Once, nearly all of the Western World believed something along these lines: the historical truth of the Babel story, the dispersal of the tribes, and the resultant birth of the modern nations and languages. During the 1600s, scores of books were written claiming that this or that nation was descended from the only righteous tribe. What is now very much a fringe ideology was widespread and taken very seriously, and is just beneath the surface of many contemporary beliefs and attitudes. It is part of the foundations of the binary framework so crucial to the operations of our culture, and is almost always expressed with very rigid black-and-white thinking:
"It is an existence that functions in darkness - not in light, in error - not in truth, in unrighteousness - not in righteousness, and in godlessness - not in godliness. The end result of this delusion is the absolute damnation and eternal ruin of its practitioner..." [taken from a post aptly called Babelology]
There is a raw persuasive power to this kind of logic. It's like the crocodile, unchanged and undiminished for millennia. Living here in the City, I fear and respect it.
Monday
Brick for Stone
i'm experimenting with new approaches to the problem of linking objects to networks of meaning and context. here, the clue to the puzzle is hidden in the shadow of the object. it's a reference to the Biblical Tower of Babel story, an important founding text or point of departure for much of my work. in the passage referenced, the builders of Babel are described as using "brick for stone". here we have a brick so worn by its time in the sea that it's taken on the shape of a stone. the Babel story has undergone a similar process; something that was once clearly man-made has become something (mis)taken for a natural, inevitable form. this story, so worn by time and in the telling, is one of thousands that make up the foundations of our culture.
Sunday
eisegetics institute: Lost Property or Belief Department
this 'poster' (never used) was for my installation in the storeroom at the Prague College studios. it's advertising the lost property dept. of the eisegetics institute, a space that playfully investigates (as usual) the relationship between art and language. this was the installation where i first started to use handmade signs to address the viewer.
Thursday
creatures from the black lacuna
i recently finished an art degree in 'experimental media'. i've yet to upload any of the last year's worth of work. (i'm writing this in Medellin, Colombia.) this is the black lacuna, my year's worth of un-uploaded stuff. but thankfully it's still 2011, so I haven't quite missed the deadline. there won't be a missing year in my portfolio. this is the plan when I return to Prague at the start of September: document all the work I've been doing. take stock.
during the course at Prague College i managed - with a lot of help from the other students and the teachers - to make the shift from groups of objects to immersive installations. i discovered (almost by accident) a way to begin making 'narrative environments', using collections of things that I find and alter. the trick, as far as i can tell at the moment, is to balance the narrative and the place. both make each other, with neither one in ascendence for long. i also found various ways of embedding text in my installations, fusing word and object by adding labels, making signs, and emending logos.
the methodology i discovered was a way of making something i found myself thinking of as a 'locus'...
by compiling a library or glossary of objects and materials - a kind of material/spatial idiolect - i could approach a site with a modular vocubulary which would allow me to piece together an imporvised 'story' by allowing the objects to talk to each other in the space. the process usually involved finding/adapting pieces of furniture, which then became the bones of the space, allowing me to begin to map out a structure.
during the course at Prague College i managed - with a lot of help from the other students and the teachers - to make the shift from groups of objects to immersive installations. i discovered (almost by accident) a way to begin making 'narrative environments', using collections of things that I find and alter. the trick, as far as i can tell at the moment, is to balance the narrative and the place. both make each other, with neither one in ascendence for long. i also found various ways of embedding text in my installations, fusing word and object by adding labels, making signs, and emending logos.
the methodology i discovered was a way of making something i found myself thinking of as a 'locus'...
by compiling a library or glossary of objects and materials - a kind of material/spatial idiolect - i could approach a site with a modular vocubulary which would allow me to piece together an imporvised 'story' by allowing the objects to talk to each other in the space. the process usually involved finding/adapting pieces of furniture, which then became the bones of the space, allowing me to begin to map out a structure.
probably the most significant single development came about when I needed to present my work to the faculty after the first half of the course. i decided to use the store-room of the school studios, a small, narrow room which was mostly empty at the time apart from some steel mesh shelving at the back. this decision allowed me to present my work as it really is: a series of variations on a theme, a totality imperfectly reflected in any individual object. the storage space took on a character of its own as i began to install items of furniture, objects, handwritten and transfer-type signs, and computer screens displaying photographic slideshows and short videos. many small objects and signs were hidden in the space, under tables and in corners. the space took on an unsettling, otherworldly feel (intensified by more troubling objects, like a tongue hanging from a fish-hook).
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