“Science and art both deal with needs satisfied by the mind and the hands in the manufacture of things. Tools and instruments, symbols and expressions all correspond to needs, and all must pass through design into matter.”

— George Kubler. "The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things."

The History of Meaning (Language Construction) 2018, Digital C-print, 21 x 26.25 inches

By ClydaJane Dansdill

Kim Hoeckele is an inquisitive visual practitioner of objects and things. Many artists possess this latent ability to select and synchronize image with meaning, but Hoeckele is a photographer whose work transcends the conceptual still life. Using referential material from her life and the world around her, she stages the excess and cacophony that is kindred to research and invention into a contemporary category of trompe l’oeils, each of which offers a vast frame of allusions from the very ancient, to the ingrained scientific, to the human way of being.

The History of Meaning (Darkened Chamber) 2018, Digital C-print, 21 x 26.25 inches

The History of Meaning is an ongoing series that began in 2017. By photographing appropriated material from a wide range of sources, Hoeckele examines the gendered power dynamics that remain eminent in vernacular, commercial, and art historical contexts. Hoeckele structures her work-desk still lifes by following hot links from Wikipedia. While personal ephemera can be found scattered amidst the performed jumble, (sometimes the photographer herself appears reflected in a compact mirror placed within the scene) objects related to the history of technological invention appear in each set. Her approach scrupulously imitates the commonplace practice of exploring the Internet. The composition and its contents, while appearing messy, has a logic. All present objects are related in some way, but the final product introduces a personification of the constellational and subjective process that surfing the web entails.

The History of Meaning (Optics) 2018, Digital C-print, 21 x 26.25 inches

The perspective of the photograph is relevantly naturalistic, and is meant to simulate the view one has when standing over a work space. As Hoeckele gesturally notes, “Whose desk is this, and what are they creating?” Much of the man made materials or references that are displayed in Hoeckele’s photographs are just that - made by and attributed to men. The aim, by implanting herself as a keen observer of history and owner of things, is to bring to question the lost voices that have added nuance to the history of technology as we know it.

The History of Meaning (Mark-Making) 2018, Digital C-print, 21 x 26.25 inches

Hoeckele acquired the title for this project from George Kubler’s 1962 book The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. Kubler’s dense examination of time, things, and history offers the fact that everything is invented because of human desire or need. If we were to assess a tool as a piece of art, or vice versa, we might better understand how the progression of objects, appliances, and symbols have intersected over time. By composing these modern-day still lifes, which can almost act as visual hypotheses, Hoeckele taps into our shared curiosity of algorithms and the matrix of sources from which images are distributed. The human tendency to amass materials and fill space is reflected in these familiar scenes. Each image slyly interprets the 18th century esteem for Vanitas and Memento Mori, famously filled with the symbolically perishable symbols of fruit, flowers, and time telling devices, into a new genre of still life that has evolved to hold guests of our contemporary habitus - cough drops, debit card, iphone, dental floss, Kindle, contact lens. The nod of this collection is a wise and humorous one. The History of Meaning presents a vanguard perspective on narrative chaos and clutter that permeate human space and existence, and concedes a cartographical examination of the historically rich, Internet-addled world we occupy today.