« Reflection | Main | Ghost paper »
July 14, 2005
Poster surgery . . . the mad designer
These are stills from DV footage of me performing a 'surgery' on one of the bollards that my posters went up on last week. They'd been pasted over two or three times by this stage, and I didn't really think this would work, but thankfully whoever pasted over mine didn't use that much paste! I dressed up in a lab coat and went to work with a scalpel to bring my monster back to life (I did this at exactly midnight of course). I thought the process of disecting the bollards might be interesting, but predominantly I liked the idea of performing this 'live' ó relating to an idea I'd had a while back to do with the practitioner inhabiting a 'character'. I guess I liked the insanity (and humour) involved in this ó maniacal, obsessive behaviour! I think this kind of behaviour will lead really nicely into a fanatical and evangelical type of manifesto (to create monsters).
It was quite exciting seeing my images come up from behind the others as I cut and peeled layers away, but what I think what was most successful about this exercise was that it made me really uncomfortable. I was slightly paranoid, a little scared, and maybe I just felt like a dick (is this just 'stupid')? I really don't like the idea that this would be/become performance art. Why does that sound so icky!? I mean I 'perform' in the band, and I really enjoy it . . . in fact I ham it up quite happily, it's strange that I felt uncomfortable doing this?
Having done this, and thinking back to the previous project, I have been thinking that it could be interesting to actually design a poster 'live' on the bollard. My aesthetic's so cut'n'paste anyway, I could just show up with all my photocopied material and arrange it on site . . . in this sense I'd be performing the design I guess . . . and maybe exposing the process in a much more meaningful way than the previous project (see Emilie's comment)?
Posted by Luke Wood at July 14, 2005 08:04 PM