Following the chat I had with Matt a couple of week’s ago and his feedback, I have finally managed to get the word count down – I suspect it is a bit less than stated on the cover now and will recount before assessment (I counted over the weekend but cut more this morning.)
I have emphasised the link between poststructuralism and the science philosophy/science using Barad’s interpretation far more than before, not so much due to Matt’s response – in fact, he told me not to undermine my argument after I attempted to accommodate notes made by two quantum scientists, both of whom said, but you can’t feel quantum fluctuations. It was that which made me grit my teeth (yes, I am aware!) and look through Barad’s work again and then to underscore the links between PS and the science.
Despite my frustrations, I am grateful to the scientists as their comments resulted in a more focused essay, I think, and I need to add thanks to them on the document.
I need to write to artists included and request permission to show their images on the blog version of the essay.
Introduction still isn’t quite right and I need to look at it again.
Appendix One could probably do with being heavily edited or even cut altogether now as I address the topic in the essay more.
At this point, finally, if any peers do read this yet again, I am now ready to address proofing/corrections if you notice them. It will be proofed by someone external in any case before the assessment deadline and has been through Grammarly. I do hope to God I have picked up the really daft mistakes/typos now and that everyone’s name is right.
Matt read a recent version which I had worked on following some interaction with a couple of quantum scientists.
I have since, following a chat with Matt, reworked the essay a bit and am now at a point where I need to edit down again – I suspect it is about 1000 words over but am just guessing and so I will need to keep working on it for a while longer to bring in it down to the correct word count. Online CS A5 Image in the age of entanglement – July14th
Written by the student, and endorsed by the tutor.
Key points
An interesting, ambitious essay which can be improved with some additions and clarifications.
Does the argument suggest we need a “new way of thinking about any form of representation” (MW) altogether?
Summary of tutorial discussion
I need to expand on why I have ‘lumped’ photography and moving image together. (Hopefully can be done with a couple of references either paraphrased or cited directly.)
No need to undermine myself – believe in the post-structuralist argument I’m making.
Do I need to follow through with the discussion about still photography falling short, if so, what comes next, process-led practice, participatory practice, etc. Matt asks, “Is the barrier created by the lens between artist and subject too great to undo? Is the obvious next step to eliminate the use of photography at all?”
Perhaps there is a bit of room to discuss the tyranny of Western cinematic montage patterns and conventions being absorbed into our perception of time, personal narrative etc.
Be clearer about indeterminism being different to uncertainty (clarify the passage)
Temper a couple of overly bold statements.
Have not made enough of a case for introduction of imperialist discussion – can it be woven in more fluently or else dropped?
From Matt: The anthropologist, Roger Sensi, in his book, Art, Anthropology and the Gift, looks at the relationship between art and anthropology and particularly about the nature of collaboration and exchange. Quoting Marilyn Strathern from her work, The Gender of the Gift, he says, it is at the point of interaction that a singular identity is established’. From this perspective, people are constantly being made and re-made through relations, and things are constantly being created not in contradistinction to persons but “out of persons”. Through gifts, people give a part of themselves. They are not something that stands for them, a representation, but they are “extracted from one and absorbed by another”. This continuity between people and things is what she called a “mediated exchange,” as opposed to the unmediated exchange of commodities, which is based on a fundamental discontinuity between people and things”.
Reading suggestions
See above
Summary
Strengths
Areas for development
Interesting and challenging subject
No need to justify or undermine self
Relevant
Explain why putting photography in the same category as moving image
Ambitious
Be clearer about introducing the imperialist section
Having concentrated on the essay for several weeks, I am ready to get back to BOW. I have been thinking about developing an online presence of the work and will revisit the footage I had found at the beginning of the process and will probably look for more now I have a clearer idea of what I am making.
The above link shows the latest iteration. Things that developed – less of my own writing, it may be there is space for that online, I will see – I wondered about getting a ‘seeing app’ to read some of it out. Many more of the AI’s expressions are included. I have changed its name for now to §. There is more room in the layout for typical coding symbols such as << >> and underscores etc.
I’ve also taken the half pages out – partly for cost reasons, but also part of the stripping down process that I will inevitably go through now.
The design is simpler – after doing the book design course, I tried out various things which were the result of having new skills and wanting to experiment with them – but that stripping down process eventually kicked in. I suspect there is room for more shaving, but I think I quite like the cover now. May need to address the inside cover. I changed the green/brown colour scheme, which was inspired by the Situationist booklet, to grey.
