Tarkovsky's unkept time

A while ago I was feeling challenged by the title Unkept, so I made a list of words that related:

Last night I watched the 1979 Tarkovsky movie Stalker (available to watch online here) and thought it was really appropriate in regard to this list of words, which I had forgotten about until now. Visually there are many obvious connections: the film was shot in an abandoned hydro station in Estonia, and the deserted landscape, overgrown fields, derelict buildings, subterranean tunnels filled with moss and mud, flooded warehouses, abandoned detritus, floating bits of dust and fluff etc etc etc really is the epitome of 'unkept'. And in true Tarkovsky style everything is just beautiful, and the experience of watching feels like peeling back layers in time and space.

Something else though, is how it stayed with me - still thinking about it today I realised there's something unkept about the time of it too. First its film-time - as in, the 3 hours or whatever it took to watch it - but then more interestingly, the time it expands out to in the sustained memory or thought of it. The slow-burn effect. This is immeasurable, unregulated time... it strays beyond the confines of the film-time into other less calculable sorts.

The idea of a disobedient, but all the more electrified, landscape is pretty interesting too. In the movie the Zone that the characters travel to disobeys the laws of physics that society has come to rely on. Its time and space is unpredictable, untamed, unknown. To navigate through it they must move slowly, cautiously, in a kind of lateral or indirect movement. I like this idea a lot, the experience of coming around space, getting to know it obliquely (and here the space itself is so potent).

The thing that strikes me about Tarkovsky's films, besides all the metaphor and striking imagery, is that they open out a space (in film, and in time) to observe the periphery of the scene. They offer an expanded view, within which exists an ecosystem of (very) slight activity - a bird call, a bug crawling over a finger, bits of fluff wavering in the breeze - and most of the time it's all allowed to occur simultaneously, without hierarchy. 

Unguarded, unobserved phenomena are given their breathing space.

Thoughts Claire -> Polly 17/03

I've been trying to think about what I know of the courtyard having spent a lot of time in and around it whilst invigilating the gallery on a quiet sunday afternoon, or coming out to have lunch. It is such a hotspot for activity - it's basically the only sunny area in the immediate vicinity of the gallery, and when the building gets so cold it's the best place to be - but its very elusive. I'm thinking about how to harness or track the light somehow. All very vague. But the thing with that is that (particularly in July!) the courtyard also becomes such a vortex - there are little twisters with leaves and wind that whip up in there when it's cold. And then of course it rains.
...
Thinking about reflections, blurrings, how to un-keep a site, how to un-see a familiar site, how to bring these little things to the surface a bit more but find a way to make space for all these elemental shifts, not just one but many - I want it to be 'working' all the time.
...
I'm no so inclined to re-create anything as such, but perhaps find a way to translate or syphon that experience of outside in a distilled form inside. I like the idea that the audience can then be engaged in this observation - like a choose your own adventure, a kind of question/game to the viewer, or just a handing over of responsibility to them to log and capture and document the activity in that space over the duration of the exhibition.
...
I am very interested in this kind of blurred reflection (below), rather than crisp pools of light. Thinking about how to achieve that... I've also been thinking about the roof!

p.s. this photo is from my Fieldwork NYC blog I kept last year

(Jessie - ok so this blog is another exception to my avoid-photography rule...)

From Jessie 29/03:

Hey Polly and Claire,

I know I'm a part of this conversation getting lost with my slow to respond tendencies! I do think about the project a lot, and what we are discussing, but have found it hard to sit down and respond properly.

But here goes...

