Between Our Words I Will Trace Your Presence by andy lock

A project exploring the relationships made manifest by artistic research's potential to explore institutional, textual and interpersonal silences and to disclose what is repressed, denied or disavowed therein. The Exposition offers access to documentation of selected art-objects, installations, exhibitions, performances, papers and presentations, created during the development of my research. These are supplemented by selected writing which concisely situates those individual works within the development of my research.

‘Between our words I will trace your presence’:

artistic practice as a means of exploring silence.

Introduction

Contents

The archive's material is presented in chronological order, on a series of discrete "pages". To access any of the archive's contents, either click on the word contents, at the top left corner of the screen (this takes you to the main contents menu) or select any individual page directly from the scrolling 'Contents' menu at the top of this or any other page.

This collation of material represents an archive of selected ‘art objects’, installations, exhibitions, performances, presentations and papers, which have in different ways contributed to the development of my research.

Although some of the archive’s contents can be experienced as digital artefacts in an online setting as richly and as fully as my intentions for their audience would desire, many of the archive’s contents rely on various forms of documentation, which while offering an impression of the work, inevitably create variously and inevitably attenuated experiences.

The archive does not represent an exhaustive record of my research, instead it focuses for the most part on specific events, activities and artefacts, which in retrospect have come to be demonstrably significant in the development of my research-practice; its themes and its methods.

The process of creating this archive has inevitably been a reflective, selective and partial one, involving decisions both about inclusion and exclusion and about the “narrative” I wish to create about my research.

In many cases the significance for my research, of the works outlined here, became clear only slowly. In many cases it has changed over time; only becoming apparent now that I’m able to see the fuller sweep of my work’s trajectory. Often, this retrospective, reconsidered significance has been quite different to my original intent. In places, I have added as concise as possible a retrospective appraisal of the emergent significance of specific works. I have also included a number of blog entries and other fragments of writing which elucidate particular facets of the archive’s individual artefacts.

This archive as a whole, has something hermeneutic about it. In the sense that seeing all the individual objects gathered here together and considering their trajectory as a whole, creates a new understanding of my research's trajectory, which in turn, changes the significance of the individual objects within the archive.

Quite often individual works and papers have been the impetus, catalyst or focus for significant shifts within my research, my practice, my understanding of the objects and themes of my work.

“My research is concerned with instances of the unspoken and the unheard; with silences that are not only perceived or experienced, but also enacted, performed and motivated; with the relationships that surround such silences and give rise to them, and - crucially - with art-practice's potential to identify and explore these relationships, these silences and what they conceal.”

(Andy Lock, project description, 2020)

Introduction

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Oct-Dec 2016, rolled bedding, recently vacated apartment room, Nygardsgaten, Bergen. Photograph

Oct-Dec 2016, unoccupied rooms, forensic investigation training house, Nottingham. Photographs

Oct-Dec 2016, unoccupied room, forensic investigation training house. Video

Apr 2017 recently vacated room, asylum hostel, Voss. Photograph

Apr 2017 recently vacated room, asylum hostel, Voss. Video work

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Feb 2017, 'Birdsong'.

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Mar 2017 material from PKU Spring Forum, first presentation