...bags that tell stories... bags that are about ideas...

Postcard research

I have printed 500 of these postcards and plan to put them in the library at University College Falmouth, in my Exhibition space and in various galleries and offices. I then plan to develop narratives and illustrations imagining the potential stories of the people who own these bags, based on the objects contained within them. I also plan to use both quantitative and qualitative analysis as another way of reflecting on my research.

Old Clothes

I have been reading an article in Selvedge Magazine, issue 21, Jan/Feb 08. The article by Amy de la Haye is entitled Personal Archive, and is part of a larger article: Old Hat, Is Vintage Fashion Looking Dated?
This article asks:
'Why do we preserve and cherish our old clothes?' (Haye 2008: 75)
'...at what point and how do particular garments become elevated from 'old clothes', that have accumulated or hoarded, to revered 'object' or collection - our wardrobe as a personal archive?' (Haye 2008: 75)
The article continues:
'More often, it is the moment when clothing triggers a significant memory that it becomes imbued with new meaning and personal worth, valued over and above its style, materiality and utility.' (Haye 2008: 75)
'Or perhaps it is because we leave imprints on our clothes - their materiality is altered by the wearer - in a way that we do not leave traces on other objects that we own? A garments shaping can distort to echo body contours; it can become imbued with personal scent and bear the marks of wear. And, ultimately they disintegrate with the passage of time, a process which can be likened to human fragility.' (Haye 2008:75)

I picked these quotes because they link to ideas i've been exploring. I have been researching collections in both museums, and personal collections, to explore why some things are treasured, valued and kept and why others become discarded and unwanted. A way for me to begin to understand the type of object I want to design. Perhaps... something to be treasured and kept, to be used and then repaired or perhaps altered to adjust to new needs; to be functional and to interact intimatley with our everyday lives - not to be too precious not to use, yet beautifull enough to to treasure and want to keep.

Classifications and collections:
Nineteenth Century Museums have a different aesthetic to the Modern art museum with “…an aura of curiosity…The diversity of its essentially ‘non art’ collection, which lacks the tendency of modern museums to over-interpret, inspires the imagination and tends to generate questions rather than give answers.” (Putman 2001: 8)
This draws to mind my initial interest in the collections at Helston Folk Museum: the way the labels of objects only give you a fragment of information. To me this is more interesting because you begin imagining the rest of their potential narrative.

The Wunderkammer – Cabinet of Curiosities – existed in Europe in C16 – C18 “This early ancestor of the museum possessed a special quality in tune with the creative imagination, a quest to explore the rational and the irrational and a capricious freedom of arrangement.” (Putman 2001: 12)

… On Karsten Bott…
“ many C20 artists have followed a collecting principle, akin to the Wunderkammer, which embodied an element of free association where the mind could roam at will. The subject of such a collection might be both eclectic and personal, bound up with memory and imagination…” (Putman 2001: 12)

Karsten Bott’s works links to ideas around collecting and classifications:
Karsten Bott’s instalation 'One of each’ is “…an archival exploration of everyday life.” (Winzen 1998: 82), in which “Even the most obsolete, broken and trivial everyday items are meticulously ordered in rows.” (Putman 12001: 39). Creating a collection of objects – perhaps things nobody else wanted - maybe lost things, like the collection of clothes I collected in a charity shop rag bag. In this installation he made categories such as “ …the kitchen, the garden shed, the bedroom…” (Winzen 1998: 82). And also categories like: occupations, festivals/customs and death. Into these categories he puts objects such as “…stockings, wage sheets, feathers, neatly folded plastic bags…” (Winzen 1998: 82). The images in this post are from this instalation.

Karsten Bott’s Trouser pocket collection 1996: “Bott gathers from the streets a plethora of colourful discarded items, each small enough to fit into his trouser pocket.” (Putman 2001: 83). These are displayed like museum artefacts, a way of classifying and collecting, somehow it seems to link to my project exploring the collections of objects people carry with them everyday in their various types of bags.

Matthias Winzen writes:
“Everybody collects. Something. Anything. Again and again. Sometimes consciously and with a long term strategy, other times without thinking much.” (Winzen 1998: 22)
(Again, I link this to the collection of clothes I explored in a charity shop rag bag and the ‘unconscious’ collections formed in people’s bags and pockets.)

…on shoes and ‘unconscious’ collections…
“Most people I know own more pairs of shoes than they regularly wear or at least have use for. These appear to be collections with no conscious intention behind them. They just have somehow accumulated.” (Winzen 1998: 22)

References:
Putman, J. 2001. Art and Artifact The museum as Medium. Thames and Hudson.
Reepen, I. 1998. ‘Karstenn Bott’. In: Schaffner, I. And Winzen, M. [eds]. Deep Storage Collecting and Archiving in Art. Prestel Munich and New York.

Real and imagined narratives: Sophie Calle

Real and imagined narratives: Sophie Calle
Linking to ideas around imaginary and real narratives that I want to start exploring when developing print designs inspired by objects or collections…
“ Sophie Calle’s works are concerned with representing absence. Since the late 1970’s she has been using found objects that she has collected, plus photograph, films and texts of her own, to preserve traces of what is disappearing or already past. These reconstituted memories sometimes tell stories from her own life…” (Gabner 1998: 96)
“…Remaining unclear throughout this poetic search for what is disappearing or has already disappeared is wheter the past ever existed, or whetere the search for traces is is merely the pursuit of an illusion which only takes form in the reconstruction of a fictional past. These documents lead us into a specific corridor of memory, where objectiviy, and subjectivity, reality and fiction intertwine.” (Gabner 1998: 96)

References:
Gabner, H. 1998. ‘Sophie Calle’. In: Schaffner, I. And Winzen, M. [eds]. Deep Storage Collecting and Archiving in Art. Prestel Munich and New York.