Monday 30 January 2012

Hong Hao

Fake 6 Map Series (1992 - 96)

Hong Hao has photographed everything he uses in his daily life to create a computer generated "map." These are his interpretations of the forces that govern the world." (Bright.S .121)



"They are more like my collections, or a record or document of my personal history including the beginning of my study of art" Hong Hao (Bright.S. 121)

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Saturday 21 January 2012

Proposal Form and Idea for Essay

Maddy has given us a proposal form to complete for this week's contextual session. It asks ...

1. What question(s) do you hope your study to answer?
2. What secondary research material is available to you now?
3. What primary research will you be doing?
4. What else do you think you will need and how will you go about acquiring it? e.g visits, exhibitions, seminars, and conferences?

Answers

1. To identify a link between past and present using an object or memory. To ask myself what relevance the object/memory has for me.(Interpret, Analyse, Evaluate) To find relevant theories/theorists/philosophies relating to my subject.
2. Internet sources: Books: Journals/Essays: Artists/Practitioners who have exhibited work on memory/objects/family history
3. Exhibitions of artists work. Published work on objects of memory/family history etc.
Family Tree


Mirror above the Fireplace at Home


The mirror belonged to my Grandmother, Peno. I was named after her. She died in April 1955 so sadly I never knew her. She had apparently refused to let my mam name any of my sisters after her, so when I came along I was given her name. My siblings tell me that she was a gentle and kind woman, a lovely Grandmother. The mirror is an object that links me to her. It lived above the fireplace at home when I was growing up. The home that had belonged to my Grandparents, and where my mother was born. As far as I know, the mirror is over a hundred years old. It is an object that has been a constant in my life, and now that I have inherited it from my father, it sits in its rightful place above our family home fireplace.

It is a reminder of childhood fantasies. I sang into it, watched myself dance in it and recited poetry into it. When I was little, I wanted to be on the stage singing and dancing. The inspiration for this was the music that filled our home every day, and the excitement or the rare outing to the theatre. I was always mesmerised by the cast on the stage and that is still the case today. Whenever I have the opportunity to see a show on stage, I am still in awe of the hard work and dedication that the artists give to their performance on the stage.

The mirror is also a symbol of my ancestral line. Family has become more important to me as I have grown older. I am more interested in who my ancestors were as people. The mirror and the photographs I have of my grandparents and other family members, keep them close to me. I may not have known many of them, but I believe that their thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences are passed down to the new generations. For me it is a form of respect to always remember them and hold them close, because it was they who have given me life.

The Mirror does not hold for me a memory of being with my grandparents, but it has the memory of myself growing in the same home that my grandparents had lived before me. It holds the memory of my grandparents having looked into the mirror that I have also looked into. My mind's eye will sometimes see, not only my reflection, but the reflection of all my family. The mirror holds inside itself a whole host of memories that it can share with me.

Looking inside the mirror I don't only see myself as I am now, but I see myself as I was then, a child in the 1960's and teenager in the 1970's. It may seem a little strange to say this, but there are pictures inside the mirror that I see with my mind's eye. They are real to me. Memories are not only thoughts, but they are pictures too. I can see everything reflected in the mirror, not only the people I love, but the room as I remember it. My father sitting reading the paper after a long day at work, my mam sat in her chair nearest the fire smoking a cigarette. Then I find that all manner of memories come flooding back, one after the other as if I'm watching a film that's moving very quickly.

One object can trigger many memories relating to that object,t and then several branches of memory come together all at once.  It can be quite dizzying and I find myself bringing my mind back to one particular memory and enjoying the inner smile it brings with it. Good .memories are joyful.

I think the small lady at the back in the doorway is my Great Grandmother but I'm not sure. My Grandparents are standing together second and third from the right. The others in the picture are my Uncles and their friends. I'm not certain when this photograph was taken but I'm guessing in the 1930's


This photograph was taken in 1920/21 when my mother was a baby. She is sat in her pushchair surrounded by her family.








Two Blogs

I must admit that I'm finding it quite a task to write two blogs. There is a lot of work going on now and my head is in chaos though I am trying hard to sort it all out.

The Contextual Sessions every Thursday morning, at times, are quite heavy going. Its very difficult to take in so much information about theories, theorists and philosophers. There are so many of them.

