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Rory Padeken Collecting Chance: Snapshots of Memory in Tacita Dean’s FLOH The function of dreams is to ensure the continuity of sleep, that of objects, thanks to very much the same sort of compromise, is to ensure the continuity of life. —Jean Baudrillard Now the problem with a collection is realizing that you’ve started one. Recently I have begun, quite unintentionally, to collect old postcards thematically. It started with finding an attractive postcard of a frozen water fountain. On finding the second frozen water fountain, I had begun a collection . . . I know people whose lives are dominated by their collections, ceaselessly searching in flea markets, auction houses and specialist book shops, never resolving their quest. Whether you are collecting versions of popular songs, postcards of lighthouses or votive sculptures of Our Lady of Montserrat, your collection will never let you be. You’ve started so you must continue, and with most collections there is no end. Whether it is postcards of lighthouses or four-leaf clovers, there can never be the definitive collection. —Tacita Dean

Transcript of Rory Padeken - Critical Studiesviscrit.cca.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/09padeken.pdf ·...

Rory Padeken

Collecting Chance: Snapshots of Memoryin Tacita Dean’s FLOH

The function of dreams is to ensure the continuity of sleep, that of objects,

thanks to very much the same sort of compromise, is to ensure the continuity

of life. —Jean Baudrillard1

Now the problem with a collection is realizing that you’ve started one. Recently

I have begun, quite unintentionally, to collect old postcards thematically. It

started with finding an attractive postcard of a frozen water fountain. On

finding the second frozen water fountain, I had begun a collection . . . I know

people whose lives are dominated by their collections, ceaselessly searching in

flea markets, auction houses and specialist book shops, never resolving their

quest. Whether you are collecting versions of popular songs, postcards of

lighthouses or votive sculptures of Our Lady of Montserrat, your collection will

never let you be. You’ve started so you must continue, and with most

collections there is no end. Whether it is postcards of lighthouses or four-leaf

clovers, there can never be the definitive collection. —Tacita Dean2

British artist Tacita Dean is partially right tosay that a collection can never end, for therecan always be something that could have beenincluded. But some collections do have an end, for example, astandard deck of playing cards. While the composition of thedeck may vary in the type or style of card collected, once allRTy-two cards (RTy-four including the Joker cards) are collect-ed, the deck is complete. Although, if one were aiming to collectall possible decks of cards, a foreseeable end would be in greatdoubt. For our purposes, let us say that within the realm of asingle deck—a single collection of cards—a set of rules andideas of Rnitude are at stake. Only the cards needed to completea deck would be collected. Once a particular card is collected, itcannot be collected again. Predicting when the collecting of adeck of cards would end, however, is nearly impossible becausethe act of collecting would be leT up to chance.3

Within the realm of chance encounters, the object collected,in Susan Stewart’s words, has “to appear as the world so oTenappears, randomly and without attribution.”4 If the object doesnot appear randomly, but instead is purposefully sought out, thiswould constitute a moment of intended consumption. Simply pur-

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Figure 1.

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book and largest to date.8 While the artist is known primarily forher silent Rlms, in the last ten years Dean has become increasing-ly interested in photography.9 In fact FLOH represents the artist’sRrst foray into photography and use of the found image. Like herRlms, FLOH is a work without words. Pe only words in FLOHare its title, embossed on a pale-green, linen cover, and Dean’shandwritten, graphite signature found on the bottom right cornerof each copy of the book’s third page. Since FLOH’s completion,Dean has given little information about the work’s meaning, be-cause, as she has said, “I don’t want to give the images explanations. . . descriptions by the Rnder about how and where they werefound, or guesses as to what stories they might and might not tell.I want them to keep the silence of the Sea market, the silence theyhad when I found them, the silence of the lost object.”10 Pe object,however, has now been found and collected into a book, whichopens up the possibility for new stories and descriptions to tell.

Presumably, Dean does not present every photograph shefound or encountered in a Sea market, nor does she gathertogether images of the present. Pe images in FLOH represent“all the things I am attracted to,” states Dean, that “are just aboutto disappear more or less.”11 As Susan Sontag writes, “photo-graphic images now provide most of the knowledge people haveabout the look of the past and the reach of the present.”12 Inother words, photography conditions our way of visuallyremembering our past. Because of the ubiquity of photographyin our culture, the structure of memory is now composed like aphotograph. But are photographs an eQective way of remem-bering? Do they function in the same ways as our memories do?How does found photography complicate our experience andrelation to the photograph and the memory it may summon?

