wall installation Poetry of Motion, St Louis, MO, USA 2005
POETRY OF MOTION
The impetus generated from my installation Safe House, Austral Gallery, St Louis, MO, USA, 1993, was significant enough to launch and extended series of projects that have spanned several continents and touched many different interest groups over a period of 17 years.
This Drawing Installation Project came about through a process of assimilation. Oxford university dictionary; ’To take in and fully understand (information or ideas)è (of a society or culture) absorb and integrate (people, ideas or culture)’
The Safe House collection of images and texts was done over a period of 4 months. The work, by necessity, was executed in a linear fashion and, therefore in process, much the same as writing a book. There were collections of images and texts which could be defined as chapters, certain individual sequences and themes which functioned as punctuation, while the overall themes were interwoven into the fabric of the installation by a consistency of format and technique.
The collection was never ‘installed’ prior to the installation at Austral Gallery. It was never seen as a three-dimensional body of work before the Safe House installation and the images and texts were not referenced one against one during production.
Thematically the collection addressed personal and global questions of what it means to feel safe – the reassurances we receive from so called expert, authoritative sources and people we trust.
Many of the primary questions were directed at the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry while others touched the nuclear industry, the environment and the politics of domestic safety.
Having prepared the collection, as already stated above, in a linear fashion, the only way to execute the installation was in situ. This meant the finished work remained conceptual until the last piece was installed. This is not necessarily exceptional with installation work, however the number of works involved with Safe House (941 individual works) made the permutations and computations of the piece exceptional.
The installation stage of the work was (like) re-writing the book as a three-dimensional structure with vertical, horizontal and diagonal reading. It was not only the reading requirement which had to be taken into consideration in the global work but also the visual aesthetic and the simultaneous cross referencing that was integral to the dynamic of the body of work.
Once the collection became 3dimensional the individual integrity of each piece became simultaneously more important and less important. More important because its inclusion in the whole was essential to the final design aspect of the installation and less important because it was now surrounded by 940 other works. Evidently there was some editing involved in the final selection and the total number of works was closer to a thousand.
Even before starting on the collection the intention was always to make the works available individually.
Once the walls were constructed the possibility of someone wanting to acquire a block of works raised the issue about works within the block that may have been already acquired as individual pieces. MY response to this question was, that they would have to select another piece from somewhere else in the collection.
As it turned out this situation never presented itself during the first installation of Safe House or during any of the many different subsequent configurations and installations. The selection process for the viewer was evidently very personal and it became immediately apparent that people were constructing their own stories from the collection.
The first public viewing of Safe House turned the traditional opening night crowd around. The visitors, instead of gathering in the center of the gallery space, took to the walls and began actively ‘reading’ the images and text. What is normally a public engagement became very intimate as people selected works from the extremes of the 4,5 meter high walls.
The Gallery was neighbour to a women’s shelter and a number of those involved in the center were present at the opening. The intimacy of the emotional dialogue expressed in the collection clearly triggered key emotional markers for several of the women.
It was at this point, realizing the permutations and computations of any given collection and the power of the collective to communicate difficult and sensitive issues, that I became interested in and excited by the potential for this model to be converted into a group project.
The initial model was designed for a group of young people involved in the Green Peace movement sailing from port to port in the Mediterranean during the summer of 1993.
Targeting their environmental concerns, the collection was to be installed, documented, then disassembled at each different port of call. Ultimately this specific project did not come to fruition, however the model went on to serve as the basis for 12 other projects.
The first drawing installation project took place in Chicago as part of the 1994 Gallery 37 summer programme. Gallery 37 offered inner city youth the opportunity to work on one of a number of different projects as apprentice artists. The projects were not imposed but proposed, so each individual could decide which artist they wanted to work with and therefore with which themes they wanted to engage. The global theme for my project was ‘self-exploration.’
This theme attracted a group of about 20 young people with varied background and experience. Almost invariably the members of the group had a range of serious personal issues to explore such as incest, rape, families refugeed post Chernobyl. It was a very emotive workshop which demanded a high level of self-exposure. However, because of the limitations on format, materials and the number of works demanded by the production process, each individual work allowed for the possibility of an ambiguous interpretation or reading. This gave the participants the opportunity to express themselves without too much specificity of information.
The process gives the participants the freedom to poetize their dialogue by sourcing key words and phrases, separating and spreading an intensely personal text over several ‘pages’; the intensity of the interpretation is simultaneously heightened and dispersed.
