Treasuring Detritus

Abstract

In 2006, Rhiannon Jones and Michael Pinchbeck exhibited fragments from their ongoing practice as research as part of an exhibition at the Surface Gallery (Nottingham). Pinchbeck showed 365 objects wrapped in brown paper and string from a project called The Long and Winding Road that involved driving a car around the country for five years as a venue for one-to-one performance. Jones was showing a video called Archived Actualities that re-traced the routes of 1000 scar stories; accidents shared with her by members of the public.

Jones suggests that scars are innately performative through a collision of dialogic triangulation that takes place between the rupturing of skin, the process of scarification and the architectural shifts to sites of accident. This five-year project resulted in a solo exhibition in the UK and the USA where scar story objects were collected and displayed in a gallery context, donated by people who had contributed to the archive, as their stories were retold through a series of live performance works.

As part of Pinchbeck’s project, the 365 objects were belongings left behind by his brother, who died in an accident in 1998. The piece explored the invisible scars left behind by grief and the literal baggage that makes manifest loss. The objects that were wrapped up lost their emotional charge until they were revealed again during the crushing of the car at the end of the journey, the emotional wreckage becoming literal, memories mangled like the car that housed his brother’s story.

For this article, both writers reflect on the detritus of their practice as research, and how in some way, Pinchbeck’s car and Jones’ scar archive ‘stage the wreckage’ of the events that triggered them. The article explores traces that are embedded into our public presentation of self and other, and are objectified through the act of conversation, in order to ask if objects can carry scars like people carry memories. The article asks what remains after physical and emotional wreckage and proposes that instead of seeing this as sediment of loss we should treasure the detritus.

Notes

1 The car was later immersed in the River Mersey on 17 May 2009 and then crushed before being discarded in Michael Landy’s Art Bin (2010). The only criteria for being accepted into Landy’s Art Bin was that the work was deemed an artistic failure. Pinchbeck argued that the project had failed to process the loss of his brother and was therefore worthy of acceptance.

2 The Art of Conversation was exhibited at Backlit, Nottingham, UK, 22 June–4 July 2012. Touring exhibition at the University of Georgia, Athens, USA, 25–28 October 2012.

3 The Artistry of Conversation (2016) is an artistic research methodology designed to facilitate conversations within arts practice for the design of dialogue. It combines performative and architectural theory. It was designed as part of Jones’s PhD of the same name from 2010 to 2016.

4 Architactics aims to make things visible, to see beyond the imprints of one’s own environment, emotional and social constructs and to consider what a new materiality of dialogue could be, and how an artist interacts with the body and with others.

5 When the car was immersed in the River Mersey in Liverpool on 17 May 2019, Pinchbeck delivered the following text via a megaphone: ‘Thank you for joining me on The Long and Winding Road. This is my car. This is my car history. On the 17 May 2004, I embarked on a journey in a graffiti- covered car from Nottingham to Liverpool. The car was packed with 365 mementoes wrapped in brown paper and string. The journey lasts until the 17 May 2009 when I will drive the car into the River Mersey. It started as a letter. Then the letter became a parcel. The parcel became a suitcase. And the suitcase became a car. This is my car. This is my car history. And this is the end of the road.’ A video of the journey to Liverpool, the immersion in the River Mersey and the crushing of the car can be viewed online (Pinchbeck 2010).