Maxine
Bristow
Monday 28thJuly 2003
For the last week of this month I have
managed to move out of the office up into the studio! Any
practical work of late seems to have been of a repetitive
mechanical nature, snatching a day/half day here and there
to, e.g, sample cast yet another of the light-witch boxes.
Although this interrupted method of working can be frustrating
and you feel that you are achieving nothing, I at least [having
always had to work like this] can now recognise its cumulative
effect and that small investments of time over a prolonged
period are essential and somehow do mount up. What I also
find is that the periods between making work or the time involved
in repetitive laborious processes can provide a space for
reflection. In reality though, it does mean that the realisation
of work is a slow process and that any response to exhibition
deadlines has to be carefully thought out and calculated in
terms of months if not years. This having been said, it is
a real treat to be faced with the prospect of a more prolonged
period of time in the studio. As is common practice, I found
myself going through my usual process of ‘sorting’
and organising the space in what I now recognise as a kind
of personal warm up ritual. This ritual of physically ‘sorting’
allows me to mentally ‘tune in’ to where I am
up to and what it is I am meant to be doing.
So accordingly… a review of where
I/we are up to:
During Kyoko’s first period in
the UK [over and above formal considerations], we seemed to
establish the notion of the boundary between public and private
space as something common to both our practices and something
that we might pursue as a common rationale for this project.
With Kyoko’s interest in pockets, it would seem that
there is a concern in the way that dress defines and redefines
‘the boundaries between self and other, subject and
object, inside and outside’ [Warwick and Cavallaro,
2001]. With my own work it is a broader interest in the politics
of space - the way that space is physically and metaphorically
bounded and shaped, with sets of rules which define and determine
where boundaries and borders may lie. But who decides the
rules and what are the ordering principles?
Both the pocket, and the features of
the built environment that I am interested in, such as handrails,
light-switches, handles, finger plates, ventilation grills
etc., seem to mark a point of transition or mediate between
the two realms of inside and outside, between the public and
the private. What in many cases seems to be significant to
these points of transition is the issue of touch - the hand
searching for something in the pocket or the hand engaging
in unconscious repeated patterns of bodily behaviour as we
move from inside to outside and vice versa. This is true particularly
of the handrails, light-switches and finger-plates but less
so of the conduits and ventilation grills. Are these concerned
with something different? Maybe we can make an analogy between
buildings and bodies in that they both breathe and excrete
waste and have a nervous system of electricity? Although it
may seem rather literal and a somewhat simplistic view, I
guess I am thinking about the electricity conduits as a metaphor
for the historical role of women in society, as often silent/unsung
but yet crucial to its functioning. Underpinning these thoughts
about boundaries is the way that the boundary or the margin
is often a site of uncertainty and unpredictability and as
such presents the possibility of ‘contestation, negotiation
and redefinition’ [Warwick and Cavallaro, 2001].
In practical terms, we have decided that
Kyoko is going to make a large-scale installation piece to
which I am going to contribute, and I am going to aim for
three other pieces of work: an installation of conduits with
cast light-switch type boxes with stitched inserts; an installation
of conduits with stitched saddles; and a stitched free standing
handrail/barrier piece. Having sampled the ‘light-switch’
casts over the last couple of months I have just this week
begun to mass-produce them. The number I will require will
be determined by the size of the space but I would aim to
have too many rather than too few. Having sampled the stitched
‘saddles’ I have also started to mass-produce
these, again at this stage I am uncertain as to how many I
might need. I have constructed the frame for the free standing
handrail/barrier but cannot begin the stitching for this as
I am still waiting for the wool. What I also need to do is
to make a start on stitching the inserts for the ‘light-switch
casts’
In terms of contextualising the above,
I am continuing to identify sources which might inform my
understanding of issues related to both the poetics and politics
of space [though finding the time to read them is another
matter]! I have also just re read Susan Best’s essay
The Trace and the Body in the Catalogue to the first Liverpool
Biennial which discusses the primacy of the body in perception
and artistic production. This is something that I find intriguing
in relation to my ambitions for the new work, and is something
I would like to investigate further. I am also ‘dipping
into’ Fashioning the Frame, Boundaries Dress and the
Body which is proving useful as a more general critical framework.
I have also just read an essay by Kenneth Frampton on Corporeal
Experience in the Architecture of Tadao Ando which is something
that I find interesting and would like to discuss with Kyoko.
Kyoko returns for the second stage of
the project at the end of this week. I have literally just
this minute received a parcel from her labelled ‘used
cloth, food’?? It will be great to see her again, see
how her work is progressing and spend time over the next month
working together and discussing the development of our ideas.
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Kyoko Nitta
- July
I've got only a week more to go until
I leave for UK. I should be in Chester by the time this journal
came out on the web page. I had two weeks worth of teaching
job left at the first two weeks of July. As a consequence,
there was a mountain of my students' reports.
Afterwards, I worked for the contemporary
art museum in Gunma for another two weeks. I have mentioned
about this exhibition in the museum which includes; Machiko
Agano and eight more artists showing works of threads and
fabrics. It is called, 'Threads and Fabrics' and will be shown
until the 15th of September. I opened a workshop on the 21st
of July which was the public holiday in Japan. It was called,
'Let's make pockets'. We used second hand clothes as main
materials. We aimed to stitch all the pockets we could find
from the garments we had together and mad a huge pockets altogether.
The participants chose garments. If it
had a pockets, we used it. When there was no pocket, we cut
the garments and created a hole which we dealt as a pocket.
Basically, we stitched every holes we could find in the garments.
As we go through the workshop, most of the participants got
used to stitch with thick threads and big needles. I took
some photographs of the final pockets and it was exhibited
on the ground floor entrance hall.
I think that pockets could be a fictional
space. It is practical and convenient. However sometimes I
cannot find my ticket in there when I was getting out from
the station. As if it was just disappeared. Often I blamed
for my short memory problem and my pocket. Then try to remember
the consequence of putting it in the pocket in the first place.
It was because, the pocket always be there when I need it.
It always wait for the best possible moment of need. In other
words, it is an extension of my hand. That's why I feel insecure
when I put on clothes without any pocket.
I actually enjoy this relationship between
my hand and the pocket. In this workshop, I made the used
garments into a huge pocket itself. It was my wish to make
the pocket to play a main role in the space. And my dream
came true now, the pocket will be shown until the end of the
exhibition.
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