3 Questions For ... Jerome Harrington

Jerome Harrington at work in his studio.

GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet: What are you working on?
Jerome Harrington: I’ve just finished setting up a new exhibition called, “An Object Described by Fragments,” which is at the SIA Gallery in Sheffield Hallam University, U.K. I’m working towards a Practice base PhD in the Fine Art department of Sheffield Hallam University and the exhibition is part of my research output. My PhD project examines our relationship to and understanding of the object and its materiality through our understanding of its making process. This examines the interplay of information both ‘in’ the object (the visible or tangible effect of process upon material) and information ‘outside’ the object (where process is documented in photographs or film).

The exhibition contains five works which function as components in an installation. The centwork is a plasticine disk which is surrounded by three film works and one audio piece. The plasticine disk is the end result of a complex making process, prior to its current form as a disk, the plasticine was used to produce a three dimensional translation of an engraving which depicts the production of Crown glass in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia (1751). After documentation, the statue was squashed in a mechanical press literally transforming the maker (as depicted by Diderot) into the object that he is making. The plasticine disk was then shown to two groups of students from the SHU Fine Art department in sessions which aimed to make a close reading of the object. The student’s response was recorded and subsequently used as material to produce a short ekphrasis text which now accompanies the disk in exhibition; a description which incorporates the seen and the imagined.

Jerome Harrington, Plasticine Diderot, 2012. Model maker: Nick Palmer, photograph: John Hartley.

By displaying the plasticine disk amongst the other components the exhibition aims to create dialogues in which the viewer imaginatively constructs an understanding of the object. This form of display aims to provide space between the components for fantasy, actively encouraging Baudrillard’s description of our relation to the object as a mental precinct.

GLASS: What have you experienced recently that inspired you, and got you thinking about your own work?
Jerome: I’ve recently been reading (re-reading) Jean Baudrillard’s A System of Objects. Baudrillard discusses the subjective relation to the object, stating:

Apart from the uses to which we put them at any particular moment, objects in this sense have another aspect which is intimately bound up with the subject: no longer simply material bodies offering a certain resistance, they become mental precincts over which I hold sway, they become things of which I am the meaning, they become my property and my passion. (Jean Baudrillard (1968), The System of Objects, tr. by James Benedict. London: Verso, 2005, p. 91.)

I’ve found Baudrillard’s description of our subjective relation to the object particularly useful. Within my PhD, I’ve been focusing on one object as the key example of the visibility of process in the object. This is a piece of Crown glass, the product of a glass making process used to make window glass until the 19^th century. The making process of Crown glass uses centrifugal force to spin a blown glass sphere into a flat disk. The physical effect of the centrifugal force can be seen in the uneven thickness of the disks cross-section, the glass being thickest at its center and becoming thinner towards the edges of the disk, where the centrifugal force was greatest.

I’ve been really interested in the string of ideas that the effect of process upon material demonstrated so clearly in this object’s cross-section, has generated, which is explored in a paper called “Fantasies of Making” (Edgar Dutra Zanotto, May 1998 (pages 392 ? 395). The myth is categorically disproved in a paper called “Do Cathedral Glasses Flow?“ (1997) by glass materials engineer Edgar Dutra Zanotto, who investigated whether it is possible for glass to flow at room temperature. His research concluded that “window glasses may flow at ambient temperature only over incredibly long times, which exceed the limits of human history.” In fact Dutra Zanotto’s calculation demonstrates that significant flow would take well beyond the age of the Universe.

The Crown glass disk is an example of the object as a mental precinct. Specifically, it demonstrates the way in which the visible trace of process contributes to construction of imagined or conceptual ideas. In this case, it is the separation of the object from its making process that causes a perceptual shift in which the uneven cross-section is no longer understood as evidence of the object’s making process, but speculative evidence of the fact that glass is a liquid and can flow; an idea now proven to be a myth. The object helps to demonstrate the generative potential of the visual trace of making process as a prompt for speculative ideas, and the forming of a subjective understanding.

GLASS: Where is it possible to see your work?
Jerome: You can always see my latest work on my Website, which is www.jeromeharrington.net. I also have a paper called “Fantasies of Making,” which is available for download. And finally, I am currently having an exhibition entitled “An Object Described by Fragments“ at the Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery gallery which is open now and will run through April 15th, 2012.