Contents:
Flow and Development of Material for Future Work
The Story of the Display Case
Boxes
"Site-specific performances are conceived for, and conditioned by. The particulars of found spaces, (former) sites of work, play and worship.
They make manifest, celebrate, confound or criticise location, history, function, architecture, micro-climate... They are an interpretation of the
found and the fabricated. They
are inseparable from their sites, the only context within which they are
'readable'."
M. Pearson 'Cliff Mc Lucas and Mike Pearson (Brith Gof)' in N. Kaye 'Art
into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents' Harwood
Academic Publishers (1996) pg.
211.
"...a site-specific work might articulate and define itself through
properties, qualities or meanings produced in specific relationships between
an 'object' or 'event' and a
position it occupies."
N. Kaye 'Site-specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation' London:
Routledge (2000) pg. 1
Our purpose for working on a site-specific project was to establish a
relationship with our environment, our living, natural environment.
The nature of site-specific is that the artists engage in the landscape of the physical place. During the process the artist can be equated
with an ecologist in that we are both concerned with observing and understanding our environment. How artists and ecologists go about
this may be different to one another but the result very similar in that we both establish a dialogue with the world we live in.
We took our first walk through the site on Saturday 18th October. Walking is a strategy for taking in the site, for exploring and viewing the
place. We had made a decision already that this project was about exploring the site through walking. How else could you get to see
everything, to investigate every aspect of the site? It was our starting point for experiencing the limitlessness of our context. We mostly
stuck to the path. We walked as though we might if we were in an art gallery, slowly trying to take everything in, not wanting to miss
anything. Stopping every so often to examine an exhibit and imagine the process the artist went through to create the artwork. Star
shaped ferns, repeated over and over. A snake sculpture made of a discarded dead piece of twisted wood. The art was all here already,
we just had to frame it put a sign underneath it to indicate the artist their medium and when it was made.
Ready-made Art
Instant
Installations
Walking was a place for talking, for brainstorming conversing while traversing, leaving moments of quiet reflection and listening. The action of walking can be meditative, the regular rhythm hypnotises the walker into a state of contented being. Walking is a sacred experience, it is a pilgrimage to a destination whether that destination be inner peace, the answer to a question or the route to inspiration, to the path that leads back to past memories, histories and experiences or simply to arrive at a geographical location. We walked and we walked through the woods for six weeks, sometimes discussing working plans, sometimes waiting to see something that inspired us, sometimes just walking to keep warm, walking with cameras still and video, walking with pen and paper, walking as visual artists, walking as dancers, walking as poets, walking as story tellers, walking as arts managers. We recorded what we experienced while walking in all these different roles. Sometimes we still felt like we were walking endlessly in circles to no end point forever collecting evidence and material to reframe for an imaginary audience and for the real audience we knew.
The performance event that culminated from our processes of walking in
the woods was a guided walk through the woodland with an audience.
Taking a route to walk through the site was a strategy and method of experiencing
the site.
The walk was a framework in which to notice and appreciate the site that
we were in. We were physically mapping that part of the site.
Within this structure, we created
opportunities to explore aspects of the place using tasks. These tasks
involved taking time to observe the objects, sounds, feelings and
ourselves in that space. By asking the audience to make their own map
of the walk by recording these things on paper we had invited them
to create their own performance and art work. Not only was the performance,
the act of walking but it was the execution of the tasks.
LINK TO TASK BOOK
This structure also allowed us to collect the experiences through the
walk so that at the end we could display those representations of their
experience to the audience
in the glass jars hanging in the trees.
A walk has a life of its own and does not need to be made into a work of art ...The art work cannot represent the experience of the walk ...
Walking is the constant. The
art medium is the variable... a work of art may be purchased but a walk
cannot be sold. The artworks are controlled - but the walks can
be wild."
Hamish Fulton in 'Walk Ways' Independent Curators International (ICI)
2000 pg. 13
Hamish Fulton represents his walks with a photograph and a piece of text
underneath it. This representation of the experience of his walk only
frames a an element of
the walk and it is the role of the viewer to imagine the walk. In this
sense the viewer becomes the artist through the process of imagination.
