Heather Phillipson

New works will be posted here between September 2012 and August 2013

Annotated Scripts

A is to D what E is to H posted October 2012

A Note on the Scripts, by Heather Phillipson

I
The words should not be mistaken for writing. They are not ends
in themselves but stand-ins for a voice. The words are written in sound.
Disturbance is embedded. The scripts have interruption written into them.
The words are there to be upset by the image – and soundtrack.
The image – and soundtrack are there to be tripped up by the words.
There is no singular position to maintain. Instead, it’s like jogging
along a street – faces, noises, pavement cracks, emotions, falling over.

The script is a physical object in space, like a kitchen floor.

It exists to be walked on, spilt on, scuffed up, but also to hold the units
in place. Tiles cannot be chiselled out without toppling the sink or
reassembling the table.

Absented from the videos, the scripts are incomplete. They are not

accurate. They are the interface between mark and performance.

They have the aroma of intimacy. They are the documents that remain.

Well, this is embarrassing posted April 2013

Medico-Musico-Metaphysico posted April 2013

Let me elaborate on the script-as-kitchen floor. It has to do with arrangements.

Let’s say the words are the units. The voice is the four walls. Images are chairs.

Sounds are hot and cold running water, the overhead extractor.In my scripts,

words are not the first blocks that get positioned. They are shuffled about with

the other fixtures. I have no idea exactly where they will end up. The table gets

inverted, the seats up-ended. It’s risky. Things rub together, get abandoned.

It necessitates making and avoiding choices.

What happens when one wall gets attached to another, or pulled away from its
foundations? What if the units no longer belong to the walls but to the furniture?
Think of the words as the carcasses. They come ready-made/flat-packed. This
is the point. They are structural. They have use-value. They hint at underlying
systems. They can be opened up and looked into.Welcome to a room in which
the structural elements overflow.

To use words is to re-deploy them. They are a form of recitation, replication,

reconstruction. At the same time, it’s a reclamation. Sometimes – yes! – they

are ineffective.

They ask questions like, what do I say? why did I say it? is that true? what’s
meant by it? what space is left for internal ruminations and external input?
Dadaists might reply that sense and non-sense, design and chance, order
and chaos is the answer to all of them. My use of words in scripts is similarly
multi-way – they indicate half-digested ideas, propped up with contradictory
supporting elements. They are a mixture of buffoonery and over-confidence,
cheap thrills and terror.

Words are the actual and the virtual. They look sturdy for a while, then rot.
They are over-reliant on the power of suggestion. As Fellini said,
‘With a sheet, fifty pounds of Parmesan cheese and two technicians, you’ve got a blizzard.’

Heather Phillipson is an artist working in video, sound, sculpture, text/poems and live events. Solo exhibitions in 2013 include Yes, surprising is life in the post-vegetal cosmorama’at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, and Zabludowicz Invites: Heather Phillipson at Zabludowicz Collection, London. Her poetry pamphlet was published by Faber and Faber in 2009, her book-length text, NOT AN ESSAY, by Penned in the Margins in 2012 and her poetry collection, Instant-flex 718, by Bloodaxe in 2013. Heather participated in the LUX Associate Artists Programme 2011-12. www.heatherphillipson.co.uk