LOCKDOWN JOURNAL: COVID-19.11 (Lou Hazelwood)
Morning Light. (still) Lou Hazelwood
The static presumed ‘nobility’ of an image has never bothered me so much as it does now. I think it’s because we are in forced states of being ‘stationary’, it’s got me thinking about the still and moving image and the slippage that occurs between them.
Also what is occurring in that in-between, in that moment of slippage with still and moving image, remembered works, words and moments and the multitude of re-telling’s. We re-tell what we think we remember and then re-class these as memories. This is a point where fractures from the slippage begin to appear. Fractures initially that open up between previous works and new works. Whereby a questioning happens, is there a connection in these previous works and what we are making right now other than the same role of the artist/maker?
I remember doing a piece in 1993 whilst in Maastricht at The European Biennale of Arts, I was in the group facilitated by Lawrence Weiner and the only person from the UK in the group which was fabulous if not occasionally tricky with language but still we laughed a lot, discussed and critiqued work, drank and back then even smoked!
One of the pieces I made on our free to use A1 colour photocopier was of a Samson ‘baccy’ pouch with the words (written on a typewriter) ‘Intensive observation ends in boredom’
Someone asked me in the group if boredom actually became ‘pseudo-sexual’, the question still bothers me. Looking at that particular piece of work, particularly the act of smoking instead of sex, and at this point insert images from your memory of ‘film noir’ men and women smoking with looks of frustration and intensity (intensive observation ends in boredom?), then their boredom is now pseudo sexual. ‘Boredom’ itself as pseudo sexual, without any act of being pensive I am not sure.
So if boredom is related to acts of being pensive and static (stationary, stationed alone at workstations, distanced and fixed) where does my thinking about slippage and fractures come in?
Right here!
I’ve been re-looking at works I’ve made previously from this standpoint literally in this case the slippage, fracture and frustration of viewing the animation on the re-engineered ‘mutoscope’ or watching the film that critiques it playing from the internal workings of the machine and not being able to do both simultaneously.
Does a sense of boredom from the mentioned slippage and fracture mean we are forgotten (isolated physically from others) when we are working and thinking and restructuring our thoughts? Do we re-make our memories so we can steal others?
I’m not bored; I’m enjoying the slippage and the fractures. Both of the static image and the moving and typing over and next to images again 27 years later!
Lou Hazelwood | April 2020