Some fragments from the Unusual Garments Series: Stick
oval bijou pendant, 2,5 x 2 cm, bijou necklace
(c) merry, 2012
description of the work and its concept:
Some fragments from the Unusual Garments Series: Stick
The changes of meaning that things, expressions or symbols undergo in culture in time are simply fascinating. These changes can be accelerated by new contexts. Also new contexts in itself means shifted or utterly new meaning for the original thing. Juxtaposition is always healthy for any standard or beaten track. As an Internet artist, I often work with appropriation and collective authorship – or, more precisely, “creative chains of work” – one person (or machine or medium) after another pushing the work by little pieces of their intervention further and further to its final shape. The unpredictable result makes the art more honest and closer to the culture.
I like to take on-line iconography and Internet art projects by other people and bring them to real life (by process called reverse remediation) by working on ongoing fashion collection Unusual Garments Series, consisting on designed clothing and garments of limited – always one peace only – collection of wearable artworks, that are distributed among people in my environment to be worn, worn down, aged and collected back for exhibitions. By this process, the work gain specific history, personality, touch of time (another piece of chain) and is ready to be conserved not only as artwork, but also as cultural artifact.
The whole Internet into a pendant.
The picture in the pendant depicts an art piece – stick made by Czech artist Martin Kohout. Kohout’s works are already multilayered, however in publication Linear Manual (TLTR Preß & PAF, 2012), that could be itself perceived as an analogy of the very Internet structure[1] and reveals around the theme of sticks – and this particular work especially – through semantic transfer (like the one mentioned above) the stick became a symbol of the Internet. Very heavy symbol. Since I’ve read the book, this particular piece of artwork – Kohout’s stick – represent whole Internet for me. Internet, the only common belief we all share and pray to every day, had suddenly its religious Icon. I’ve decided to use those religious feelings and enable also others to have a religious Icon of the Internet, as they used to have religious pendants with saints when they were Christians (in Czech Republic, majority of people are atheists nowadays and it is not common to wear religious pieces of jewelry any more).
To make it more spiritual and closer to the Overmind, it had to be collective (creative-chain) work. So I bought a material for a pendant, found on Internet gallery of photographs from Martin Kohout’s exhibition in Prague also containing the Stick class A series, that took somebody during the opening and put them online, and sent my friend who makes pendants as a hobby the link to this photo gallery and the material for a pendant. With no further information, she had to choose whatever piece she liked for the pendant and sent it back to me.
Since that I am putting the work into various contexts to observe the interplay with the environment, experimenting with its highly religious meaning. Unsurprisingly, as with other religious Icons, the meaning is firmly fixed forever.
[1] See MEIXNEROVÁ, Marie. „If you hate Internet, don’t even try to like this book. JUNK JET N°6 & Linear Manual review.“ [on-line] Movie magazine 25fps, www.25fps.cz. 14. 03. 2013. http://25fps.cz/2013/junk-jet-n6-linear-manual/.
