Memory-Maker (abridged) version 1. London Edition

The construction of autobiography through my practice works around the decision making process, through which I recognize the potential of particular systems that I use to narrate and document my everyday.
Thus, within the idea of collected souvenirs of the ordinary life, I have developed an interest in the archive as a metaphor to reflect the chaotic nature of memory, and also, as a statement of the difficulty and impossibility of carefully recording and classifying the always mutable subject of identity.
By classifying, indexing and labelling “the unimportant”, I have realised that this is a process that builds itself as it keeps unfolding by going back and constantly revising ideas and filling the gaps among the pieces that comprise an archive.
This project is titled Memory-Maker (abridged) version 1. London Edition, based on a site and time specific background (a year as a foreigner in London), an archive in the search of giving significance to memory.
It plays different games between reality and fantasy, in its urgency to hold or conquer the passing of time, exploring the ideas of the imminent disappearance or nothingness within its creation. This archive it’s a book and an installation that consists of three elements (a display on the wall, a box with adhesive copies of 45 images and blank forms bound in four books), a very low-tech system that exists to involve the audience in the process of collecting, organising or classifying my personal memories from 45 weeks of living and studying in London. On the wall, the images are displayed for the audience so they can browse before choosing from the box on the table. Several copies of each of the 45 images are arranged according the colour that dominates the picture, giving a guideline of the possible meanings and stories in the relation colour-emotion. After choosing a sample, the observer is invited to stick the image on a blank form, and then write an adjective, colour and month in order to create a collaborative sample book of shared memories and perceptions.
In this project I wanted to create a collective archive that relied on the making process, in the search for a personal artistic expression that also wants to be universal.
This archive is an experiment that has allowed my personal journals to evolve into a book-object that understands the endless possibilities of the inevitable subjectivity of recording memory within a more public context.

MEMORY BLOG

This is a memory blog about my MEMORY MAKER (ABRIDGED) DEMO VERSION LONDON EDITION. In here I'll recount all the process behind the project I made for the final degree show of my MA in Book Arts at Camberwell College of Arts. This blog might be helpful for whoever was or is interested in this project and what drew me to develop it.

SUGGESTIONS LAYOUT

My project keeps evolving but it feels like a very slow process. In get stuck when I doubt and then I sort of panic. Despite that I think I had a very productive day, I found myself asking why am I doing this and if it's worth keeping all this memories.
Anyway, today I'm not feeling very sure about having the suggestions or ideas hanging in the wall, which are meant be for people to understand what they have to do with the samples and how they have to put them in the request format.
I started designing the layout and the text is based on the leaflets and samples displays of paintings that I found at the designers shops. The text itself is quite cliche but is what I want to show. I changed some words to give the context of memories-colours relationship.


I also used some of the expressions that can be found to describe things at decoration websites. The first page I designed is meant to explain why the need of this sample book, but although I wanted it to work as the suggestions board that I saw at the designers shop, I was sure I didn't want it too look too "graphic design", like some kind of advertising. I want to keep the idea of the inexpensive, the basic, the simple. I played with the layout and it was hard to find a look since I can't decide how to make it look like a sample book without compromising the design.
Maybe the answer is keeping things simple, regarding the basic sort of aesthetics of the archives.
Simple fonts (typewriter style), labels, old archival paper.

INSPIRATION: Colour samples

THINGS TO CONSIDER

• 10 for each month might not be enough. I think I could make one memory a day (i.e. 30 for september) or even more, since I don't want the box to look weak or empty.
• I'm just wondering if I need a bit more of text going along with the images. I will have some at the suggestions wall, but I'm wondering what would people think when they complete the sample form.
• The text of the sample request form needs to be quite clear for the public.
• Do I want to leave the audience wondering what to do with all the pieces on the table or do I want to be quite clear? Maybe I just need to find the way of balancing that...
• What do I want to do with all the samples when they're ready? I think I want to create a book out of it so it's important to think about the layout of the sample request form.
• What would I do afterwards with those books? 1. They can become another project. 2. They can be for sale.
• Suggestions and sample request forms must be same size if I'm thinking about making them into a book.
  
• The stickers are not that easy to peel off so maybe the big blank adhesive sheet doesn't work. Maybe I do need the individual labels.
  

IN THE MAKING!

I started creating the images for the sample box. I started with the yellow tones since is the colour I chose for September (happy, sort of holiday memories). I'm enjoying the process of going back to those memories and give them a new context, draw on them, think about how they would work as samples. I did 10 in one page because is easier to fit them altogether in order to compare them with each other. Then, I print and cut them in half because when they are complete they look too big (almost 10 x 5.5 cm) and the idea of samples is lost.So I quite like that they look like threads of paper, like paper testers. It also brings up the idea of memory fragmented, the anxiety of putting things together and the impossibility of coming up with one clear picture of a past event.