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chasing a collection of cards is not the same as collecting cardsby chance. It is possible, however, that anything a collector encoun-ters or purchases could be included in a collection. But mostcollections have a theme that unites the entire body of collectedobjects together. Without a unifying theme, collected objects couldsimply be seen as accumulated stuQ without any real purpose inits collection. Objects that appear to the collector without causeare “removed from realms of accident and disappearance”—suchas the antique shop or Sea market bin—and “placed into realms ofintention and appearance”—the curiosity cabinet or archival book—that have proceeded under the conditions of chance or luck.5

Perefore, the photographs Tacita Dean collected for herwork FLOH represent the fortuitous encounters she had withthese images in the Sea market (Rg. 1). As Stewart notes, “a work[of art] that encompasses chance would need to have an end,even if there were no purpose to it, or else anything and every-thing not selected would be in the collection.”6 By placing thephotographs into a book and printing a limited number, Deancloses oQ the possibility of including other found photographsinto FLOH. But why did Dean select these particular photographs?What might her use of found photography have to say about thecurrent state of photography today? In FLOH, Dean uses chanceto explore, through found photographs, how memory and theimagination are two kinds of truths. Both of these truths worktogether in shaping and creating one’s lived experience.

Completed in 2001, FLOH (as in “Sea” or “Sea market” inGerman) is a signed, limited edition of 4,000 hardbound books,each comprised of 163 found photographs.7 Dean acquired thephotographs in Sea markets in cities across Europe and the UnitedStates over a seven-year period. Pe work is Dean’s fourth artist

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Figure 2.At Rrst glance Dean’s selection of photographs for FLOHseem random and arbitrary. Pis observation is only heightenedby their chaotic arrangement and seemingly diverse illustra-tions of everyday life: the various tasks, habits, rituals, andexperiences that occur throughout a lifetime. Pere are imagesof lovers and friends, family portraits, wedding and birthdaycelebrations, playing in the snow, walks in the park, and hang-ing out with old friends. Images of Sowers, butterSies, swans,leaves, water, ice, and trees are also included. Some images areeither over- or underexposed, while some images are out of focus.One image shows the approximate date it was taken, whileanother image shows the name of the person in the picture.Many of the photographs capture moments and experiences notmeant, or too embarrassing, to be captured in the Rrst place: abride yawning during her own wedding cake cutting ceremony,a couple smiling for the camera while being partially blocked bysomeone else’s bag, and a woman asleep next to her friend whoglamorously poses in an impromptu photo-op. All of these cat-egories and examples reSect the multifarious possibilities,strange happenings, wonderful encounters, and missed oppor-tunities captured in vernacular photography every day.

Pe photographs in FLOH evoke a sense of nostalgia throughwhat they depict: a group of people in 1970s attire, a child withhis dog and sheep hitched to a wagon in a grassy Reld, a personmilking a cow by hand, and a family posing in front of theirModel-T Ford. But this nostalgia is also produced through thephotographs’ physical qualities—the black and white, sepia-toned,and fading chromatic colors. Pis is also a collection of imagesthat triggers for me personal, childhood memories of hot sum-mer days and family trips to the beach (Rg. 2). Or a reminder of

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Figure 3.

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the various emotions I have experienced throughout my lifesuch as love, hate, happiness, and loneliness. I surmise, though,that others have experienced these events and emotions as well.

A photograph can sometimes capture things unbeknownstto the photographer. What one might have wished to capture ina photograph may not always be recorded in the way one mighthave intended. Sometimes the camera unintentionally captureswhat was supposed to be leT out of the frame. Pere might havebeen an overexposure or underexposure of Rlm, an error indevelopment processing, or the slip of the photographer’s handduring the moment of exposure (Rg. 3). Whatever the case maybe, instead of capturing a moment one wishes to remember, thephotograph alters or coerces memory. Pe photograph does notpresent us with a memory we actually experienced, but instead,a memory we re-experience visually that is not entirely true.

