Operational Handbook on Making Art 05: Leave Gaps

Not everything needs to be supplied.

Not every face needs to testify.

Not every story needs a complete record.

Sometimes the missing part is doing half the work.

Do not sack it.

LEAVE GAPS.

Give people enough to enter.

Do not give them enough to close the case.

A face disappears into shadow.

Black most of it out. Lose the eyes. Smear the features. Leave part of a mouth. Maybe the angle of a brow, the tilt of a head, a scrap of expression.

Enough to suggest anger. Or grief. Or boredom. Or that something happened five minutes before the picture began.

Not enough to settle which.

Good.

The viewer starts filling it in. You leave enough missing for the viewer to start doing unpaid interpretive labour.

They bring somebody with them.

Sometimes somewhere.

A bloke they used to work with.

Someone who drank in a pub thirty years ago.

An aunt.

An ex.

A person they have not thought about for twenty years.

A back street in Oldham they swear ran behind their nan's house.

Then they tell you:

“That looks exactly like someone I knew.”

It does not.

Probably.

That is not the important part.

The viewer has entered the gap.

They have supplied a memory, a person, a place, possibly a whole complicated history involving somebody called Terry.

None of this was requested. It arrived anyway.

Keep it.

DO NOT REMOVE THE WORLD.

REMOVE THE CERTAINTY.

The room can be specific. The clothes can be specific. The posture can be specific.

The beer pump, wallpaper, dirty window, carpet, light fitting and badly positioned chair can all be specific.

Then let the face refuse to cooperate.

A familiar room can do the same thing. Give people enough ordinary detail and they start locating it.

They have been there.

Their dad drank there.

There used to be one exactly like it behind the market.

No, not that market.

The other one.

Different witnesses supply different records.

Fine.

If everything is vague, there is no gap. There is simply less there.

That is a different department.

ASHMOUTH ASSEMBLY NOTICE 05/A

BACKGROUND EVIDENCE: EXCESSIVE.

FACIAL IDENTIFICATION: INCONCLUSIVE.

LOCATION: DISPUTED.

WITNESS CONFIDENCE: SOMEHOW INCREASING.

PERSONAL MEMORIES: ENTERING SCENE WITHOUT AUTHORISATION.

CORRECTIVE ACTION: NOT ADVISED.

A useful gap leaves evidence.

A door hanging open.

A chair knocked over.

Three people staring at something outside the frame.

A sentence ending before the important word.

A photograph with somebody cropped out.

Something happened. The complete report is unavailable.

Missing information still leaves a shape.

An empty room is an empty room. An empty room with one wet footprint leading under the table has acquired a problem.

That is enough.

There is a widespread compulsion to explain the thing immediately.

Here is the image.

Here is what it means.

Here is what inspired it.

Here is the symbolism.

Here is the historical context.

Here is the approved emotional response.

Here is a paragraph preventing unnecessary imagination.

Stop.

IMAGE BEFORE EXPLANATION.

Or sound. Or object. Or action. Or whatever has been put into circulation.

Let the thing arrive first. Give it a few seconds to commit whatever offence it was planning.

Explanation can wait outside.

Context is allowed. Sometimes it matters.

But if the instructions arrive first, people spend the whole encounter checking the work against them.

Symbolism located.

Intended meaning confirmed.

Correct feeling experienced.

Form signed.

Excellent.

Nothing escaped.

ASHMOUTH ASSEMBLY NOTICE 05/B

INITIAL ENCOUNTER: UNASSISTED.

EXPLANATORY MATERIAL: HELD BACK.

AUDIENCE CONFUSION: WITHIN ACCEPTABLE LIMITS.

CURIOSITY: DETECTED.

INFORMATION MAY BE RELEASED LATER.

CURIOSITY CANNOT BE RETROFITTED.

The gap does not have to stay inside the work.

Release the image without the explanation. Let the phrase appear before anybody knows where it came from. Mention the incident before releasing the incident report. Show the photograph before the story.

Leave a fragment somewhere without the rest of the machinery attached.

Somebody encounters it, carries it away, gets it wrong and tells somebody else.

By the time the missing information arrives, several unofficial versions may already exist.

Good.

You left territory unoccupied.

Somebody moved in.

No eviction notice will be issued.

Silence works too.

People walk.

Eat.

Wait.

Watch rain.

Nothing advances the plot for a while. Nobody rushes in to repair it.

The pause gives somebody somewhere to exist. The gap before a sound returns belongs to the sound. Blank space belongs to the page. Darkness belongs to the room.

An awkward pause belongs to any conversation involving relatives.

Do not fill every silence because somebody might get bored.

They might.

They might also start thinking.

Ashmouth accepts both outcomes.

Stories become larger when the filing system is incomplete.

You do not need the complete history of the building. You do not need biographies for everybody standing outside it. You do not need twelve paragraphs explaining why the tunnel was sealed.

Say:

THE TUNNEL WAS SEALED AFTER THE INCIDENT.

Then continue.

Somebody will ask:

“What incident?”

Good.

A world gets larger when some doors stay shut. It gets considerably smaller when every door has a laminated information board.

The answer may exist.

It may arrive later.

It may never have existed at all.

DO NOT BUILD THE WIKI BEFORE THE MYTH.

SECTION 05.7

[REMAINDER WITHHELD]

This does not mean removing random information and hoping for the best.

A dead bird on a windowsill is still sometimes just a dead bird.

The missing part needs pressure around it. People should be able to feel the shape of the hole.

“I have absolutely no idea what any of this is” is not a victory.

“I think I know what happened here” is better.

Now somebody is involved.

People will misunderstand.

Of course they will.

