I can't articulate my thoughts because there are too many in my head. About the role of the artist and the privilege that is still assumed to accrue to that role. Questioning that. I've tried just now to sketch out some questions about this but there's too much for now. I need to let it settle.
Some gold shoes.
The camera had trouble focussing on Georgia's shoes because they sparkled so much.
Been thinking a lot today about The Feminine, with a capital T and a capital F. About Ingeborg Bachmann. About using textiles. About domesticity. About wearing the trousers. About evading the role of the perpetrator in favour of occupying the territory of the victim. About Hirschhorn He and Diab She. About polarities and ambiguities. About the idea of keeping to an 'eye-line' – Whose eye? Whose line of vision? About aiming and firing. About shooting and framing.
Wondering how to get past and over it all.
Thinking about how little I know.
Disappearing. Like she did.
Between Ivan and Malina*
Into a crack.
But, how that is history.
We've progressed beyond that.
We learn, we move on.
You think?
*The two male protagonists in Bachmann's novel 'Malina'.
I have called my Ingeborg Bachmann piece I.B.
I've just realised this also stands for Incommensurable Banner.
The collective protest banner that I started off in the gallery is not working at all. I am considering ditching the whole endeavour. I have not managed to start it off in such a way that others want to keep it going. It would require, I can see, my active involvement in generating interest around it. But I am too busy being involved in what is happening with my work in my studio and in this blog and in talking to people while I am in the gallery. I talked to Jane Fordham today when I was at Fabrica about this. She said the collective banner project is too hidden. It is. It is in a box. I sent an email to Tasha last week to forward to all the volunteers to try to generate some new enthusiasm about it. It doesn't seem to have made much difference. I think I'll leave it for now and talk to Tila tomorrow about it if she is in.
Perhaps it is just too much to ask to expect people to want to leave a visual response to Hirschhorn's banner. I have been considering my own responses since April this year and for most visitors, their first view of the work does not leave them in a position to consider making a contribution to an ongoing art project.
In my statement to accompany our open studios exhibition about how we use photography I wrote that I am a lightning conductor for people's reactions to the work. Their reactions aren't bolts of lightning though; rather perceptible only as small flickers.
Fear (part two)
So, the carnage that is represented on the banner. To face that degree of harm, mutilation. To physically stand in front of that so that one's view is filled with it. To appreciate the scale of it. To place one's own (intact) body in front of the evidence of what modern munitions can do.
Of course we cannot feel the response to all that. From my observations so far of how different people respond to the images, it is clear that some are more immediately in touch with some kind of visceral or emotional reaction than others. But I am pretty sure that even those who appear immediately affected are only feeling the outer edges of a very much bigger potential response. Something INCOMMENSURABLE. Something that is building within my self and that is starting to manifest itself in physical responses of which I am not in charge. And I am very glad to have those responses because I would almost be worried if I didn't. It seems to me fitting and the very least one would expect in the face of such unmeasurable force.
I haven't been able to write about this fear at all adequately. But I'd like not to give up and will have another go at it another time.
Biscuit, anyone?
Fear (part one)
Last week and the week before I woke up a few times in the middle of the night with my heart pounding. I was inclined to think that this was the result perhaps of eating dark chocolate late at night. But then a friend, a good friend, suggested that maybe it had something to do with the images on the I.B. (Incommensurable Banner). As soon as she made this connection I knew it was true. But, interestingly, I hadn't been able to make that connection myself.
So, I've been thinking about the response of fear that the banner images evoke in people. Tasha, Fabrica Front of House Manager and I always joke about the importance of the biscuits on our shifts in the gallery. She says she thinks sugar is a necessary accompaniment to time spent near the work. It takes the edge off the shock?
When I first saw the banner itself, rather than the images of it I had seen prior to that, I felt sick and a bit shaky. Now, having spent more time looking at the banner and thinking about it, I think the fear has deepened and is resulting in these mid-night awakenings. At the start of this blog I spoke about fear in relation to sharing with you my Grandmother's Iraqi heritage. This is different: less specific, more general and – perhaps, animal.
I tried to articulate this today in the gallery to someone I was having a conversation with but noticed how woefully incapable I was of speaking about it. I'll try: the fear of death, yes. The fear of looking at such damaged bodies. The fear of imagining that that could happen to you.
I am reminded of being a child at school and learning about beheading as a form of punishment. And that beheadings took place in the Tower of London. I remember that it was inconceivable to me that people would remove other people's heads. And then visiting the block and axe at the Tower on a school trip and trying to imagine the axe coming down and severing the head from the body.
Spent some of Thursday, Friday and today getting studios ready for our open studios event over the next two weekends 25 & 26 October and 1 & 2 November. I know what I want to show. It will be a series of 'banners' which aren't really banners. They are pieces of found fabric with images applied to them via photo transfer paper. I'll show them on the walls of my studio. I like the fact that I don't know what sort of banners they are. Or what they are 'for'.
I've been thinking quite a bit about my use of fabric and questioning it. As a support and with this photo transfer method, it is quite easy to work with. I wonder how I feel about showing a number of cloths. It all feels terribly feminine to me. Apart from my Ingeborg Bachmann piece, which I am very happy with, this seems problematic. But I am going to go with it. I have considered using clothing when I have seen garments that would be suitable to transfer images onto in charity shops. But I have so far rejected the idea of using clothes. So, this much I know, they are not cloths to be worn. Not clothes.
Neither are they protest banners nor interior soft furnishings.
The pieces of fabric are:
a small white hemmed sheet about 100cm square
a white cotton lawn handkerchief
an old faded curtain with a floral print on it from my (maternal) granny's house
an embroidered tray cloth with drawn thread work
a length of curtain lining fabric removed from the curtain mentioned above and which is a very nice soft beige colour
I'm going to show these in my studio space as well as displaying my Peace Banner / Pea Spanner piece and setting up a laptop with this blog on it in case anyone wants to look at it.
I'm also transferring an image of a scrunched up lump of brown parcel tape onto some white museum object handling gloves. The brown tape was taken off the packaging that was wrapping the Incommensurable Banner and was given to me by Michael Maydon at Fabrica as genuine Hirschhorn parcel tape. I like the idea of this throw away material decorating museum gloves that would be used to handle precious or fragile objects.
