The art of lying
Within five days of my daily tasks, it has become clear to me that I could lie. I could lie about the tasks I’m performing, the lines I’m drawing, the work I’m creating. No-one would have to know – would they?
What is clearer is that it’s easier to lie in the real, analogue world than it is in the digital one.
I have to confess to making mistakes already. I am trying to remember to photograph the drawings and sketchbooks I am making each day. This doesn’t always happen. When it doesn’t happen, I have an internal debate about whether I should just make it up – no-one would know, would they?
A few years ago I would have been able to take and develop a photograph and it would be quite difficult for anyone to say exactly when it was taken unless I told them or perhaps included a watch or clock within the frame. Now, even the tiniest digital camera records the time and date the photograph was taken. Maybe I could be clever and alter the settings on my cameras but once that photograph is uploaded on to my PC, the record is there, the date and time logged as clearly as the pixels.
I’m recording images a little more frequently over at immaterialpractice.blogspot.com and sorting the photographs of my various activities as I go along. As I repeatedly work on some of the drawings I have realised that the photographs will become the only record of each stage.
For example I am repeatedly adding gouache lines to a small square of watercolour paper and each day it changes – the previous marks disappear under the new lines, changing the colour, not always for the better – as I work my way across the gouache palette, each day the lines get a little muddier, sometimes a little less defined, sometimes a little more. I’m not a painter. I’m just interested that I spend a little time every day making these changes and recording them. It will be finished, not in terms of an aesthetic decision but because its time is up. I won’t paint it again after 13.5.13 – that will be it, its time will be done.
wake walk drink draw time record eat cut wrap slice click wash dry dress drive work listen search help listen eat drive check email cut slice cook drink eat talk draw write sit undress brush read sleep. Today is the first full day of home/work/drawing/writing. A challenge is a good thing…. www.immaterialpractice.blogspot.co.uk
The daily drawing has begun and I’m already seeing small differences and connections in the types of mark I’m making, how long the drawings are taking and how working at home is different than working in the installation room at college.
I’m at the beginning of the first fulll week of 13.4.13 – 13.5.13 and am anxious that the tasks I have set myself will be difficult to complete on a practical level and, indeed, may not develop into pieces that I want to show in the degree show.
For me, the outcome of this piece is as much the recording and my responses in writing as it is in the drawings produced. They will be two separate entities but as relevant as each other.
I’ve had a few weeks to test some of the ideas and worked in the installation room at college for a few days, working on the daily drawing repeatedly – horizontals, verticals, repeats. As well as the large, daily drawing, I am working on smaller, individual drawings and in sketchbooks.
Already, three days in, I am hyperconscious of time.
As well as the effect on my artistic practice, I’m interested on a personal level how this idea of dividing and cropping chunks of time to perform drawing or painting or writing (or indeed any other work or task) is going to affect the rest of my day to day activities. As I begin to wrestle with how I’m going to work and what the meaning of work will be once I finish studying – the exchange of my time for money is also starting to push forward into my thoughts.
It’s day two of my final degree project, provisionally titled 13.4.13 – 13.5.13.
As I’ve been working through my degree, I’ve realised that in every project, I’ve set myself a task, a project within each module. I find it almost impossible to draw and make work without some kind of structure, paramaters, planned repeats.
Sometimes these are connected by time, sometimes by material, sometimes by activity. Sometimes they have a numerical quality.
In two months time, my degree will be finished. The sketchbooks will be stacked. I’m not sure if we’ll have had our feedback but it will be over, done. It reinforces the idea for me that time is really the only currency worth considering – there are only ever twenty four hours in a day. There are only so many days in a week. No-one gets any more time than anyone else. It’s a finite resource.
I’ve always been interested in the ideas of work, leisure, time off, working time – how we all spend our time, what we do with it – how our activities define us.
I’m a mature student – I have a family and also work part-time. As I’ve got older and the demands on my time have become greater, I plan my time and carve it up, separating out segments for doing this, doing that. Time and what I do with it becomes more precious.
I wanted to explore time with drawing so have set myself various tasks for the month – I am recording time spent drawing and not drawing. Part of my work is the documenting, the writing, the responding to lines with words and vice versa. I suppose what I’m attempting is a sort of forensic examination of this particular time.
