Head in the railings

I went looking through the artist books in the mac library today. All the books I looked at where of a pretty standard format, not anything like some of the pictures I was interested in online. This has made me think that perhaps artist books aren't really what I should be looking at? I want to make a book that could be seen as something apart from the content, something like the camera in the last post.
What I did find in the library though, which I think is fantastic and applies really well to what I was trying to do, was a book of photographs by an artist called Sion Parkinson called Head in the Railings. It shows a series of public interventions made by the artist and under each picture there is a description of how he experienced them.

Artisit's Books

With all the pictures I have taken this project I have been thinking about making a book, not to be part of my research instead of the blog but to go along with my final piece, like an explanition or a guide to the finished thing.


With this in mind Ive been trying to look at more Artists books for aome ideas. I have found quite a few that I'm looking forward to going through but they are all in the Mackintosh library but as its the bank holiday weekend I wont be able to look see them till Tuesday. I have managed to find nice examples online.

Lygia Clark 2

With the questions I had in mind yesterday, I decided to have another look through my Lygia Clark book in more detail and to my surprise I found lots of her performances that where similar to what I have been doing.

There where hoods that she made

and particularly one piece called tunnel

In this piece she had participants crawl inside a long cloth tube, which clings to the body like a stocking. Along the way they are helped by others and if one participant feels suffocated a cut is made in the cloth. It sounds fantastic to me, all the work that she made was to do with approaching materials and actions from a new perspective. Putting them and yourself in a new context in order to experience them freshly and as something new. I really feel like finding this has helped to understand what I have been doing a little better.

Questions

The day after the bag pictures where taken, I've been feeling a little bit like I don't quite understand what it is that I'm doing? I know I'm learning new ways to work, I'm trying new techniques and enjoying it but what is behind it all, where is the meaning?

I made a point of talking to Ken about how I can understand it better and he gave me some interesting ideas about how to approach things from another perspective in order to understand it from a new light. For example, he suggested I look at the relationship between self and other rather than just self and self, so looking at how others perceive the action of being in the bag not just my experience of it. The traditions behind women being made to cover up, this restriction of someone and contrast that with my volunteering to do it. The idea of a woman in a bag being a pre-packaged object, ready to pick up and take away. I found all of these ideas really interesting, I'm not sure if they are a direction I want to take but it's certainly opened it up to a new light.

Out and About and the Four Minute Warning

Wednesday I decided that the weather was never going to get any nicer and even though it's raining when else am I going to get these pictures taken! Euan kindly offered the use of his camera and we went out to take some photos of me in the bag. I was feeling pretty nervous about it, so we stared off in the Macintosh stairwell that leads down to the basement, i like the light down there and Euan said there was a cupboard under the stairs which could look quite nice in the photos. This gave me time to get a little bit more comfortable moving around and also let me see the kinds of shapes and effects I could make with the materials. This is one of my favorites, I'm stretching up to cover the stairway light.

Click on this link for the Flickr page I set up to show the rest of the pictures, it looks a bit of a jumble at first but the organised sets make it clearer.

After the pictures taken in the basement Euan suggested I set myself a task. I should go to each of the buildings that make up the art school (Macintosh, Newberry, Bourdon, Foulis, JD Kelly, Barnes and Haldane) and give myself a set amount of time from the moment I step foot in the door to find what I feel would be the safest place to hide. We decide on the time limit being 4 minutes as it corresponds to what I wrote about earlier, the protect and survive manual the treat of nuclear attacks and the 4 minute warning. The idea of this made me feel even more anxious at first but I decide d to give it a shot anyway. I'm glad that I did, it was a lot of fun, again it helped me to feel more comfortable and I think we got some really nice pictures and shapes out of it.

All this took about an hour to do and then we headed out properly and took some photos in more open places, which is what I had had in mind from the start. As much fun as the others where to make and as much as i like a lot of the results I think these pictures are my favorites. I like the contrast within the settings and the way it became quite amorphous and doesn't always look like there's a body underneath. some of them particularly the ones taken on the fence remind me of kinds of fungus that grow on tree stumps.

In the bag

As planned I went round some charity shops to try and find some suitable material to make my bag from, in about the third or fourth shop i found the perfect stuff! Its a pale lemon, fleeced cotton, double bed sheet. I would have liked to have more than one to play with but it was only a pound and its more than big enough to fit me, which is my main objective.

Once I got into the studio I very quickly and roughly stapled two of the three edges together to make one really large pocket and then i tried it on. It was really pretty comfy in the bag? Nice and light, not to stuffy and very soft and Downy just like i had imagined it might be, i felt quite safe, safe enough to stand about for a bit. Then, the next thing I know someone is giggling and tying a piece of rope around my middle to trap me in.