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Busker

I always carry my Pentax K1000 35mm Camera with me; I feel lost without it. While I was waiting for a film to be developed at Jessop's I sat and listened to a Busker. He sang and played a guitar. I don't usually approach people in the street but I wanted to photograh him and I knew I should ask for his permission. He was happy for me to take a few shots.
These are a few taken on Fuji Colour film expired 2005

 

 



Wednesday 11 January 2012

Guy Martin Exhibition Shifting Sands, Falmouth


"During the spring of 2011, Guy Martin travelled to Egypt and Libya to record the unfolding Arab Spring. On Wednesday 20 April, he was severely injured during a rocket attack by Gaddafi's loyalists in the centre of Mistrata.

University College Falmouth's School of Media & Performance presents Shifting Sands, an exhibition of the work produced by Guy alongside a series of events highlighting the heavy price that can be paid by frontline photojournalists in the cause of documenting a country and its people's struggle for freedom."

Text copied from the Exhibition Leaflet

I found this quite a difficult exhibition to view because of its content. I do not have any wish myself to do photojournalism. I would find it much too difficult to be in war torn countries, seeing and documenting such tragic sights of dead bodies and carnage.

This exhibition is excellent. The photographs, vivid pictures shot by Guy Martin, captured the grief, the pain and the destruction of the countries he recorded. I can not imagine the dangers photographers like Guy Martin expose themselves too when they embark on these hazardous missions. I admire their courage.

This exhibition is in remembrance of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, two of Guy's friends who were killed in the rocket attack that injured Guy.

With thanks to http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthdevon.co.uk/2011/12/24/images-from-the-frontline-guy-martins-shifting-sands-in-falmouth/  for this image

Saturday 7 January 2012

Objects of Memory from the Corner Cupboard

My Grandmother's Sugar Bowl and Milk Jug. Sadly broken since it was moved from its original resting place. I never saw either piece used, but remember it as always being there.
A Coffee Set given to my Mother as a gift from "Adar y Banc" when they parted in the 1970's 


  A Souvenir, A Gift from me as a small child to my mam and dad after a school trip to Kidwelly.


I have no idea where this came from, how old it is or who it belonged to originally;but its another item that sat in the corner cupboard.


Two Sailors found in my Brother's home.
 Two Sailors crafted by my Brother when he first began his life
 as a Sailor in the Royal Navy age 16 in 1958 


Friday 6 January 2012

The Corner Cupboard



The Bathroom

My response to the handout given to us; an extract from Busch. A. Geography of Home (writings on where we live).

This text discusses how the bathroom is perceived and utilised by people in different countries and cultures, both historically and socially.

The bathroom for me is a quiet place of contemplation.  It is a place to find privacy, and a place to unwind and relax after a busy day. I also see the bathroom as a quick and convenient way to get clean. But if I am very tired, or feeling unwell, that is when I indulge in a bath surrounded by candles and steam, where my mind relaxes and I am prone to meditate and clear my head. It is in the bath that I may reveal something that had previously eluded me. I find it is a spiritual place; running water is thought to heighten the senses and insights are more prone to materialise. The pipes are believed to house the spirits of the dead and give them the energy they seek to make themselves known. The warmth of the water evokes a sense of safety and is a reminder of the womb.
When my children were very young, the bathroom was a place of solace if stress levels increased because of their constant demands, which were sometimes overwhelming. The bathroom became a place of retreat, to gather my thoughts, count backwards from 10 and face the demands with calm restored.
I don’t read in the bathroom. The author of the text assumes that everyone does, but this is a generalisation, one that I disagree with. I know many people who don't read in the bathroom.

Busch notes that the telephone has not found a place in the bathroom. I do agree with the writer in this, I don't think that it will ever find a permanent place in the bathroom.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Hair Curlers or Rollers - Objects and Theory

NOTES from Evocative Objects and my attempt to relate the object, i.e. the hair curler/roller, to the theory of things.
Theory enables us to explore how everyday objects become part of our inner life: how we use them to extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within"
 (Turkle: 307)
Create Associations - combine objects and theories.
The philosophy of the objects and the inner self.
(Turkle: 307)
 "No ideas but in things" William Carlos Williams (Poet). The thing carries the idea.
Claude Levi Strauss (Anthropologist) Connection to the Cognitive. The man pulling toys apart and putting them together again was becoming a scientist.
BRICOLEUR - BRICOLAGE - Style of working in which one manipulates a closed set of materials to develop new thoughts. (Turkle: 308)

Jean Paget objects help us think of number, space, time, causality and life. Learning is situated, concerte and personal. (Turkle: 309). As a boy plays with a toy, so he is seeing himself capable of inventing an idea and changing in other ways as well. (Turkle: 309).

