Dead networks...

Thinking about empty/non spaces/places, dead and lost functions (telephone exchanges, transient places)... and so straight to the stitch!

I have been using plain, boring fabrics, no identity as a representation of these non places, making little empty sacks or containers, and stitching little networks; organised ordered, bringing a feeling of function...

I want to bring these two themes together, telephone exchanges, lost empty buildings, their function has been minimized (literally, equipment has been made smaller, make way for modern technology!) They sit in solitude, almost unnoticed, connecting people, instantaneoulsy, repetitively, just like non places, (e.g car parks..train stations) waiting around, no identity just for function.

They are more like transient places...lasting only for a short time.

I think more research for T.E's are needed,

Words- connections...transient...repetitive.

FAT

Fashion. Architecture. Taste.

'FATs design, installation and gallery based projects explore the potential of objects to perform as critically engaged entities. Through material, form and use they develop a culturally rich approach where design is not only a solution to a problem but a way of describing the contemporary world.'


Fat is a pretty interesting design group, who are based in architecture but do a bit of design work too... 


The bit about ' a way of describing the contemporary world' caught me! And I think this what I am trying to do, or this weeks theme, trying to map and represent the dead and empty spaces in Manchester.
I am going to try and get hold of snowcrete and use plaster and maybe see what setting flour paste achieves...


Konran SHOP.


A few objects were made for the Konran Shop in London...

'FAT's Konran Shop was a range of products exhibited and sold at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Recognisable icons of design - Philippe Starck's Juicy Salif, the ipod, Alessi coffee pots - are crudely remade in clay. Lumpy, slightly grotesque and functionally useless, the pieces satirised our obsession with accumulating designer objects for the home, 

FUNCTIONALY USELESS. Makes me think about the telephone exchanges -LOST functions, DEAD FUNCTIONS. And makes me think about the non places, car parks, train-stations; the functions are to wait, strange transitional places and periods. 

Its all quite repeitive, the function, and the aesthetics of the places, which relates back to a little comment by E.H on the minimalist period of industrial, identical serials and systems

'Such systems were hardly rational, serial art is another way of repeating absurdity'

It is all absurd! 

Shopping Hour

'A magazine bringing art, philosophy, poetry and critical theory together in exposing the naunces or contemporary life and culture'

I bought this the other week and it has been an excellent read! The focus of the issue was 'the critique of science' which is rather fitting with all these thoughts of science and future designing buzzing around our heads.  

It has a mixture of short articles and interviews by scientist and artists (and it seems a fair few graduates of  MA Aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths-note, possibly interesting course...)   and also illustrations and illustrated pieces. Lots of SOUND ARTISTS and alternative ways of thinking and exploring...

Best bits

-'We are just playing' -the observation and relevance of child's play in adult life and culture. (Jonny Briggs interview linked in with this, commenting 'all children are artists, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up').

-Mike Hulme - scientist and professor of climate change commenting on 'Transparency and the limits of the see-through knowledge' and world that we are living in.

-'The misunderstanding is that science is considered more precise than poetry'.

Its all very philosophical and questioning and in this issues quite sciency, questioning the effect of science in our culture, its necessary, but damaging...

Thoughts - No.? (unsure, but some more).

Sculpture and making things;

Serial  (things in series, sequences etc...)

Contradictory (e.g what a telephone exchange promoted-faceless communication, possibly more solitude, beginnings of virtual world...)

Sculpture/objects that accumulate history/surroundings (representing spaces/history of spaces)

I think there are possibilities for overlapping...

Tate = thoughts.

Reading RW 'Transient Spaces' and this has given light to a lot of ideas about space/architecture and objects/sculpture. 'Portrait of the original building'...'absense becomes presence'...'an object that accumulates history of the surroundings'...

Went t' Tate, there were a few interesting pieces that caught my eye...
Lucio Fontana- 'SPATIAL CONCEPT' neither paintings nor sculptures, creates holes in canvas, believes that making holes creates a connection to the free space, hence a connection to the spatial than material.

Eva Hesse- ADDENDUM Hemispheres placed at increasing distances determined by mathematical systems, and apparently this was the thing to do around minimalism (hanne?!) She commented that systems were 

hardly rational and that serial art is another way of repeating absurdity.

Carl Andre- Layed out 'activating space'. Observing that it becomes a record of everything thats happened to it. 

Empty.

Time consuming (lonely?) works.

Repetitive stitches, no thought, quite basic, as these dead spaces have become, and what non-spaces already are. Thought about creating a few container like pieces that are empty inside...

In terms of dead spaces (barren land, a few spots in salford come to mind...) they are huge expanses of space, some thing was once going on, and maybe there is inside, underneath.

The straight-stitch pieces can easily be removed- temporarlity. A feeling of change that is near.

And even with the long piece of fabric with the knots hidden inside, full of nothing, and something at the same time, waiting for something to come through. 

(to be turned inside out, stitching hidden)

(also time consuming, more representative of ideas about the telephone exchanges, confusing networks/webs connections, so more contradictory of the present nature of the building)