# 11

specialisms, bozar

we've now begun our specialisms. here are some of my outcomes from my "30 things to do" project, which i displayed in a mini sketchbook. #11: measure things. lots of things. record. #15: record anything that you see that shouldn't be. #24: go into a public space and leave a message.

all of these were displayed on our first crit, the first monday we arrived back from our break. but we were told that these had to be expanded and developed for a following crit next friday. whilst looking at my version of #11, one of the tutors suggested i looked at the one book: you are here: personal geographies by katharine harmon. we seemed to agree upon the fact that i enjoy doing monotonous tasks and i like the concept of repetition. i found inspiration within that book and decided to create a piece that was purely based on interaction and collection as part of a dialogue. i was in control of what had to happen and asked 40 people to draw an outline of the united kingdom, an outline of a camel with 2 humps, and a portrait of me.

i then scanned all of my collected data together, and what i had envisioned was for all of my images to be printed out onto coloured sheets of paper.. my computer skills failed on me and i was forced to print the images onto acetate and stick coloured paper behind them. i was quite disappointed with my final outcome.

i also went back home to belgium for the weekend! i visited the gilbert & george's (jack freak) pictures exhibition at bozar. unfortunately we could not take pictures inside, and there were so many guards about ... these works explored the themes of religion, urban life, race, sexuality, nationalism, death, hope, life and fear. i had seen their work before however i have never seen such a huge mass of it it one space. out of their 153 jack freak pictures, 85 were exhibited at the bozar (was this too many?!) seemed a bit repetitive at times...). as a complement to the exhibition, there was also the movie "the secret files of gilbert & george" playing. it was filmed in 2000 by the curator hans ulrich obrist for an exhibition in paris, and it highlighted the hysteria of the archive and the collection. this was probably the best part of the exhibition. as all of the pieces being exhibited were created in 2008, i had expected that it did not take so much time to edit these on the computer and churn them all out. however the movie proved my thoughts wrong, and showed how extremely organised these 2 artists are, working obsessively with great care to not create one piece of art with similarities to another one.