St Sepulchre Church Exhibiton

This summer, some of the then second year students managed to aquire space at the loval St Sepulchre church. Having applied to show my work in the exhibition i was accepted, and so began the process of helping set up the show. The two pieces I presented can be seen below.

Here is an extract from an interview about the pieces:

 Some photos of the church venue:

Here are a couple of my work hung:

Here are some group photos, the first of the exhibiting artists and student organizers  the second also including the mayor, and members of the church staff:

Becomings and Ouroboros

Becomings

I came across a book in the library titled 'Becomings: Explorations of Time, Memory, and Futures' by Elizabeth Grosz. Time and memory I have been considering though my work since the beginning of the term however the future has escaped me so far.

"Determinism annihilates any future uncontained by the past and present" p.4 so here in the books introduction Grosz is highlighting that the everyday definition of time as a vector or arrow, pre-supposes that the future is inherently predictable in relation to the past/present.

In this section of the book on page 86 Grosz considers the 'glace' as the view of life in the present, without preconception, but pure unfiltered momentary viewing.

"Unlike any arrow, this shot (the glance) does not simply go forward to its target, following a one-way trajectory that, once completed, lapses into nonbeing or at least nonactivity. Instead, the glance loops back onto the subject who emitted it; it folds back on the subject, coils over onto this subject, falling back onto it. . . . The clearest case in point is glancing at oneself in the mirror. Here I start by looking out from myself; taking my glance with me outward, i send it before me into the mirror, where I see myself glancing at myself, catching myself in the act, as it were. No sooner does this happen, however, than my glanced-at glance returns to me and is absorbed by the very face that sent it out in the first place: it folds back over this face, rejoining it at its own surface, as if to acknowledge this face as its own progenitor. Yet the glance returns to me not simply as to the same self, but to a self augmented by its own looking "

In this describes a sort of duality with the present and the past, that the two unfold simultaneously. Bergson talked in his own terms about time and the mirror:

"Pure Memory is to perception that which the image appercieved behind the mirror is to the object placed before it. The object is touched as well as seen: it can act on us as we act on it; it is pregnant with possible actions, it is actual. The image is virtual and, although similar to the object, incapable of doing what the object does. Our actual existence, insofar as it unfolds in time. is thus doubled with a virtual existence, with an image in a mirror." from L'energie Spirituelle, by Bergson.

This takes me back to my considerations of Narcissus in a previous post HERE

The Ouroboros

The Ouroboros, The snake that devours its self, has appeared in may different cultures and has resembled through varying themes an illustration of unity. Here is a look at the symbol and its significance.

Here is another perspective that considers Ouroboros in relation to seemingly separate observations.

Like the snake the earth appears to be devoured and re summoned in its cycle of darkness and light.

Guido Cagnacci, Allegoria della vita umana, c.1650

The allegory of human life by Cagnacci uses the Ouroboros as a symbol in conjunction with the skull and flower representing creation and destruction, life and death, the hourglass symbolizing temporarily of human life.

Reading Around My Work

Hello Library, warm, secluded, and quite. Today I am doing some reading around the concerns of my work; the relationship between time and memory, and the nature of presence.

'Present Pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory' by Andreas Huyssen

"Even now, when i try to remember . . . , the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as i think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on." W.G.Seabald, 'Austerlitz', p.24

"The boundary between past and present used to be stronger and more stable then it appears to be today. Untold recent and not so recent pasts impinge upon the present through modern media of reproduction like photography, film, recorded music, and the internet . . . The past has become part of the present in ways simply unimaginable in earlier centuries. As a result, temporal boudnaries have weakened just as the experiential dimension of space has shrunk as a result of modern means of transportation and communication."

The section titled 'The hypertrophy of memory' proposes that this compression of our history and how we identify with history, as if we are, socially, culturally, and individually, transcending a paradigm of association with the past and more an understanding of the past as ever informing the present, through the present. In this sense there is an instanuity in our recognition of the present, something which is maybe more accurate to the nature of human perception. relate my statement that "memories we have to remember aren't memories at all. It is the memories tat live through us in the present which are real."