First to respond to Claire:

Haha.  I'm only indecisive when there is nothing at stake - what to do when I'm hanging out with a friend, what to eat for dinner, things like that - I'm pretty intuitive when it comes to important stuff. I think with the colours its that there has to be a reason for using whatever I'm using. For instance, I did a work last year where I painted the pieces of bubble gum on the ground on a section of pavement in the city, and using a rainbow didn't really seem all that appropriate so I had to decide on a combination of colours that worked together and felt right. I went with purple, pink, orange and teal because they are bubblegummy colours (I spent a lot of time researching this!) But when there isn't those other considerations (for instance chips in bricks in a laneway) I find it hard to reason the use of particular combinations.

is that making sense? Am I just repeating what I discussed last time? Is that actually just indecisiveness?!?! Ha. 

It does seem as though we are aiming for similar outcomes with what we make, but go about it in different ways, which is great, another common thread between the two of us. I don't have a proper name for the moment - I tend to just refer to it as 'that moment' or 'the encounter' - perhaps we should research to see if there is a term and if not come up with our own?

I avoid using photography as much as I can as a tool for making and presenting works. I feel like it is a removal from the work, and from creating that moment of encounter with the work. Even though as friends point out to me, people still have a moment of encounter with a work when it is hanging on the walls of a gallery, I just think it is different. Seeing a photograph of a rainbow crack in the pavement is not the same thing as actually discovering a rainbow crack in the pavement as you walk down the street. You know when you walk into a gallery that you are going to see something, its a specific, generally deliberate decision to see something, even if you are not sure what it is going to be. I guess I want to challenge how the viewer encounters the work, which adds to that moment we are both aiming for.

In saying that though, I have been thinking lately of using photography a bit (not as documentation for interventions but, more intervening into images) and about how my work could maybe translate into video but I haven't really pushed either of those as yet. I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the permanency of those mediums, something I really struggle with. Again though, if it seems to fit the project perfectly (as in it is the best way to do what I want to do), I would just go for it. Which I guess is the same as your  intent to "install the video in a way that gives that moment (the corners of the mouth turning up, the little jump in the heart) back to the viewer, not through the document or the representation (maybe that's just a prompt) but in their live/direct encounter with the work, whatever that may involve." I just haven't gotten to the point of trying it yet! 

I really love your instagram shots Claire! The way the light falls in a room is so beautiful and is constantly changing. What are you planning on doing with them all? 

I also really love the way that you have documented the rainbows with words rather than images, and made it about the experience of seeing one not actually seeing one - yours initially but then allowing the viewers to have an experience in the gallery too. 

Can you apply this to your work for 'Unkept'? Not the rainbows, but some kind of recordings from New York? 

Having works of a 'non physical' nature but that somehow fill the space could make for an interesting combination between the two of us. Not sure how this would fit with Polly's vision of the exhibition? 

This is getting really long. I'll respond to Polly's collaborative question separately I think. 

x. Jessie

PS. Yellow is a great option for favourite colour. So happy.

PPS. Happy, happy birthday Claire! It's a beautiful day in Adelaide today, hopefully its just as lovely wherever you find yourself x.

From Polly 23/03:

Hey Jessie and Claire, 

Sorry I've taken so long to get back to you both. Been crazy busy with the wedding preparations. 

Great discussions. 

Here's my next topic... 

Collaboration

Jessie you mentioned your recent collaboration with Jock but maybe it'd be good to talk for you both to discuss your collaborative work experiences, what was created and how collaborations impact your practice. 

Thanks and look forward to reading more. 

Pol xx

From Claire 19/03:

 Hi guys,

Great to hear about your work Jessie!

That's interesting you came to work with rainbow colours because all other combos seemed to mainly remind you of sport - I seem to remember a similar experience with all those colour options and decision making. I love the idea that choosing rainbow really just is a way of avoiding making a different kind of choice. It's like the inclusive choice... I used to answer "the rainbow" when asked what's my favourite colour (and in fact still did until my exes kids were quite unsatisfied with that response and pressed me harder for a real decision! - I finally settled on yellow).

and now that I think about it, I am notoriously indecisive, which maybe accounts for the appeal of rainbow colours to me! Are you indecisive Jessie?!

