well, the mouthpiece I was working on (painstakingly) didn’t work out. At all. And that is okay. I think the components that make up the piece can be turned into stick pins or a brooch, so not all is lost. While weaving single strands of hair day in and day out did give me some meditative time to think, I did manage to move along in another direction.
Here are a short series of images I shot, which stem from my interest in discards of the body, process, and the notion of “wearing an experience”. I also like the idea of their being a residual there after this process is enacted.
In my crit, the notion of the work being too linear and didactic was brought up…which it is. I am not sure that I have a problem with that necessarily, as I think that it highlights or emphasizes the gesture/process more (but perhaps this is too closed or too straightforward—which can be a way to shoot, so I’m torn). I had toyed with the idea of taking the “spitting” image out so it is a triptych instead, but, as an idea I do like them. Perhaps they do need to be more open, less of me showing you something? More open to one’s imagination?
click to enlarge:
So, first, part of my ten piece.
This is a little side project that I’m continuing. Its drain hair, collected for week long periods, then worn as a brooch. What is interesting, to me, is the idea of wearing everything you washed off of your body in a week. All of these parts of your body (now the dead body) that are cleaned off, reordered, and reformulated into a new configuration.
This is also going to be a an ongoing project. I made 6 mouthpieces, which put some downward pressure onto the tongue and cause salivation (think dentist). The catalyst for this project was actually my English Lit class, which is on Virginia Woolf. In reading the first book for the class, The Voyage Out I was quite interested in a passage from Milton’s Comus. There is an underlying theme in the book of sexual abuse, which was rampant in Victorian England. Woolf herself was a victim of sexual abuse; preyed on by 2 brothers and left unprotected in her home by her father. This worked its way into the storyline, as well as marriage, communication (or lack their of)… At any rate, I did a little research on Comus, which as it turns out highlights the mythological beginnings of English society…which ironically is based on sexual abuse. This lead to more research into Comus itself, then into performative speech acts. I’m finding quite a few parallels between Woolf, communication theory (if you want to call it that), and the experiences of survivors of domestic violence. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about Foucault and the docile body, Derrida, language/speech/communication…
I’m continuing to work on the mouthpieces, but they are taking a slightly different manifestation these days. More refined, symbolic forms (aka an abstract language). The final piece will consist of both the mouthpieces and a video installation.
Now today, I had a couple of the grads help me shoot these images:
This is, obviously, a dead cardinal brooch. I had a gut reaction/mental image that needed to be created reaction, so, here they are. I’m currently honing in on the why.
The name of the game right now is reading. I feel like I’m not getting anything done (and that I’m really behind in my English class). FYI, I have a stack of books at least this tall at home also….
