For several days now I have been working on making storage boxes for my bricolage hammers. What I thought would take a couple of days with the specific outcome of getting the hammer exhibition safely packed up, has not turned out as planned. I try to make the hammers fit in and categorize them according to materials and sizes. But the hammers do not want to be locked up in boxes, so they protest and create problems for me. Such a bunch of disobedient hammers! So, what do I do? Do I cut the longest ones to make them fit inside a box that is not too big and unmanageable? Do I have to change the shape of the hammers that are too unorthodox and not at all streamlined in shape? Or do I turn this challenging situation upside down and make the boxes follow the shape of the hammers instead? Who is really the boss in this situation? I thought it was me, but it is dawning on me that it might be the hammers....
I put the biggest and most problematic hammers on top of each other. Together with Kristian, who is the master of the wood workshop, we start to talk about how fun it would be to make boxes that follow the outline of the hammers.
A meta project is developing; is it the content that controls the form, or the form that controls the content? The hammers are certainly starting to boss me around, instead of the opposite. How difficult can it be to make some boxes for a collection of hammers? Why can't I just be allowed to listen to podcasts and enjoy myself while doing something as easy as making some boxes? It's not exactly rocket science we are talking about here. So why do they have their own agenda and make it all so complicated for me?
I observe that concepts such as disobedience, animacy and agency that are central topics in my PhD project, are activated in this part of the project: Boxes has grown out of proportions and started to be about something much more complex than functionality and aesthetics.
I'll leave this now, and I'm sure I'll figure it out when time is right – or more likely; the hammers will figure it out for me. For now I can make a simple rack that will serve as a preliminary hammer storage and display element. The perforated metal trays I've had lying around for many years will work very well for this, both as an exhibition item and as a storage.
Which way will the project take based on what I choose?
If I go for boxes that follow the shape, this can be linked to The Useless Machine because of its rebellion against efficiency and functionality. This can be a fun way to go. If I choose to go the other way, the boxes are really just hammer boxes that do as expected; They fulfill their function without demanding too much attention.
I notice as I write that I am more drawn towards the first; to let the hammers be in charge and take over the project, as this is closely linked to fundamental topics in my PhD project: Animacy, agency, disobedience, function etc.
This process of reflecting through writing, drawing, discussing with others and getting my hands dirty in the workshop - is for me what artistic research is all about: The project takes new directions and starts living its own life in ways I could never have imagined before being deeply entangled with it. I try to be in control, but I experience instead that I am being controlled. Just like the designer who tries to shape the world but ends up being shaped by it herself.
There has been a conflict in me from the beginning of this hammer box project. Why am I making these boxes? Are they shipping boxes or exhibition elements? Shipping boxes should be light and solid, with efficient utilization of space.
Exhibition elements, on the other hand, should provide air and space around the things that are exhibited, and be nice without drawing too much attention. Shipping boxes and exhibition elements are therefore two concepts that are difficult to reconcile, and I have come to think that what I am making now will be both poor freight boxes and ugly exhibition elements. As shipping boxes, they are too large, heavy and with low space efficiency, and as exhibit elements they are, much because I use leftover and waste materials, imprecise and not nice enough. Although using leftover and waste materials is in tune with the bricolage concept, the process has proven to cause problems; small imperfections in the materials propagate and make it all just a little bit wrong and crooked, but not enough to make it an explicit aesthetic. The result so far in the process is that both function and aesthetics end up somewhere in the middle and undefined.
AUGUST 2021 UPDATE: I have still not been able to tame and contain the hammers; they are on the loose and taking over my studio!
What should I do then?
I think that I either have to create boxes that are only for shipping purpose, or I have to further explore the conflict between shipping function and exhibition function. I either have to go for an aesthetic that is deliberately messy and imperfect, and use materials that are even more skewed and "wrong" for the purpose, or I have to go all in and make the boxes/ exhibition elements precise and in new materials such as solid wood or birch veneer. The question is whether the reuse aesthetic is beginning to attract too much attention from the bricolage hammers that are also made of found and waste materials, or whether the aesthetics of precise execution in new materials are too tedious and do not add to the project and thus a lost opportunity for new and surprising ways for the project.....
I started the hammer box project without a good plan. It would have been different if they were to be sent to a gallery in N.Y. and that I had to have them shipped and exhibited there; then I would have some concrete framework to work from. But now it's more fictional; for now, I just need to pack the hammers for storage. Maybe my lack of defined direction is seen as an invitation for the hammers to start being the boss of me?
I could make drawers for the hammers, like in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. These will work as practical storage + cargo boxes + display items; like a wünderkammer of hammers. (If I choose to follow this path, I should hire a student assistant to make them for me).
I can go completely in the opposite direction and make hammer boxes that follow the shape of the hammer; impractical hammer boxes that distorts our notion that a box should be functional, efficient and sensibly designed.