Interesting that we both resist the impulse to photograph, but still receive them from other people. Although admittedly I have thrown caution to the wind and begun documenting light around the house for instagramming purposes, which often is most exciting to me when you get the chromatic separation thing going on around the shadows, I usually try to avoid the photograph as a tool for making work about such things, hence the voice recordings. I do make video though so maybe that's contradictory. I guess overall I try to install the video in a way that gives that moment (the corners of the mouth turning up, the little jump in the heart) back to the viewer, not through the document or the representation (maybe that's just a prompt) but in their live/direct encounter with the work, whatever that may involve.

I don't know if I always am able to achieve that, but it's definitely something I think about a lot. And if I can't achieve it then I guess hopefully the work points to the failure of the work to do that in a kind of amusing way. I want to say slapstick, but it's a super subtle slapstick if anything..

What do you call that moment you're trying to create in your work Jessie? I feel like it's a similar moment to the one I have in mind when I make my work too. 

Alright I'm writing this on the train and gotta get off but as a parting note, I thought this favourite mug of my dad's was relevant:

Jessie Joins In 16/03:

 I'm going to start with the rainbows...

I don't work with rainbows as such, but rather rainbow colours.

It's definitely something that has become important to me later in life, that is, I was never really into rainbows or colours even as a kid. It started in the final semester of my undergrad degree - I had just returned home from my time in America, had started to get on a bit of a role with the kind of work I make now but was still experimenting with materials etc. I had bought a packet of permanent textas from the supermarket that came in all the colours of the rainbow and some toothpicks and was sitting in the studio on my own late one night in an attempt to have a play without anyone there to comment on what I was/should be doing. I started colouring the toothpicks in but couldn't decide on a combination - using just two or three colours had all kinds of connotations or ideas connected with them already (mostly sporting teams) so I just decided to use all of the colours instead. A way of making a decision without having to in a way I suppose, although I didn't include browns, greys or blacks and still don't to this day (they aren't 'happy' colours). And putting them in rainbow order (the way they came in the pack) made the most sense at the time. Again, I guess it was an easy way of making a decision. 

I realise of course that rainbow colours have their own connotations (gay pride for instance) but funnily enough, Henry Jock is the only one to raise that point with me, and that was only last year, somewhere in Northern NSW. I tend to think/use it as more of a hopeful, beautiful, joyful, happy thing and so far it seems to come across that way.

Like you Claire, I have people send me pictures of rainbows and of the spectrum that is cast on the floor, ground etc. when the sunlight passes through glass windows (although I know technically not a rainbow, it brings out a similar joyful feel the way a rainbow does). I also used to collect pictures of these moments myself but have stopped (unless it is truely spectacular) because it is about the experience of these things that makes them magical and special. A photo just can't capture, doesn't make my heart jump, or the corners of my mouth turn up, the way that see these things first hand does. 

I think it is this that is one of the biggest things I am trying to achieve when I make my work - the moment, the experience of that moment, when I see a rainbow, and how it makes me feel. I know that I am far, far away from recreating a natural phenomena in a way that is as successful as the real thing (indeed if anyone can) so I try to recreate that moment as best as I can in whatever ways I can - finding a rainbow in a crack on the pavement, or on the top of a wooden post, or finding that the dirty bubblegum on the ground has suddenly become colourful again - its about that surprising, joyful, heart lifting moment when you discover something lovely out of the blue.

There are lots of other things I think about when making my work too (to the point where I wonder if I should actually go and speak to someone and work through a few thoughts/issues on my own existence) - like Polly mentions, the drawing attention to everyday environments, raising the lowly, an encouragement of being mindful of where we are as well as lots of others - but this is the one that relates most closely to the rainbow. I won't go into everything right now but maybe in future emails if it comes up in/seems relevant to the discussion.