Mieke Bal characterizes these acts of remembering or pre-serving the past as “the memorial presence of the past,” whichserve several functions, most notable for this essay’s purpose,“the polemical use of the past to shape the present,” and ulti-mately the future.13 We take photographs because they recon-nect us with the past and provide us with a sense of comingfrom someplace or somewhere. But they can also function col-lectively in creating a cultural or social identity for particulargroups of people. Photographs serve as markers of identity andreminders of the past that are continuously modiRed and re-inscribed in the present.14

Photography captures a moment in time already passed atthe precise instant of recording that occasion onto Rlm. Pephotograph always images something that has been and willnever be again. A photograph captures the past by freezing a

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Figure 4.temporal moment as it was for all eternity, thus giving memorya tangible and material form—however truthful this form ofmemory may be.15 But it is through coincidence and chancethat photography in Dean’s work is always evolving. Dean isable to engage the photographs in FLOH in a kind of diegesisthrough their prescribed sequence and arrangement in thebook.16 Pus, through the use of the found image, Dean createsa narrative that her silent Rlms work to deny.

By using found photographs, Dean emphasizes the impor-tance of chance and coincidence in her work. As Stewart notes,

Coincidence preserves experiences and knowledges from theephemerality of time passing, making them, by their intersec-tion, cohere as events and phenomena of signi;cance. Loss ispreserved by the coincidences that are Dean’s works them-selves intersecting with such gestures in time.17

Pe moment of coincidence is marked by the intersectionof past and present. Pe Rnding of a similar photograph by luckwould only happened if Dean had recognized and recalled aphotograph she had already collected as being similar, if notstrangely familiar (Rg. 4). For Dean, mining through personal,anonymous photographic archives became her way of activelyshaping a particular reality. Traversing the stalls of Sea marketsfor found photographs for FLOH is, in some ways, not entirelydiQerent from walking the streets of a city. Both oQer the kindof serendipitous encounters, strange overlappings of diQerenceand similarity, and “fabulous coincidences” that would satisfyany curious observer’s fantasies and desires.18 Prough their pres-entation in FLOH, the found photographs are given a renewedsense of presence, which speaks directly to our present time.

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photography has the ability to capture and image every facet ofdaily life. In turn it can preserve memories and experiences bybearing marks of love and scars of hatred and betrayal.23 AsGodfrey notes, photography itself is frozen like ice, “picking upwhatever lies in its path, it dumps it elsewhere, on the stalls ofthe Sea market.”24 However, by collecting and arranging thefound photographs into a book, Dean emphasizes her unex-pected discoveries, as she does with the found ice photographs.Dean “reminds us that coincidence is the intersection of multi-ple times within the frame of an individual moment observedfrom a single point of view. Pat point of view is both a Rctionand a place of departure for the imagination.”25 Prough coin-cidence and chance, Dean undoes the idea of time standing stillin a photograph.

Barthes writes in Camera Lucida:

:e photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer,but only and for certain what has been. :is distinction isdecisive. In front of a photograph, our consciousness does notnecessarily take the nostalgic path of memory, but for everyphotograph existing in the world, the path of certainty: thePhotograph’s essence is to ratify what it represents.26

While a photograph can certify that an event took placebefore the camera, it is not a duplicate or an exact copy of howthat event was experienced. Rather, a photograph stands in foror replaces memory when the mind fails or forgets to remem-ber what happened. Pe photograph, therefore, becomes oneway through which memory is recalled. Photographs conRrmmemory by providing an image to hold on to, while altering theways in which these memories where actually experienced.

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Before Rnishing FLOH, Dean assembled another, smallercollection of found photographs depicting frozen water.Published as an artist’s project in 2001 in issue 9/10 of Transmagazine, the project included RTeen black-and-white photo-graphs. Entitled Found Ice: Berlin, August 2000, the project ini-tially began with Dean collecting photographs of frozen foun-tains.19 Pe idea that Sowing water could freeze in mid-air musthave greatly fascinated Dean, for the water would have had tosolidify in a split second. Pus, reinforcing the ideas set forth inthis paper: that something believed to be impossible or rarecould very well be possible and not rare. And if these thingscould occur in the imagination, they might also occur in reallife, or at least in our memories.

Pe images of frozen fountains also allude to one way ofunderstanding photographic time: that photography similarlyinvolves a split-second instant.20 Mark Godfrey points out,Dean’s photographic collection also highlights the belatednessof the photographic moment; the image would have been cap-tured aTer and not during the moment of freezing, thusreminding us that photography always captures the momentaTer the photograph was taken and not during the actualprocess.21 If she had only published these photographs of frozenfountains, it would have reinforced the momentary nature ofthese images on which her Rlm work might have otherwisefocused.22 Instead, Dean decided to collect photographs depict-ing other forms of ice found in and out of cities: a snapshot of achild beside his snowman, an image of a soldier skiing down agentle slope, encrusted ice on dead trees, snow-covered half-constructed buildings, and smothered wooden structures.

