Author: Maren Deepwell

Shortly after I drew the Travelling Monument Kit I started a new sketchbook and that turned into a whole series of works, photography, drawings, sculptures and, I suppose, travel, too, all centred on swimming flippers and entitled ‘Travels with my flippers’.

The flippers became another layered metaphor, and worked for me on many levels:

The beach under the city streets…
Inspired by the writings of the Situationists International movement I have written about in a previous post, the flippers were my tool to uncovering a sense of freedom and discovery. The idea, to me at least, of a beach, a place that is wild and natural, that is hidden under the geometric grid of the urban landscape has always been an attractive one. I can imagine that at a time when industrialisation and urbanisation were rapidly increasing and cities were encroaching both in the physical sense but also in the public imagination, the idea of going to discover a beach, a place of freedom and inhibition under the concrete of the pavements, streets and plazas was a radical proposition. Not following the rules of the city, to create one’s own path and map, following the currents of the mind, the imagination is a poetic undertaking that still appeals to me, just as it did then.

Then, I actually travelled with a pair of blue rubber swimming flippers that I bought in an old department store in Nicosia and put them into various places… taking photos along the way. It was surprisingly effective in situ and made people question how they read the space.

I created a sculpture of the slippers, in white resin, and they were beautiful, glossy objects, that always looked ocean wet. To the puzzlement of many they were ‘installed’ on ordinary pavement slabs in a pristine studio space for my fine art degree show without any further explanation. It worked for me, but it didn’t work as art. The context was too obscure, the metaphors remained unexplained and inaccessible outside of their own very peculiar aesthetic.

But it didn’t matter to me at the time, because the flippers acted as a metaphorical catalyst that inspired my practice as an artist. I filled sketchbooks and rolls of film, I wrote and dreamt and thought of things. The flippers also acted as a metaphorical accelerator, something to make the worlds of dense cultural theory I was reading easier to traverse. Swimming with flippers is a great deal easier and faster, they help us adapt to an unusual environment like underwater. It felt appropriate to use them as a tool for exploring critical theory, too. 

Revisiting that now I find it interesting to revisit the idea, because I still do a lot to make exploring the worlds inside my head easier, to provide myself with the appropriate context for my professional practice (even if nowadays I don’t make and draw so many things anymore).

Although much of my everyday work is now digital, I still have many material symbols of my practice… laptop stickers, sticky notes, books, journals, pens, badges, conference lanyards, drawings, charts, things on my watch (like the watch face) and so forth. Also, cables, lots of cables, and an increasing amount of debris of older devices, chargers, cable ties, hard drives etc. And alongside these objects, I make just as much effort to create the right conditions to be creative, to think about complicated things. I have a workspace full of things that help – including artworks and mementos from trips I have been on or conferences I have attended.

And often it is an object or the space I work in that help me find time to write, to draw, to think. I respect the needs of my professional practice and I think that is what those flippers were ultimately about. They were travelling companions. Companions for thinking and doing, for my practice as an artist. They were symbolic and yet entirely practical. They were totems of my professional practice.

Signpost: This is a post from the Neon Flaneuse blog. The Neon Flaneuse is a blogging project for which I write about art, anthropology and edtech. It’s part of my professional practice but a project I pursue in my own time.

Nearly two decades ago I had an idea to create a Travelling Monument Kit. This is the original drawing which I still have in a sketchbook somewhere even though the actual suitcase I made has been lost in the mists of time (read: one too many house moves). 

The idea of the travelling monument kit is really a layered metaphor, several ideas wrapped into each other, so let me try and unpack it for you. 

Note: From here you proceed at your own risk… this is a post about a half remembered artwork on a blog about an imaginary character. 

At the heart of the Travelling Monument Kit, what originally got me thinking about this idea, is the relationship between travelling and permanence. Travelling is all about leaving things behind, discovering new ones and changing perspectives… it’s about change. Monuments are normally fixed in place and time, permanent markers of things to be remembered. They signify that which we don’t want to change or forget or leave behind. 

The Travelling Monument Kit contained maps, both a world map to put pins/markers on the chart and track the overall route, to record places visited; it included a camera to take photos of the travelling monument (the physical artwork included a Polaroid camera); a plaque with text to affix to or mark the monument on location; an album for recording and collecting the monuments. 

