Had a play around with photographing the pot like a still life on Sunday.
I don’t think the medium is particularly effective, but whilst I was finding things to use in the photo I started to think about how people might interact with the pot. Maybe they do place little votive offerings around/in it, maybe with the goal of protection or good fortune.
I’m now thinking I want to partially fill the bowl with wards/offerings/charms and see how that feels. Perhaps I could ask others to place something in their to bring them protection etc? Or does that stray from my concept a bit?
She mentions how people used belamine jugs to ward off evil spirits by placing things like bent nails in them. Can I do something along those lines and put things in there to protect the harvest? If people do that would they place the jug in the midst of their crops to keep them safe? Or would they put them somewhere within the home? What things would I put in there?
I’ve already been thinking about the acoustic qualities of my pot, I want to put microphones in there and record the conversations around it to see what/how it picks things up.
Core to my practice this term is exploring how the Anthropocene, and the changes to the environment that comes with it, will transform and shape our spirituality in the centuries to come.
I believe that changes to our growing seasons, weather patterns and our access to resources will create new traditions. Our ability to adapt to different environments is core to our survival and at every point in the past where those environments have changed new belief systems and rituals have arisen. Longer growing seasons in parts of Europe might lead to a renewed focus on the Harvest as an important time of year; longer, harsher winters caused by the loss of the Gulf Stream and potentially the loss of the Great Ocean Current would surely change our behaviour during that period and our response to the coming of Spring.
I want to explore what these changes might look like, how we move through both the seasons and our new environment by combining scientific predictions and fantastical imaginings of a proto-future.
One of the digital collages I’ve made. Jen pointed out that using images from the 50s/60s suggests this in an alternative timeline, rather than a photo from the future (pretty obvious now I think about it).
I like the idea of using the buildings we have and retrofitting them with the things we’ll need to 100 odd years. It’s hard to believe that people wouldn’t use the buildings around them, interspersed with their own constructions that are designed for the climate. So maybe a pathway to go down next term is to explore that side of things?
Work I saw at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal a couple of weeks ago.
The top picture is known as ‘The Great Picture’ commissioned by Lady Anne Clifford, depicting her life. I’m wondering whether I could do something similar digitally with my pot? I’ve been thinking about its place in the domestic setting and as part of a larger holiday, could I make postcards/posters/calendars showing it in use, like current holiday cards?
I’ve made some digital collages using the pot but I don’t know how effective they are, Jen said to bear in mind how the photos I use impact the narrative. Not sure where to take them from here
Progress shots of making the pot over the last 6 weeks. Unfortunately Tumblr caps the amount of images you upload so I can’t show the progress of every face
“Living History tries to take a perspective on our present, from some future. What will the people of two centuries hence think when viewing the images we’re creating in these early days of virtual reality?”
Policing Genes:
“Pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with pharming – genetically engineering plants to produce useful and valuable drugs. Currently undergoing field trials are tomato plants that produce a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease and potatoes that immunise against hepatitis B. … However, the techniques employed to insert genes into plants are within reach of the amateur…and the criminal. Policing Genes speculates that, like other technologies, genetic engineering will also find a use outside the law, with innocent-looking garden plants being modified to produce narcotics and unlicensed pharmaceuticals.”
—-> This artist is very relevant to me, he constructs realistic and near-touchable proto-futures through research (a bit like my current practice). The process of documenting things from futures that may or may not exist is really interesting, I found the video work in particular very helpful as there’s a level of authenticity that I struggle with. It didn’t feel silly or outlandish at all. Also using actual footage of the present and then simply telling us it’s a reconstruction from the future is very clever – I might try something along those line in my own practice.
The video of the artists scanning the work. (Hyperallergic see link in previous post)
—> This is fascinating to me when you think about the idea of stealing an artefact simply by publicising its data. The questions around what will be preserved where and how that will impact our cultural memories around the world are really important to ask ourselves and to try and find answers too. I also like the fact that there are now possibly multiple busts of Nefertiti which could have been altered/hacked that will exist in our historic/archaeological record.
could this become a norm? does anything exist outside of a virtual data set anymore? in the future could we simply scan the things we find to gain information? is this post-human? How does this effect my work –> if museums and regulatory bodies control access to history then how does that effect the wider population’s understanding of said history? Does history become more decentralised, like agriculture, can you simply find artefacts online and download them, if so then who controls information if anyone? How does this effect how people tell stories? How people remember each other and their culture?
Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles, Nefertiti Hack.
The two artists covertly scanned the bust of Nefertiti using 3D scanners in the German museum. They then used a 3D printer to create an exact replica and donated it to the museum of Cairo, they also released the data online for anyone to download. Commenting on colonialism, empirism and power in the world of museums and art.
“The head of Nefertiti represents all the other millions of stolen and looted artifacts all over the world currently happening, for example, in Syria, Iraq, and in Egypt,” Al-Badri said. “Archaeological artifacts as a cultural memory originate for the most part from the Global South; however, a vast number of important objects can be found in Western museums and private collections. We should face the fact that the colonial structures continue to exist today and still produce their inherent symbolic struggles.”
LFlynn Research Blog 