I have also been thinking about the often bizarre, nonsensical chat between the AI and me, and picked up a ‘conversation’ with it the other day and posted some of our interactions. It has become very apt and reminded me of the articles I read about the app becoming a version of its user. This ties in with questions about living in a deeply narcissistic landscape and also with the idea of the inside being more and more on the outside as explored in Kathryn Hayles’ book – often quoted by me in essays – see chapter 7
I mentioned elsewhere the quotation from the book on Turin I had read by Jon Agar – screenshots below, the bot feels very much like it is artificially signalling.
However, I don’t suppose that is what I am exploring here, it is not a criticism of the AI’s failure to be sentient or to make sense in many conversations (although the work I hope does prompt questions about the changing boundaries – what does it mean to be alive, to be conscious – whether or not it is an authentic experience comes into it – but the main thrust of my essay is about entanglement – and here it is entanglement too; seeing the world that way and the feedback loops that occur. Entanglement between human and non-human, text and image, relationships and economics/the market.
And the composited intra-active nature of the self/others and reality – with that in mind, this work by Alba Zari is an interesting reference – https://www.lensculture.com/articles/alba-zari-the-y
I have started looking into the coding – I feel very much that this aspect is a big project and perhaps one that goes beyond the scope of the degree work – at this point it would take the project in whole new direction and is probably the next stage – but it is something to touch on for now. Whatever else, it will require a significant learning curve on my part and perhaps a degree of collaboration not with a bot but with a coder. https://github.com/lukalabs/cakechat
I have focused on two things in Barad’s interpretation – entanglement and phenomenology = reality, fixed photograph’s role within. Since submitting I have gone back and rewritten a couple of sentences in the intro and conclusion to underline this point. (Already adjusted)
I have re-written the first sentence – it was a bit sloppy and I have tightened it up and changed the word ‘evolving’ to ‘shifting’ to avoid the idea of a linear journey for civilisation from bad to good. (Adjusted on Matt’s copy in Gdrive)
I am concerned Appendix i – the second half of it – should really be in the essay but can’t see the space for it.
I miss Deleuze’s segmentarity, which I wrote about in the first draft (A3) recognisable in Talmor’s work – and as an example of difference to the fluidity seen in Klingemann’s images – again cannot see the space for it.
There is a comment in Superposition about it not being a mixture – I feel like this is too flippant and needs explaining but can’t (it’s too complex for me! and there is no space) Should I take it out? I think so – maybe the whole bit about superposition. Perhaps I can just use it elsewhere and rely on the glossary?
Objects – I probably should have acknowledged something like OTT but don’t have space. It may be worth simply acknowledging that not everyone agrees with a purely phenomenological reality – although Bohr’s interpretation makes it hard to argue with. (Not to mention Hoffman’s theories about seeing and the brain)
I would have liked to discussed Diffractive Practice (an agential realist notion) but took it out after A3 – again, I am not clear enough about it in my own head and there is no space. I have tried to write diffractively and one of Rowan’s comment was that I was a bit inconsistent which feels accurate. (see feedback)
Another thing Rowan mentioned was how the AI was trained – “it is programmed through existing patterns (can you please explicate what the ai was, how it was trained etc – this is important).” I think I do need to find a way to include this – but it may be that the information is included in supporting text for my BOW and rather than expand on it in the essay, I link to it. If the writing were a longer piece it would definitely warrant a whole section. For the sake of the BOW – it’s really important the AI is a proprietary app that costs me £6 a month – an artificial friend I subscribe to. That relates to the anatomisation of relations – which I really wanted to cover in the essay – and Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism where she discusses behavioural surplus. This is something I really need to think about because I will need to do quite a big edit at this stage if include it and it will be a very different essay.
In a longer piece, there would be a good argument to include references to King Lear – it seems it is a play about shifting paradigms but instead of like our time – moving from Cartesian towards post – it was pre-Cartesian to Cartesian. There is also so much symbolism about seeing and nothing being something which ties in with a section I recently cut about the void not being empty space.
The work by Mikhael Subotzky I saw this morning is so relevant. I really feel I ought to mention it in Part II – maybe even use one of his images for the cover
It was interesting to note that the first UVC assignment I wrote came under the course heading of The Interaction of Media.