More so lately, the use of rainbow colours is also dependent on the material that I am using. As with the textas at the very beginning, I limit myself to what is available in whatever material I have chosen, which quite often comes in a pack. I also find that the rainbow colours helps make it something special - unless the material I am using is sparkly, or glittery or something else - just one colour, no matter how bright or lovely it is, doesn't make it anything great. Multiple colours, especially rainbow, help show that it is something deliberate, an art work etc. as opposed to a material used by the council on the street. I guess this is dependent on the site as well (gallery v public) and what I'm highlighting.

And if I am working with rainbow colours, I try where possible to find materials where there is more than just the basic 7 colours - multiple shades of each colour or at the very least, not just the stock standard shade that is typically found. Maybe more pastelly, or bright or whatever if that makes sense. I spend a lot of time in toy departments, craft departments just looking, searching for something perfect. 

Last year I tried to move a way from rainbow colours a bit (it was very much dependent on the sites I was working with and that I was forced to think of other colours that suited the project more wholly) but have come back to them after driving round Tassie with Henry. We spotted more rainbows there than ever and it has sparked a whole conversation/argument (that you were both privy to seeing a tad of last year) and a collaborative project between the two of us (which is awesome because we've spent so long working out how to combine our two completely different practices).

So its nice to come back to them again here - perhaps I can't escape them just quite yet!

Maybe thats enough about the rainbows? If I think of more I'll write again.

I also really love writing, and have been doing lots of it lately (both creatively and a little bit of critical/arts writing). I only sometimes think it helps me flesh my ideas, other times I think it keeps me stuck in the one place, focusing on a problem rather than getting out there to work on the solution but in this context I think its beneficial so I'm looking forward to how this discussion develops!

I'm sure there is more to say - but I'll just hit send before I leave this any longer!

My website Claire is plasticineandthumbtacks.wordpress.com. I need to update it a bit but you'll get the gist of what I do from there. And if none of this makes sense without a more in depth description of how I actually make my work (which I just realised you might not know) sing out and I'll go into things a bit more.

xx. Jessie

Ha ha about your old email address Claire! Why on earth do you not still use it?

Claire Continues the Conversation 04/03:

Well there's a lot there to talk about. Sounds like it's a busy month for us all. Thanks for making all those great connections Polly!

I am also really excited to be working with you Jessie! And I too am unsure how exactly we will be working together and exactly what Polly is thinking/wanting now - although maybe she's not sure either, but anyway I am open to all sorts of things and I suppose it is my inclination to say at this stage I'm keen to get some dialogue going and let things develop naturally. 

To be honest, amidst lots of other juggling right now I seem to keep dipping in and out of the headspace for this project and so feel it's all very open/unformed, which on the one hand makes me nervous, but on the other hand is exciting to have such freedom. So on in this regard I think maybe just keeping in regular conversation with each other will be really helpful for me in returning to developing the work and keeping focused and inspired. Hopefully it'll be the same for you Jessie.

Plus I don't know about you but i find the act of writing a really effective creative tool for forcing me to think something through in a different way, so I hope that this getting-to-know-each-other through writing about our practices might actually be quite productive in terms of developing new work. I also think the collaborative thing can't be forced, but this is a good start to exploring common ground.

Ok, so to Polly's topic...

Well, to describe how I've worked with the rainbow in the past is much easier than to articulate what it means to me, so I'll start with the first bit and see how I go with the second after that.

So really my main (or only) rainbow work began as an exercise where I made a voice/field recording for each rainbow I saw, a project that I carried out over two years. Every time I saw a rainbow I would take out my iphone and 'log' the sighting, like a botanist or field reporter. I was also trying to avoid visual representation, and I guess I thought 'what's the most inadequate way to describe a rainbow?' and through that realised that in fact description and circumstance had a lot of expressive potential. 

