Covert Artist in Residence

Site Specific Facsimile Boxes at V&A
I think I’ve just discovered probably the most fun you can have in a museum.

I took about a dozen of made Facsimile Boxes to the V&A to release to the wild, their natural habitat. I found a place for each, somewhere near or like where the images were taken, and left them there.
It was brilliant, and totally covert, as I didn’t want them to be immediately taken away by the guard people there. The blocky shapes of substance looked very much in the right place.

When I was looking for somewhere to leave them, it felt like I was casing the joint and about to steal something. How funny to feel like that when I am doing the opposite of stealing. I wonder if there is a word for that – I am not exactly donating, or giving, but surreptitiously, covertly sneaking things in.
It raises an experience of museum and gallery policy issues – art students are forever sneaking little publications into gallery bookshops – apparently.

During my degree at Middlesex, we had to do a group exercise – seven of us did a big joint painting, which was actually a bit rubbish, cut it up, then wore it in Tate Modern, We walked around, sometimes lining up and thus reconstructing the painting.

Access to exhibition spaces, participation in cultural spaces. Decisions, permissions and criteria about what is collected by museums and exhibited in galleries.

So I have left the Facsimile boxes in situ, some more obviously than others. Perhaps I will go back in a few days and see if any remain. In the meantime, my site specific installation is currently in exhibition at the V&A.

What will happen to them. Perhaps they will all be binned tonight. Perhaps someone will find one and feel like they are stealing from the V&A when they sneak it into their bag. Perhaps a couple might remain for a long time.

Facsimile 

Streams of people wander through, in and out of my sightline. I sense them. I hear in their chatter the echo of myself. I never was this woman. I am still the rock I was hewn from, and into such matter I will return in time. Frozen in this long moment, I will crumble away before I move.

My solid shadow. I stood still while tools carved me, while eyes interpreted my body. Now I breathe out and laugh, and slip away, bringing my nakedness with me.

We are part of it all by seeing it. We make it exist by being there, breathing in those same molecules from centuries before, adding the invisible patina of our day. We come to this place so that we can feel the past coexist in the present. It was always so, before this stone was excavated from its ancient sleep in the earth, and made into this woman, and in time each particle will be breathed away.

Facsimile is a ten minute moving image piece with sound, made during this covert artist residency at the V&A.

I have been unable to upload video onto this site, so stills and a link:

stills 

http://www.eleanormacfarlane.com/apps/videos/videos/show/18849737-facsimile

As a conclusion and dissemination of my covert residency at the V&A, I am making a downloadable PDF print, cut, fold and make museum box, which can be filled with cut-out printed objects.

It’s a museum in a box, curated by the individual.

The V&A objects, now fabulous treasures, once in currency.

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I had various ideas about making treasure boxes. There’s such a feeling about all those beautiful and intricate boxes at the V&A, compartmentalised boxes for sewing kits or drawing materials, or personal care, or other secrets. I had the idea for the downloadable box pretty early on in the residency. What if all leaflets in museums and galleries could be thus transformed – it’s so difficult to keep even lovely leaflets – postcards are better,

The project needed to be – something to do / make / product / game / publication
Origami – more low-tech than 3D printing – 2D like 3D – 11/2 D.

Museum quality – the plethora of judgements.
Museum shop – the psychology of wanting.

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Making was a delight. I love making stuff and coming up with practical solutions. I made it a theViewergallery project – my project site and persona which is low-tech / handmade / digital.

http://theviewergallery.blogspot.co.uk/

All my sites, projects and personae essentially overlap, but I find organising things like that productive and facilitating to all those multi-tasks.

I thought it would be better to just record the making video without a rehearsal, and I think it’s ok – if I did it again it would just be different but probably not better. I was talking to an art student recently about trusting the moment, and believing in what you can produce at the time. You’ve got to trust yourself, and not have some vague plan to go back and draw better or make marks better – continuing to work on a thing and post processing is completely different, and also full of moments to trust. It’s very like that with video footage – you do everything possible to get it right at the time, and that’s what you’re capturing, that time, as best as can be got, with a flavour of that moment. Somehow there has to be as much control and planning, technique and knowledge as can be mustered, and then the spontaneity of the moment. My work may not look much like it, but I think owes something to my musical training in that there is practising, and then there is the performance.

Some stills of Making The Facsimile Box.

It’s like recording a performance in one take, rather than splicing and mixing recordings together for a sort of manufactured perfection. I’d rather go for the concert performance with graininess, because then all the subliminal parts match. That how I take and use video footage.

Some intriguing boxes at the V&A: