GCOP200; first tutorial

Sal: Ben Highmore has written a reader on the everyday. There are lots of essays in there that all about the ways in which people approach it, and a lot of it... Like Tehching Hsieh recorded himself for a year doing specific things like clocking in everyday.

J: I like the idea of archive, and collecting.

Sal: So what you’re doing is you’re saying ‘is it everything, is it certain things? Is there a weird taxonomy about it, and if there is what is it?’ So you would document that; because there are thing that we would say... Well I’m eating, is that important?

J: It is important. Because I think it’s physiological things that I’m interested in tracking... Running at maximum efficiency I think is the goal, generally.

Sal: So they become idiosyncratic, these things? And how are you recording? Are you just writing it down?

J: I have a book, and I write down things of significance throughout the day, and at the end of the day I put it on my chart.

Sal: Is it logged in a graph?

J: Yeah, I have two lines; productivity and mood.

Sal: So it’s like a map of self?

J: It is a map of self.

Sal: So some of the things that you would be putting in for, would be maybe maps, maybe artefacts.

J: Yeah, that was the lecture that I really liked actually; I love maps, and mapping.

Sal: So maps of self... Come out in these infographics. You could look at those funny, yet idiotic symbols that are infographs. Then you need to look at taxonomy and language, you’ll have to look at the language of mapping. Not always of the everyday, but like business speak. So that kind of documentation is going to be part of what you submit isn’t it? And then there’s going to be another element to that- a piece of writing, an essay. Hopefully equivalent to 2000... You’re doing an artefact, so that’s also quite a lot of word count; maybe 1500, 2000 of you talking about the artefact itself, your process.

Jason: Right, there are two pieces. So do you remember in the very first week we talked about George Perec? We talked about some quotes when he was saying describe your street, overwriting that... There’s something there that talks about Rhythmanalysis, and there’s a book called Rhythmanalysis by Henri Lefebvre; because what you’re talking about is recording everyday-ness; blandness. Constants. So there’s two pieces, there’s that one, and very luckily, the next chapter in the same book; Mary Kelly, Mary Kelly’s recording all of the actions of her baby from when her baby was born. Fastidiously. What’s that referencing, do you know what that references?

J: Oh, the Rosetta Stone.

Jason: So it becomes about language doesn’t it, it becomes about taxonomy. So it’s almost about you... There’s this thing, recovering addicts and things like that, they get told to keep a diary, and they have to note everything they do. Note what they drink; note what they thought at a certain time. It becomes almost an artwork itself, as another artefact. So, when you’re recording coming off this medication, what are you recording? Are you recording thoughts, you might be recording things that happen- The everyday stuff.

Sal: If you’re mapping something, you are specifically looking at something, but you’re also putting something less interesting out of the way. Maps are about what you don’t include. It’s being specific about that distinction. ‘This is important, this isn’t.’ The thing that’s important, in reality, could be the least important thing... Which is what’s ironic. So I’m making notes here; you want to put in, what, some mappings? They can be rough...  You will be discussing the process of documentation; making maps of self. This is an artefact option. And you will be writing through the artefact, and discussing process, taxonomy, and ordering systems. That’s kind of the same thing really, taxonomy and ordering... Recommend Ben Highmore, chapter on Mary Kelly. There’s another book called The Everyday, short essays.

Jason: Tehching Hsieh. This guy used to do year-long projects; One year performances. For example, in this one he said ‘I plan to punch a time clock every hour on the hour for a year’. Every hour. Basically, there’s all this documentation; reasons that he’s missed it. So he missed it 133 times in a year; 133 times out of thousands. So you see how the documentation... It’s the documentation that’s interesting, as well as the project. So there’s thousands of these cards. So it’s about documenting these moments, the everyday. The next performance for example, ‘spend a year outside’. He’s not allowed to go inside any structure for a year. So these for examples, these are beautiful. He starts to produce these maps of New York. And you know how Sally was talking about infographics; these maps of New York become his daily life. So you can see on these maps, the routes that he’s walked that day. Even the most boring things; ‘Defecate here’ ‘Made fire’ ‘Spent $7.50 on food’. Starts producing this really banal... but if you think about it, produced on this scale, 365 maps, you start to see something else coming through. Everybody’s life, every day is pretty exciting.
So this project is horrible. For this project, he’s chained to this woman. They didn’t know each other, but for a year they’re chained to each other. They hardly know each other. Think about the difficulty of this for a whole year. So he did these projects- he only did 5, and then he never did any art every again. It killed him basically. He just didn’t have anything else to say. So take that, think about how he’s mapping.

Sal: The Everyday. What’s really good about this series, as an introductory reader, the essays are quite short, but different ideas about the everyday. Makers, theorists, everything. So there is an essay by Ben Highmore in there, but you need to read down the contents to see where you think it might actually apply. You’re going to have to sift through... But you’ve got things like Sophie Calle; She documented herself didn’t she, through artefacts, objects. So you need to spend a day just reading this.

Jason: If you do a Google search on Rhythmanalysis- looking again at the idea that life is just a series of rhythms. And the more you break that down... I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about my birdsong projects. When I walk around the city, recording birdsong, it has nothing to do with the birds- It’s about the rhythm of the city that goes around the birds. So you’re recording the birds, and you get an ambulance; and that’s more beautiful than just birds singing, isn’t it, because it talks about the nature of the city.

Sal: What you need to do, to get yourself going; obviously you’re reading around your subject, that’s brilliant, you’re annotating as you go... You need to be making your artefact now.

J: Oh, I am.

Sal: That’s cool, I’m sure you are doing, because one of the reasons why we say that is that the artefact, if you develop it in time, it gives you time to reflect on it. So maybe shall we say in a couple of weeks? We’ll see what you’ve got. See how you’re connecting. I’m interested in seeing how you connect these things to your artefact. 

Staff Notes:
You are discussing a process of documentation and making maps of self - this is an artefact option and you will be writing to the artefact and discussing process, taxonomy/ ordering systems. So there are two elements to submit. Written text about 1500 to 2000 words.

Recommended Ben Highmore: chapter on Mary Kelly
The Everyday: Documents of Contemporary Art
Tehshing Hsieh: Out of Now
SH to bring in Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis: life a series of rhythms, the nature of the city.

See you in a couple of weeks with some maps!!