I want to Google my memory!

Have you ever had that? Somewhere in the filing cabinets and dusty boxes of your brain there is a name, the name of an artist, one artist in particular. I know he's a Russian artist - well, at least born in Russia, but living in exile. I think he's Russian…Anyway, I can remember one piece of his in particular - it was a series of photographs hung in frames along a corridor - the corridor was badly lit and the wallpaper reminded me of something you might find in the home of a serial killer, or at least an aging uncle - bad taste circa 1975. Under each photograph was a small write up which seemed to be a story explaining the photos - the people in the pictures, where they were taken, how their lives were unfolding at the point in which the image was captured. As you went along the corridor however, you began to have the slow realisation that the story was not a simple linear narrative - in fact it wasn't one story at all. The entire thing was just growing and growing and with each new piece of writing your mind was desperately trying to fit it in with what had gone before, until, in my case, I gave up and stopped reading.

Now I want to remember or at least find out, who that artist was, is. I know I've seen more of his work - in fact I've been a fan of his work for a number of years - and each time I try to recall his name down come the metaphorical shutters and I'm left grasping helplessly at the ether. I'm pretty sure it's not Christian Boltanski - although I am a fan of his work too, but when I think of him large rooms of woollen coats come to mind and not photographs.

I found it!

It occurred to me that the artist for whom I searched is an installation artist - so I searched that term on Google - as an aside, wouldn't it be good if we could google our own memories? Up came the Wikipedia page and on it a name was mentioned - not the one I wanted, but beginning with the same letter - K. And at that moment my brain fired up and the name KABAKOV suddenly lit up in neon.

If only it were so easy to access other bits of information.

High Culture!

I'm currently working on a new short story and thinking about how it could relate to or indeed actually become an exhibition piece - Art. I don't mean that my writing is so sublime that it has become elevated to Art (ha! ) but rather that the ideas I have would work well if placed in a gallery space.

Now I could go on about intertextuality , juxtapositions, and other such poncy terms….which I have to admit to loving just because they sound so elitist. However, it would be truer to say that I'm really drawn to the idea of telling a story to people with pictures - both created in their heads and also accompanying - possibly photographs, but not illustrations.

I'm rambling now about Work…

I do find myself so often in two camps - that of Artist and Academic - with all the juxtapositions and other such high falutin language. And also that of the ordinary 'punter' - despite having studied Fine Art for a number of years I can honestly say that sometimes I'll go into a museum or gallery and be totally at a loss, not able to understand or even grasp what it was the artist intended to communicate. Sometimes it does appear that contemporary art is the Emperor's New Clothes.

But….

I guess we could say that about poetry too - sometimes poems can be impenetrable until we return to them again and again and their meaning trickles through. In the same way some art work can be like that - one glance doesn't give the viewer the whole story.

On the subject of poetry…at the moment my favourite is a Ted Hughes poem - The Full Moon and Little Frieda - simply because it makes me think of cryptic crossword puzzles. I'm utterly useless at cryptic clues, but this poem seems to work in the same way - the hints are all there…it's devilishly clever.

Ted Hughes

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket --

And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming -- mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath --
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.

'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

-- Ted Hughes

Pasted from <http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/723.html>

Can also be found in Staying Alive p.231