Looking forward to Family Ties: Recollection and Representation and getting this chance to develop discussion further from @NancyProctor’s Connecting the Dots back in September… I have been thinking on how the transition of the family photograph, from physical to digital artefact, arguably allows a certain generosity on the part of the collaborator towards the artist. The exchange, however, also raises questions of authorship, in practical, aesthetic and philosophical senses. I want to consider the digital artefact as a form of ‘gift,’ a notion that has been investigated by across the disciplines of anthropology and material culture (Mauss, Levi-Strauss, Hyde, Purbrick). This ‘gift’ carries ethical and political responsibilities directly connected to a living subject and family memory. Currently reading the very insightful The ‘do it yourself artwork’ edited by Anna Dezeuze….
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Whither the roots? took its name from a track by Wounded Knee and created an event
in which questions relating to place were explored with an invited audience, drawn from a number of sectors. This looked at the significance of personal or community connections to places that are subject to erasure, whether through regeneration or economic decline – and some of its politics. It not only celebrated the end of the project Beneath the Surface / Hidden Place with a new publication, but widened the theme by bringing a musician, an Architect, and two Cultural Critics. Together they asked what is the importance of personal stories, social and architectural histories that lie in whither the roots? After all ‘Whither’ has other meanings beyond ‘wither’ leading to the question Whither are we wandering? and to its Scottish meaning: to stroke, beat…
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See how experiences drawn from two projects, Beneath the Surface/Hidden Place (2007-2009) and Unsorted Donations (2010) help articulate two positions of the artist as stranger: one by self-appointment (the self-initiated project), while the other by invitation (the artist residency). Go to Sheffield Hallam’s Transmission: Hospitality papers online under the heading Conference Proceedings, or read my contribution Artist as Listening Post
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The Peter Potter Gallery’s invitation to create a show for their Lost Landscapes programme had a number of appeals – the working title Archaeology for the Ordinary hooked me, and the pressure of producing new work in a short, sharp timescale was also appealing. But where to start and how to avoid the risk of repeating oneself – artistically speaking?
Artworks always seem to start with conversations, and then following in someone else’s footsteps. Archaeologists David Connolly and Maggie Struckmeier tell me about a job they had to assess the archaeology value of a set of abandoned labourers’ cottages. They send me a copy of their report and also take me back to Papple Cottages in which there is rather poignant writing on the walls. For example, a K Boyle inscribes “we left Papple Farm on Thursday the 30th September 1954”. How then to avoid the seductive sense of nostalgia and dereliction? How to work with questions that archaeologists are left with once their job is done? And the cottages are all now under offer…
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