Rivers & Tides

The Goldsworthy Movie that... well... Lets just say if I were talking about a person I recommended to a friend to date I would say that the movie has a great personality.

Never mind that. A discussion of the movie:

First of all all of Goldsworthy's projects have some sort of time element. All of his projects start in the "natural world" ( I put natural world in parenthesis because everything is part of the natural world but in this context it is the rivers, tides, forests, deserts ect.). The "natural world" is a very chaotic place and the projects usually have something to do with those natural processes that make it chaotic. Goldsworthy must account for time of day, time of month, the season, weather, tides and much more. He deals with these things by simply embracing the natural processes. If the tide swallows a project its fine, if the wind pushes something over so be it. Thats all part of what Goldsworthy produces.

The strange and new in a familiar form exist everywhere. It would seem that the forms can and do exist all over. Firstly, the act of traveling to somewhere, whether It be familiar or not, gives most people that strange feeling of being uprooted. Some call it jetlag but I get that feeling from driving too. Even those places that we may have grown up in can feel strange especially when we haven’t been there in a long time. The world, rather the universe we live in is an ever-changing chaotic place with stuff interacting with other stuff all the time. On the other hand, our own selves change and adapt constantly so when those changes are confronted in the familiar that can give us that sense of strange but familiar. I think what Goldsworthy was talking about was that even the familiar actions can feel strange because of some of the things I just talked about but I also think he’s talking about the details of the area. The details of places are what make them familiar to us. Even though the tides are pretty much the same all over the world there’s differences too. It’s those little differences and details that make the familiar.

When Goldsworthy gets excited about “discovering” and talks about its potential I think what he’s talking about is a fairly common human experience. I like to call these moments “Ah-Ha” moments. Artists I think have this more so than your average person and for that reason recognize it and really strive for those kinds of moments. They have to be some of the best moments because for me it’s a culmination of pieces of knowledge that all come together and I can see what I can do with that knowledge based on this new input. The real key here is that there is this sense of true understanding of what can and can’t be done. I’ve heard this called a “happy accident” before. I think though what Goldsworthy is talking about goes a little further than that. When I think of a “happy accident” I don’t necessarily know how or why it happened and I didn’t get new insight from it. What Goldsworthy is talking about is gaining insight and being able to repeat that “accident” so that it does something for you.

The concept Goldsworthy brings up about the very thing that brings his objects to life also causes their death is a pretty loaded statement. I say that because you could say that about all things in some way it’s just a matter of perspective. In the case of Goldsworthy’s example I think what he’s talking about is how nature is constantly in flux. Not to get too philosophical but everything in the universe is part of nature but as humans we’ve learned how to use those natural properties to our advantage. Goldsworthy goes into that part of nature where humans don’t necessarily control those properties therefore the materials and natural processes he uses also destroy the things he creates. A fairly simple and common example of site/place giving birth to possibility would be the way the sun shown on a lake. That of course changes throughout the day. The suns movement gave birth to a reflection or the way the light shines in a particular way on some rocks or trees disappears in an hour or two. Just as the time of day changes those things the time of the year changes those kinds of things as the seasons change the position of the sun and its angle to the landscape changes thus changing it even more. Another example would be of some large rock formation in the desert with cuts and caves carved into it by wind and sand over time. The very thing that made the rock formations interesting shapes and contours will be the same thing that will eventually disintegrate it or cover it. As I said earlier about how this is such a loaded statement because when you think about it that’s true for everything. The potential of any site or place has to with when you encounter it. The potential of a site will be always in constant change and with what we call nature it’s changing even more constantly. Its not so much that that change destroys the potential it simply changes it.

