Before
my arrival at the Spode factory, I had many pre-conceived ideas about it being
a void. Empty. Disused. Useless. Void of human life or purpose.
On
arrival a void is the opposite of what it was. Not only did it contain history
and sadness, a monument to failed industry, but it also contained a new
purpose.
To
be filled by nature.
Nature
sees its usefulness. Its crumbling rocks as nesting ground for searching buddleia
and pigeons.
The
reality of this nature is quite different to the nature used on Spode's tableware. The tamed, beautified nature of composed flowers, pastures and peaceful
idyllic animals. The real nature now gradually fills its walls. A
void is an impossibility.
My
approach to the space will be to experience and relate to it at is present
moment. The past will filter through by its traces, marks of time, scars and
blemishes, and its future by the use it fulfills now. The Spode factory is an
entity itself. It has seen time and it will continue to see time, in its own
way.
During
the initial meeting between myself and it, I used research experiments (or
perhaps systems) to situate myself in that point in time and the space. To gain
an intimate knowledge of the site and its state of being, so that we were
connected.
These
included durational experiments, such as walking to create an amplification of
space, mapping to know its crevices and its dimples, writing from the spaces
perspective and mine so that we intermingle at some points. Documenting the
scars on the skin of Spode from its life of production and the life that it now
knows.
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