It was my intention to read Bo’s post, then leave it a couple of days before responding, but he’s got me all fired up now. Six months ago this would have been a fast paced conversation in a coffee shop, or an argument in a messy room in Margaret St.
I would be prattling rubbish and too many conflicting un-thought-through ideas. Then Bo would say “hmm… but…” and I’d be shot down in flames… then I’d go away and think about it, and come up with something better.
This process, by necessity, has been slowed down by distance and medium.
But I still want to answer this quickly. For me, it’s the blurting it out quickly that gets my mind racing. I want to answer quickly this time, because I think I’m actually getting somewhere… the synapses are firing like mad tonight! Insomnia beckons!
Ok, Bo – you are breaking down an image of my work, in various ways, looking at it with a different eye(pad), then putting it together in a new way: Deconstruction/reconstruction surely?
These pixels have no fixed and stable meaning because we keep altering them, true. We keep translating them into different medium, making more changes, looking in closer… a shifting truth?
WHAT IS LESS?
I think perhaps we need a change in the vocabulary. Instead of the word “less” let’s try the word “pure”
PURE: “without any extraneous or unnecessary elements”
One of my favourite phrases/watchwords… “avoid tautology”. If I could sum up my 2 yrs doing the MA in two words, it would be those two. So for me, the search for the pixel/stitch (Higgs Boson?) is the ultimate avoidance of tautology.
As we are in the mood for definitions, I looked in the thesaurus for stitch. Other words are suggested, but I reject them. (Arrogant? That makes two of us then, we’re in good company!)
Baste: no, basting is a long loose tacking stitch, not all stitching is basting
Fasten, Join: no, both of those can be done in many ways, not just with needle and thread
Sew: verb, not noun
Suture: the closest, but for medical use only.
So I reckon there’s only one word for stitch too. That’s pleasing isn’t it?
What I need then, is some sort of methodology to lead me through the work. I think, at the moment, I will magnify, plunge deeper in, keep making, purifying, getting rid of tautology.
When Bo unravels a piece of work, because of the digital nature of the unravelling, he is able to use it. From the real and total disembroidery there is too much disintegration for it to be useful (at the moment anyway). So I must start afresh. The way I reconstruct from what has gone before is to hijack Bo’s processes for my own ends.
The moment Bo sends me a piece of work and I see something new in it, it’s mine, no offence meant to him either… I see strings, layers, peeling back, additions, subtractions, textures, pattern, shape.
The disembroideries are a cul-de-sac. They go nowhere for me now. Other than they have provided a starting point. They were needed, but having chopped them up and passed them on, they have no further relevance, they were the topsoil. I’m far more excited by what comes out of the next layer of Bo’s processes, and will carry on stripping back from there.
(Is this homeopathic embroidery? A vague memory of stitches gone before? Is it purer now?)
One of Bo’s images – I think he used it on his personal blog – is a single pixel on a grid. I could make a single stitch in the middle of a piece of fabric and we could both put our hands up and shout “Sir, I’ve finished!”
But where’s the fun in that?
I think I might have a plan too… a small glimmer at least.
But there’ll be more questions. You can count on it.
