Sep
01

Ann Hamilton, indigo blue From SF MOMA: Indigo blue is comprised of some 18,000 pieces of used, blue work clothes that are folded and piled on a steel-and-wood platform. In front of the platform are a wooden table and stool where an attendant sits and erases text from a book titled International Law Situations, published by the Naval War College, exemplifying Hamilton’s incorporation of an active, physical presence within her work. The attendant moistens an eraser with saliva, rubs out lines of text, and allows the eraser filings to accumulate into a pile at the book’s edge. Hamilton has described this activity as a way of “using the body to re-mark history—taking the mechanically reproduced text and replacing it with the mark of the body.” The work also acts as a surrogate voice for the anonymous laborers represented by the mountain of blue uniforms located behind the work table.

Ann Hamilton, indigo blue

From SF MOMA:

Indigo blue is comprised of some 18,000 pieces of used, blue work clothes that are folded and piled on a steel-and-wood platform. In front of the platform are a wooden table and stool where an attendant sits and erases text from a book titled International Law Situations, published by the Naval War College, exemplifying Hamilton’s incorporation of an active, physical presence within her work. The attendant moistens an eraser with saliva, rubs out lines of text, and allows the eraser filings to accumulate into a pile at the book’s edge. Hamilton has described this activity as a way of “using the body to re-mark history—taking the mechanically reproduced text and replacing it with the mark of the body.” The work also acts as a surrogate voice for the anonymous laborers represented by the mountain of blue uniforms located behind the work table.

bespangled Posted by bespangled

Notes

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    This was one of our first posts to make it to Tumblr’s Radar feature, posted during the theme of labor. I was not...
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