it’s dead. Rosie and Stephanie FMP pitch

‘Attachment to Toys’ Project, 2012, drawing.

Context

Past projects have devoted interest towards human psychology in the attachment and detachment to objects and other forms that connect to society as a whole.

We have been interested in creating a reaction or response with our work, we believe that art can produce new attitudes and highlight issues within society and the individual psyche.

Past projects have involved looking at the attachment to toys, and using the creative strategy of deconstruct and reconstruction to test these ideas and emotions. We have also created a deep interest con-textually and practically in collaboration by testing the boundaries of working together as physically attached practitioners.

We would like to continue this collaborative practice into the FMP , using the working ethic and designs to change/restrict our practice while changing our focus from collaborative practice to a new topic. This will be our main theme and focus with the attached collabora-tive element informing our practice.

‘Attachment to Toys’ project

Ceramics as a process and aesthetically pre-senting work. Dolls cast in plaster and latex.

Final Major Project - New concept

An investigation into societies detachment towards death.

Death is around us constantly, it gives and it takes away, it is the unknown and the mysterious.

Death Row- Ethics of ‘a life for a life’-Humanising side or ‘the symbolic social act‘ of giving the prison-ers their last meal and the dehumanisation that murder creates.

Road Kill -Something which is a more obvious form of death within our so-ciety.-We reject or normalise their death, the same way other cultures do with human death. - Neglect of Death, left on the road, uncared for and destroyed.

How death within societies can be perceived differently becasue of the social constructs which they live by. We normalise or accept roadkill and see it regularly. The death penalty in America is ac-cepted as a construct, therefore we want to look at how these ideas relate.

Issues that are arguably still neglected within different societies and that are powerful subjects of controversy and emotion. They hold a very current place in art practice, because the topics create public debate and conversation due to the moving and uncanny nature of them.

Whilst considering the serious nature of these topics we want to make light of these concepts and create a humorous perception of the issues.

To look at societies detachment from death by questioning death row, which other cultures might perceive as a normal part of society and the link to the everyday occurence of roadkill within our society, which we have normalised or come to terms with more?

Our intention is to address why we create a barrier against death to make it something unseen and frightening. We also want to explore the issues and problems or feelings about death row and how these emotions could be transferable to road-kill.

Death as a social construct which people are wary of even though it is the most natural and consistant variable of humans.

‘Death is the mother of all beauty’ Wallace Stevens, Title: Sunday Morning.

Questions to address:

Why do we instantly feel guilty for using the subject when other people have killed them.

Are we all murderers?

Does society have a deeper guilt that they are afraid to admit to? Should we protect this feeling by not mentioning the issue?

Highlighting the issues as avoidance may condition humanity to act worse or continue in its ways.

Are we conditioned to neglect death as a throw away society? Our emotions are what keeps us attached to people, but not roadkill?

Our culture only rarely sees death, however visually exposing death can be suggested as immoral and dissolute. We often thrive on these interesting stories of fatalities and casualties, but when it comes to personal trauma and the reality of death, it is a very serious matter.

Life is lost, never to return, the feelings of attachment and pain can be powerful, but death is natural, ordinary and even mundane.

Most of the time we ignore it and possibly make some passing, emo-tional remark that offers sympathy towards the flattened entity. How-ever the conditioning of overlooking death, bestows us with inno-cence. Therefore we could consider road kill to be a representation to what society neglects, how it avoids death and hides it from harming the population?

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Two Faced Cunt 1995 Fibreglass, resin and paint 103 x 56 x 25 cm

Challenge the visual morality of what should be used in their art and what shouldn’t. – Fused together mannequins of children usually with their genital areas at-tached. The also con-sistantly refer to death and create imagery of hell and scenerios of killings/death.

James Reynolds, Last Suppers

Kate MacDonald, ‘Death Penalty’, oil on canvas.Kate MacDonald ‘Death Penalty‘ Oil Painting

Bernard Amos (2011) Cprint

Mat Collishaw (opposite)

‘For some years, Collishaw has been interested in exploring the vexed moral issue of the aestheticisation of violence.’‘Today his project is to marry the idea of still life with last suppers on death row. What meal would you choose to die for? Would your taste be spartan or gluttonous?’

