Steven Anderson.
While on the residency I intended to think more about domestic scale actions and gestures. My idea was to work with people, talk to them about everyday actions and think about how normal everyday actions could be thought of as a performance or the basis of performance.
I also wanted to look at domestic relics, those things in the house that have gained importance beyond the sum of simple materials through being involved in significant activity. Before I started any focused purposeful talking to the folk of Cushendall, I decided to do a bit of cleaning. To take off the layer of use and non use that is representative of a fresh start. I washed the windows and began to sand the kitchen table. I video recorded these actions but didn’t record washing dishes or mopping the floor.
I realised at another time that I was documenting the domestic actions of my Dad. My Dad had a thing for sanding back the coffee table. My sister and me used to laugh that it would be like a wafer by the time he was satisfied with it.
Simultaneously I listened to the radio. As usual on Radio 4 there was interesting stuff on about art and history sometimes.
The action of sanding became a bit of a preoccupation while the action of recording it felt personally intimate and placed an aesthetic slant to my perception of what I was doing. In the apparent smallness of that activity there is, I am discovering, a serious profundity, I think.
