Proposal

My proposition is more or less analogous with yours.

In this diagram I suggest we put the brocoli (the host for a sound piece via headphones) to placed on a projector stand and below that an additional elmement- a 35 mm slide of the colour red projected onto a hi-gloss surface (either coated alumninum or hi-gloss painted wood). 

I can imagine this could be too much- but I wondered about our interest in dialouging with a surrounding and dissolving- I wondered if it could be a good idea to add  the element of light.

But as you will see this is perhaps too much- then I would suggest to use a light tube and suspend it from the ceiling to hang just above the mirrored shelf with the brocoli on it..

I suggest to use a shade of beige for the table top instead of orange. I'm interested if it would be possble for us to use beige and a mint green! Both such institutional colours.

I very much like the idea of making a small collage- could be something like the image I posted earlier- or your amazing image of the blurred couple speaking?

I think we have to remember that the text piece adn the video are both very powerful works so perhaps I already know that the slide projector is too much....but would then really go for a tube suspended near to the brocoli..

Deception

Thayer and his colouration experiments, investigated both colour and pattern making in order to dissolve into surrouding.

Abbott Thayer, 'Monochrome Soilder Exposed, Concealed-Disruptively Patterned Native Woman Concealed', date unknown

Abott Thayer, 'Stencilled Installations as Windows into Nature', date unkonwn

---RK

Did you know that 'presentational acting' is a term they use in theatre?
I was thinking about your proposal and especially the leaning panel. I think the broccoli-mirror and the video-table-perspex combi is really good. Thinking about the panel the possible form it could have in relation to the other works, I would suggest some kind mimicry or camouflage piece. For example I started to
consider the use of the grid as a strategy that is both expansive and diagrammatic in use. A method to explain/organise thoughts or an articulation of a subject-world-intertwinement, but also a wish dissolve or disappear, a kind of camouflage. Perhaps this is bull shit, and I just feel caught in a grid, or trapped in architecture and am in want of something more natural or fluid, like flickering light, reflections and water. I guess the A4 paper with the grid and the wave-shape somehow reflects this approach/stance. It good be something else, but then you know what kind of track I'm on.


RK---

----RB

Ive made some drawings but left my camera at home so will send them through tomorrow, it's almost exactly the same as yours, but different use of colour!

Amzing, I just read a wonaderful essay about early cammoflouge and deception in animals in Cabinet Magazine..also had been thinking about the congealing/dissolving thing both in terms of the Rietveld Schröder huis, but also realting to the new piece I will make relating to the disappearance of Agatha Christie....

escape, visible, secret

The Crucial Moment of Deception Hanna Rose Shell
Abbott Handerson Thayer’s law of protective coloration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_Handerson_Thayer

there are examples of work by Thayer that are incredible!!!Including a 'tree man' 'rock man; If I can figure it out I'll scan it for you and email it through. tomorrow

I'm goign home now, it's too hot in here and I want to be outside so I send more tomrrow, but basically I think we are totally in agreence, I will make my colour suggestions and slightly different surfaces....and lets think more about a kind of image/collage- I think this would be a good addition!

More tomorrow
RB-----

-----RK

Love it, beautiful pictures and I'm curious to see more. Suddenly I realise why I started to work with inverted archival photographs, but never did anything with it, because inversion didn't give me the desired effect, it should have been more like the model duck with countershading.


Or another proposal with two people sitting across a table; the work folding in on itself.
The striped sweater is a pretty nice example of disruptive camouflage. You also have a girl reading with a striped shirt in your image archive somewhere...

.

I really got hooked up with designing special outfits for a performance or maybe a staged situation.
When I made this drawing I was imagining you reading or speaking the 'built a wall or be a room'-text to me and this time I would be able to look you in the eyes. But I'm sure I can come up with something better, just a beginning.
RK----

recent skye discussion- dissolve the grid

                                              Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 13:57

hey Ruth I'm on line

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 13:57

hi dear

23/06/2009 13:57

 

7 minutes, just need to arrange something with jo hardy...

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 13:58

good, talk to you later

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 13:58

talk soon...

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:05

Well, 'll just start anyway, I like a slow beginning. It's possible I stay slow throughout conversation, have to go through my tax papers this afternoon.

