SEM 2 - THEORY IN ACTION
This is a piece that speaks to the thingness of objects and the theory of objecthood. The work consists of a large ice block, infused with red colorant, with a shaving razor suspended in its centre. Chains are frozen to the ice block, which is positioned to melt slowly in Ikea instructions (for a MALM set of drawers I'd been assembling that week). By taking a quotidian object like a razor and removing it from its function (by freezing it), the piece forces the viewer to confront the object differently. In this context the razor becomes conceptually more potent, removed from its practical purpose.
The inclusion of the Ikea instructions serves as a critique of how we are conditioned to interact with object, suggesting that our perception of objects is often confined by prescribed use. The sculpture also has a dynamic component, a crescendo which begins with the slow melting of ice and ends when the chains break free of the block, generating anticipation from the viewer.
Background: In this piece I want to play on the essay "Moving as Thing: Choreographic Critiques of the Object" by André Lepecki. Here, Lepecki explores ways in which objects become things - i.e. they loose function. I liked the idea of ice as it traps the object but also has a temporal component.
Some artists I like in the concept of loosing function are Cornelia Parkers piece Cold Dark Matter as it appears to me that it takes something familiar, a shed, and takes it out of its context. I like how Parker accounted for the piece becoming too biographical (hence she commissioned a shed she could blow up) (TATE, The Story of Cold Dark Matter).
Looking directly for pieces that utilized ice I found work by Olafur Eliasson, a piece called Ice Watch. This piece actually takes a climate change undertone that does not quite align with what I want to communicate - I wonder if political narrative interrupts defunctionalization? (if that is such a word)
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