Attended a talk/in
conversation with Andy and Peter Holden about their Art Angel commission,
Natural Selection which was an absolute pleasure. They’re both just as
intelligent and charismatic as you would expect and a particularly exciting feature
was how much stage time was given to Peter. For no other reason that it felt
important to the work to be able to learn about his connection (or lack of) to
the art world. Andy was then his way in/guide to learning about this part of
the world even though he’s obviously a clever and by our assumption liberal
person. This then relates back to their common interest in birds and how Peter
was the instigator of that and now Andy has done the same thing with art. Learning
about their first work together was also beneficial; Andy invited him to come
and give the same lecture he had seen him do previously. This for him was a
readymade – taking something that previously existed from one place and
refreshing the context.
The new film is going
well! After getting quite far through it we weren’t sure what it was doing. Initially
we wanted to make people think more about the world around them and how
everything is constructed but in order to do that we need something to bounce
the examples off of. Some sort of juxtaposition. This will probably come in the
form of a second screen, intentionally detached from the other one as opposed
to just having a projector with two sets of imagery on it. At the moment, we’re
considering having just everyday objects on there – sofa, fridge, backpack etc.
The images from the Ikea or Argos catalogue are perfect because they’re just
images in white space, no context at all.
The lack of context/surrounding is
important in order for other people to bring their own context to them. Another
method would be to only use a word which would then be an entirely dematerialised
object and only becomes an object in the mind of the viewer. It then becomes
about value, choice and judgement; everything is a prop, the only reason you
think they’re important in the films is because someone’s decided they are,
same with art. It’s about giving something value through choice and consequently
applying meaning to that thing. What occurs in a gallery a handful of times a
year happens every day out in the world, which is one of the reasons are is
important, it helps you stop and look at it all.
