As I move through the week and my several freelance and teaching jobs a large part of my mind is on getting ready for our open studios at APEC on 25 and 26 Oct and 1 and 2 November. I know what work I want to have up but I haven't made most of it yet. So, slightly panicking about that. How much of the time my work is on the back burner, gestating in my head, while I get on with earning a living.
I have been thinking about how to display the piece that I want to put on the wall outside my studio. It's very small and simple: a print on a handkerchief. Whether to let it hang loose with just a pin in each of the top corners or whether to give it a board angled to the wall to rest on so that it can lie flat. It's that old question again about flatness or not.
Just quickly. Was at Tate Britain on Monday for Turner Prize and Francis Bacon.
Bacon: human flesh as meat. Of course! But I'd forgotten how bloody his carcasses look. His archive of photos that he had lying around in his studio to paint from: body parts and and war wounded.
Cathy Wilkes: fragility and femininity expressed in such pure sculptural terms. I found her display very arresting. And Mark Leckey's film of his performed lectures reminded me of this blog: ruminations on nothing much except the things that interest one.
And why not!
The other good things that happened during my session in Fabrica yesterday were: initiating discussions with visitors to the exhibition in front of the work and a large, round table discussion taking place spontaneously when a female visitor with a good strong voice came up and addressed the room in general with her response to the work.
I approached a man who was carrying a tripod and a backpack and told him that I would be very interested to know what his thoughts were on seeing the work because I was artist in residence for the exhibition and that talking to him about the work would help my own reflections. As I was saying this I realised that this was the key: it was actually true! I was presenting myself to him not as a sort of 'listening ear' for him to offload his reaction to the work onto, nor as some sort of background filler-in of facts about the piece but as who I was and with a genuine offer to have a conversation because I wanted to. Obvious really, isn't it.
We went back into the viewing space and stood and talked about the work. As we were talking a large part of my thoughts was observing our interaction. It felt friendly. I found myself thinking about our two bodies facing each other in front of the array of images of bodies on the banner. Worlds apart. They as dead and no more than flat images. Us as living embodied beings. They voiceless, exploded, contorted, rendered immaterial through the destruction of their materiality exaggerated further by their reproduction as mass-produced images. We full of potential and of the moment. Possible progenitors of future generations, but now also having witnessed through the work (indirectly, oh so indirectly) the results of the worst of human behaviour.
[I can't remember much about what we spoke about I was so absorbed in my reflections about our encounter.]
There's a vague whiff of exploitation in the binary opposition I've drawn here. I can't put my finger on this element but it's something to do with the potency of the living being enhanced by the presence of the dead. I don't like it. I've frightened myself with it. Should I call it 'fascist'? Use that word with extreme caution. Is it Sadeian excess? To use the dead to make oneself feel more alive? Maybe this is what B means in her condemnation of the work? Is it in all of us? Maybe I shouldn't speak for 'all of us' but I spot it in myself at least. Latent. It's how tyranny takes hold. By exploiting that streak. Better to get it out and look at it.
Too scared now. Back to bed for me.
Note to self: take another look at Angela Carter's 'The Sadeian Woman'.
Had a good session in Fabrica yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. I spent some time exploring the whole space with the banner in it by taking photographs. There were four volunteers in as well as Tasha (Front of House Manager) so together we were already a discussion group even without any visitors. It was good to have the opportunity to get together with Giuseppe, one of the volunteers and a teacher (in his spare time) who is going to bring some of his students to the exhibition, to talk about how to approach doing so. After some discussion in front of the banner, we came to the conclusion that neither of us had any idea about how to plan for such an occasion. I was all for waiting and seeing what happened and letting the students take charge. I do think this is the best policy with this work. All you have to plan is how to guide their leadership, or, better said, their facilitation of the session.
Then there was a surprise when an old school friend of mine turned up. We have bumped into each other since school, several times actually, but we've never really managed to hook up again. I felt very touched by her presence in the space with me in front of Hirschhorn's work. She's a child psychologist now working in schools on emotional literacy and we talked a bit about how unkind the girls in our class had been to one another back then, as girls in a girls' school. I told her I had worked in schools as an artist on projects around 'emotional intelligence' and I think we both saw some link (without needing to spell it out) between what it was like then and our decisions to do this work now. Her mum and young daughter were waiting to one side of the space in Fabrica away from sight of the exhibition and we had moved to join them. Thus moving away from the 'zone of action' which is occupied by the banner and its viewing space to the marginal area occupied by those who don't wish to look, those excluded by age and the rest of the world.
To what extent should a blogger limit their input so as not to put off potential readers by presenting them with a barrage of postings that they will not have time to read in their entirety and how much should the blogger 'go with the flow' and carry on posting if that is what the impulse is to do?
There, I have demonstrated that I am at least considering taking you, Reader, into account, which gives me permission to continue now with the posting(s?) I was going to put up anyway.
I had a look at the collective banner project I initiated to see how it was getting on and was dismayed to see only two images on it so far. With around 500 visitors per day at the moment to the exhibition that is a pretty poor result. I acknowledged to myself my half-hearted attitude to this collective banner project and there is undoubtedly a connection to my half-heartedness and its lack of development. I decided I do want it to go ahead and I do want to see it filled with pictures. So, I will set about rethinking how to present it to people so that they will want to take part.
