This text was originally written on Microsoft Works Word Processor, then printed on to A4 paper and copied on to the paper you have your in hand. The paper has the casualness of the ‘readymade’ but is not so. The paper is called G5, (H23.3 x W16.6cm) this is ever so slightly larger than A5 (H21 x W14.8). The ‘G’ is most likely for Gemma, as in Gemma Holt, the paper is her artwork. It is photocopy paper - 80grams/m2 - and has been used where possible for Limoncello gallery’s correspondence, loan forms, invoices etc.
As far as I know there are not yet purpose made envelopes to accompany G5, according to an intern at the gallery this can pose a problem, but points to the moment where Holt’s construction rubs against a pre-existent system with regard to its functionality and slippage into the world around it; highlighting the ‘life-support’ necessary for certain constructions to sustain themselves in the world - it would take the backing of a big business manufacturer to strong arm all that was necessary for G5 to become the functional commodity it has the potential to be, not just envelopes, but photocopiers, extra selection choices on printer options and so on. A one-woman self-initiated standardization scheme is bound to be of slight impact in this regard, but that is not to say it feigns dissent or is insincere, more that it will stay in the realm of the symbolic and was always meant to.
I use the word 'dissent', thinking of a quiet tension generated by G5 between the standards we have always known and what is new, thereby calling into question more fundamental units of quantification: be they of time, physical distance or weight. G5 isn’t rhetorically propositional, but it does ask us to look at the act of standardization, to consider who can call for things to be standardized. It invites us to reflect upon assumed fixities that we might follow blindly, either conceived arbitrarily or whose rationale may have once been historically important but no longer so. Significantly neither of these charges can be aimed at the international paper sizes, of which A5 and A4 are part. Quite the opposite, their beauty lies in their width to length ratios, approximately 1:1.4142, if a sheet with this ratio is divided into two equal halves parallel to its shortest side, then this ratio is maintained, hence the ease of scaling up or down A0, A1, A2 etc. G5, could therefore be considered a malfunction of sorts, a disrupter of the elegance of the mathematics possessed by its rational cousin, A5. Through its deviancy (and one might say failure) it asserts its individuality.
As advertisers and marketing strategists in their self-protective cunning have increasingly come to understand (or more likely, always understood but now need to recognise), there is conflict between the message of their pitches: promoting their product as a sign and reinforcement of our ’uniqueness’ and ’individuality’ and what they are pitching: something not unique, something mass produced… Their evolution has been toward the mass produced item which can be ‘personalized’…Online networking sites, mobile phones, digital TV viewing packages pride themselves and make a focal part of their ’package’ the potential for users to customize their products.
Holt makes murky our sense of customization: she hasn’t altered what’s been given, but begun from scratch. She wittily makes something to her own specification that mimics the produce of a production line. It is an act of taking power for oneself, but concurrently affirms her sense of the power of standardization. Perhaps the difference being asked of us is that we recognise alternatives alongside the mainstream choice offered by the nearest stationary store.
As far as I know there are not yet purpose made envelopes to accompany G5, according to an intern at the gallery this can pose a problem, but points to the moment where Holt’s construction rubs against a pre-existent system with regard to its functionality and slippage into the world around it; highlighting the ‘life-support’ necessary for certain constructions to sustain themselves in the world - it would take the backing of a big business manufacturer to strong arm all that was necessary for G5 to become the functional commodity it has the potential to be, not just envelopes, but photocopiers, extra selection choices on printer options and so on. A one-woman self-initiated standardization scheme is bound to be of slight impact in this regard, but that is not to say it feigns dissent or is insincere, more that it will stay in the realm of the symbolic and was always meant to.
I use the word 'dissent', thinking of a quiet tension generated by G5 between the standards we have always known and what is new, thereby calling into question more fundamental units of quantification: be they of time, physical distance or weight. G5 isn’t rhetorically propositional, but it does ask us to look at the act of standardization, to consider who can call for things to be standardized. It invites us to reflect upon assumed fixities that we might follow blindly, either conceived arbitrarily or whose rationale may have once been historically important but no longer so. Significantly neither of these charges can be aimed at the international paper sizes, of which A5 and A4 are part. Quite the opposite, their beauty lies in their width to length ratios, approximately 1:1.4142, if a sheet with this ratio is divided into two equal halves parallel to its shortest side, then this ratio is maintained, hence the ease of scaling up or down A0, A1, A2 etc. G5, could therefore be considered a malfunction of sorts, a disrupter of the elegance of the mathematics possessed by its rational cousin, A5. Through its deviancy (and one might say failure) it asserts its individuality.
As advertisers and marketing strategists in their self-protective cunning have increasingly come to understand (or more likely, always understood but now need to recognise), there is conflict between the message of their pitches: promoting their product as a sign and reinforcement of our ’uniqueness’ and ’individuality’ and what they are pitching: something not unique, something mass produced… Their evolution has been toward the mass produced item which can be ‘personalized’…Online networking sites, mobile phones, digital TV viewing packages pride themselves and make a focal part of their ’package’ the potential for users to customize their products.
Holt makes murky our sense of customization: she hasn’t altered what’s been given, but begun from scratch. She wittily makes something to her own specification that mimics the produce of a production line. It is an act of taking power for oneself, but concurrently affirms her sense of the power of standardization. Perhaps the difference being asked of us is that we recognise alternatives alongside the mainstream choice offered by the nearest stationary store.
This focus so far on functionality, which to me seems secondary to the idea of the artwork as a model of how things could be, risks obscuring another quality of the work: its self-interrogation as to the nature of an artwork. It is not an artwork designed to be mechanically reproduced, but rather by its nature is multiple; if the few sheets of paper before you were the only ones of its kind it would be an aura-possessed work pretending to be otherwise. It makes no cult of itself, it’s not singular and its differences are hardly noticeable without attention being drawn to it. Although emerging from a gallery and an art-world context it operates virally, intravenously dripped into everyday life. Ultimately it is beyond the gallery where G5 can create its ‘little jolts’. Drawing you up sharp when you find it not quite fitting your file, or the discovery of an unusually broad margin when you print or photocopy. By creating this ‘glitch in the matrix’ a portal is opened for further investigation. Although the virtues of standardization are numerous: as regulator of health and safety standards, as a means of regulation of resources (potentially benefiting consumers or those less powerful in society), as a means of optimizing resources and most importantly - easing communication; its flipside is that it is an enforcer of dominant norms and restricts and contains ‘the marginal’. This is particularly apparent with the spell-check facility of Microsoft Works Word Processor; regulating not just types of spelling but words themselves, thereby circumscribing expression of ideas. Disturbingly for me while it recognises curator and curatorial, 'curating' apparently does not exist.
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