Voicelessness / On being absent

Voicing thoughts on voicelessness and being absent for Unkept


Photographs by Liam James: documentation from the work, Wind Poem for a Cobweb - performance in 5 parts, as part of Unkept exhibition 2014.

Map of ideas

When Polly asked me to contribute a hand-written letter to the artist talk, I didn't really feel like writing a letter, but I had drawn a map of my ideas behind the works in the show whilst on a train and decided to send her a copy of that instead. I did it to help me get down some of the recurring thoughts I had had about the various works as they were developing, and then to see what connections were there between them all. In the end it felt like everything was getting too connected, man. But I guess that's just how art practices go...

Transoceanic Whistle

Notes on whistling

Claire:
I'm thinking about a sound work that's a dialogue between you and me, where we both record ourselves attempting to whistle to each other. I have thought a lot with this exhibition about communicating back home, the absence/presence thing, how we can play off the fact of our distance and make a work out of it. And I love that neither of us can whistle, I think that's a pretty interesting discovery. In my mind the work would be like a calling out to each other, but also a camaraderie in our lifelong inability to whistle - a way of making something kind of beautiful and funny and sad out of it.

Wind:
Attempting to whistle is kind of like the wind.
The whistles blowing our dust works around.
The wind blowing down a corridor.
The wind blowing across oceans.
The wind filling the sails of ships.

Jessie:
I also like the romance of wind blowing across the ocean. I was making/thinking about flags alot last/early this year - prayer flags from Mongolia and then maritime signals - which also led into thinking about ships and their sails - and thinking about how the wind plays an important role. Without it they would all just be pieces of fabric. I also come from a family of sailors so I guess I think about yachts and sailboats with the wind and the sea too.

Communication:
In La Gomera in the Canary Islands they use whistling to communicate across the deep ravines and narrow valleys that radiate through the island:
"This method of communication, in which the Spanish language is replaced by two whistled vowels and four consonants, has a peculiarity perfectly suited to this landscape of deep valleys and steep ravines. It has the ability to travel up to 3.2km, much further and with less effort than shouting."

Superstition:
Whistling at night is thought to attract bad luck.
Whistling indoors is supposed to bring poverty.
Whistling on board a ship in a calm will bring the wind but to whistle on board when the wind is blowing is to bring a gale.

Sayings:
"Whistling in the dark" is to console or encourage someone in trouble.
"Whistling in the wind" is a futile attempt at something.
"Whistling down the wind" is to cast someone or something off to its own fate, from the sport of falconry - when hawks are released to hunt they are sent upwind and when turned loose for recreation they are sent downwind.

Titles:
'You just put your lips together and blow (attempts to whistle across the seas)
'Transcontinental whistle conversation'
'Transoceanic whistle conversation'
'Transoceanic whistle'

Time:
At opposite ends of the day.
Within an hour of a specified time.
Is there a particular time important to sailors?

Whistling in the wind:
The work in itself being a futile attempt - to communicate across the world, for either of us to whistle.

Castles in the sky for Claire

I saw this work about 10 years ago in a book of all sorts I got for Christmas one year and it has stuck in my memory ever since because it is such a simple and beautiful idea, and Adelaide's buildings are not tall enough to have this effect. Your talk of the sky, and of being in New York made me think about it again.

http://peterwegner.com/work_detail.asp?id=112

I'll try and find it in the book, but from memory, someone made cookie cutters from the shapes and baked cookies so people at the opening were eating pieces of the sky.

Perhaps something along these lines is a way we can have a piece of NYC in Hobart or vice versa?

Elusivity (research)

Since the sky has been mentioned...



