A psychogeography of devastation is here re-presented in the studio,
the site of the production of artifacts from the small room of the
fragile psyche.
Recently while visiting abandoned and
overgrown strip mines in the former East Germany, I happened to visit a still-functioning one.
This was the first time I'd seen open strip mining, and it gave a
very powerful impression of active devastation, stretching from one
horizon to another. The scale of the machinery was huge, but
looked tiny within such a vast space.
The fact that the
mine is active, however, meant that it is resource extraction that
still contributes to the material make-up of the industrial
world. Its scale negates a discussion of its effect upon the
landscape: it becomes the landscape, with its resources of crude
bitumen extracted within a much larger context of a laying-waste to the
land. It is geography stripped bare. This most inefficient
mining of ancient plants and algae to power the last vestiges of the
petroleum industry. Though I was compelled to document this landscape,
I did not know what to do with it, as it was outside of the context of
my practice; it featured little plant presence, and very little
reclaimation by nature. In fact new territory was being cleared
as we watched.
However, it was later, when my mother was in crisis, and later died, that that scene of total and active devastation
kept flashing before my eyes. It was as if part of my mind was
linking up two very different examples of devastation as a way of
making sense of the experience. The same feeling of shock, a
sensation of blown-open space, and breathless dialation of the present
moment until it consumes all idea of past and future, of movement even,
beyond the precipice currently balanced upon of shock, loss and despair.
This has made
memory interesting to me, as it is rarely a conscious choice what gets
replayed on the screen of the mind. This is true as well of when it
will play back, and I become somewhat helpless to let them wash
over me. As a maker, it seems at times that memory is the
counterpoint to artistic practice. That for me, not
only is memory often the genesis of an artwork, but within the act of
making, the associated emotions are inscribed into the piece.
If
a document is the preservation of memory, the proof of it, what happens
to it in the hands of the artist? The document goes through the
artist's space, and through the artistic act, is overlayed with memory
and association, emerging as a kind of memento, a more personal,
aestheticized testament. The space, the studio, thus becomes the site
of this transformation, not necessarily of the artist nor the artwork,
but the document, that can become almost unrecognizable. Does it
still have any claim to the status of truth? As we recognize the
partiality of reportage, are there documents of subjective truth?
Contained Excavation is a project of the enaction of memory. If this is a psychogeoraphy, it is one that connects impressions of a place with the architecture of the studio. Using the video I shot on site, I am re-presenting the studio space as a theatrical or performative space of memory. Presented in fragments, framed like memorials, it re-enacts the dissolution of memory, even as the hand traces a connective pattern onto the wall of the present. As the character of the maker, I trace the lines of the video footage onto the wall of the small room.
Detritus of the room's materials, as well as those of the presented landscape, line the walls and crunch underfoot. If the studio space is a workshop of memory and materials, the physical construction of it - the materials of the walls, the paint, the floor - may it become imbued with the memory of the artist? Perhaps the materials themselves have their own shock to make sense of. Perhaps they have material memories of their own, guiding a slow return to their original states.
Video footage, graphite, mixed media, performance, Concordia University, 2009