The comparison of last meals and food choices symbolising who we are or who we want to be.

Robin Cruz McGee (below) - The Road kill Serving Tray

Connecting link between todays economy. This serves as a cheaper alternative to a meal, using readily made available materials that that have been designed to function in time of need. Artist doing their part to help the environment?

Adam Morrigan

Adam Morrigan

Marco Evaristti

Helena (2000)

‘In this exhibition the audience was faced with two choices: either to push the button and kill the goldfish or to leave the liquidiser alone and pre-

serve its function as an aquarium. The installation puts temptation in the way of the visitor, challenging his/her ethics and morals.’

If the participant pushes the button, they become a part of the art work, and have to bear the consequences. This also breaks the boundaries of the art work and their morals. It also instantly becomes an interactive piece

by allowing the audience a role, whether they take it or not. They have to make their own decision.

Killme (2009)

‘Dolls sentenced to death, violent sculptures and drawings. Evaristti explores our inner world of demons which he displays with satire and grotesque dislocation. In continuation to his 2008 project “The Last

Fashion”, Barbie-style dolls are clothed in pieces from the satirical line of fashion designed for prisoners on death row. The dolls’ middle-class

accessories -- villa and sports car -- are replaced with gallows, an electric chair, and an execution bench. The face of the artist appears on the male doll and both dolls have been fitted with a voice box citing last sentenc-

es.’

Body fat meatballs

Seeing the body as an object rather than somthing that should be treas-ured.

‘By canning what was once part of his body as consumable and the dec-laration of unique traces of his own body as commodity, aesthetic art

consumption is transformed into an anthropophagic devouring of art in the sense of devouring, annihilating, destroying. In so doing, cannibal-

ism, which in Western thought is traditionally attributed to the primitive and other, is revealed as a cultural cannibalism in our own culture and in

ourselves.’

Nigel Grimmer (2000) Mum, ‘Roadkill Family Album‘

Simryn Gill, Roadkill, 2000

Context

Past work /ConceptsOur past collaborative work: We have a strong interest with visual representation. Working together is an important interest, from research of our most recent project; we believe that collaborative practice is the way forward in the production of art and design. Representations of life and preserving objects that are important to us has become a recurring theme in our work.

OUR new CONCEPT/Project

An investigation into societies detachment towards death

Understand and research the waves that form in society, sometimes culture adopts and accepts death, whereas in other times in the past and present culture death has been feared and something that is not acknowledged or expressed. Death is around us constantly; it gives and it takes away, it is the unknown and the mysterious.

The first interests:Death row Road kill

Both highlight death within societies and culture today, they can be metaphors for human act and describes the relation we have with death. Through a research and process related to death it can instantly begin to bring it into an interactive dimension that can create a relation and response. In this way we are questioning the attachment or detachment from death.

Processes – Working together and 3D work

In an interdisciplinary context, this project will combine different methods of documentation such as video, photography and 3d work, and will visually aid our representations with changes in processes and conceptual ideas. We will be examining things that are currently still neglected within different societies and that are a powerful subject of con-troversy and emotion. They hold a very current place in art prac-tice because artists and writers both look at these ideas to create public debate and conversation, due to the moving and uncanny nature of them.

Using current practice to inform a new project – 1. Collaboration physically within the apron2. Exploring death within our culture and others3. Away from the serious – lift the cover on death and make it humorous so that attitudes might be changed to a lighter feeling towards death. Making light of serious concepts and issues within society.

Ideas and Questions

Our intention is to address why we create a barrier against death to make it something unseen and frightening. We also want to explore the issues and problems or feelings about death row and how these emotions could be transferable to road-kill. Which creates the idea of road-kill being an everyday occurrence for our society, which is conditioned so that little guilt is felt.

DEATH ROW/ ROADKILL/ SOCIETY/ DETACHMENT AND AT-TACHMENT.