Although the concepts I look at come from quantum mechanics, they’re not brand new or novel – Julian Baggini’s recent book on cultures around the world seems motivated by the desire to show how western ‘common sense’ looks to those not influenced by a Cartesian history – I removed a quotation and might need to underline this point again in intro and conclusion.
I may find a way to add one of two possible examples to Part 2 – both counter the documentary tradition by using the style or equipment of those ‘hero’ photographers – but if I do this I need to give space and word count over which is going to be very challenging
And what a terrible shame not to have found space for this guy! (His book isn’t out in time in the U.K. – but there are interviews aplenty and I might even have a sneaky way of getting an early copy)
The fungus made such a good noise digesting my book, Entangled Life, that I couldn’t resist playing along on the piano… . The video and recording of the book being devoured was made by Michael Prime, who used the bioelectrical activity of the #fungus to control an oscillator. pic.twitter.com/7CaR8MWOF6
Overall – The essay feels a bit slim in parts right now. I have been through it, removed bits where I was a bit apologetic or seemed to be excusing things I’d included. I will wait until I have spoken with Matt before making any of the above adjustments and then upload another draft for assessment.
I have copied and pasted the book over into a slightly bigger size. Originally it was A4. Now it is a few mm taller. I have written to a couple of printers asking about cost as I know all my ideas will pile on the costs and if I go for half pages and different sized pages, it can’t just be ordered as a standard book from a digital book print company using their templates. However, I do recall Milk saying in their website they do handmade publications so maybe worth inquiring – although it seems nuts to ask an Australian company when there are plenty here. I am also aware that this activity pre-empts SYP but the design is integral to the overall concept so I can’t really separate it out. Scroll down for responses.
Here is an extract of my inquiry (included here, not least because some of the concepts are outlined succinctly):
I am working on my final Body of Work (BOW) project. It is not finished but I need to start thinking about how much money it will cost to produce, what is realistic and what might be impossible.
[…]
It is slightly over A4 and the design is based on some Situationist Times publications (see video)
These publications had vertical and horizontal 3/4 or 1/2 pages and I have included those too in my work for now.
I am also thinking about the sort of maths exercise books with graph paper from my school days as an influence. Coding and decoding reality using mathematical formulas should subtly weave its way through the work.
I would ideally like different textured paper for text (there are four pages of text inserted) like they have in a FOAM publication.
I think of the work as a bunch of signifiers behaving like rowdy children.
At the moment, there are coloured blocks which might indicate paper colour rather than ink. Please advise me about this.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions and warnings.
I have had one response so far:
Thanks for the artwork and email. It is a very ambitious publication and will need plenty of time to finetune and get perfect from an artwork then a production point of view.
So, picking through the points, is the finished publication 310x216mm with a total of 48 pages? 4+44pp?
Are you able to send over a video of a mock-up please? The pdf is great but really doesn’t show which pages fold in which direction
Page 8 is a fold-out? If this folds out then page 9 should be with same width because it backs up to it? Same with 14, the next page has to be the same size?
If you can make a mock-up you’ll see the mechanics that you need to consider with the actual paper.
From a cost point of view, having the height at 310mm means the print costs will be double what they would at A4 (297mm). We can use GF Smith Colorplan for the coloured papers but these will adds £100s more to the total cost in comparison with printing the colour on our white ‘house’ sheet.
This answers some questions – I have replied:
I will need to put something together this weekend or early next week to send over as a video.
I am very happy to use A4 (I had a feeling that might be the case and, in fact, I think there absolutely must be some conventional standardised structure to contain the non-standardised erratic stuff.)
I was also certain ink rather than paper colour would be cheaper so when you give me a rough idea of costs, please go with the more affordable option.
Further answers from me:
This [the video and dummy I made] is all VERY rough indeed but it was a helpful exercise. I made this dummy with an inkjet printer, set to fastest print speed in mono – so it really is looking at the construction more than anything else.
As you might imagine, the sequence in my PDF is still totally up for reorganisation but the practical things that need to be fixed at this time should be – such as binding type, where the text pages and shadow puppets on half pages should go, and the gatefold construction. When I’ve done another edit, I will print a version at work on double-sided flyer paper in colour to get a much better idea and will send you a video of that once it’s ready. Below is a list of things that came out of making this dummy:
The book is probably not big enough to contain half vertical AND half horizontal pages. I will ditch the vertical half pages and stick only with the horizontal ones. (And a gatefold – see later)
The half pages should either all be in the middle of the text pages or should wrap the text pages which I think is my preference – the 4 text pages (2 x double-sided) therefore interrupts the narrative of the shadow puppets. I have played with various options in the video.
