Final tutorial presentation notes
Issuu edition of final iteration (some information has been redacted for ID protection):
https://issuu.com/mecob/docs/lastiteration_forissuu
Final presentation available here in an interactive pdf:
https://artslondon-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/m_ecob0820231_arts_ac_uk/EWYKzeT3vfREskIGMIFc4f8BVgOrbjiWOP_Q7tjGgrgtlw?e=DP62uS
Presentation notes:
Final tutorial notes 200525
– Authentic passport favoured
– Really gone for the “hidden” aspects, true to the aim of hidden colonialism
– Tutor likes the fact that you don’t know what an original stamp is versus what I have intervened with
– Hints that I’ve intervened adds depths to the work, for example the augmented cover
– Elements like that work in its favour, it says something is happening here
– Groups agreed that the “hints” I’m the passport add a level of depth
– What about the story I’m trying to tell? Explained it fully to the group, went through the text in each, explaining incidental changes to the stamps. Emphasized feedback taken in last week to the end matter of the passport.
– Same story of hidden colonialism.
– Tutor: emphasized paying attention to an object in order to understand what it’s doing. A valuable act. Outwith the passport, more about the way we receive and engage with information. This document requires a slower pace of engagement and a more in-depth engagement to really understand it. That’s special and worth celebrating and fantastic (!)
– Original passport most successful because of authenticity, you really have to find the hidden details. Other iteration is more of a comment on passports and beaurocratic documents.
– Doing something more with the passport, deeper, more intentional way compared.
– Gayatri – using an original passport is more metaphorical. Layering is impactful.
– Group discussed widening understanding of what is IN a passport, we take these documents for granted.
– Discussed ‘KNOW-SHOW’ and materiality (Gitelman), but also that passports act as a bridge between one thing and another. References are generally “bad” or comments against power structures. ME emphasized inherent responsibility in documenting and the GCD involved.
– ME raised ‘what is a document?’, is there way of brining that into practice
– Tutor – something everyday and mundane has power and meaning.
– Victoria – never paid attention to the detail and what it represents. Official document of identity doesn’t show who you are. Is there something about family and narrative over time?
– Next steps? Appraise all of the documents with slow attention, perhaps cross into a new medium that isn’t the typical use of paper.
– Tutor: You’re doing something “subversive”. The act of defacing a ‘valuable’ document, is subversive, adding things that you shouldn’t be adding, ripping things, interjecting with existing stamps are all subversive acts. The way you talk about this project comes from a subversive lens, describing something I don’t like. The document supplies a lot of privilege but the user dislikes it and what it represents at the same time. Reflecting on the other work made in this class, the act of ‘unstamping’ and taking away is subversive.
– Adding more than subtracting to the passport, thereby changing the original.
– ME to reflect on subversive angle.
– Tutor: Richard Turley reference, Bloomberg Business week examples, known for subverting something dry and expected into something else. Interview magazine, primarily working in print. Recommend looking at him – how he uses the visual languages he uses to subvert, playing with the unexpected.
– Can the passport evolve without offending, be improved, in the context of my family (empire/colonialism). Subversion is a power, why not use documents to do it?
– Victoria – passport through time, family, parents, referenced other work in previous projects. Our personal stories change and evolve over time.
Conclusion:
– Very pleased with this project, its execution and criticality. I believe it has considered references coherently, whilst allowing for a process that evolves.
– In Positions through essaying, I intend to map this journey visually and use it as an opportunity to break these methods out from paper-based documents into moving image, building on my moving image experiments in Positions through iterating (birth certificate).
