Implant

The fourth and final part of my creative jaunt into the Nostalgia Realm for First Fold Records' 'Premier Pli' publication.
The brief for 'Premier Pli 2' is to fill four pages with words and/ or pictures based on the theme of 'Nostalgia'.

One of the threads through my collection of objects for Premier Pli 2 is "films from my childhood and the fan-fetishism associated with film props." When people have asked what my favourite film of all time is I always answer, 'Blade Runner.' It is a beautifully realised film about technology, environment, man's attempts to blur the boundaries between themselves and god, mortality, paranoia, reality and memories. It is this final theme that strongly feeds into the Premier Pli 2 brief about 'Nostalgia.'

"Implants. They are not your memories, they belong to Tyrell's sixteen year old niece."

And so Rick Deckard has cruelly revealed to Rachael (an android based on her creator's niece) that her memories are in fact 'implants'. 

One of my previous objects 'What I Really Need (1977)' was made '... to illustrate how our memory tricks us ...' and similarly (as stated above) many of Blade Runner's characters are a victim of this anomaly.

"... what the eyes see and the resulting memories are not to be trusted. This is a notion emphasized by Rachael's fabricated memories ..."

Nostalgia often works in this way, I think, gilding the past with adornments and wonder. I realise that these ideas about nostalgia seem rather negative but to be honest I see absolutely no harm in your brain adapting the past into comforting memories.

Blade Runner's opening shot is that incredible fly-over of 'Hades' - Los Angeles, 2012 - 

but before that and before the scrolling text which contextualises the film, the Ladd Company logo appears.

Aside from Blade Runner's strong themes about memory, it is within this peculiar 2D computer rendering of an oak tree that really got me thinking about my final object.

My son in the park aged two.

While myself and my son (then two years old) were on one of many trips to the park he found an acorn and gave it to me as a present. I have kept that curious object in a coat pocket for nearly three years. Whenever I wore that particular coat I would find myself absent mindedly flicking the acorn's seed out of its cupule and manipulating it snugly back in place. The repetition of this action gives me great comfort and I have always wanted to preserve the acorn in some way.

It may seem like a ridiculously broad leap to tie an acorn to Blade Runner but for me it sits thematically and visually very comfortably alongside that amazing film and the brief for Premier Pli 2.

The challenge for me was how to make a small object that deceives the viewer and implies a fragility using such a personal and overtly sentimental object. I found that key in the scene where Deckard cruelly reveals to Rachael that her memories are just 'implants.'

From the shooting script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples:
 

DECKARD

Remember the bush outside your window

with the spider in it.

Rachael looks up at him.

DECKARD

Green body, orange legs... you watched

her build a web all summer.

RACHAEL

Yes.

Her voice is getting very small.

DECKARD

One day there was an egg in the web.

Rachael nods faintly.

RACHAEL

After a while, the egg hatched and

hundreds of baby spiders came out and

ate her. That made quite an impression

on me, Mr. Deckard.

My idea was to suspend the seed of the acorn over the cupule using spider silk as it is deceptively strong. This was a worrying concept as I had never collected spider webs and ended up reading a blog about collecting spider silk which was brilliant but impractical as it suggested using the webs of Golden Orb spiders which are absent from the British Isles. I couldn't even find a cob-web in my garden or in my house from a lowly British spider. Then one day my wife found a cob-web stuck to an old coat hanging in our porch. Spider silk, although strong, can snap easily when old and I was worried if the object would last long enough to photograph and whether or not it would actually look any good.

And so with a nervousness and panic filling my being I made the final piece which is entitled Implant (1982).

The cupule supported on a pin and an upturned aluminium candleholder.

Suspending the acorn seed rather primitively from a steel ruler.

I will post the final images once Premier Pli 2 has been published but it actually worked out a lot better than I (and my wife) thought it would. I think Implant (1982) is a fitting end to an incredibly challenging and creative journey as it is the most personal and most delicate of my four objects. In fact it no longer exists, it is now just another memory saved for prosperity in a photograph.