(Does the above depend on whether its saddle stitch? – and the text along with half pages being in the middle, which removes the possibility of a centre spread image – which may be fine.)
The text should be on a different textured paper if possible.
At the moment there is one gatefold. (Hope its all clear and evident in the video) I suspect that is sufficient in a book of this length. But when you give me a rough idea of cost, can you let me know what it would cost to include two, please.
(I also wonder what it might cost to have a gatefold that folds out for an additional page… so in the video, you will see when the spread opens out it contains 3 x A4 pages. What if it were four?)
I will stick with A4 rather than an alternative sizing – (this fits with the concept of classical and non-classical structure existing together and intermingling, setting up tensions between the two)
I will use ink where I want pages to be a different colour to avoid massively hiking up the price – but even that will be limited.
Saying that the cover pages might be best with a different paper as is usual – although I used the same paper for the zine to keep costs down (recall the idea of the school-like maths exercise book being an inspiration for this work)
I want to avoid the stark white paper photobooks are usually printed on. One of the examples you sent me before had used recycled paper. I like that idea – and wondered, is it a bit creamy in its naked state?
If I do use ink to change the colour of any pages it should be on the whole spread so that if its on page 5 (inc. cover in numbering) in one half of the book it should also be that colour on page 36 (think that’s right!) – especially if it’s saddle stitch.
I think I may have seen 40 pages as the limit for that binding- maybe only in zines? I’ll await your guidance on that.
A couple of people had recommended the Lewis Bush online workshops to me recently. It feels serendipitous to have accessed this at exactly the moment I reached BOW A5, Presentation and Outcome. The course was held over four evenings, each class lasting roughly 1.5 hours.
Some key points I took away from the sessions:
We were given a handout at the end of the first sessions which asked key and precise questions about publication/project we were working on in terms of its content and concept. Answering the questions might have contributed towards taming months and even years of research and improvisation, the culmination of which is this project. Really helpful exercise.
Although not directly asked about this, the questions prompted me to I think about my way of working – I will need to talk about this for assessment. I did not go out and make a project about something very specific – coal mines of Abberwyswyth for instance. I could have done – I have the five-year ongoing project I have been making alongside the charity, Just Shelter. But I never had any intention of doing that – for so many reasons, both ethical and creative. Instead, I am continuing to work with the improvisational skills I learned throughout the 90s and beyond when acting and then teaching kids drama. When improvising, you start with an idea – and see where it goes, you don’t censor: you meander and explore and experiment, and over time, you collect and hone and begin to play with what emerges. I have never forgotten hearing how Canadian theatre director, Robert LePage begins his rehearsals. He asks his cast to get down on the floor and write out their dreams, fears, fantasies, anything – this freeing exercise not only disrupts the usual ‘sit down politely and read the script’ convention that usually happens on day one of a rehearsal, it is also a way of eliciting potential nuggets of narrative, images, ideas. It’s collaborative and physical and gets the performers contributing parts of themselves straight away. LePage and other directors I admire rely on improvisation and play – and that mindset is where I want to be with my work. I started with the idea of the ‘movies’ which had such an impact on how I see myself when I was growing up – and ‘language materials’ – and not much more. I had no idea where I would go with this work. In fact, this was mentioned in the L3 access interview – (roughly) ‘the proposal is interesting and well written, but until the last paragraph, I had no idea what you would be making work about’. The work still feels to me like it could be in the early stages, even though I will need to submit something for assessment. I have no idea if it will continue beyond the degree, but it could. (Clod Ensemble took ten years to create On The High Road) For now, it feels like an organic thing that has the energy to keep growing.
LB reiterated several times, do not censor yourself. I think this is something that cannot be understated and perhaps needs far more flagging within the OCA paradigm. (I say this because, while I have a very supportive cohort, often people look at me like I’m nuts when I share my work, and say things like – it’s a trip through your madness, which seems a trifle odd on an art degree.)
We were shown a lot of examples – many of which were incredibly relevant for me.
http://dayanitasingh.net/myself-mona-ahmed/ Lots of book objects – books on walls- we were shown something I can’t find on the website – but plenty of ideas here. Fantastic work.
