From object towards island

University essay from Konstfack/Institutionen för Konst (K)

Author: Tessa Van Thielen; [2017]

Keywords: Fine arts;

Abstract: A NOTE FROM ME TO YOU ABOUT WHAT I WILL BE HIDING In a moment I will introduce myself to you as a storyteller and a constant traveller; bothdescriptions are accurate and so is the description of an ‘object maker’. In combination withstories, objects are created and either the story or the object is presented, and so you will have tosettle for only one element in the upcoming writings. Singular edition photographs, books or evenengraved instruments will be hidden from you during the tales. Documentation; this could be the simplest way of describing my method, things are simplywitnessed and written down, or traces are caught on camera. Objects as documentation and thenthe reverse; stories within stories and photographs within photographs. There is an aim to makeall information obtained into a riddle.It is experiences which trigger these tales: people I meet, or texts which magically match with reallife events and synchronize. I use the word ‘magically’ since my own plans always turn out to bedisappointing. I attempt to plan, but often something else takes over; leaving chance to create thework. Most objects involved are rather small and simple; there exists a distance between these objectsand you. They are about their own details; about the small engravings one might pass; about thewood used for the framing and about the printing process which makes a blue bright. They areabout time; they require time. Time to reveal the amount of information they keep captured withinthemselves. They are about places; they require space to breath in and out. The photographic is present in these tales and it is also the photographic which makes me hidethese objects from you now; to reveal or hide a bigger context. It is the photographic which sinksinto my way of thinking. I use text and stories and the imaginative and the real as a photographer,despite not being one. However, I do document the objects previously mentioned and theircontext and find new life in these images. This is where the work continues, it is a non-stop‘connecting-the-dots’ way of working. I do not care for fiction; although I do not care for the fantastic either. Truth is there is aboringness to this process, as things are sometimes repetitive and executed in the here. Aninability to access ‘the there’, at first sight, could perhaps be said. But let’s admit there is no fun intelling tales which will actually happen. You will travel through stories in where various sorts of information are combined and narrationsout-of-nowhere are created. Connections between gossip and truth and present and past andearth and earth are intertwined into a sort of imaginary world in where nature is centralized.A riddle and at the same time an insight into an artistic process. The travel never ends

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