06 Jan 2014

Five Years Gallery: A day of continual irritation for myself

A day of continual irritation for myself
SE Barnet, co-organized with Sally Morfill

A day of continual irritation for myself* presents a filmed performance of team proof-reading based on materials from the Mass Observation archive. Part of a larger project involving a number of activities, (from extensive transcription to the creation of drawings, through scripts for performance and film to daily tweets) it employs these materials towards re-appropriation and détournement. The project offers a look at an early complicit engagement with surveillance and diaristic self-exposure, with its resultant surfeit material.

This second in a series of two exhibitions on making marks and meaning, follows on from the transcribing, copy-editing and proof-reading performative activity begun during the exhibition General title given by myself at Five Years Gallery in July 2013. Here, the proof-readers are enacted by Mexican artist Fernando León-Guiu and writer France León. The pair are based on a couple well known throughout the publishing world for their facility and formality.

The starting point for all this activity comes from the Day Surveys of 1937-1939 from the Mass Observation archive. This British movement begun in the early 20thcentury, aimed to create 'an anthropology of ourselves' by recording everyday life in Britain through a panel of untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires. These observers acted as recorders, attempting to capture the details of their own everyday lives and the lives of those around them.

* This line of text comes from the Day Survey of an unidentified contributor of 12th March, 1937