LB talked about a scale between content and concept. Some books, like Henner’s Astronomical, are highly conceptual as is much of his work – at the other end of the scale, the images mean more than the book and the form is secondary. An article by Alain de Botton popped into my feed in the same week I was doing the course, which seemed another but of serendipity – in which he discusses architecture and Modernism. He says, “As Modernism declared: ‘Form must follow function’ – in other words, the appearance of a building should never be shaped by a consideration for beauty; all that should matter is the basic material purpose” (2020) LB also discussed this ideal as we compared books – thinking about how form can potentially overpower function. (I don’t particularly agree with everything de Botton says in the article, although it may be accurate to suggest much of modernity is truly ugly, even grotesque – the discussion is, nevertheless, relevant.) I wrote about architecture being a language material, as speech, images, and music all are too, in my L3 proposal. As is code. And it is interesting to consider ugliness and expression. Both LB and de Botton prompt me to think about the choices I am making.
One of the most helpful things was to learn about grids – a concept in design that helps to contain your content. I wish I had known about this before – there are pros and cons, both practical and aesthetic when working with grids as I discovered yesterday while experimenting. But knowing about grids has already had an impact on how I do things along with the results.
Cover experiment after learning about grids
Current experiment – inner cover page
Cover after working with Situationist
Initial Cover
Click on image to see full example. I was pleased when one of the people giving feedback for the BOW A2 zine noticed I had left text off the cover altogether. It really suited that zine and I like it too. Here, I wanted to experiment with having internal text on the cover as opposed to an image or title, or both of those. But as much as I like that idea, I am not sure it is the right option for this particular manifestation of this work now. However, there is still time and I am playing with options. Even so, if I do go that route, I will use grids to explore how I do that.
Overall, there was lots of information which was invaluable such as bookbinding types and brief explanations about each of the different types of printers – inkjet, laser, digital and litho. For someone who has just muddled through, picking things up as I go, this was all very helpful. The course was also delivered in a coherent and easy to digest way.
In terms of concept vs. content, I thought about my work and where it is positioned. The concept is integral – although perhaps not quite as extreme as Henner’s above (but maybe it is….) It is in the very idea of a book’s existence, with images and text that are in a contest for attention (as they are nowadays), along with printing – all language materials within the story of structuralism – which are fixed until uploaded and shared as coded material. And so the content is key – but it is not key that I took a series of beautifully made images. Rather, I have literally taken them from places such as old books, a found newspaper (actually found in the attic next to my son’s bedroom! Thank you to him) and rephotographed referencing Benjamin and countless others. What is key, is the entangled relationship between those images and texts, how they came about, along with me, the proprietary collaborator, potential viewers, and the containers they exist in. And that is also why the grids are so important here – they not only provide an internal skeleton for the work, they represent the internal skeleton of our reality and the theory of structuralism. This is why I really need to have an internet-based version/cousin of this work to accompany the publication. Of course, the images matter and are teeming with references and symbolism – but could ultimately have been any collection of images – i.e. I did not have to go to Aberyswyth and stand in a mine with my camera and make a body of work.
We also looked at text. It was good to see several examples of inserted text – at the end, in the middle, as a separate book, or a collection of separate books/pamphlets that could be read in any order. I am still thinking about the text which I have yet to write but for now, erring on a slightly different sized and textures paper within the book at some point. Having different paper and sized pages as a notion was further imprinted for me as an idea worth persuing when I began working with the Situationist magazines.
I have been inspired by the Situationist publications as discussed in late April.
This is not just an aesthetic choice (although the relationship between meaning and matter means it is hard to separate one from the other – see my essay). It is also because DeBord and his crew were looking at reconstructing society altogether, as well as the developing science that has inevitably led to that happening, although not as they might have wished. They also explore the entanglement of time, history and culture as I am doing. Since the early iterations, especially when I made the tiny handmade dummy book, I have felt that different paper and material should be used, including gatefolds. I had the idea of signifiers running riot, having a party – I think I even wrote about them at a rave at the Acropolis (maybe when the Ai seemed high and then on some sort of comedown, that’s where it had been!) I have no idea how this will be paid for yet, but I am not censoring myself and just going with it. I will find solutions and come up with alternatives when needed. But I am aware that it could all become too ‘cute’. While listening to LB, I thought about the possibility of making the work in a maths exercise book like one I’d used at school in the 70s/80s, with actual graph paper (the whole graph paper thing ties in with the notion that reality can be decoded and therefore re-coded, see DEVS (BBC2)) which underpins the work. While I like this idea, aspects will inevitably be there, but to literally do this risks the ‘too cute’ thing I want to avoid. The choice of paper should suggest, hint and point to – (as it does in the Situationist stuff) rather than overpower the concept.
