The Bakery of Blok (2009)
The Bakery of Blok (installation detail)
The
Bakery of Blok assembles a related group of works in different media to
suggest the culturally rich metaphor of bread making - a process
involving basic elements, activating agents, chemistry and time. In a
narrative of transformation generated from a metaphorical group of
eight abandoned blocks of wood from a closed bakery, the installation
explores the development of sculptural form as a densely layered
process that resembles organic growth. The blocks of wood become tools
for populating their environment with other forms while form itself is
depicted as a self-reproducing character in a plot where pieces of
dough re-animate into living beings. The Bakery of Blok was conceived
like an audience testing pilot mechanism, such as those used for
proposed television series. Accordingly, the various related elements
of the exhibition - sculpture, video, and photographs - are construed
to resemble a partial set, some short clips and a series of promotional
posters. While inhabiting contemporary cultural idioms, The Bakery of
Blok mimics the larger process of history and this subject’s
negotiation of memory and forgetfulness.
Weights of the Blok
Tools of the Blok
Containers of the Blok
The
Bakery of Blok features three groupings of sculptures. These are
Weights of The Blok (5 objects), Measures of The Blok (5 objects) and
Tools of The Blok (7 objects). Each grouping has been hand carved from
commercial grade spruce typically used for home construction. The
block-plinths that each grouping sits upon are constructed from
unfinished plywood and purposed with a light white wash of latex paint.
Identical dimensions indicate the plinths as a series of units wherein
the objects related to The Bakery of Blok are arranged according to
their use within the overall narrative.
Each of the seventeen
items is the result of a linguistic translation of text into form. In
researching bread production I came upon instructions and lists for a
necessary series of implements needed to make bread. Illustrations
showing the appropriate items were routinely absent. As a programmatic
working rule I did not seek out visual references for each tool.
Instead I set about producing sculptural translations of each item as I
interpreted it. The knife, spoon, scraper, tray, weights, scale, and
containers represent what I have versioned as a depiction of the
written item. Each item records my use of a constructed language, a
sartorial fashioning of material into form.
Within the
narrative of the video Eight Pilot Episodes for The Bakery of Blok each
of the seventeen items is depicted as the result of the eight wooden
blocks constructing the implements needed to produce bread. These
seventeen items were used during the shooting to produce the bread
forms present within the video. Displayed according to their
categorical use, the wooden sculptures record the making of bread upon
their surface with traces of flour and dough referencing past
employment. Separated for the gesture of exhibition, the objects reveal
a series of sculptural translations that propose the generation of form
as the result of a fashioned discussion.
For instance, the
weight for water is a combination of the container’s mass plus the
volume weight for that ingredient. Assorted wood bits were collected
totaling this combined weight then arranged into a form, finally
painted blue indicating its role within the proposed narrative. As an
object this Weight exists according to a constructed logic that has
assigned an arrangement of wood with an inaccurate measurement and
elemental identity. The definitions of one language have been replaced
with that of another, the beginnings of a systematic vernacular address
of all that pre-exists.
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (One Eye and Second Loaf), C-print
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (The Bakers of Blok), C-print
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (Red Stripe and Second Loaf), C-print
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (Bread and Salt), C-print
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (France), C-print
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (Upstairs, Downstairs) , C-print
Arrangement for Bread and Wood (Bread Hat), C-print
The
seven colour photographs collectively titled An Arrangement for Bread
and Wood depict a photo-shoot utilizing the cast and set from Eight
Pilot Episodes for The Bakery of Blok. Although elements from the video
are present, the images are not scenes from the pilot narrative. Each
image presents a sampling of found and constructed forms, the bread and
the wood, provisionally situated within a visual setting that
oscillates between promotional advertising and performance document.
One’s recording while the other’s proposing. Buddy-ed up and presented
as a pair, the wood and the bread casually explore their table-top
lifestyle in a series of dramatized instances highlighting their unique
ability to underscore a material similarity with an equally dissimilar
appearance. On one hand the images record a series of authorial
intentions to augment and develop the language of sculpture. On the
other an index of promotion, teaser previews, are presented to
potentially hook an audience into mental participation with an
unrevealed narrative arc.
As documentary images each photograph
constructs a propositional relationship between the dimensionally
similar elements of bread and wood. The foreground and background of
each image collaborate to construct a specific facet for a general
narrative. In recording a clearly staged arrangement the two formal
elements and their related sub-sets (flour and dough for the bread,
containers and wedges for the wood) introduce a dialogue where the
language of one form is used to address that of another. While the
wooden block is the long result of a series of growths, processes and
formations, so does the crust of bread emerge from a similarly long
trip. As needed, an increasingly abstract narrative evolves the
variables of consumption, abundance, and growth to the infinite
regeneration of these two organically related, but ultimately
processed, forms.
