Continuing Conversations

My shortest post ever:

Writing this dissertation is beginning to feel pretty much like curating an exhibition – I know there’s a way that all the ideas will work together on the page, but it’s taking a ludicrous amount to time to figure out exactly which way that is.

Just realised this’ll be the first post of the New Year. I’ve spent most of it so far wrapped up in blankets and a shawl, admiring the beauty of the snow, before turning back to my computer to continue writing my MA dissertation. As I’ve mentioned before, this is about trace and absence in relation to the domestic environment, in particular to the house myself and my partner have just purchased. The idea is that there are effectively two sections to the text, having a symbiotic relationship with each other. The more formal, academic side is the critique of ideas and artwork in this area, whist the opposing side is a personal account of how the various ideas / points are related to the experience of creating a home in our new house. So, while yesterday was the bodily traces in art objects day (think hair, dust, blood etc), today has been about Boltanski’s Missing House from 1990. (If you don’t know it, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niah84/2842382429/). There seems to be a bit of contradiction going on as to whether Boltanski saw this piece in the same vein as his post-memory Holocaust work – one critic quotes him as saying that the installation is about “‘the finger of God’; that is, the absurd and arbitrary contingency that determined that the residents on one stairway would be blown to bits, whilst those on the other might escape unscathed”, where as another writes: “He … discovered the names of the previous Jewish inhabitants, which he then used as the basis for the memorial content of the work”. I’ve always liked Boltanski’s work, the tricky bit is referring to artists who are so well written about in this field – it’s really easy to go off on perhaps a really interesting tangent, but a tangent nonetheless.

The snow’s pretty much all melted here now. Give the metro’s headline of ‘Briton’s heaving a sigh of relief’ as the forecast heavy snow failed to materialise, it seems I’m one of the few people in the country who would prefer that it had stayed. Okay, so the trains were crowed, the death-ice wasn’t much fun and I really didn’t like it when my boots leaked, but my god, wasn’t it beautiful?