Postgraduate Forum - A performance

Postgraduate forum

Of No Value Beyond the Object Itself

ICA 9.05.10 10.00 – 7.00

Well here we go again I thought as I took my seat behind the reception desk at the ICA. I had already been asked if the café was open by a member of the public when I was setting up to which my response of ‘I’m sorry I don’t work here’ went down like a ton of bricks. A sarcastic ‘no, your just sat behind the desk’ marked the start of what was to become 1 of many people thinking I was a member of staff.

At first I revelled in people responding to me like I was a receptionist even when I was clearly ignoring them. People just didn’t seam to understand that playing with a rubik’s cube on a reception desk wasn’t normal behavior especially when the rubiks cuber was taking photos every time they complete it.

I was working sure. But not in the way they wished of me. I was working to complete my pointless endeavour fuelled by this little box of iconic uselessness and my attempt to give it purpose. Each picture validated the time I had spent in it completion marking the success of myself.

This is why I when the ICA told me I had to have a sign saying position closed at my desk to stop people getting pissed of when I didn’t answer them I instead got pissed off. POSITION CLOSED. Position was not closed position was clearly fully functional just not to its original intension. POSITION NOT WORKING TO YOUR IDEAL NEEDS would have been more accurate.

Nevertheless I continued and as I got so into the task at hand that I started to become oblivious to people even asking me a question. All I could think about was completing the cube quicker, making the time go quicker.

‘Ok so average time is usually 8 minutes so I can do it roughly 6 times in an hour (give or take me being an idiot and having to start again) if I speed up my average time to say… 6 minutes I can do it possibly 10 times thus making my time go quicker.’ - alright so I am aware that this makes as much sense as a chocolate teapot but I had been cubing for about 4 hours at this point and my brain had turned into colours and patterns.

This was what had consumed me. Quicker, faster, complete the cube and complete the task, end the day quicker. Even when friends turned up and try and distract me lost in a world of coloured brinks and inverses I only realise it’s them as they leave.

The oblivion on my behalf is then matched by a couple of spectators. They stand and flick though my box of photos and talk about me like I’m not sitting less than a foot away from them. One bloke even picks up a photo, waves it under my nose and asks me ‘what is she doing as the ICA?’ What the fuck! Clearly ‘Sitting right in front of you’ would have been my response if able to communicate.

The nonverbal aspect to this endeavour clearly heightened concentration on the task but validated my presence less. The pictures alone weren’t validation enough here people wanted/ needed more. Confirmation that is not just another receptionist. Validation that in there belief I had more value than this.

Ok so time to justify my actions. Give them validity. Which ironically is what I’m am doing within my practise by attempting to give the steamily pointless point. I am partaking on a useless endeavour and questioning the value of this uselessness.

To validate is to demonstrate or support value or truth of. It gives weight to something demonstrating its purposefulness or importance.

Performance as storytelling is part of this validation in terms of documentation. This is due to the fact of public interest. This was highlighted to me in the channel four documentary ‘My daughter grew another head and other true life stories’ which examines magazines which use ‘true live stories’ to gain readers by taking uninteresting stories, elaborating them and then repackaging them as “fascinating truth’. By handing over your story to be repackaged you are not only validating your experience to others but making it bigger and better to get greater validation for something originally quiet pointless.

The biggest player in the useless endeavour game however has got to be the Guinness World Records. Recognition is given to the person who can travel the farthest with a milk bottle on his head or to the person who can grow the longest finger nails. By entering into this world they Gain acknowledgement of there actions. They validate their uselessness.

It is public interest in both of these examples that is important to me. Should the public really be interested in someone snogging a swan or running over their fiancée by accident? Is someone balancing a milk bottle on his or her head for the longest distance really of any interest to the general public? Yet this is what we strive to achieve if we want to enter into this world, the validation of others. The need for someone to be interested in order to validate your experience or endeavour is the fundamental issue here. In terms of true life stories whether this is truth or not doesn’t seam to matter. Belief and interest will always triumph over truth and importance.

Draw attention to HAND OUT (chase audition)

It is documentation of my steamily useless endeavors I am experimenting with at present.

Within a materialized art world the intentionality of live art is becoming subverted though documentation. With the value of live art work increasingly being carried by the strongest documentation, is the necessity of this more important than the preservation of an ephemeral medium? It seems to me to become about giving validity to a transient medium within a heavily materialised art world. The status of live art now relies on the answer to which its self-referring liveness is essential.

To quote Peggy Phelan -‘Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance.’ It becomes validation, validation of the ephemeral to which validity is both gained and lost. Gained through public interest (bringing a fleeting media to the masses.) and lost throught the subversion of its intention (Live art).

On the other hand the purpose of documentation as validation of something seemingly useless enables the truth to be twisted and manipulated to give greater validity to said uselessness. (Alike the true life stories and the documentation on the sheat) If the documentation in this respect works as indented, to give value, it gives validity. It is not however the documentation that is valid but the action itself. The documentation is a vehicle for the validation of the useless and therefore does not need validity itself. In the words of Wikipedia (a source that itself is persecuted for it validity) ‘Validation implies one is able to document that a solution or process is correct or is suited for its intended use.’ (Wikipedia, 2010) If the documentation shows that the useless has a use it gives validity. Again the documentation is used to give validation to something else, whether the documentation itself is valid is a different story. Henceforth documentation of the documentation would be needed to gain validity and so on.

In relation to my practice and therefore personal endeavour documentation of a useless endeavour enables public awareness and therefore interest. It also allows for manipulation or exaggeration to make the endeavour seam greater and further more complete fabrication of the event. While this is useful in giving the useless/pointless value it makes the action itself obsolete. This both validates and invalidates the story/documentation through both interest and truth respectively.

Does validation of ones own experiences through documentation to give value to your life? Is that what we look for in documentation, validation to yourself as well as others that what you did had value? Does documentation automatically insert value on to an action or event? – it was of enough value to document in the first place. In this respect does documentation self validate?

I think at this point it is a good time to again define the word ‘validate’ - To validate is to demonstrate or support value or truth of. It gives weight to something demonstrating its purposefulness or importance.

ASK FOR TIME IF RUNNING QUICKLY SHOW VALIDATION VIDEO!

At present it is this support of value that I am looking for and hoping to achieve through the Guinness World Record book for my attempt at ‘The largest display of knitted mice’

This attempt has been rejected on the ground that it is too specific. However a similar attempt of 'Largest display of paper-mache pandas' has recently been accredited in the 2010 book.

A Facebook group Called 1000 blind mice has been launched as a campaign at the appalling rejection of this record in attempt to gain access into the book of world records.

Please join the group to raise awareness of the plight of the mice.

1000 BLIND MICE