How much attention

How Long Can I Hold Your Attention For?/ How Much Presence Can I Give You?

I've been following a variety of conversations about social media, artificial intelligence and advertising. Apparently when I want to communicate with you via Social Media, I am set against supercomputers that are exerting exponentially increasing (whatever appropriate measurement) to grab my attention. I guess ultimately to get me to shop or at least to gobble up my data. It's no wonder that whilst emailing you, I find myself two hours later down some tailored-to-fit-me-cyber-hole, that I actually had no interest in. Can attention be seen as a new currency? And what is the difference between attention and presence?

Jewellery  historically has been a method to store and communicate value. Can it also hold my attention? How long does it hold your attention for?

The making of jewellery certainly requires a lot of both attention and presence. Could jewellery hold attention, as value, as currency, for exchange? Could the supercomputer tap the attention held by the pendant I'm wearing, instead of pestering me, whilst I'm trying to chat to you?!

Bio:

Mark Rautenbach lectured Design in Jewellery at CPUT for a number of years, for some of that time co-lecturing with Farieda Nazier. Art making now demands his full-time work attention. In the past five years performance has increasing become a feature in his work. His performances are often of long duration and characterised by rather uneventful, perhaps unremarkable or mundane activities. They usually involve making, unmaking or re-making. The matter he works with is twofold: an engaging  with actual material; exercising its capacities and potential, and, the symbolic nature of material as in ‘what's the matter?’

How to approach and engage with the performance.

Key elements:

Title:

How Long Can I Hold Your Attention For?/How Much Presence Can I Give You?

Materials:

Safety pins; silver ‘colour’ references Silver; a socially agreed upon material/matter of value and significance.

'Size-tape’; this tape is from which the sizes of garments are cut from. This tape references measurement: how long/much?

Activity:

Threading; labour intensive and demanding attention, shows how much time has lapsed, and how much attention has been paid.

The performance is conducted throughout the entire conference.

Viewing:

The performance can be viewed from all vantage points throughout the atrium.

The performer:

Is contained and focuses his attention on the threading. He does not engage verbally with the observer, hence the pins between his lips.

Real Work

I wore James Reed's Jacket entitled Real Work during the second day of a two day contemporary jewellery conference, at the University of Johannesburg, September 2018.

My contribution to the conference was a two day performance: I threaded small silver safety pins onto a spool of tape. The tape is used in the clothing industry and is from which the sizes of garments are cut and stitched into garments. The threading marked the entire length of the conference.

Reed's ‘Real Work’ piece invites others to engage with it. The piece is a jacket made from two other dissected jackets, stitched together down the spine. The left side is a grey pin-stripe and the right a white ‘workers/labours’ overall jacket. I had emailed him asking permission to use it during the performance. His response was welcoming and he asked; could [you please] take note of what thoughts may emerge  for you with regard to the question : What is the Real Work that can be cultivated now to shape a humane economy for future generations?

My original intention for the piece was to perform in the central atrium of the Faculty of Art and Design [FADA] building. I hadn't realised that the faculty was in recess, thus a deserted campus. I moved the performance into the actual rooms the conference  was taking place, thus becoming an integral part of it.

The topics of discussion on the second day, the day I wore the jacket was about objects of gratitude, actions of gratitude, gifts, gifting and strategies to develop some kind of Jewellers community/coalition. It was interesting and somehow pertinent that James’ question be pondered in the conversation on gifting.

What is the Real Work that can be cultivated now to shape a humane economy for future generations?

My responses to James’ question come as more questions, I don't have answers, but paths to walk down and ponder.

I question the link between work and economy. The title of my performance is; How Long Can I Hold Your Attention For?/ How Much Presence Can I Give You? The work explores the idea of attention being a new currency, how social media/advertising gobbled up attention, steals my attention. If Attention is a new currency, could we develop devices that could store attention, so that I might get on with my work?!

As an artist my work, my real work, is art making. I use performance, live art and social sculpture to explore, engage and make visible the threads which connect individuals and groups of people in specific cultural, social, places [geographies], matter [symbolic and actual] and time contexts. The work emerges directly out of, these contexts, and therefore might not have any significant meaning outside of them.

There seems to be a sliding ratio proportion to Real Work/meaning and fulfillment and money. The more authentic the work, the less pay. And vice versa. That says a lot about our current economy ethic.

I've been following discussions around, following Yoval Harari’s ideas around the rise of the use-less class. That AI will be rendering humans useless as workers. This further unpicks the ties between work and economy. In these discussions ideas around everyone granted a standard set salary, which they don't have to work for. some Scandinavian countries are already implementing this.

There are different types of work; basic domestic stuff, earning money (a job), vocation. Working for money, working for life.

I've had some more time to sit with these ideas and this is what's emerged:

The real work is the work on the self. I do this as an individual practice and collectively with others. Being human is expensive. This is how I/we best pay our way.