from "Untitled Aesthetic"
by Susan Simpson
“Have you ever really looked carefully at your watch?’ The questioner knows that I have looked at it often enough and now his question deprives me of the sight which I’ve grown used to and which accordingly has nothing more to say to me. I realize that I have given up seeing the watch with an astonished eye; and it is in many ways an astonishing piece of machinery.” – Bertolt Brecht
To view the world with an astonished eye can be a haunting experience. Take the objects that lie before you. For me, at this moment, it is a toy kitchen, a fishing lure, a plastic bridesmaid for the top of the cake, two of them actually bought as stand-ins for brides at a double bride ceremony. Beyond the thing that each object seems to be, there is the thing we believe it to be, the thing it aspires to be, and the thing it pretends to be.
What material is it made of? What labor? What cost? What boredom of process? What chemical formula? What natural resource depleted? What excitement of invention? What shipping? What darkness of storage? What smell of the new? What section of the store? Every object threatens to capsize in its own wake.
[continues in TrenchArt: Tracer, become a member and read more]
Susan Simpson is a TrenchArt Tracer series visual artist, in collaboration with Ken Ehrlich