Rate of flow

The concept of "time passing" can be considered to be internally inconsistent, by asking "how much time goes by in an hour?" The question, "how fast does time pass" seems to have no satisfactory answer, in which answers such as "a second per second" would be, as some would argue, trivial and thus false. In addition, even if we do accept the above answer, then the statement "a second per second" can be expressed as a fraction which is always equal to 'one'. But this 'one' has no meaning beyond being a number and is thus also the wrong kind of answer. Therefore, the argument goes, the passage of time is nonsensical.
There is a major problem though in that the question of time is no different from space. We can similarly ask, "how much space is contained in a meter?" — and face a similar objection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

In The Unreality of Time, J. M. E. McTaggart divided time into an A-series and a B-series, with the A-series describing events in absolute tensed terms (past, present, and future) and the B-series describing events in terms of untensed temporal relations (before and after). He also added the notion of a "C-series", a series that has an order but with no notion of time, like a series of letters.
      (series of letters like an un-regimented series of events is similar to how i believe we draw our sense of self and experience time through the self. We tend to only remember the important events, irrelevant of how far they were apart. How does this then relate to my suggestion that our memories live through our present actions; the unconscious self defined by past events, or the conscious self who is aware of this pre-determination. This then brings into question free will, and potentially how only through being conscious of the present moment and our actions in the present, can we be free to alter our actions and ultimately the future due to the inherent relationship between our learned behaviors  (preconceptions) and our perception. Though my previous statement exists within the 'A-series' framework, could it not be reconsidered in relation to the B series; in so much as, the past and the future can be plotted on some form of trajectory in the established understanding of sociology and the predictably of humans within given environments and under specific stimulus. Considering that B-theorists believe that the past, present, and future are equally real, I have to bring up the 'Many worlds' interpretation that every possible scenario of an event is as real as the other; this has reference to the nature of quantum mechanics; however it is both relevant to this discussion objectively but irrelevant to our human experience of life as I am concerned. The point I am trying to make is that we as humans exists within the fourth dimensional of space-time. Interestingly, it seems that our profound ability to remember and plot events in time is both the what sets us free from the unconscious cyclic nature of existence and yet our self absorption with the temporarily of life has lead to us creating a system where we try to calculate the speed of time in years, divided into months, to minuets, and seconds. How can we transcend this prison of time. Huyssen Suggests the 'Hypertrophy of memory' and in this maybe there is a portal. As we move ever closer to the instantaneous; the ability to share and communicate with increasing congruence with the present. We are becoming ever more interconnected; and through this process i believe that the self is becoming dissolved, just as our identification with the past is becoming more difficult, the separations between now and then. I equally see potential that separations between the self and the other will be transmuted. There is countless evidence to propagate this eventuality within our history and in such our nature. Anytime in history when one person has intended to rule assume power over another it has failed, and yet we all seek an affinity with the other, an essential connection that can be seen but is not limited to the sexual bond between male and female. Our tribal heritage is not of coincidence and does not still exist within the world today by coincidence  As the pressure of globalization increases the consistency of egoistic collisions, ideals are forced to dissolve into one another. As the collective gravity of matter formed the stars and planets, we are so heading for a dissolution, whether this will crush us under its weight or transmute us into a core is unclear. These considerations of time translate in scale, if we can release the binds of the past and so the future, we can see the present as a palimpsest of what has and may come to pass, though this image is shrouded in entropy, it is our unique potential to decipher these seemingly ambiguous observations and be imbued and informed through present consciousness. Magic.

Schrodinger's cat

Speaking on the relevance of the quantum mechanics and the 'Many worlds theory' I believe that Schrodinger's though experiment has much to offer.
Schrodinger wrote:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

—Erwin Schrödinger, Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics), Naturwissenschaften
(translated by John D. Trimmer in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society)

I have highlighted in orange specific phrases which hold presence in my current experiments with condensation of time and the abstracted ambiguous images that are produced. here's an example from my previous post:

Many Worlds theory

In 1957, Hugh Everett formulated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which does not single out observation as a special process. In the many-worlds interpretation, both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are incoherent from each other. In other words, when the box is opened, the observer and the already-dead cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since the dead and alive states are incoherent, there is no effective communication or interaction between them.

More to read:

Art & Time (704.949529)

Phenomonology of Perception by M.Merleau-Ponty

The Anthropology of Time by Alfred Gell

Becomings by Elizabeth Grosz

Wash

     Below is a link to newest product of my experimentation with a video process I have been exploring in relation to my interest with memory and the human experience of temporality.

     The act of washing has roots in the religious, cleansing of the spirit. Given my considerations for the nature of the self, and how we identify with ourselves in time present, and past through memory; the video appears to be dissolving the image of the self as formal portraiture, with each consecutive wash transforming the original form. In this very way I find correlations between this video and the video works of Bill Viola, in specific the piece as described by the artist below. Using the process of washing as imagery to present a change in state.

