unmakings

Portland show Themes: Pedestrian activity / Time / everyday / ritual / material

The word ritual is one that keeps coming up lately—something life affirming, a practice. If making things is a ritual, could it be a spiritual one? Like those Tibetan sand paintings , what is it about making something that might be destroyed? I threw away the physical remnants of my thesis aside for my favorite chunks. All that really mattered was that it was documented. Could it be a totally spiritual thing, to make something without reverence for what it becomes? Keep thinking about Penelope from the Odyssey, making and then unraveling, the unraveling to delay the completion of something, (does ‘finishing’ cause something?) Is having a ritual, something to feel like I have to do, is this a reaching, a process, waiting for finishing, for something to be over and become whatever vestige of its becoming it may become. My cat peed all over a pile of deflated pattern sculptures yesterday and I didn’t really care, I just shoved them under the table and I feel like it was supposed to happen, or a sign, or something. Is the sloppiness of the result part of it? Yes, because it makes you imagine its creation. But what if my show smells like cat piss?

I just realized I think one of my great problems is simply: what are the material traces of making? Is an unfinished or ‘unmade’ thing more revealing of its making than a finished thing, polished and clean?

one ritual I maintain is getting dressed everyday— and I’m obsessed with how the bargain barn has shaped my entire ethos about materials, and the way my closet is constantly being edited, evolved, swapped, etc.

for a while I thought I’d make some sort of system out of how I’d choose what to wear, or document it in some way. Theres something about choosing what I will wear that gears me up for the day, and even sets the tone for my experience. Even though I don’t lay my outfit the night before, theres something about clothes laid out on the ground as if a deflated person is wearing them: Miranda july’s learning to love you more . I really love this assignment, how the people lay their outfits on their beds as if preparing for the first day of school, and each one has personal significance.

{these photos from Miranda July's learning to love you more, assignment #55, 'Photograph a significant outfit'}