I’m not sure anymore whether I originally imagined there to actually be anything else in the suitcase, or whether any given object or place identified could simply become a monument by virtue of the process of making it so, putting up the plaque, taking pictures, recording it and so forth. In real life I did both, create those kinds of monuments as well as choosing an object to actually travel with in the physical sense. 

(The object I chose for that purpose was a pair of swimming flippers. Why? Because there was a beach underneath the city streets that I was interested in finding.)

In a way the Travelling Monument Kit explores how we can create lasting meaning amidst change. The process of ‘making a monument’ is very similar to, for example, going to a familiar restaurant in unfamiliar surroundings or finding connections between landscapes we are familiar with in a new place that is strange and different. It’s about creating something solid and strong, a connection, to bring things into perspective. 

The Travelling Monument Kit is also in a suitcase. And that was a deliberate choice as well as being integral to the idea. It’s important that it’s a suitcase. It’s important in a number of different ways: a suitcase is purpose built for travel. It’s a native travel object. It is designed to be at home whilst travelling in a way very few things are. It’s never not at home because it (by definition) contains everything within it. Also, a suitcase is made to be in transit, on the road. In contrast to objects like first aid kits which are usually fixed in place and purpose, a suitcase is flexible both conceptually and practically. In the context of the Travelling Monument Kit it signifies that you can take the ability to create your own monuments, your own lasting meaning, memories and connections with you. You can pack it in a suitcase and never be without it. 

The physical dimension is important, too. It’s important that the process isn’t digital, but focused on visual and material things. It makes a difference that the traveller, the monument maker, undertakes a physical, practical process. It’s important for the same reason as visiting physical monuments in the real world is distinct from seeing visual or digital representations of them. The sensory and embodied practice of interacting with a specific place or object is key to creating the connection, to making a memory, to establishing meaning. It’s particularly important for a traveller because our physical bodies can often be out of sync with new time zones or sleeping patterns, food, smells, perspectives. It can be disorientating to experience a lot of change, to encounter a lot of new places or people in quick succession. It’s necessary to relate to what we encounter with our senses and physical selves in order to make sense of things. 

That’s where the historical dimension of the monument idea comes in. It’s about creating order, a timeline, it’s about finding a narrative, a story that connects the new markers we place on our map and brings them into perspective. It helps us create our own histories, to make sense and determine the meaning of things to us and in the context of our own internal worlds. It’s a lot like writing, I suppose, but also more than that.

The Travelling Monument Kit is not an instant monument kit. It’s not about appropriation. Technology and the tech industry keep looking for shortcuts to creating a sense of history, of legitimacy, of belonging in our lives. This artwork is not about quick ways to create the look of the thing – even though some of its elements are very visual, like taking a photo, putting up a plaque etc. It’s about a process, about experience and embodiment. At the time when I made this I didn’t own a mobile phone yet. I neither had nor dreamt of the affordances of such digital tools as are now commonplace. But even if I had done so, I don’t think it would have mattered that all physical elements of the Travelling Monument Kit could now be easily replicated or approximated with my phone. A camera, a custom map, a plaque, a photo album or record… I could easily replicate the look of the thing, make an app, an Instagram account. But it would be something entirely different from the original. 

The intention that shaped the making of this Traveling Monument Kit was not focused on what it would create, although I did end up creating some travelling monument ‘books’. It wasn’t about creating and sharing content. The intention was to articulate, to think through the ideas, to create a sense of belonging whilst travelling, whilst being in flux and to foster that ability within yourself. 

All themes that I still think about two decades later and which have developed new, interesting dimensions since. 

In the sketchbook that the original drawing is from, you can follow the development of the idea:

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The Travelling Monument Kit itself is the final drawing in that sketchbook, after that there are only some blank pages. It’s as if the train of thought that had led to the drawing came to a full stop. The idea was created. I hadn’t thought about that before, how appropriate it was that the sketchbook ends after that drawing. It’s a useful thing to keep our own archive sometimes, to be able to go back and look at the physical objects that shape your thinking. Searching through my desk drawer revealed another interesting clue as to where my thoughts went next (this next sketchbook was probably bought in London but travelled to Athens where I was living at the time and back again and has followed me through all the house moves since 2002): the cover says it all: the suitcase files – travel accessories as metaphor.

