Rachel Whiteread

I've been challenged by my tutor, John Reardon, to use my collection of messages in ways that don't simply rely on nostalgia. 


I know what he's getting at. It's all too tempting to romanticise the messages, to separate them completely from the present. 


To get me going, I've been thinking about the work of artist Rachel Whiteread. 


A few weeks ago I went to see the Tate exhibition of her drawings. As well as her sketches, the show included some of her collections of objects - from Russian postcards to hotel keys, squashed cans to a cast of Peter Sellers' nose. 


Whiteread (of the plinth on the plinth in Trafalgar Square, of concrete casts of a terraced house, and of a winding village of old dolls' houses) appears interested in our ambiguous relationship with memory. 


In conversation with Bice Curiger, Whiteread likened drawing to writing a diary. This fits with the feeling you get as you walk round the rooms at the Tate. Peering into the vitrines feels very much like looking into Whiteread's mind. Or her memory.


But in the interview, I was puzzled by her attitude towards collecting. Here are two quotes, one about her collection of dolls' houses and the other on how she regards postcards:

"I started collecting dolls’ houses about 22 years ago, by chance. I bought maybe three or four, and then people started buying them for me. I didn’t really know what to do with them, but I kept buying them, and the more dishevelled and unloved they were, the more I wanted to look after them.... I had wanted to make something that wasn’t sentimental, but would make children gasp when they saw it."

"Explorers took photographers with them, and would make postcards [from their pictures]. Postcards were a way in which people first saw the world. However, I do not want to be nostalgic…"

For both the dolls' houses and postcards, Whiteread is keen to avoid nostalgic sentimentality. But her attitudes to the dolls' houses and to the cards differ substantially.


Of the dolls' houses she says she "look[s] after them". And you can see this in her artwork. Her village brings the collection to life. She resuscitates the "unloved" houses. 


But with her postcards, things are different. Rather than preserving, she has irreversibly changed them. Punched holes into them. Created something new - see the photo below. Whereas she's fallen in love with the dolls' houses as they are or how they've been, the postcards offer potential for what they might become.

I think my interest in old postcards is most similar to Whiteread's love of her houses. My urge is to preserve and breathe new life into them. 


Or to put it another way, I won't be introducing them to any hole punchers.

A quote, a video and a postcard.

From Walter Benjamin's The Storyteller;


no event any longer comes to us 
without already being 
shot 
through 
with explanation 


by now 
almost nothing 
benefits storytelling 


almost everything 
benefits information

Walt's coded love

Postman CCTV

I know most of you have already worked this out but I can officially confirm...  there are only so many hours in the day.

How have I come across this insight? Well, I've just started a masters degree and  - as my absence from blogland suggested - have been struggling to get everything done.

On the upside, neglecting Postcardese has allowed me to achieve all the essentials of student life; a handsome amount of stationery has been procured, my face is suitably unshaven and - while not yet perfect - my I-was-just-about-to-say-that nod is coming along well in classes.

The course is art and politics. And over the coming year, I'm going to try to think through how some of the concepts I'm picking up relate to postcard messages. The end goal? Well the main reason for doing the course is to enjoy having a think about stuff, but on top of that some postcard-related art is going to emerge.

It would be great if people could fire up their imaginations on what this might look like. Or if there's some event, artist, thinker that is relevant, send me a link to postcardese@gmail.com.

First up is an idea which has come up a couple of times in class  - Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon.

Bentham designed this theoretical prison as a way to demonstrate the power of surveillance. He wanted to explore how isolating and watching prisoners might change their behaviour.

In the Panopticon, inmates were to be kept in cells around the edge of a circular prison - they'd be visible at all times to a guard in the centre of the building. Cells were to be backlit and the guard's hut would have no light, meaning he could see prisoners at all times but the prisoners did not know when the guard was there. Prisoners would, Bentham thought, be conditioned by surveillance into changing their behaviour. Or as he put it, surveillance would "grind rogues honest."

The Panopticon never got built in England but you only have to think of today's CCTV cameras to appreciate how the power of surveillance has become a very real mechanism of power in modern society.

Panopticon postman?

The open nature of postcards means the sender accepts their message may be read by others besides the addressee. There is a parallel between the prison guard sometimes being in their hut and the postman sometimes passing the time by thumbing through cards as he/she delivers them.

The question we are left with is how this surveillance changed the behaviour of our Edwardian postcarders. Worth pondering.

If you have any ideas or comments please put them up on the boards.

Finally, rather than just giving you still images this week, I've uploaded a video which discusses a message affected by the prospect of snooping postmen. Ignore any camera wobble - it's deliberate ;).

A fine set of girls

There's an anxiety associated with communicating. 

Once a message is sent you don't know how it will be received. You hope you've hit the right tone but you know there's a chance it might be misinterpreted. What's more, as Muriel hints, you're aware your thoughts may be read by others besides the addressee.

And all that was when we were using the one-to-one format of the postcard. 

Today, our new one-to-many means of communication (Facebook, Twitter, etc) can intensify those feelings of self-doubt. Take leaving a message on a friend's profile for the world to see. If it's left hanging without a thread it's easy to imagine it's been ignored by not just your friend but also by an unknown number of people who've seen it. 

I suspect this has the effect of splitting messages into two broad categories. On the one hand, people aware of the risks in communicating play safe and reveal little. Neutral, innocuous remarks give the impression of not expecting replies. On the other, people in need of a bit of attention feel pushed into saying something quite extreme to guarantee a reaction. 

One thing's for sure, I doubt Muriel would be able to comprehend that her "fine set of girls" is now on show to the world. Sorry M. 

By the way, which one do you think is Muriel?

Grassroots history

A lot of grassroots history is like the trace of the ancient plough. It might seem gone for good with the men who ploughed the field many centuries ago. But every aerial photographer knows that, in a certain light, and seen at a certain angle, the shadows of long-forgotten ridge and furrow can still be seen.

Eric Hobsbawm, "History from below"

Hobsbawm's notion of grassroots history fits well with old postcard messages.

I hope by picking out cards for their messages, we're doing our bit to discover long-forgotten ridges and furrows of ordinary life.

I bought this card last week at the Bloomsbury postcard fair in London. It shows how even the simplest message can transport you into a strangely unfamiliar world.

While the basics of humour don't change, targets do. Would it be acceptable now to poke fun at teetotallers, however gently? And I'd never heard of teetotallers referred to as totes before? Had you?

Instant Postcard Messaging

About a year ago I bought a new mobile phone - one of those fancy ones with a built-in camera. 

It is great. 

I love being able to send images to people and get instant reactions. I'll take a photo of some new glasses I've bought, say, and then send it to my mum. Within a minute she's texted back her thoughts.

How modern you think - how advanced we are. Well not exactly. Those bloomin' Edwardians were there first I'm afraid.

Take the pair of messages above. Gaddesden Place catches fire on 1 February 1905. Already by 18 February, our postcarder has a choice of cards to send showing what happened.

And that he/she decided to send two allows us to enjoy something unique.

Different cards sent on the same day, to the same address, to two brothers (?) about the same fire. This is the collecting triumph I referred to last week. By having both messages, the fire and the sending of the cards seem to become 3D.

 

PS My mum thought I was trying to look like Woody Allen. So cruel! Yet probably fair.