The Fiction of Fixedness

I am beginning to see the final piece in the puzzle - at least in the remaining weeks of the MA - is to fully document and observe the returning stage in the composting process. Initially the idea of returning the paper works to the compost was simply a practicality - no space for failed attempts to I disposed of them to donate their fibres to the good of future research. I now see how poetic this stage of the process is, that it actually goes to the very heart of what I am searching for: a release from grief.

I remember at the RCA we discussed burning my work but it felt so urgent, not in a good way, it felt so dramatic, so destructive. I dismissed the idea then and dismiss it now, burning paper feels mundane, rude even. Returning cellulose to the compost feels like a rite of passage, a ritual of mourning, a way of sending off my works, over which I have pored, loved, nurtured and offered my time, kindness and attention. They have mattered to me, so to put them back into the collective humus from which we are all reborn feels good to my bones.

I am not sure what form this will take, perhaps a video or something a bit less literal, I don’t know yet. It would be tidy and satisfying to complete this circularity before the end of the MA. I hope in this final stage in my learning I will cement the idea that fixedness in place is truly a fiction, there is no start or end point, no edges, that we live and die with hungry edges, sprawling, becoming, retreating and ceasing, emerging and morphing. The wider implications for the fiction of fixedness are societal, generational and multiplicitous. In my wildest imaginings I see it as the ultimate in kin-making, a drawing that lives and dies as I do, as we all do.

Addendum - idea: occurred to me at yoga I could do a small compost heap in a bucket and time lapse the degradation process of a paper cabbage leaf. I don’t know how to do this but it seems like something I could do. It could be something simple like just taking a photo every day and stringing it together, which would also intersect with the animation idea.

Update - I have ordered a see through plastic bucket and asked JK lots of questions about how to do this. Lots of ideas on YouTube of course and I will very simply time lapse the degradation of one of the paper cast cabbage leaves and some of the other rejected paper castings. The bucket isn’t very big and I think it will be better to be focussed. I may need compost accelerator if it doesn’t seem to be making much progress.