Mile of String... 2007!

After experimenting further with my string installation in my laundry utility room, and after a rather luke-warm reception of the idea in the last group meeting, I decided to change my idea a little... To be more precise, I decided to change the location for my installation. Group members generally agreed that the public participation element of Duchamp's original Mile of String added to its interest, and that my re-creation would be more effective if it were in a more public space. I also took in to account the fact that the final outcome of our project is to involve a presentation, and simply showing photos of the installation in my utility room would not be all that exciting... I therefore came to the conclusion that the most effective method of conveying the experience of the Mile of String would be to make the actual installation my presentation. I would install the string in the Casket Space, where the presentation is to be held! I proceeded to buy large amounts of string, got hold of a staple gun and went to college earlier this evening after classes had finished, and set up the string in the Casket Space with the help of my assistant...
I documented the process from start to finish on my digital camera, and below are the images in order from the earliest to the final result...














































I also made a short film of moving through the string, as the photos do not convey the 3D sense of the structure as well as moving image does... Here it is:

Mile of String!

Continuing my research online, I came across this work of Duchamp's, named Mile of String...



The website I was looking at explained the following:
Above: "Mile of String" - 1942. In 1942, Andre Breton organised a retrospective exhibition of Surrealist art in New York: First Papers of Surrealism. Duchamp created this installation for it – a gigantic web called the Mile of String. He and Breton furthermore arranged for a number of children to play ball in the room thereby making it very difficult for the guests to see the paintings.

I really loved the idea of "contributing" to an exhibition of painting by making it impossible to navigate around the gallery and actually see the work! Though it seems like a negative contribution, seeing as the exhibition was one of Surrealist art, it was in fact highly appropriate, creating an extremely surreal atmosphere!

I think I would like to try and re-create the Mile of String idea in a different context...

I researched the Mile of String in more depth and discovered that the idea was re-done for an installation in Selfridges in March to coincide with the Surrealism exhibition at the V&A this year. Here are the images I found:








The website (dezeen.com - a design magazine website) included the following text on the installation:

March 30th, 2007

Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT) have sent us images of 1.51 Miles of String, a temporary shop within Selfridges department store in London.

The “pop-up” project is part of a series of installations at Selfridges to coincide with the exhibition Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, which opened at the V&A museum earlier this week.

Sam Jacob of FAT explains the project: “This is not a shop, or rather it’s not quite a shop. It reworks Marcel Duchamps ‘Mile of String’ exhibition design for the 1942 ‘First Papers of Surrealism’ exhibition in New York.

“Here, the length of string is determined by the distance between Selfridges and the V&A, respectively the Museum and partner for the Surrealism and design exhibition. This as-the-crow-flies measurement has been threaded around the space to create a web like installation.

“The 1.51 miles have been tangled, hooped and slung to form a very different kind of space, a grotto of geography.”


The significance of 1.51 miles being the distance between Selfridges and the V&A is a neat and effective idea, I think...
I've been considering what I would like to express with my re-creation of the Mile of String... will it be a mile, for one thing?
I decided I would like to install the string somewhere in my flat, and started to consider my washing machine, and the love/hate relationship I've had with it over the passed year with its intermittent soaking of my clothes when it was meant to be drying them and such... My washing machine lives in a tiny utility room and has, in fact finally been fixed as of Monday this week, and I have been thinking that installing the string in the utility room (making it impossible to open and use the now in-perfect-working-order machine) might be an amusing and suitably surreal idea... I have been experimenting rigging up the string and will be photographing it to create a series of surreal photographs!

Biography... Marcel Duchamp

To begin my research, I took a look at the Grove Art Online entry on Duchamp...

Duchamp, (Henri-Robert-) Marcel

(b Blainville, Normandy, 28 July 1887; d Neuilly-sur-Seine, 2 Oct 1968).

French painter, sculptor and writer. The art and ideas of Duchamp, perhaps more than those of any other 20th-century artist, have served to exemplify the range of possibilities inherent in a more conceptual approach to the art-making process. Not only is his work of historical importance—from his early experiments with Cubism to his association with Dada and Surrealism—but his conception of the ready-made decisively altered our understanding of what constitutes an object of art. Duchamp refused to accept the standards and practices of an established art system, conventions that were considered essential to attain fame and financial success: he refused to repeat himself, to develop a recognizable style or to show his work regularly. It is the more theoretical aspects implicit to both his art and life that have had the most profound impact on artists later in the century, allowing us to identify Duchamp as one of the most influential artists of the modern era.


Here are some images of Duchamp and his work.





Mona Lisa - 1919


Rotoreliefs - 1935


Bicycle Wheel - 1914


Boite-en-Valise - 1942-54


Bottle Rack - 1914