Blank Pantomime II [or, The Fondest Dream]
1x1 Project: Imani McCray & Troy Egan Mixed Media: Found VHS tape collection, black marker, white spray-paint, white poster paint, craft glue, insulation and packing tape, cardboard box, cardboard cut-outs, twine, metal clothes hanger, three plastic pegs, one power cord.
2017
The first collaboration began in January 6 2017 after a friend, Imani, followed up on an invitation. After brief discussion, we decided to find ideas and materials to choose for the project. I was drawn to a pile of VHS children’s movies discarded on the roadside near my house in West Sydney. I recorded the initial find and took them away. After discussion, Imani and I reviewed existing artworks using VHS and audio cassette tapes. The works that stood out to both of us from an online search included pieces using vibrant colour and that were sculptural in construction. The idea of children’s movies and VHS tapes created a fond sense of nostalgia, found in the warm bright VHS covers, memorable titles, characters and fonts, and childhood memories of watching my first ever VHS, Ben Hur in startling Panavision.
Original site of found objects – Children’s VHS movie collection.
Imani discussed a desire to scatter and disrupt the pile of tapes and to dowse them in spray-paint, his current medium of interest. This style of work had caught his attention during our online review. This inspired me to think outside of the box in terms of how these objects can be re-presented and engaged with. I was drawn to the idea of blending the spray and scatter approach with an older idea of fabricating everyday objects (such as televisions) in a stylised way. In this case, the VHS cases would be used to build a TV set which would either have its own leg stands, or arise from a pool of melting VHS tapes. I began with some initial sketches that played with how the set could be constructed and look. It seemed fitting to add a power cord and antennae to enhance the fabrication.
Images of artworks using cassette tapes as media – courtesy Pinterest.com
The question arose: what is fabrication really? In essence, a fabrication is a construction or a false front, a façade, separate in some way from the thing it represents. To fabricate is also to make new from something old, a form of customisation or transition that provides value to steel, home or chopper motorbike. The fabrication may arise through the process of construction, the act of making and transforming. When we fabricate, we recreate the original into something new and different in form or function. The definition of fabrication as a lie points toward inauthenticity, or at its worst, outright dishonesty and total disconnection. Philosophically, fabrication touches on the conflict between such oppositions as truth and falsehood, the represented and the representation, reality and fantasy. Why do we feel the need to fabricate as a culture or as individuals? Why do we wear social masks, and why do we mass-produce masking consumer products and media that distract, or dull or pacify? What are we avoiding?
There is also the symbol of the television and the video recorder. In the 1950-80s Western era of modern Pop Culture, these items were the epitome of home entertainment and icons of suburban fashion. They slot somewhere in-between the transistor radio and the smart-phone. Audiences were then able to vicariously live the lives and adventures of their favourite characters in their own homes. The VHS cassette tape is a direct descendant of the early film reel, a reminder of the painstaking frame by frame interrogation by directors, editors, projector operators and animators.
Initial sketches of TV set fabrication.
Where do children’s movies fit into all of this? These stories are predominantly animated (in production and tone), creating worlds otherwise unseen in the real world. A nihilist reading could judge such films as conditioning young minds to the ideological dogmas governing artists, production companies, funders and governments, with life-long revenue creation as the end goal. However, the reading that Imani and I felt drawn to was the child’s perspective, which may pertain to feelings of excitement, engagement, whimsy, safety, colour, vibrancy, energy, humour and wonder that exists in the childhood imagination.
Initial sketches of TV set fabrication.
For aesthetic purposes I explored using the black VHS cassette tapes to line the inside of the TV set, while the colourful cases would clad the exterior. I began the sketches and mock-up, and then time got the better of both of us. Our initial goal of two weeks began to blow out due to living circumstances on both our parts. When Imani informed that he would be leaving to go overseas , we resolved to conclude the project together.
Experiment with TV set fabrication.
The next development was Imani’s sketches of a figure peering through a screen, opening the idea of viewing and the voyeur into the discussion. Imani developed the voyeur into an acrobat on a swing, drawn with black marker on a collage of children’s movie covers. These covers were lacquered and given a light white aerosol coating, then were mounted on black VHS cassettes. Imani’s subject matter and materials would inform my next contribution to the piece. Some of our initial ideas involved using mobiles and pop-outs within the interior space of the TV set. I envisioned Imani’s drawing as the content for this device. We considered the TV set as a reflection of the modern world. Safety is uncertain. There is conflict between the negative and positive plains of the object: the Outer World and the Inner Self. I felt impressed to play with this idea, and reverse the idea of safety – a concept arising from the sometimes carefree innocence of an idealised childhood. The Inner Space of the TV set, as inspired by Imani’s drawing, could develop into a Cirque du Soliel of the heart. A secret place of wonder found deep within, and accessible through the imagination.
Illustration by Imani – black marker and white spray paint on VHS covers, mounted on VHS cassettes.
In our discussion, we concluded that the world is not always safe. There are ever present dangers, fears or threats. This artwork functions as a memory, similar to previous works where I have explored Momento Mori, sentimental loss, nostalgia and unrequitedness. In this case, the ever pervasive screen has been subsumed by an arrangement of discarded things, movies, memories, joys, hopes, fears. Who is the acrobat? Is it Imani, myself, the voyeur, the inner child, the audience, the subject, the object?
TV set construction with VHS cassettes, cardboard cut-outs, cardboard box, tape, string and black marker.
The final act would be to return the finished artwork back to the original location where the VHS tapes were found, under a tree outside the front gate of a neighbour’s house. The work is transient, like the process, like life, like memory generated upon seeing someone else discarded VHS collection, or inspired by the insights and interventions of another creative. This new memory may be dismantled yet again by the original owner, but not seen as a memory. The work will become a new object within shared collective memories of the original owner, of Imani, of myself and the viewer). Yet, instead of appearing as a free giveaway of children’s stories from a fading media platform, it will be transformed into a strange-sculpture -thing-that-kinda-looks-like-an-old-TV that was found on the front lawn.
Final TV set (interior) with VHS cassette cover collage inlaid on cardboard, and mobile cut-outs on string.
Before and After Construction.
Postscript: I passed the site a week later and the artwork was still present, although the TV box was face down on the ground behind the pile of covers.
View other HeavonEarth collaborations here.