From the utterly serious to the haphazard and obscure,

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from the past? As a writer of objects, Baudrillard asks, “Whatlies behind the persistent search for old things? What is the rea-son for the strange acculturation phenomenon whereby peopleseek out signs extrinsic to their own time and space?”30 What isrevealed through the process of treasuring and safekeeping thatFLOH undoubtedly exempliRes? Baudrillard tells us that it isdesire that obliges people to Rnd and gather together objectsinto collections, series, and vast treasure troves of history. Healso suggests that the act of collecting objects from the past is athrow-back to the world of our childhood and its playthingswhen fantasy, myth, and make-believe were reality as livedexperience.31 Pe collected object becomes an object of love thattakes on a purely subjective status when the object’s collectortransforms it into an object of property, passion, and possession.

Pis may explain why Dean took great care to reproducethe photographs in FLOH as meticulously and as clearly as shecould. In many of the photographs, Dean has managed toreproduce crease marks, scratches, and stains as faithfully aspossible. However, many of the images are cropped or enlargedacross the breadth of two pages, a reminder that not everythingabout the images is true to the original. Pere are single imagesand doubled images. Some of the images in FLOH are set in acollage or part of a series which folds out from the book, whileother images are placed opposite a blank page.

At Rrst the various presentations of the photographsseemed unintentional to me. Yet, each time I looked at thebook, themes of doubling and pairing began to emerge, prom-ulgated by the eQect of montage and narrativity. Pese themes,however, were not simply predicated upon the juxtaposition ofthe images, but also on the idea of chance. While snapshot pho-

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Pey allow us to imagine what has happened, and in doing soour memories become replete with images we see. Pus, whilethe images in FLOH are found photographs, as images of nos-talgia they have the ability to recall these past memories onceagain by resonating closely with our own experiences.

By collecting these photographs into a book, Dean rescuesthe images and the things that they depict from the passage oftime and their eventual disappearance altogether. As objects,found photographs are, as Sontag explains, “unpremeditatedslices of the world . . . clouds of fantasy and pellets of informa-tion.”27 As information, photographs provide us with depictionsof past experiences and historicized moments; as fantasy, pho-tographs give visual form to the imaginary. But photographsalso depict the impending death and destruction of life thathaunts all images of people and things. In FLOH, pen-markedfaces show anger and aggression, hand-written dates indicate aspeciRc time, and white-out lines convey a sense of alterationand disremembering. While photographs are reminders ofdeath, they also invite sentimentality. “Photographs,” writesSontag, “turn the past into an object of tender regard, scram-bling moral distinctions and disarming historical judgments bythe generalized pathos of looking at time past.”28 Dean capturesdeath’s charm by reinvigorating the photographs in FLOHthrough the workings of chance and desire. Doubled photo-graphs in FLOH are signs of desire created by objective chance.Pese photographs show, in Andre Breton’s words, both the“fortuitous and foreordained” encounter with the found object.29Dean’s search for these photographs is not only as a discovery ofthe unexpected, but also as a rediscovery of the lost object.

What compels us to collect, especially objects and things

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photographs Dean collected and their placement in the book.Chance was given a structure within which a number of oppor-tunities and connections could arise. Within these connections,writes Dean, “the unspoken desires and demands of the humanpsyche respond to the autobiography of the viewer.”34 Proughchance, the found photographs are given new contexts thatentrust their viewers to seek out the connective thread thatbinds the two photographs together, whether instigated by dou-bling or narrative.

While Dean would have come upon the photographs inFLOH by chance—especially identical or similar images—we,as viewers, have the task of recognizing these images asmoments of chance for Dean. In other words, viewers do notcome upon these images by chance, because Dean has alreadygiven them to us. We must realize the opportune discoveries ofthese photographs were made by Dean and not by ourselves.Our task is to determine how the Rnding of these images func-tions as an unexpected occurrence. Pe satisfaction and delightthat I feel when these chance moments are recognized are pred-icated upon my ability to discover the possible connectionsmade by Dean, but also the connections I make with the pho-tographs. Perefore, I am not so much interested in how thephotographs are diQerent, but rather in how they appear in mymind as the same.

Near the beginning of FLOH we come upon a black andwhite photograph of a young woman wearing a long, polka-dot-ted dress with her legs stretched out on a couch (Rg. 5). Pecouch is decorated with three, diamond-shaped, lace doilies.Pe young woman half-heartedly stares at the camera, herdowncast eyes directed toward the camera’s low point of view.

