Today involved a crit in which we displayed the work involving the vacuum cleaner. We positioned it in a way that suggested the task (vacuuming the room) had been completed and the object that completed it (the hoover) had consequently been abandoned. There was certain information we felt needed to be conveyed so we decided to write it on the wall. This decision was down to the fact that it felt similarly ephemeral; it would continue to be there within the room until it either faded or was painted over (mirroring the detritus that had been collected). The piece was actually received very well and the feedback was more than generic-y good feedback – it was genuinely aspects of the piece we could change as opposed to thinking about the ideas for something else. The language we had used in the writing wasn’t quite as specific as it should have been; ‘cleaned’ should in fact be ‘collected’ and instead of calling it ‘dust’ we should have written something like ‘material’. It was also pointed out that it wasn’t necessary to say that the vacuum had been used. The ideas about making art from other art (in particular the art from the room) was conveyed and it was great to unpack what we were actually trying to talk about in terms of how ‘people’ view art and how we’re trying to put that on its head slightly.
We’re currently involved in the 30WORKS30DAYS project organised by the weird and wonderful 12ΓΈ Collective. We participated in it last year and it was hugely beneficial for our practice and general thinking about art and art making. A favourite idea that’s appeared from it has been a screen shot of a text conversation between a gallery and an artist about a missing artwork. The work is never seen and is only vaguely described allowing the reader of the text to create their own story/work and the features it may or may not hold. By doing so we’ve generated infinite works based on that description and also constructed a story or a myth about the work. There are some obvious links to our No. 1 guy (Ryan Gander) and his piece C++ where he produces paintings, which are never displayed and are only shown through the pallet on which the paints have been mixed.
To develop this we want to have it as more of a sound work, similar to a scene in a film where the protagonist walks in through their front door, throws their keys down onto the table and in the table motion presses the ‘messages’ button on their answering machine. What would follow is a series of answer phone messages getting more and more animated depending on what situation was being described. This scene features in everything from a cheesy rom-com where the guy has made a mistake and is confessing his love slightly more with every message until he’s screaming for ‘her’ to take him back to a sci-fi movie where the aliens are landing and the messages begin with ‘can you see that weird light in the sky from your place?’ to franticly asking if you have a spare baseball bat to crush some alien skull. The one we’re proposing is somewhere in between; the artist is inquiring about a work that should have been dropped off that afternoon for a show the following week. There are a variety of messages all describing different bits of the piece and slowly becoming more and more concerned with the lack of response from the gallery. The final message would be an angry/upset one where the artist has gone to where the exhibition was supposed to be held and cant find the gallery and perhaps realises that none of it was ever real. The installation of this work would be something like this.
Another sound work we’ve been attempting to materialise is the speech. We toyed with the idea of just having microphone and it being played through hidden speakers or just the idea of it happening in a room and not having any physical hints at all. However, we landed on the clothing that one might wear at such an occasion, a suit. The suits would be on a rail in their dry cleaning bags – ready to be worn. The sizes of the suits is very important since we are both different sizes and they are supposedly for Sid and Jim.
Visiting the Fischli and Weiss exhibition at the Guggenheim acted as a catalyst for another idea, something that might not get ‘done’ while we’re here but definitely is something to think about. The water fountains at the gallery a all gold which is hugely comical already and then it becomes almost like a religious thing – the holy water of the art world. This in reinforced by the (what feel like) insane admission fees which can be compared to similar activities of a church or religious organization; one doesn’t necessarily ‘pay’ to enter but there is certainly an exchange somewhere. Our idea was something along the line of either making a copy of a Guggenheim water fountain, which is continually running with ‘holy water’ from a church (the church itself is yet to be decided) or somehow get our hands on a font and fill it with water from the Guggenheim fountains. Both ideas are still in progress and perhaps they can exist as a pair. They’re both talking about the same thing but the visual language being used would draw very different conclusions.
A show we’ve seen that was of particular interest was ‘New and Handmade by Me’ by Brad Troemel. He’s interested/invested in exploring how the Internet spurs production. He’s used Pinterest to find techniques that interested him and learned how to make works using glycerin soap, bath bombs, handmade gingerbread houses, and other things. The press release was different to many we’ve previously encountered – it was quite endearing. ‘The idealistic hope for making a healthier world together and the nihilistic paranoia that the world will end at any second once again arrive at the same practical conclusion: doing it yourself. And for this exhibition, ‘New and Handmade by Me,’ that’s just what I’ve done!’ One of his previous works that we are fond of involves a Tumblr called the Jogging, in which Troemel and others quickly made works, destroyed the objects, and left the images online to get re-blogged by others. (The rapper Gucci Mane used one the Jogging’s images as an album cover.)
