After working at home taking photographs and separating stuff into piles for a few weeks I lost perspective, questioning what it is I’m actually doing. Am I just getting ready to move to a different country or am I working on an art project? Going through tutorial notes from a conversation I had with Post Graduate Research Tutor Becky Shaw from when I was on my MA, I was reminded that I’m not alone and that I’m actually exploring the issue/the fine line between life-art. This time concerning my own house, I’m turning a place into a space and not the other way round.
The fact that the process is so personal can create an interesting tension as what I’m doing is real, I am really de-homing our current house and we are really building a home on a piece of land in Austria. I don’t need to worry if this is art or not as I am exploring the issue art-life. And anyway, it is art because it is thought of it as art.
The process turns into the product, in fact the process is the product. I’m having a residency in my own life where I’m trying to communicate a thought process; I’m looking at it from a different perspective, asking different questions, framing a problem differently.
I do have to know where the enquiry sits – but I don’t have to know my position on it. My position is to ask questions about it and that’s why it is art and not politics. I feel I’m slowly moving back on track. Re-reading ‘Living as Form’ edited by Nato Thompson reminds me where I roughly sit with my work although the projects in there a much more political. Other names I remember being mentioned to me and I’ve read some time ago are Allan Kaprow, Mary Kelly, Grand Kestner, Ben Highmore, Danny Miller and more.
Nick is in Japan at the moment but his future Austrian boss proposed a salary offer that looks ok for us and that means ALL GO NOW. So I’ve contacted our architect Hans to arrange a meeting for when we are over there at Easter. This weekend when Nick has returned we’ll tell the boys although they are assuming our move is already planned anyway. We’ll also invite the couple that is interested in buying our house and update them as they want to have a survey done. Will tell my mum too of course. So my de-homing process gets a ‘neuen Schwung’. Need to pause from time to time to slow myself down and to not lose sight of what I’m doing.
