The light box sides for the information stand are all ready to be sealed up which is good to get out of the way.
We had our final tutorial which was great with regards to ideas and how to move forward but meant we now have so much more work to do. We had finished the leaflet content (or so we thought) and it was 30 pages. However, meeting with our tutor, we were told it was only the bare bones. By attempting to make it too believable we had lost why we were bothering to make it up in the first place. What we had written was too informative and too much like one voice. Since all the works were things we had in our ideas list, they were all actually do-able. This begged the question, why would people want to see these things which could happen anyway? We needed to take on more of the stories we had been reading and make it less of a press release and a list of works, and more like narrative that takes you through experiences that you could only imagine. We’ve therefore decided that the “press release” will be the main focus of the leaflets. But the press release is going to be in a story form and that story will get more and more bizarre, drawing the reader in as they go, until they can’t really remember how they got to such a strange place. We’re going to use more experiential language in order for people to actually want see the work.
This was inspired by a Julio Cortázar story called Axolotl. After being recommended it we read it right away and it’s insane. It does an amazing job of showing how a fantastic reality bursts into the realm of the everyday. It starts in a similar way to other stories by Cortázar, gaining the reader’s confidence, putting readers at their ease by creating a normal setting and conventional characters in familiar situations. But then the readers find themselves trapped by a strange, nightmarish turn of events that threatens and ultimately destroys the logical, routine reality described up to this point. We then did a little extra reading about Cortázar himself who has likened the short story to a photograph. Unlike novels and films, which provide abundant details and complete, well-rounded plots, the short story, like a photograph, limits its scope to a single frame, a fragment of reality that forces the reader to supply the missing pieces. This is exactly what we want to convey with our work. Axolotl is a new favourite; it uses suspense well and explores mysterious boundaries.
The idea of performative writing came up and especially Kate Love’s work. Text doesn’t just say something but does something, it can be an instruction or a demand which takes the reader into a place. We’ve since gone and found Kate Love’s ‘The Experience of Art as a Living Through of Language’ which is amazing! She doesn’t write about the experience of art but with it in order to truly capture what experiencing a work of art is like.
We were also made aware of the fact that since the leaflets we were giving out were the actual work, and the rest is just a vehicle for transporting it, we should really take consideration over the design. There are plenty of different ways of portraying the work but we really like the idea of it being something people would want to keep so having a poster on the back is a definite. We also like the idea that the leaflet continues the corporate aesthetic up a little bit so maybe we’ll try and work the design into that. Still thinking about the design, we spoke about how it should be relative to the work and therefore somehow about access to the artwork. Not sure how we’ll manage this but we’ll try to work through it.
It also has its own sculptural form; by people taking the leaflets away it both makes work and destroys. This has some clear references to Félix González-Torres and something we never really realised about so much of our work. we really like people being able to physically take something away from our work, a memento of some kind.
We also spoke about a new gallery that Goldsmiths have been involved in constructing and what that says about the institution.
A great time with regards to ideas and thinking but hard not to think about the past few weeks being wasted *Smiling Face With Open Mouth And Smiling Eyes, but with a single drop of sweat on one side of the face*. We know it wasn’t wasted really but you get the idea.
