The third artist whose work immediately influenced was Hanne Darboven, who on my first visit was exhibiting index cards. I had used badly scrawled index cards in the days before the computer database, and this led me to think in terms of converting all my existing record cards, indexes, and lists into my project. From an internet search I learnt that since the 1960's Hanne had also focused her art work on daily writings which sent a shiver of excitement at the discovery of another connection, although it also raised that constant question of what can be said to be original to any individual and not part of the genealogical and cultural subconscious.
The fourth artist impressed at the time in a different way because of what I learnt about his social and political interests. Not only did Joseph Beuys believe that everyone is an artist in some form, but he had argued against the artist becoming so self interested and absorbed by their work that they separated themselves from the political and social causes and movement of their time. Because of cost and its practicality, I had invested in the cheapest available free standing black shelving available to display completed volumes and also a display of previous technology and communications stuff. Two years later when rewriting my original notes I found that before my visit to Tate Modern there has been a ten room showing of his work and that photographs and descriptions were retained on the internet site, and where in one room he had used almost identical shelving to exhibit an array of objects.
One of my many weaknesses is the failure to repeat mistakes with a rapidity which confirmed the learning difficulties of childhood. I had intentionally not taken a notebook around with me at Saatchi for the same reason that I frequently do not have a camera when attending important functions. I want to be part of the event, to give myself fully to the experience, and the note book or camera, only reinforces always being the outsider, the observer looking in. The notebook had been retrieved at Saatchi and then packed away in coats and bags at the Tate. At the end of the visit I bought Bill Drummonds, "How to be an artist" because of the way he made up photographs and used text. I liked the idea of superimposing himself through an object placed in an every day environment and subsequently took a series of photographs of his opened book held by a teddy bear among my installation as it had then developed. Realising that I was unlikely to remember the names of everyone who had interested I rushed around the public galleries writing names and notes about who had done what in one the inside cover to the Drummond book with the intention of making a second visit as soon as I could. I had only stood for a few minutes among the screens of Bill Viola's 'Five Angels of the Millennium.' convinced that I had seen something similar at the Gateshead Garden festival years before. While unable to confirm this from the programme of the event, the work was still showing on the second Tate visit, and I watched the cycle of each screen, and than of the whole and then of the extent to which almost every visitor walked through, or lingered for moments to gain an impression, but no one else was interested enough to view the full experience as had occurred during the full performance of 'Bad Boy, Good Boy,'
Last Autumn I was part of an audience that sat through two and a half hours of Exquisite Pain during which time one actor from the Enforced Theatre Company recounted the same experience forty to fifty times with only small variation, while another recounted different experiences of various forms of pain. What was the difference between the two audiences? A feature of the Newcastle audience is that no payment was asked for money in advance and people were not required to contribute but most did, with ten pound notes in evidence in the glass contained as well as few of £20, and even those on student grants from the adjacent university put in pound coin.
On that first I also enjoyed the invisibility of Supata Biswas, Sam Taylor Wood's "Decaying Still life DVD", Cornelia Parker's Exploded view and which causes me to think of raising funds to blow up what I am doing if it fails, or if succeeds, and no one wants to curate when I die. I also noted down Vitto Acconi and Mark Dion, but cannot remember why. The correspondence art work also interested and reminded memories of the postal chess played as a young man.
How much of the experiences led to the creation of the first set of 24 cards, homage to Tracey Emin, and then the decision to develop the work into the present project two months later, cannot be disentangled from other events. After nearly four years of continuous toil there are no regrets.
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