Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Two Objects












Two Objects; one bought at an antique store in Louisville, Kentucky, and one found on the street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, revealed by the Spring thaw. They are similar in many ways. They are of similar size and weight. Both are cast iron and heavily patinated, showing evidence of heavy use and the passage of time. In addition, both objects are mysterious to me. I do not know what they were used for. I think that the first object may have been some sort of weight. I've seen similar objects used underwater, to weight down fishing nets. Of course, it was found in the middle of Kentucky, far from any major fishing industry, but then, these objects may take convoluted routes in finding their way to the antique store. Embossed on its surface is the number "1 1/4," which I assume is a unit of measurement, although it is certainly heavier than 1 1/4 pounds. This makes me think that it may be either very old, referring to an antiquated measuring system, like 1 1/4 stone (?), or from a far away place that measures weight in something other than pounds or kilograms. For the second object, I have fewer guesses. It reminds me of the excavator teeth that were exhibited under vitrines in the recent MCA exhibit, "The Way of the Shovel." But the end that would have been the point of the tooth has a slot for mounting with a nut and bolt. I thought perhaps it could be a kind of trailer hitch, but the round end tapers in such a way that whatever it held would easily slip off. I have a small collection of these mysterious objects. It is their mystery that attracts me. In some ways I hesitate to say anything about them publicly, or post pictures of them, for fear that some reader may know what they are and fill me in, thus providing a kind of closure and stripping them of their power over me.


But there is something else on my mind regarding these objects, and it has to do with how they were acquired, and how that changes my relationship to them. In some ways, the second object feels more genuine because I found it. It is my claim. I recognized its value and its interest. By choosing to pick it up and take it home and display it on a shelf, I have personally declared it as valuable. I have difficulty taking the same kind of ownership over the first object. In this case, I have paid for the privilege of owning somebody else's discovery. The antique dealer has already curated it for me; already declared it valuable, to such a degree, in fact, that a specific price was named for it. I know exactly what it is worth, because I know how much I paid for it. I do not know the monetary value of the second object. It is likely worth very little, other than the value of the metal itself. But because I found it, rather than purchased it, I do not think of it in monetary terms the way I do the first object, and therefore its primary value is an aesthetic one. Although the value I place on the first object is also aesthetic, it remains clouded by the knowledge of the price that I paid for it, by someone else's assessment of its worth.

There is something about the antique store that seems to interrupt the natural life cycle of an object. The second object came to me through a direct series of events. The iron ore was mined, it was cast into its shape in a factory, it was attached to a piece of machinery. Years of use loosened the bolt which held it to that piece of machinery, it fell off, landing in a snow bank, it was revealed in the spring thaw, I noticed it, wondered about it, picked it up, and took it home. A similar chain of events may have brought the first object into another set of hands. That person saw a value in it, and it made its way into the dealer's hands, into the antique store. It was placed, somewhat anonymously amongst thousands of other antiquated objects thought to have potential resale value. Often these objects sit on display shelves for years before being passed along. Although the object likely had a rich and varied history up until that point, that history is rarely retained by the antique store clerk, who acts as a middle-man between the dealer and the collector. Occasionally, a piece of that history is passed along to the collector, but there are multiple opportunities for that vital information to be lost along the way, and more often than not, it is only the evidence contained within the object itself, or a general knowledge of objects of its kind, that can illuminate aspects of its past. Its specific story is lost.

I suppose a third category of object is the inherited object; one which has been handed down by a previous owner. Only then are the stories attached to the object passed along. These objects are often mythologized, symbolic objects that signify a particular view of the past, held by the object's possessor. I think of an old wooden trunk, owned by my parents, which will likely be passed down to myself or my brother one day. This is a trunk that contains stories of our lineage. I know that it came on a wooden ship from Norway with the emigration of my ancestors. I believe it was filled with lefse, a type of Norwegian flatbread, or so the story goes. Apparently it was a difficult journey and many died along the way. The details are fuzzy, but when the object is again passed down, the story will be retold along with it, and the object's particular significance will be renewed. One day, when there is no longer an heir, a kind of end will come. The trunk will be sold at an estate sale, and it will be emptied once more. Inherited objects are illuminated objects. The mysterious object; the found or purchased object, is comparatively mute. And yet, it is precisely the opacity of the mysterious object that draws me to it. Although the loss of story that accompanies each object in the antique store represents a kind of tragedy, it also leaves room for a more open kind of speculation, an imaginative impulse that is less rigid than that of the inherited object. We are no longer confined to seeking out the particulars of a specific history. Instead, history becomes a fluid, plastic medium. The mysterious object is a kind of hub with many branches and tributaries to explore. And it is in these imaginings that we begin to reveal our own orientation to the past.

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