An Alien Dream-Logic Capsule
As described in the first blog in this series, the discovery of a ‘contemporary folk archive’ of ‘How To’ videos on YouTube, set me on course to devise the central component in Demonstrating the World for Unlimited 2. The sheer volume of this unofficial, seemingly endless archive meant that ‘the world’ was practically my oyster (Yes, there are a few ‘How To Shuck/Open Oysters’ videos, such as this one seemingly presented by Star Trek’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard).
So what in the world would I be ‘Demonstrating’? The physical context for the performance was established early on with my producer Edd Hobbs. Since the final work would primarily focus on being a public-intervention performance, we decided that some sort of attention-grabbing ‘roadshow’ vehicle or float would suit us. As in some of my past works, Demonstrating the World would have a high public-camouflage aspect. We wanted shoppers and passers-by to both identify the mode of performance (i.e. a public demonstration of some kind of commercial product), but with it also being absurd enough to make audiences take a closer look. A key theme established from the outset was the figure of the ‘alien’ or ‘other’, someone who appeared to have fell to earth and landed in the market places and shopping centres of our towns and cities to demonstrate worldly functions back to the earthlings.
We had then, to decide upon what my goods atop the demonstrating platform would be. Potato peelers, remote-control toy helicopters, new flavours of ice cream: all were familiar tropes of public pitches and indeed find their counterparts as ‘folk performances’ on YouTube. To take us out of that box, Edd proposed a collaboration with Ida Martin, a Copenhagen-based architect. Ida came to London and an instant rapport was established with decisions being made quite quickly in the way that good collaborative work falls together. We wanted the platform to be both domestically identifiable whilst being slightly ‘off’, not quite right. We talked about the ‘strangely familiar’, the ‘unheimlich’, and started thinking about the work taking place within a room arrangement housed inside a trailer, its fourth wall exposed to the public.
We started to design the ersatz contents of this the trailer to imitate the manner of an IKEA-style display room. However, the room’s furniture would be elaborately detailed with innovative and absurd features. These would be designed to operate as collapsible or concertinaed fold-out designs with components that are capable of being transformed from one domestic function into an entirely unrelated other. A side table can be opened to form an ironing board. A cabinet would incorporate pull-out steps to reach a small cupboard in which an old-fashioned radio can be tuned and its aerial adjusted. A picture on the wall converts into a table for two, and a clock transforms into a vacuum cleaner.
For inspiration we watched Buster Keaton’s ‘The Scarecrow’ (1920) and ‘The Electric House’ (1922); and Snub Pollard’s ‘It’s a Gift’ (1923). Each of these silent comedies depict a young inventor demonstrating ingenious labour-saving gadgets and fittings by which to transform a house into an alien dream-logic capsule.
We also talked about the mode of the performance behind the demonstration. I’d already developed a ‘running commentary’ style for a work-in-progress presentation of Demonstrating the World for the Association of Medical Humanities at Dartington Hall in June, and this version included detailed descriptions of handshapes and postural movement required to perform the simple domestic activities I was enacting (tying shoelaces and so on). Now though Ida and I decided to formalize this conceit by devising a ‘vocabulary’ of hand-shapes. You can perhaps picture these hand-shapes by the names we assigned them: the cliffhanger, the crab, the gun, the hook, the pecker. . .
Since then we have established a further collaboration with furniture makers Emma Leslie and Wilkey (Studio LW), who, together with myself Edd and Ida will be occupying the Shape Gallery at Westfield, Stratford between 19th August - 4th September to build, as a public exposition, the furniture for our eventual Demonstrating the World vehicle. Do feel free to call by and check how we are proceeding and learn more about the scope and aims of the project.
'Don’t Forget The Wrists!'
‘Demonstrating the World’ is a project for Unlimited 2 (delivered in partnership by Shape and Artsadmin) which had a Research and Development phase and now, in collaboration with producer Edd Hobbs, a production commission.
Sometime midway through the R&D phase I encountered the wonderful contemporary folk-archive of amateur demonstration videos on YouTube. (That’s my descriptor: they do not, collectively – as yet – think of themselves as forming an archive).
In these short enthusiastic films an aspect of our everyday lives that we would normally consider banal and unworthy of very much attention, has been given a rigorous and elaborate instructional depiction. You can test the depth of the ‘archive’ by searching ‘how to’ followed by almost any random task or activity, and someone, out there in their bedrooms and kitchens, will have taken it upon themselves to make a short informative film illustrating the activity in question. I love these films, although I can’t fully imagine why they exist.
If you’ve ever seen Nic Roeg’s ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ starring David Bowie then you’ll recall that the eponymous Man (‘Newton’ – a name with some gravity to it), prior to falling to Earth, had learnt everything about living on our troublesome planet from watching videos of us humans doing things. Thus, by extension, my conceit is that the YouTube demonstration videos might similarly be considered to be addressed to some alien entity who is preparing to come and live amongst us.
This blog then, since it is focused on the YouTube ‘archive’, will double as a Video Jockey gig. So let’s start the ball rolling. Or at least, let’s learn ‘How to Roll a Skein of Yarn into a Ball’
Actually, I’d recommend some degree of selection upon your, the blog-reader’s part, when clicking on the links I’ll be offering: that ‘ball-rolling’ film manages to extend to almost 14 minutes and any potential entertainment presented by the stated concept of the film is pretty much exhausted after seconds rather than minutes (I myself have watched it right through, though. Twice.) So with the links below, I will list the films’ duration so that you can instantly appraise how much life-reduction time is in the balance).
