Being an Artist

I would like to briefly talk about artist archive-thinking.

The archive, place of history, memories and time. The sheer materiality of the archive, the physicality of it whilst it is waiting to be ordered, when it becomes a sea of documents.

The archive localises and protects documents, but it also imprisons them. Locks them in a specific space, allowing the process of archiving and then finding or viewing it a somewhat emotional experience.

This experience is more often than not a linear movement, a walk down an aisle of a library, or a bookshop. It becomes physical, emotional and ordered.

What is the emotional impact of the archive?

Do we appreciate this impact and does it become more present when it is an individual more personal experience? For example, when we enter a city’s archives -generally in a large vault, or hidden room -where you have to be escorted and the keepers of this archive wheel out the documents on rather magnificent sized tables. Does archiving become more about the experience than the document? You feel you are the voyager on a strange and important meeting, a moment in time that perhaps you were not supposed to be a part of.

Yet, here you are. Witnessing this; this spectacle before you, this memory.

Should we keep these moments hidden away, archived, like the dead sea; waiting for the person to come and make use of them, uncover their lost pages and store them in their memories before having to come back again to re-read what has been forgotten. Or, should we erase all physicality.

Should an individual book be for the individual. Or for the collective human race.

Sometimes, we become trapped by the history of these archives, by their past their meaning their hidden secrets. Are they supposed to be revealed? Are we supposed to store them or live them?

Should we have the ‘library of life’ available to all – or is it already available, metaphysically, in our subconsious.

“Documents become available at a certain time” as Walter Benjamin stated.

Thanks to Picture this and Ruadhri Ryan for introducing me to the book ‘Ghosting: The role of the Archive within Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video’ – Inspiring me to think more and write about the archive.

Today, I have been invigilating at Picture This, in Bristol. We have just had a talk by Maryam Jafri on her piece ‘Avalon’.

The film ‘Avalon’ features an entrepeuner known as F.R in an Asian country, who was given $700 USD by his father in order to ‘make something of himself’. With this F.R invested in a multi million dollar clandestine company that secretly exports fetish wear.

The women who work in this factory, not only do not know what they are actually making these products for, but they think they are body bags for US military in Iraq and props for circus animals.

The choice of factory and products relied upon the themes of gender, sexuality, the unconscious, desire and mainly the workers -abused by the service providers.

The range of different characters and relationships explains and gives a difficult and thorough view of the moral implications involved in this factory setting. At first glance the entrepeneur and the consumer are judged, however you soon realise that the workers may be better off not knowing..? These complex relationships and the civil liberties concerning their rights and visibility is one of the main key elements to this part documentary, part staged performance.

Is it best that these women, are kept in the dark – not living in shame of what they are making?

This somewhat journalistic approach to film making, engulfed with huge amounts of field work and research that has been carried out, seems highly appropriate in order to produce the staged shots.

Real or unreal, the film allows the subconscious to reveal many political feelings and opens the mind to reflection of these.

***REALITY***

I am back from Greece, back in cold, windy, rainy England.

It has taken me a few days to sit down, look through everything and reflect.

I’m not sure if it is good to reflect too much and focus too much on ‘things’.

Perhaps, I won’t reflect.

Perhaps, I will just post some images.

Perhaps, you should reflect, yes you, not me.

This is my grandmother’s house.

Rewritten, remembered, rethought.

Expanded and contextualised.

Why is it we chose to remember some things more than others?

Again, I have written this post twice now.

3 seems to be the lucky number.

Re-invent. I shall re-invent it.

I want to look back at dust. Look back at this years relationship with this material. This existence.

The air in which we breath.

Dust particles, particles of humanness. Mere specks in the whole planetary system. Specks?

No. No, we are smaller than specks, for each speck consists of thousands of molecules. One speck of dust is in essence our entire human race.

So I ask, what and who are we? Have I been exploring our infinite existence through this dust process?

Where do we belong?

A dustpan worth of dust is a world in itself.

Where does that leave us, me? I am, dust.

I am, a tiny molecule of dust.

When I die, you will breath, me, in and out.

I will float, existing, in a world full of dust. Made of dust.

Dust cannot be extinguished. Just removed from a solitary state that is visible to our naked eye.

Dust, I am.

Being in Greece.

What with the heat and the fact that you physically can do *nothing* because of it, there has been little to inspire me so far.

Yet there is dust *everywhere*.

Too much dust perhaps….?

I am waiting for the third idea to appear.

A visit to my grans won’t go a miss. I’m sure she’ll bring something interesting to the tables. The First Dust Lady.

Tomorrow I will take some photos and maybe make video – if I find the equipment to do so.

For now I am writing…