Something Special, Something Else, Something In-between, sculpture & film installation with performance, Solihull (2001)
Inspired by female relationships to things and objects, this project explored special relationships with clothing and objects over time. Three separate works combined into a resulting installation was made from inter-relating media and time frames between, creating dialogue between each time frame, site and the performed body.
The installation comprised decomposing sculptural copies of special clothing (Something Else), with three monitors showing video vox pops of interviewees talking about clothing that makes them feel special (Something Special), and layered with live and recorded performance (Something In-Between). Video, performance and 3-dimensional objects combined can create a complex set of meanings, with the monitors suggesting multiple interpretations as well as a sense of timelessness and ambiguity.
The relationships and conversations between absence and presence created in this process-based work engage with conditions of representation and mutability, ‘structured as a relay of anticipations and reconstruction of events that may become traumatic though this very relay’ (Foster, H., 1996, p.207). Making differentiated representation possible through the suspension of real objects and a real performed body has the potential to create a ‘psychic experience of what is to be embodied’. This multiple embodying process was used to explore trauma and mental health for women and mothers. It also uses our common experience of objects as stand-ins that have the power to reveal the self and the Subject and reveal innermost unconscious and emotional states.
This installation shot shows just one of the video monitors and the oval enclosure of cloth. Many of the images are lost but you can read more about the theory and process of making ‘Something Special’ in this series of photos from a book written and designed by the artist:
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