James Benning, Ten Skies, 2004


From recent readings:

Clouds are associated with cosmology, but also inner states. It is this combination of indeterminacy, space, and interiority that [...] make us think not only about form and vacancy, mobility and change, but also about the peculiar realm of affectivity that we call "mood." Whether we feel uplifted or depressed, we tend to take the ups and downs of internal states for granted - so much so that we scarcely notice them. Mood is like the weather, changing and unformed, yet always with us. In classical landscape painting, weather and mood tend to converge on the drama of the sky. A cerulean sky spells calm; dark clouds indicate tempestuous events or passions. But in temperate climates, we most often experience an in-between state that is subject to subtle fluctuations of brightness and shadow, transparency and opacity.


Goethe in response to 19th Century meteorology and Luke Howard's first classification of clouds:

Ich muss das alles mit Augen fassen,
Will sich aber nicht recht denken lassen 

(All of this I have to take in with my eyes,
But it will not let itself be grasped by thought).


ref:
[Mary Jacobus, Romantic things: a tree, a rock, a cloud, 2012, University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London.]

Invisibility - inspiration - breath

-1-

The threshold of visibility has always been a recurring interest in my art practice, although I probably rarely mention it as a defining aspect of my work. In a recent email to Lucy Bleach in relation to the essay she is writing for the Unkept catalogue I talked about invisibility to her in the context of the air/wind and its visibility through the cobweb. I reminded her of a project I had done in Melbourne two years ago, which she had actually visited, where I sat in a chair at Blindside ARI and meditated on the notion of inspiration, while staring out the window of the gallery, waiting for it (inspiration) to arrive. The project was called Lines of Flight and I kept a blog during its three week duration (also coincidentally it was during this project that I made a work on the light on the wall with white chalk). I revisited the blog to find for Lucy the bit where I had observed a cobweb flapping about on the window, and came across two posts dedicated to thoughts "On Invisibility" (here and here, if you want to read more) - so I realised it has been a prominent thought for some time now...

Air is only apparent to us when it is manifested through other things, such as: smells, dust in the light, movement enacted upon something (such as wind on a cobweb)... etc. And like you said Jessie, without the wind in it, a sail is only a piece of cloth. I also quite like the idea of the potential embodied in a sail or a flag though, whether or not it is  realised. Maybe that's something for another project entirely - it'd be interesting to make a catalogue of objects that embody that kind of potential, whose purpose is to be activated by something invisible (like wind). But that's a bit of a sidetrack.

-2-

In another project, earlier still, titled That which is breathed or blown, I explored the manifestations of air and light via walking, observing and mapping - using the gallery space as a working hub, where the artifacts of this exploration were installed/arranged/distilled and experienced by the viewer. The title though, came from the word 'pneuma' which means literally in Ancient Greek, "that which is breathed or blown" and refers to a certain intangible life force, which in a literal sense could be understood as the breath, or air, but has also been used in a spiritual sense to refer to the life-giving spirit or vital essence of our being.

-3-

Inspiration is interesting too in relation to the breath, another thing that has been coming up in preparation of this Unkept exhibition. Inspiration, as in, to draw breath. Expiration also meaning exhalation. The interlinking of air/light/breath/wind and ghosts/spirits is particularly interesting to me. There is a definite relationship between the two fields, and I believe it is to do with the threshold of visibility that they occupy. When a gust of wind slams the door shut it could indicate ghostly activity. A flash of light at the corner of your eye, or strange light formations in a photograph might be a spirit. Inspiration in the Romantic era was often described as a kind of transcendental intervention, or an otherworldly illumination - the ability to 'tap in' to some higher source of knowledge and purity. In this vein we could logically go on to say that if inspiration is the drawing of breath then inspiration in the other sense of the word is like the breathing in of creative energy, or spirit; and exhalation, expiration, is the breathing out of this to create new forms, or to breathe life/spirit into something - to animate that which is static.

What if ghosts were considered, rather than as beings or entities, in more every day terms as extra-perceptive presences, matter that exists at the periphery of our sensory limits, phenomena that occupy the space between appearance and disappearance?


*sorry my posts seem to be getting longer and more rambly!

Hey Polly...

