Perfectionism/Cataloguing

After my birthday, I felt a compulsion to photograph and log the presents I received (along with the food etc.), but instead I decided to fight that urge because I realised it was a response to my inability to feel happy on my birthday despite the efforts of others (I was very sleep-deprived), and the guilt associated with that. Instead I wrote the following in my sketchbook:

"perfectionism and cataloguing as a way of coping with lack of fulfillment
lack of fulfillment leading to feeling of lack of 'meaning' for events
perfectionism becomes the new 'meaning'
cataloguing is a way to feel as though the events have consequence

cataloguing and recording birthday presents: 'these people are putting effort into making you happy - why are you not happy - record everything that these people are doing for you'*

very little sense of fulfillment -> replace general fulfillment with something else which becomes your new goal -> actions are limited to those which work towards your goal"

On researching Sophie Calle for my dissertation, I found something relevant:

"Calle has created elaborate display cases of birthday presents given to her throughout her life."

"Calle further decided she would not use the gifts her family and friends brought for her, but would display them in a glass-fronted vitrine for a year, as a tangible token of their affection. After each birthday, the previous year's gifts would be stored away and the new ones displayed. In The Birthday Ceremony Calle exhibits all the gifts accumulated between 1980 and 1993, her 40th birthday, when she terminated the ritual."

Luckily, the more I read, the more relevant to my dissertation this seems; I suspect that since my mind is easily blown by tiny coincidences, I would have probably tried to force this shit into my dissertation either way.

*Usually I try to stick to a more detached narration of my thought processes, but in this case I felt it would be most efficient to just spell out exactly what my brain seemed to be whining.

Re-thinking The Piece With The Dates

I'm thinking that since it's about a continuous action/process, maybe it makes sense to leave it slightly unfinished (i.e. not mounted), because otherwise it's just slightly confusing text. I'm also not sure why I didn't think of leaving the needle in it; it makes a whole lot more sense to leave the needle in this piece than in the Translation Show piece.

I'm also wondering if, since it was mounted and finished, the first piece ("I'm just trying to drown my indifference...") actually made it clear that it was referring to the process of its creation. Reading it while it was still in my hands being made was probably the most appropriate time to see it, in terms of most clearly making its point.

My next piece will be less about the process of its creation, so I need to evaluate which medium will be most appropriate. If I decide on cross-stitch, I won't display it with the others at any point. This is because the others refer to the cross-stitching process and this one will not, so it would be confusing.

Translation Show / Progression

I thought it would be a good idea to try and examine how my ideas have progressed this term, and evaluate whether or not my work is communicating more effectively.

This cross-stitched piece was playing with the idea of humans being conditioned to feel the need to "do something." Just "something," purely because the alternative (doing nothing) is something we're conditioned to feel guilty about. It's intended to speak about not speaking, and say that there is nothing to say. It's not "art" that has a "point" or "purpose"; it's an object created for the sake of creation. It deliberately ignores the idea of fulfilment, instead focusing on the idea that life has no intrinsic meaning, and so our actions are "meaningless." I don't think it's bad that it intentionally ignores many logical perspectives; essentially it's a tongue-in-cheek description of one point of view. It's deliberately a little bit illogical. It doesn't intend to convince other people of its point of view; it intends to present that point of view in a way that highlights that it's mildly amusing. It examines my thoughts and actions and describes them, not intending to convince or justify.

This deals with the same sort of ideas - productivity for the sake of productivity, and doing things for the sake of doing things. It speaks about the perceived importance of doing something every day. You "have to" get up and you "have to" shower and you "have to" eat, but it's not limited to basic needs. There is apparently more than that, and even if we don't know what that means for ourselves, we supposedly have to at least make a vague stab at it.

(Translation Show piece, sitting with other people's.)

The piece I made for the Translation Show is where I feel like the communication sort of falls directly on its face. It refers to the idea of investing time into something for the sake of artificially creating some idea of "value." It's cross-stitched because that medium is incredibly slow, and not widely considered to be that aesthetically pleasing compared to other methods of creating images. This makes it seem inefficient, and it seems like its only appeal is how much time is invested into it. The medium has "value" BECAUSE it is slow. Its value is its own inefficiency.

"In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value; and vice versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour time required for the production of an article, and the greater its value." (This is from Das Capital.) Certain materials have value because extracting them is inefficient. Certain objects have value because the process of creating them is slow. In the case of an image created using a slow method (an image that could have been created more quickly in another medium, and that would have served the same purpose in this other medium), the image's creation is a process that INTENDS to use up a large amount of time.

