DUST AND POWER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - Nc … AND POWER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY documenting energy and entropy...
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DUST AND POWER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY documenting energy and entropy in a domestic space Sally Van Gorder Graduate Candidate Art + Design NCSU College of Design STATEMENT OF WORK This project examines domestic dust and debris as autobiographical narrative and challenges conventional models of communicating self-story by employing household erosion as primary subject matter. Images of this detritus will take form as an installation that explores the intersections of printmaking, photography and video. In developing an abstracted visual language of dust that suggests the non-figurative, this project participates in new ways of creating narrative, and reframes the ideology of “the personal is political”. INTRODUCTION This work developed out of an interest in the home as a site of investigation. Documenting the routines associated with domestic maintenance through printmaking, photography, sound and video, the project focuses on dust and its potential as a form of autobiography. In researching the practices of female artists whose work addresses roles of domestic maintenance and care-giving, as well as the work of artists centered around processes of collection, documentation and classification, the project establishes a methodology for examining and representing the unnoticed and discarded evidence of daily domestic life. Working within a material culture framework, the project draws from visual autobiography, archeology, abjection theory, and feminist theory to develop ways of thinking about dust as a compelling narrative material. In complementing traditional visual art methods and materials with scientific techniques of observation and recording, this project develops work in which the subjective and objective form a contradictory yet complementary relationship. By focusing on household dust, and the kind of information about human patterns of behavior and values it contains, the project exposes the overlooked or disregarded, in physical, social, psychological, and political terms. TOOLS, TECHNIQUES & MATERIALS The project begins with documenting a variety of domestic chores through photography, video, sound, and printmaking. Through an iterative process of organizing recordings and experimenting with media, the project explores how representations of one element the chores attempt to get rid of – domestic dust and debris – can generate autobiograph- ical narrative. The detritus in the lint pan, the vacuum bag, the HVAC filters, etc. are all locations of collection where dust is pulled together, quarantined in small containment spaces, and finally disposed of. The detritus is of course less noticeable when dispersed, and possibly only visible upon collection. This suggests an analogy to invisible identities and populations. By looking at chores and, ultimately, dust in many different ways, the project attempts to present a complex but focused view of the topic. On the one hand this dust and debris is trash or refuse; the expectation is that the clean house is a “good” house. There is a daily effort to meet an expectation that can never be met. A house can never be clean. To sanitize it would be to kill it. The dust is evidence of the life. The project includes the following media and methods of making: Still photography, time-lapse photography, high-resolution scanning, 3-D scanning, photogrammetry, camera-less photography, microscopy, video, intaglio printmaking, relief printmaking, monotype, chine colle, sound recording. HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY INFLUENCES Presenting the domestic environment as a complex, interconnected organism, this project expands upon precedent work from the 1960s to the present that explores the everyday aspects of caregiving and domestic maintenance. Through recording banal, domestic activities and collecting the resulting artifacts of dust, lint and debris, this project draws upon practices of scientific observation and documentation from the mid-nineteenth- century to the present day, to examine dust for its narrative potential. This project builds upon the work of female artists examining domestic roles as frame- work for an art practice and exploring alternative forms of autobiographical narrative: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance Art (1969–ongoing), Mary Kelly, Post Partum Document (1973–79), Kriszta Nagy, I Am a Contemporary Housewife (1997–98), Tierney Gearon, The Mother Project (2006), Moyra Davey, Long Life Cool White (2008) This project also draws upon artists that investigate methods of collection, documenta- tion and classification as a primary communicative device: Anna Atkins, Photographs of British algae: cyanotype impressions (1840), Mark Dion, Raiding Neptunes Vault (1997) and Tate Thames Dig (1999) The use of dust, lint and debris as a primary material for making in this project has been influenced by other artists working with trash and the discarded: Cornelia Parker, The Negative of Words (1996), Mass: Colder Darker Matter (1997) and Heart of Darkness (2004), El Anatsui, Man’s Cloth (1998–2001) THEORY The ideas explored in this project are influenced by theories and positions around waste generally located within material culture studies, the relationship between people and things. Gleaning from perspectives on domestic maintenance and waste management in visual autobiography, archeology, abjection theory, and feminist theory, this project explores a new autobiographical form through the collection and representation of dust. Michael Thompson’s 1979 book Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, makes the point that waste is now not only understood as an economically determined material, but also as a cultural construction. William Viney’s Waste: A Philosophy of Things, provides several examples of artists working with ideas around waste in the field of material culture. Stephanie Foote, in Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice, points to the recent trend of artists using the post-consumption material of waste as a primary medium. One of the concepts in the emerging interdisciplinary sub-field of critical discard studies, which concerns what is systematically left out or left behind, is abjection, explored via a range of methodologies including visual art. This project embraces the idea that domestic dust and debris, the shed remnants of our