We wanted to harness this process in our work and in so doing, to challenge
Fulton's assertion that the walk itself was not the
artwork. The walk which the audience experienced was the artwork, it
could not be sold to them because they created it and the art was the
experience of the walk itself. Part of the site is the viewer themselves,
all their thoughts and associations they have with the site, their
memories and fantasies which they project onto the site. So the audience
partially erase the site's history to make room for themselves, their
histories and their relationship with the site.
"Palimpsest 1 a piece of writing-material or manuscript on which
the original has been effaced to make room for other writing."
'The Oxford Encyclopedic Dictionary' Oxford University Press (1991)
The audiences maps were not to start with blank pieces of paper entirely.
The pieces of paper were the blank undersides of cut up Ordnance Survey
maps. At the
end of the walk they were 'Audience Survey' maps.
JARS
Using recycled jam jars as a gallery in the woods was an idea I had after
noticing the landscape as it existed when I was there as witness was
impossible to capture of
film. The natural light that illuminated it was what made it living and
vital. I wanted to display photographs of some of the images I had taken
through the process. Printing the images onto acetate and placing them
into the jars allowed the viewer to see them with the sun light
shining through. The weather and sunlight was part of the process of
the evolution of these artworks. The sun could fade the colour in the
pictures and although the jars were meant to be water tight the elements
still got into them and rain seeped in and altered the images as the
colour ran and the jar collected a measure of coloured water at the
bottom
of it. To create works of art and see them slowly destroyed by
the very thing they are framing and celebrating could be very disheartening.
It could also be seen as an interesting development in the
work. We were reminded of the work of Andy Goldsworthy who's "...works
are specifically designed to move,
change and erode over time."
'The Barn Cinema: Film Guide' Dartington Arts November/December 2003
Andy Goldsworthy's works are like ritual performance while he is constructing
them, painstakingly assembling materials into precarious
structures while the elements battle to affect the work . He uses natural materials found in the context that he works with in that site.
Even when the work is finished by Goldsworthy they continue to evolve and change until often they are eventually gone forever. Rather
like performance which exists only in that moment that it is being performed, Goldsworthy's work is ephemeral. There might be evidence of
it from a particular moment but the ephemeral performative nature of working outdoors in a natural landscape can be seen as an un-framed
performance. It is the role of the artist to tame the wild and re-present it to their audience. We wanted to explore the idea of ritual and the
role that the natural elements have to play on arts practice in this setting. The transitive nature of the walk was one way of doing this but
also the act of collecting the materials as we went along finding them from where we were, rather than importing materials into the site.
The jars could be seen as imported materials, but they were also part of the context in terms of the community who live there. Recycling
and making use of objects that are no longer used for their original purpose is part of the community's strategies for lessening waste and
pollution in order to live sustainably.
Throughout our process we had been charting the changing of particular
objects in the woods. By identifying constants that we chose to
take photographs of each week so that we could look back on them and see how they had naturally changed over the time we were
working in the woods. This is an area of development that we are keen to develop and use in future work. We have the photographic
document of this change that we have taken from the site and are interested in how we might work with these in a studio context.
Documentation as Art
The photographs shown here are of the display case that Eve and I found
at Leeses' reclamation yard, we claimed windows and board for
making the new kitchen and Dan's dwelling at Steward Community Woodland. We used the opportunity to find items that were of interest
for making some work.
We found that wooden box engaged us in an exploration of the relationship
between documenting the found and made objects of Steward
woods and making art by waiting to see what might be found. To see how the elements and environment effect the objects that might be
placed by the community members, or by Eve and myself, into the frames of the box. This waiting and seeing was important to us and
having six weeks to wait while going about our daily everyday existence and making work in the rest of the wood seemed a good
opportunity to see something physical develop into something other than what it was on its first day arriving at the woods.
week 3 Nov 2003
Matthew Goulish is, it seems, a true lover of waiting and slowing down
and seeing. Appreciating that some things take time to become
themselves. We can take time to wait in response to the context and in turn move away from the busy schedules and fast pace
environment of the modern age
that forces and controls nature for its own profiteering wants.
