Evaluation: Investigations of purpose and meaning
During an assembly in the seminar room last year at the end of our L4 year, we were asked to clear the studios for the end of year show. Ok, I hear you ask, thats fair. Sure, of course that is one way to see view this simple and reasonable request. But for me, upon hearing this this made me think about futility of the the making process. After the first lockdown, I got to explore the space of the institution. Fig, (a)
What is the connection? Well, it was the phrase “and what work you don’t want in the studios, just throw it in the bin”. There was a stark reactive force imbued within me upon hearing these words. This has got me questioning not only my role but the institutions role within, not just my own, but the creative network as a whole.
Fig. (a), The seminar room of the Calcutta Annex showing a display of the hoods in a symmetric alignment. This layout questions opposition.
Fig. (b), The first depiction of how I saw myself in a setting with screens showing the hoods stacked each side of me.
I’ve remembered a loose scrap of paper Fig. (b)that I scribbled the idea on. So, starting with this idea, the desire to exemplify this vision has driven me to find an answer to this nagging feeling that has me wondering what is the making process, my practice and my responsibility to answer these questions of meaning.
So what are we determining with this work acting as an demonstration to my evaluation of the practice I take part in, and how I am trying to embody this concept into the work.
If we take the Latourian route of Actor Network Theory, there would be an equality between myself and the object world. The qualities within the technicality of the artistic process are just as important, so every decision I make determines the work. This relationship presents two ways of seeing. The process of my making joins the result of this action which combines to make something that has its own collective presence.
Rosi Braidotti (PK, 2020, p. 56), provides a text that exemplifies this process in a way that helps define what is taking place within a conceptual intention to delineate what the final work will achieve by accomplishing a “critical task along side a creative one.”
Research based on a callback to a previously experienced work from Ai WeiWei.
The Set Up
“To be a disinterested outside observer becomes slightly more difficult.”
The whole project of ‘Hoods’ has become an exploration in meaning. During a tutorial last year, it was posited that maybe now I had the hoods made, the way forwards would be to think about display. How do the hoods challenge a space? What kinds of residency can be explored?
One way to answer this was to investigate how the Hoods will look on screen. Fig. (c)
I want this to explore documentation, artistic display and representation. My ultimate goal is to recreate the Hoods on CRT Monitors so as to ‘document’ the destruction of the work in a performative way. The best way to achieve the performative element was to set a ‘stage’ to show the process and thus convert the hoods into “props”. Setting a scene, Fig. (d) justifies the use of props that aid the performance.
Fig. (c) Eight differing Gifs. These edits where made to reference each real world hood to a representation on a monitor.
Fig. (e), Test run of smashing a ceramic item.
Fig. (d) On set with the hoods. Each real world hood on monitors.
During the set up with Naomi, Lonrad, Frankie and Lydia, who all had agreed to be studio assistants for the day, we wheeled in the monitors on two trolleys, fig. (f). The trolleys themselves had such a character, I made the decision to utilise their aesthetic. So, rather than having two identical stacks either side, I chose to set them as seen.
Fig. f, In the studio choosing camera positions.