...is it snowing on Mt Wellington yet?

Hey Claire...

...do you walk fast or slow?

While I was in Melbourne in May, I was walking down Victoria Parade with Henry and our friend Viv. I was way ahead of them both, when I heard their conversation behind me about walking speeds - apparently a friend had commented that he had become a fast walker, which he suggested may have been because he had spent lots of time in recent months having to catch up with me.

Viv on the other hand, was more of a dawdler, meandering her way from place to place in no great rush. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that she lives in an Indigenous community a couple of hours north of Broome, where life is understandably much slower, but it sparked a shift in the conversation to how it might have a bearing on the type of work we make.

She often works with birds and the sky, and I have noticed that a lot of my work lately has been focused on the ground.

We wondered: was this because slow walking allows for more time to look up? Was I moving too quickly and therefore had my head down as a way to focus and thinking mainly of what was beneath my feet? Were we perhaps over thinking it?

And so I wonder, now that Polly has made this differentiation in our works also, does our theory apply to you too?

Ghosts and the volume of air

Thinking a lot about invisibility and visibility in a few different contexts.

I left a box of belongings in New York when I was here last, and upon returning collected it. In it was a short novel called Ghosts by an Argentinian author, César Aira, which I had purchased purely on the basis of its cover (I choose my wine in  the same fashion) - and which I absolutely loved when I read it last summer in small chunks on the train travelling to and from work mainly. I didn't bring much with me to read this time so when I retrieved the box in May I started re-reading the book. It is super pertinent to my thoughts for Unkept, and my general feeling/mood at present, although it's difficult to explain why. And I think intangibility, the elusiveness of understanding or the ability of the thing to resist being pinned down is essentially my criteria for what is good and worth giving more thought to. The novel tells of a Chilean worker's family who squat on the construction site of a large condominium building. The building is inhabited by ghosts, but only the workers and their families can see them - the rich people who are buying the apartments can't see them. It is a beautiful book where not a lot happens, but there are many oblique references to transcendence, perception, tricks of light and shadow, daydreaming, worlds beyond the physical, and a general sensitivity to the atmosphere. I love the aesthetic it conjures up - it's a bleached, hot, dry, white, quiet blankness with subtle imperfections and childish playfulness and innocence that accentuate an underlying beauty. Which I think is an interesting take on Polly's ideas behind Unkept. Here is an excerpt I really like which draws an indeterminate picture of a volume of air, whatever that may mean:

The third floor was the same, yet different; it wrapped the three of them in a fresh layer of silence. They say that silence increases with height, but Patri, who lived at altitude most of the time, wasn't so sure about that. Anyway, if it was true, and if there was a gradual increase, the difference between one floor and the next should have been perceptible, at least for someone with a sensitive enough ear, a musician, for example, listening in reverse, as it were. As she went from the fourth to the fifth floor, she felt the silence thicken, but that didn't prove anything, because the data of reality, as she had observed in the past, were produced by chance, or rather by an inextricable accumulation of chances. Also since it's well known that sounds rise (which must be because "they're lighter than air", as the saying goes, or a lighter kind of air), you should hear more noise as you go up; it should be quiet on the ground. True, sounds fade progressively as they rise, because height is a kind of distance. But under normal circumstances, human beings are at or near ground level. If a man were placed at a great height, and he looked down, somewhere near halfway he would see two corresponding limits, floating like magnetized Cartesian divers: the limit of sound as it passed into imperceptibility, and that of his own hearing range.

(César Aira, Ghosts,1990, trans. by Chris Andrews 2008, New Directions, New York, pp 52-53.)

-

While working in my little shop the other day, a number of customers pointed out what looked to be a white towel suspended mid-air... a ghost... it was gently swaying about and visible only through the dirty window behind me. The window looks out into a weird void space in between the buildings, it's very narrow and tall because the buildings are tall, and then leads up to the sky. Another customer, an architect, told me that it became mandatory after many fires in Soho buildings in the 70s to instate these void spaces between the buildings, which can allow the fire to escape out. He said if you looked from the air you would see all the buildings in Soho have these small voids.

