Ideas for the content of my video installation:
Actually, when I started the Matt Roberts ALAS residency, I came with more than one idea for the exhibition. One was to make a new video (which I hope to do after the residency, about motherhood, children and food fights, but more about that in another project blog). The second idea was to make a short animation with found photographs from the 1970’s as I’ve written a story around the images.
After having my first crit with Matt and talking about my work, he preferred my third idea: to use a dolls house as part of the installation and to also show my existing animation, “Don’t Go to the East Side”. I agreed, as I can now see that it is the most realistic project to complete in time for the exhibition in November.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/kwJNiySdatV2zg2gw…
It’s great to have professional advice and guidance on tap, something I really miss after college. I hope to find a studio to share ideas with other artists, and this is yet another reason to do the residency.
Where did my thought of using a dolls house originate? I sat down mulling it over and then looked through my computer bookmarks. I vaguely remember saving a link of an artist who created a Victorian dolls house project. The artist is Jennifer Linton, and her project is ‘The Disobedient Dollhouse’. Jennifer’s work lingered in the back of my mind, as I really was impressed with her vision.
Then in the summer, before the residency, I did more searches. And found Maria A. Lopez’s dust houses. Then Rachel Whiteread’s dolls house collection/exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.
But how do the dolls house link to my own work? I’ve had to ask myself what is the connecting thread.
I’ve only figured that out as I go along, there wasn’t an obvious link at first. But then, I realised I take pictures of bigger houses. Abandoned ones from my hometown Flint, Michigan. It’s a bit like destruction porn, but the Flint houses are unique as they mark the specific trajectory of the boom and bust of the auto industry. Which is still such a shock each time I go home to visit my mother who lives in one of the nice/inhabited areas of town.
When I was a child, Flint had the highest income per capita next to Anchorage Alaska (oil) and was the second biggest city in Michigan after Detroit. And is now ground zero for abandoned homes, poverty (if you don’t have the legacy of a General Motor’s pay check) and mass exodus.
If you are not from a failed industrial city, you may turn your nose up at the decay you see in my images. But the photos aren’t the whole story (at the moment), there are plenty of beautiful homes left in Flint.
That’s the dilemma of indexicality: Individual photographs represent an isolated moment in time and not necessarily a complete image of what is ‘real’. My installation can give more visual information about an historical event as it’s three dimensional, like a staged play. It also makes me feel better, as if I am telling a more holistic narrative, and not just creating an empty spectacle. Maybe it’s why I’ve always been in two minds about my abandoned house photos. Hmm.
Besides my own photographs and animation, another link to abandoned structures is the artist Gordon Matta-Clark and his architectural interventions. Fellow ALAS resident Susan Cunningham, mentioned Matta-Clark’s work during a discussion. Please have a look at her blog: www.landscapeandmemory.wordpress.com.
Should I carve into dolls houses like Gordon did to empty lofts and homes in the 1970’s? Are dolls houses too precious to maim? I’m still deciding.
It feels really good to sit down and finish this second blog entry. Since the residency, I have been to many gallery private views, art tours, and talks. It’s been great, I’ve learned a lot. But I’m also exhausted. I do find that this blog is providing a means to assimilate all that I’ve seen and researched, and it’s a way to organise ideas for the installation.
http://laotracasa.tripod.com/id89.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/arts/design/03ma…