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tography involves a great deal of intentionality, it also dependsheavily on the ability to capture a moment in a particular orunknowing kind of way. Pe inadvertent encounters Dean hadwhen she discovered the photographs in the Sea market areevoked through a picture-editing process that privileges theviewer in recognizing when similar images reappear in the book.

Dean occupies her practice with an investigation of thechance occurrences of everyday life. Unexpected moments,unnoticed situations, and forgotten memories oQer up a win-dow onto the reality that one desires. Indeed, it is through theimaginary and the make-believe that Dean fulRlls her desires byrepresenting those things on the verge of disappearing. As Deansays, “the idea of chance has always interested me, but I think itdepends as much on a facility to notice—being in a state ofgrace—as anything else, so that you are open to it. When youare actually immersed in something you do notice—well, I do—connections.”32 Connections are the relations amongst peopleand things that link physically, logically, or contextually theseobjects and ideas together. Dean selected the photographsbased upon the kinds of connections she could make betweenphotographs and their subsequent presentation in a book. Justas a book’s spine binds together its pages, chance is what holdstogether the seemingly random photographs in FLOH.

However, Dean did prescribe a set of rules that would gov-ern her choices of which photographs could be used for FLOH,and which photographs would be leT out. As a general rule, allof the photographs had to be found, and all of them had to betaken by amateurs.33 Pis is not to say that chance became onlyan idea or guiding inspiration for the project; rather, it becamea methodology or practice that was fully realized in the kinds of

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Figure 5 (below). Figure 6 (opposite).

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Figure 7.As we continue Sipping the pages of the book, we see her againin another black and white photograph. Pis time, however, sheis part of a collage, in which the faces in six other photographswere cut into the shape of a heart (Rg. 6). Together, the sixhearts form a six-leaf clover, an interesting fact to note sinceDean has long been fascinated by clover with four or moreleaves. Pus, if FLOH interrogates and complicates Dean’s longinterest and relationship to life’s chance occurrences, then herFour, Five, and Seven Leaf Clover Collection (1972–present) rep-resents her discovery of it.35

When Dean was seven or eight, she wrote to the GuinnessBook of World Records telling them of her chance discovery ofRve or six four-leaf clover. Pey brashly wrote back informingher that her Rnding was not all that rare and that a man in Ohiohad come across several thousand.36 Pus the idea of chance—of recognizing moments of serendipity and the endless possi-bilities that can transpire from found objects—interested Deantremendously. Her idea of chance did not center so much on therarity of the object or thing examined; instead, it focused onthings believed to be rare.37 As a result, she began Four, Five,and Seven Leaf Clover Collection in response to the idea ofnoticing “rare” things. While the collage of faces represents yetanother chance discovery for Dean, it also shows her ability torecognize this encounter as a moment in which past and pres-ent are dually invoked.

Toward the end of the book, the young woman, whom weRrst saw on the couch and then in the collage of faces, appearsonce again in two separate photographs (Rg. 7). In the photo-graph on the leT, the young woman half-heartedly gazes, as inher other photos, directly toward the camera. Peeking out

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Figure 8.

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behind her is the same couch with the lace doilies. In the pho-tograph on the right, the young woman produces the same half-hearted gaze. Her Rngers Rddle with a piece of cloth as she sitsnext to a mosaic table or chest. While one might object to myclaim that these two women are not the same, it is precisely thisidea that FLOH rejects. If this collection of photographs is one thatis founded on the premise that Rnding similar images in a Seamarket might be a rare occurrence, then the images of thesewomen aim to complicate this idea. Pe multiple appearances ofthis woman (and other images as well) suggest how Dean playswith memory by juxtaposing similar images in the book. Pesephotographs ask viewers to look carefully at the connectionsbetween people, objects, and ideas, however deliberate or casualthey may seem. Pey also depend upon a viewer’s ability to sepa-rate the novel and memorable from the ordinary and forgettable.

Doubles, multiples, and pairs in the Sea market must havecaptivated Dean as they involved a kind of objective chance thatleT out the numerous other types of photographs she couldhave collected. Pe absence of text from these images allows forserious mental play as memory and imagination overlap. Peimagination permits the mind to see similar photographs asthey converge into a single, heightened reality (Rg. 8). Proughmemory, we process this imaginative experience that only pho-tography as a medium of memory and imagination allows.Imagination and make-believe allow us to construct the worldaround us. If the Rnding of a four-leaf clover—not to say Rve orseven—is not that rare an occurrence to begin with, but onlyshrouded in myth and legend, then Rnding a double or pair ina Reld of discarded photographs might not seem that rare either,but it is still wonderful.

