Old incisions

I'm not one for holding on to my past works - after the intense outpouring of passion and effort is over, I want to throw everything away and never look at it again. I feel no remorse in the cutting down of an installation that took days and 20 people to put up; months to prepare. This is not wise, I strongly advise against it - it leads to an unfortunate blase attitude about documentation, which in turn leads to agony once grant application and presentation time comes along. I'm ashamed to say the shocking state of my slides once reduced me to tears - twas' only a few hours left before the competition application closed, and I realized I would be judged on a couple of sorry, miserably dark little pieces of film. All the work I'd ever done before, that people had seen and touched - gone. You could say that LEARNED ME GOODE. I still love throwing things away, but at least now I spend a few painful hours making sure I've got passable photos.

But, you know, I wonder...

I looked again at the blog for Fourth World, which I havent' done in ages. It'd been the target of some odious spammer! (I knew those 38 comments were too good a number to be true) I felt I had let things decay somewhat, and as I deleted the spam it seemed I was clearing away a particularly obscene and putrid crust (bestiality fetiesh anyone? brother-sister incest orgy?) - and underneath there was my work, still strangely close and important, more important than all the others before or since. Not to say better, I think I've made better work since then (or so I hope!), just personally important somehow. It did my heart good to see it again, and to read L.'s essay - which remains the most generous, concise and accurate appraisal of anything I've done. Listen to a few passages:

'...the “Shores” series maps a longing for the world outside, a romance with the unknown. Recorded then on each strip of perspex and paper is the ebb and flow of desire.'

The generousity:

'The sails in The Fourth World are perpetually in the harbour because Chin is not searching for a utopia elsewhere; she embarks on a passage to the here and now.'

And the excruciating accuracy:

'Hoisted high, the sails seem as hopeful as prayer flags, but are more like flagging prayers.

...Desires may be trapped, but they breathe through perforations in the walls.'

Excruciating only to me of course, because it's as if one has been laid bare. But this is work from a different time, and I'm different now.

Still somewhat self-indulgent, however ^_^

A few lines of that Silverchair song are playing in my head almost constantly these days:

'Old incisions, refusing to stay... like the sun through the trees on a cloudy day...'

Here I beg your indulgence for this self-important post and leave you with images of Paper Shores (my Jolly Koh moment, heheh):