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Talking Leaves is a process-oriented artwork built over time through the electronic submission of images by anyone who wishes to participate. Though simple in design, it invites reflection on the ways disparate and fleeting perception can be part of a complex web of experience held in common.
Talking Leaves is a cumulative, collective artistic production which questions and expands pre-set notions about community and aesthetic value. Anyone who has access to a digital camera or a mobile phone capable of taking digital pictures can participate; furthermore, there is no editorial or curatorial intervention in the selection of images. The images gradually accumulate within the exhibition space, comprising the Leaves of the ‘Trees’—structures composed of suspended metal rings which grow increasingly image-laden and ‘leafy’ over the course of the exhibition.
What the Trees ‘become’ is finally a collective experiment and collage, for which the organizing principles are not explicitly given. The images on display are identified by name of photographer, location and sometimes a few descriptive words, but otherwise are not curated according to any specific themes. Nor is the show as a whole explicated for viewers in any overt way, apart from description of the show’s formal processes. Wandering among the Trees, visitors witness a growing, dynamic compendium of moments, in which every image seems potentially and mysteriously linked to every other. The juxtaposed images reflect the perception and experience of local as well as more far-flung participants, challenging fixed geographies of community.
Relying upon the amateur digital snapshot as its primary building block, Talking Leaves aims to foster a community at large, as people who have submitted images are drawn to the installation to see the work that is of their own making, and as people who see the installation tell others and submit images themselves. Word of mouth (assisted electronically through an online blog and searchable gallery) thus becomes the show’s primary means of publicity and mode of production. Far from the idea of the magnum opus or masterwork, the project is more akin to twitter (flutter)-- as in the flutter of leaves and ideas. Yet this trembling of a multitude of leaves creates an impression of a jagged, interconnected simultaneity of experience.
As a work of “social sculpture” tied to the conditions of its composition, and it’s spectacular and its artful countenance, I feel now that the project must move beyond ‘art as such’ and to serve as a means to an end. Namely, as a community and communication platform to convey actual human value based goals such as building and connecting communities; to build bridges of communication that result in sharing, which I believe will beget caring. In the proposed staging of Talking Leaves I want the project’s execution, energies are also explicitly devoted, on the ground, in pursuit of goals so that trust, and intimacy may grow, which serves to build mutual respect between communities. One of the things I’m finding helpful right now, is to be sure the process of the making of the work embodies the values I want the art itself to produce. Talking Leaves is a template for a process resulting in a social sculpture. How its mechanisms of human engagement are designed will define how useful it is in building these bridges I speak of. It is a fact that Talking Leaves looked, and will look spectacular, vibrating with fields of image energy. It is not enough any more to merely reflect or refract 'the idea' of ‘community building’ like some advertisement which is quickly forgotten, as almost all art, and advertising is forgettable. Life is about relationships and to view the world through another's eyes, is both thrilling and informative.
