SITE RESPONSIVE & INSTALLATION WORK PHASE II

One of the dilemmas of practice based at UWTSD is the lack of very large installation spaces. Considering this, I had something of an epiphany:

My beloved alley is an ideal installation space, and synonymously site-response heaven. There is ample space, which is dynamic yet static and daily self-regulating. There is an element of unpredictability. Everything I want and need to do with the alley the alley will provide: numerous found objects, routinely changing in type and location. All I have to is interact with the site, minimally, leaving always a light, diminishing footprint. Come and go. 

Fledgling experiments have been worthwhile and I sense that I am developing the same sort of fascination for and healthy creative attachment to it that characterised my engagement last Uni year with the Pottery Subway.

LESS POVERTY IS NEEDED Reflection

The process of my first documentation session this morning for this project has proven very compelling.

For someone who often claims to have little interest in ‘political art’ and social justice, I have surprised myself with the viscerality I feel from doing this. Maybe my good old-fashioned Jewish liberal upbringing is showing itself?

I like the images above of the rain-soaked print-outs of my key statement. Discarded and soaked like rough sleepers themselves. The stupid simplicity of these pretty print-outs being left on the street to become trodden, defaced and torn speaks to me, but what speaks much more to me is speculating upon what my female rough sleeper will think and feel when she sees these throwaways on and near her. I’ll never know, and it’s this element of the uncontrolled, unknown and unforseeable in it that lends this project life and excitement.

LESS POVERTY IS NEEDED: Research As Practice Site-Responsive Gesture

A simple and direct site-responsive gesture sited in the long alley opposite my home. And a precursor to my LESS POVERTY IS NEEDED site-response.

Process:

For some time I had a small bag of clothes I intended to leave at a charity shop. Instead, one day seeing its possibiliies, I instead decided to use it for a a site-responsive gesture.

I left the bag of clothes by a doorway (seen above) in the alley, amidst the ever-changing material discarded by others. I left the clothes spilling from the bag, to signal their presence.

I photographed the bag of clothes at night, intentionally at a time when I knew rain was expected.

The next morning I went back to the site and, some distance from the original site, found the bag emptied and left by a parked car.

Clearly, overnight an unknown actor, possibly looking for such items, had found the clothes and taken them all.

Rationale:

I am pleased with this simple gesture. With a light touch it makes a statement regarding - though this may be presumptuous (the unknown actor’s motivation cannot be known exactly) - poverty and/or homelessness, assuming the clothes were taken by an individual in need. In any case, the interaction involved fulfilled the aims of the gesture, which was to make a gesture to the alley that would be responded to in a natural, anonymous fashion. Also, of course, there is a statement made in terms ephemerality, disposability and transience, of people and possessions.

I had considered leaving images of my digital artwork in the alley, and may still do so, but to begin with I wanted the gesture to be more literal and personal. Not just what I have made as art, but what has been a more intimate reflection of me: my clothing, bearing the invisible imprimatur of decisions, energetics and personality that would be transferred to another without intrusion of my immediate presence. I often give clothes to charity shops; this different method of sharing my possessions left a curious sense of having participated in a more powerful process. After seeing the images, I also considered restaging this gesture, to provide material of a different quality, but upon reflection didn’t want to sacrifice the spontaneity of the work done once.