abstract v. 2 - to be revisited

Subjective Narrating of Objects

In my project an object (a football) triggers a whole narrative about economy, war, and entertainment.

In the research paper I will be looking at different artistic practices that shifted the object from its physical state to a narrative dimension.

Hollis Frampton worked on a video entitled "Lemon" where "a light moves slowly around the fruit describing it as defiantly three dimensional, touchable almost, until the light is entirely behind it, the fruit made into a perfect silhouette, three dimensions irreducibly made two, a flat shape that is nothing but a shadow of itself, a space of no light on the screen."

On a narrative note, Marcel Proust's Madeleine cookie triggers almost 180 pages of describing childhood memories in his autobiographical book "A la recherche du temps perdu" (Remembrance of Things Past): "And as soon as I had recognised the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents ... the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along

which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine."

Michael Craig-Martin's "An Oak Tree" is a glass of water standing on a shelf attached to the gallery wall next to which is a text arguing that it is an actual oak tree. In an interview with myartspace.com the artist says that "on one occasion when it (the oak tree artwork) was barred by Australian Customs officials from entering the country as vegetation, I was forced to explain it was really a glass of water ... an incident that ... extended into 'real life' the discussion about belief and doubt, and fact and fiction I was addressing in the work."

I will be exploring how different art practitioners have worked on narrating objects in different eras, thus examining the relationship between inanimate physical objects in everyday life and in museums and objects as data.

I have been reading about the cult of less, an initiative by a young software engineer, Kelly Sutton, to get rid of everything he owns by digitizing all his possessions, and then keeping the few cherished objects, selling the ones that could benefit other people and ship the rest of the goods he owns but don’t interest him.

In a BBC interview, Kelly is described as the '21st-Century minimalist’; he says he “got rid of much of his clutter because he felt the ever-increasing number of available digital goods have provided adequate replacements for his former physical possessions.” He got rid of most of his assets, apart from his iPad, Kindle, laptop and a few other items, replacing his actual records with mp3s, his photographs are now digitized and uploaded on Flickr, he credits his external hard drives and online services like Hulu, Facebook, Skype and Google Maps for allowing him to lead a minimalist life.

I will be stressing more on the today's digitized data of objects and looking on how narrative is affected by that matter.