This post is to try and get some focus, work through some of the issues that came up today and get clear in my head what still needs to be done before next Tuesday. And what exactly to do with the nails....
These are important because fear, threat and control are the key concepts of this piece (box 2). Control is represented by the identical wire circles homogenising and policing the otherwise unique textile pieces (human physicality). The nails then are the fear/threat element that inspires the need for control. Fear/threat isn't immediately obvious by the overall piece - it's a 'body' and at first sight is supposed to inspire an idea of human perfection or rather what has been identified by researchers of disability discourse as 'the norm' (or the entitled participant of a democracy) - a young white athletic heterosexual male. Ironically a very small percentage of any population. In my mind as I work on this I inadvertently keep seeing an all american football hero/jock. Loud, brash, outwardly confident and impenetrable. Or perhaps the image projected by the US. Which of course is no coincidence given this work is essentially about the anxiety democracy and individualism inspire in a population as then projected onto the body.
So back to the nails....the fear is that the body can't ever be truly controlled despite all the posturing authority of modern medicine. The threat is the flesh itself - vulnerable, mysterious and anarchic. So I am thinking the nails must be on the outside but not main feature/overly prominent. Probably a row hammered flat from the inside floor and coming out the bottom, mainly visible underneath. Need to suggest the body can never be a benign entity but that that threat needs to be hidden away as much as possible (hence the invalidating of the disabled). Issue resolved? Somehow the threat is meant to add some vulnerability to all this football hero bravado, and not sure this nail arrangement does????
I somehow feel nails need to be on the inside too but just not sure how that is justified.
Another problem today when my 'head' design didn't leave enough space for the electrical cord (what was I thinking?). But I'm not keen on just going all rectangle as design wise thats just makes it overall too boxy/clunky/uninspiring. Also it doesn't keep in with the absurdist element.
Another issue is whether to put lighting inside the box as well via an LED lighting strip. This pretty much needs to be decided soon because if so it needs to go in quite early before fully assembling and to have a hole put in the top to connect into the junction box beforehand. On the plus side to lighting is that the shadow created by the textile/wire pieces projected onto the perspex adds a whole new dimension but whether that positioning would be enough I dont know. Also too much light can dull the colour of the silk and felting and make them insignificant.....I guess I can only buy the lighting strip and try it out. But it could only ever be approximate as the textile frame can only be put in once. Once in thats it, no taking out. Experimenting over. Hmmmm..... Maybe just putting in the hole anyway....?????
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