     Where on one hand, above, I have proposed that the process is a reduction in form, there is room to consider that the repetition creates an accumulation rather then a reduction. Though this is contradictory to the nature of the video process I feel it does offer an insight to the works gravitas. 

     As the process repeats it can be seen, that like Bruce Nauman's 'Art Make-Up' (above), in appearance an application of colour to the work. Though in process I know this not to be the case, as the only stimulus that exists within the video is the initial image frame, with no further external reference, only motion remains; all of the colour distortion that occurs is essentially a reduction from the source image colours. That being said I do believe that within the works concept there is a form of accumulation that can be brought into question, the accumulation of obscurity; as the act regresses from its original form of conception, its moment of origin; entropy begins corroding the form. The building ambiguity of the work culminates at the videos end, as the portrait becomes evermore ethereal.

     I  want to conclude that this deformation through process is my intention to suggest our inability to ever truly experience the past as it happened in the then present. Eckhart Tolle's claims on this are of great influence to me, referencing 'The power of now'. There is a certain irony that arrises in the this debate between the notion of the self and our memories of ourself. I am proposing in duality, that whilst the past offer use such ambiguity  we simultaneously draw the egoic self from that same place. In a sense this video is a proposition of our fallibility, of the fundamentally flawed uncertainty of any definite understanding of the self drawn from the past. I suggest that regardless of our re-imaginings, our memories live through us in the present regardless. The only way to truly view the self is in the mirror of consciousness in the now.

Narcissus, Aten, Benoit Mandelbrot

     In Greek Mythology Narcissus was a hunter from the territory ofThespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him. Nemesis saw this and attracted Narcissus to a pool where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image. Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus died.

'Narcissus' by Caravaggio

     The story stands as a metaphor for self absortion and the corruptive nature of the ego. In relation to my work I am considering how we identify the self and relate to our 'self'. 

     Oscar Wilde created a variation of this story which continues after his death. He says that when Narcissus died, the Oreads, who were goddesses of the woods, came and saw that the sweet waters of the pool had changed into salt tears.

‘Why are you crying?’ asked the Oreads.

‘I’m weeping for Narcissus.’

‘We do not wonder that you should mourn for Narcissus in this way,’ they said. ‘After all, we could only run after him through the forest, but you could gaze on his beauty from close to.’

‘But was Narcissus beautiful?’ asked the pool.

‘Who better than you to know?’ the Oreads replied, somewhat taken aback. ‘It was, after all, on your banks that he would lie each day.’

The pool was still for a moment. Then it said:

‘I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that he was beautiful. I weep for him because whenever he lay on my banks and looked into my waters, I could see my own beauty reflected in his eyes.’

     This version now bares the understanding of an ecology between the self, and the other. That we see our own nature and beauty, reflected in the other. In relation to the philosophy of human finitude the acceptance of the other is "fundamental" described by A.W.Moore in the essay Human Finitude, Ineffability, Idealism, Contingency. Toril Moi describes the realisation that "there are others" as a "traumatic discovery" in her essay From femininity to finitude: Freud, Lacan, and feminism, again (p.874)

Figure 1a. The Mandelbrot set illustrates self-similarity. As you zoom in on the image at finer and finer scales, the same pattern re-appears so that it is virtually impossible to know at which level you are looking.

Figure 1b. Mandelbrot zoomed 6x

Figure 1c. Mandelbrot zoomed 100x

Figure 1d. Even 2000 times magnification of the Mandelbrot set uncovers fine detail resembling the full set.

Aten is the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian Mythology, and originally an aspect of Ra. The deified Aten is the focus of the monolatristic, henotheistic, or monotheistic religion of Atenism. The tablet extract below shows hands extending upon the rays of the sun, which illustrates well the belief that human existence was somehow intrinsic to the sun, not only in symbiosis, but in essence also. Again there is an ecology with the other, however in this example, there is now fundamentally a cohesion of formality in being. 

Benoit Mandelbrot created the term Fractal Geometry, a visualition of mathematical formulae which generate patterns that are self referential. An understand of this relationsip between the micro and the macro intruiges me in relation to the belief that all tings are one, and binded by a universal force. Some call this god, the unknown.


In the abstract pattern above, someone has attempted to create an illustration of the sun god Aten. This image speak resoundingly for the connection that I am trying to establish with the Mandelbrot set. Reflecting upon my initial inquest into the story of Narcissus, I am suggesting that by accepting the subjective fallibility of the self (the ego) we can embrace the essential otherness that we share with all things, and which in that sense connects us all. 