At this stage I'm regretting not have taken as much pictures as I would have liked. But I have a bad relationship with my camera, I'm hating the poor old thing (even though is still useful) and I desperately want a new one.
About the images itself, I think I prefer the ones I drew more on top. So maybe I need t work more on that. Also need to make the colour contrast more evident between each image. I'm still quite interested in make it all look simple and low cost. But it has to be sleek as well. Is important so stressed the idea of impermanence, of the paradox of how precious we consider memories but also how easy to lose and dispose they are.

WAYS TO TITLE WORK- Cornelia Parker

Thirty Pieces of Silver (exhaled)
Cornelia Parker, 2003
Thirty pieces of plated objects crushed by 250 ton industrial press, metal wire

Talking about how to title our work (always a very difficult thing to do), Sarah recommended me Cornelia Parker's work. Very inspiring.
Found here

DECISIONS

• Cardboard box: divided in 10 compartments
• Samples (adhesive): one corresponding each day (but then it would have to be reproduced too many times)
• Many samples of each month would imply I have to have millions which is a lot of money and time. Why 10 for each month? It seems like a random chosen number and it doesn't make sense.
• What if I make each memory for each day and then find the way of reproducing them for the audience.
• How to reproduce them taking money and time into account?
• How to display both originals and copies in the box? Maybe I don't need to show the originals. Maybe that is only shown on the suggestions board. In that sense: 1. I don't have to separate both originals and copies. 2. The audience gets to have everything although is in pieces. Ideas of both private/public and personal/universal aspects are present. 3. It saves time and money.
• Not every colour has to correspond to a particular month. It can vary.

PLAY

Mix and match. One of the systems I've been thinking about is designed for the audience so they can pick and choose from my different memories and make a new memory. But would they take the final outcome with them? I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
People choose the colour for their walls and furniture according to the mood and style they wish to create in a room. I'll classify my memories by the emotional association I give to them by colour so people will choose from my samples to create a memory that suits their mood or style.

IDEAS FOR THE SAMPLE REQUEST

And this are so far the contents of the piece:

INSPIRATION: DESIGNERS GUILD

In the search for systems to develop my archive I went to Kings Road to find out how designer shops display samples and which methods are didactic and easy enough for people to create personal styles and designs. It was very helpful because I manage to develop a first draft of how I want my piece to look like:


I was also fascinated by the little sort of archive-room at Designers Guild -where they keep tiny samples to give away to customers. Organised along very tidy small white shelves and drawers, all sorted by colours and styles, it was my obsession made come true! If only I could make my project bigger, and not only have a colour-emotion-memory based book-archive but a whole room! I couldn't take any pictures but I'm uploading some from the showroom found in their website also to give an idea of how I would like to see my project if I had a much more large budget. Maybe in the future...who knows.

PARTICIPATIVE ART - Rudolf Stingel

"Since Rudolf Stingel’s sleek midcareer survey opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in June, hundreds of visitors have been allowed to depart radically from traditional museum protocol (hands off) and have a go at the walls in the exhibition’s first gallery, using anything they happen to have with them: pens, money, credit cards, cellphones."

"It helps that the bits of remaining silver foil glint in the light from a large, genuine cut-crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling (also foil-covered, but untouched). The contrast is probably part of the point: they represent two extremes of craftsmanship, beauty and fragility."

Found here

SYSTEMS

HOW

• Creating a catalogue.
  
• Creating a manual.
  
• Giving categories:
• Recycle, reuse, reinvent, recreate.
  
• Find artists that do similar things.
  
• In creating a catalogue, give the possibility of participation to the audience; just as they choose their furniture and the fabrics for it, give them choices so they can take decisions based on mine.
• I'm interested in a kind of art that understands the value of life, the importance of preserving it and make the most of it through creativity.
• I do believe that people and audiences can contribute in a work of art and enrich it.
• I don't entirely agree with the idea of art just for the sake of the artist or for merely aesthetic purposes.
• The consciousness about death but also the celebration of life.
• Some device/object that works like an archive and display something to choose from that is also practical. But, what is it?
  

WHY

• To organize my life in London. To organize my memories and my future.
• To make me realise how impossible is that.
• Just to have a little, a tiny little nit of control.
• Is a site and tiem specific project, it directly relates to my life in London (during my MA)
• Because my life is entirely related to my work. Everything in my work is autobiographical and I feel the need of showing it because I can't think of any other way of finding conncetions with the audience.
• The universal and the particular are together in the foundations of the archive.
• The archive as a guide to sort out my life in a big city such as London and for the first time in my life.
• The archive/catalogue is much more a reflection.
• Catalogue the everyday/Find identity in the everyday.
• Because my time here is short and I don't know if I will be able to stay, eventhough I want to, and I already missed the time that has gone, and I want to preserve it, I want to cover everything with my memories so I won't forget it.
  
