Clem Edwards:Take a pug apart and put it back together a pomeranian

Clem's 20 minute presentation for CONSTANT CRAVING ~ PERFORMING UNDER CONDITIONS - DAI's 3 day performance lecture marathon at State of Concept in Athens, June 2018 

Take a pug apart and put it back together a Pomeranian

Summary

Dressed in a white coat and holding a flimsy piece of cardboard, Clem sits on a chair next to a microphone, a video playing on the projection screen in the background. The video shows what looks like a shelf or small stage made from cardboard and on it three small, assembled objects – the reference for their diminutive size we get from a broken egg shell encrusted in plastic pearls.

After Clem thanks those that contributed to the presentation and especially their theory teacher Marina Vishmidt for the time together, the presentation begins with a reading of a long list of various objects and materials described in more or less detail, such as “a signet ring”, “the clay handle of a child’s cup, twice shared”, “plastic pearls and gems”, “iPod-tripod”, “a parcel of silver glitter” and “the jacket we stitched together”. The reading continues with a description of the fragile cardboard construction we see in the video, displaying three assembled objects which partly consist of some of the materials listed before. The prose-like list continues with items brought to Athens in a suitcase – presumably for this very presentation.

“I want to talk to you about the unintelligibility of sexual experience – no, just the straight up incomprehensibility of experience, full stop” Clem reads and continues to talk about “messy materiality” and how “trauma, not its residue, can narrate a fractured now”. In poetic and ornamental prose, they share a childhood memory of trying to remove a mole – a disturbing “foreign freckle” – and of collecting picked scabs in bed as an early craft project. The cardboard is increasingly unfolded, revealing itself as the script as the story continues. In the projection we see more objects being moved around, displayed, and manipulated by hands, as Clem reads the line: “objects, my kin”.

Towards the end of the presentation, Clem gets up and stiffly, clumsily walks closer to the audience then back to the centre of the stage, holding up a tiny handmade purse, revealing the beautifully embroidered back of their white coat before facing the audience again. The coat is opened, one side lifted by Clem to transform into a tiny projection screen, and Clara Saito operates a small beamer projecting onto the coat’s inside. In the projection we see marionette puppets being operated by four hands in a makeshift cardboard set, moving and dancing to the sentimental soundtrack of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from the musical ‘Les Misérables’.

Maria Lind

Maria Lind opens her response by complimenting Clem, stating that the presentation was beautiful. She appreciated the entire approach, the aesthetics as well as the gentleness of the performance, the embrace of storytelling and play on autobiographical experience. She feels reminded of the power of simplicity by Clem’s use of the most mundane and discarded materials found, such as cardboard and broken objects and remarks on their ability of gleaning beauty from them. She notes that things in the performance and video are placed in a way that balance is at stake.

Maria Lind comments on the trust in words she has observed throughout many of the previous presentations as well and sees a big potential for the formal articulation of the objects and the way they are made to perform on the little stage that was arranged. She draws a connection between what she refers to as Clem’s “micro drama” and fellow graduate Pitchaya Ngamcharoen’s “molecular dramas”, then closes by expressing curiosity for a continuation of this work, potentially more concentrated in terms of format. She adds that there is clearly a particular sensibility and what seems to be the beginning of a methodology.

Bassam El Baroni

Bassam El Baroni begins by sharing that he found the presentation very touching and creative. He comments on the interesting use of visual and textual metaphors, pointing specifically to the ornately decorated eggshell and its relation to the storyline. Another dimension he found intriguing was the use of kitsch, and he sees a link to the work of artist Shana Moulton. He liked the connection between the decorative /outer shell and the metaphor of the interior, the “emotive nature of things”, and mentions specifically the moment when Clem opened the jacket, and the puppet piece is presented inside of it. He sees a continuation of this dialectic in the narrative as well and finds the correlation between the inside and things on the outside, like moles and scabs very interesting. He elaborates that this kind of dialectic is compelling but can be difficult to navigate in a contemporary art context, where the play between emotions and concepts is a balancing act – one he thinks Clem did very well.

Marina Vishmidt

Marina Vishmidt agrees that the presentation was tremendously moving and disorienting and describes a feeling of “sanctioned voyeurism” caused by the exhibitionism of opening the jacket and having the internal drama play out there. To her there is something both large-scale and operatic but also seedy or questionable about this gesture, and the dialectic or drama between the fragile, abject interior and the decorative crust registers at many aesthetic and affective levels. She mentions Joseph Cornell’s boxes which were an important reference to Clem during the work on the thesis, and which also display the tightrope between emotion and conceptual architecture with the private theatre as an operative vehicle. She refers the “conceptual and aesthetic extravagance” of what is called ‘outsider art’, which can be more transversal of many worlds than art labelled in more mainstream ways. With a smirk she shares that she bought into the premise of the title and was hoping for an actual disassembling and reassembling of a dog – maybe next time?

About: Clem Edwards