I’ve just adjusted the title of this blog having confirmed the name of the piece as “Doing Words with Things”. It’s a play on J.L. Austin’s lectures on speech acts and pragmatics in the 1950’s which was entitled “How to Do Things with Words”. His lectures discussed the pragmatic interlocking of language and world, and though some of his conclusions don’t convince me he lays out a useful set of nodes to navigate. The phrase “Doing Words with Things” reflects titles of other related pieces of mine: “What To Do” (2010), “What The Matter Is” (2009), “Do Something” (2009), “Writing Art and Life” (2010-11). I like words that are short and plain.
The piece is gradually taking shape: it will have a clear start and end rather than being a durational performance, and I’m working more on ideas for the sculpture that will result. To sustain something like a narrative before a seated audience, I want to make the sculpture vary its appearance over time while keeping it continually abstract. The important thing is that it mirror the gestures of BSL that instruct its construction. I’ve found a couple of images that suggest the kind of thing I have in mind – here’s one I love (scanned from a clothes catalogue) but mine will need more structural variety and a greater range of materials.
