Thursday, 30 May 2013
A short film documenting the destruction of my degree show peice
After nearly a full year i finished editing this short film documenting the destruction of a large drawing I made over 10 days.Drawn with 0.1 mill posca marker straight onto the wall.The film depicts me sanding it all down and painting it over.The motivations during the piece of work are talked about below.
'The deterritorializing power of the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire and at the same time the force that calls for and makes necessary its destruction.' Hardt and Negri
Inspired by the politics of the 'multitude', a loosely defined theory by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their book 'Empire'.Negri and Hardt describe 'Empire' as globalised free market capitalism how it is today.This all encompassing global megalith has parallels with previous empire's.
-To make a short example - The book offers analogies of supranational institutions like the U.N describing it as a judiciary to legitimise greedy financial persuits, wars and other atrocities.The multitude presents itself as an alternative to that. Without a banner, a slogan or a symbol.It is defined without gender, race, age, hierarchy or any of the divisions imposed on us by 'Empire'.Driven by its own plurality, without ideology, its focus is to present an alternative to this, through the individual.Through difference that it is united.
Apart from the constraint of time I had very little idea of an overall outcome.Before the starting i made experiments at home and in the studio on lining paper.It proved difficult to do anything of any size.When it came to preparing to draw on the wall it was un-even and needed to be sanded all over.I wasn't sure how much could be drawn in the allotted time, so i did the whole wall and gave it two coats of emulsion.
Everyday i set about drawing people, people drawing and drawing more people.Due to the nature of how i was representing people in a stylised way.I was driven to depict the folk as caricatures.Unfortunately caricatures pick out, over exemplify and exploit physical features that Empire tends to use to exploit people .Divisions such as race,gender,age,class are just some of the files that folk can slot nicely into.This became very contradictory because i was trying to represent something that has no defining feature in the context that things are usually defined in.The multitude doesn't have an ideal person or and ideal look or even a slogan only in individuality is it a 'thing' at all.I tried to reflect this were ever possible, whether it be a dimple or the way a character would carry themselves, or the way a character would relate to others.
I found some very interesting things about myself through doing it. The level of conditioning that i have as a 24 year old working class (although thats questionable now with a degree) white male in this world is so vast.A friend pointed out that i was prone to drawing white male's.I tried to overset the balance back again but found increasingly that characters came from my pen were very different to the ideas i thought i had.Some days i walked away from the wall feeling disgusted in myself.
I drew on... until a few hours before the degree show. I never counted the characters or measured the drawing on completion those things weren't important.I tested my politics and found out and made it very public even if it wasn't apparent.More so than anything that i went through it drew and destroyed.
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