- Interesting to collect road-kill and then draw round them, to make shapes. - Photographing sending letters to Death Row- or send them, - Send letters to road kill / creating last meals for the road-kill- Children’s book – dot to dot of road-kill - Colouring book – morality, its something that everyone sees – pro-tection of naivety and youth.

Does American states accept death more? Is it more normal for them to have death in their society? Or is the motivation to kill making them less human and the same as the offender? The ritual offering of the last meal is to show compassion towards the prisoner; sometimes the warden will sit with them and eat, which is possibly completed to highlight the fact that they are still ‘civilized’ even though they will kill that person the next day. The last meal can be seen as haunting and absurd to our socie-ty, due to its symbolism and realisation of death.

Discussing this topic gives us interest towards also producing work relat-ed to it. We will apply our own relationship with death through possibili-ties of last meals for road kill.

America is a country of contradictory views and still in many states has death as a consequence of extremely bad human behaviour. ‘Death Row’/ ‘Capital Punishment’, in America has been debated in relation to its eth-ics and with themes concerning:

- All different levels of crimes in each state- Some states have abolished death penalty recently - Prisoners last meals being stopped by some institutions- Politics surrounding capital punishment relating to human rights

Aims and Objectives

• Explorethenotionofdeathwithaninterdisciplinaryandconceptu-al nature.

• Createdifferentvisualoutcomesateachstageoftheproject.

• Createlinksbetweendeathrow(adifferentculture)andoursocie-ties detachment from death. A death or massacre we do see is road-kill and how this effects our perception on animals, and our differences to them. This could also lead to ideas of being comforted by the animals/ toys which mimic this and why we therefore have a neglect to their life.

• Look at the themes and concepts, analytically and theoretically on a deeper level.

• Work as a joint collaborative team, to experiment and realise our pro-ject outcomes.

Method and Media

We will work with different mediums, using photography and video as a form of documentation and as possible outcomes. We are keen to ex-plore 3d in particular using ceramics to visualise our ideas.

Manipulation of materials as well as deconstruction and reconstruction has been a predominant process within our past projects and will con-tinue to aid our exploration of ideas and material outcomes.

Working collaboratively together.

Intention

We need to question whether it is going to be purely aesthetical or whether we intend to produce something functional.

We dont necessarily want our piece to be aesthetically pleasing, we want it to voice an idea or opinion which questions and represents our con-cept of societies relationship with death. Past projects involved processes of a multimedia nature, which this pro-ject will too. Displaying the outcome within the context of the gallery will mean thinking about how the audience and subject should be per-ceived.

Resources

We will need workshop access due to our particular interest in:- Ceramics- Photography - Video

We will experiment with different spaces with college and outside to explore the extent of the project and how it can be perceived.

Bibliography and References

• Brown,R.(2001)TheArtofSuicide,London:ReaktionBooks.• Morrison,B.(2010)SallyMann:Thenakedandthedead,TheGuardian, 29 May, [Online] Found at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/may/29/sally-mann-naked-dead • Brandes,P(2012)review:‘Roadkillconfidential’unsettleswith‘nor-ish’ style [Online] Found at: www.articles.LAtimes.com Found from above: … ‘At what point does creative freedom collide with moral accountability?’

• JakeandDinosChapman:Zygoticacceleration,biogenetic,desub-limated libidinal model, 1995, fibreglass (looking at the sick into humor-ous installations) • GregorSchnider–deathinexhibition• Evaristti–deathrowprisonermadeintofishfoodDeath row artists:• MattCollishaw• JamesReynolds• KateMacDonaldRoad kill artists:• AdamMorrigan–makesartoutofdeadanimals• NigelGrimmer–makesfamilyalbumsofroad-kill• RobinCruzMcgee‘RoadKillServingTray’-(purposemadetrayto eat road-kill off ’ – design in action • SimrynGill–carsmadeoutofthingsfoundontheroad‘RoadKill’• AlisonBrierley–cravesroad-killwhilstpregnant• The rules and regulations when accidently killing animals – road-

kill – not allowed to take it.• KatePuxley‘loveanddeathonthesideoftheroad’-conversationwith Taxidermy sculptor• Roadkillondrawsomething• http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

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