on the conceit of origin

ii.14.mmix

a new client from out of state told me she heard the psa on wrfl yesterday.

she said it was on a list of "scarey things to do for friday the thrirteenth: get a tattoo at [the shop] where every one was the same," (along with other such things, like catching the new release of friday the thirteenth).

i asked her if it was '[the shop]' or me in particular that the psa mentioned ... and she wasn't sure (she had sought me out in particular, because she had seen an "original" piece on a friend of hers that she liked).

she responded by asking if i was the only artist at the shop.

i said yes.

she decided she wasn't sure which it was -the shop, or me- that the psa had mentioned. then she asked me if our piercer had the "special" tattoo and i said yes. she remarked that she would have come if she had known it was "so cool".

a few minutes after our conversation, a girl called the shop phone, and asked if she could come by to get the tattoo i did yesterday for friday the 13th.

i responded with, "it's no longer the thirteenth. that was a friday the thirteenth piece, specifically for friday the thirteenth."

she offered to pay $40 for it.

i refused. and told her there were two more friday the thirteenths this year.

she hung up saying she wanted to get all three.

i figure all of this is precisely part of the piece.

i understand how meaning and intention shift from percipient to percipient and each participant somehow lends shape and meaning to the work ... i am left to grapple with whether with each successive event, i will offer the other pictograms retrospectively.

since i was working my butt off all week prepping for the event, and was home very little, i only got to listen to the rfl, at most. a couple of hours a day ... i never heard the psa.

i trusted that rfl would bill the event as an art event ... because, in an effort to emphasize the conceptual aspect of the piece, my media press kit didn't mention [the shop], only myself as a conceptual artist and the address of where i would be tattooing for the day.

if rfl did mention [the shop] in their psa; they put two and two together, and took it into a commercial territory which i hadn't intended. howerver, i really like the wording: "a tattoo where everyone is the same," because it raises a conceit of tattooing ...

the notion of "originality":

when one chooses a tattoo from hundreds of designs on a wall, their tattoos are not singular ... thousands of tattoo collectors all over the world have the same tattoo with minor alterations, executed by hundreds if not thousands of tattooers!!

the tattoo i designed for friday, february the 13th, took me a couple of weeks to "figure out."

it was designed for a specific time, a specific day, of a specific year.

it is a tattoo meant to be given by a singular artist (me) to a limited number of people within a specific space of time (and there are only so many tattoos that one human can execute on a group of other humans in an allotted amount of time).

i did 22 tattoos yesterday. each one was as different as each person.

yet they were also as much the same as people are.

however, the experience of receiving and giving the tattoo was singular for each individual, including myself.

a tattoo decidedly captures an indelible moment in time ... which is to say, the experience of time, place and circumstance is an integral part of each and every tattoo.

if an artist designs a piece for specific place in time and performs it with a limited amount of people during the designated time; is it a lesser piece? is it?

if a tattooer designs an original tattoo for a specific place and time, and tattoos said piece on a limited amount of people during the designated time, is it a lesser tattoo? is it?

if two people get this tattoo from the tattooer, is it the same tattoo or different?