thought kate and well others too might be interested to see this section of the mantle piece at the farm - just round stones and fossilised sea urchins, . The round stones we pick up off the fields, we think they are whats left behind after the ice age [where we live the ice was approx a mile thick] -me dad calls them 'ball bearings for glaciers'.
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I like these round stones - have you thought of making a device to measure them- Tim collects flints and mushrooms is there something about collecting things from the land or is it just collecting - I think we are so obsesed with objects as we percieve them as real which convinces us that we are real this is a bit like pinching yourself to see if your awake. perhaps we could make art which could pintch people - not litterally.
I've enjoyed these posts. The piles and piles and piles of random stones, pebbles, conker husks and small bits of driftwood (and my favourite: smooth sea-worn glass fragments piled up in large glass kilners on the window sill) that slowly sendiment up whatever space I'm in - this collecting from the land is pretty compulsive, but I'm not sure whether its about me being in the landscape's physical space, or bringing the landscape into my psychological space. I've been away in Orkney the last week or so and found a perfect piece of aquamarine coloured glass - long and thin - on Scapa Flow beach. I consciously thought of it as a keepsake when I picked it up (can't remember what of now) although until I imbue it with a personal significance (by remembering the thought at the time) it is no more or less meaningful than sea action on the properties of glass and what gets to be in the sea. Also at Skara Brae 5000 years old thought a lot about artefacts, and about different versions of doing ethnography. It fascintates me that we seem to have to have an explanation of the meaning and function of standing stones - always a version of something that is meaningful now - a religious place or a landing strip for UFOs or whatever - and yet we have no clear conception of what life was like - does day-to-day survival = societal life? Stone Henge could have been built as a livestock market, whereby the sun alignment thing is to do with showing off your best sheep. Who knows? At Stromness museum (upstairs bit stuffed to the gills with dead animals) there was a stuffed Glossy Ibis - very rare bird - and the note 'On the 12th June 1912, a flock of 20 Glossy Ibis arrived in Scape Flow, 12 were shot'. Life itself in all its variation to be collected one way or another. I am off to Portugal soon so excuse another absence, but I will be wading knee deep through broken Roman amphora kicking them out of the way and cursing the way they wreck the soles of my unsuitable and expensive shoes: the relative & shifting values of artefacts that erode each other and all that!
I love this too. I like the fact you actually don't have any family momentos on your mantelpiece.
Mantelpieces are big in Pakistan and also in Wales - in an article that you can access here: http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/4/717
She writes about how home narratives construct the artefacts on the mantelpieces. You have told a story about the objects that connects to space, place and identity.
we measure them in relation to one another, they are laid out along the length of the mantle piece largest to smallest. [this is a small fraction of them] They [the stones] become i suppose liike monuments - a tangible expression of permenance or duration - have been reading about this v interesting Marc Auge non- places. I think they or we try to convince ourselves something went before and therefore something goes after, their function is to make us believe life is not pointless. Also we have a competition now as to who can find the most ? me mums rubbish at finding them!
How do we do art pinching? is it like milking?
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