Puddles from New York

Yesterday I got caught in a ridiculous downpour just as I was leaving the gallery I'm working at to run an 'errand'. In a very deja-vu-I-swear-I've-seen-this-in-the-movies scene I was down on 10th Ave in Chelsea at 6 o'clock rush hour, dressed in my nicest gallery outfit under an umbrella (rendered more or less useless) helplessly trying to hail a cab, which is impossible in New York in the pouring rain, utterly soaked, so that I could deliver this iPad to the gallerist at her apartment across town before she left for Art Basel in a couple of hours - when I arrived at her apartment in Soho I had to empty the water from my shoes and attempt to dry them out with newspaper. It was quite hilarious and distressing. I was standing on the street with my arm flailing about wishing a cab would pull over, thinking, if I weren't worried about actually trying to get anywhere right now I would be frickin LOVING this spontaneous bursting of the sky, I know I would be grinning my head off at the way the sky surprises constantly, and it is commanding and simply uncontrollable, we all must redirect our attention to it in such moments. But instead I at one point thought if it got much worse I might cry, it was such a hopeless scenario!

Anyway, today since the rain has cleared, there are puddles galore, and one must jump over them at the last minute to avoid getting a muddy shoe. Also in New York in the summer time there are so many puddles - all the airconditioning units drip puddles of water onto the street below. I remember last time I was here wanting to do something with them - collect the water, or make imprints of them, paintings out of them. They are like microcosms of New York filth, floating with bits of trash, leaves, cigarette buts, I always wonder how long those bits stay there fermenting after the rain in the humid New York air. There are a number of shots of puddles with such filthy 'treasure' in them in that Tarksovsky movie I mentioned in an older post, Stalker. Also drips.

Jessie I don't know if you've ever seen any of my paintings, but they are basically puddles of colour, that dry over a period of days and leave collected traces of the activity of the pigmented liquid on the absorbent paper. Here is a link to a tumblr of many of them, they are an ongoing series I call the Reservoir series.

I've been consumed in the last couple of weeks with a work I was making for an exhibition in Perth about endangered birds. It just opened on Thursday whilst I was sleeping - and came together with the amazing help of my various siblings and mum and the assistance of an old friend. It has been such a strange, rather stressful, but also kind of magical, experience to make a work remotely like that, and I am aware I'm about to do it all over again with Unkept (!) 

Anyway, the work for that show reminded me of your experiments with puddles, there are just some uncanny parallels between our practices! The work is probably best described in this article. The picture in the article doesn't show the work in progress, but here is an out of focus one that does - the glass has since been filled with the Indian Ocean and the pigment egg is slowly dissolving into liquid.

I played a lot with powdered pigments and binders and have spent a lot of time in my newly discovered favourite art supply store in New York, Kremer Pigments, talking to the pigment experts there. After years of being limited to the colours and consistencies available only in tubes of watercolour paint I could buy, it feels like a whole new world opened up to me since finding Kremer in terms of the potential to make my own composites and casting the pigment in different shapes (like the pigment egg I had my sister cast for this work). One thing I would eventually like to do is nest different colours as layers within the one cast - like a gobstopper. This seems to be kind of the opposite process to what you're working with, where you're adding pigments on top of each other to compose new layers, whereas my cast pigment would eventually dissolve/erode away to reveal new colours??? Anyway, I LOVE the idea of evapourated puddles and the traces of colour they might leave - like a ghost puddle.

Which resonates with yet another thing I have spent a lot of time thinking about lately in relation to this show and am hoping to work with - the idea of ghosts, ghosting, absences and presences... but I'll save that for another post.

I'm super excited about this work for you Jessie, and the continual connections we are discovering between our practices!

Leftover

I have always been attracted to the smaller, quieter and left behind things of this world.