This piece was a "translation" because the intention was to wholeheartedly explore the medium, creating images in the traditional way. The flowers were supposed to convey an attempt to be beautiful, and I framed it since it was about futility with conviction, not apathy. This point ended up being muddled by the fact that I left the needle in. I was unsure whether I wanted to leave it slightly unfinished to emphasise the tedium, or finish it to reinforce the point of futility with conviction. This is another reason I framed it instead of mounting it; I wanted the decision (to leave the needle in) to be reversible in case I changed my mind, and I think I have.

There is a lot I don't like about this piece. It starts to refer too specifically to the habits of middle class women decades or centuries ago - women "filling time" as they did not need to work. This is not what I am interested in, and it's not what I'm researching. However, I think this is a side-effect of the instruction to "translate" the work, so maybe it's okay that I pushed things out of my comfort zone all the way to the point where the work catastrophically fails.

Another way this work fails is that it aims to communicate the idea of pouring lots of time into something, but it looks like something that didn't take very long. It did. Even I don't believe how long this piece of shit took me. The medium is actually TOO effective at being tedious and time-consuming, so my point gets lost.

It also feels less sincere than my previous work. I think this is because it drifts away from observing and describing my own habits, and speaks about a hobby that other people (who are not me) have. It feels slightly mocking, and that was not the intention.

Current Structure Of Dissertation

intro - consider changing

pattern that rituals follow

example of habits following the same pattern

another example

another example

explanation

argument against

another argument against

another argument against

conclusion

Notes On Whether Or Not My Practice Is Still Relevant To My Dissertation

Yes:
- activity is presented as being a ritual to ward off negative feelings associated with futility, and therefore fits the pattern argued in my dissertation

No:
- activities referred to in practice are daily "productive" tasks (e.g. art, crafts), and not either "bad habits" or religious/spiritual rituals
- the idea that my practice communicates is intentionally biased (i.e. it ignores the idea of "fulfillment"); it is supposed to be from a specific point of view

Conclusion:
- the two things were more connected when I was making work that related to hoarding etc.
- maybe I could expand my dissertation to include the role of everyday activities/fulfillment/meaning, but that would make it too broad as I would then literally be examining the meaning of life, and would have to discuss everything from fulfillment and stewardship/legacy to religious views on the afterlife

Notes On Inefficiency

"In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value; and vice versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour time required for the production of an article, and the greater its value." - Karl Marx, Das Capital

If we think about how this applies to non-essential objects (say, embroidered art work), we could argue that since a medium requiring less labour (for example, through the use of technology) could arguably serve the same purpose, the maker of the work is intentionally being less efficient for the purposes of adding to the item's perceived value.

Maybe an argument against that is the idea that certain techniques cannot yet be successfully replicated by technology, but then again maybe that argument is only used to attempt to back up with logic the idea that hand-made objects are intrinsically superior.

Essentially, I feel like we pour time into things for the sake of pouring time into things.

The Turner Prize, Late Turner And Efficiency

I've realised that my days of spending at least five hours in every "major" exhibition (this was a habit of mine during my foundation course) are long, long gone. I don't trust curators with my time anymore. I went to see the Turner Prize and basically walked past everything time-based; I didn't feel as though I had a reason to give them a chance - it would be gambling, but with time instead of money. This means that although I'm supposed to be an "art student," my opinion fell neatly into one of the three categories that the guest's comments on the notice board outside the exhibition seemed to be split into.

1. My five year old could do that.
2. Ugh, it was all film.
3. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, why are all these comments knocking time-based media when it's a perfectly valid art form?!?! Film is my liiiiiiife. :'(

I guess what I can take away from this is the idea that I really haven't looked into why people use film: what's it supposed to do? IS it supposed to do anything? Then again, I'm really valuing this newfound EFFICIENCY; I've stopped forcing myself to observe and analyse everything until it's torture.

I then visited the Late Turner exhibition which was pretty packed, presumably with all the people who left the (almost empty) Turner Prize saying, 'What rubbish - they shouldn't call it the "TURNER Prize..."' I made another observation regarding efficiency. It's more an opinion than an observation.

Whalers at Sea at Sunset

Paying attention to colour and composition is a whole lot more important than sinking hours and hours into a piece of work. EFFICIENCY.

(The work I'm making now is about pouring time into something to illustrate inefficiency.)