Hello everybody,
A while ago I asked, among others, a few people here for a memory about Daniel, for my graduation project on my art academy. Well, I graduated! And of course I want to show you people what happened and how it looks like
.
Why: I heard about Daniel Johnston a while ago from a friend of mine. After the interesting story I started to look for his story and music/art. And I saw that he couldn't remember his own songs (lyrics) anymore. Considering the fact that I was really impressed by Daniels art and music, I felt I had to do something about it.
The idea. To create an installation that represents Daniels memory so I could fill it:
It's a wall with about 100 wooden barges (? barge?) on it. All these ought to be filled during the process and exhibition.
To keep Daniels memory solid and not lost again, I thought it would be a good idea to create a collective memory. I did this by designing publications about the memories people sent me. People could send these publications to themselves on the exhibition, so they were Daniels collective memory:
On the last picture you also see a collected biography of Daniel Johnston. I created that biography by a text written by myself about Daniel Johnston and identity (and Jaques Lacan). And I combined that with a booklet with texts from this forum. So his biography is written by people who like Daniel and some who know him.
And further I designed for 4 memories a specific thing.
For John Foster:
2 toys with speeding motorcycle coming out of them. His memory was about his daughter who remembered speeding motorcycle and really liked it. In this way people had to pick up the toys/song and press it to their ears. Having the song soft and close.
For Rastaman on this board:
A pile of paper to write messages to Daniel which were placed on the wall. He remembered Daniel drawing on a pad of typing paper for a lot of people on aconcert. In this way people do the same for him, they give him a memory, or something to remember them. later on I will bundle these messages and I am hoping to give this to Daniel when he comes to the Netherlands in octobre. (I took this memory of this board).
For Bill Anderson:
A soundscape where I cut out all the conversations out of Daniels tapes and CD's and melted them together to about 25 minutes of conversations, laughing, laurie etc. Because he remembered recording a song with Daniel (etiquette), and he really liked the spontaenity. I thought that was best expressed by al these conversations.
For Melle from John Dear Mowing Club:
Melle remembered driving together with Daniel in a van. And he thought, man I can kidnap him now and do some gigs in Germany. Of course he didn't do that, but I made a tour poster for them.
I only have a good picture of that now.
So... and now I am going on vacation
, so I will react on your reactions in a week
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