Recently my partner took me on a tour of the inside of a derelict mill on a site which we (Lancaster Co-Housing Company) have bought. I decided to make an installation based on the contrast between orderly systems and creative chaos. (I was excited by the strewn plastic coating, which thieves had stripped off the electrics. The coloured plastic curves and loops looked wonderful.) Permission granted, I can go ahead.
I needed a statement for the opening and as I wrote it, I realised it needed a new title, one more deliberate than Unravelling.
Subverting the Straight Line.
As I did the work, I gradually realised why I found the pieces of cable strewn on the floor so compelling, and what issues I was trying to understand and comment on by making this piece.
I clearly have a personal emotional attachment to the issues, but I think they have relevance to members of the co-housing group, as we try to make a community for ourselves, and to society in general.
The first room, with its straight lines, its dull colours, and its rules, is identified in my mind with present-day western society, which still in reality places a lot of reliance on Newtonian physics; where cause and effect is thought to be straight-forward, (but where a factory making components for the military can make a rule, which seems somewhat ironic to me, about their products not endangering people); where surveillance is all-pervasive and self-surveillance encouraged, and changes are considered to be deviant.
The second room is a place less well-known to me or to any of us, as it is about what we might create; as a society if we took quantum physics on board, (so a butterfly may cause a storm on the other side of the world, and particles may remember being linked,) let alone chaos theory or string theory; and as a group if we try to change the way we relate to each other and to the environment (which is where my re-use of found materials fits in).
Meanwhile the ‘real’ world will keep on going, and we will have to keep moving between the two environments. So the experience of going through the ‘portal’ in each direction will be just as important as the experience of being in one environment or the other.
I took another look at the metal bits included in the installation. I thought there were too many of them, so I removed some and relocated others. I turned some of the found objects into ornaments for the window ledges; ordinary work objects became a caterpillar and a rainbow. This is in contrast to the Surveillance Niche in the other room.
The notice ‘Meeting in Progress’ cried out for a comment, so I added some cable to the notice board.
I brought in some lengths of cable to strew about the floor in the same careless way as the robbers, but leaving space in the centre of the room for the audience.
Then it was just endless tidying, making safe, sweeping the floor on hands and knees, and putting up notices.
I am ready for the once-only viewing
Never mind the earlier entry in which I decided there was no time to do any more painting; I found some time, or perhaps I did some speed painting. (I was recently introduced to the concept of speed anthropology at a talk at Castlefield Gallery. Up until then I was only aware of speed archeology from my addiction to Time Team, but obviously you can apply it to anything.)
By the end of the day I thought I had done enough to this room, with the addition of more straight cables, more defect notices, and a few hanging found objects.
I tried introducing some found metal scrap. I am not sure if it works, but if I leave it up I can judge the effect next time. Conceptually it is fine; it is more scrap material from the site, and the metal pieces fall into similar curled shapes to the plastic cables. The skips which contained the scrap have long gone, but lots of pieces obviously fell to the ground. Each time I collect the pieces I think I have got them all, but more appear in the gravel track all the time, and the fishermen complain to me bitterly about their slashed car tyres.
Next day
Only two more working days to go to the once-only viewing, but somehow the day vanished and I wondered what I had achieved, apart from using a great deal of blu-tac and glue to surprisingly small effect. I had left black wires hanging on the ordered side of the portal, so I secured them to the other side. Much blu-tac needed as I must not use glue on the door frame so that I can make good at the end of the project. Then I worked on the portal from the other side. I think the portal is finished.
I wrote out my own injunctions to go on the other side of the internal window from the Luneside Engineering injunctions, trying to match the first set in some ways. Of course, it is so late in the process that it will be hard for anyone to know whether I obeyed them or not, or whether I ever intended to…
CATANDCOAT INSTALLATION STANDARDS
1. All art work must be the artist’s own; no plagiarism is acceptable.
2. There is no such thing as a mistake; any changes must be left visible.
3. All work must be created incrementally, in response to the site, without pre-planning. All drawing must be freehand.
4. Always do your best to increase the risk of changing people’s preconceptions.
However I have paid attention to the Luneside injunctions (which you can see in a picture in an earlier post) and have labelled authorised deviations from drawings, and reported defects using coloured cards found on site. I printed out some pieces and installed them along with found notices in the niche, to transform it into a Surveillance Room. Chris had a look at it, and even though he knows the site very well, he asked me which parts were re-used and which I had created.
I finished painting the designs on the wall, and started to attach black or grey cable in straight lines on the ordered wall. Some of them go round the door reveals and then start to behave in a less ordered fashion. I spent a coffee break wondering a) whether to paint more designs to the left of the door, which is blank at the moment, or on the right of the door to fill in spaces, so the designs might seem to go through the floor or ceiling, and b) whether to let the lines of cables relate in any way to the designs or not. Then I worked out a timeline, and with 4 working days left, more painting is not realistic, though I would like to do it. As far as the cables go, a halfway position seems best; if they relate too strongly to the painted designs, that will imply that the designs are more realistic than they are, on the other hand, because this is ‘ordered’ world, they cannot completely ignore the designs. In one of the photos you can see that the door leads into a darkened space; this is my creative chaos room. It is quite hard to work here as the windows are boarded up, and the only light comes through the door.
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