I’m
writing this on a train coming back from Leeds. It’s a weird place, full of
students wandering aimlessly around, where time slows down to a standstill. It
makes me think of Suffolk and the down time that occurs whenever I return there.
The short pocket of time that I’ve been here for, away from London, has been
intriguing, having time to think, time to reflect, time to consider, pre-emptively,
the first year of uni that’s nearly over.
I
keep coming back to the idea of time in these posts, repeatedly considering how
it affects me and what I’m doing. This week I’ve begun to connect that to my
work in some way for a vague piece in the future. I’ve been scouring all of my
meta data from Facebook, mainly exploring the millions of messages that I’ve
sent to people over the years; reflecting on who I used to be alongside the
time that I’ve spent on the platform, wasting my time. For the past few days I’ve
been thinking about how to use this data, what work to make out of it, paying
respect to my past self, whilst slightly mocking the person who I used to be.
The first option that I considered was to simply display all of my past
messages, in tower like structures, piled up pieces of A4 paper, allowing the
viewer to take however many pages they want; playing off of the idea of the
government reading through all of our data all the time anyway.
Although
this idea intrigued me, it feels a little too simple, simply displaying data.
There are many artists in the past who have done this, Laura Poitras with the
Edward Snowden documents, Steve McQueen with his piece End Credits and Simon Denny throughout his career. When Liam Scully
used his Facebook meta data for his exhibition at the Union Gallery, A Digital Suicide, he chose to display
the messages with simple, childlike drawings drawn on top of the original messages.
Although I enjoyed this, I feel like it’s a little close to simply displaying
data like the aforementioned artists. I think that you have to find a middle
place, making the viewer aware that they’re your old Facebook messages/information
whilst aestheticizing them in some way.
A
very early idea of mine is to obtain various LED tube lighting, printing off
multiple pages of messages and placing them within the tubes and then pouring numerous
liquids usually confiscated at airports into the tube. The tube referencing the
‘classic’ office space, more precisely the office spaces of the NSA and GCHQ headquarters
and the liquids discussing the heightened security measures that came into
effect post 9/11. This is a very early idea however, one that may be made for
the exhibition in June.
A
couple of other things have occurred this week, the documenting of my Call of
Duty piece being one thing, as well as photographing of my video game landscape
balanced on a blow up chair. Both pieces can be seen on my main website here: http://www.bobbicknell-knight.com/ I think both of these projects were successful,
with the Rubik cubes elevating the screen similar to Chris Ofili and his ‘dung
paintings’ and the blow up chairs referencing the gamer space that I keep
coming back to, similar to how Jon Rafman, Eva and Franco Mattes and Sidsel
Meineche Hansen’s Second Sex War all
do this in some way.
Alongside
this documentation, I’ve been slowly compiling all of my things together for my
assessment tomorrow, printing out many pages of A4 paper whilst searching
through this blog for instances of reflection among other things. The video
game with John continues to progress, the more we learn the more complicated
the game gets, which is a good thing, although as this year is coming to an end
I’m beginning to feel less and less motivated, and more and more tired.
We
had our first official group meeting for the exhibition next month, which went
well. We talked about what kind of work we were all thinking of making, and
what kind of spaces we would want. We also decided to meet weekly up to the day
of the exhibition, having casual crits of the work that we’re all making,
allowing everyone to get a sense of what’s being made and strengthening the
group in some way. I’m really looking forward to it, especially as a way point,
the end of my first year at uni. There are ten of us in total, which will be
enough to fill the space and hopefully allow us to curate the space well, even
if it’s general aesthetic is incredibly dominating already. This is just a quick Sketchup model of the space that we have.
I’m
still thinking about what I want to show, considering the constraints of time
and the fact that we have to take down everything after the private view, so
nothing huge that requires a van can be created. A simple idea would be to get
a series of caps printed with tweets that have got people fired printed onto
the front; a continuation of my current project focusing on the tweet from Justine
Sacco. I think this would look really good, around 20 caps hanging from hooks
on the wall, a different tweet per hat, with the number of hats conforming to
however many office cubicles are in a cluster, or something along those lines.
I’m currently considering either that or the work with the Facebook data. I
like the idea of using the data, considering time linking to the end of the
year experience. I just need to pin down what I want to make.
I’ve
been reading Delete; The Virtue of
Forgetting in the Digital Age which talks a lot about how your digital
footprint is never scrubbed clean and all of your data is constantly being
compiled in a government facility somewhere, which is incredibly relevant to
what I’m currently thinking about.
I
also had a tutorial with Andrew this week which brought up a lot of ideas, reflecting
on the year and thinking about where I can go from here. I was asked an
interesting question, a deceptively simple one, as to whether my work had an agenda
or not. At the time I couldn’t really answer the question, and I’m still trying
to find the answer now. I think there definitely is an agenda, but that can be
as simple as ‘to look aesthetically pleasing’. I’d say most of my current work
is created in response to wanting people to understand one thing or another,
the USB blocks making people more aware of how easy it is to steal one’s data
for example, or with my video game work attempting to make people feel like a
player, feeling trapped in a space that’s familiar to your younger, middle
class self. I think I need to consider
this more with future works, obviously not to the extent that some artists do,
having an agenda so much that it clouds the work and makes it more about the
mere act of making the work, rather than the finished product, but enough to
know what I’m trying to say.
