Life and Death

20th October

The exhibition was due to take place from 13:00 to 15:00 inside the prison. We all had to exhibit on the first floor, were not allowed to fix anything to the walls or ceilings and there were no electricity points.

I chose the end of the first long corridor after the entrance to the prison for my projection which was in semi-darkness. There were two big heating pipes going across just underneath the ceiling so I used string to tie the two silk sheets to these so that they hung down, one in front of the other. I then set the projector up on a chair behind to get it to the right height to project through the two sheets.

A large number of the students and tutors came from the school to look at the exhibition. I had to explain my work to each of the groups of people through an interpreter. One of the students said that he found the work ‘very eerie’ and the headmaster explained that where I had chosen to exhibit had been the old entrance to the prison where all the prisoners were brought in.

A tutor commented that he could see the projector behind the silk sheets and this had distracted from the projection itself. Our tutor Laura Leahy, said it was interesting how the fate of the prison was unresolved, as in no one can decide what to do with the building, nothing is clear, just like my projection piece, so she said that she thought it worked really well in the space.

19th October

Using images and filming of one of the spy holes I edited a short film using IMovie. I experimented with my portable projector, projecting into a small box space but the images were too defined. When projected through crumpled sheets, the image was too blurred. I preferred the image through two flat silk sheets because it seemed to create a visual echo of the original image. I also wanted to add sound to the images.

I had some recordings of someone speaking Czech, footsteps, a clock ticking and jingling keys which had a double meaning, both unlocking doors and telling communists to go home. I had distorted these sounds in various ways and edited them into the film using IMovie. I wanted not only the visual image to be distorted but also the sound too.

18th October

We attended a dry point workshop at the school with some of the Czech students. I used the drawing I had done the day before in the prison. I liked the result much more than when I had tried it in level four. Instead of Perspex, we used a softer material which seemed much more receptive to the marks and indentations and I left a lot more ink on which worked well.

This made me think about how much an image changes each time it is reproduced, how it can look the same but it isn’t the same. How over time things change so slowly that we often don’t notice the change. I noticed how through drawing and the printing process, I had defamiliarised the corridor of the prison removing a lot of the context so it was now impossible to tell what sort of corridor it was. It was no longer the original drawing as it was first perceived in the context of its original place and time. It had lost its authenticity. As Walter Benjamin pointed out in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” (1936)

In Corps Etranger (1994) Mona Hatoum takes something familiar to us and by playing with scale and altering context, makes it unfamiliar. This also creates many layers to the work which plays with the viewer’s perceptions, experiences and beliefs.

This made me think about an idea for the exhibition at the end of the week, how I could use the images and filming that I had of the inside of the prison to somehow create the abstract concept of time passing, maybe a back projection through one of the spy holes in a prison door. I also liked the idea of creating physical layers by projecting through silk sheets.

Thought about ways to show time passing. Artist Maarten Baas real time Schiphol Clock (2016) recorded real time using a person as the mechanism for the timekeeping. He used this concept with both analogue and digital time. In Sweepers (2009), two handy men sweep two lines of rubbish in the form of a first and second hand on a clock to keep time for 12 hours. This real time film is then projected onto the wall in a living space above a table and chairs, where a clock might hang. I find this idea of the physical ‘making of time’ and spending time watching the making of time a really interesting concept.

I thought about time and how it can totally change how something is perceived. How do we know ‘when enough time has passed’ and why do things get ‘stuck in time’ and what is time?

I decided to just sit in the dark inside the arts building and try to experience time passing. I noticed shadows increasing and decreasing in size, car lights outside passing the windows and silhouettes of people passing by. I could also hear a clock ticking in one of the corridors so I made some sound recordings and filmed some of the lights and shadows.

Benjamin, W (1936), The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Translated: by Harry Zohn. Available online: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

On one of the afternoons we had the opportunity attend a pottery class. Jabe, one of the Czech Republic students gave us a demonstration and then I had a go at throwing a pot. Eventually managed to centre the clay and made a bowl and a dish. Found it really hypnotic and therapeutic.

17th October

Residency in the Czech Republic to visit the Palace of Justice in Palacky Square. The prison was used by the National Socialist regime in World War II and is infamous for the cruel treatment and executions of political prisoners in later years by the Communist Party. Today the Palace is the Secondary School of Applied Arts and part of it overlooks the courtyard where many of the executions took place. The purpose of the residency was to visit the prison, make work in response to the space and put on an exhibition for the students and teachers of the school.

I was drawn to the views of the corridors which seemed endless, as if time and space were being squeezed into nothingness in front of my eyes. I started to make drawings and each one I did became more and more abstract concentrating only on the retreating space. This seemed to reflect the heaviness I felt whilst in the prison, as if the space was closing in around me.