Lost & Found Department

A couple of most visit-worthy websites have popped-up on the radar of late, the first in particular by virtue of the occurrence of a most serendipitous moment.

Whilst indulging in what was quite a rare moment of late-night channel-hopping, I chanced upon the movie 'In Search of a Midnight Kiss': although a recent production, its black & white aesthetic arrested the attention enough to pause a while, during which time the narrative progressed to a point where the female character of the featured on-screen perambulating couple had her attention arrested by the finding of a single abandoned shoe, which object she proceeded to photograph, at the same time informing her male companion that she posted such images on her very own website, appropriately named 'thelostshoeproject.com'.
Although the film was soon to prove itself otherwise unengaging enough to warrant much further viewing, alas, still this incident remained in the memory - as well it might, given subject matter having a certain affinity with concerns & happenings here at TOoT, of course - & further research was carried out as soon as appropriate thereafter, resulting in the finding of a website bearing the very same name, The Lost Shoe Project.

There seems to have been a little debate generated amongst some of those similarly intrigued as to whether this particular internet resource bears any relation to the movie ('factual' opinion & cited evidence most likely confirming an affirmation of such), but nonetheless, the website features a selection of engaging images of single, abandoned found objects of a footwear nature, of a variety of types, many of which have been beautifully, most aesthetically photographed - one assumes more or less as discovered, encountered - upon roadsides, in the gutters, on verges, adjacent to roads & their familiar surfaces, very much in the manner of the those examples of discarded aluminium can 'roadkill' as frequently appear photographically here on TOoT.

There's a sense that, particularly if it owes its existence to some form of movie tie-in, & as evidenced by the mere 20-odd images in its gallery, 'The Lost Shoe Project' website is frozen in its specific time, its development arrested & forever in abeyance, which seems a great shame given the scope such subject/object matter offers, but still it remains of some interest, not least 'affinitively', both visually & conceptually.
Shoes obviously seem more intriguing when found abandoned, particularly singly & missing the counterpart, that other, that comprises their pair, given the comparitive scarcity of such discoveries, & more poignant too, considering their human dimension, than do ubiquitous examples of the discarded packaging of consumables, but still one might claim some form of kinship.

Such thoughts of abandoned shoes, or at least images of, cause me return to another theme that, having recentlyish been found at The Affected Provincial's delightfully whimsical online journal (& more particularly this entry), has continued to percolate slowly.
Having last summer invested-in, enjoyed & subsequently written on the subject of Guy Maddin's idiosyncratic movie 'The Saddest Music in the World', my curiosity was thus, of course, instantly aroused by the concept of 'The Saddest Object in the World', as proposed by Evan Michelson.

Now, given a found shoe's potential capacity to inspire a 'Proustian involuntary memory', of some significant profundity, perhaps, & also to come under aesthetic consideration for the purposes of critique, such an object might indeed aspire to the condition of being the saddest of its kind, one might say.
The 'roadkill' cans, alas, for all their abandoned status, accident-prone nature & abject appearance, seem unlikely - even to one such as yours truly, having established an intense, prolonged working relationship with the genre & the individual instances of - to ever belong to such a rarified category: their purpose is purely functional, they do not inspire an emotional response, even if they might be considered aesthetic objects.
So what then might be 'the saddest object in the world'..?

But, we digress...the second intriguing website to which I was alerted (by, for the nth occasion, Mr Reynolds' wonderful blissblog) happened to be (again, one might see the rather obvious attraction to an inveterate & indeed incorrigible finder of objects) none other than
Found Objects, which subtitularly claims for itself to be a 'hauntological dumping ground', as indeed appears very much the case: all manner of visual material of various vintages that might stir a memory or two of the personal & communal cultural past is constantly being updated in great & fascinating profusion. A subject very much to become lost in (thoughts of), as occurs often: when, for instance, one might consider the hauntological implications of the tagline of the 'Yesterday' TV channel - 'where the past is always present', which could have certain spooky connotations amongst other things, as one is enjoyably reminded of aspects of one's own televisual past &/or gently educated in aspects of the general socio-culture.

