Notes from the window

‘the confessional’
in the window, filling the space; working but allowing time for visitors to interject
open to engagement, happy to talk but also to listen; available
intrigue/interest (why a body in the window – an office, an exhibit, a studio?)
visitors engaging in conversation; memories, life stories, moments shared
questions asked, pondered, discussed; of life, living
intense: subjects of substance, in passing and/or in depth
encouraging discourse, allowing exchange; open to exploration of big questions …
bodies, matter, life and lives lived; snapshots, glimpses and sideways glances at life/humanity

The experience is prime (what remains simply evidence of a passing, an occupation of space = captured fragments, frozen moments from a life: a time spent living, breathing, thinking, doing = a body in transit, a bodily occupation of space) … ‘what remains?’

Connections, subconscious rumblings reach the surface = action: paper dirtied (rubbed on floor, picking up debris/loose matter/traces of past occupants – dirt)

Traces of me but also others (human/non-human)
Echoes of time, DNA, matter (residues of space/place, of inhabitation)

A spontaneous gesture prompted by a throwaway remark, an unrelated comment overheard that brought together myriad thoughts, undercurrents, possibilities …
We all leave traces of ourselves (along with/to add to other existing traces): an accumulation of personal objects as well as a dispersal of self – remnants and residues of stuff we need (sustaining, meaningful and comforting) and of stuff we don’t need (excess, refuse, dirt – and the more intimate traces … hair falls out, skin dries and flakes, fingerprints, saliva/DNA)

Prompted by conversations with visitors (just words)

Saliva/DNA (the title of my piece in the exhibition: the dental x-ray and olive stone in petri dish)
Accumulation and consumption
Embodiment
Inhabitation
Mortality and matter
Concentration/meditation
Routine and repetition (NB routine as structure?)
An everyday life
Melancholy and dark humour
Permanence/impermanence
Scale (and intimacy)
Emergence
Vulnerability and authority
Presence, absence
Memory
State of mind
Weariness
Temporary, ephemeral
Humanity
Action and reaction
Domesticity
The stuff of life
Visibility/invisibility
Instinct and reason
The senses (and sensing body)

Residues of lives lived – traces of DNA, the stuff of life.