A compulsive hoarder is probably too strong a term to describe myself, but I do like to keep things, and enjoy spending my studio practice time archiving and labelling them in my various folders, files and boxes.
To sit on the floor or at my desk and look, remember and revisit the concert, movie, play, museum or exhibition. Who knows what will happen to them when my demise comes. Will anyone care? The majority of them are some form of paper: a ticket, handout or postcard. But no matter how hard I try to cull my collection these things need to be kept and archived. It is something that is fundamental to my practice but also in some way a process as I try to make sense of time.
In August I started my residency at The Florence Trust in London. Currently, I am trying to work out my surroundings and how my collections fit into this place. I have begun researching the architectural history of St Saviours Church, skimming books on Gothic Revival Architecture. Somewhere, in my parents cellar, I know that there is a box full of old photographs and slides of various churches and their interiors I think this might be my next starting point.
The Sphæræ was designed by artist Cocky Eek and we were lucky enough to be the first artists to use the inflatable structure to play, experiment and test things out in.
I used this opportunity to rework my BA graduation video footage, shot at the Eden Project, Cornwall. I was struck by the architectural similarity of the biodomes and the Sphæræ.
I performed my piece – Eden – live in the Sphæræ at the festival Kunstvlaai Inexacltly This in 2012.
We, Wallinger’s companions, can also now witness this event. We witness how Petit carefully traverses a point in space that events have since effaced. I am travelling back to my memory of the BBC news footage of 9/11. Wallinger is probing us to reflect on what we are looking at and the narratives they construct between things. He has taken Petit’s wire and connected the two pieces together and we must walk along it, bounce up and down, our feet must leave the wire and settle down again, lie down and relax and swing our legs over the wire. Like the Doctor, Wallinger has chosen a moment and image that create personal myth and personal language, grounded in politics, a sense of time and place, rooted in history as well as the ubiquitous ambience of the electronic media.
The essay can be read in full on Academia.
Threads is a 1984 television drama which focuses on the medical, economic, social, and environmental consequences of a nuclear war spanning over a 13 year period.
This clip shows a child of one of the survivors who is educationally stunted and speaks a broken and distorted version of English.
I often find myself re-watching this clip. It is incredibly powerful as a it demonstrates a way of learning and a methodical way of working through communication. In my notes and work I am trying to think about my own thought processes and how I can communicate my ideas to a wider audience.
My critical notes:
- presentation of language
- sense to nonsense
- call and response
- create a sense of meaning through construction
- listening and reading: education
- divisive machines: inversion, repeat, re-look and contemplate
- fragmented and functioning like an archive
- objective and subjective voices
