Up Shit Creek
The paddle is causing uproar. The idea is to try and extend it's Narrative and in so doing give it a new meaning within the museum. To this end I suggested taking it to meet well known Rotherham celebrities such as the Chuckle Brothers and David Seaman. I also thought I'd take it to the pictures to see King Kong - I've invited Kate to the Zoo with me so we can photograph it with animals from it's past (Crocodiles?)
As I described these ideas to the senior curator it all seemed to be making sense even the connection between truth, fiction and metaphor and Conrad external fixators and buying a train ticket for it and telling people who asked what I was doing with a paddle that I was extending it's narrative and seeing if I could re invent it as a piece of social rather than ethnographic history.
The sticking point seemed to be my suggestion that I was going to use it to paddle a boat (Not a shed) across Rother valley country park. This was taken on the chin but as I looked into her gradually rolling eyes I could see the potential problems I was sparking.
So it's all very interting the museum are now researching the paddle for me - they say there might be a speer I could use instead - as within the Dogma of my current thinking I'd have to hunt impala or kill somebody with it I thought I should not really go there.
I'll Keep you posted - if the paddle is really important I may need to make a replica if it's not important they may de accesion it which would mean that after it becomes famous as the first Rotherham paddle to meet the queen it will have to go back into the collection but where?
I told my 12 year old daughter about the idea and she said "Dad you could just make it up" so if she gets it I think I might be onto something and can start my journey back down shit creek.
posted by spodsheff @ 7:37 AM
6 Comments:
I still think it is worth doing.
David and I are really interested in the Conrad links and I have used it in my mind to trace all sorts of things.
Maybe you could also do a map to go with the journey.
What's worth doing - killing someone with a spear? The best possible outcome is for me to be banned from paddling a boat with a paddle. Most of the ideas we've talked about lie within this paradox.
maybe, maybe not? I can think of a situation where it's worth smacking someone senseless with a paddle, though!
Still, think you need to take that paddle for a walk, specially if not allowed!! I don't know Conrad (know Capone!) .. but sounds like its becomming a necessary journey? + Urgent or forced, it may link with questions of belonging -- incl. ownership of objects, truth, kate's work and the museum's global aim for increased diversity (tick them boxes!)
?
Diversity is an interesting idea. Museums used to try and show people the other now they often act as a mirror - if you can't see yourself in a mirror it's not much use. A Mirror for looking at other people with -like those little ones which stick on the side of cycling helmits or the ones on swimming hats to stop you swimming into walls when doing back crawl.
My focus for this work is to experiment with narratives and meaning and ask how much of an objects history remains in it's physicality. Or not
The Paddle is most
definatly spending some time with me - perhaps on a walk perhaps on a train or who knows if the budjet
stretches a plain.
this raises lots of thouhts and ideas .. in thinking of journeys (otherness and place), if jet-setting might you also have to do the trip as stowaway in the back of a truck? if location is important, how important is it how (and why) you get there.
more importantly though: SWIMMING HATS WITH REAR VIEW MIRRORS!!! Have could I possibly have missed this! the object of all objects, surely!!! Where do you get those???
I think you should kill the Chuckle brothers with the paddle.
Molly hates them and says they spoil her morning TV experience.
This could be your First Victim.
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