This is the Sarah Jones I mentioned thinking about documentation in an expanded sense - and here is the journal edition that you should be able to access online through the uni library. Martin Westwood is into quite dense theory but Sarah brings it back to the body and talks about the impact of written documentation in the ear. I like this summary of her contribution:
This question of virtual-physiology and the phantom organ is broached towards the end of the discussion with Sarah Jones where the dialogue turns to her interest in the English riddle. The discussion considers the effect of the technique of writing upon the human experience of one of its biological organs: the ear. The focus essentially replaces aesthetic thought with a materialist and physiological montage of the biological, technical and virtual.
The 'montage' described makes me think of all the modes of experience that documentation could describe - and also all the forms that documentation of a single experience could take.
I also mentioned Camille Henrot I think. And Zoe Williams (google her too though because her website doesn't give much away).
Discussion on ‘Script for the playing of a 7′′ phonograph record prepared for readthrough’ between Sarah Jones and Martin Westwood
In documentation, what constitutes the document and the role it takes is a live question or better still it is an exchange between the document and the documented.
Documentation is and is for interpretation; the what of it is evasive, akin to the riddle in that it also obscures what it names. It has in it the potential to prompt a way of seeing, of listening, of touching the imagination; how the beholder makes it up.
To go back in time, there was a moment when I decided to stop photographing my work. With a sculptural practice taking photographs of the sculptures, the things I made, was something I had felt I was supposed to do.
Now, I ask what I can do for the ‘it’ that is being, documented. What is the tone, the temperature, the weight, the texture;
Any question that is brought forth will have a bearing, a weight, it will hang, how it hangs.
In the light of your statement that ‘documentation is ... for interpretation’ would it be fair to test pushing this statement towards: ‘documentation can be considered as a technical and material interception’?
...that there are no mediums but always, and only, media, that there is no ‘it’ before the event of re-performance or re-scripting, only a motion of reconstitu- tion providing ‘it’ with stability. This moves the document away from being considered as a form of representation and towards its capacity to distort received formats or protocol.
interception is not a distorted channel but...prioritises that the ‘origin lies with the pirate rather than with the merchant, with the highwayman rather than with the highway’
I like the suggestion of an interception; my first response, that it has dark overtones of an action stopping some- thing reaching its intended or desired destination, is tempered by a question of where does that thing go then, could it be held in suspension or does it become diverted to a new destination.
I am thinking about how and why to rep- resent something all the time but whilst I’m thinking this I’m also busy avoiding that thing being pinned down, that is to say being reduced by representation.
Playing around with mash-ups.....
and How to document....
My experience with Joanna Macy podcast. I could definitely push the sound further / be more experimental.
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