Promotional campaigns introduce a product,
series, or service while educating an audience on the specific merits
of the subject at hand. A good “pitch” is needed in order to generate
interest in the product. After this has been achieved and the audience
is hooked, there occurs a delivery of more advanced and intricate
information exploring the initial idea. Television commercials,
magazine advertisements, poster campaigns, testimonials, articles, and
merchandising: elements of information-administration with the
potential to affect an audiences’ generosity to the unfamiliar. The
seven photos propose a bakery (albeit a haunted one) as a metaphorical
location for the generative organic-like growth of sculptural forms.
Wherein a temporarily concealed process (A scenario of experimentation
that is responsible for the development of a never-ending expansion of
form) has resulted in the paring of wood and bread as re-animated
partners. Presented here as a kind of commercial Trojan horse for the
discursive elements of abstraction, memory, and intentionality relative
to the propagation of sculptural forms in both a serialized and
specific manner.
The
single channel video Eight Pilot Episodes for The Bakery of Blok
depicts the production of bread by eight wood blocks in an abandoned
bakery. The structure of a television pilot was used to highlight the
propositional nature of the information contained within this work.
Beginning with the rise of the sun, each bock character is introduced
to the audience. The voice of each block is a different sound produced
by wood. Scratchy, knocking, popping, and swirling are terms that
textually approximate the sounds of each character. Following this
introductory episode the environment and daily monotony of these blocks
is introduced and explored with brief interactions and confrontational
discussions between the elders and the young ones. One day an ideogram
of bread is discovered posted to a wall in the distance. Using this
graphic as a place of departure the block begin a discussion that
explores the immediate surroundings to develop the necessary equipment
to produce this alien form, bread. Tools, measures, and weights are
developed from found and mysteriously summoned piles of wood in order
to transform the loose piles of ingredients, flour, salt, yeast, water,
into a mixture that is eventually transformed into bread. Once a
successful loaf is produced, a piece of the dough is saved into a
custom built octagonal container. This dough, also referred to as a
starter or sponge, enables the group of eight blocks (The Bakers of
Blok) to endlessly produce this same bread form.
This process
of a yeast starter is standard in most European and western bakeries.
Yeast starters have been traced back 300 to 400 years in Europe whereas
the oldest recorded starter in North America belongs to a bakery in San
Francisco and dates from 1890. To enable the continued existence of
this organic form the yeast requires daily handling. If the yeast
starter is not used, it dies. A lot has happened in the last 400 years.
Because of the starter’s demand for daily handling, this little dough
mixture adopts the role of a material witness, absorbing the
information of each day as it’s handled by the baker. This dough is
then made into a series of identical soft forms then baked into a solid
form, units of information, distributed like newspapers and periodicals
to a base of customers. The bread as form serial documents each day of
its existence. Each unit of bread, 60cm long by 6cm wide by 5cm tall,
is a unit of memory, one that can be consumed by an audience.
In
France the baguette style of bread is carefully protected to ensure
standardization and accessibility to its citizens. Bakeries must adhere
to a strict list of ingredients, their weights, the length and width of
the bread, and the number of slashes on its surface. Everyday a
particular list of ingredients in determined quantities are mixed
together to produce a series of identical bread forms that are then
consumed by a population, or, that bakeries constituency. If the
constituency does not agree with the bakeries style of production (or
story as I approach it) then that bakery is not able to continue its
production. That story is lost to the public. As a metaphor for the
entropic movement of information the bakery that is popular is that of
the dominant discussion, the hot zone. The bakery that is closed is the
cold zone, the island of minor information deemed unnecessary and out
of fashion as it relates to the major island of popular activity.
Within
this constructed relationship the narrative depicted in Eight Pilot
Episodes for The Bakery of Blok addresses forgetfulness, memory, and
how discussion propagates additional forms. The relationships of
narrative and material are developed sculpturally within the video and
are the result of an active address of a subject’s historical and
situational surroundings. The language these forms use to communicate
(wood for wood and bread for bread) is incomprehensible to a larger
public. The language is as specialized as that of many cultural subsets
who have fashioned an existence of difference relative to the dominant
fluency of the major cultural, social, and political themes and their
practitioners. Conversely in recent popular programming for television
and cinema the use of gibberish-based languages have enabled a larger
audience to be addressed by situating the communicative content of a
narrative within an area of audience projection. The Italian children’s
stop animation program Pingu is the most successful example of this.
Celebrated internationally for its accessible content that addresses
situationally humorous lessons for children, the program is perhaps
more of a success for popularly introducing abstraction as an economic
tool. Because the characters of Pingu speak gibberish, the episodes do
not need overdubbing. The adventures of Pingu and its friends are
visually and aurally communicated through a narrative sequence that
relies on tools of observation and projection. The abstract voices
amplify and direct the information that is introduced through action.
That abstraction can be used to address a larger public is employed
within Eight Pilot Episodes for The Bakery of Blok to extend the
material simplicity of the objects depicted, bread and wood, as a
sculptural ground zero for the production of exploratory forms that
first construct then populate a landscape with their actions.
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