"Most of us live in fear of slowing down our thinking, because
of the possibility that if we succeed we might find that in fact nothing
is happening.
I guarantee this is not
the case. Something is always happening. In fact, some things happen which
one can only perceive with slow thinking."
Goulish Matthew '39 Micro Lectures' London, Routledge, 2000 pg.82
I could have spent one day scurrying around the place looking for objects
to put in the display case, arranging them in different
juxtapositions, write some text and stick it to the back of the frame about recycling or some such thing. But the place itself stopped me in my
tracks. There is so much in the woods. The Larch swaying in the wind, the wind in my hair, cold nose, ash dancing in the wind and swirling
in the fire pit. How could I frame any of this? How am I really going to say anything about the woods if I just throw a load of objects into
this case? So the process was the authority and that seemed like a slow idea to match the slowness of living in the woods. I will talk about
how long it takes to do anything in the woods compared with the seconds things take in my fossil fuel guzzling nuclear powered
home back in Totnes in another
part. LIVING SUSTAINABLY.
This documentation as art sets up a relationship of art with life rather
than forcing its opinions on the object onto the environment it is in.
This documentation process is about becoming. This is possible when the flow of change is given time.
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Flow and development of material into future
work.
We can explore and understand the flow of things, the change of energy,
connections of experience of life in all its possibilities through arts
practice. Allowing a cohesion of flow and connectedness. One thing becomes another, yet in its transition it holds the memory or essence of
the previous being.
The documentation is of a process of an artistic partnership with the
materials of the woods. Sometimes found sometimes unspoken in the
work itself, and can be brought out through other means of possible expression through future performance. The documentation can then
be performed and embodied. This
will continue the flow of cohesion in expression of itself.
During the text and Live performance elective in stage 2 of the degree
course I was encouraged to look at material as having full
ownership over itself. To write
about a subject does not mean ownership of the material. The writer is
a container for it to flow in.
Robert Janz treats his painting in respect of the flow of what he is painting,
Suzi Gablik points to his work:
"For Janz, the drawing must also transform, through a continual
process of erasure and redrawing. Drawing becomes process, fluid energy
patterns
evolving over time. You don't control the subject- it's more like a dance than a product...This is time gathered into wholeness, the cyclical rhythm
of life taught by the feminine
principle, which connects us to the natural order of growth and decay"
Gablik Suzi 'The Re-Enchantment of Art' Thames and Hudson , London,
1992 pg. 89
By framing found objects they have time to do what they do, I recall the
painting of Dorien Gray by Daphne Demorio. In her story she
brings the painting of a man to life, not so that he steps out of the picture. In Demorio's writing she describes the daily aging of the man
and his environment in the picture, until he and the environment ages and rots.
The same thing happened in physicality to the objects and life placed, fallen and grown over time into the frames of the box. They were
able to express the possibilities of what they really are through their performance of life.
Cohesion of Audience/Artist
The audience for this process were the members of the community. The objects
of found and exposed interest encouraged one member of
the community to find more interesting and beautiful expressions of life in the woods, he displayed upturned roots upon a Larch stump, cut
a spiral into a piece of Larch
and displayed it on another stump.
In our group feedback with the community he said that with us living in the community he saw how we worked and responded to the
environment and felt empowered to be creative in his own day to day living. He related it to Permaculture design, which also encourages
creative living. He doesn't have to go and purchase art or travel far for the materials he wants to make something for creative expression.
He can use the materials that
present themselves to him during his day to day work of building a new
kitchen for the community.
Does this point to how creative practice can become embodied and contained
through the audience, maybe continuing the flow of
expressions of what the work
was to begin with?
