Clothes maketh the woman: the diary

We were watching a trashy 80s movie, there was a scene where a teenage girl who wants to go partying late – but has been grounded by her dad for wearing ‘unholy’ clothes (he’s into the church) – and he booms at her: “CLOTHES MAKETH THE MAN”. That just cracked us up. You’ve got the dad telling her what she can wear and what she can’t and even when he quote’s from the bible he can’t find a quote that gets the gender right! The quote’s interesting though…the power of the quote is in sounding so literal – without actually being so. So we decided to take it literally…and make nonsense of it. What if the cloth did maketh the man – or the woman? It would solve all those niggling questions wondering if your outfit was ‘really you’ – if the outfit was actually you! If we gave people our clothes would they become us? There’s a lot of folk religion logic there – this idea of fetishes, hexing – people leaving traces of themselves in the inanimate… but Ayo and I we’re very petit, we’re tiny – hardly anyone could get into our clothes! So we began to think more about the value of labels – names are the most important label we wear – perhaps the one you can never escape. When you do alter it, it becomes a big political statement like Malcolm X or Prince becoming that squiggle…except online, in chatrooms…changing names is the norm…it’s stranger to keep your name, that is almost too sincere for that place. You can’t ignore Magritte here either. And so we arrived at the t-shirts with our names. Wearing a label signifying us. The object and its sign are very arbitrary.

 We will give the t-shirts bearing the name ‘Ayo’ and ‘Oni’ in pairs to our friends. What our friends ‘do’ while wearing the t-shirts is given back to us. So it will not be ‘us’ filling the diary space, but ‘you as us’!

Perversely, we wanted the t-shirts as artless as possible. We got them made at Snappy Snaps, just a regular photo-store, we gave them our names, the letters – we let them do the rest. The first ones to get the t-shirts were Harun Morrison (Oni) and Helen Walker (Ayo) from the art collective They are here. If you’d like to wear them for a day get in touch at ayoandoni@live.co.uk. We are open to exploring life through anyone…

Monday 28^th January 2008- Ayo Oshodi (Helen walker)

It was an altogether unremarkable day except for the fact that I was you and not me, you and still me in your Ayo t-shirt. I never wear white- perhaps because I am so very white and immediately I felt uncomfortable in the skin of another, literally emblazoned with your name AYO in Helvetica black caps. What would I choose to give you (of my day, of my thoughts, of me)? I am a notoriously mysterious person who likes to keep things hidden for a special few. I guess you are now for this day a ‘notoriously mysterious person who likes to keep things hidden for a special few’. For those who know the twins well perhaps this is not such a leap in identity! I woke up on this Monday at home as usual under a mountain of duvets and quilts and I thought to myself it would nice to donate my most typical day to you. A day of extreme thought, of reading, of peppermint tea and chocolate digestives, of home made carrot soup with rice cakes and cheese, a day of meeting in the evening with various other artists, of rushed cheese and vegetable Cornish pasties at Liverpool St., of late exhausted return to the mountain… There is something ironic in me giving my body as a placard for you and your t-shirt, since my body is undernourished and underused and my mind overnourished and always overused. I guess if you offer the t-shirts to some athletes this can be easily rectified but for now you have my MIND AYO.

I went downstairs to the kitchen and your presence was immediately noted by my Grandmother, who for 5 years lived in Nigeria with my mum in the 1960s. She said it sounded like a joyful Nigerian name, which I think is ironic because I remember once you telling me your name did mean ‘joy’ in Yoruba. My Grandmother then went off happily repeating your name and so yes, you were present at 9.43am in this faded white tiled kitchen. Like a ghost hovering in me, my Grandmother saw you and spoke to you as if I had ceased to exist. I am now thinking about your labelling/mislabelling concept- is it that I am stealing your identity, is this a type of invited (legitimated) identity theft? Or perhaps more worrying that you are stealing mine for unknown and potentially dubious purposes? Is it really as innocent as a game of make-believe? I am pretending to be Ayo, aware that I am not Ayo. There is a hint of shamanistic mind play here as you/I highlight into your introduction to the project. What will you do with these things that we/you donate to you? Will they become elements for a new and frightening Voodoo project that you and your sister Oni are right now starting on with this diary entry… I also wonder Ayo what have you been doing on this day? Oh I know this answer- this diary is the official government dossier. I imagine I have stolen your spirit and forced you to sit at home silent, immoveable (not that different from my day!), waiting for the t-shirt to be returned to you and you to yourself more importantly. Or perhaps this is part of cloning experiment in which there will be twins of twins, powerful like all mutations. Like the Magnetic Field’s song ‘I wish I had an evil twin’ this could be an alibi opportunity unknown to participants.

Oh yes I talked to your/ my twin sister Oni (Harun) on this day at 1.58pm. We argued over something minor and circular on the phone, as we always do, as you always do. I saw Oni that day too at a meeting we both had to go to via a Cornish pasty and the bus 388. Reunited in space and time from 7.04pm as part of the Urbania A-foundation project we are working on/ you are working on (now)(temporarily). There an astute Harold noted the t-shirt presence which was doubled in visibility through repetition- a bit like you and your sister I guess! It was an appropriate meeting for you/me to be at, since the project is an online television broadcasting experiment with the all the attendant fluidity and totality the internet provides and which you / I make so much use of in your/ my work. I feel like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey as a I write this, having my innard chips pulled out slowly so that I find it hard to speak and write and end up singing a mournful pixelated ‘daisy, daisy, give me your answer do’ while knowing all the time that I am degenerating, being threatened by the arrival of an unassuming white cotton t-shirt size M marked ‘AYO’. ‘Dave you don’t have to do this you know….’