Destruction isn’t really all that different from mutation/shifting/evolving. I would say that in the sense of the word that Goldsworthy uses it, destruction is a deliberate human force. Destruction has violent and negative connotations. The “human force” aspect of if is where we see it as deliberate. Humans see themselves as outside of nature and we see nature just doing what it does. In the sense of the word Goldsworthy is using it puts a moral weight along with it. Nature is amoral so it would make sense that it wouldn’t feel like destruction plus he knew what was going to happen when he started the project. Destruction in his sense of the word would be if an onlooker came up and tore it up purposefully making them an ass. Some other examples would be clear cutting a forest or dumping toxic waste in bodies of water. Mutation/shifting/evolving is everything that doesn’t have any moral weight or context, which is every natural process. Lakes being formed, canyons carved out, mountains rising and falling are all common processes on earth. Along with that Goldsworthy talks about this edge he takes the things he creates to. What he means by it is that the work is built up in such a way that it has a very fragile existence so that if he were to try and add/build/shift anything else the object he has created would fall apart. This edge has real artistic power. By pushing his creations to their limits it creates a real tension and unexpectedness. Also by doing so the object is very complex and built up giving it a very aesthetically pleasing quality. The work has a minimalist process but the work itself becomes very complex. This shows us something about the human experience as well. The way we start from simple understandings of the world and by building on to those simple ideas we gain a very complex understanding of the world. What Goldsworthy is doing is by using this simple process he is learning something about the materials and at the same building something “pretty.” The human experience isn’t really all that different because we take our knowledge and understanding to the edge in order to further our knowledge and understanding of the world we live.

Time is always the great teacher. The more time spent doing/working/experiencing the higher ones understanding will be on that particular. Simply put the more time you spend in a place the more you learn about it. Goldsworthy contrasts two places, the art college and a beach, talking about how the place your in can effect your artwork to a great degree. In context with the comment about time he’s talking again about the unpredictable nature of the world outside. Specifically he’s talking about a beach but it’s a metaphor for getting outside and finding new places and experiencing more than just a building. Even being in an environment that is somewhat fluid and unpredictable allows you to get more input and ideas (some call this inspiration). In the classroom it’s hard to get new ideas when you have no new input or experiences. Without the new input and experiences you can’t produce anything new.

Failure is the best way to succeed. I excel at failure, mainly because I’m not afraid to but also because I like to learn. The only way to learn is to fail first and learn from that. I never learn anything from success. Success to me is the culmination of knowledge I gain by failing. If I succeed then there isn’t anything to learn from that, the success is the proof and product of that knowledge. There is always an exception to the rule and that of course is something I’ve already mentioned, “happy mistakes.” Ignoring that I can give you a good example of my own that seems to work for me. I’m a photographer and I work pretty much exclusively digitally (even if I don’t start it that way it ends up that way). In editing my photographs I’ll work on them until I feel they’re “done”, study and scrutinize them, pick out all the flaws and problems that stick out like a sore thumb (to me) and then start all over again. Working on an image about three times starting from scratch is usually when my work is at its finest.

The projects that he creates don’t have that “edge” quality like they did in there “natural” setting. They seem to have a more static and lose their context in a way. The urgency is gone there is no sense of time with it. Watching him make it in the place where the stones came from then seeing it in the museum, the museum just doesn’t have any real impact. I feel like the ocean an important part of the project and that’s lost in the museum. The object itself is simply a relic of a place and a proof of what he learned from that place. The object, by being in the museum, is transformed into a memory of a place and time.

Stereotypes, first impressions, fear and wrong associations are all things that the human animal has and has to deal with. It is only when we look past them that we find things that we find things that are worthwhile. Usually, they are thing we wouldn’t have ever expected to find. These things block and/or stop us, mentally, from pursuing any further knowledge about people/places/things. In the movie, Goldsworthy uses the wool of the sheep to decorate the relics of the landscape that are falling apart. He makes the wool look like a river drawing a metaphor for us to perceive the sheep as a powerful river.

Goldsworthy talks about how the sheep not only impacted the ecological landscape but also the humans that had embedded themselves into the landscape. The “absence” of the people is starkly clear in the meadows and hills. But here and there you see little relics of what used to be. A small wall, built up stones and perimeters make up that record of what was once there.

I think the movie taught me to reconnect with some of my old habits. When I was younger I would just build or fidgit with something similar to what many of his projects are on a much smaller and less complex scale. By doing that sort of thing you can discover many interesting things about a place.