• But the audience would be able to participate so they can create new memories. But do I want to keep them or am I happy to give them away?
  

TESTERS AND SAMPLES

SILLY THOUGHTS Part two

THERE ARE CERTAIN CONDITIONS THAT APPLY TO THIS ARCHIVE/CATALOGUE

• You have to be completely alone
  
• You have to be in a foreign country
• You have to be speaking in another language
• You have to go to a place that has seasons
• You have to be human
• You have to be financially restricted
• You have to be in that place in order to pursue or achieve something
• You have to have never lived by yourself
• It's not necessary but strong preference for those really sensitive and emotional

PROBLEMS TO SOLVE: CONTENT

• When an autobiography becomes interesting?
• How to get rid of the self-embedded, self-indulgent egotistic character of some autobiographical work?
• If I want my project to have some sort of ethical awareness, how do I do it? Could this be solved in the way I display my work?
• Is the narrative lineal or non-lineal? Depending on this, is it going to be chronologically ordered or by subject?
• Do I want to recount a process or just random memories?
• How is the imagery, how does it work with the content, how is related?
• My Decision-Maker is a good example of finding ways of playing with the title, and even though is a catalogue, is important to give the audience another idea. So maybe is about balancing the right amount of catalogue/text/poetry.

Decision-Maker Abridged Version 1.0
Pamphlet book or device created to help people make decisions.
I created a sort of system that tries to consider the unlimited aspects that have to be kept in mind when taking decisions in life. By representing mains aspects with a chosen colour, I wanted to show the infinite possibilities and combinations that might result by mixing them, just as in life we attempt to embrace all the relevant fields that might be affected along the decision-making process.
Printed paper
15 x 10 cm

• Is it an archive for me or for everyone?
• In the beginning my reflective journal was like a diary and it became too personal. All the clues where there but it was too self-indulgent. I feel like my new reflective journal works very well in the way that helps me organize all the mess in my mind and brings coherence to what I called the prime material of my work.

PROBLEMS TO SOLVE: FORM

• Think about the way people would apply those patterns in their daily life.
• Is it important to show how they can be used? Does that means that apart from the catalogue, it has to be a user's manual?
• How to include text? Labels?
• I think I haven't thought about how people will put them back (Stephanie's idea of how people will put her panflets back on the table).
• Testing: How much information is necessary to give?
• IDEA: Microfilm Store box

THE WALLPAPER CATALOGUE

• The obsession for organise, classify the changing chaos in my mind.
• Maps: Look from above, have a subjective look.
• Wallpapers as archives, as changing repetitions at a certain time and space. A repetition of an object that is common for everyone.
• Wallpapers for selling -or find the way to make them public-.
• I tried to cover everything, archiving everything but I'couldn't handle it.
• Is like carrying that mirror that for me is the archive; I keep looking at it, seeing myself working on it, seeing how sometimes is right and sometimes is wrong, and seeing also, how it contracts and expands.
  

INSPIRATION: FROM THE UNEXPECTED

I've been working as a temp at a furniture shop and when is quiet, I try to think about ideas for my project. While I was doing some thinking on finding ways of organising the patterns or images I intend to work on, I realise an idea was lying on one of the sofas; a sample book. In the shop they use those books to show types of fabric available for upholstering the furniture.
This kind of object may have some characteristics related to the archives.


Textile sample book, Wiener Werkstätte
Open to Orpheus by Dagobert Peche, 1911
Printed silk, printed cotton, paper
8.5" x 10.5" x 1.25"
Textile Traces: The Lloyd Cotsen Collection
Found here

I also found some amazing sample books by searching in Google images:


Found here

RANDOM IDEAS; PAPER DOLLS

SILLY THOUGHTS

Archivization:
Childish attempts to recollect memories and dreams in order to have more control over life and therefore feel like and adult.

ORDER AND CHAOS

I was looking at the notice board of the London Graphic Studio in Covent Garden and I was surprised by the amount of business cards from people looking for jobs, waiting to be contacted. And I thought, we are just too many. We are different but we are also pretty much the same. So I've got this idea of patterns, a catalogue of patterns, an archive of patterns where you put all your ideas of a perfect life.

FIRST IDEAS

The archive was the image of perfection; total control, complete power. Absolute happiness, feeling of fulfilment and sense of achievement. This was an ideal. Nothing like that has happen. This is the archive:

Undetermined, eternally growing, this archive takes over and there is no distinction between my life and it's life. I function by it's non-sensical instructions and somehow I go along in the day to day. There is no practicality on it, is all improvised and immediate. It doesn't have a proper form nut it does has a narrative (a chronological one) and if possible, can be read in many ways -but I want to focus on one before it keeps growing-. Possibly has an ending but only if I ignore it because I know that it will exist all the time. Is there, existing, living, breathing.