Theory Lecture Notes & Response

The title of the lecture: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg

     We began by looking at the work of the Abstract Expressionists and how their ethos corresponded and differed to that of the two titles artists. Specifically looking at the works between 1950 - 1953. Craig pointed out that the artists within the AE movement were authorial as artists, they were at the centre of their woks creation; The pieces an expression of themselves. The evidence for this claim was presented in the form of documentary images. How the photos of the artist working within their studios suggest to promote the creator over the creation. Another testament to this appears in David Hopkins 'After Modern Art' (art and social function, page 15) when he writes "Abstract Expressionist individualism was promoted by the American establishment to counter the collectivist ideals of Socialist Realism.). The Abstract Expressionists interest with the Surrealisms considerations for Freud and the unconscious also promote an importance of self.               

'Erased De Kooning Drawing' by Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

     To paraphrase Craig: The process of the work was a reduction to structure. It could be seen as symbolic, for an erasing of his peers or the 'fathers' of the art before him; An "iconoclasm'. This piece was a powerful statement in the direction of the New York avant garde.

Photo of Black Mountain Collage

  

     The Avant garde being spoke of had a home at the Black Mountain Collage. Rauschenberg attended here alongside De Kooning and many others. Here at Black Mountain:

     "Composer John Cage pioneered the idea of aleatoric music; choreographer Merce Cunningham formed an experimental dance company which changed the course of modern dance. Robert Rauschenberg blurred the boundary between painting and sculpture, calling his art “installations” for the first time; Jasper Johns started a new age with his pop imagery entering the world of fine art; and painter Cy Twombly worked with John Cage to visualize Cage’s musical concept of silence with his graffiti-like scribbles." written by penccil

     As a collective these artists assumed a critical reflection on the nature of contemporary art, questioning and experimenting with it. Duchamp can be seen as a large influence within their ethos. A certain distance and detachment is evident in their process. Duchamp promoted just as Dada, the Surrealists, and John Cage's Fluxist's embraced, that chance is essential in art; that you mustn't attempt to exert a control over that, more so to realise it as integral. Framing back to the initial address of Craig's lecture, in this very sense, the work being created by Rauschenberg and his immediate peers was anti-authorial; It did not suppose, but reflect, did not impose, but create space. 

     This Anti-authorial approach is evident in this statement. Talking about his 'White Paintings' Rauschenberg stated "It is completely irrelevant that I am making them. Today is their creator." (I suppose I'm curious as to how we adopt this attitude in other areas of our life, and not just our view on art.)

     And again the creation of space could not exemplified better then in John Cage's 4:33:

     The piece is obviously about silence, but through that uses the medium of ambient sound. It allows space for the sound that already exists  In this sense the work work is inhabited by the audience and becomes them. The objective is, maybe, to reflect the subjective response. John Cage in conversation about the piece said he wanted "to move from structure to process, from music as an object having parts, to music without beginning, middle or end. Music as weather."

     This piece titled 'Minutiae' by Rauschenberg (1954) was present in the lecture as example of the artists suggestion that the medium should not define the creator, that you can be more then a painter, or a sculpture. It reminds me of a realisation i'd had a while ago, that the truth can be spoken in several languages, apparently quite obvious on one hand, and yet for me, a profound realisation about the nature of language and communication on the other.

This understanding can be related to 'The finger and the moon' proverb:

The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriach Huineng, "I have studied the Mahaparinirvana sutra for many years, yet there are many areas i do not quite understand. Please enlighten me."

The patriach responded, "I am illiterate. Please read out the characters to me and perhaps I will be able to explain the meaning."

Said the nun, "You cannot even recognize the characters. How are you able then to understand the meaning?"

"Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?"

This understanding is discussed in more detail here

Collection of Mark Rothko's 'Black paintings' at The Rothko Chapel

     Perhaps overtly opposite to the 'White paintings' of Rauschenberg, however pushing the politics of the new York art scene to the side, formally I am claiming that Rothko's 'Black paintings' have more in common with John Cage's 4:33 then Rauschenberg's paintings. Where the white paintings propose a purity of form in space, there is an inherant awareness that the object exists through ethereality of its subject; adversely Rothko's 'Black paintings' create a void in space, Like  reflective black hole, pulling you in as subject. Continuing along the space themed metaphors, in 4:33 there is this same sense of vacuum which the work creates; like a sensory deprivation tank the stimulus is denied, leaving our-self, our natural state of being, brought into conciousness; it can be witnessed within the video of 4:33's performance above, just as I witnessed it in the lecture hall when Craig orchestrated (in a sense) a re-enactment, us as the audience. These works are the 'awkward silence', only named so because we can no longer distract ourselves and become aware of the present moment, the infinite now.