In April this year I was married and as is usual speeches were given. Against tradition I asked my mother to speak on behalf of my side of the family. She talked about my character; how at eighteen months I didn’t respond to the name my parents had given me at birth and so they had to change it, about growing up in country S.A. free to explore and express myself and how travelling around the world since little had instilled confidence and ability to build relationships fast with anyone from a French baker to my art teacher. 

My mother shared, “I fondly treasure the love language we exchange in giving each other odd bits and bobs; special rocks, wild flowers, autumn leaves.” It’s true, almost everyday on my walk home from school I would find something small and precious for my mummy. It became a ritual for me to pick the tiniest pale pink rose bud that I could find (but only if there were more than 3 flowers on the bush) and put it in the tiniest vase on my mothers’ dressing table for her to find when she came home. To this day, I am still in the practice of finding precious treasures on my walks home or around the garden and putting together little displays. My kitchen windowsill is on a constant rotisserie of tiny found objects and fresh flower buds that bring me a smile whenever I do the dreaded washing up or make a cuppa tea.

As a child one of my favourite toys was a teddy bear called Leftover. He was a scruffy brown and white teddy bear, with small ears and a funny arm that dangled by a few loose threads. We got him from the local arts and crafts store, a favourite jaunt of ours, at the top of a hill in Whyalla. Leftover was in a bag with other teddies and dolls that were damaged or broken. Leftover’s left arm had fallen off and was loose in the bag of goodies. Most of the toys had a missing piece waiting to be mended and brought back to their former cuddly glory. 

Headless wasn’t so lucky though. Leftover and Headless became my favourite toys as a child. They always played significant roles at the lounge room tea parties and their attendance always invited lively conversation about how Headless had no need for tea and biscuits but enjoyed the party all the same. He was always there to  help Leftover pour his tea. 

Just yesterday, I gave my last soft toy to Vinnies, Wally (see pictured above). Another favourite growing up. Wally was a scruffy, flopping teddy who was a bit of a trouble-maker and gave particularly good cuddles. But as he always seemed to end up under the bed rather than on the bed I decided his hugs would be better served elsewhere. I do quite love this photograph though. 

All this seems significant as I prepare for a show that is essentially derived from taking unnoticed, found and left behind materials and not only drawing attention to these often 'unseen' elements of everyday life but somehow revelling in their ordinariness. Somehow not ordinary anymore. 

Puddles

Something I've been thinking about for the last year or so has been working with puddles. I had a moment in Mongolia where stepping in one became the most magical moment of my life (you can read a story about it here) and I've been trying to find a way to recreate or work with that somehow.

They came up in my latest Skype conversation with Polly and as it's been a bit rainy in Adelaide this week I've started playing around with some ideas, using just what I had in my studio.

This was my first go, dropping food colouring into an already existing puddle. It completely evaporated over a couple of days (it stopped raining) and disappeared without leaving a trace.

Today I tried purple paint mixed with some water, dug a depression into the ground and made my own puddle. 

I'm hoping that as it dries it will leave something behind, but I think I need stronger colouring and a different surface - concrete I think would work better.

I have also left a small puddle of paint (less watered down) on a wet patch of concrete - less like the ones above as it is a flatish surface, but a place where water has still collected. It's a bit drizzly today so I am keen to see what happens to it over time. At the moment it is slowly spreading outwards and filling all the tiny cracks beautifully - I'm hoping it will rain a bit heavier then it is currently and it will form it's own colourful patch/puddle. 

Maybe this is more like an oil slick then a proper puddle?

I'm not really sure where it is going, but I'm excited by the ways in which it has me thinking.

I guess my original aim was to find a way to make a rainbow puddle but single colours seem OK for now.

If I can work out a way to make it leave a trace as it dried, I can fill and let it evaporate over and over with different colours to leave some rainbow remains.

