At the time of contemplating what it was we both wanted to do, we both wanted too include some sort of 'substance' to the work. Possibly inspired by Matthew Barney's use of Vaseline we wanted to work physically with these substances. Without discussion Matthew had decided that he wanted to use lard, for various reasons. I had decided that i wanted to use coal because of its strong connotations towards welsh heritage and the Valleys.
I decided that with my masculinity i should explore the history of my country and possible links towards masculinity i.e. mining, famous welshmen etc.
We decided to work in a room in the Sculpture department of our campus that has been dedicated to our area (Media Arts and Performance) Matthew has been working with this room for the best part of this year, this i felt created an already present relationship between us and the space. His previous work with the room involved the notion of 'claiming space'. That is what we'd continued to do with this room, we booked it out for full weeks so that no one else could use it. This gave us the freedom to do as we please with the room and come back the next morning with the room the way we left it.
I bought a number of bags of 'smokeless' coal from a local petrol station and Matthew had bought a dozen blocks of lard. Matthew had preconceptions of what it was that he wanted to do with his lard. He planned to melt the lard down block by block and toss the molten lard against a wall. We experimented for a few days in the room before we came to a conclusion what i wanted to do with my coal. I tried a number of different things, moving the coal around, braking it down, experimenting with it in relation to my body, trying to create a physical relationship with the substance.
Matthew and I discussed our substances and both realised that the relationship between them is that they are both burned for energy. Thus I realised what it was that i wanted to do with my coal, I wanted to burn it.
All of our work climaxed in a durational performance where I was located outside of the room that we had been working in, there I had a coal fire burning. As the coals reached a high temperature and begun to glow orange I, with a coal shovel, moved them into the sculpture installation room and placed them on a short platform for Matthew to use. On the platform was a constantly growing pile of hot coals where Matthew could heat up his blocks of lard. This created a very interesting process of wasting and recycling as I was wasting energy by burning coal to melt Matthew's lard which didn't serve it's normal purpose, but at the same time Matthew was recycling his lard by leaving it to dry then scraping it up and beginning the process over again.
Whilst working together we constantly considered the direction this project might go. The idea of tools was something that Matthew was particularly interested in, and I was interested in the imagery of fire. This led us to considering forging/smithing. We arranged inductions with the Sculpture department's technicians and began our discovery of blacksmithing.
For more information on Matthew Last visit his blog;
