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You took the slip, now call me up!

Final reflection

Roni Horn discarded the word place in its noun form, as no place is a fixed or concluded thing, in her terminology, placing is the only meaningful use of the word. Words and how we use them to position ourselves in the surroundings, is what I am using a typewriter to explore in the first work of my series of three. I realised by looking at Carl Andre’s concrete poems, that words can function like bricks in a very literal sense, so I spread them out in a landscape. The underlying photo is one I took in Iceland of a mountain under construction. The hand drawn plan depicts the area I can see from my window. I made my mother draw it. These layers are put together in a reference to the film, and tiled like bricks, so they could fit through the typewriter. Shaping our environment, is as inevitable as the environment that shapes us. This dichotomy is what I seek to explore in my second work. A video demonstrating a quite literal example of the verb to place. From the comfort of my window I’ve been following the group of bricklayers who were appointed to reconstruct the pavement. Inspired by Fiona Tan’s approach to film-making I resorted to documenting these construction workers interchange between intense labor and absent-minded laziness. (Something I can very much relate to in my own practice). Mika Rottenberg’s work also revolves around the notion of labor. I read an interview where she quoted Marx on defining labor as a process between a person and nature. Observing the process taking place on the square, I realised the different characters leaving and entering were like actors on a theatre stage, and myself the audience. My thoughts kept returning to this one specific character, a local woman who always takes seat at the cafe (Cafe Deja Vu) by the same table. She sits there silently smoking cigarettes and sipping red wine, always on her own. I have had discussions, whether she is unemployed, lonely, mentally ill, alcoholic, seeking affection, or perhaps she found some peace of mind that we all need. She has so much grown a part of the surroundings I was considering to ask her if she would let me film her, for my project. But whenever I have build up the courage to create eye contact her stare when I pass, seems so distant I never managed.

To my thrill I noticed one day, as I was looking out the window, my muse had casually taken place in the center of the stage. I watched how she would observe the coming and going of the extras on my film set, this improvised play is the starting point for my film. The endless placing of the bricks, became the starting point for my sculpture. I was thinking about how we change our actions and expectations depending on where we go. This dynamic change in people depending on change of place, is somewhat beautiful but not always beneficial, but we cannot help being affected by the places were we act. I played with these expectations by taking bricks from the square and placing them in my mother’s suitcase. They made no sense in their new surroundings, but were heavy and hard to get rid of. In a way this illustrated my idea but I was not really happy with it as a sculpture. Instead I made light castings of bricks which I could easily cut, then I placed them in the Dutch herringbone pattern and shaped them after the inside of the suitcase.

Testing

First I made a drawing of the place then I convinced my mother to do one from the same perspective.

Google street view satellite picture of the view from my window, layered with Icelandic landscape photograph

Thinking about making places: Hand and computer-made drawings from Museumsplein in Amsterdam. My mother worked on the park in the late nineties when she had her first job as a landscape architect.

Masonry

Title? Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves.

Individual presentation work 3

work 2

Individual presentation work 1

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A comparison (using transmission photoelasticity) between the stress diffusion in an elastic body (on the left) and a model of masonry (on the right). A highly localized stress percolation is visible on the right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry

proces

testing

Process reflection

Do people change? And do places even exist? These are some of my questions, that have been fueled by the making and thinking assignment. Roni Horn discarded the word place in its noun form, as no place is a fixed or concluded thing, in her terminology, placing is the only meaningful use of the word. Words and how we use them to assert ourselves in position to our surroundings, is what I am using a typewriter to explore in the first work of my series of three. I realised by looking at Carl Andre’s concrete poems, that words can function like bricks in a very literal sense. Shaping our daily environment, is as inevitable as the environment that shapes us. This dichotomy is what I seek to explore in my second work. A video demonstrating a quite literal example of the verb to place. From the comfort of my window pane I’ve been following the transformation of the pavement outside. On the little square where I live some cables needed to be taken up from underground and replaced. So to put things back in place, a group of brick-layers were appointed to do this reconstruction. Inspired by Fiona Tan’s approach to film-making I resorted to documenting these construction workers interchange between heavy labor and laziness. (Something I can very much relate to in my own practice). Mika Rottenberg’s work also revolve around the notion of labor. I read an interview of her where she quoted Marx on defining labor as a process between a person and nature. Where when and how do people change places? And do places change people? I have been pondering how to capture this power relation n a sculpture. Looking at the process taking place on the square, I realised the different characters leaving and entering were like actors on a theatre stage, and myself the audience. My thoughts kept returning to this one specific character, a local woman who always takes seat at the cafe (Cafe Deja Vu) by the same table. She sits there silently smoking cigarettes and sipping red wine, cornered up with her bag against a transparent windshield. I’ve noticed that she has a tangle in her hair, so thick it seems like a unintentional dread lock. I have been discussing with the people whom I live with, whether she is unemployed, mentally ill, disabled, alcoholic, lonely, seeking affection, a rub in the neck perhaps. She is so much grown a part of the surroundings I was considering to ask her if she would let me film her, for my project. But whenever I have build up the courage to create eye contact her stare when I pass, seems so distant I never managed.

To my thrill I noticed one day, as I was looking out the window, my muse had so casually taken place in the center of my theatre stage. I watched how she would observe the coming and going of the extras on my film set, this improvised play is the starting point for my video work.

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