This leads to another set of questions about contextualising arts practice
as in this instance, exploring the means of working ecologically
and its transformative possibilities between artist and audience, artist and material, artist and context. Does this change the audience
performer relationship? Are the boundaries blurred and the artificial status of the artist changed when the artist works ecologically and
audience becomes framer, creator
too?
Spiral
Larch by Pete
Ready-made Art by Pete
The Story of the Display Case
The display case was at that time empty of anything. I imagine the history
of it, once used in someone's workshop full of screws, nuts and
bolts, and other fixing paraphernalia. The box or draw that it was, is made from something reclaimed. On the back of the draw a burned
inscription tells us that it was a tea chest. Here a story can be told. This item has been many things; a tree, a tea chest, a traveler of the
seas, from India or China, become something else. Now it sits in a wood in Devon, propped up against a moss covered granite rock in front
of slow dripping water from a stream above, there should be a small, fast running, waterfall by now but it has been the driest year on
record in England since 1921.
We brought the case to the woods because it is a ready made frame. The
place is limitless and needs some kind of control so we don't get
lost in it all. Our job as artists is to frame by any means necessary. to hold up a mirror to what is here. To document. The box is a potential
control of what happens in the
woods. I'll explain this a bit more.
Our day to day living at Steward woods, was governed by the elements,
if we get cold, we get ill, so we cant work. We couldn't just switch
on the central heating, because there isn't any, we have the daily chore of carrying, cutting, and chopping wood. How could we make art
using the everyday of living?
In the picture you will notice round pieces of wood, one was in the frames
at each 'wooding' session. When cutting the Ash with a bow saw
we found what was within the wood was amazing fungi patterns living in circular patterns marking each year of growth.
The whole process of the documentation took six weeks, but including the
age of the trees and the tea chest and each day of Larch Pine
sprinkles, it would of taken me probably 10 generations to mark the progress of this work. it is still working out there in Steward wood,
being changed by the weather
and the bacterial growth, changing the colors and patterns of the wood.
The documentation could be incongruous in the woods. This is interesting
because the meaning of it there keeps shifting, one moment a
work of art? The next a piece of documentation? What is it? Also the objects that are displayed (including the box itself) have
ingongruosities of their own to the woods. The frame was imported to Steward wood, along with the materials to build dwellings and
communal spaces, or the Settlement as the community has named it. The wood itself when probed further into its histories is not native to
this country, the Scots pine, Larch, and so an are imported to use as fast growing cash crops implemented by the Elmhirsts of Dartington
as a way of helping the local
economy of Moretonhampsted in the 1950s.
In one of the frames we see a photograph of oranges. This is a photograph
taken when I noticed that oranges skins were placed on a
grate over the fire pit. Those oranges too have been imported from far away country, been on a journey across the sea. In the case of
ideals they are incongruous to the permacultural vision of the community because the fruit is not locally sourced, fortunately we learned
that their very own fruit trees
were planted two summers ago, but unfortunately, are too young to bare
fruit.
The bright color of the orange emits stored, strong sunlight on this cold
day, behind me as I take the photo the same sun shines brightly
upon the orange Autumnal Larch.
Round sun, round oranges, round wood
A segment of wood like a segment of an orange.
Traveled skins, traveled boxes, traveled people
Meet round the fire pit under traveling trees
Skyward.
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Boxes
Found at recycling centre when looking for carpet to line and insulate
the bender we were living in found a nice box cupboard instead.
Cost: One Pound in the poring
rain.
Photographs of the boxes.
This small cupboard
imagines:
Safety
Treasures
Security
Surprise
Doors to Adventure
Pandora's Box
the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe ( Steward Wood is Narnia without the
spell of snow)
A tiny door into Alice's Wonderland
Storage
A place for keys, money, old jokes, sweets, spare bulbs, books.
It becomes in this time a place for, yellow leaves we found and used to
make circles in the glade fire pit, pieces of rotting wood covered
with indigo blue fungi, a poem written by Eve to give a clue about yellow circles in the fire pit and small jars filled with: Larch pine needles,
charcoal from the fire pit and a piece of rotting indigo wood.
