Three Fates Archives - Nicholas Hedges

Clotho. Lachesis. Atropos.

October 22, 2007 by Nicholas Hedges

Thinking about the Three Fates project, I was considering how the individual fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, might somehow reflect the work I’ve been doing over the past year. As I thought about their roles, I realised that there were some interesting connections. Clotho for example, through her spinning yarn and creating life, reflects much of the work I’ve been doing regarding pathways and the coming-into-being (the unliklely, almost impossible coming-into-being) of the individual human. It is interesting that in much of my work and thoughts this year, I have been considering the pathways of our ancestors and visualising those pathways with, amongst other things, string (a tangle of string might represent the impossible pathways of ancestors). Lachesis of course represents the lifespan of the individual, and in the case of my work, the lives of individuals is a recurrent theme, particularly as regards my work on the Holocaust and World War One. Everything to do with life, our physical acts (such as walking) and the everyday, mundane objects which we encounter and which shape it, are represented by her. Atropos, who cuts the thread, is of course death, and I needn’t say how she fits in.

Of course, much of my work deals with memory and Bill Viola’s quote regarding how we have been “living this same moment ever since we were conceived,” and how “it is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or ‘highlights'”, fits in with the ‘action’ of the three fates, who could be said to be dividing a single life into its component memories as well as Life with a capital ‘L’ into its separate lives.

Atropos’ Shears

October 21, 2007 by Nicholas Hedges

Today I began to cut up a few balls of string, cutting the strand into various lengths so as to indicate the different lengths of lives. It was interesting how as the pile grew, it had a completely different consistency to a ball of string that had become tangled, having been unravelled, dyed and left in a pile. It seems an obvious point to make but an observation that is nonetheless worth mentioning. It was on the second ball of string that I began to focus on the sound of the scissors and as I cut, I realised what the sound reminded me of – it was the sound of hair being cut. Of course the cutting of hair and the Holocaust have particular and distrurbing overtones, and on the third ball of string, I made a loop several strands thick and cut the lengths that way. In this respect, the thickness of the strings and the action of the scissors trying to cut through the threads became interesting to me.

I thought again of the ideas I have had recently where, three ‘Fates’ would pull tape through a reel to reel recorder. The action of the pulling – a violent action – when applied to the idea of Atropos cutting hair was particularly chilling.

Looking at the ‘string’ work I’ve been doing recently, the work with lines in the camp (railways lines, telegraph wires, barbed wire), threads, tape, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos and scissors, it’s interesting how the action (potential performance) of the Three Fates can be used in so many different ways when the fabric is changed. Certainly, this whole performance/action is something I want to explore thoroughly over the next few months.

Bill Viola and Highlights

October 19, 2007 by Nicholas Hedges

“We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or ‘highlights’.”

I was thinking about the above quote from Bill Viola in relation to the myth of the Three Fates; Clotho, Lachesis and Atropo. I had imagined creating a work involving string being drawn, measured and cut as signifying life being measured and cut. This was to have been created in relation to my ongoing work on the Holocaust.

However, it could be that the lengths of string represent not only individual lives, but these discrete moments (memories) which Viola describes, i.e. moments of a single life. This could be very interesting as regards work which aims to find the individual amongst the millions who died in the Holocaust. A pile of cut strings could represent a pile of bodies, or, a pile of one person’s memories.