23/06/2009 14:05

 

I liked your short proposal in yesterday's email----

 I think we should totally propose something like this as a host strucutre, a table+shelf+display wall/leaning wall- combi of images a sound piece and video, simple strong statements. In London we got these kind of Ikea tables specified by using various table tops- perspex, lino and mirror, I think a coloured perspex one would be great- perhaps wiht monitor underneath on the floor a small shelf above with a sound piece coming out of a brocoli and another perspex leaning against the wall with coated metal or wood...??

23/06/2009 14:08

 

I can imagine how a table covered with colored acrylic and Video Class-video underneath it could work out really well. In that same line of thought the broccoli that is speaking on a mirror-shelf.

23/06/2009 14:10

 

They both are clear statements in the way you can easily describe and name there positions, almost like a caricature.

23/06/2009 14:12

 

Since I've been working with this table arrangement and describing the ink-jet prints as saturated and congealed, I would place these two before-mentioned suggestions within that category as well.

23/06/2009 14:17

 

Then the next question would be how they would enter into a dialogue with their surroundings. I'm looking for things that are less clearly outlined, I think. Perhaps as you would say: tilted - seeping - flickering - blurred edges/ light astray/ periphery - shadows - movement - touch - billowing.

23/06/2009 14:30

 

I'm wondering if Jens gets these messages as well once I've added him to my chat list. Don't think so, because there's always just one person selected.

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:30

Hi R

23/06/2009 14:30

 

i'm not usre if Jens gets this as well?

23/06/2009 14:30

 

I think we can forward it to him?

23/06/2009 14:31

 

i think we can't add him since he has the black moon next to his name...!

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:32

I accepted him as my contact, no what. Oh, that could be the 'problem'

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:32

i have hm as a contact now, but when i ask to add him to my chat it doesn't let me...but shall we call?

23/06/2009 14:33

 

or maybe typing is easier?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:33

no. let's wait and chat a little bit more before..

23/06/2009 14:34

 

Did many peoples form JvE join the tour? staff, advising, researchers?

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:34

I think the basic proposition of a surface that is both reflective and absorbing and also open (with nothing on it) implicates the surrounding space in that way, in that it is sucked and warped

23/06/2009 14:35

 

this implicating the surrounding space could also be exagerrated by placing surfaces like that around the space

23/06/2009 14:35

 

either tilting or leaning, or much more dramatic coul be to use the mirror trick that I have done from time to time,

23/06/2009 14:35

 

this could be a very elegant combinatino

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:35

Yes, but the relation is not specific, as it would be when you lay images out on a table.

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:36

table with acrylic, video monitor underneath, mirror shelf with brocoli and mirrored tilt else where

23/06/2009 14:37

 

so you would say tha tputtng images on top of the coloured perspex surface implicates the surrounding space more?

23/06/2009 14:37

 

or more specifically?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:38

No, it's just an example, a bit like you described in your tour, when putting images on a tabletop

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:38

in this case I'm not sure- since by placing this surface above/below/between a voice and an acting body seems to me a force of implication- it becomes a structure that unites these two gestures (though colour and a a nod to archiecture) and then strteches out

23/06/2009 14:39

 

i think both those works- the video class and build a wall speak to and address there surrounding anyway

23/06/2009 14:39

 

...?

23/06/2009 14:43

 

Or we coudl suggest that we both come for 2 days or so with a bunch of materia and just stand around organising it on the table??

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:45

Yes I see how they could work together quite specifically. But with images, as an example from experience, there's a relation where 1 cm to the side or up matters. But I don't know, perhaps I need to see a gap, an undermining of these clear statements, more fragmentation. No, I don't think images are the solution necessarily

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:46

im just wondering in the context of a group show it might not be better to work with rather strong statements that create a flickering

23/06/2009 14:46

 

both pieces, in combi with a perspex surface and maybe mirror do that

23/06/2009 14:47

 

strong statments but that rely on the shifting of light and proxmity to address the viewer?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:48

Perhaps, but there are not so many modes of viewing or approaching the work e.g. mode of reading.

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:49

what do you mean?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:49

Close-up, absorption versus something else outside

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 14:50

hey do you get this message from jens?

