2nd Year Art Student

I have today made some personalised footnotes after reading a section of the above book, these are personalised to me and my practice. Just a way I think sometimes…

1- Artefact- a relic, something to refer to when needed, a protected item from the past with significant value, or a relic from a previous performance.

2- Realia- Used as an education. This could be any object. This can be used to educate myself and jog my memory.

3- Props- Something used that has further meaning or use than just to view.

4- Residues- a left behind in a performance. Something that could stand on it’s own two feet as a piece of art of its own this may be a ready made or otherwise.

5- Marginalia- history of note making in the margin of books a per-formative act by a previous owner.

6- Methonymy- It is a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated. We can come across examples of metonymy both from literature and in everyday life.

7- Juxtaposition- The two opposite of what one sees together – none-juxtapose would be for me acting in the exact thing that one may see.

8- Retroactively- Looking on past works to inspire you to move forward.

9- Polaroids- obtaining information quickly to move forward.

10- Archaic- something primitive – primitive like – understanding words and acting on the exact meaning, not understanding the true meaning.

Yesterday I found some discarded wood outside a regenerated house in Worcester, ‘how about I build a table of memories , left behinds. Peoples stories are effectively stored in the wallpaper on those pieces of wood.’ The half door a gateway into this.

Today I visited Walsall Gallery  (The New Art Gallery Walsall) and I saw a piece of work called Bookworm (at least a still), on further investigation I found it was a short film by Simon Raven and Film/Performance artist, Within this piece he had taken the saying/name bookworm and actually embodied it. This has really spurred my interest and I will defiantly look into it more I have been thinking about English sayings and what would happen if I acted upon them?

sayings like:

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak
The squeaking wheel gets the grease
The tide must be taken when it comes
There is safety in numbers
They also serve who only stand and wait
Two heads are better than one
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones
A stitch in time saves nine

Over all though the exhibition was very thought provoking and in general pulled me in.

The Mat Collishaw exhibition was brilliant, All things Fall, 2014. (seen above) was fantastic, it was just a shame I was not able to see it in Rome in complete context. This spinning model gives us the illusion under strobe that the figurines are moving, and portrays a real scene of horror and blood thirst, but due to the fantastical nature of the sculpture/installation you are unable to move away and are drawn in, ‘what can I see next?’

Homage to Yellow was a performance made last year.

• I had to produce my own wallpaper.
• I researched the medical history of Worcester.
• I read the short story, the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Wallpaper design below.

I took from the the research, Charles Hastings a local; medical/surgical doctor from the 1800’s who did allot for Worcester but with little recognition so I decided to hide him within the wallpaper, a short poem and research about him.

I used the fact that the main character from The Yellow Wallpaper becomes sick and is disgusted by the wallpaper. I used Baked beans (I cannot stand them) to paste the wallpaper on the wall.

Is Britain able to allow us to be free , truly, a Utopia would be deemed as impossible at this time we are always watched by the onlooking eye we are surrounded by tools of propaganda, propaganda tools just like Alex, Alex is a  propaganda tool of  a dystopian totalitarian state, within the story he became non-human, a tool in society with the means of propaganda to help the highest paying bidder achieve their goals, although I feel by the end of the book he is fully aware of his power, or the power given to him by the government which up until he attempted suicide he was unaware.

Alex is Clockwork orange but not throughout the book, yes admittedly what he does do at the beginning is deemed as wrong and against all moral restraints set by civilized society, Clockwork Orange;

‘Clock work orange – by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.’ (Burgess)

He does partake in bad/evil but there is also a goodness within him which is not quiet obvious to see, his choices define him, choices. once he goes to prison he becomes interested in god and the bible but is soon experimented on, forced into good choices, which gives him no choice, a product of a Dystopian state with a Totalitarian Government. He cannot make the choices he wants to make, he isn’t give the chance to change because he is constrained to do so, the shackles of prison are never let go. The opposing regime use his trigger,Beethoven against him, to enable a propaganda, he was now a robot;

‘Robot- a person who acts and responds in a mechanical, routine manner; automaton.’

Upon a trigger he can be controlled, stopped, this forces him to attempt suicide. once healed the Government use him as a tool of there own and so on it goes until the book shows his full recovery at the end by giving him two paths to take one back to his old habits one to a new life. Though the below passage from the book show he looks to fine a mother to his son, maybe a moment of change and coming of age.

 ‘And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round, like some bolshy gigantic like chelloveck, like old Bog Himself (by courtesy of Korova Milkbar) turning and turning and turning a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers.’

A Clockwork Orange has given me a insight to what a Dystiopia could look like and what we read in this novel has much resemblance to what is happening today, although seen as a separate dimension I can almost place myself in this world when reading the news and/or walking at night (?) Something I must pursue through my performance work.