An object associated with someone or something we love can elicit the intangibles of an important relationship: memories of conversations, arguments, gestures of kindness, love, misunderstanding.
This object can serve as a nexus of the emotional interactions that bind us to people and the environment, restoring stories seemingly long-dissolved by time.
Intangibles arising from objects can re-establish a sense of possibility, of interaction, with people and places whose roles in our world have otherwise ended.
We can re-frame our reflections to tell new stories about our present and future.
An exObject can be about something real, like a lost key, an inherited watch, a hand-made box, something in nature. Or it can be imagined, something we wish we could experience. An exObject can be the sharing of time, like a regular journey taken down a familiar road there and back.
By looking closely, using our imaginations, talking to others, we have the chance to re-envisage valued people, places or things lost but not forgotten.
This tiny model of an Asian sampan boat on a shelf unleashed Alison Nicholls’ imaginative recollections of a beloved storytelling Grandad
Creating an exObject can make intangibles feel more reachable.
Through reflection we can bring physical objects used by generations of a family, or a river or field, into a hopeful present.
Every exObject is hopeful. It might start with a sense of loss, such as a green space where we used to play or sit. The object can be regret for not spending enough time with family or friends. It can be the yearning for a relationship we never had (or not in the way we wanted it). Loss can be a hope we had for the future that is not yet realised, that is still possible.
Inspirations for exObjects
Following a Covid infection, Jean Boyle died on 12th December 2020. In the hours, days, weeks and months that followed, objects surfaced from the range of her 89 years of life…
… a tiny icing sugar dove that topped a 1954 wedding cake, witty hand-written letters that tentatively initiated decades of being together, blunt Hollywood film reviews with the capacity to dent famous actors and directors alike, and fabric designs inspired by love and a respect for nature.
Jean took part in Colours, Community & Chemistry at the People’s History Museum. She contracted Covid-19 and died at the end of 2020.
Read the Other lives obituary published in The Guardian 10th February 2021.
Read Terry Boyle’s Other Lives obituary in The Guardian 30th August 2021.
——————————————————————–
Go to the exObjects public collaboration
Read exObject ‘Peace’
Find out more about what Artificial Silk has made to date