Materials such as paper, stone and carbon are abraded, attacked, aggravated, aggrieved. Rips, gashes, slits, scores, piercings and perforations are repeatedly constructed and cave in.
Ash, Chalk and Charcoal
Ash, Chalk and Charcoal explores how the materiality of mark-making, drawing, language, text and writing in situ, as part of an artistic practice, can reveal, contain and express violence.
A key idea is that the inherent violence – soft, aggressive, latent, explicit – that is encapsulated and released through the combination of marks (visual, audio, spatial) can be revealed through simultaneous production of creative and critical work in the site of, and during, making that takes place in private spaces and public spaces. The criticality at work in a live process of exploration is described through consideration of the roles of the subject, the artwork and the artist’s (Tracy Mackenna) live-to-camera action.
Surfaces such as paper, stone, carbon are abraded, attacked, aggravated, aggrieved. Rips, gashes, slits, scores, piercings and perforations are repeatedly construct and cave in.
Multiple voices are at play, to present and confound the subject of violence. The beauty and worth of the non-linear is teased out, using the fragment to build towards a larger whole, stimulating the requirement of (visual, auditory) re-reading as a way of negotiating temporality.
An important focus is the value and legacy of the transitory (image, sound, place), explored through attention to the sensory qualities of marks, language and haptic communication: productive mis-readings and re-castings of the video’s subject matter.
The affective and multi-sensory aspects of mark-making are revealed in relation to their ability to stimulate on-site experimentation in textual and image-based language processes.
The work features, and was made in and around Collemacchia and Venafro, in the region of Molise, Italy, 2021.
Duration: 00:04:22.
The work was part of Violence: The fourth PARSE (Platform for Artistic Research Sweden) biennial research conference at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 17/18/19 November 2021.