Before the onslaught, a short pause. Unlimited 2 is a disability art commission so it is reasonable to ask: what is the relevance of demonstration videos to disabled people? Actually, I reckon that question might be more puzzling for supposedly ‘non-disabled’ people. If you have an experience of disability, either yourself, or through people close to you, then you’ll be aware that the world, our Earth that is, isn’t a self-evidently transparent, unthinkingly-negotiated environment. No it’s not.
Ornery stuff as depicted in films, TV and popular media generally, can be fiendishly complicated for those of us with the crip gene. For example, I myself need to be vigilant against the build up of wax in my ears, since, being deaf, there is no concomitant loss of hearing either way, earholes stuffed full of wax or not. So, here’s a big-up to a certain Dr John Kiel for his short film (1 min. 51), demonstrating how to remove ear-wax
Moving forward to let’s say, ooh. . . um. . . (YouTube Search in progress). Hand washing. Here’s a lovely little film (1 min 19) that includes the warning/legend that I’ve extracted to serve as the title of this blog: 'Don't Forget The Wrists!'
So you’ve washed your hands and are all ready to pull on your shoes and head out into the big wide World. Shoe-lacing can be tricksy though, so thankfully, presuming you wear shoes (which this DAO-bound blog does not), AJ Nickell’s opus (2min 16) has got the juice. The way he does it goes like this
Shoes on, ready to set off, perhaps to a meeting? Maybe one about securing a funding commission for some crazed artistic idea you’ve been gestating? If you’re a fella or Diane Keaton in ‘Annie Hall’, you might want to wear a tie.
It’s worth considering the duration of ‘How to Tie a Tie’ (a pleasingly tautologous title for a rather trying 7 min 16 work), before becoming click-bait, but as a document it mostly creates bafflement that our presenter ‘Ben’ has definitely not sat through a film demonstrating how to match a shirt to a tie (he does pre-emptively ward off criticism though by stating ‘This Video is for Beginners’
Something more directly disability-relevant? ‘How to Climb Stairs’ (just 37 well-spent seconds) from the ‘Alexander Technician’ Leland Vall is here
More exactingly, (8 min 46) is ‘How to Climb Stairs Without Hurting Yourself’ from ‘The PostureDoc’
Almost as entertaining as the demonstration videos themselves are the comments offered by their viewers. Most often these take the simple form of an acidic troll, (‘Dude, I know how to fucking breathe, ok?’); but there can be moments of levity such as this response to the aforementioned ‘How to Climb Stairs Without Hurting Yourself’:
After numerous attempts of trying to climb the stairs in my current home. . . I have somehow managed to get my penis stuck in the ceiling fan. Any information on how to get it out?
As suggested by the stricken appendage mentioned in that comment, it has to be noted that the great majority of ‘how to’ demonstrators and their um, ‘demonstrees’ are male. Particularly when the activity is gender-neutral, (washing, walking, fixing pesky stuff), whereas female Demonstrators -I’ve only scratched the surface of this vast archive so could well be wrong here - seem to concentrate on applying make-up, hair-fixing, cheerleading moves and so on.
I don’t have a theory as to why that might be, although recently the phenomenon of ‘mansplaining’ has been picked up on in the media, this being the condition by which certain men feel it necessary, entirely unbidden, to ‘mansplain’ rudimentary, obvious things to women. I’d hazard an opinion that demonstration videos’ are demographically a ‘guy thing’, then.
Sometimes maddeningly so. There’s a sub-genre of videos that smugly assert and attempt to definitively demonstrate that ‘You’ve Been Doing It Wrong’. (‘It’ being almost everything: you’d be surprised at how many things are done wrong, including, in this precise instance, using words ‘wrong’ when you should be saying ‘wrongly’. But anyway.) I love ‘You’ve Been Using Ketchup Cups Wrong’, but am finally going with ‘You’ve Been Pouring Juice Wrong’ (3 min 17) as my curatorial peach of an example.
Somewhat related, but more on the side of being helpful rather than just plain objectionable, we might consider the ‘Life Hacks’ genre. These short films do not say you’ve been doing stuff wrong, but that you might like to consider doing them a little better, more efficiently. Again there’s a wealth of material in the ‘Life Hacks’ sub-genre and you may want to explore this archive further, since they can be genuinely useful. I never knew that if only I decided upon purchasing white duck eggs rather than brown ones from hens, I could add the discarded shells to my towels wash for a brighter, whiter finish. (Steady as you go: this compilation of 20 ‘Life Hacks’ is 7 min 56, although the useful/helpfulness is testified to by the views – in excess of 1.5 million!).
Like these Demonstrators, I could go on at much further length but I’ll close this blog with a creative, perhaps alarming thought. It might be possible to (re)construct an entire, reasonably typical human day from these videos, a visual Joycean ‘Bloomsday’ perhaps: how to get out of bed, how to use the bathroom and so on, right through to how to switch the light off and then fall asleep.
In the next blog, I’ll outline how I’ve been deploying this ‘contemporary folk-archive’ of demonstration videos to inform my work as the artist at the centre of the Unlimited 2 commissioned artwork, ‘Demonstrating the World’.
This is my third blog-series for DAO now, each of which have provided me with the opportunity to recount the progress and process of an art venture. You can read my two previous blogs for DAO by clicking on the following links: The Eavesdropper and Spike Island Residency