• People ignore the objects and walk past it. I kind of expected that people would pay attention to the interaction between people and the objects, although it wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I guess when I chose the locations in public space, social interaction would be automatically especially paid attention to. However, the point I want to make is the action itself, rather than an observation of other people or expectation of interaction, although lack of interaction does add the sense of futility of trying to be used/needed I think. But based on the action of trying to be objects, special attention shouldn’t really be expected/hoped because they are objects rather than humans. The reason why viewers pay attention to interaction is that they still see the objects as humans, which again tells the futility of being objects I think.
• Stuck compared to surroundings, so still performance. I think this view is still because the objects are seen as humans. But I think the feeling of being stuck is a bit related to futility when I don’t know where to go or what to do.
• Death vibe, creepy, ghostly. The reason why I use white cloth is that it’s usually used to cover objects when they won’t be used for a long time when the owners are away but at the same time it means they will be revealed. So for the objects, there’s a desire to be reused.
• Very white cloth taken the identity/life. Absence of person. Same person or different? Is it object? I think the fact that the performer is myself makes the work more convincing because I’m expressing my personal feeling. However, I think the idea still works if it’s a different person. I thought it’s obviously a person trying to be an object so I’m still very surprised that some people would think that it could be a real object. Maybe it’s easier to tell in real life instead of the screen.
• Invisible and hyper visible. I’m glad that Ekua noticed this, which is the reason why I used a white cloth to cover the body. And I think it’s an important point to tell the status of emptiness, which no one mentioned… So I’m not sure if it’s good work regards to my intention.
• Battle with oneself exposed. Cry for attention, trying to find people recognizing the objects. Out to people without interaction. Physical and mental to stand. The reaction to social space. Social relationship activated. Alienation among people. Keep people from engaging because so out of place. Pale white, no invitation. I’m happy that Ekua noticed the effort of trying to be objects, which is the key I think in this work as well as the motivation to pay this effort but no one talked about it. Most focus was still on social interaction.
• Title implies effort on something that doesn’t happen. Contradiction. Put yourself out there and cut yourself out. Lack of social response or putting yourself in position to get engaged. Do what you want to me and don’t come over. I wasn’t really thinking about this but I think it makes sense. The performer’s intention of being an object in public is to get used by others while this action of the performer is also the reason why it’s futile. It’s like to get rid of emptiness, I put myself out in the crowd to get attention/interaction but I myself also decide not to get involved/related in most of the crowd as I don’t feel they fit me.
• It’s not clear to tell it’s a bin. It’s very difficult to make the shape to my satisfaction although we spent about one hour to get a good one. But because I’m not the one to shape the final position, it may not come out as a best shape.
• Pretend to be a chair on a chair, something more. I was worried about this object because it’s kind of meaningless to try to be a chair on a chair although the shape came out of my body. As the last two videos were both a bit over an hour, so I expected all the videos of similar length but maybe it’s not necessary.
• Pretending to be the wall or clothes stand? I thought it’s clearly a clothes stand because of my arms with clothes hanging. But I guess because the other objects are placed next to real objects while the stand not, which makes it a bit confusing.
• Laptop behind the TV. Mirroring hidden and concealed individual. I actually used my laptop only to play the sound but it’s considered as a part of the work… But I like Olivia’s reading.
• Viewers of the screens don’t feel awkward. People who actually see it are confused. It’s a good point which I never thought about. I also thought of galleries and museums were such safe places for artwork. But art should exist in life because it comes from life although it’s much more challenging to make it happen in real life.
• Hide camera. I didn’t really think about it because I wasn’t trying to focus on the interaction. But I guess it also makes sense because now that I chose the scene in real life, I should make the setting more realistic as well.

The heaviest of burins crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

MILAN KUNDERA

An attempt of adding the weights.

So I had never really done my work or do something so weird in public. It was both exciting and frightening and I was literally dying while holding each position for over an hour. But I’m glad that I tried. It’s the first time that I’ve tried a video camera as well. It’s much smaller and lighter than I thought.

Clothes Stand

Bin

Chair

Thought for a long time about how I wanted to present the videos. Thought about monitors but there’re only 2 in white city. Thought about projectors but they require a dark environment, which I think too formal because the objects aren’t moving and there isn’t much dynamic content actually so it’s not much like a real performance for viewers to watch seriously I think. So there’s only TV left. I don’t want them to be on one screen because they’re in different locations. I thought for a while how to put the TVs because if I just put them on the tables, they just don’t look good as I imagine. Then I thought of putting them at different heights, clothes stand at eye level, chair at chair level and bin on the floor.

Installation View

It was driving me crazy to get a better photo and I found it’s the problem of the camera I was using when I used a better camera. But overall it’s just really difficult to get the angle right as the photo is not at the right angle itself with the frame.

Academic Tutorial

Only had time to edit one photo:

Hesitated a lot between photos more colorful or grayer. Then I decided on the more colorful one because I think the grayer one looks too peaceful and I want to give the “object” more mood or emotion. I have never really edited the color of photos so heavily as this one but I somehow like the effect of thickness and softness and I think being an object by a human is not so realistic itself so the effect is ok for not looking so real as in reality. It reminds me of Erwin Wurm’s photographic sculptures:

I showed the 5 photos and videos to Adam and he suggested me to shoot videos of the performances/sculptures in public spaces. He said it’s too easy in still images. I guess that as I’m talking about the futility of attempts, with a longer duration, the effort of the attempts and the sense of futility would be more obvious. As in public spaces, though people might have some reactions to the objects, I don’t expect any interaction to be honest, as there would be a camera and people would probably want to get away from it. But actually I’m not really looking for interactions, although it might be good. It’s more about the attempts from my side. But the fact that people don’t interact with the objects could also show the futility of the attempts I guess. I think in public spaces, the attempts would make more sense because they usually look out to interact with the outside world. Adam also shared Leah Capaldi and Rory Macbeth’s statue.