Thanks to Craig Staff for an inspiring lecture

A Chat With Mike Evans

So today, whilst attempting to recover some filming off a very temperamental camera, I crossed paths with one of my tutors, Mike. He asked about some of the video work I've recently been doing. After showing him the videos in the newly refitted projection room (which is awesome) we began talking about the work and ideas surrounding it.

Bruce Nauman:

The way in which the paint is applied to the body, resonates with the nature of my video's process, as the pixels wash over the moving figure, like liquid paint. The nature of the portrait also may have some relevance to the work, the nature of looking at the'self' and the image of our 'selves'.

False Memory Syndrome:

Another thing that Mike suggested i look into was 'False Memory Syndrome'. A psychoanalytic term for the study of memories that are either distortions of original memories or completely fabricated. This suggestion came when explaining my concern with the fallible nature of visual perception and increasingly so visual reproduction in the mind. This theory, of which there is evidence to be found, also enhances my curiousity with our relationship to the past; the association of our selves with something that is no more, in one sense or another. I'll be bold and suggest: Memories we have to remember aren't memories at all; obscured by the ambiguity of perception through time. The things that placed us in the present, those are our real memories; living through us in the now.

What are false memories?  Because of the re constructive nature of memory, some memories may be distorted through influences such as the incorporation of new information.  There are also believed-in imaginings that are not based in historical reality; these have been called false memories, pseudo-memories and memory illusions.  They can result from the influence of external factors, such as the opinion of an authority figure or information repeated in the culture. An individual with an internal desire to please, to get better or to conform can easily be affected by such influences. False Memory Syndrome Foundation

Here the writer Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen discusses the function of false memory within the context of Freud's career. The reason I have highlighted the conclusion here is to draw attention to the relative relationship between what is perceived and what is believed, we often accept that what we see effects our view of the world, though rarely do with accept that equally, our 'view' or 'idea' of the world can directly effect what we see. 

It is thus one thing to say, as Israëls does, that these ‘memories’, these ‘scenes’ (and later, these ‘fantasies’) were not spontaneous, because they were the product of Freud’s theories and hermeneutic hubris. It is quite another to consider them as mere fictions, mere non-realities. The fact is that these theoretical fictions did become real in Dr Freud’s office, because of his patients’ willingness to accept his ‘solutions’. To speak of lies in regard to this fabrication of ‘psychical reality’ is too shortsighted: in the domain of psychotherapy, just as in that of human affairs in general, such a co-construction of reality is inevitable and normal. There, one never finds facts, only artefacts. In the end, if psychoanalysis must be criticised, it is not because it fabricates the evidence it adduces, nor because it creates the reality it purports to describe. It is because it refuses to recognise this and attempts to cover up the artifice. How a fabrication differes from a lie by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen.

Compressed video Images

Media Proposal (Video, Paint)

     Beginning where I left off; the last academic years work culminated in the creation of a painted diptych. A conversation about the malleable ‘grey area’ that exists between perception and reality, between different cultural attitudes, and more specifically commenting on the nature of individuality; questioning our ability to connect and establish a dialect. The intention for my coming work is to continue an investigation into the indefinite, using the nature of memory and our experience of ‘self’ to explore the entropy of impermanence.

    The writer Eckhart Tolle discusses our relationship to the ‘self’ or ‘ego’. We propel ours ‘selves’ back and forth, through past and future, inadvertently grasping at a control; assumption and identification, the poisonous nutrition of false validation. Ultimately he proposes that we accept our place in the eternal presence of the now. Following this logic I have began exploring how we relate to our memories, understanding that we largely derive and identify ourselves with them.

    I will be using the temporality of film to capture an experience, using a specifically developed video process I will be repeating the captured video. The process losses some of the original clip data per repetition; as it is constantly overwritten the image is becomes distorted to the viewer. This represents my curiosity about memory and acts as a metaphor for our inability to live in the past as it forever recesses from the present into obscurity.  

    The condensational process seen in the work of Idris Khan and Jason Salavon, is of strong relevant for my intentions to experiment, with condensing the frame by frame imagery of video into a single still, a single moment. In this vein, I am also keen to explore how the process can fit within the historical context of modernist painting; the conversation between the essential illusion of realism and the curiosity of abstraction. Just as Pollock transformed the easel bound canvas into a floor, a stage. I intend to reconsider the very human experience of time and memory.