It was funny even though it got a bit claustrophobic in there but what I found really interesting was I had never considered how vulnerable putting yourself in a big opaque bag could be? Seems silly that it hadn't occurred to me before but I had gotten too caught up in the idea of making yourself small, covered up and safe but it was all from my perspective within not the perspective without. I still like the original idea of creating a private moment in a public setting but I'll definitely take this aspect of vulnerability along with it.

Thank you Hazel for taking the pictures and video... and thank you Stephen for getting me out, but not Steven, it was you that tied the knot so tight.

Hood

As a start to making a bag Ive been looking at and pricing different material. In my mind Id like it to be made of fleeced material, something like a bed sheet or a baby blanket, which is nice as both have secure connotations. I'd like it to be big enough to at least hold me, about two double bed sheets sewn together size. Originally I had a circle shape in mind, so it would look a little like a deflated balloon or giant tea bag to crawl into but i think a large rectangle might be best. It will be easier to sew and also will make nicer shapes and folds as there's more fabric left over to play with.

I took a little trip down to Mandors, to price and see if they had anything near what I had in mind. They do have rolls of fleeced cotton material but its quite expensive so I will be going for a hunt round some charity shops in the next few days. What i did find though was some nice material in the scrap bin, it was no where near enough but i bought it to play around with. I bought some pink and white elasticated cotton which I've made into a little tent.

And some heavy navy blue felt which i very quickly and roughly made into a hood, to try out how the bag might feel. Trying the hood on was fun, its pitch black inside and not comforting at all, really feels quite eerie and unnerving. It's big enough to cover me to just below my knees if i curl myself up.

When I saw the hood on other people it reminded me a lot of the hood that the Iraqi prisoners where forced to wear in Abu Ghraib. It made sense of the uncomfortable feelings I'd had earlier but has also tainted the idea of the bag for me a bit and I definitely don't want to put the hood on again.

warm lights

Walking home very late the other night I came across a vacant shop, which must have been going through a refurbishment of some kind. And for some reason there where still some lights on inside, it made the empty shop floor seem very warm and inviting on a horribly cold wet night.

Eggs

Got a quick picture of the eggs in the nest while the bird was off doing other things. Think they're such a beautiful shade of blue.

Another book I was recommended was the Poetics of Space. Ive only managed to read one chapter so far but it was specifically related to nests. Its got some very beautiful passages but I chose a few that particularly made me think:

" The well being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out of doors, is entirely animal. A rat in its hole, a rabbit in its burrow, cows in the stable must all feel the same contentment I do."

"the sense of well being takes us to the primitiveness of the refuge. Physically the creature endowed with a sense of refuge, huddles up to itself, takes cover, hides away,lies snug concealed."

"among the wealth of our vocabulary for verbs that express the dynamics of retreat, we should find images based on animal movements of withdrawal, movements that are engraved in our muscles."

"to make such a gentle comparison between house and nest one must have lost the house that stood for happiness. We return to it because our memories are like dreams which become a great image of lost intimacy."

everyday saftey

Jamie wasn't feeling too good today and he let me take his picture, he said this made him feel better...

walking home i came across these sandbags by roadworks, they reminded me of how I imagine I might look in the bag

Lygia Clark

After the talk with the second years it was suggested i take a look at the work of Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark so I picked up a couple of books from the library. I particularly enjoyed the Lygia Clark, I really love her use of materials and the way she approached ideas. She made some beautiful drawings and fascinating sculptural pieces but I loved her performance pieces where she involved the audience. There are lots of these performances in the book under the chapter heading "The Phantasmagoria of the Body" which i think sounds wonderful. Found a lovely description of her work on line:

Communicating through experience, Clark emphasizes the fluidity of life in opposition to any attempt to fix and systematize the world. With this series of uncanny wearable creations made of cheap and ephemeral materials often found on the streets, work and body merge into a hybrid of geometric and organic forms. The participant wearing the Parangolé dances with it, exploring kinetically its multiple possibilities.

I really like the temporary nature of this work, i like the fact that the only people who properly get to experience the work are those who where there and took part at the time. The photographs and documentation of these performances just seems to be an after thought, most of them don't seem to be taken with aesthetics in mind or to be particularly bothered about it either.

One piece in particular which i like is Rede de elastico, it was again another audience involved performance piece. A net is made from these red elastic bands by many participants, to complete it they have to weave them together and in doing so begin to weave themselves, this then forms a collective body and the act of weaving the net becomes as important as using it afterwards.

Although I'm not interested in involving anyone else in what I want to make I love the shapes that are made by the participants when they move around underneath. So with this in mind what I've been thinking about is making myself a big bag. I'd quite like to make a really big fabric bag that I can move around inside of. It incorporates the public and private aspects I've become most interested in, as being in the bag would be very private experience but one that could be witnessed by an audience. I imagine the audience would never fully understand what was happening underneath the material and the person inside wouldn't be able to gauge any reaction or whether in fact there was an audience there at all? The idea of a barrier between the two aspects interests me to, because creating a barrier be it social or physical is a way to keep yourself safe.