Event, Line, Alignment

Having completed my second live drawing performance on Friday 16th December, I find myself thinking again about temporality and the sense of becoming – two notions that I’ve referenced in my previous blog posts and throughout my ongoing practice.

At the end of my first live drawing event back in October, I had produced a drawing that had been entirely constructed of elements from my own film footage of the Beaney, a film made prior to the event. I had projected my footage onto the wall and allowed that to direct the drawing. This time, however, there was a difference. Instead of projecting onto a blank surface, I decided to project the footage onto the previous drawing and worked on top of that.

As before, the film played and I would pick out details that would be traced into my drawing. However, I found that as I did that, these details were also responding to the drawing underneath. The film and the original drawing were simultaneously influencing the one that was forming on the surface in that moment. Together, these three elements existed in a fluctuating state of symbiosis where their relationships were continually shifting, becoming obvious at times and less so at others. These three elements were continually aligning and realigning themselves with each other as I continued to draw.

 

The process is becoming self-referential in the sense that each step emerges from the previous one, and each drawing is making its presence known through the one that is created next. As I add more layers of paper and create additional drawings on top of the previous, there is a chain of decisions in their creation that continue to share their influence. I’ve established a chain of events that is continually emerging from the initial film and the initial drawing. The Beaney has become a point of origin in a chain of events that is still unfolding, and will continue to unfold as I continue to draw. But more than that, the Beaney represents a trajectory through spacetime: it is an institution that has its own personal history, as well as encompassing the histories of all that it contains.

Ultimately, The Beaney exists as a node within a fluctuating network of information that extends further and further through time and space. And each time that I visit The Beaney and study an artefact, biofact or geofact, I am referencing this trajectory through spacetime. The physical appearances and the way in which they were produced influences the processes that I employ to create a new drawing. Each time that I project my film and use it to establish a new spatial drawing, again, I reference this trajectory through spacetime. The space as it existed within a certain timeframe re-emerges out of its chronological linearity within the space that it was captured, re-establishing an essence of temporality each time. The objects and the building that houses them are physical representations of this trajectory and exist in their own right, as well as now existing through the work that I am producing.

On Thursday 22nd December I will continue to explore this further in a third live drawing event before concluding my residency with a final blog post and set of final drawings.