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).
