Monkey’s Fist
In my fist a palm sized monkey’s fist, paw, claw gifted on a doorstep by Adam Cluely playful artist, manipulator of events and occupier of traversing territories. My task – a report which I am appropriating to the archives of barren in the hope this collaboration extends that far.
Christy Georg completed a large scale monkey’s fist as part of her work Nautical Body (2007-2008), its overarching title identifying its primary relationship as a sailors knot. Knots and the nautical have a beautiful aesthetic fascination recently found in an installation in Michael Schmidt’s installation at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs but this replication draws attention to the maritime and its heritage. I would like to ask how that informs what the heck I’m to do with this fist apart from lob it into a wide open space and hear it thud into some damp sod.
As a tool it is primarily a throwing device the fist acting as a weight which on connection to another object such as balustrade, other rope, tree etc. It will wrap around it much like a fist on which the thrower can yank and pull either himself nearer , bridge a gap or even use to attach something to pull into place. This sounds vague to me but on throwing it over a washing line it is easy to see the weight pull down and the rope twist around the line and itself with the momentum.
So as a mover and drawer my concerns are with its possibility as a drawing tool and how this can add and draw attention to the body in a movement act which is functional. I have an intrinsic response to rhythmic repetition and the seductive actions of fly fishing over to throwing a stone in at the waters edge which puncture moments beautifully in our everyday practice of the mundane and ordinary. From Allen Ruppersbberg’s ‘ Fifty helpful hints on the Art of Everyday’ there is this word ‘specific’ which we often associate with site however he comments on specific being the revealing of something passing, recognized, acknowledged and undefined – what is specific is that your view has been subtly made different by an act. The moment is just a tip and underneath the myriad. I often have trouble with wish wash tripe but the fact that this shift is part of our aesthetic everyday experience is capitalised upon and fragments and delineates our interaction with space, time and the day. Many artworks replicate and copy such things in order to draw attention to it and as Ruppersberg would say create a 50;50 basis by which to create something new. In other words by removing the copied from one space and designing in it in another, or dealing with it as fragment, it gives the viewer another window by which to see it.
This is my basis for what I will do with this monkey’s fist, shift its context and location and gravitate towards my own research borders to hopefully create a window into how distance, connection can be perceived at our transitions at borders. I think in terms of location between cities, regions and towns. It is this between, the non-space seen as transitory and passed through without touching it which I would like to permeate and occupy with this fist.
Differences on a small scale yet accumulating in potential distance as we shake our fists from within the interiors of cars – the doors acting as fences. This is only in a small sense but a faint rumble of the dissatisfaction voiced beteen communities, regions, countries. We stand in opposition and face one another, whom we don’t know but draw lines between. Rather than shaking a fist if we looked in the mirror and saw our own reflection would we be more inclined to offer a monkeys fist? Idealistic wonders do exist and should continue to if the extent of our differences can be but gently undermined by small acts.
I recently finished a book Tortilla Curtain on the prejudice growing between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ on the borders of Mexico; Mexicans finding a gap in the fence and the unrest that emerges. In fixing difference an extra 700 miles of fence are to be employed at Mexico’s borders and the comment is, that it does not unite – I would have thought that was obvious.
