Friday

Objects, stories, notes

What is it? The object in your book might be pinned to the felt, stitched into a page, tucked into a quiet space, hidden in the spine or folded into the cover.


Did you find it? Many of the Knicker Drawer Note Books contain objects. Perhaps they reflect the character I've held in my mind's eye as part of the process of making your book. Or maybe your object reflects my particular obsessions. Time, enclosures, layers of knowledge, imaginative life, histories, ordinary/extraordinary, physicality... (plenty to choose from).

But I want all the pieces you find to be a moment for you too, for the creative process you make, telling a story while handling an object. Because when we handle an object, we cannot help but wonder. Who does it belong to? Where would it be used? Is it precious? What journey did it take to get here? Is it something that I should value? Or discard?


We're human. When we handle objects and ask ourselves these questions, we're building stories unique and personal: we're making meaning for ourselves, telling ourselves an interpretation of the world through a physical experience.

As we turn the key, the small phial, the scrap of lace, the pin, the strange bead, we're not only negotiating a meaning with ourselves and the world. Curiously - because I must be here too - you're negotiating a meaning with the person who pinned your object there, perhaps in my own identity or while adopting the voice of another. Isn't that a wonderful form of communicative, collaborative art?


But what will you do next? Will you collect more objects in the same style? Or magpie-mix an eclectic collection? Or discard the objects you find, to start with a clean book?

Collections are not only expressions of our interests. They tell of histories, social moments, contexts, relationships, powers, values, beliefs. As you build your book, object, biography and story merge. Perhaps your objects tell of conflicting stories; resolutions or problems outstanding.

But each time your book is opened, and whenever you handle your collection of objects, you reconstruct, retell and remake your narratives. We remake our who-we-are. Perhaps your book then becomes a precious place to hold traditions, cultures, life-spans.

Or maybe that object already worked itself loose and fell away, a long time ago. Now there's just the book. And you can say, the object that came to mean so much? It must have existed, because here, in this book, you made notes.




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