#failurestates

SThinking about failure states this week I’m reminded of the house, and how this highly desired and impossible object is fading from our future. So many different images come to mind which explore the house turned upside down, so to speak. 

Mike Bouchet’s 53rd Venice Biennale work Watershed, 2009, which was erected after the housing crash in the United States, to float on the Adriatic. The house was an homogenous American model home named Sir Walter Scott, which looked like an homage to American suburbia. Within hours of finishing building the modified floating home, due to defects in its design, the home sank. Two thirds of it submerged into the water only to reveal an entirely new meaning.

Another remembered scene is from Andrei Tarkovsky’s great film Sacrifice (1986), in the protagonist watches their house burn down after they have lit it on fire. The scene, which is harrowing enough while it slowly contemplates the meaning of this place, is well known in cinema history for its failure state. While shooting the scene, in which the actual set of the of the movie was burned and captured on only one camera, the camera jammed and the film was destroyed. The scene had to be recaptured, which required that the house had to be rebuilt quickly. Apparently after the scene was recorded for a second time, the entire cast broke down in tears. 

It’s impossible to document nothingness, as it is impossible to encapsulate nothingness with art. You can not represent nothing, and you can not give non-existence form as the very action of formation goes against its original design, or lack thereof. 

I want you to know that I am conscious that by announcing that my final art work is nothing, and that this, the very act of explaining my intentions behind why I have presented nothing, is in fact artistic or form like. It is both my intention to tell you why I am presenting nothing as my final work, as well as my perogative to simultaneously discount this artist explanation because this is not art, yet it is artful in that the process I am about to explain, and the choices I have made have helped me come to a better understanding, conceptually, of what nothingness is, even though nothingness cannot ever be. 

My intention and choice to refuse to hand a final artwork is an art. I present nothing. 

Yet, I continue to explain. If I had my way I wouldn’t write this explanation, and I wouldn’t hand in any final work what so ever. There would be no final artworks, there would be nothing. I wouldn’t announce it, I wouldn’t tell anyone because that is truly nothing as there is non-existence. Still, I continue to reason. So this is art. Non-existence is my artistic material. 

Fine, I will explain what I have seen and what I have experienced of this ‘nothing process’ so you can come to know what I have known. To make significant what I have found significant, and help you realise what I have realised. I guess you could say my final ‘artwork’ is performative in nature.

I didn’t turn up for assessment day, not because I didn’t have anything to present, but because nothing was what I was presenting. I have not handed anything in because there is nothing to hand in. I have felt no feelings of remorse to hand anything in because again, there is nothing to hand in. I have spent a long process attempting to document nothingness. I thought I could simply document reflective surfaces, as reflective surfaces haven’t got an individual identity or an individual consciousness. I thought that I could filmed air, that I take photos of voids with no light, and that I could record silence. However, I have found that all of this are incapable of capturing nothingness as the very means of creating, forming, representing or objectifying is to render something as a thing or an object. To produce is to find something, and my goal has been to find nothing.  The ultimate success of this would have been to never, ever hand anything in for the final process. But I would fail the assessment, and possibly fail the course as a non-attempt. I think this explanation is also quite interesting to think about in terms of what is it to complete or finish work in our western education system. That we must produce and show a final product in order to evidence our thinking. As you can see by my process and thinking I know it is impossible to show nothingness. I refuse to also tell you that I am showing you nothingness because that would be besides the point. I want you to know that by explaining this I am fulfilling the requirements of the  assessment. I also want you to know on the other hand it was an artistic choice to not hand in anything until 2 minutes before the maximum 14 days penalty under UNSW assessment requirements. I know that I have lost 42% and have failed this assessment. But by handing in something I have failed my own methodology or structure I have placed on myself which is to find nothingness or at the very least formulate it.  “The abstract possibilities opened up by failure are further reinforced by the problems of physically realizing artworks—wrestling with ideas, representation, and object-making. By amplifying both theoretical and practical failure, artists have sought new, unexpected ways of opening up endgame situations, ranging from the ideological shadow of the white cube to unfulfilled promises of political emancipation. Between the two subjective poles of success and failure lies a space of potentially productive operations where paradox rules and dogma is refused.”

Experiment: 

Final Artwork - Part 3

Final Artwork- Part 2 (continued)

Final Work- Part 2

Hand Glitched Series: Time affects the nature of human memory, often manipulating it in a way that the original memory is almost completely forgotten. 

16 images in total

This series, unlike the first, reflects upon the fragility of human preservation of their own memories which is largely dependent on the passing of time and certain events that occur. Due to the malleable nature of human memory, we can consider ourselves, as well as technology, unreliable in preserving our own memories, because as humans, we are the most affected by time and we are prone to decay, often bringing on our own memory failure. This series is more personal to me as, cutting through the photographs, made me feel and visualise the failure of my memories of my connection to my cousins. However, the concept in this series is still intended to remain quite general and applicable to the broad nature of human memory.

Final Work - Part 1 (continued)