The Outlier
- The Outlier was included in Jessica Potter's exhibition Rocks and Weeds, at the Herbert Read Gallery, UCA Canterbury, England from 20 Feb-29 March 2019.
SUMMARY
This participatory project was commissioned by Lara Goodband for A Dictionary of Stone at the Rotunda Museum in Scarborough – England's first museum of geology. A "snowball" process gathered together a group of human participants, each with a relationship a large boulder situated at a street corner. During meetings with each participant, the material relationships between the boulder and other non-human things were identified. These provided the basis for further activity in a workshop, where participants improvised empathetic personifications of the community of materially-related things.
The project proposal is included here, as well as video recordings of improvised "object autobiographies" made following the workshop, and which were installed separately on six monitors around a circular room in the Rotunda.
A printed volume of object autobiographies was published to accompany the commission. This commission was supported by Scarborough Museums Trust and Arts Council England.
DETAILS
Participatory project to generate "object autobiographies," that tell of a glacial erratic's social world.
Produced during June & July 2014
6 videos with audio exhibited 19th July-28th September 2014 at The Rotunda Museum, Scarborough, UK
The Outlier: object-autobiographies publication produced by Valley Press in edition of 100.
A re-edited video exhibited at Alternativa 2015 in Gdańsk, June – September 2015.
PRINTED PUBLICATION
Outlier–online version.pdfScroll to read the online version of the publication, or download an online version here.
DESCRIPTION
During June and July 2014, Simon Pope led meetings and workshops with Scarborough residents to investigate the ‘social world’ of the boulder at the corner of Royal Avenue and Valley Road. In geological terms, it is a glacial erratic of Lewisian Gneiss carried by a glacier from the West Highlands of Scotland during the last Ice Age.
Pope says: ‘My interest is in the way the rock can be understood as related to a diverse community of other things – be they human, animal, vegetable or mineral. It allows us to think around these relationships and the affinities, conflicts, alliances and tensions that this community of ideas reveals. It also operates as a metaphor for how we might live together with those that we may consider different or strange.’
While not an outlier in geological terms, he uses this title to allude to the way the stone has evaded inclusion in the Rotunda collection and incorporation into the group of boulders once arranged outside this museum. Both identified and yet outside the collection, it allows us to reflect on what it is to be both isolated from kin, and our connection with those to whom we are apparently unrelated. Pope is interested in how the rock, ‘might promote openness to mutual transformation and the forming of identity through dynamic relationship with others, rather than retreat into isolation and separateness in the hope of preserving an "essence" or core of identity.
The exhibition at the Rotunda consists of ten videos which document participants’ improvisations of "object autobiographies" of the meshwork of things related to the Royal Avenue glacial erratic.
The publication The Outlier: Object-autobiographies accompanies the exhibition, collating these and other historic and geological accounts of the boulder.
(from A Dictionary of Stone press release)
With the participation of: Martin Arnold, Nadia Emam, Andy Exton, Karen & Paul McCabe, Jade Montserrat, Ronnie Pope, Peter Robinson and Susan Timmins.
Additional contributions by Tim Burkinshaw, Stuart Cameron, Chris Hall, Chris Hutch, Keith Johnson, Matt Joseph, Angela Kale, Roger Osborne, John Oxley, Catherine Rooney, Debbie Seymour, Matt Stradling, Tim Tubbs, and Peter Turton.
Special thanks to: Lara Goodband, Rachael Drew, Tariq Emam, and Sarah Cullen.
VIDEO
Installed at the Rotunda, Scarborough in 2014; re-edited for exhibition in Gdańsk, 2015.
VIDEO DOCUMENTATION
A series of videos were produced by the commissioners, documenting the project's development.
IMAGES
