quicksilver flooding a model (Dutch city planning in the 70 's)
roadblocks
ceramic
\Just sharing quickly the work I had to do for you know what. The text has a bit weird tone for that reason. Getting ready for a wedding now, but hope that I can spend more time on the blog from now on.
Invitation
The request on the one hand could be taken as an invitation to make an insertion that functions like an exception of the standard: an interruption. While on the other hand an activation of the framing could produce a self-reflexive commentary on the whole situation. This is the action where the exception actually binds. To extend this interrogation a bit further; to reflect on the exhibition that I’m simultaneously part of, would create the situation where one becomes part of his/her own image, a second appearance.
I will take this process of unhinging and binding as a departure point. Such an “in-betweenness” will on the one hand negotiate and confront standards in formats of presentation and on the other instigate terms under which an entry into another position is made possible. A position that moves beyond a state of exception.
One work, in the form of a video, will be set around the encounter with one particular documentary image: A still from a documentary about a Dutch Welfare office in the eighties. My aim with this image is to move through its primarily indexical signifying function and beyond its surface. This process introduces a personal methodology to approach documentary or archival images in general: the handling and touching of the material activates new relationships between the image, body and their immediate surroundings.
Another element which I’d like to extend and amplify, through sculpture, is the extraction and isolation of a particular motif. The motif comprises a spiraling form which is derived from the still image that also appears in the video. The spiral follows the illuminated edges and shadows of a generic type of ashtray which rests on the table where two people, respectively a social worker and a client, have a conversation. The ashtray or spiral is literally removed from this table, highlighting a potency or promising something charged. This sculpture, made of ceramics, will materialize the unhinging and binding forces I have described before.
For the third, complementary work, I want to use a particular image from the Stedelijk Museum’s archive documenting a municipal acquisition exhibition in the seventies as a starting point. (See image) One of the centrally depicted elements in this image comprises a frame that creates an atmosphere of separation and circling around. The reference to road blocks was most likely used to generate a commentary on the status and position of municipal art made public. In the context of the group show I will use this form of rectangular framing to comment and reflect on the dense installation of works of the different artists gathered in one of the wings the museum and the synthetic nature of the theme through which they are brought together. I intend to use this frame to stage a re-appearance of the means I appropriate and use to facilitate communication, but which in themselves are not contributing to a meaning per se. A display of pure means, which I will exhibit by synthetically reconstructing them, to have them appear as an effect. I imagine this effect to be non-nonsensical with moments of reinforced factual representation, as if reason suddenly hits you again.
still from video (video see link below)
http://www.divshare.com/download/11495866-d7f
