phantom limbs

Phantom Limbs by Gaby Wood:

Gaby Wood wrote about prostheses in the Chapter ‘Phantom Limbs’ in ‘The Phantom Museum’

‘…the orthopaedics room with its stack of well worn arms legs and crutches’

Hildi Hawkens and Danielle Olsen wrote about Gaby Wood's chapter in the book: she ‘combines the strictest historical rigour – in its definition as closeness to the known sources – with the highest degree of sympathetic imagination; and her path leads us straight back to one of the oldest forms of storytelling, the fairytale. Storytelling, after all, is not always about making things up; and some of the best stories are true.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: xii)

…of prosthetic hands:
‘They seem to be pointing, or beckoning, fingers, folding inwards – gesturing towards towards a story they cannot tell. Where have they been? What have they done?’ (Wood 2003: 79)
“of these stories, these losses and rescues, we know nothing. The hands remain mute, frozen in a language of meaningless signs.’ (Wood 2003: 79)
An object that has a sense of intimacy told by traces of wear and tear. Once used, and now remaining, living on after its owner has died – ghost like…
‘…a delicate things in a light brown leather glove – perhaps a woman’s... shows signs of wear – dark patches along the thumb muscle, heavy creases in the joints of each finger.’ (Wood 2003: 79)
‘it would remain floating in the world, disembodied and senseless, a phantom of some former self.’ (Wood 2003: 80)



References:
Woods, G. 2003. 'Phantom Limbs'. In: Hawkins, H. and Olsen, D. [eds]. The Phantom Museum, and Henry Wellcome’s Collection of Medical Curiosities. Profile Books.

The Collected

Hari Kunzru’s 'The Collected' in The Phantom Museum:
‘Hari Kunzru’s series of evocations, ‘The Collected’, explores the space between the things’ existence as museum objects – only the most recent phase of their rich and varied careers – and their former lives: their spirits.' (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: xi). The idea that they are somehow alive because of this sense of history – alive because of the idea that they have spirits or souls – becoming human-like?

This chapter tells stories of:
A shrunken human head: ‘I was once Juan Ignacio Perez-Santos, out of Havana (Kunzra 2003: 55), who travelled through the jungle in search of gold. ‘The hot green pulse of the forest thickened the air, which became heady and stifling, hard to take down your lungs. We travelled for weeks, pushing ourselves up the silent brown river…’ (Kunzra 2003: 56). The story is told partly from Juan’s perspective, then interspersed with grisly factual information about how to shrink a human head: ‘First you have to sever the head. Then you cut a slit at the back…just simmer. The thing will disintegrate if the liquid gets too hot.’ (Kunzra 2003: 56). ‘There in a few words, is the story of Juan the idiot who believed the stories he was told in bars. Juan who paddled up the river and got his throat cut.’ (Kunzra 2003: 57)

Hari Kunzru weaves a fairytale-like narrative, interweaving factual information with the voice of the object now in the collection. Taking you away from its current context in a museum, to imagine and visualise the story (or possible story) behind the object, now sitting on a shelf with a label, gathering dust…

… and the story of a locket containing an illustration made from human hair… ‘My lover…wanted his memento to be finer to confirm that his love and thus his loss were greater than the other man’s’ (Kunzra 2003: 60). A memento speaking its story of how it came to being… ‘Now when I think of love, I think of hands. I think of jewellers delicate hands, taking strands of my hair and teasing them into the shape of trees… even now that I am here, the property of the collector, I am marked by the touch of those hands.’ (Kunzra 2003: 60)
…ghostly traces and memories of a life… now a memento of the passing of time…

Hari Kunzru writes as though the objects in the collection are talking:
‘It is dark in here…
In the rooms filled with rows of numbered metal racks…
But I am here.
There are others too.’ (Kunzra 2003: 47)

‘Even in nothingness one has to have something to think about. I like to contemplate certain ironic aspects of my situation. The one I like best is that the collector is here too, caught in his own afterlife. Skin follicles. Saliva. A single moustache hair that fell when he was examining a new curio. Enough to trap him here, one of us, crouching in the darkness.’ (Kunzra 2003: 73)
The collector becomes the collected. Writing about the thoughts or dreams or yearnings of the collected objects…


References:
Kunzru, H. 2003. 'The Collected'. In: Hawkins, H. and Olsen, D. [eds]. The Phantom Museum, and Henry Wellcome’s Collection of Medical Curiosities. Profile Books.

