Teapots & To Draw a Name from a Hat
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Through talking with MzTek I began to wonder what could become of a teapot if I embedded it with electronics- a common practice in object hacking. The object loses its context, its expressive ability, and acquires a fake identity. The first step into simulation…I created a fake yet ontologically vague teapot. At which point the question arose: how can the fake re-enter the sphere of the real, and what kind of reality could house it? According to Baudrillard (Simulation and Simulacra, 1994) a shift in the object’s ontology would allow for a cognitive shift in the user’s understanding. The doubly-faked object turns real in a hyperreal environment.
So hacking was only the beginning. Like a second-order simulacrum the teapot was stripped of a second layer of symbolism. Its form needs to replicate itself in a way that vaguely resembles the initial object. The three replicas were thus built. Gradually they lose their colour, exposing the process and mechanics of their conception.
The third un-teapot like aspect of the object is its playback system, which enables the teapot to state that it is a fake copy. It plays back “This Is Not A Teapot”, and not being a teapot is a tautology as obsolete as it is crucial. That is what Baudrillard calls the “order of sorcery”, a state where the object does not claim to one thing or another, an almost free object, but still a bit unsure?
These two tautological languages reach out to Magritte’s painting Ceci n’ est pas une pipe. The first order simulacrum here is the drawing of the pipe and the second order is the statement below it. Similarly with the teapot, the drawn pipe is freed of its objectivity when we are told not to believe what we see, even if we see that it is fake.
The fourth order of simulacra would be to draw new symbols with new referents into the object, a state of absolute remoteness from the original object.
Mia Gubbay’s Performance, Portraying homonyms, began as an attempt to naturalize the hybrid through creating parallel compositions to those criterion of Bauldrillards ‘Order of Sourcery’ and its own. There is a semiotic development; the pouring of the tea is replaced by the ‘drawing’ of names from a punched in hat yet, something is still. Through drawing, Mia Gubbay will create a series of interventions to take place throughout the Chi-tek tea party at the V&A.
Artemis Papageorgiou
Victoria& Albert Museum, Sackler Centre
24&25 September, 11:00am-4:00pm, Performances ~12:00-3:00pm
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TO DRAW A NAME FROM A HAT
Why do we ‘draw’ names out of hats and not pull them? As a spinning Pollock paint-can the expression challenges the idea that to draw is to attempt to control- the inside of the hat- the head- & the random futures of however many people take part in this ‘drawing’. Of course it is a homonym. In drawing the names from the hat we are ridiculous patrons of an irrational decision. The ‘hat’ is a poetic gesture that has reached the status of invalid act vs. practical tradition. Both to draw and to utilize a hat are theatrics implying that the drawee is drawing himself; containing his manner, living himself in contour, tone, inspiration as an adequate frame of his drawn in self- who is himself pulling at an object that can not purposefully be seen- It would be interesting to have a representative from the future draw a name from a hat- no longer stretched by the moment’s indeterminacy he would be just a um puller.
Mia Gubbay
http://imaginationandskepticism.tumblr.com/
http://www.mztek.org/programs/chi-tek/
