I realised I was testing John Cage’s Serious Play – both in work and method - particularly the towel and sheet throwing video pieces, which are a direct link to Marcel Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages 1913-14. Utilising my own form of ad hocism (Jencks and Silver: 1972) I opted to work only with what was ‘at hand’, finding things that were worth nothing in themselves but working with them as art objects, making something from them, in the manner of the facteur Ferdinand Cheval’s Palais Idéal. It is especially liberating/reassuring to realise that I found myself tapping into work that I had begun making 40 years ago - right back to my sculptural roots - it made me very happy.
Simultaneously, I was also asking what does the camera want? How can I subvert this machine and make pictures of things worth nothing and not what the camera wants - e.g. a load of mops and brooms and cardboard boxes rescued from the rubbish?