Rachel Koolen

23/06/2009 14:50

no,

23/06/2009 14:56

 

hi ruth

23/06/2009 14:56

 

are you there

Ruth Buchanan

23/06/2009 15:00

toilet

23/06/2009 15:00

 

im back now

The way colour distorts and opens and closes space

Face

It's hard to imagine the book as an active surface or a changing space, but I want to imagine it as live, this is the act. We decided that after each event we will work on the action that occured and re-formulate or filter it through the colour (cromolux high gloss) onto and INTO the form of the book. So the action is changed and re-cast but it is still part of the action not retroactively reinventing waht the act was in the first place, it is like a ripple in the water, it starts in centre and as you press further in the curves undulate and change the surface slightly, this water is still the same but it looks different. Of course it is a book and that is the limit.

active forms

You cast a color on each action that appears in the book. What comprises an action in the book. What could be such action that you respond to and how can it be (pre-)conceived as part of a book (structure)? Or does the action imply the decision to make it part of a book and this is what you act on?

Distraction

To draw attention to the approach to the from, the approach becomes the form and the perceivable form itself, this is why I dispute collection, this is not an approach only an impulse or mechanisation of too much time on ones hands. What could be beyond an impulse into an approach that is the form?

At the point when the imperfect mirror acts (coated alumninum in midnight blue) it acts by simoultaneously absorbing and reflecting, one folds and unfolds, draws a line out and up and not at all. Ambivilent? 

I too am supposedly making a book, where colour is used to cast light on the each action that occurs within the book, the books appears accumulitively. An index, we drop it in.

Ambivilence?

Letter

The idea for a publication rose during a studio visit with Joelle Tuerlinckx last year, she saw there was enough material that would be suitable for such a format. She had brought some of her own books for her presentation that day, I found them very inspiring but they have also set an impossible standard. I hear all the time that my work reminds people of her work, and I don't really know what is the reason for this projection, e.g. I unfortunately do not have this collecting mania and therefore cannot make the work of the (personal) archive the content of a book, even if I would have liked to. In her books (or the one I looked at specifically titled b.o.o.k.) structure personal anecdotes and descriptions of exhibitions by a specific attribute of the work, in this case color. The nominalism applied creates both a fictional and personal thread that runs through the work. Through assignation the book (the reproduction) is taken beyond the status of a documentation/recording of an exhibition. The plain naming of things, in a stage of reduction, denies the promotion of a specific experience (think e.g. of a linear relation between pre- and post-production or any durational aspect for that matter) by leveling (neutralising) the value of the different works, thus creating a potential for endless proliferation/multiplication. This somehow grasps a reality that I find very attractive. (Is this sense of reality rendered through a structure that is at times applied arbitrarily and sometimes justifiably?- creating a closed system that opens up for an abstract elsewhere)

In Role of a Lifetime (vanAbbemuseum until June), Deimantas Narkevičius combines drawings of a landscape where a lot of post-war socialist sculpture in Lithuania reside, films by an amateur filmmaker depicting Brighton and an interview with Peter Watkins. Especially interesting here is the moment where Watkins describes how he became interested in a series of photographs published in Paris Match and studied where the people were, what they were looking at, to extract that special feel that would allow him to construct a make-believe reality, which this series expressed for him. Further how this perception of what is real is completely subjective, he continuous that the fact that his work has always been marginalised must have effected his view; his political- and social position.

Peter Piller collects images that are familiar to everyone. He finds them in the filing cabinets of regional newspapers or in the archives of a company that sells aerial photos of houses. Freed of their original purpose they initially seem to be devoid of meaning. When the artist rearranges them and classifies them in series they at first reveal the clichés of commercial photography, but then also bring new meanings and unusual relationships to light. What appeared to be a detail, somewhere on the edge of a photo, could be the start of a narrative.

The reason that I'd like to start working on a book has to do with a slight feeling of discomfort when it comes to the exhibitions I've done so far. Even though they are very real to me, they appear (real) and disappear quite arbitrarily. The duration of the different shows, varying between one or two months, stretches the moment of presentation to an unspecified length and leaves me with a surreal feeling.
I would be most interested in employing/utilising the publication as another moment of selection (just like the exhibition), whereby this selection/construction process is imbedded in a larger structure; that of everyday life. So rather than extracting the particular from the mundane as Peter Piller does, I'd like to strengthen the ties between the personal work and the world/mundane/reality. (multiplicity)

Technocratic Openness Free Aggression

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