Got inspired by my reading mentioned in the last post, I started to think about the relationship between container and contained. I found that many things became not functional generally when they’re loose/not contained:
It’s similar to the separation of ego and body/body and space, which leads to loose ego and empty body.
If I only want to capture the moments of being empty, I could just photograph the above pairs. However, the point of my idea is the futility of attempts to fill the empty inside. So I thought of the following inappropriate pairs:
I spent many days thinking about how to show both the emptiness and futility at the same time. Finally I found I had to mix the objects because of the cross-relationships among the objects:
Roxana’s body and her house are bound together by parallel clauses in an identity she will learn to exploit. Within this chilling interior emptiness she begins a series of invisible occupancies, secretly inhabiting (and learning to control) spaces that appear closed and empty to the rest of the world […]
CYNTHIA WALL
Using body to fill the space is interesting. I actually thought about it before but wasn’t sure about meanings.
Jane herself, like Bertha, refuses to accept such imprisonment, and one of the leading dramatic tensions in the novel assumes the spatial form of a struggle between container and contained, between an enclosure (house, room, body) and an emotional quickening at its central core […]
KAREN CHASE
The relationship between container and contained is interesting. What have to be contained?
The door, however, in a stricter and more obvious manner demonstrates that the acts of separating and relating are but two sides of the same act. The human being who was the first to build a hut demonstrated – much like the one who was first to build a path – the specifically human know-how (with which he confronts nature) by carving a parcel out of the continuity and infinity of space and by designing this parcel into a separate whole according to one meaning. By doing so, a piece of space was unified in itself and separated from the rest of the world. The door cancels the separation of the inside from the outside because it constitutes a link between the space of the human and everything which is outside of it. Exactly because the door can be opened, its being shut gives a feeling of being shut out, that is stronger than the feeling emanating from a solid wall. The wall is silent but the door speaks. It satisfies their deepest nature when humans define their own limitations but do so with freedom, i.e., in such a fashion that they can remove the limitation and put themselves outside of it.
GEORG SIMMEL
The door relates the finite unity – as which we have constituted a piece of infinite space designated for us – again to infinite space.
GEORG SIMMEL
From the door […] life flows out of the limitedness of the isolated being-by-yourself, and it flows into the unlimited number of directions in which paths can lead.
GEORG SIMMEL
I thought of door as the link between inside and outside before but didn’t know how to interact with it. The words above articulate the meaning of the door so well that I’m impressed. I think I will think about it further after I finish this book.
Inspired by the content I read in the last post, I want to try to explore further based on the photos I took. To place objects in inappropriate environment, it shows more difficulties for me to interact with the objects, creating a stronger sense of futility and also making the situations worse. There’re 5 scenes I think of:
I considered longer about the last scene as nothing seems empty. As I thought further, I started to think that we expect to see clothes on hangers or in washing machines/dryers, so it would show an absence of clothes and the futility of trying to get clothes from the washing machine/dryer while only getting an empty hanger.
I wanted to use the washing machine in the last series of photos but I couldn’t think of an interaction with it. The idea of the use of washing machine was inspired by Helen CHADWICK’s In the Kitchen (Washing Machine), 1977:
Shoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the dining-table; food is not dirty in itself, but it is dirty to leave cooking utensils in the bedroom, or food bespattered on clothing; similarly, bathroom equipment in the drawing room; clothing lying on chairs; outdoors things indoors; upstairs things downstairs; under-clothing appearing where over-clothing should be.
Idbid. pp. 44-5. Arthur Danto makes a similar claim by citing a passage from Charles Darwin:” A smear of soup in a man’s beard looks disgusting, though there is of course nothing disgusting in the soup itself.” Danto continues that “there is nothing disgusting in the sight of a baby with food all over its face, though, depending on circumstances, we may find it disgusting that a grown man’s face should be smeared with marinara sauce.” (The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), p. 53).
It’s interesting how same things don’t fit in different environment.
Sometimes it’s a relief to be told what to do.
July and Fletcher
That’s very true. Thinking takes a lot of effort and it can be really exhausting. Sometimes not thinking is so relaxing.
I’m shocked by this performance:
I found I’m especially attracted to performance. I think it’s mostly because a lot of times the way they do performance in the real world connects the work and their life completely, which takes so much courage. I’m not sure how much I can do for art or if I can just live for art, nothing else. It’s not an essential element for art but the attitude towards it could make a difference I think. I was asked if I was happy recently and I didn’t know how to answer it. Is it important? It used to be the most important thing for me but it seems I have never really achieved it, which is why I’m doing what I’m doing now. And now, I don’t know anything important except focusing on what I’m doing.
Some tooling up stems from artists realizing that their own bodies are the cheapest, and most readily available, material of all; with minimal adjustments, they can pull to new use.
Art in the Making
That’s very true.
Eva Wang