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Pre-positional Objects

in the introduction to their book 'Creative Criticism, An Anthology and Guide'* Stephen Benson and Claire Connors describe a pair of objects we made for the cover of their book as 'already-made'. The hyphenated phrase is coined in obvious reference to Marcel Duchamp's term 'readymade' - everyday objects renamed and appropriated as art. The objects we make acknowledge this lineage but Benson and Connors' term differentiates something with its 'al' and '-'. They describe our objects as not having been present before, 'a before in which they weren't', a 'before' which they make for themselves, a 'before' that is cast 'back behind them'. What are the differences between a 'readymade' and an 'already-made'? What are the similarities?  Certainly the hyphen performs an important function - 'readymade' is a conflation of 'ready' and 'made', whereas with 'already-made', 'already' and 'made' are held apart and together simultaneously. 'Made' is common to both, but what is the difference between 'already' and 'ready'? The online dictionary Dictionary.com defines 'ready' as 'completely prepared or in fit condition for immediate action or use'* and can be an adjective, verb or noun. It can qualify an object (in this case the made 'thing'), it can describe an action (I am ready), a state of being (state of readiness), or something that occurs (readiness happens), or it can be a name for something. It is only when one tries to define a 'readymade' one realises how deliberately slippery Duchamp's term is. So what does 'already' differentiate? 'Already' is perhaps a conflation of 'all' and 'ready', it could have been hyphenated over time, but it has significantly different use to 'all ready'. 'All ready' suggests previously-prepared, previously-prepared for 'something', whereas 'already', an adverb, can be thought of as being 'prior to' a specific 'now', or 'then', but not prepared for 'something'. 'Already' is adverbially waiting to connect to something - to alter, or nuance some-thing in some way. Benson and Connors further-define our already-mades describing them as obstinately and 'madly prepostional'. The online dictionary Dictionary.com defines 'prepostional' as:  

noun
, Grammar

1. any member of a class of words found in many languages that are used before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives, and that typically express a spatial, temporal, or other relationship, as in, on, by, to, since.*
 

Applying this definition to our objects one might equate them with visual phrases that are formed to modify and locate (or perhaps re-locate) the things, people and places that they encounter. One might think that in the encounter with them, they pull pre-judgements of things, people, or places back to a before. They open up a thinking space for new thoughts to happen. We would argue that all the objects we make do this, but when things are made outside of a commission, or context, it might be that they are in a 'before' that has not yet found a present to cast back from. It is in this sense that these objects are pre-positional.


*Dictionary.com. (no date) Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. [online] <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/preposition> (accessed: August 26, 2015).

*Benson, S. & Connors, C. (2014) Creative Criticism, An Anthology and Guide. Edinburgh University Press.

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  • home
    • about
  • dialogic objects
    • museums sheffield
    • rochester cathedral
    • nantwich museum
    • museum of london docklands
    • imperial war museum
    • scva objects >
      • scva words on gallery wall
      • scva comments
    • manchester art gallery
    • turner contemporary
    • harewood house
    • creative criticism commission
    • british library
    • norfolk regimental museum
    • fermoy gallery - kings lynn arts centre
  • objects
    • pre positional
  • independents
    • on white
    • on black
    • between a rock and a hard place
    • kitchen thinking
  • moving things
  • drawing
    • drawings
    • string interventions
  • incantated objects
  • thinking
  • process
  • contact
  • archive
    • object box 1
    • object box 2
    • object box 3
    • object box 4
  • after the before
  • trans-formations
  • if → then, and, but
  • Latest