Soundtrack for this post:
Dusty in Memphis by Dusty Springfield

Also…

• The Neon Flaneuse home
• Twitter @neonFlaneuse
• Small print

How do you cite a graphic novel? I’ve been reading Art Matters by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell. And I want to write about it but simply quoting the words doesn’t work, so I have decided that pictures of the pages of the book may be better. They are all from the chapter entitled ‘why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming’. (As an aside, I really recommend the book – it makes for inspiring reading.) 

I’ve been looking for ways to think about my professional practice, my work and the future that isn’t bleak technological determinism, surveillance capitalism or decided by algorithms. I’ve found starting points for theory, policy and the wider context, but this post is more about the personal dimension, the ‘what do you get out of bed for’ part of any creative endeavour. Art Matters is a good book about practice and work, and although it is mostly written from the perspective of creative professionals like artists, musicians and writers, I think the heart of the book is just as relevant to working in education or edtech. 

I read so much that I don’t often think about reading. So the page above made me pause. In this bit Gaiman talks about how important it is to read when you are young, or rather to get into the habit of reading for pleasure as early as possible. It reads: 

You are finding out something as you read that will be vitally important for making your way in the world. And it’s this: the world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be different. 

This is about reading fiction, reading for fun,  but I think it’s equally useful to consider in the context of reading policy, reports and so forth. Much of what I read about innovation, disruption and change, other than research, doesn’t seem to be about things actually changing, about things being different. 

I like the idea that reading fiction builds empathy. It sounds very akin to ethnographic fieldwork. To see the world through other eyes. The idea that reading fiction as a journey that changes us is simple and powerful. It rings true to me. And it can be true of other stories, too. Really good lectures, inspiring keynotes, research.. the stories we tell. I hadn’t really thought about it in terms of building empathy before. 

I read a lot in all media. And the pages of the book (above)  made me reflect on how something like a book remains valuable and relevant even though there are other formats, alternative choices. It says:

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate to screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, over twenty years before digital books showed up, a physical books is like a shark. Sharks are old. There were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. … physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath resistant, solar operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. 

I want that to be true. I think it goes back to what I wrote about in the last post, that it’s not helpful to frame our relationship with technology, with digital things, in terms of which one is better, which one becomes obsolete. It seems more helpful to appreciate that for instance physical and digital books can exist alongside each other. Like audio books and physical books, complimentary and each good in its own way. Plus, I really appreciate the bath reference. Sometimes there’s a story you can’t put down and you want to keep reading even in the bath. Some of my favourite books have spent days carefully drying out next to the radiator.

Earlier in the chapter Gaiman talks more about the importance of literacy, libraries and access to information. Even though it’s both interesting and important, I am going to skip that bit and hopefully let you read that for yourself. Instead, I want to come back to what he says about imagination. 

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth. We all have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different. 

This is one of the radical bits of the book. There are quite a few, as it is mostly written like a call to action, a manifesto, but this bit in particular reminded me of something I have been thinking about recently: namely how hard it is to make something that is true for us, something that we feel is important, sound valid. Somehow I feel like I ought to proof. 

Such words as ‘imagine that things can be different’ can easily sound trite and get dismissed quickly. Partly, I think, because of the responsibility they entail. It’s after all within my power to daydream, to imagine… to do better, to speak up, to make a change. It doesn’t require anything but my will to do that and so it’s entirely up to me. It’s within my power as an individual, a human being, but that means it’s also my responsibility – and that is the bit that many don’t feel comfortable with regardless of whether you are talking about inequality or technology or reading books or making art. 

It’s what I really like about this book. It’s funny and it talks of failure. The loneliness of writing and the comic mistakes made. And the tragic ones. It’s about making choices and putting important things first. And so I am going to borrow yet more words from it to end this post with the following parting thought: 

… ‘the things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality, have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time spent on any of them.’

Soundtrack for this post:
Dreams by The Cranberries

Also…

• The Neon Flaneuse home
• Twitter @neonFlaneuse
• Small print