Artist & object.. the object bit..

For the object to accompany my artist i received a knife. Initially everything that i thought of on the spot there was pastiche. There was the ideas floating around my head of felt having healing properties according to Joseph Beuys, and a knife being something that can injure/ damage. So of corse i thought of encasing the knife in felt in some way, whether mimicking Beuys directly and just wrapping the knife almost like a gift, to creating a older/ case of the knife. although of course these initial thoughts are pretty well awful, the idea of healing crossed with the harming of the knife was an idea that kept coming back to me.

Using Beuys’ concepts that society needs healing - and healing starts with the individual - when given the object of a knife I wanted to produce a piece that transferred his ideas onto the object in a contemporary setting. Today’s infatuation with knife crime offered me the opportunity to use Beuys’ theory that every object can be transformed into a tool to release creative power. For the outcome of this project I want to create a set of instructions/manual mapping the journey the individual needs to take in order to transform their fear of knives into this creative power - thus following Beuys’ theory - Heal themselves, therefore, heal society.