(un)realized words Kathryn Hummel (un)realized words is an installation combining photographs and paper objects (used and new) to form an interactive work out of a variety of incomplete/in-progress elements.
I do not recall at what age I first began to write stories, but what I do remember is making the books myself out of stapled or folded sheets of paper, complete with colour illustrations and pull-out characters. Curiously, it is these short pieces from childhood, retained in my mother’s chaotic archives, that are complete, were realized; as I began to grow in age and ambition, as I recognized the potential to create longer and lasting work as a writer, as I turned to ‘real’ notebooks—sewn, bound and pre-lined—I failed to complete the ideas I recorded. Set down in the more permanent medium of the shop-bought notebook, my ideas, even when formulated many times over, remained incomplete and my writing unfinished. (un)realized words presents five of my notebooks, used between the years 1997–2012, as the subjects of a photo series as well as installation objects. The notebooks contain the beginnings of novels, stage plays and poems, blended with sketches and doodles, observations and recordings of daily life, notes relating to business ventures or various jobs, academic research and references. The notebooks also map my various ages, contact with other people and cultures, the development of my handwriting and writing styles, as well as encounters with others’ work. Visually, the notebooks are marked with different coloured pen and pencil; covers are worn and spines damaged, with pages rumpled, stained, water-warped, scrawled over, clipped up, bent; some have extra pages tucked inside back and front covers. Many of the notebooks have accompanied me on travels around the world and others have simply banged around in my shoulder bag, ready for my record of everyday life. The story each notebook tells—beyond the (un)realized words they contain—is one of many dimensions.
Adding to these dimensions is the ‘willful’ act of the snapshot. To capture un(realized) words as informal instances of spontaneous life but show them, simultaneously, as the projections of contrived thought, point-and-shoot photography is used for each series, with an irregular number of shots devoted to the features of all five notebooks. The snapshot is an apt method for interpreting the notebooks, in more ways than one: the un(realized) words carry with them the loss and nostalgia traditionally associated with the snapshot, yet when recorded by the snapshot, the words, as an inventory of the past, are reframed and brought into the present in a new form. Not all ‘has been lost or banished from’ the notebooks, by virtue of the snapshot. While each image highlights words, time and textures in and of the notebooks, combined in a series the photographs create a visual narrative separate to the un(realized) words, allowing viewers to interpret both in the creation of a ‘social reading space’. Drawing more heavily on this idea of the social reading space, the final component of the installation is tactile and interactive, with the notebooks themselves presented for handling and exploration by viewers. While the words they contain are lengthy captions to the photographs, I also propose to supply five blank notebooks in which the viewers of the un(realized) words can create their own captions, record comments to be left or torn out and taken away; to realize projects of their own, or add to my unfinished ones. Once more, the ‘newly virginal’ notebook will be open to an ‘act of rewriting’, introducing a significant element of spontaneity to the narrativized sequence of the snapshots and the domination of my own texts. The interactive element of the installation emphasises that un(realized) words, although belonging to the past, are not records of lost moments but intended for present and future reinvention; there is, after all, eternal potential to celebrate in being and creating the incomplete.
(un)realized words Kathryn Hummel (un)realized words is an installation combining photographs and paper objects (used and new) to form an interactive work out of a variety of incomplete/in-progress elements.
I do not recall at what age I first began to write stories, but what I do remember is making the books myself out of stapled or folded sheets of paper, complete with colour illustrations and pull-out characters. Curiously, it is these short pieces from childhood, retained in my mother’s chaotic archives, that are complete, were realized; as I began to grow in age and ambition, as I recognized the potential to create longer and lasting work as a writer, as I turned to ‘real’ notebooks—sewn, bound and pre-lined—I failed to complete the ideas I recorded. Set down in the more permanent medium of the shop-bought notebook, my ideas, even when formulated many times over, remained incomplete and my writing unfinished. (un)realized words presents five of my notebooks, used between the years 1997–2012, as the subjects of a photo series as well as installation objects. The notebooks contain the beginnings of novels, stage plays and poems, blended with sketches and doodles, observations and recordings of daily life, notes relating to business ventures or various jobs, academic research and references. The notebooks also map my various ages, contact with other people and cultures, the development of my handwriting and writing styles, as well as encounters with others’ work. Visually, the notebooks are marked with different coloured pen and pencil; covers are worn and spines damaged, with pages rumpled, stained, water-warped, scrawled over, clipped up, bent; some have extra pages tucked inside back and front covers. Many of the notebooks have accompanied me on travels around the world and others have simply banged around in my shoulder bag, ready for my record of everyday life. The story each notebook tells—beyond the (un)realized words they contain—is one of many dimensions.
Adding to these dimensions is the ‘willful’ act of the snapshot. To capture un(realized) words as informal instances of spontaneous life but show them, simultaneously, as the projections of contrived thought, point-and-shoot photography is used for each series, with an irregular number of shots devoted to the features of all five notebooks. The snapshot is an apt method for interpreting the notebooks, in more ways than one: the un(realized) words carry with them the loss and nostalgia traditionally associated with the snapshot, yet when recorded by the snapshot, the words, as an inventory of the past, are reframed and brought into the present in a new form. Not all ‘has been lost or banished from’ the notebooks, by virtue of the snapshot. While each image highlights words, time and textures in and of the notebooks, combined in a series the photographs create a visual narrative separate to the un(realized) words, allowing viewers to interpret both in the creation of a ‘social reading space’. Drawing more heavily on this idea of the social reading space, the final component of the installation is tactile and interactive, with the notebooks themselves presented for handling and exploration by viewers. While the words they contain are lengthy captions to the photographs, I also propose to supply five blank notebooks in which the viewers of the un(realized) words can create their own captions, record comments to be left or torn out and taken away; to realize projects of their own, or add to my unfinished ones. Once more, the ‘newly virginal’ notebook will be open to an ‘act of rewriting’, introducing a significant element of spontaneity to the narrativized sequence of the snapshots and the domination of my own texts. The interactive element of the installation emphasises that un(realized) words, although belonging to the past, are not records of lost moments but intended for present and future reinvention; there is, after all, eternal potential to celebrate in being and creating the incomplete.