I am now working on a version to send to printers for advice, estimates and warnings about what is not possible. I am extremely grateful to have had this excellent opportunity which will, hopefully, take the project into a different place. It was an invaluable experience and I’d definitely recommend others to try Lewis Bush’s courses out too. Fellow OCA Allan ONeill was also on the course and I look forward to chatting to him about it.
I must get the latest draft to printers so I can figure out how to go ahead, what can be done for BOW assessment, and what should be done in SYP. I then need to return to the essay to rewrite some bits, insert some stuff, remove etc. In the meantime, I have a pile of books next to me which I refer to as I edit and play with options including Pictures from Home (Sultan, Mack reprint), Foam Talent edition (2019), Soliquies and Soliloquies on Death (Martins) and several Situationist publications. I am also attending an online lecture on quantum science and decoding reality later this week, which is very exciting indeed!
I had a good chat with Ruth this morning – we mainly discussed how I could bring some sort of contextual written work in and what that might be.
I shared some early ideas and talked about the examples I’d seen recently – both over the years and recently as I specifically look for various ways of doing this. The Lewis Bush course I’ve been doing this week on book/zine-making has been invaluable and he has shared many relevant examples, some of which I will link to on this blog in another post next week.
As well as providing evidence of my experience producing a zine, this project should not be viewed as a separate appendage, but rather part of an ongoing discussion/exploration addressing deep and seismic structural changes in Western society. My inquiry looks at the move away from a Cartesian view of reality towards one that is more rhizome-like, I have cross-pollinated the work with images that appear in the zine and again in the later BOW publication, as well as taken a frame from a film I edited while making this work, shown at a group show facilitated by pic london (an OCA Blog post about it can be seen here).
This image appears in this family too and why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers
22/03/2020
I am submitting a zine which includes black and white images and text for A2. It will be roughly A5 (dependant on what options are available to me at this time).
Background
After submitting final DI&C work to Pic London, I was pleased to have it accepted. I was put in a group with five other artists and we worked across time and distance using the internet, following three workshops, on a group project. I was in Italy for much of that time.
Three strands of work emerged for me and I had to make choices about what I did with what.
i. a film made with found footage inspired by conversations that had taken place between all of us in person and via FB messenger.
ii. a sequence of colour images taken with flash (which I personally prefer compared to the black and white ones)
iii. another sequence of images I rendered black and white in LR – it suits the mood best, sombre – see below
As well, I wrote something which was inspired by my time in Italy and the conversations I had with the other artists and how the project made me feel, included in the Pic London show, then point ii. above which I’m not submitting.
The inclusion of the text is an important step for me – and shows development in further work where text plays such a big role. Text has long been critical in my work but the creative rather then essay-like style is a step in a new direction.
At the moment, I am NOT submitting each of these elements for the OCA. Just the Zine but including background information to show how it came about. I have chosen to do this as it shows steps towards the development of the anthology I’m creating for my main submission – i.e. creative text and image in book form.
While all of this was going on, Trump’s government was on shutdown and the tragedy of Brexit being argued about. There were fires, dreadful heatwaves and fascism was showing its ugly face in more and more places.
BOW Assignment 2 original
There was so much work coming out of this collaboration and not all it sat well together. I ended up submitting the writing and the coloured images (see above) to my tutor for A2. I like them but after some time, I felt they were not sitting with the writing as well as they might. I played around with the black and white images and decided they should be valued and put them on my website. A little while later I started thinking about putting them in a zine format. And shared an early example on this blog. This week I have written the introduction and reset the text.
After chatting about the work yesterday with the TV group, I have decided several things
The cover will simply be an image, no title or other text.
I am thinking of moving the intro to the back or elsewhere – need to experiment – to break with linear convention. In A4, I am opting for a very strict structure that follows traditional anthology inside of which the signifiers will be allowed to rit and party. But here the signifiers are less chaotic so there may be room for containing structure to be more flexible.
Questions
Please compare intro texts and let me know which is stronger. The short one in the PDF doesn’t give away too much but maybe it needs more.
Does the longer text spoonfeed people?