"Object play engages the heart as well as the mind, it is a source of inner vitality. Far from being silent companions, objects infuse learning with libido"(Turkle:309).
Seymour Papert (Mathematician)"I fell in love with the gears" Intimate connection with the object "gears." (Turkle: 309)

The Curler

My journal entry for the 30th December 2011 begins "My hair looks fab! Full of curls......."  Later I wondered why did a full head of curls make me feel so "fabulous."

My first thought was that the price of vanity is a sleepless night.

But it's not vanity that I feel, it is an inner warmth and happiness; putting rollers in my hair to give me a "curly head" brings back a joyous memory; a delight seeing myself in the mirror with soft curls reminding me of the joy my mother felt when she was allowed to curl my hair. I love the softness that surrounds my face and the gleam in my eye reflected back at me. The sight makes me smile inside.



I am taken back to Sunday nights, early 1960's, bath night. At that time bath water was shared by my siblings and I. When my brothers and sisters had all left home, I had the pleasure of a hot bath to myself. Radio blaring, "Pick of the Pops," Sunday evening, chart night. In the 1960's the anticipation of which pop song had reached No1 was a special event, at least I thought so.
After my bath, I would slip into my PJ's and go and sit in the old round wooden chair next to the glowing fire in the Agar, to keep warm. I sat while my mam curled my hair. We chatted, I moaned if the rollers were too tight, but she didn't take any notice of my moaning and carried on as if I had said nothing. It wasn't because she didn't care, I think after having seven children, she was probably oblivious to our moans.
A sleepless night usually ensued, the discomfort of the rollers, pinching my head, unable to find a comfortable position, was not conducive to sleep. But when I woke in the  morning impatient to take the rollers out... ah..., what a relief, my head released from the discomfort and weight, that by now felt as if a ton of pins sat on my head. It was sheer delight.

Looking in the mirror at the curls laying softly about my shoulders was bliss. My mam always said how pretty I looked. This was a rare compliment for me. I was not the pretty one of the family. My other sisters, all four of them, held that privilege.  I grew up believing that I was the ugly duckling of the family, but I had inherited my grandfathers' nose, an unfortunate inheritance, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I accepted my fate. But with a head full of curls, this was my moment to shine, and I relished it.

With age comes a little wisdom, beauty in the traditional sense became to matter less and less. When I look at photographs of all of us, we are all remarkably alike, Edwards nose or Davies nose.
So that the reader is not under any illusion that because I did not consider myself as beautiful as my sisters, that I suffered in any way, this is truly not the case. I was blessed with a musical talent that I also inherited from my mother's side of the family, and I was the only one of my siblings to pass the eleven plus and attend the Grammar School. So what I lacked in beauty, I made up for in other ways. My family have always been very proud of my achievements, even though there have been no great achievements to speak of.

The realisation that having a head of curls, being excited at the prospect of putting the curlers in, enjoying the moment, and the memory of the whole experience with my mother, returning unexpectedly to make me smile.
 

 the object and the inner self ........
















Monday 2 January 2012

Notes from "Stuff" by Daniel Miller

The Following are notes from "Stuff" by Daniel Miller and not my own writing

Miller. D (2010) Stuff Polity Press Cambridge Malden USA
THEORIES OF THINGS

The Sense of Order Gombrich. E (London Phaidon Press 1979)

Focus on the frame …Gombrich argued that when the frame is appropriate, we simply don’t see it (49) because it seamlessly conveys to us the mode by which we should encounter that which it frames. When it is inappropriate we notice that it is there.
Material objects are a setting. They make us aware of what is appropriate and inappropriate (50)

Surprising conclusion is that objects are important, not because they are evident, but quite the opposite. The less we are aware of them, the more powerfully they can determine our expectations. They determine what takes place to the extent that we are unconscious of their capacity to do so. (50)

Much of what makes us what we are exists, not through our conscious senses or body, but as an exterior environment that habituates and prompts us. (51)

The phrase “blindingly obvious” implies when something is sufficiently evident it reaches a point at which we are blinded to its presence, rather than reminded of its presence. (51)

Claude Levi – Strauss “Structuralism” - Central idea is that we should not regard entities in isolation. A  Desk, a dining table, a kitchen table, etc. … both the objects and the words we use for them, achieve definition by contrast with what they are not, as much as from what they are. (51) Structuralism focused on the relationship between things, rather than the things themselves. We understand each in relation to the whole system. (51)

Pierre Bourdieu (anthropologist) “Outline of a Theory or Practice”

Bourdieu ….theory of socialisation … in UK we learn to eat with knife and fork, in China they use chopsticks. We sit on chairs; other cultures squat on the floor. All things we learn to use are the stuff that makes up our environment. (53)

Bourdieu called this The Theory of Practise …the everyday us of things lead to consistent interaction with things. (53) Objects help us to learn how to act appropriately. Bourdieu used the work “habitus” meaning unconscious order. This is nature.

