ARTISTS TALKING

# 41 [13 October 2008]

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.

# 42 [13 October 2008]

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'. 

# 43 [15 October 2008]

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! 

# 44 [15 October 2008]

A book I ordered through Amazon arrived today. For some reason I looked closely at the original price sticker on the back and it said it was from Silver Moon Bookshop, 68 Charing Cross Road.

Talk about nostalgia! 

# 45 [16 October 2008]

Note to self

Things I would write about if it weren't so late and I weren't so tired:

What I've not yet said about Hirschhorn's work.

Fear.

What I've been reading about photography's indexical relationship to reality.

Quotes from Judith's article about politics and art (and fear).

Notes from the secure unit.

The impossibility of working with others.

Anti Edo demo today.

The face(s) of political engagement today.

Lots of other things that I've forgotten. 

# 46 [19 October 2008]

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.

# 47 [19 October 2008]

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.

# 48 [19 October 2008]

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?

# 49 [19 October 2008]

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.

# 50 [19 October 2008]

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'.