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16 George Baker, “Photography’s Expanded Field,”October 114 (2005): 125–26.17 Stewart, “Tacita Dean,” in:e Open Studio, 76.18 Siegfried Kracauer explains the Surrealists found their inspiration by walk-

ing the streets and noticing the overlooked things the city had to oQer: “Wewant to seize, in passing, upon all that may present itself unexpectedly toour view and interest in some respect,” in “Photography,” in:eory of Film::e Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1997), 19. Originally published by Oxford University Press in 1960.

19 Tacita Dean, Found Ice: Berlin, August 2000 (2001)/photo gravure onHahnemühle Bütten, 350 gr. paper/33.5 x 25 cm./edition of 75/published byH. Lundbeck for “Art Against Stigma.”

20 Mark Godfrey, “Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean’s Floh,”October 114 (2005): 112.

21 Ibid.22 Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between (New York, NY: I.B.

Tauris, 2007), 86.23 Godfrey, “Photography Found and Lost,” 113.24 Ibid.25 Stewart, “Tacita Dean,” 76.26 Barthes, Camera Lucida, 85.27 Sontag, “Melancholy Objects,” in On Photography, 69.28 Ibid, 71.29 Andre Breton, qtd.by Dean in An Aside, Tacita Dean (London: Hayward

Gallery, 2005), 4.30 Baudrillard, “Marginal Objects,” 75.31 Ibid.32 Dean, qtd. in Tacita Dean, Royoux, 13.33 Peodora Vischer in Analogue: Drawings 1991–2006, 24.34 Dean, qtd. in An Aside, 4.35 Tacita Dean, Four, Five, and Seven Leaf Clover Collection

(1972–present)/found clovers/dimensions variable/shown in four displaycabinets/Collection of the artist.

36 Royoux, Tacita Dean, 13.37 Pe idea of noticing “rare” things or occurrences appears in several other

works by Dean. Most notably, in her Rlm,:eGreen Ray (2001). ATer manyfailed attempts, on the last day of Rlming in Madagascar, Dean was Rnallyable to capture the elusive green light that the sun emits at the momentbefore it drops below the horizon line.

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Notes

1 Jean Baudrillard, “Marginal Objects: Antiques,” in :e System of Objects,Jean Baudrillard, trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 1996), 97.

2 Tacita Dean, qtd. in Tacita Dean (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani deBarcelona, 2000).

3 Susan Stewart, “To Take a Chance,” in:e Open Studio: Essays on Art andAesthetics, Susan Stewart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005),10–11.

4 Ibid, 10.5 Ibid.6 Ibid, 12.7 Tacita Dean, FLOH, in collaboration with Martyn Ridgewell (Göttingen:

Steidl, 2001)/limited edition of 4000/signed by artist/48 color and 109 b&wphotographs/9.5 x 11.75 in.

8 Released on April 1, 2009, Darmstadter Werkblock, Dean’s most recentartist’s book, is a signed, limited edition of 1,000 hardbound books of Rlmstills from the Rlm of the same name made by Dean in 2007. Pe Rlm andbook documents Joseph Beuys’ Block Beuys, 1970–86 installation atHessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadter before its controversial renova-tion. Since Dean was not allowed to Rlm the space of the installation, sheinstead focused on the materials that made up the installation and aimedher camera at markings and stains that showed the history and usage of thesite.

9 Peodora Vischer in Analogue: Drawings 1991–2006, Tacita Dean, ed.Peodora Vischer and Isabel Friedli (Göttingen: Steidl, 2006), 24.

10 Tacita Dean, qtd. in “Tacita Dean: FLOH,” Frith Street Gallery, London,http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/shows/view/Soh/.

11 Tacita Dean, qtd. in Tacita Dean, Jean-Christophe Royoux (London:Phaidon, 2006), 15.

12 Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave,” in On Photography, Susan Sontag (NewYork: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1978), 4.

13 Mieke Bal, “Introduction,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present,ed. Mieke Bal and Jonathan Crewe, et al. (Hanover, NH: University Press ofNew England, 1999), vii.

14 Ibid.15 GeoQrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography & Remembrance (New York:

Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), 8 and 16.

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