25.2.09

Suspect, Location, Time










150 x 210 mm
12 pages of embossed card. Black felt binding.
Typewritten text with black pen and ink.

This bookwork was made in response to Foucault's "Panoptican" with the idea of surveillance as a ‘faceless gaze’, positioned and alert everywhere (Discipline and Punish). These ideas relate to city life in the twenty-first century with the growing number of CCTV cameras becoming an expected part of the city landscape. This piece uses the set-up of a detective following and noting the movements of five suspects. The detective is the camera. The five individuals are watched in unison and each offers their response to this alongside the detective's notes. References in the text and map are actual places in and around Baker Street; however, they have been reconfigured to create a new fictional text and site. The map of Baker Street has been drawn in relation to the movements of the suspects in the text and not in accordance with a map of the actual site.

2 comments:

Anna said...

I'm just looking at all your amazing bookworks here. They are really beautiful, and should certainly be sold - approach the book arts book shop!

This reminds me of Sophie Calle in terms of theme, and also Yoko Ono to some degree (remember the fluxus instruction - draw an imaginary map and then follow it) and what's great about your book and in fact all of these products is the very high production value, which is also a really important element of Sophie Calle too. And even your practice of describing your books in the way that objects are catalogued in galleries etc. It's all really fantastic. xxx

karen sandhu said...

Thanks Anna. At the minute there's only one of each. I'd like to make more copies once I've finalised the text of each. At the moment with every remaking of a book there's been a revising of the text along the way.

Yes, alot of it is based on the work of Calle and Templeton and particularly this idea of taking a site, remapping and fictionalising the site and then, placing this remapped fiction back into the original site.

Ah yes, I should have considered Yoko Ono!

k xx