Making Multi-logues

I am interested in how documentation can be the result of the processes of production rather than created from an external vantage point. I am also interested in how many voices and points of view can be evident in the documentation and how time and duration are incorporated- or multilogues.

Documentation constructs the notion of an ‘original’, seeking to fix it in time and space. The intention behind how it is fixed can shape inadvertently or intentionally, to perform in the future in certain ways. Creative projects are most usually documented through photography or film. Photographic documentation has supported the move away from art as an ‘object’ to more temporal, ephemeral, social, or performative works. The documentation enables temporal participatory event works to continue to be encountered beyond their limited existence in an actual time and space. How this documentation is construed and disseminated is the means by which cultural capital is both produced and designated. Daniel Palmer notes that temporal events ‘are more generally “consumed” as still photographic images – whose ability to record, spread and multiply across the globe, not to mention endure for posterity, makes them the primary mode by which all those audiences who do not have the privilege of “being there” become “informed.”’[1] The compositional and framing decisions by the photographer involved are not neutral but constructs how that work will be remembered and also represented in the future.

These documenting approaches attempt to incorporate multiple perspectives into the documentation process from the outset. Instead of crafting or superimposing a narrative, the maker or audience can interrupt or interact with what they saw being documented. Commonalities and variance across the collaborators or collectives is evidenced producing more complex readings of the project for future audiences and also allowing each participant to capture what aspects are important to them.

These ideas explored or evidenced in most of my projects- below are images from Consumed where a a multi-channel recording using closed-circuit cameras where the collaborators could position the cameras, and Design teaching projects where Instagram becomes a collective exhibition space for film and 10 image folios.

IDEA Symposium and Exhibition here Proceedings of the 2014 IDEA Symposium and Exhibition: Situation, pp.70-7

You can see the Instagram examples here. and here

[1] Daniel Palmer, “Photography and temporary pubic sculpture: publicity and publicness,” in One Day Sculpture, eds., David Cross and Claire Doherty (Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber Verlag, 2009), 27.