Megan Lavelle

Expelling

mlavelle — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:22:50 +0000

Object Project

mlavelle — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 23:25:11 +0000

For those willing to participate:

What is your most prized possession? Is it the drool stained pillow you’ve been carrying around your whole life, the sweater you wear five times a week, or your grandmother’s wedding ring? Whatever the object, I want you to show it to me. The premise is this–you pick a time slot and together we’ll enjoy some snacks, discuss your object, and I will document it for the purposes of cataloguing.

My thoughts are two fold: To archive these tiny monuments in our lives through the form of catalogue, as well as to challenge the economic value we place upon sentimental objects. How do we determine the value of our objects? Through use? Through material value? Through its ‘lived’ experience within our personal/lived narrative?

The photo reproduction of your object will then be posted and placed for bidding on ebay with the value you have placed on the object set as the lowest bid. (Your object will not be sold, only the photograph). Participants will receive half of any earnings made from ebay sales and will receive a free copy of the catalogue created at the end of the project.

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Please email me (Megan Lavelle) at objecttoobject@gmail.com and I will arrange a time and place to meet with you and your object.

**If you are an east coast resident, then we should schedule something over the month of December when I will be home for break.**

Semester One

mlavelle — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 23:24:52 +0000

Mantra:
LET IT FAIL

Lesson #1: Questions > Answers and Questions ≠ Answers.

Lesson #2: Language is a powerful thing. Wizardry is better.

Fieldwork:
As part of our Social Practice workshop we are required to do a few weeks of initial fieldwork in a field outside of ART. Other than that the parameters have been very loose so I decided to do a bit of research into the act of performance, specifically in performance requiring a spontaneity and reaction. So far I have talked to a few jazz performers, a few psychics and a few improv artists with the hope that the investigation will inform some (if not all) of my work this semester.

I just met with Peter Kim of Endgames Improv. It was a great conversation (will post soon) and we will hopefully work together on a few projects in the future. One thing that struck me were the amount of significant parallels there were between our processes. Maybe I’m meant to be an improv artist instead of an artist artist? Not sure what it all means quite yet, but there is potential for something awesome.

I also met with a psychic with a few appointments coming up (they are not cheap!). Still haven’t completely settled my feelings about the entire exchange. She hit on some really tough strings and I cried like a baby, but the commodity exchange was always at the back of my mind throughout the experience and therefore built a wall of doubt.

Update to come.

Readings:
American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland
By: Robert O. Self

Participation
Edited by: Claire Bishop

Sculpture in the Expanded Field
By: Rosalind Krauss

Body as Language: Body Art and Like Stories.
By: Lea Vergine

The Ontology of Performance: Representation Without Reproduction
By: Peggy Phelan

Disassembling the Archive: Fiona Tan
By: Philip Monk

Archive Fever–Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art
By: Okwui Enwezor

Introduction

mlavelle — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:52:07 +0000

It begins here—as it always has—as a practice with the social. My inspiration is found within personal moments, relationships, conversations, and observations. In this sense, my social interactions serve as both the entry point and the ﬁnal outlet of my work. Over the past seven years I have continued to revisit the work of Sophie Calle; her examination of identity and intimacy through arbitrary, yet intentional, sets of rules continue to inspire me (as seen in my works Rest Stops, How We Dwell, and The Object Project). This work references systematic and structured nomadism, oral history, and the construction of personal myth in my life, and the lives of others.
For the past six months I have been meeting with people and discussing their object of emotional signiﬁcance as part of The Object Project. My request to meet is a prompt —permission given to release information sitting at the back of the throat. Each conversation reveals personal investment and exchange, a transaction of narrative, our shared communication catalyzed by an object, and how it collectively transforms relationships with our personal myths. Each participant’s story serves as research for the content of my works of ﬁction. These vignettes of imagined, intimate moments create a space separate from that of the original object and story.
I relate these structures of narrative to individual motivations behind emotional attachment through personal economy. By thinking outside traditional economic models, I examine the individual as an economic model and ask, “How do we manage and allocate equity in our emotional banks?” While systematically compartmentalizing personal financial assets, how do we distribute personal investments of time, space, memory, experience, and emotion?