of my hands. I have had several conversations with the curator about how it could be presented but the last thing I expected was a gold trolley. The documentation I have left in the hands of an artist and good friend Larna Campbell who is also taking part in the show.
So now what happens to it from here. At what point do I get involved again? Or do I? I expect that at the end of the show the other artists will collect their work or it will be sent back to them. I need to decide what I should do. I’d like to continue to keep the whole thing apart from me as long as possible and to find some way of continuing the idea and allowing it to grow and develop. I could ask people to send me their address is they would like to have a postcard sent to them. This way the work would never become an object. It could become a book. With some writing, images etc. which then could be sent to people. Or each postcard could become it’s own book being sent on to different people and maybe documented online.
oops gonna have to continue on another blog post reaching the max here
Another day another couple of rejections for menial part-time jobs. Tonight’s the opening of Leeds Artist Book Fair and the Home From Home exhibition. I’m gutted I won’t be there. It’s going to be a great event. Over 80 artists exhibiting in one house. And thanks the the Royal Mail my book project will actually happen.
It looked like disaster earlier in the week when we discovered there was no letterbox. My book is being created by the audience (or to be correct the readers of an email) to send a postcard to the address, but with no letterbox officially the undelivered mail would be destroyed. It only took two calls to sort it out with the post office who were only too glad to help.
In other news I got a snazzy new dictphone in the post today which should help with note taking and listening to audio books. I’m still making my way through chapter one of Karl Marx’s Capital Volume one. The idea came from Strategies for Free Education http://noinstitute.wordpress.com/ who are one of the many groups who are seeking other ways to learn that don’t involve a lifetime of debt.
So far there is no interest from the community in Dorset or my fellow MA students and my tutors seem perplexed as to why I would want to burden myself with reading such an epic piece of literature. But that’s the way I work. I have to know the source. Like paper, or even photography I have to go back to the begining and understand what it was like to experience these things when they had just begun to happen. maybe ot goes back to the insecurities about education.
Coming from a background where education was only for those who could afford it my parents presented our education to us a gift that we should value highly. But when your the first person in your extended family to embark on post graduate training it does feel kinda special but fragile and a huge step really. I know my dad’s cousins are all lawyers and one was the Lord Chief Justice in Northern Ireland, but still learning kind of isolates you. You think differently and you realise how little you know. Maybe that’s why I feel the need to go back to the beginning and build up a picture of the whole thing because I have no reference for this new knowledge.
However and whatever my priority at the moment is to stay focused. Not easy at all, but this weekend will mainly be reading and writing my PDP (see yesterdays post).
Specialised, proficient, practiced, able, skilled, knowledgeable expert capable of having an opinion who has advanced, improved, matured, grown and transformed and who can show evidence of this in a collated container or file or as it is known by my fellow students the PDP.
I had a look through a fellow students PDP file today and it was clear, honest, straight forward, all loose ends tied up and was attached to published professionals by way of context, subject and aesthetic. And mine? Currently it exists as scraps of paper, random electronic documents and mind maps. But to be fair theirs was a rerun and I do have the advantage of pining over this process for twice as much time being a yet unemployed part-time student.
Everyday I appy for jobs and still nothing. I’m restricted by location as I am commited to one day a week at University, but if push came to shove I could always negotiate something where I attended seminars in the second year. All that is up in the air as well because my partners job ends in September so well will go wherever he can find a job.
But back to the MA. When I have the time my favourite thing to do is browse the journals and magazines in the library. It never fails to inspire and excite. Today I came across an article in The History of Photography journal about film stills which is right on the button regarding the project I’m currently devising. So far I have just skim read it but just glancing through I see references to thinkers and artists I’ve already come across which is encouraging.
But priority for the moment is this side line project which I will spend tomorrow on whilst listening to Capital Volume One by Karl Marx. At some point I will receive a delivery of software which should make my life a little easier and then then week will come gently to a close and I can curl up in bed and sleep away this cold.
‘The body is gendered…The body can thus be seen not as a blank, passive page, a neutral ground of meaning, but as an active, productive ‘whiteness’…The woman artist thus transgresses both what it is to be an artist and what it is to be a woman…The work is thus always a representation of the art’s gender, an embodiment of her embodiment of gender, a gendered self-representation, no matter what its medium or overt content…[Freud] suggests that women themselves should not concern themselves with the question as they themselves are the problem…’
The Engagement with Psychoanalysis, Border crossings by Hilary Robinson