All the recordings state the date and time, my location, where the rainbow appears to be, and then circumstantial details like how I might have chanced upon the rainbow, or other observations that filter in. I also usually tried to measure it between my fingers, and give it an opacity percentage. In the end I had something like 120 sound recordings which I then categorised into 7 different types (regulars, doubles, appearing/disappearing, partials, obscure/obstructed ones etc) and played them through trumpet-shaped glass speakers that I had a scientific glass blower make. The speakers were held with chemistry clamps on long ear-height steel stands that were placed at different points in the gallery. To hear the recordings you had to hold your ear up to the glass.

I still see think of this as a piece in working, I often think about it and how I could better resolve it physically. So it might have another life yet. (In fact, I probably think this about most of my work, that it can have multiple lives and re-volutions).

So that rainbow work seems to have led people to identify me with rainbows, I guess in part because it had such a long gestation period and many people encountered it at different stages of its life. People started sending me pictures of rainbows they had seen, or texting/phoning me to alert me to a rainbow. Someone even wrote me a short story about the rainbow after i told her about the work. I felt like I'd become this rainbow whisperer for people who weren't quite sure what to do with the joyous excess of seeing a rainbow, or something. It's taken me a while to feel comfortable about that, I guess because I think my work is about more than the idea of the rainbow... but maybe the rainbow aptly sums it all up, I don't know. I think I'd like to work with this rainbow-channel thing somehow eventually, but haven't quite got there yet.

(Sorry this is turning out to be a long email)

Ok, part two: Definitely I have always been drawn to the rainbow but moving from Perth to Tasmania really saw that interest peak, and this is undeniably linked to the sheer number of rainbows I saw there. I think prior to my move to Tassie (where my work directly with the light really began) I was more interested in colour, the spectrum, and working with this through a painting process, but I started to seek it out in natural occurrences through light itself in the last few years. For sure this was influenced by my new surroundings as well as a desire to take my work beyond the piece of paper and into real world experience. 

It's a huge thing to try talk about because to me the sustaining thing about rainbows is their unfathomability as well as their simplicity. And the fact that they really can't be talked about but experienced. They are a great example of this kind of simultaneously fundamental but complex experience of being in the world, a moment of relation or triangulation between us, and our time and space - a direct link (or can I say portal?!), to reiterate these fundamentals of empirical experience. The idea that each rainbow is unique to the vision of each person, or as Olafur Eliasson has written, the rainbow is a virtual image of the sun; or Philip Fisher, that the rainbow is the ultimate example of the experience of wonder - a unique encounter involving a combination of surprise, intuition, aesthetic pleasure, mathematical or logical 'working out' and placing oneself within that complexity. 

All that really interests me, but I also don't know if I want to bang on about it, because ultimately it's the perceiving bit that interests me, the whole sensorial experience. I suppose that's where I felt my rainbow work reached an end point was when the descriptions became repetitive and took away the magic for me. I wanted to let the rainbows go, give them back their temporality (or maybe rather, give me back my own temporality)

I think that's enough of an introduction! Phew, maybe next time I'll do dot-points!

Yours spectrally, and slightly deliriously (it's late),

Claire

p.s. a confession: i once had this email address: rainbowbrite86@hotmail.com

One to One

CALLUM MORTON
One to One, 2011
Polystyrene, epoxy resin, steel, sand, wood, synthetic polymer paint, light, CD, audio unit
256 x 335 x 132 cm

I first got introduced to the art of blogging when Jessie and I were in first year of art school in 2006. As part of our assessment we were required to post an image and a short review or summary on an exhibition or artwork that we had come across weekly. I really enjoyed the rigour of research that was built in this practice of seeking out an artwork/exhibition that inspired us and discussing it with our peers. 

Which is what brings me to this installation shot of Callum Morton's One to One as part of his 2012 exhibition The Insides. This exhibition title is fitting for the kind of work that it held and particularly for the feature piece One to One pictured above. The titles suggest intimacy, but what kind of intimacy? And at what cost? 

This haunting image of a disused fireplace where the burnt wood, coals and ashes have been removed long ago leaving behind an empty fire rack and the burn marks and smokey residue on the back wall of a highly fabricated manmade fireplace. This burnt interior is framed by a wooden slab and white sandstone bricks both of which are crisp and unscathed. 

