#fionamclees

Viccy Adams & Fiona McLees : book/jacket

book / jacket, a collaboration between writer Viccy Adams and paper conservator Fiona McLees, draws together text and image gathered within the Barbican. The information is then represented in book format in a fragmented and anonymous way, to generate new accounts of the space. The work questions how we construct narrative and use source material (data) within a creative context.

Adams perceives hacking to be the act of accessing data and more specifically, the act of accessing natural data. In the context of book/jacket extracts of overheard conversations in the Barbican are accessed to provide source material for books hand bound using McLees expertise as a paper conservator. In terms of obtaining personal data, hacking could be understood to be a physical intervention of which, the outcomes are perhaps more sinister than what was originally intended. There was further discussion about how personal data in particular, is used in a negative or harmful way towards an individual. It is something topical: the disclosure of the NSA surveillance system and the story of Paris Brown; the former teenage drugs czar who was forced to stand down due to ‘questionable’ content on her Twitter feed. Adams and McLees edited all text and imagery within the project, so that it echoes the idea of something genuinely overheard and fleeting, rather than something revelatory and scandalous.

Additionally, there is a predisposition according to Adams to view an intervention (or a hack), in a creative context as a wholly positive act. In her previous role as a researcher as part of Ageing Creatively at Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Adams worked on a project assessing the impact of creative activities for the over 55’s. The resultant research revealed that creative activities can have a negative affect on the participants and result in a lack of self confidence, frustration or disinterest. This of course expands upon the concept of hacking and the recommendations of the project provide a useful framework for all creative practitioners who wish to stage a type of creative intervention with people. The research that Adams has contributed to certainly manifests within the way book/jacket sensitively manages the natural data hacked and gathered at the Barbican.

The inspiration for book / jacket came from Adams’ Arts Council funded collaboration with American artist Samantha Silver. Evolving over geographical boundaries, the text and image collaboration seeded an aspiration to work further with both mediums. Just as pertinent was the desire to work with McLees on a project to create engaging physical objects (books) for a wider audience. The discreet, pocket sized books are scaled in such a way to whisper a route into a bag or hand. Using Japanese Stab Binding the books contain data that can be prized as beautiful object or just as equally destroyed and never seen again. This, it was discussed, is almost the antithesis to how data is managed digitally: where corporations and governments can keep or delete what they and not the individual wish.

Viccy Adams: www.vsadams.co.uk