The Phantom Museum

‘One of the most poignant aspects of the world of inanimate objects is their longevity. They endure and we do not…they are unspeaking witnesses that can never tell us what they have seen…’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: vii)

I have been reading a book called The Phantom Museum, and Henry Wellcome’s Collection of Medical Curiosities. The book links to my interests in telling stories about objects and collections - here are some quotes from the book and some of my thoughts:

‘The Wellcome Collection is a vast repository not only of objects, but traces of physical sensations, ideas and emotions, a reliquary of thoughts and fragments of memory. The soft, fleeting and ungraspable stuff of life is conjured up by matter of an altogether different nature, now lying inert in an anachronistic institution and very slowly turning to dust.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: viii)
…collections as containers of memories… finding ways to express those narratives in a way that is subtle enough to be suggestive; allowing the viewer space to imagine….
Ideas of dust bring to mind the dust on butterfly wings - something physical that is fleeting, insubstantial, ungraspable – if you try and touch it, it will disintegrate. One must be gentle with these things and these thoughts
…ideas of poetics and object as metaphor (the image of a butterfly has appeared in my print designs as a way of lightly suggesting this sense of insubstantiality, these echoes of the past that can become embodied within an object.)
‘...this book is full of subtle resolutions, quiet shifts towards the light.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: xiv)
…writing and exploring with a lightness of touch…not being too heavy (link to lightness discussed by Gaston Bachelard in poetics of space?) – this allows for subtleties for the little perhaps unnoticed things to be noticed remembered and treasured…

Creating imaginary narratives that are sympathetic to the objects and their history, yet also go somewhere ‘other’ – beyond their literal physicality.
‘Here in the Phantom Museum, the objects are investigated using a different method, that of the sympathetic imagination.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: ix)
‘Our fiction writers …were priming their imaginations with a thorough grounding in the known facts about their chosen objects – although very often that knowledge was incomplete.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: xi)

In October when I drew objects at Helston Folk museum the labels on the objects I drew affected the way I related to and understood the object; with no label you are lost…or perhaps completely free to make your own story…
In the Wellcome collection: ‘Some of the most mysterious objects now even lack the labels which might once have helped us decipher them; their meanings have become impenetrable.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: ix)

…ideas about random types of classification – how do I classify the objects I use as inspiration for my print designs?
In the collection in Blythe House in Hammersmith ‘objects are classified by room – Glassware, Oriental, Surgery – giving rise to a higgledy – piggledy arrangement in which snuff boxes rub shoulders with mourning jewellery, ear trumpets with dentists chairs and anatomical models with human bones’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: x)

… in my work… illustrative print designs, combine imagery and text, real and imaginary narratives… grounded in factual research and fragments of real information…lightened by imaginary fragments… suggesting – allowing the viewer to engage with the work to develop their own personal response and narrative… when these prints are applied to an object in a design context – is it perhaps a way of making an object more than just another thing…to become a thing with a soul, with the ability to ‘speak’ and tell part of its story?

References:
Hawkins, H. and Olsen, D. [eds]. 2003. The Phantom Museum, and Henry Wellcome’s Collection of Medical Curiosities. Profile Books.

I've just looked at this website: www.sfgirlbybay.com, it has links to loads of inspiring design websites and blogs...
It also had a link to this blogspot: www.inspirationboards.blogspot.com, which has an interesting interview with Maira Kalman (an artist, designer,author, illustrator and photographer) - she talks about collecting and found objects, and the way they can tell stories. Here's an extract from the interview with Maira Kalman by Lori Pickert on 23.03.08:

'What do you collect, and how does it inspire you?
First and foremost I collect books. Those are my treasures and if I had to give everything up, I would in a second, but not the books. Then there are all the collections of odd ephemera. Old notebooks, boxes, fezzes, cafe napkins, moss, doll clothes, interesting packaging. Inspiration comes from shape, color, text, misuse of text, humor, honesty of intent. All of those things play in making something. The endless possibilities are always encouraging.

Can you say something about found objects and how they inspire you?
First of all a found object is free. And that is always exhilarating. It was waiting for you and you took it. It had a life and now the life continues. You may pass it on to someone. Or forget it for years and then refind it in a box. It is mysterious and yet tells a story.'

I've been researching blogs:
I've looked at camillaengman.blogspot.com, and was interested by her illustrations and the photos she's been taking of collections of objects...

design application research

I have been researching design applications for the illustrative print designs I have been developing; I have looked at these websites because the designs have an illustrative quality pertinent to the designs i have been developing, and also to give me ideas about context, pricing and website design: www.freckledesigns.co.uk, www.sylviefuller.co.uk, www.nadiasparham.co.uk

bag handles and fastenings research

I have been exploring the collections of objects we carry with us in our various types of bags. I plan to make a series of bag samples using some of my printed fabric designs. These printed fabrics explore the real and imaginary narratives around collections of objects. Making these bag samples will be a way of researching and developing relevant design applications for my printed fabrics; linking with areas of interest in my research.
I've been researching handles and others types of fastenings to use for making the bags, I found these websites
www.u-handbag.com, www.bagsofhandles.co.uk, www.kleins.co.uk, which look like they might be useful to source handles and fastenings.