Tuesday 9 October 2007

Just had a chat with

Rachel Reynolds at Clifton Park.
She thinks that the object is less important than the narrative and while you can have narratives without objects, you cannot have objects without narratives.
Just stirring.
She thinks objects are 'props' to keep narratives alive.
Is the blog an electronic object?
Bruno Latour would say that this blog has a 'thing-like' status' that is separate from the separate traces that encircle it like spiders' webs.
This reminds me of Clifford Geertz who famously said that
'man[sic] is an animal encased within webs of signifiance'.
The Interpretation of Cultures (1993).
Fab book.
Your mind will be blown by Notes on a Balinese Cockfight which is in that book.
If you have not yet read it RUSH to Amazon.
Have booked 8.08 in the Education building for our meeting on the 17th.

4 comments:

spodsheff said...

I think you can have objects without naratives I'm just not sure they are very interesting. It's the tree that falls in the forest which nobody hears or sees or tells stories about or the object in the museum stores which nobody sees nobody hears and nobody tells stories about- My idea is that museums collect the ideal object so they have no real objects at all just references to real objects hense the paddle and breakfast. It would be good to hypothesis that the object "becomes" at the point it's narrative commenses which works well for me and my current thinking as I'm looking for the moment before this becoming.

Kate said...

I am writing an article called the Case of the Disappearing objects about how museums invent objects and people in homes lose objects.
Am obsessed with how many people in our Ferham Families study said they had objects but actually they lost them.
I constantly lose objects myself.

kate g said...

or 'becomes' again once it narrative recomences as in inherited things or in their new journey through artemis, which makes me fell happy for them because their impact on others prior to joining the other artemis objects is gone for us.

kate g said...

oh also meant to say , i suppose in response to the stirring - it depends what business your in ? of course to her the narrative is important, but i suppose if you ask me dad, the story doesnt help dig the hole .