The project demands several levels of engagement. Subjective personal expression/ objective self-critique/ working as a team to create a composition.
That is:
1 Firstly the willingness to participate in a group project of subjective self-expression.
2 Secondly the capacity to work alone but in a group environment with a common goal.
3 Thirdly the ability to be selectively objective with one’s work.
4 And finally to contribute to the collective composition.
The collective parts of the project #3 and #4, offer several important aspects:
Each individual is asked to select from between 40 and 50* pieces from their collection and lay them out together as one work; for- example a composition of 6 x 9. It is here that the poetry of the collective work starts to impact. While forcing the participants to be objective about their own work it also gives them the opportunity, as they construct their own ‘concrete’ poem, to decide which images and words are most important to them.
(* this number varies depending on production and final installation space)
this is the first part of the shift from the linear to the 3 dimensional.
They are then asked to deconstruct their poem then reconstruct and reconfigure it as part of the collective.
The ‘collective artefact’ respects the aesthetic of each individual part and acts as a map describing the topography of the group with the song lines of the individual.
Regardless of the group there is a synergy that immerges over the period of the workshop. Even with each individual working alone the dynamics of the collective image making quickly develops its own semiology that can be referenced to societies where collective symbolic representation holds the key their social and spiritual order.
In respect of the applicability of the project to the disabled and special needs groups I believe the key factor is to establish an atmosphere where the fear of failure or to create is reduced to a minimum. The greater part of this is achieved by limiting the number of choices required of each participant; everyone works on the same format with the same material and the same tools.
The envisaged number of works produced by each person is so high (upwards of 100 pieces) that it allows for a high level of final selectivity. Which means each individual can afford to eliminate more than half of what they produce. This reduces the importance of succeeding with each piece and allows them to enter into the flow of dialogue more freely.
At the beginning of the project reducing the options for production gives priority to the content. As the process progresses and becomes easier for each individual the aesthetic quality of the images is addressed.
Generally the participants in any given group (regardless of disability or special needs) are asked to think of several key words, a phrase, a line from a poem, a song or simple prose. The reason for starting with words is because, in general, we have better facility with spoken and written language. When writing skills are in absence the starting point can be direct to visuals because written and spoken language don’t act as inhibitors.
‘The Poetry of Motion’ a project conducted in 2005 in St Louis Missouri, USA, with a group of children with Cerebral Palsy, was a pilot programme for those with physical disability. The children were selected from the patient group under the care of Dr. Janice Brunstrom-Hernandez, Pediatric Neurologist and director of the Pediatric Neurology Cerebral Palsy center at St Louis Children’s Hospital. Dr.Brunstrom was herself diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy when she was a child so has a profound understanding of the difficulties associated with the condition. After introducing several groundbreaking innovations into the physical care of her patients through martial arts and sporting activities she was inspired by the artwork of a young French boy with cerebral palsy. Paul was a student at the school in la Perrière where I did a drawing installation project in 2003.
Dr. Brunstrom once again extended the boundaries of the predictions for individuals with disabilities by inviting me to come to St Louis and conduct a two-week workshop with a group of her patients. It was, to say the least, simultaneously magical and uplifting and a very difficult heart-rending experience for me.
The programme for the workshop was 3 hours morning and afternoon for ten days. Intensive, and exhausting for the team and the young artists as it was, the energy and application of every member of the group was without question.
There was an assistant assigned to each child, volunteers, and some therapists with experience in the field. Certain adaptations to the equipment were required depending on the mobility of each individual. We had hand braces that were designed to hold brushes. And we were able to devise improvised systems for stable water and ink containers. The format of the paper was augmented to allow for broad movement. Otherwise very little change was made to the structure of the project. Accommodating the process for individuals with special physical needs is part of the organic nature of the project.
After a description of how the project would proceed, we discussed some of the groups primary concerns in life. As a starting point I asked them to think about and target key words or phrases but not necessarily to write them down. They were to search for personal symbols in their work and aim at producing a hundred pieces.
One of the advantages of using brushes and ink as a medium is that almost everyone is a novice. Apart from calligraphy it is not a technique commonly used in art practice, certainly not as a way of writing and rarely as a drawing method. It demands that everyone rethinks the way they convey information. It is difficult to control and therefore in a certain way liberating.
This project has been implemented in the USA, Australia and France with various groups with special needs and/or special interests.
