I’m reading back through a book a studied for my dissertation Evocative Objects Things We Think With edited by Sherry Turkle (MIT Press 2007). The book is a series of short essays by guest writers who talk about objects that have personal value. These guests are all academics and include scientists, designers and educators. They talk about their respective objects in great detail, some from the perspective of their chosen academic field. All the essays create contexts and are reflective. Turkle’s essay concludes the book by summarising the experiences the guest authors have connected with their chosen objects. She talks about objects working as enablers in our emotional lives, for example they might exist in the liminal spaces of our emotional experiences ; they might act as transitional objects or signify desire and longing.
I wonder if the work I am doing about my own evocative object – the figurine – goes any way to express the bigger ideas that Turkle talks about. In working with such a personal subject am I able to step back from it to see its meanings in a broader sense? Sometimes I think I have created a trap for myself, too caught in the personal to connect with other contexts. Perhaps this is just how it feels to be looking in depth at something – the intensity, near obsessive involvement with a subject. I guess like any in depth study there are stages – identifying an area of interest; delving in and exploring; stepping away and looking at the work in a wider context.
If I think about this reflective summing up stage now I see my object as a touch stone. Situated at a place in my psyche that allows for ‘safe’ recollection of significant childhood experiences and that acknowledges my use of the object as transitional. When I think about the figurine as it existed in my childhood ( not as I see it in the present) it stands alone. I am able to approach it and circumnavigate it as I would a large sculpture. It is during this circumnavigation that I not only read the figurine – its form and detail – but loads of associations made as a young child also come to mind. They are tiny details of places, situations, sensations. The object as viewed by my five year old self is alive with references.
The figurine allows for recall then, and as I have studied it I have begun to use it as a tool for examining formative experiences in a safe and structured way. It is enabling self-analysis I guess. If as a five year old the figurine allowed me to traffic “between the outside world and the inner self” then today it enables me to examine elements of my identity formed back then. It helps me make sense of who I am in adult life and importantly what lies behind some of my life choices and motivations.
But these ideas aren’t expressed in the work, they simply exist within the process of making. This process is self-analytical. I know through the greater context of the meaning and value of objects that what I’m exploring is universally experienced: the placing of highly personal meaning on to objects as a process of emotional development. Will any of this be apparent in my work? I think my current work is an ongoing process of self recognition and response. Its subtle and ambiguous and it has to unravel at its own pace. This is ‘a work in progress’.
