I’m starting to spend
quite a lot of time talking around ideas at the moment. I have had quite a few
conversations related to strategies of thinking; basically how to develop ideas
from initial starting points. There is an issue about the relationship between
closed and open ways of developing ideas. Often a way of thinking that appears
closed at first, can sometimes take ideas into evocative and expansive territories. For instance
I was taking to someone about a wooden object. They were using it as a starting
point for work. They had lots of ideas but the ideas seemed to be too loose,
too arbitrary and not focused enough on how the object itself could be the
instigator of concepts.
So what do I mean by
this? The object in question was made in a particular way, using particular
materials, which were manufactured in a particular place, using wood sourced
from a particular forest, which had been grown in a particular place because of
a particular economic situation, and it had been left to be found because of a
set of particular reasons. All of this information was embedded within the
object, but very little of it was being used to direct ideas or to open out a
meaning structure that might illuminate something about the world. Instead
ideas were being ‘forced’ onto the object and extraneous materials were being
brought into the situation which as far as I was concerned ‘muddied’ the waters
and made it harder to realise what could be done, in fact it was easier to see
possibilities once these additional ideas were stripped away and we could bring
the object back into focus. First of all there were the physical realities of
how it was made, how many nails, how much wood, what sort of wood, how was it
cut, was it all cut from the same tree, why were the nails used in the way they
were, why not screws, who manufactured the nails, who nailed them in, where was
the sawmill, where was the forest, who worked the sawmill, who cut the trees
down, who tended the forest etc etc? All rich information to begin developing
narratives around. Each piece of
information could lead to a decision as to how an action could further
illuminate it. For instance the object had a very clear grain and this was
easily highlighted by making a rubbing. But with what? There are lots of
materials that you can make a rubbing with, however in order to keep the
concept ‘closed’ perhaps a piece of the object that had already broken off
could be charcoaled and then used to make a rubbing. The wood effectively being
used to record itself. This suggests a better intellectual closure than using
just any available rubbing materials. If another structure is going to be made
from the object, what could it be? If abstract, perhaps an ordering principle
based on the internal existing structures of the object itself, divisions,
thicknesses, ratios, numbers of nails used and pattern of their insertions. If
more figurative or narrative, perhaps the wood could be used to make something
else that reflected a significant piece of information that had been researched
in relation to the object’s history. For instance it might be found that the
wood came from Scandinavia and that at that latitude dog sleds were used to
drag timber over frozen ice, you might therefore re-fashion the object to make
a dog-sled and look to having it pulled by a team of dogs similar to those who
took its basic materials on their initial journey. Or you might decide to
illustrate the dogs and their labour by making large drawings in charcoal using
up the wood by converting all of it into charcoal and making sure you used
every last bit in the production of the images. Other ideas might be to make large scale
technical drawings using the charcoal to show how the wood manufacturing
process operated, making lots of diagrams of wood machinery, transportation
vehicles and/or the workforce behind these machines. You might decide to
replace the trees from where the wood came from. Once traced, the wood’s
history could reveal an area of deforestation and you might become actively
involved in a project to plant new trees.
On the other hand your research might reveal something totally
unexpected. Perhaps something about the nails? They might be made in a small
family workshop in Cleckheaton, or mass produced in China, whatever the answer,
a suggestion as to how to make another move arises. The nails could be melted
down to make something or the wood given to a craftsman to make an object that
had resonance in this opening story. The point being that as the ideas open out
there is still a feeling of ‘closure’ because the ideas are directly related to
the making and history of the object in question. Who owned it before it was
found? What was it used for? Perhaps an idea might arise because of a conflict
over ownership or you might want to pass a metaphorical ownership on to someone
else. What other things does the owner own? Could a substitution be made? What
would happen if the object didn’t exist, what would be the implications?
You are allowed of
course to take an idea off in any direction, the point being however that the
logic must somehow be impelled by qualities inherent in the object or events
directly related to the object’s history.
One way you could look
at it is that as an artist you are revealing some sort of meaning. Opening the
object out into a wider series of associations that are already there but not
yet visible.
The object could be linked
to a situation, a memory, a political position or an action, as long as the
‘logic’ developed has a direct relationship with it, you cant be accused of
making arbitrary decisions. However the narratives developed can often reveal
that ‘life’ is weirder than anything you might invent yourself. It is how you
play with the information that will eventually result in an interesting
art-work.
For instance you may
find that the pine used to make the object was also used to make simple
children’s toys, why not use all the materials that went into the construction
of the object to make the largest possible version of one of those toys. The
poetics involved coming into play as the artist looks for an image or action
that will have ‘resonance’ and yet will still remain active within the closed
loop of information obtained directly through unpeeling the layers of information
surrounding the object. A voyage may be decided upon that takes you back to the
Scandinavian forests that ‘birthed’ the wood that the object was made from. The
object of the voyage may be to return the wood to its ‘place of birth’. But in
what format? Perhaps if the wood had been refashioned into a toy train, it may
travel in a different method to one proposed if it was made into a toy boat. Each
move of the game should imply another, associations often building upon each
other, until a dense matrix of interconnected decisions are built, each
decision having a certain ‘logic’ to it, but a poetic logic more akin to the
logics developed by Duchamp, or if we go a little further back the logics
opened out by Raymond Roussel in his classic book ‘Impressions of Africa’. See
There are many examples
of this type of work, for instance the work of Simon Starling who describes his work as ‘the physical
manifestation of a thought process’ a thought process that reveals hidden
histories and relationships. His Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No
2) and One Ton, II both from
2005 demonstrate a circularity of links that lie behind the generation of his
poetic narratives. In ‘One Ton II’ one ton of ore, mined from a South African
open cast mine, was used to produce just five handmade platinum prints of
images of the mine. He was pointing to the fact that it takes one ton of ore to
get enough platinum to make just 5 platinum prints, thus opening out issues
surrounding the exploitation of both people and land associated with platinum
production. Using video, film, slide projections, photography
and sculpture, Starling’s work opens out complex histories, with sometimes
quite elliptical connections. Cornelia Parker also works in a similar
territory. A typical example being her ‘Pornographic Drawings’, images
resembling Rorschach blots were made from pornographic videotapes dissolved in
solvent. Rorschach blots were often used by psychiatrists to tap into people’s
unconscious and as Freud based so many of his ideas on sexual repression,
Parker is able to neatly bring the idea to a very satisfactory closure.
Cornelia Parker ‘Pornographic Drawing'
Chris Dobrowolski's work currently on exhibition at &Model demonstrates another variation of this approach. This is a wonderful exhibition, try and get there before it closes. See
This type of work developed
out of the conceptual art movement of the late 60s and early 70s, which itself
owed much to Duchamp’s previous example. It is only one of many strategies that
can be used to generate ideas but a powerful one. Above all it allows for both
an intellectual and a poetic engagement with any object or event. Theoretically
this type of work can be supported by Benjamin’s concept of ur-history. Walter Benjamin looked at mass culture as a source of
philosophical truth. The Paris Arcades that fascinated him being a 19th century
"ur-form" of the modern shopping experience. Benjamin demonstrates
how to read consumer products as both anticipations of social utopia and as gateways
into a political critique of culture. A very good introduction to Benjamin’s
thinking is ‘The Dialectics of
Seeing, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project’ by
Susan Buck-Morss.
I realise this has been
a long post, but working this way can be a very useful strategy and one that
lies very close to the core of much contemporary practice.
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