I plan to have a map of the world and put the number of missing people per day on different countries. I want to do this by having digital timers that can count up at different speeds....for example the USA has 2300 people who go missing per day, so I would want a counter that counts up to 2300 over a 24 hour period. The UK has 550 per day so I would want it to count up to that over 24 hours. These need to be fairly small to fit on the map and ideally flat.
I have collected a lot of statistics about missing people/ murder victims and cold cases and was shocked to hear that in the UK 600 people on average go missing a day. That is 25 people per hour. I was thinking of using these statistics in a digital timer based work, counting upwards the number of people that go missing per day. I could do this either by projecting the timer up onto a wall as it counts up to 25 every hour or somehow have a large timer on the wall. An artist called Darren Almond uses giant clocks in his work that presents the march of time.
I have also signed up to missing person's forum to ask if any of the family members or friends of a missing person would like to be interviewed. I liked working with video and projection so if I could interview these people about their experiences I was thinking of using their words and projecting them publicly. The artist Krzyszof Wodiczko interviewed war veterans and used their words as a projection around Liverpool city centre. He also used the sound of bullets as the words were projected onto buildings.
If I were to do this I would consider using sound this time as the whole video and projection art work is new to me and I have never used sound. Another artist that deals with public projection is Beveley Carpenter. She has used back projecting as I did last semester and also words and images projected onto buildings to highlight issues that are usually overlooked.
Another artist I have been looking at is Christine Borland, who deals with forensic science within her work. I find her work interesting because she raises unsettling questions by making works that are usually inaccessible to the public now visible. She has studied missing peoples cases and reconstructed those who have been found dead. Her work made me think of creating a cludeo type piece of work, where I leave clues leading to a missing person and the public have to find them.
I am interested in making works outside the studio as I have never really done that before, so I made this piece using photographs I had taken of my missing persons table. I had taken these pictures over a few days and in the mirror you can see the different times of day reflected through the glass. This conveys a passage of time and the washing line acts almost as a time line as well as a symbol of everyday or domesticated life. I had a few people intrigued by it and they didn't directly know what the piece was trying to say, therefore the piece was not obvious like some of my earlier stuff.
In my last assessment I shown my missing women video which I have now shown publicly in Bold Street. I played my video in News from Nowhere bookshop with whom I'd been emailing for around a month. Earlier this month I got an email confirming when I could go down and play it.
I could have shown it last month but there was a Christmas display in the window and didn't think my video would fit into that kind of environment. The people who work there were very interested in what I was doing and were more than happy to accommodate me as they are part of the women's collective. As this was the first time I had shown my work publicly I wanted to get as much feedback as possible, so I stood around the shop and spoke to anyone who watched it. Many people said the video was moving and was shocked to hear some of the statistics involved. This public showing of my work has given me more confidence and taught me a little how artists negotiate.
