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December 06, 2007
new thoughts on georgia museum of art installation
When I began the Wardrobe Project I had grand ideas of building an elaborate home interior in the museum, with a comfortable chair (upholsetered with my printed fabrics), printed wallpaper, framed prints hanging on top of that wallpaper, a printed floor covering, a table next to the chair with all of the print/sketch books stacked on it for perusal. And a closet with the dresses in it. Total sensory overload. As the project progressed I realized that this whole construction was unnecessary and confusing, and dropped the idea.
The real space where this work exists is in the daily performance of wearing, and in this web space where the documentation is collected. For me right now the upcoming show in the museum is secondary (in terms of showing this particular work; this is not to say I don't take the museum exhibition seriously). But putting the artifacts on display in a museum is not the primary focus of this project, where the doing is the work.
About a month ago I revisited the "living space" installation idea, thinking that perhaps I could winnow it down to just the closet with the dresses hanging inside. I envisioned hanging tags on the dresses, with space to write in the dress number, reason for retirement, and the date stamps of all the days the dress was worn. Still this felt like it would reduce my project to something that's just about fashion (which it's not, really, at all). I feared the tags might make it seem to speak more to commercialism and look as if the dresses are for sale. I'd envisioned these tags resembling the date due slips in the backs of library books, but hanging them from the dresses is not going to give that impression.
Discussions with my colleagues and Peter about the problem of how to show this work tend to revolve around catalogueing more than around display. The documentation contained in this web site needs to be a part of the final installation, but I'm not willing to bring the web site itself into the museum space, because the site is an entirely different art venue that should be able to stand on its own without the validation of the museum. And, as I've said, the web is the true exhibition space for this aspect of the work.
And so the discussion has moved on to boxes. Drawers. Shelves. Ways of sorting and organizing, categorizing. And the other day I dragged out my eight large prints on tokuatsu that I stopped working on on October, the prints that are supposed to function as maps to this entire project. I'd tentatively called three of them finished, posted them as such on the web and even sent off slides of them. But I don't think they're really finished yet. At the moment they contain a collection of marks that catalogue the damage caused to woodblocks when run through the press with dresses, but I just don't think there's enough there. So I'm going to begin printing on them again, collecting more layers of dress impressions. I'm going to interleave these impressions with wood intaglio printed from newly cut blocks (it's been two months since I cut a new block!). And the documentation, the tags, the date stamps will all be within these prints.
My vision for the museum installation right now is this: there will be two of these large prints (36 x 78 inches) on the wall, backed with book cloth and hung with school map hardware. Between the two "maps" will sit a wooden cabinet of map drawers. Each drawer will contain a folded dress with its documentation. The web site will not be mentioned. The museum installation will be a place to map the project, record the performance and the making in one place, and to catalogue and organize the fossils left behind by the project, the ink-covered dresses.
Posted by jodi at December 6, 2007 09:55 AM | categories: the rules
Comments
Interesting that you mention fossils again, after all these years. I think the map cabinet idea works so much better than the wardrobe. Much more interesting and attractive in terms of presentation, but also much more conceptually rich.
Posted by: peter at December 6, 2007 04:13 PM