RockandRollIcecream

When I was a pre-teen in home-ec, we learned how to make ice-cream by mixing cream and sugar inside a tin-can that was tucked inside a bigger tin-can filled with rock salt and ice.
As we shook the can, the ice evoked condensation around and caused the cream to congeal.
This was learning to cook. Or something.
We also learned how to make monkey bread- a sugary dough that cooks for a limited amount of time in the oven to become a soft and chewy sweet bread.
I also remember sewing my first pair of pants and perhaps cooking an egg in a slice of toast, called a Toad In A Hole.
I don't think we were learning so much about how to survive and make home (or maybe we were?) as much as we were learning that matter can be manipulated in such a way to create pleasure. We were learning that we could make things and those things can be fun!

1970's craft books are a real delight for me. These books, with their instructions, are the result of a movement- the Arts and Crafst Movement- inspired by the empowerment that came with the 60s. Craft is a funny concept, or rather, a slippery slope when considering its definition. Is it something made to be functional or is it the exact opposite ? A hand-made leather belt or toilet paper roll doll?
Making things for the sake of making.

Here, taking an picture from one of these books that represents the making of Rock and Roll icecream, I focused on the image itself. In the image two children look at one another, ready to roll and lost in amusement.
How do we access what's happening in this image and more specifically, how do we open it up to action ?
Creating a dance by way of making ice-cream, the gestures of shaking, pushing, shoving and rolling were extended to a slow motion exchange that mimicked a silent conversation or karate.
Concentration and suspension were held intentionally in order to pull the action within an image back to the experience of real time.
Yet, this was the attempt to transform movement back into an image.
To activate an image within movement.
or to make movement without time, or lost time.

When is an image? When is a dance?
This performance focuses on the material of the exchange,which goes to say that the interaction becomes lost to its own action. The passage of movements between participants is inteended to become so static, so tense, that the viewer forgets that there could be rules to confine or contextualize the reading. The participants' (dancers? communicators?) silent and contained exchanged offers a glimpse of the transformative power of dialogue by way of its visualisation.

The installation consists of a constellation of elements, of interventions plastered onto walls, windows and piping of the raw terrace quarters. Using images of yarn knits and weavings, as well as studio shots of medical-gloved hands, gesturing themselves.The texture is flattened against the course surface of concrete and aging shutters.

Other elements were found in-situ, such as blocks of plaster, metal rods, blocks of wood, and ping-pong balls. Installed in the space in such a way as to simultaneously reference classic sculpture and a child's playroom, these gestures and things were an effort to talk about material meaning.

I wanted to consider how one attaches meaning to things, to souvenirs, that thus become valuable due to association. We see the thing for something else (like the images of crafted objects). Yet, to then emphasize the rift between a craft and crafting- process vs. treasure. Meaning through activation. What is the connection between memory and movement of moments.To craft is to sculpt with time, to sculpt time.