On the general subject of hauntology, one might appropriate such a phrase & concept as 'where the past is always present' into the process of making art, where any piece of work, or indeed every mark, might be loaded with reference to or evoke spectres from the history of: some of us could reasonably be charged with rather enjoying & indeed encouraging such...

Found 'Drawing'

Now, the presence of found objects haunts TOoT through the provision of subject matter for the processing of drawings - most specifically the ‘roadkill' diptych series of such that have occupied the most significant area of operations over the past year & more - & also photographs, as many a recent example might attest.

However, this particular post marks the occasion of (re)presenting the found source itself (or at least the image of a digital reproduction of), which item came to hand but yesterday during one of the frequent ‘tidies-up’ that form an aspect of the day job duties.


found 'drawing'
printer toner on paper/21x16cm

Departing somewhat from the norm, in an act not of process but, rather, of aesthetic perception & designation, one might consider this as being ‘art’, a ‘readymade’ example of such, in the form of a found ‘drawing’: it is, in fact, the obviously-trimmed & subsequently discarded residue of a larger sheet of paper that has passed through a monochrome photocopier, bearing the ghostly trace of an image of the pin-prick marks upon the inside of the machine’s lid, that part which comes into direct contact with the screen, fixed with toner powder.

Thus it is the proposal today that to anyone sufficiently aesthetically-inclined (the premise upon which TOoT exists, of course) - & quite possibly having passed through a process of art education – the potential exists to view such a ‘mere’ by-product & the mark-making thereupon (or therein) as a drawing (as both object & process, indeed), in, stylistically, something of a minimalist idiom – measured, cool, subtle, yet possessed of a quiet, compelling intensity all the same, classically modernist one might even say, not least in the manner in which the regular pattern of the marks implies the presence of a grid without actually describing such explicitly (in fact, a grid could be imaginatively constructed by joining-the-dots horizontally & vertically).

Trouble is, even when considered & designated as such, which way up & around is the ‘drawing’ meant to be viewed, for the most appropriate & profound aesthetic appreciation?
In ‘portrait’ fashion as initially presented? Or otherwise ‘landscape’...


Or flipped on either vertical or horizontal axes...



Or perhaps this very ambiguity, this versatility, these complications, this further ‘leaving open to interpretation’, are the clearest indications of all of the object’s status as ‘art’...

For another particularly well-presented & thought-provoking example of 'art' as found amongst the duties of the day job, please refer to this entry in Jazz Green's ever-excellent artist's journal (& Jazz's website as a whole for much intriguing & aesthetically-engaging 'found art' - 'paintings', 'drawings' & more)

Back On the Road Again...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'Easy To Be Around'

And so the occasion of the arrival of the rather sexy little Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ10 (invested in as a pocket-sized & thus more handily-portable, anytime-anywhere alternative to the chunkier Fuji) provided the impetus to test it out 'on the road' & record examples of the recently-utilized small fruit as found, fallen upon the pavement & roadside, some of it inevitably as the 'roadkill' that seems to be providing the general subject (matter) of aesthetic fascination. The grey of the tarmacked road surface provides a particularly pleasing complementary ground to the reds, greens & yellows of the fruit in the creation of an aesthetic harmony.



Then incorporating road markings - a 'painterly' element, of course - into the composition, & introducing a formal device into the informal arrangement (as framed photographically, pictorially, thus relating to the horizontal edges, of course) that seems to intensify the structural role played by the kerbstones...



And finally a more obviously formal (& 'pictorial') composition, as found: Rothko was here, it might appear...


Interesting to consider too, incidentally, from a perceptual aspect, the presentation of such obviously horizontal subject matter, photographed thus from directly above, in the vertical, pictorial form of the screen - something that applies to the whole 'double black lines/aluminium can 'roadkill' enterprise, of course (especially with all such work thus far made being done so - processed through drawing on small, A4 scale - horizontally, thus relating more directly to the subject matter as found).