Testings
I’ve been testing out a few different formats for the drawings: the black and white photo isn’t grassy enough though…so colour it is. I want it to be clear that it’s a drawing on a photo of some grass.
The size has been reduced to a tiny 10 by 15cms and I will print out as many as I can before my printer finally blows.
I’ve found a certain freedom already in the mark making process and it would be great if I could produce 100 drawings on the day. I’ve surprised myself because these are gestural marks, not meant to be anything other than filling a very small page.
I can relate to Marion Michell’s comment about the issue of re-approaching drawing and the problem of making the first mark. I think the constraints placed on this way of drawing has released me from the burden of any representational expectations.
Being in the world
Merz made his drawing last all day and didn’t take the pencil off the paper. I’m not going to attempt that. A re-enactment is part interpretation and ritual.
It was only by chance that I discovered how to respond to Merz’s time in the field: I doodled carelessly on one of the grass photos. Instead of faithfully recreating Merz’s grass drawing, I want to draw on as many photos as it takes for my time in the field.
Merz’s work that day was about ‘being in the world’ and not painstakingly reproducing what he saw in front of him. Each drawing should be mindless, about nothing. The question is, how long can I sustain thoughtless drawings?
Mario Merz and the Artist’s Mythology
One day this week I will be spending the entire day in isolation, drawing. Just like Mario Merz did way back in 1945.
As the story goes, re-told by the man himself forty years later, the day he left prison he spent from ‘dawn to dusk’ alone in a field drawing the grass. This piece of work no longer exists.
Merz created a mythology around this performance. By recreating this action I intend to adopt this into my own, personal mythology.
He used pencil on one small piece of paper, continuously with one line, never leaving the surface of the paper. What struck me was the contemplative and immersive nature of this type of mark making. Celant observed that Merz aim was to “submerge the self consciousness of gesture within the immediacy of existence in the world”.
My starting point began with some basic photos of a patch of grass in a field. I wondered if it is possible to re-enact Merz’s immersive drawings onto a series of these photos? How necessary is it to produce ‘something’?
Kevin Bacon and the BBQ volcano
I’ve noticed a running theme on postcard messages; the weather.
But I am interested in the senders, and in particular want to begin weaving my own narrative into the story. A postcard from Lanzarote in 1992 from Kevin and Tina mentioned a ‘barbeque cooked by the heat of a volcano’. So droll.
I like playing along with the idea that it could have been postcard from Kevin Bacon (Footloose). I’ve begun to make a few images incorporating the wood chip wallpaper but actually I want to steer away from illustration. Right now I’m undecided as to whether it should feature at all.
The line of enquiry into ‘lies’ is perhaps merging into one of popular mythology, particularly in the case of the Kevin Bacon game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
Lies, Lies, Lies
Mythomania: an excessive or abnormal propensity for lying and exaggerating
or/ pseudologica fantastica
I watched Pamela Meyer’s talk on TED: ‘How to spot a liar’ – http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html
which led me to considering documenting a conversation as a transcript, and including body language and other lie leakage in brackets for instance.
Michael Shermer’s TED talk: ‘the pattern behind self deception’,
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/michael_shermer_the_pattern_behind_self_deception.htmlI
discussed the patterns behind self deception and showed images used by Susan Blackmore’s ESP tests, whereby scrambled images are perceived by the viewer to contain a picture of something. More so if an outline is included. I’ve begun this line of enquirey by abstracting a photo to the point of remoteness. Perhaps it is worthy to look at how something can be reproduced and twisted to an end point.
I came to the realisation that alot of my recent work falls under the theme of lies: deception, untruths and falsehood. I could have a body of work so to speak.
I also found that every year in a country pub in Cumbria, a competition is staged to find the World’s Biggest Liar. http://www.santonbridgeinn.com/liar/
So lying can be a performative act and even woven into local culture.
I had been short on finding base material but rediscovered a pack of handwritten postcards boughts from a charity shop years ago. I’m looking forward to reading through them again to see what I can find.