bodies, our things and our environment still retain us and hold our story. Although unrecognizable as fragments and particles, perhaps through dust’s continuous dissolve, the need for a malleable narrative is met. RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER DISCIPLINES This project makes connections to ideas – and methods of investigation – in the related disciplines of forensic science and microbiology. Contributing processes of collection, examination, and analysis that identify and connect events, forensic science and microbiology provide a narrative framework from which cultural meaning and value can be derived. In referencing the trace evidence approach to crime-scene investigation and emergent DNA sampling studies of dust, this project creates a symbiotic juxtaposition of the subjective with the objective. Science photography fosters recording methodologies with a seemingly objective position. Microscopy, in particular offers tools with which to look deeply into the composition and structure of material. It is from this locus of apparent neutral looking that this project seeks to explore the personal subject matter and subjective experience of autobiography. In finding out what dust contains and what it looks like through the lens of science, this project experiments with the construction of a self-story. Reflecting upon the way in which the sciences seek to reveal the hidden or unknown: “Each bit of dust is a microhistory of your life” Rob Dunn, Professor of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Timothy Dow. Light Writing & Life Writing: Photography in Autobiography. Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Print., Amato, Joseph Anthony. Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2000. Print., Arefin, Mohammed Rafi. “Abjection: A definition for discard studies.” Discard Studies: Social studies of waste, pollution, & externalities. 2015.Web., Dunn, Rob. “The First National Inventory of All Household Life (on a Swab).” Your Wild Life: Exploring biodiversity in our daily lives. 25 Aug. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015., Foote, Stephanie, and Elizabeth Mazzolini, eds. Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 10 Sept 2015., Holmes, Hannah. The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things. New York: Wiley, 2001. Print., Keller, Corey. Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840 - 1900. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2009. Print., Molesworth, Helen. “House Work and Art Work.” October 92 (2000): 71-97. JSTOR. Web. 7 Dec 2014., Rexer, Lyle. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography. New York: Aperture, 2009. Print., Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson, eds. Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Print., Steiner, Barbara, and Jun Yang. Autobiography: Art Works. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004. Print., Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 1999. Print., Viney, William. Waste: A Philosophy of Things. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Print., Whiteley, Gillian. Junk : Art and the Politics of Trash. London, GBR: I.B. Tauris, 2010. ProQuest ebrary. Web.
Transcript of DUST AND POWER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - Nc … AND POWER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY documenting energy and entropy...
DUST AND POWER: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHYdocument ing energy and entropy in a domest ic spaceSally Van Gorder Graduate Candidate Art + Design NCSU College of Design
STATEMENT OF WORKThis project examines domestic dust and debris as autobiographical narrative and challenges conventional models of communicating self-story by employing household erosion as primary subject matter. Images of this detritus will take form as an installation that explores the intersections of printmaking, photography and video. In developing an abstracted visual language of dust that suggests the non-figurative, this project participates in new ways of creating narrative, and reframes the ideology of “the personal is political”.
INTRODUCTIONThis work developed out of an interest in the home as a site of investigation. Documenting the routines associated with domestic maintenance through printmaking, photography, sound and video, the project focuses on dust and its potential as a form of autobiography. In researching the practices of female artists whose work addresses roles of domestic maintenance and care-giving, as well as the work of artists centered around processes of collection, documentation and classification, the project establishes a methodology for examining and representing the unnoticed and discarded evidence of daily domestic life.Working within a material culture framework, the project draws from visual autobiography, archeology, abjection theory, and feminist theory to develop ways of thinking about dust as a compelling narrative material. In complementing traditional visual art methods and materials with scientific techniques of observation and recording, this project develops work in which the subjective and objective form a contradictory yet complementary relationship. By focusing on household dust, and the kind of information about human patterns of behavior and values it contains, the project exposes the overlooked or disregarded, in physical, social, psychological, and political terms.
TOOLS, TECHNIQUES & MATERIALSThe project begins with documenting a variety of domestic chores through photography, video, sound, and printmaking. Through an iterative process of organizing recordings and experimenting with media, the project explores how representations of one element the chores attempt to get rid of – domestic dust and debris – can generate autobiograph-ical narrative. The detritus in the lint pan, the vacuum bag, the HVAC filters, etc. are all locations of collection where dust is pulled together, quarantined in small containment spaces, and finally disposed of. The detritus is of course less noticeable when dispersed, and possibly only visible upon collection. This suggests an analogy to invisible identities and populations.
By looking at chores and, ultimately, dust in many different ways, the project attempts to present a complex but focused view of the topic. On the one hand this dust and debris is trash or refuse; the expectation is that the clean house is a “good” house. There is a daily effort to meet an expectation that can never be met. A house can never be clean. To sanitize it would be to kill it. The dust is evidence of the life.