Culture gives us our second nature, that which we habitually do without thought.
Karl Marx – humanity starts with nature itself. Our social evolution consists not of advances in consciousness per sé, but in our increasing capacity to create an artefactual world from nature, first stone and pot … agricultural systems …. Urban life ….. Industrial revolution ….which represented a vast acceleration in our capacity to create “stuff” (58). We make “stuff” through labour. By creating “stuff” we also create other problems (59). e.g. we make cars which in turn lead to environmental concerns, oil consumption, accidents and carbon footprints. With Hegel each stage creates a new thing outside of ourselves, and we progress to the extent that we are able to see ourselves in this extension of ourselves, which is after all our own product. The reason we make things is because they potentially extend us as people. We make them through labour. By seeing ourselves in this world we have created, we gain in complexity, sophistication and knowledge. Hegel (1807) Phenomenology of Spirit or Phenomenology f Man EXAMPLE – An amoeba becomes aware that it exists inside itself the more it is aware that there is another that exists outside itself. (55) Development changes our consciousness and allows us to develop further. E.g. Law has developed through reason, thought and discussion … to reach an agreement.

Marx put this as follows: “the object of labour is therefore the objectification of the species- life of man; for man reproduces himself not only intellectually in his consciousness, but actively and actually and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he has created.”(59) But Marx has almost bypassed the need to create a theory of culture from Hegel and gone straight to a theory of material culture. Hegel saw the process he described, where consciousness creates by positing something outside of itself, as a form of self-alienation. For Hegel this was an almost entirely positive and certainly a necessary process for our development.

Miller refers to objectification as self-alienation

It is the way we enhance our capacity as human beings. By creating stuff we can grow ourselves. Every time we do such a thing, by the very same process we also create a contradiction, a possibility or progressing ourselves if the thing we made then develops its own autonomous interests. By creating the car we also crate pollution, road accidents and landscapes devastated by motorways. (59)

Marx starts with a vision. Nature of itself belongs to no one. So the things we create from it should be to the benefit of all those who are responsible for that creation. But as Hegel argued, once something is externalised, it can also become oppressive, and we can lose consciousness that it ever was our creation. Marx argued that this happens in capitalism, which fools the workers into thinking that what makes this material world is not their labour, but the resources of capital. Marx stops writing about the second part of the Hegelian process, but concentrates on this moment of rupture, when consciousness is taken away from us and uses terms such as fetishism, reification and alienation. He leads the argument to a Utopian state called communism. Hegel says that we need to accept the integral contradictions where people own and have rights to the place they live in which helps them to identify with that place. (60)

Simmel, a 19thC social theorist (and an eloquent theorists of the positive qualities of money saw that quantity, the increase in the amount of stuff  we possess, itself posed a contradiction. The Australian Aboriginal’s traditional culture had relatively few material things, but was hugely rich in kinship and elaboration of cosmology. However, as they have drifted towards the fringes of urban life, they may have lost much of their traditional culture. Many have ended up reduced to alcoholism. Simmel would have described this as the subjective only gains when it can assimilate the expanding objective culture. What we cannot assimilate oppresses us. He wrote essays on the contradictions of the metropolis.  A place where, if we try and relate to too many things, but have no substantial relationship to any one of them, we can become largely indifferent to the world and to ourselves. We are then being reduced, rather than expanded, by the sheer quantity of things. (62)

Australian tribes – dreamtime – the time of the ancestors who lie at one remove from people, but whose actions and consequences remain an integral part of the lives of the living, ancestors remembered in myth. They recognise that there are prior forces which have already created the world in which we come to be socialised. But in turn we can come to act upon those forces. The Walbiri retain contact with ancestors through the dreamtime and re-enact this relationship in ceremony and ritual today. It is the same landscape and order which is used to legitimate the critical relationships of kinship and social order which give individuals a sense of who they are. So both ancestors and contemporary people externalise themselves as culture and recognise themselves in that which has been created. They objectify. And in their myths they possess also a theory of culture that explains this process. (63)