Getting to the point

I've pulled these two questions from the abstract. I think these can form the context for the Paper in Boston - me and Kate G can talk about how we approach these ideas - I would say something about informing the system I'm working within shaping it's function through meaning adding to the world of objects and questioning meaning by making an object which challenges function within a system or value structure- which is the English breakfast piece - I'm really clear on how all this fits in - Kate G could do something perhaps around ideas of a collection (Rather than just collecting) Kate P and Lou can you think of your slant/ approach on this and we could all perhaps look for points of synergy or where collaberation has helped us to see things from a new perspective - perhaps this idea of creative triangulation has some milage in it. Also I like Kims idea that because an object is there it must have a provenance it asserts itself through it's thingness (Is this Phenomology) "This is this this isn't something else" So an object never really looses it's provenance because this always sits external to it - it's the human part of the equation the thing which allows us to connect to the past and the future - do we need to have somesort of material culture studies input I think it's here we may look a bit thick - I can talk to my archeologist friends - I know a flint expert working at stonehenge and he may be able to give an interesting slant as he is a real focussed specialist or perhaps we just need to focuss in on ethnography and not worry about material culture.

How do objects move in meaning, or move from function to meaning?Does it matter if an object has no provenance?What happens if there is a narrative and no object (the case of the disappearing object)Are objects merely taking their menaing from their form and function or do they acquire new identities as new resonsances and echoes take hold of them?

a bit from me

well , i am also reading the baudrillard system of objects which i concur is very interesting,
I like the bit about handicrafts and by what has been created by someones hand, and how we are fascinated because the moment of their creation can not be reproduced.......all of this part i like..... Intersting perhaps in reference to steves breakfasts and doorstops, and my subject and 3D digital prints, beceause if im right they become functional objects but also mythological....

But what i wanted to say was, i am reading alongside this book - A journey around my room by Xavier de Maistre, I love the echo from each, I hope you know it. But what i like about reading the two together is the Baudrillard one is like the kate and Lou bit of this project and the Xavier one is like me and steve, both deal with the same thing, they just approach it very differently. The first has decided and theorised until he has the answer, the second is pondering, undecided and practical. But both try to find an answer in reference to objects.

This is this

This is This All my thinking started of from this bit in the dear Hunter. So I thought I should put it in. I'm not that interested in warn things in terms of this project only to the extent that we pretend that objects carry with them more traces or signs of their history in the marks or scraches on them - which is funny as when we collect antiques condition is everything - reading or rather dipping into (It's next to the toilet. ) Jean Baudrillards Systems of objects really interesting [Video]

Thanks Steve

For getting us back to the blog.
I do value this space, just been sitting in St Thomas's hospital for 2 weeks, with my father in law, he died last Tuesday.
BUT I have also done some thinking about this project
Thought 1 I shared with Kate which is this:
1. As artists you focus on the thing itself, the object, Kate looks at traces of sheep on grass, Steve looks at worn objects then makes replicas.
This is a sort of phenomenological (ie the thing like aspect of objects) approach, one that looks without the academic 'gaze' but a different kind of gaze.
Focus on sensory nature of objects.
This is why I have steered Kate in the direction of functionalism and away from symbolism and Implicit Meanings - the Mary Douglas take on life.
Sarah Pink writes about this in her book on the sensory home when she talks about sensory ethnography and accessing insider views of the objects.
You two are insiders on your own objects.
here is a response to Steve's point just now:
2. I like the focus on practices, and think you both reside in the realm of practice. This is like Bourdieu's notion of a set of dispositions that guide the way you do things.
this is called the habitus.
Steve is focused on worn objects, the use over time.
Kate is obsessed with intergenenerational objects, with the way they are used on the farm, over genersations.
This is very Kabyle house - here is a quote from Bourdieu:
Whether in verbal products such as poverbs, sayings, gnomic poems, songs or riddles or in objects such as tools, the house or the village, or in practices such as games, contexts of honour, gift exchange or rites, the material that the Kabyle House child ahs to learn is the produce of the systematic applciaiton of a small number of principles conherent in practice (Bourdieu 1990:74)

Boston Steve Austen

We need to start talking papers and presentations. I want to start off simple. Me and Kate think we would like to talk about the Artist as researcher. Something about positioning yourself in relationship to the field. The artists as something you are-rather than something you do. an individual perpective and voice which explores theory in a very practical way. Perhaps something about activily interacting with and trying to change and inform systems rather than understand them - but steering slightly away from Praxis. So celebrate the differences tie this to the practical exploration of the systems of objects through the artemis project but round up by clearly highlighting through example that we are all looking to a greater or lesser extent at the same world (Perhaps)

Please try and keep a theme going I'm going to email you to chivy everbody along - feel like we should do this on the blog so we have a record - comments good but posts would be better

linkage exhinitoin statement

steve and i have now selected all the artwrks from artemis, and have some linkage photos left to get, but we need to write a statement for the entrance way, i have started this and steve suggested blogging it, so here it is, we would like comments please. or additions. cheers

LINKAGE
This exhibition includes 35 examples of artwork from the collection at Artemis, interlinked with images Kate and Steve have taken on their mobile phones.
The mobile phone is omnipresent in contemporary life and used to record: passing moments; significant discoveries or random stumblings. These digital files are often never downloaded, forwarded, or printed out, remaining within the device, building into an archive of captured moments. We accumulate this temporary collection, often discarding it as we change phones, all without significant consideration.
As artists, Kate and Steve are interested in collections and as such have utilised their mobile phones to enable a journey through the Artemis collection and provide an insight into their practice. Like a game of Chinese whispers, we can move from one image to the next observing the lateral ponderings.

Artists Art and Artefacts sees artists Steve Pool and Kate Genever working on a year long, Arts Council England funded, project at Artemis: Education Leeds artefact loan service. Working both individually and collaboratively the artists are researching, exploring and responding to Artemis’ collection of over 10,000 artefacts.

Abstract

I like this abstract bit because it concerns what our collabertion is really about which seems to be exploring a theme in different ways and how each of our approaches if valued in the correct context helps everybody to progress thinking. This is slightly different from the original bid where Kate P and Lou are written in more to support the artists CPD and reflection on practise. So for me it's become far more collaberative which makes the AAA conference thing seem more relevant. Perhaps we could unpick some of this and use it as narrative entry points to our paper - Also I'd like to suggest that we make the trip to Boston part of the work (Artististic concept based) which gives us licence to shake things up a bit.

So I think I've written about this before but on our first trip to Artermis for the very first meeting Kate Pahl started to tell me how she really didn't want to steer the artists and wanted to position herself with enough distance from the project so she wouldn't influence the ideas too much. It seems to me that this is her constant personal battle to find a position in relation to the field which allows her to activly engage with people , reflect, and observe without impacting. Due to excessive enthusiasm Kate is very bad at this but perhaps this is why we want to work with her.

So after deciding on her epistomology she suggests that the project is about canoes and Cargo. This comes from nowhere and is supported by a story of the change in british ethonography over thge last 50 years. I brush this off don't think about it much and suddenly find myself 6 months later asking if an object is a canou or Cargo and strangly understanding what this means. So Kate provides another lens to veiw the work/world through and I get a lot from this - she also provides a different context for ideas. as Artists we try and grow all our ideas ourselves - Like my disfuntional allotment my ideas are all strange shapes don't really look like what they are supposed to but taste really nice as long as you don't try and keep them too long. I don't want to grow veg for a supermarket but sometimes I like to know how it's done. This is a strange metaphor but the phones ringing and I need to go - it reminds me of that film Being there with Peter Sellers in it.