I'm also thinking about ways in which I can freeze a puddle without it being below 0 degrees outside.

Polly and I discussed taking casts of existing puddles to make containers to then freeze water in, which I can then replace in the ground and allow to melt. But I'm also thinking about collecting water from puddles (once it starts raining again) and doing something with that - freezing it into a different shape maybe? Or using it in something else, I don't really know. 

It has been unexpectedly warm in Adelaide lately but come on winter, I need you!

Hey Jessie...

... can you whistle?

Notes during Skype with Jessie

[24/05/2014 1:23:50 pm] Polly Dance:

"definitely want to do something outside the space"

[24/05/2014 1:30:31 pm] Polly Dance:

It's hard working off memories

Different way, different approach

Maybe not so much filling and fixing

But something else

The courtyard was a really clean place when I was there

There wasn't cracks or bits missing

Maybe that brings in materials that are dirty but nice (in a way)

The opposite - bringing your own kinds of dirty

With my work a lot of the decisions are taken away from me

I just have to choose a colour

The dust line and collection was a complete surprise

The best part of the work in the end

Then I recreated it

I guess I have to think about the weather as well!

[24/05/2014 1:43:30 pm] Polly Dance:

Puddles

[24/05/2014 1:49:15 pm] Polly Dance:

I'm about the human aspects

Getting rid of all traces of human inhabitance seems backwards

Human aspects of space?

Human footprint

Human remains

Man made

[24/05/2014 1:52:30 pm] Polly Dance:

Polly: "I don't want to change your practice"[24/05/2014 1:23:50 pm] Polly Dance:

"definitely want to do something outside the space"

[24/05/2014 1:30:31 pm] Polly Dance:

It's hard working off memories

Different way, different approach

Maybe not so much filling and fixing

But something else

The courtyard was a really clean place when I was there

There wasn't cracks or bits missing

Maybe that brings in materials that are dirty but nice (in a way)

The opposite - bringing your own kinds of dirty

With my work a lot of the decisions are taken away from me

I just have to choose a colour

The dust line and collection was a complete surprise

The best part of the work in the end

Then I recreated it

I guess I have to think about the weather as well!

[24/05/2014 1:43:30 pm] Polly Dance:

Puddles

[24/05/2014 1:49:15 pm] Polly Dance:

I'm about the human aspects

Getting rid of all traces of human inhabitance seems backwards

Human aspects of space?

Human footprint

Human remains

Man made

[24/05/2014 1:52:30 pm] Polly Dance:

Polly: "I don't want to change your practice"

Jessie: "No, I wouldn't let you change my practice"

[both laugh]

[24/05/2014 1:57:05 pm] Polly Dance:

I just want it to be the Space and my Work

Draw attention to it

a signpost

[24/05/2014 2:05:19 pm] jess:

Does the cleaning matter for this work?

[24/05/2014 2:06:00 pm] jess:

It's part of the process, can I draw attention to it?

[24/05/2014 2:06:24 pm] jess:

The material usually gets thrown away, can I do something with it? Recreate it?

[24/05/2014 2:12:40 pm] Polly Dance:

Puddle-hunt

[24/05/2014 2:24:15 pm] Polly Dance: Call ended  1 hour 9 minutes 6 seconds

Jessie: "No, I wouldn't let you change my practice"

[both laugh]

[24/05/2014 1:57:05 pm] Polly Dance:

I just want it to be the Space and my Work

Draw attention to it

a signpost

[24/05/2014 2:05:19 pm] jess:

Does the cleaning matter for this work?

[24/05/2014 2:06:00 pm] jess:

It's part of the process, can I draw attention to it?

[24/05/2014 2:06:24 pm] jess:

The material usually gets thrown away, can I do something with it? Recreate it?

[24/05/2014 2:12:40 pm] Polly Dance:

Puddle-hunt

[24/05/2014 2:24:15 pm] Polly Dance: Call ended  1 hour 9 minutes 6 seconds