I found these 2 projects of Capaldi’s especially interesting:

I started to get how duration helped the emphasis on the theme. I’m again surprised at how the performer uses her body in the work and almost forgets herself I guess.

I paid attention to this because my work is also a body covered, although I don’t really know what it’s about.

Adam found connections between my photos and videos although I thought they were not related. But it’s true they’re based on the same initial idea. He mentioned about surface and membrane that light can go through but are not entirely seen through, like veil/fold/draped, as I’m exploring something not really reachable. He also shared The Fold by Deleuze. He suggested I could take portraits of the objects. I’m not very sure because I do want to have context for the objects.

Lecture & Workshop: ‘Making Things Public’

WIP Show

I’m not sure if I saw photography show… I’m surprised by how much texts for story telling are involved in contemporary art practice. I think it’s very interesting how many mediums are mixed in a same pathway or even a same project.

As I could only have the camera for a day so everything was done in a quite a hurry.

Shooting 5

I tried on-camera microphone and it turned out the videos silent… I also tried Tascam Recorder but the sound came out only in left channel somehow… But I have recorded the sound by my phone as well. I wanted to shoot them in the day but I didn’t have time so I decided to try first anyway. I’ll try to edit them and see how the video looks in the end, although I’m not quite sure if it conveys my ideas behind.

Shooting 6

Was reading about Meret Oppenheim:

She and artist Lilly Keller were cast as the curtains. Three years later, in 1959, she organized a Spring Banquet (Le Festin) in Bern for a few friends at which food was served on the body of a naked woman. The exhibit cause controversy, with Oppenheim accused of treating the female body as on object to be devoured.^[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Méret_Oppenheim

I suddenly got the idea of making oneself as objects. And I thought of some books I read, which I had also posted before:

If man ‘experienced himself as entirely passive, a mere object’, echoes Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, ‘he would lack a sense of his own will, of his identity. To compensate for this, he must acquire a sense of being able to do something’, Fromm continues, ‘or to use the most adequate English word, to be “effective”… To be able to effect something is the assertion that one is not impotent, but that one is an alive, functioning, human being. To be able to effect means to be active and not only to be affected, to be active and not only passive. It is, in the last analysis, the proof that one is. The principle can be formulated thus: I am, because I effect.’

The Experience of Architecture

Besides the positions of the body, to further remove the identity, I thought of covering the body. And I thought of Man Ray’s work:

It’s a status of being both present and absent. And I thought of using white cloth to cover the body to show the objects are to be/being used/needed.

The reason why I feel empty is that I don’t like myself. I don’t rely on my identity or I don’t really have an identity and I’m not relied on, either. Most of the time, I’m emotionally unavailable and I’m not making any difference to my surroundings, almost like an object. But an object is at least functional. The act of becoming an object is an attempt of evidencing my existence by being useful or needed by others, or being a part of the world. But those attempts don’t work. I’m physically in the moment of the attempts but my mind is seeking something else, which is a worse feeling than not taking those attempts.

I tried to do it myself but it’s impossible… So I asked my housemate to be my model and it’s more difficult that I thought. He had a hard time holding good positions and he’s big so some positions just don’t fit.

Thinking about the gap between inside and outside, I somehow thought of a scene of a flower contained in a clear ball being watered, which is like the situation where I’m contained in a shell that’s hard but fragile, light and hollow, and the inside is unable to be reached.

As I thought further, it would create a stronger contrast if it happened in a pot, just like a scene of watering a plant, and I should keep watering it even if the water and the ball spilled. Thinking about some feedback I got from SOI, I was told to think about fullness as well. I think the fullness of the water and the emptiness in the ball creates a stronger feeling of futility.

I considered about using a flower/leaf/feather and I decided to use a leaf as it related more to a single part from a whole than a flower, which indicates fragmentary ego better, and a leaf fits better in the scene of watering than a feather.

I also want to have sand in the pot as soil while sand doesn’t hold water, which creates the futility of the action.

I thought for a while where to shoot this scene and I decided it to be next to the window where the garden could be seen through to create a contrast between the dying single leaf inside and lively plants outside. And the windows should be shut, which gives a feeling of being isolated with the function that they can be opened, although people don’t go through windows but doors.

As I experimented with clear plastic balls before, I thought of using them at the beginning to contain the leaf. Then thinking about fragility, I decided to use glass. But I’ll try the plastic ball first before I receive glass balls. Also thought about the shape, I still want to use a ball because it’s like a planet as an individual.

I’m worried that the video would be really short because the clear pot I have is very small. So I thought about also shooting the set up of the scene including putting the leaf into the ball, putting sand into the pot, etc. But I decided just to shoot the action of watering because it’s the only meaningful moment. Although I’m still worried about this single scene too simple, I’ll try it first anyway. It’s better than nothing.