This bleak but strangely beautiful image carries a powerful message of internalised pain, violence, abuse and entrapment. Using only a few materials, classic design, simple process and by changing the way the viewers enters the space the work is experiential and creeps up on the viewer. The simple crisp build of the 1960s fireplace is oddly familiar and its simplicity draws the viewers eye to the vocal point of the piece; the fireplace. The fireplace has been cleared out after a fire has burnt-out, leaving behind only violent smoke markings in black and red ochre on the back wall. These wisps of black and red remind me of blood and bruising from too many lashings. The markings are strangely beautiful and intriguing. And like the fire that has long since extinguished it's completely captivating and even though I know I shouldn't look directly into the fire I can't help but stare.  

Unkept conversations begin

Having begun conversations through email correspondence with participating artists Jessie Lumb and Claire Krouzecky I wanted to take these conversations into a public forum for open discussion, correspondence, commentary and sharing. But first we must backtrack...

Unkept: rainbows

Sunday, 2 March, 2014 0:55

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Dear Jessie and Claire, 

I am thrilled to be working with you both in a curatorial capacity for Unkept. 

Thank you for confirming your participation and enthusiasm for my project. And for taking this adventure with me. Since seeing your Fontanelle show through a Skype tour Jessie and walking through your Masters exhibition Claire your works have fascinated, captivated and "Wowed" me. I am so thrilled to me able bring you, your practices, approaches and work together in Unkept. 

There is so much resonance between your works:

• Both worked with chalk: Claire to draw the light hitting a wall, Jessie to create a rainbow and bring forth the texture of the gallery walls. 
• Both work with rainbows: Claire documents sightings of rainbows, Jessie uses rainbows in her works not wanting to negate any colour 
• Both respond to site: Claire often working with the light, inside/outside, studio space, and chance sightings, Jessie more directly working with any particular site as she finds it and usually adding (or occasionally taking away) colour, glitters and texture, using minimal materials and simple but repetitive processes
• Both draw attention to everyday, lived in environments
• Both worked collaboratively on very successful projects/works: Claire as part of Nuclei and Intercollective and Jessie with Steve Wilson and as part of tarpspace
• Both occasionally incorporate an element of interaction in your works: Claire with your listening devices you gently encourage the viewer to stoop down or lean up to listen to your recordings or soundscapes, and also your kite work, Jessie you've used binoculars before for the viewer to use to read tiny writing in the distance. 
• Both inspire the viewer to observe and appreciate their surroundings: Claire your paintings of the sky are observations, documentation and recordings of your surroundings, they are ever so beautiful and simple in their appreciate of your surroundings (and I feel that they are so "of" Tasmania), Jessie working with even the most lowly materials or spaces (chewing gum, cracks in the pavement, holes and flaws in walls and ceilings) you transform often ignored everyday surroundings 
• Both inspired by light and shadow: Claire most of your works, Jessie your recent light chalk work with Steve - drawing the light in the stairwell at UniSA
• Both incorporate a sense of play in your work: Claire I think your kites are a good example of this and also the birds - tracing their movements of the surfaces of a window, Jessie your work is often so small, colourful or shiny and often a simple gesture it's inescapably charming and playful
• Both your work makes me happy

I know you don't know each other very well so I hope this list of similarities that I've spotted can introduce you both to the resonance in your works, approaches and practices. As I've discussed with you both I'd like you both to get to know each others practices and approaches better in the coming months. To discuss recurring themes and ideas, ask questions and give personal responses and potentially work collaboratively on a work/or a number of works in Unkept. 

You might already have questions or things you want to discuss from the crossovers that I've highlighted but I thought we could begin this conversation and see where it takes us. 

Love Polly

ps - Jessie when are you coming to Tassie again? Perhaps we can book in a time to meet at the gallery.