The project includes the following media and methods of making:Still photography, time-lapse photography, high-resolution scanning, 3-D scanning, photogrammetry, camera-less photography, microscopy, video, intaglio printmaking, relief printmaking, monotype, chine colle, sound recording.
HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY INFLUENCESPresenting the domestic environment as a complex, interconnected organism, this project expands upon precedent work from the 1960s to the present that explores the everyday aspects of caregiving and domestic maintenance. Through recording banal, domestic activities and collecting the resulting artifacts of dust, lint and debris, this project draws upon practices of scientific observation and documentation from the mid-nineteenth- century to the present day, to examine dust for its narrative potential.
This project builds upon the work of female artists examining domestic roles as frame-work for an art practice and exploring alternative forms of autobiographical narrative:
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance Art (1969–ongoing), Mary Kelly, Post Partum Document (1973–79), Kriszta Nagy, I Am a Contemporary Housewife (1997–98), Tierney Gearon, The Mother Project (2006), Moyra Davey, Long Life Cool White (2008)
This project also draws upon artists that investigate methods of collection, documenta-tion and classification as a primary communicative device:
Anna Atkins, Photographs of British algae: cyanotype impressions (1840), Mark Dion, Raiding Neptunes Vault (1997) and Tate Thames Dig (1999)
The use of dust, lint and debris as a primary material for making in this project has been influenced by other artists working with trash and the discarded:
Cornelia Parker, The Negative of Words (1996), Mass: Colder Darker Matter (1997) and Heart of Darkness (2004), El Anatsui, Man’s Cloth (1998–2001)
THEORYThe ideas explored in this project are influenced by theories and positions around waste generally located within material culture studies, the relationship between people and things. Gleaning from perspectives on domestic maintenance and waste management in visual autobiography, archeology, abjection theory, and feminist theory, this project explores a new autobiographical form through the collection and representation of dust.
Michael Thompson’s 1979 book Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, makes the point that waste is now not only understood as an economically determined material, but also as a cultural construction. William Viney’s Waste: A Philosophy of Things, provides several examples of artists working with ideas around waste in the field of material culture. Stephanie Foote, in Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice, points to the recent trend of artists using the post-consumption material of waste as a primary medium. One of the concepts in the emerging interdisciplinary sub-field of critical discard studies, which concerns what is systematically left out or left behind, is abjection, explored via a range of methodologies including visual art.
This project embraces the idea that domestic dust and debris, the shed remnants of our bodies, our things and our environment still retain us and hold our story. Although unrecognizable as fragments and particles, perhaps through dust’s continuous dissolve, the need for a malleable narrative is met.
RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER DISCIPLINESThis project makes connections to ideas – and methods of investigation – in the related disciplines of forensic science and microbiology. Contributing processes of collection, examination, and analysis that identify and connect events, forensic science and microbiology provide a narrative framework from which cultural meaning and value can be derived. In referencing the trace evidence approach to crime-scene investigation and emergent DNA sampling studies of dust, this project creates a symbiotic juxtaposition of the subjective with the objective.
Science photography fosters recording methodologies with a seemingly objective position. Microscopy, in particular offers tools with which to look deeply into the composition and structure of material. It is from this locus of apparent neutral looking that this project seeks to explore the personal subject matter and subjective experience of autobiography.
In finding out what dust contains and what it looks like through the lens of science, this project experiments with the construction of a self-story.
Reflecting upon the way in which the sciences seek to reveal the hidden or unknown:“Each bit of dust is a microhistory of your life” Rob Dunn, Professor of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHYAdams, Timothy Dow. Light Writing & Life Writing: Photography in Autobiography. Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Print., Amato, Joseph Anthony. Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2000. Print., Arefin, Mohammed Rafi. “Abjection: A definition for discard studies.” Discard Studies: Social studies of waste, pollution, & externalities. 2015.Web., Dunn, Rob. “The First National Inventory of All Household Life (on a Swab).” Your Wild Life: Exploring biodiversity in our daily lives. 25 Aug. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015., Foote, Stephanie, and Elizabeth Mazzolini, eds. Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 10 Sept 2015., Holmes, Hannah. The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things. New York: Wiley, 2001. Print., Keller, Corey. Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840 - 1900. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2009. Print., Molesworth, Helen. “House Work and Art Work.” October 92 (2000): 71-97. JSTOR. Web. 7 Dec 2014., Rexer, Lyle. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography. New York: Aperture, 2009. Print., Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson, eds. Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Print., Steiner, Barbara, and Jun Yang. Autobiography: Art Works. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004. Print., Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 1999. Print., Viney, William. Waste: A Philosophy of Things. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Print., Whiteley, Gillian. Junk : Art and the Politics of Trash. London, GBR: I.B. Tauris, 2010. ProQuest ebrary. Web.
