Sunday, 16 June 2019
I arrived at the Fundación Mapfre in Madrid one hour before the opening time of the exhibition ‘Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity’.
I walked the streets thinking a bit, then I sat waiting in a quiet square. Or I sat quietly waiting in a square. I wrote a poem while I was there, in the dappled sunlight under the trees, waiting in the Plaza de las Salesas.
Fig. 1 Surfaces & Strategies Workbook excerpt 16.06.19
I am exploring how 3-D surfaces can act as a memory of space. How can these surfaces act as a token for entry into that memory? On a beautiful beach I found a small, single-use, plastic spoon from an ice-cream tub. It seems to represent the transformation of a natural material into something artificial. What could this mean for the space around us? Is it something partly artificial, something that went through a transformation, something that is constantly going through transformation? What does this mean about ourselves?
Plastic. Extracted from nature and morphed into something else. Designed. Artificial.
Plastic Ice-Cream Spoon (06.06.19), Presqu’île de Giens, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France
Shaped to scoop. Shaped to slide against the tongue. Smooth. Summer. Heat. Green. Greenwashing. Fun. Tasty. Sweet. ALCAS. Schism. Hairline crack. Memory of petroleum. The tale of the sands. Sand. Becoming. Gordon. The shape of me. The space of me. Boundaries. Surfaces. What is it? What am I? Extracted from nature and shaped. A surface? Inside. Outside. Plastic.
Gordon Sutherland - Photography Research Journal 