An initial reaction to the new project: Unlocking Potential and Releasing Success.
This project involves designing a piece to be displayed in a communal space inside Bullingdon Prison. What I take from this before all else is the fact that this project is going to be almost infinitely less ‘free’ (no pun intended) than any previous one. There are so limitations that surround what sort of material/content would actually be appropriate to display inside a prison. the brief itself states that there can be no direct references to prison life, and no blunt reminders of what the prisoners are missing in the outside world. That, to me, seriously limits my options as far as content goes.
Medium-wise the piece has to be largely 2D, although a relief piece is plausable. There will be 3 pieces displayed, with minimum dimensions of (in metres) 2.5 x 2.5, 2.5 x 2.5 and 3 x 3. So I will, if my piece is selected, be potentially working on a large scale, which I need to take into account on paper. The materials I use will need to be easy to rework on a much larger scale. For example a painted piece with lots of different textures, strokes etc would be quite a challenge to accurately enlarge from A3 by hand. Another set of limits.
Besides this I have to think really hard about what sort of images I can actually create that will be appropriate. Of course there are socialogical issues to consider. How will inmates react to certain images?
- There will be inmates from many different places with many different beliefs and views, so I will need to be careful to create something that would be universally acceptable.
- Should the piece be passive or engaging to those who see it?
- If the pieces cannot reflect prison life in any way then I will have to research and create something in contrast to the colours/shapes/atmosphere of the prison.
- There is an issue that in taking all of this into account could actually result in something that appears patronising to inmates. In reality, the whole project itself could be seen as very patronising, but tossing the big picture aside, this is still a brief that any designer would have to work from.
- Researching the kinda of art that inmates produce could be very useful indeed.
The title of the project is Unlocking Potential and Releasing Success. Kind of a tricky one considering that if you are already in prison then your concept of success is probably going to be a distorted one. The idea of potential has always been a negative one for me. I don’t believe in it. This is school report card language. “Timmy has lots of potential, but no drive.” If you seriously look at it, anybody can have potential, because potential is just another way of saying “something you haven’t done yet.” Society tells us that smokers have the potential to quit. Failing students have the potential to get good grades if they ‘push themselves’. Offenders have the potential to develop into better people and rejoin civil society… and I don’t doubt that some of them do in the end. But the sad truth is that people will smoke until their lungs collapse, failing students will drop out and live in council flats until the day they die, and there is a recidivism rate of around 50% in the UK. Potential is a word that is only applied to those who are already failing. I see it as an intensely negative concept, so I’m going to have to work hard to incorporate it in my work.
What may be a better idea would be to create something that is just a positive piece of imagery. the brief seems to suggest that the best way to go about this would be to create something abstract. Based on the limitations of the project, I imagine that the majority of works submitted are going to be along these lines, so I’m going to try my hardest to move away from the patronising idea of “oh, it’s ok, if we create something abstract then there’s no chance of offending anyone.” Personally, if I was locked up and a great big Rothko painting was installed somewhere that I would have to see it every day for the rest of my sentence, I would be disappointed to say the least.
The brief states that the piece has to meaningful. I believe that the brief has just tripped over its own shoelaces by completely contradicting itself. How can anything be meaningful when so many restrictions have been placed on it? Something meaningfulness comes from the heart, and as soon as you put rules on it loses that.
I could probably talk for days about this project, but it’s probably a good idea if I just get on with it now. The bottom line is, it’s brief. I’m going to work to it, no matter how flawed it might be.
Let’s do this.