A
few other noteworthy things happened this week, with the lecture on Monday
being one of them. Centred on ‘the sublime’, the lecture consisted of an array
of works that evoke various overwhelming feelings, the majority being paintings
of huge mountain ranges or the night sky. Invoking the sublime seems to be an
incredibly difficult thing to achieve, with people’s ideas of what a sublime experience
is varying massively. Being able to trigger the sublime on a whim may be
verging on a Philip K Dick science fiction novel however, considering a future
where ‘sublime’ is injected in exchange for money. Or maybe we already have
something like that?
On
Tuesday the artist talk was being given by Katrina Palmer, an artist who
predominantly works in sound, installing her pieces in various locations, from
quarries to specially designed boxes. I really liked the work and how she
managed to translate the written word into an art form within itself. I’ve been
interested in creating a sound piece in the past, one that’s connected to a
film but that only becomes apparent when you eventually encounter the film
within the exhibition space. The viewer would be given the headphones at the
beginning of the experience, allowing them to hear what’s happening in the film
pre-emptively whilst consuming the other works in a given exhibition. I remember
going to an exhibition at the Hales Gallery where they had done this on a
smaller scale and it was a really interesting experience. I always love the
idea of a ‘revelatory’ moment.
Also
this week I ordered another Vaporwave t-shirt that arrived a few days ago, I
really like them and enjoy the idea of a ‘range’ of t-shirts, a product line if
you will, displayed on a classic clothing rack. Maybe I could even have them ‘in
situ’ within a normal clothing shop, accompanied by various other t-shirts.
That would be interesting.
My
other twitter based items arrived too, all of which look very professional and humorous
in a distressing way; commenting on the PC culture and the adverse effects that
it’s having on the first world society. I always think of the South Park
episode centred around white male college students being incredibly PC; Stunning and Brave. Obviously South Park
takes the satirisation of these things to the limit and is an over-emphasised
version of what the PC culture has turned into. Hopefully I’ll be able to
document these products tomorrow and upload the images to my website, so that
it can be a part of my work that’s been submitted for assessment. I’m planning
to use at least one plinth to display the mouse mat, business cards and other
items that don’t work nailed onto the wall. The other items will be displayed on
the wall.
I
don’t think I went to any galleries this week, apart from the Cory Arcangel
show at the Lisson Gallery which was mainly filled with blown up pixelated
photographic prints. I love Arcangel’s work, I just think that this show was a
little basic, with no real innovative work being shown unlike his earlier
hacked video game works. I also went to the other Lisson, which had work by
Stanley Whitney on display. Enjoy big paintings made up of blocks of colour
with ambiguous names? Then you’ll love this show. It wasn’t for me. Unfortunately,
those were the only two exhibitions that I went to. I do need to consume as
much art as possible before I go back to the countryside for the summer
holidays. I did however go to a performance at Toynbee Studios that focused on
magic and magicians; A Nation's Theatre - Tim Bromage With Joseph Badman:
H.O.R.S.E. It was very weird, watching magic occur alongside a monologue of
sorts. It was an interesting juxtaposition that I didn’t fully understand. I
don’t really know what it was that I witnessed, but I do know that it was good.
Week
4 is live on isthisit? with work by
Julia Collington and John Hui. I can definitely see it getting harder as time
goes on, but we shall see, hopefully I’ll have amassed enough submissions by
then. You can see it here: http://isthis.wix.com/isthisit
I
wish I could say that I’ve seen many films this week, but I still haven’t got
fully back into the watching one a day spirit that I adopted last term. I have
been continuing to watch tv shows though, with That '70s Show becoming a permanent fixture in my life. It manages
to hold a good balance between comedy and ‘real life’ moments placed into a
funny setting. Although it’s literally just taking every plot line from every
family comedy from the 70’s, it’s doing it very well in a knowing, self-aware
way that I do enjoy to watch.
I
think that’s my week, mostly full of documenting and printing, which is a ‘necessary
evil’. This time next week I’ll be out of the studio, fully committed to
helping John on the final stretch of the project whilst continuing to consider
my work for the exhibition next month. Not knowing is fun, although I have many
‘backup’ pieces that I can show if I don’t quite manage to think of something
new to do, although that would be a very rare occurrence.
So
the week ahead will consist of rushing around tomorrow, with a week out of the
studio to work with John and catch up on the various exhibitions that I’ve been
missing out on in the past few weeks. I look forward to it. It’s pretty much
bang on a month until I go back to Suffolk for the summer holidays; how
depressing, or do I welcome it? Who knows…
Enjoi.
Instagram:
bob.bk1
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