Elias Canetti and Sketch Book

This summer, after searching for a book to read I came across an article in frieze magazine;

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/ideal-syllabus-gabriel-lester/
Ideal Syllabus: Gabriel Lester

"In an ongoing series, frieze asks an artist, curator or writer to list the books that have influenced them"

the book that i chose was; Elias Canetti, The Torch in My Ear

Here is what spurred me to read it.

"(Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1982; first published in German in 1980; translated 1982) Recommended by my mother at a time when I had just started out as a visual artist, The Torch in My Ear is the second of three volumes of Canetti’s memoirs. It describes the beginning of his career as a writer, set against the backdrop of the artistically vibrant Vienna and Berlin of the 1920s. The book as a whole is a great read, but the best part is set in Berlin in 1928. At that point, Canetti, still an unpublished writer, was fortunate enough to move in the inner circles of the avant-garde. His accounts of meeting with Bertolt Brecht, George Grosz, Isaac Babel and many others are exceptionally witty and clever. Reading this book is like having a good time and making friends along the way."



Needless to say I became obsessed with the book, as Canetti opened my eyes to crowd Phenomenology. I was inspired and wanted to make work that linked with Canetti's ideas.



I also found the idea of creating work around the theme of the crowd relevant to the project I had stared in August "elements of travel."


www.emmascreamingart.blogspot.com/2011/08/lost-for-words.html

"‎"I wanted to put chaos into words, organize It, banish It from my mind." - Elias Canetti, the torch in my ear.

This direction would enable me to create conceptual art, but also continue to work with painting, in making these chaotic, overloaded of information images.

Linking my paintings with a new project was the most exciting part of creating new work based on CANETTI.




Sketch book-November/December 2011




Within my sketch book I start to focus on what it is about reading of crowd phenomenology that fascinate me; I came to the conclusion that it was the fact that the SENSATION CHANGES people.
So I started to think about how shape and space is used as a medium in contemporary art to bring about a confusion in perception and disorientation.


I started to look at artists that create sculptures that change landscapes, uses crowds in their work, and through the use of sound and space change produce a sense of disorientation amongst the viewers.























I started to think about creating an imposing structure, that viewer had to walk through. The idea was that curiosity would first encourage the viewer to enter the work, but inside would be a concoction of confusing sounds. I also toyed with the idea of building a maze, making sure that once the viewer entered the work, the sensation being overwhelmed would fall upon them.
My first plan was to create a structure of exaggerating large hanging figures, that the viewer was to walk through.

the description I gave this work, conceptually was

"AT PLAY OR ENTRAPMENT"

this is the overall theme I want to get forward.













As I research methods of making my maze/installation further, I came to the conclusion that, the shapes should be non-representative (inspired by Barry Flanagan) I wanted the work to focus on sensation, and the form of the maze not to be too distracting. Thin fabric was the medium I settled upon. The Repetition and delicacy of the fabric I feel would counter play the sensation of entrapment.