On the value of things...

So last Friday I managed to escape the weather nightmare at Gatwick and only suffered three hours delay. I was flying to Spain for the festive season after a year’s absence. And now…? Now I am in Alicante, a place I can only really call home because my family lives here and there is a room full of my stuff – old stuff. Anyway, last night I had a long and somewhat overdue chat with my mum: told her everything about i am small THE WORLD IS BIG. I don’t know what this kind of conversation is like for other fellow creatives out there, but for me it’s an important moment. Though my mother is certainly cultured she does not necessarily have a full understanding of the ins and outs of contemporary performance practice. Furthermore, though she is certainly supportive she is equally critical and analytical. And so, the moment I tell her about one of our new projects is always exciting because I know I will get a barrage of questions followed by her honest opinion. She was excited about i am small THE WORLD IS BIG and was impressed by its scope and scale, but that is not what I wanted to write about…

We were talking about world atlases and how we plan to use them for our project when she referred to them in passing as a ‘defunct technology’. That strange thought grabbed me. We live in the age of Google Earth and other such technological marvels. In fact this morning my brother showed me that Spain is the most ‘photographed’ country after the US, on Google Street View that is. So it is strange to think that I could give you my ‘home’ address and you could have a peek at my family’s house! Though to be honest I’m not sure how I feel about that… At any rate it was something I had not considered before: the possibility that good old world atlases printed in book form might already be a thing of the past. Where does that leave i am small THE WORLD IS BIG? At the moment I cannot say. Of course you don’t yet know what we intend to do with the atlases we have collected – and we have collected quite a few! (We already have atlases in English, German, Spanish, and we are still hoping to find more in Easter languages such as Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Hindi, and Mandarin.) For the time being all I will say is that we will be cannibalising these world atlases… So, if we accept the statement that printed world atlases are a ‘defunct technology’, does that mean they are becoming historic artefacts? Should we therefore treat them with more respect? I am not sure.
A telling moment came a few weeks ago when we received in the post an atlas I had bought on eBay. It was printed in 1917. When he saw it Rick put his foot down and was adamant that we could not cannibalise it. This, he said, was a precious thing… But why? Do we feel some strange nostalgia? What happens when we see Canada appear as the Dominion of Canada; or see that Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were united under British rule; or that Germany was once huge? I don’t know. Or is it rather that we value artefacts such as this 1917 world atlas because they have survived the relentless passage of time, because they offer us a window into the past?
After taking into account other, more practical considerations (such as the quality of the paper), Daisy and I compromised and agreed not to use the 1917 atlas in the same way as we intend to use the other ones. However, my mother’s comments put this into perspective and problematise our attitude. If all world atlases are ‘on their way out’ and will eventually be replaced by electronic copies, then does that not mean that even newer atlases (from the 1960’s to 1990’s say) are already in the process of becoming historic artefacts? Will we be cutting this process short by using them in our project? Or rather, do we mind that they will become different and transformed artefacts once we have cannibalised them? The whole question reminds me a little bit, though tangentially, of the discussion that ensued after the Chapman brothers (Jake and Dinos) ‘defaced’ or rather ‘rectified’ 80 of Goya’s famous prints (http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/mar/31/artsfeatures.turnerprize2003). Not that I think we are operating on the same level of course! I am aware that the world atlases we will be cannibalising are not precious works of art, but they do have a value in themselves. Hum… Many questions. Few answers. For now.

Pablo

PS: and if I don’t blog before the end of the week… Feliz Navidad!