Someone will see grief where anger was intended. Someone will laugh at something horrible. Someone will recognise their grandfather in a face that barely contains a nose.

Do not immediately issue corrections.

THE AUDIENCE IS NOT A STORAGE DEVICE FOR YOUR INTENTIONS.

They bring their own equipment: memory, fear, desire, local knowledge, bad judgement, old grudges.

A remarkably detailed account of something that happened outside a pub in Stockport in 1994.

Let them use it.

The work has entered somebody else's nervous system.

You no longer control the entire site.

Good.

Sometimes fiction and memory start rubbing against one another.

A place looks real enough. A figure feels familiar enough. A detail seems remembered.

Nothing quite resolves.

Somebody says:

“I swear I've been there.”

Perhaps they have. Perhaps they have been somewhere like it. Perhaps the work has found a memory with roughly the right shaped hole.

Do not rush to correct the record.

This is not permission to fabricate evidence and insist it is true.

There is a difference.

Leave the uncertainty alone.

The face disappears. The room remains: posture, clothing, gesture, distance, light.

Enough evidence to begin. Not enough to finish.

A clear expression can close the case very quickly.

Angry.

Sad.

Afraid.

Bored.

Probably called Darren.

Sometimes that is exactly what is needed.

Sometimes it kills the gap stone dead.

Black the face out. Lose most of the expression. Drag paint through the eyes. Turn the head away. Leave half a mouth.

LET SHADOW DO THE PAPERWORK.

Now the body has to speak. The room has to speak. The viewer has to speak.

Half a mouth and a bad feeling can be enough.

Do not supply the rest out of nerves.

ASHMOUTH ASSEMBLY NOTICE 05/C

EVIDENCE PROVIDED: SUFFICIENT.

CERTAINTY PROVIDED: INSUFFICIENT.

MEMORY CONTAMINATION: ACTIVE.

WITNESS STATEMENTS: MULTIPLE.

WITNESS STATEMENTS: CONTRADICTORY.

CASE: IMPROVING.

Language can close the case too.

So can a title. So can a caption.

There is a point where more information stops deepening something and starts killing routes through it.

Add the final sentence. Then explain the final sentence. Then add a note clarifying why the unexplained bit remains unexplained.

The gap has now been filled with customer service.

Stop.

DO NOT FINISH THE EXPERIENCE FOR THEM.

Give them evidence.

Remove certainty.

Make them do some of the work.

Do not become precious about ambiguity.

Not every unclear thing is profound. Not every obscured face is haunting. Sometimes the photograph is simply underexposed.

Sometimes nobody understands because the thing has failed.

The test is:

DOES THE MISSING PART MAKE THE REST MORE ACTIVE?

Does the absence sharpen attention?

Does somebody start supplying possibilities?

Does a question leave with them?

If yes, leave it.

If no, fix it.

Take something already made, or something close to finished.

Find the piece of information doing the most work to settle everything.

The face.

The caption.

The final sentence.

The explanation.

The obvious establishing detail.

The bit that tells everybody exactly what happened.

Remove it.

Cover it.

Crop it.

Black it out.

Mute it.

Turn it away.

Put it outside the frame.

Do not remove the whole structure.

KEEP THE EVIDENCE.

The room stays.

The body stays.

The object stays.

The aftermath stays.

Whatever gives the missing part pressure stays.

Now look again.

Is there enough left to start an investigation?

If not, put something back.

If yes, stop fiddling.

Do not replace the missing information with a more mysterious explanation of the missing information.

This constitutes administrative fraud.

Put the work in front of somebody without explanation, if possible.

Do not ask:

“Do you understand it?”

Do not ask:

“Can you tell what this is supposed to mean?”

These questions contaminate the witness.

Ask:

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED?

Or:

WHO DOES THAT REMIND YOU OF?

Or simply:

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Then shut up.

Do not rescue them.

Do not steer them towards the authorised interpretation.

Let them trespass.

Record what comes back.

A person.

A place.

A memory.

An event.

An emotion.

Something that was never supplied.

Useful.

Operation complete when

THE PART THAT CLOSED THE CASE HAS BEEN REMOVED.
ENOUGH EVIDENCE REMAINS TO OPEN ANOTHER ONE.
THE WORK STILL HOLDS.
AT LEAST ONE POSSIBILITY HAS ENTERED FROM OUTSIDE.
NO EXPLANATORY PARAGRAPH HAS BEEN DEPLOYED IN PANIC.
THE MISSING PART STILL HAS A SHAPE.

Record of Activity

Record what was removed.

Record what appeared in its place.

Not physically.

In somebody else's head.

If they tell you the face reminds them of their old foreman, write it down.

If they insist they know the pub, write it down.

If three witnesses identify three completely different people, do not convene an emergency meeting.

The gap is working.

If nobody has anything to grab onto, too much was removed.

Restore evidence.

Not certainty.

LEAVE THE CASE OPEN.

The audience does not need the whole map.

Give them a street.

A pub window.

A figure in shadow.

A light upstairs.

A phrase somebody should not have said.

A door left open.

Enough for the world to exist.

Not enough for it to settle.

Then release it.

Let memory get involved.

Let somebody recognise the wrong person.

Let somebody remember the wrong place.

Let somebody from Oldham insist the street was demolished in 1986 and you have got the windows wrong.

Do not investigate.

Let somebody insist the dog was there too.

It probably was.

LEAVE GAPS.

Not because there is nothing to say.

Because the gap is where somebody else starts saying it with you.

And if a witness later insists the half-seen face reminds them of somebody they knew:

Do not immediately produce the reference photograph.

For fuck's sake.

Operational Handbook on Making Art 05: Leave Gaps

LeaveGaps

Operation 05: Remove the Part That Closes the Case

Record of Activity