While I was preparing for the Chisenhale residency I made lots of videos of felt tips moving over paper.
I posted one of the videos (also posted below) on my other blog “What The Matter Is”: I’d been failing to find a camera small enough to attach to the pen nib, and this camera angle was an unexpectedly good compromise.
Nicola Dale made the fantastic connection between the dance of the pens and the movements of figure skaters on ice. She wrote: “if you can’t find a camera small enough, could you draw with your feet on ice?” Thank you Nicola – it’s a very helpful link! It reminded me of an installation I made in Liverpool for a 2009 exhibition, the video component of which I’ve posted below.
I didn’t strap a video camera to my ankle but I tried to do the next best thing, filming continuously down at the ground as I walked around the city. I drew maps of my route as I went, and the final video shows the footage of the ground synchronized with new footage I made by navigating the maps on paper.
Ice would be better still – it would keep track of the tracks and save them up for an aerial view, perhaps. It brings to mind Borges and his map on a scale of 1:1.
Maps, diagrams, lines, words for things.
CAN YOU SEE ME NOW? (2009)
