#research as practice

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SITE RESPONSIVE & INSTALLATION WORK PHASE II

One of the dilemmas of practice based at UWTSD is the lack of very large installation spaces. Considering this, I had something of an epiphany:

My beloved alley is an ideal installation space, and synonymously site-response heaven. There is ample space, which is dynamic yet static and daily self-regulating. There is an element of unpredictability. Everything I want and need to do with the alley the alley will provide: numerous found objects, routinely changing in type and location. All I have to is interact with the site, minimally, leaving always a light, diminishing footprint. Come and go. 

Fledgling experiments have been worthwhile and I sense that I am developing the same sort of fascination for and healthy creative attachment to it that characterised my engagement last Uni year with the Pottery Subway.

In launching this new phase that follows the LESS POVERTY NEEDED gesture of last semester, I decided to first to install myself in the alley, as a form of claiming/reclaiming it. To establish a link between last semester and this, I wore the same clothes I did in my SANEWORLD video, and once again entered an (even more) confined space to convey a degree of isolation and suffocation. 

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- Jeremy Gluck

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removal of a specified object from a place or position; ousting; specifically : removal of a corporate officer from office —distinguished from disfranchisement; deprivation of possession of property… See the full definition

Definition of amotion

plural -s1a : removal of a specified object from a place or position...

I stumbled across this word first as an idea triggered by listening to Eno’s new album ‘Reflection’. I wasn't sure it is a real word, but it turns out is! And not only a real word but one I can use to feed into my new phase of site-responsive work. Been waiting for The Muse to deliver. Bingo.

To wit: Why - as I planned to - place objects on-site? Why not just remove objects that are already there? I rather like the idea of moving rubbish from one place to another, for absolutely no reason at all. (Am I becoming predictable? Or is this just some kind of metaphor for my entire life???)

Maybe not? Could it be the dawn of 

AMOTIVE ART

Meanwhile: The above prompts further 2nd Semester ideas:

SLITE-RESPONSIVE and/or MICRO-RESPONSIVE ART.

“Slite-responsive” art is a play on words embedding the quasi-word “lite” and signifies site-responsive art that is “lite”, i.e. it leaves a very light footprint. This would fit in with my ideas above for “amotive” art that removes objects already there as a response to a site.

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Two paintings by Gustav Metzger:

Above - Homage to the Starving Poet (1951) and Table (1957).

Metzger was mentored by Frank Auerbach and his influence is evident in these crude yet powerful works by a young Metzger on the eve of his founding of auto-destructive art. I am inspired by these as I have myself recently made my own transition from painting to a new form of auto-destructive art.

Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/metzger-homage-to-the-starving-poet-l03660

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/metzger-table-t14290

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As 2018 and a new semester loom, a new and more intensive phase of site-responsive art in my beloved alley looms also.

This new phase will consist of a number of interrelated gestures. 

Standby.

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Destruction is difficult. It is as difficult as creation

Antonio Gramsci

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As dawn broke over the St. David’s Centre one rainy and cold morning late in November I shot footage of rough sleepers sheltering under the overhang outside Iceland.

The raw footage was almost impenetrably dark. I processed it in Adobe Lightroom, achieving a look and feel as marginal and damaged as my subjects. It’s important to me to interfere as little as possible with the original material; the idea of reshooting in better light was rejected the moment it came to me: what better evocation of the situation of my subjects than a film as dirty and dark as the street corners they inhabit by bad night like freezing, sodden rats?

For the soundtrack I used a very short recording of a conversation I had with a homeless beggar. I asked him if he would talk to me about art. This may seem strange, but I realised that I am not someone who can be the compassionate, caring and somehow predictably concerned interlocutor for those in need. I am very much the archetypally self-absorbed and selfish artist. In doing this site-responsive series I recognised in myself again my capacity to use others. For this is what I have been doing: using other human beings to make this work. There is no grand generosity of spirit or will to help involved in it for or with me. It’s utilitarian. And I tried, especially with this video, to communicate that realisation. It’s detached and isolating. Observational.

I wanted to use my poem, ‘Travel In Peace’, because it does express a lot about these subjects of mine; these to whom I have subjected myself and in turn even if only vicariously brought into subjection. The title of the poem derives from a common farewell said by the Chinese over those departed: “Travel in peace.” The poem is strangely appropriate to the video footage and its subjects, expressing alientation and yet a sort of integrity. Standing in oneself, against oneself, against what is not oneself; but, also, understanding a commonality.

I’m very satisfied with this project and especially this video. It’s authentic to its maker. Honesty isn’t always the best poilcy, but it can work...