Sixth session - social marks

Sixth session

Social induced marks

In this session, we have studied all sorts of social induced marks, from the marks us, as a society live on everything we touch, as we lead our lives, to the marks created by artists through putting together various aspects of social manifestations ( from newspaper articles, to bus tickets).

For this project, I have taken inspiration from the works of Kurt Schwitters. I  really liked his collages, which, even though they try to create aesthetic sense of the world around him, they allude to social events happening during that time. In one of his works, titled "Picture with turning wheel (1920), he "combines a series of wheels that only turn clockwise, alluding to the general drift Rightwards across Germany after the Spartacist Uprising in January that year" 
                               ( In the Beginning Was Merz, Mayer-Buser, Orchard, Hatje Cantz, p55)

The collage that attracted me the most was En Morn (1947) which features a collection of proto-pop mass media images having in the centre the image of a blonde girl, while the message underneath states: "These are the things we are fighting for"...

Kurt Schwitters - En Morn (1947)

So, in line with this, I have chosen the idea of taking photos of some of the closed down businesses in the center of Plymouth, as a way of showing the social impact they have on the community. I have also thought of transforming this mini experiment into one of my final projects. For this, I intend to print out all these images, create a collage out of them and arrange them into a funnel shape above a toilet that I will draw. All these closed down businesses will be shown as "going down the drain" , while on the lid of the toilet I will have the Plymouth College of Arts motto: "Magic is what you make", in an attempt to show that all that social impact created by empty shops, can be overcome through a positive and proactive attitude. We can be better than the times we are living in, it is all a matter of approach.

Here are the original photos I have taken before tempering with them ( I intend to post process them in Photoshop before printing them out and creating the final collage).

While the other images are pretty obvious in regards to  which shop they represent, this one might be a surprise for many Plymouthians:...this is the inside of Woolworths!!! Photo taken in May 2013... This shop has been closed for a few years, boarded up and noone knew what was going in inside and IF there was anything going on inside. Well,...through a very small gap in the sticker attached to the window, I have taken this photo. Now I am extremely curious as to what this extremely large space will become...

A very interesting instance into a shops life: It has been closed down before the owners had a chance to empty it. This shop has been closed one evening and prepared for the next business day (tables set, menus on, etc). Meanwhile, a court order allowed the owner of the building to change the locks and deny access to the business owners. Also, since then, noone entered the premises, so everything was left intact. Below are two photos of the inside of the cafe and one of the court order stuck on the door...

Inside of JAcksonz Cafe

Court order allowing the proprietor to change the locks, denying the business owners entry to the premises...

Funky modern stickers the centre of Plymouth has been filled with recently. ...

Very interesting and extremely explicit closing down notice in one of the shops...

Another sample of the funky stickers that cover the windows of the closed down shops.

This shop has been through many stages, the last one, a pop up shop with a very short life,  being Inspired Rooms. I have lived in Plymouth for 8 and a half years and have never seen the original wall above this shop. It was always covered with the shop signs. To see Lawson carved in the stone, was really interesting for me.