Saturday 6th December saw the second part of my residency at South Square, and it was interesting to see how the lines left behind at the end of the intervention had moved as people had continued to move around the space during the rest of the private view. Some of the (cheap!) tape measures had self-retracted and enterprising members of the public had found ways of making them stay anchored in position on the night by counter-weighting them against each other.
As other 6 other artists will follow my residency, I wanted to make the ‘drawing’ left by the tape measures more permanent and for the ideas behind the work more accessible. During the intervention on the 5th I introduced each scenario, listing the people who lived in the space, which I feel creates more of a narrative and lessens how ‘mathematical’ and cold the work can feel. I want to bring some of that narrative into the work now that the live part is over.
Saturday’s residency was mostly spent replacing the loose tape measures with ones attached to the floor. I’ve used printed masking tape with measuring markings, but the two rolls of each that I had bought soon ran out. Realising that I had a load of real tape measures (those cheap poundshop ones that I’m not going to be able to use all of again) I figured that I’d try cutting them up and pinning those to the floor. By the end of this day I’ve got a selection of the squares ‘permanently’ attached to the floor and plans to do a few more on Sunday, before adding some of that narrative to the work in the form of written notes along the edge of the tapes and some more printed censuses where appropriate.