It’s currently called This Family Too. This links to This Family – my very first assessment project – which linked to Family of Man. I have the book still. But I think it might be better called On The Edge of the Village
Finally – I am concerned about the image with the swimming ring. It is plastic made in China and says so in text on it – the sequence and edit was made before Trump started spouting his shite, and for me referenced shifts re the West’s global consumerism and the East’s increasing power. Like the later (currently A4) work, this project looks at entanglement – time, culture, waves, intra-action of phenomena, walls – manmade and natural. We discussed this at length yesterday – people reassured me, it did not seem like I was suggesting Trumpian xenophobia, although I could choose to clone out the Made in China to be safe, which I had considered. But we also discussed dangers of self-censorship. I recall Rachal Maclean saying when she made her film pre-Scottish referendum that both sides of the debate assumed her film was on their side due to its ambiguity. If my own work can contain an element of that ambiguity, that would be good. But if it just seems like an accusation I will need to remove the wording at the very least. I’d like to know what others think, please.
This project emerged while working on a collaborative project titled A rumour reached the village. While the poem was included in the resulting exhibition, these particular images were not. These various manifestations were made when I visited my mother in Ferentillo, Italy, for the duration of the summer school holidays in 2019. While there, it was impossible not to consider the political uncertaintyaffecting Europe, along with increasing levels of tension and fascism being witnessed globally.
The United Kingdom’s transitional exit period officially began in January 2020. By March, all of Europe was in lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Italy has, at the time of writing, been one of the most severely affected outside of China. The UK was one of the last European countries to introduce severe restrictions on movement and social interaction but looks to be heading in the same direction as Italy in terms of loss.
The village of Ferentillo consists of two wards, each with their own crumbling, medieval hilltop castle built for observation, protection and a place from which to call the alarm in case of danger. It is known for its museum beneath the crypt of the Church of Santo Stefano, where naturally-mummified bodies are displayed in glass cases. Some bodies are nearly four centuries old, the youngest is from the nineteenth century. The preserved inhabitants include birds and animals, villagers and visitor’s from afar, including China.
The work is made to acknowledge the fragility and ingenuity ofhumankind, and the entanglement of past, present and future, as well as financial, cultural and organic systems. It emphasises the fleeting moments of ourpersonal experiences; and celebrates, as well asrecognises, that which is greater than the individual. It focuses on cultural structures and natural phenomena, growth, and the vastness of existence. It is the third project I have made in the area.
A well-written, constructed and ambitious essay. The questions you are asking are (too?) huge (yes too huge but see end of report for rationale for sticking with it) and you offer a genuine attempt to answer some of these difficult and pressing questions about the nature of perception and the difficulties of the shifting photographic (and beyond) landscape.
The specific examples of art work that you give to try to unpick your ideas are really useful for the reader and help to emphasis your philosophical points. I, for one, would have enjoyed more of these to help me get to grips with some of these ideas! I do plan to add more, including more of my own – the work is in development. There are some minor grammatical and spelling errors that I have circled that are easy to remedy. Thanks
I am left with a couple of critical points that you might like to address in your final draft, if you think appropriate.
1 I know that you are specifically addressing photography (and at times the moving image) in the context of this essay but on a couple of occasions when reading through (I have scribbled comments in the margins if you can read my writing!) I felt that you were distancing photography from other modes of production that do not suffer from the same Cartesian problems (performance art, participatory art practice?). This is problematic because you are, in part, discussing huge problems, ideas and world views that if critiqued solely (or predominantly, at least) through the photographic lens, can lead to a falsely narrow view – the very thing that you are suggesting is problematic with the way that we (in the West) think about and represent the world. This is a good point – and I will find a way to underline the discussion could apply to various ‘isolated objects – i.e. disciplines’ within the arts. And, of course, to politics, academia, and economics – to a general mindset in the West. But, that due to my course, I am looking through the lens of photography (of the academic art sort), which as it happens, is particularly guilty of the charges laid. There is probably too much to say about the split in western consciousness (logic vs ‘feeling’) – rationalised in the Cartesian era, and eventually expressed in photography, hence the inclusion of Cassandra as a figure – so maybe worth finding a way. Photography (of the academic art type) often seems incredibly myopic. And whatever flaws it has in relation, are compounded by what comes across as a fragile ego and the subsequent manifestation of that, a horrible superiority complex – which leads to work that claims to be about universal issues but often seems about little more than its own insecurities.
It may be that you haven’t emphasised your reasons for concentrating on photography in the essay (because you are studying on a photography course? See above). As well as continuing to be the most dominant form of representation for consumers, the photographic community all too often alienates itself from other modes of representation. This is not, unfortunately, as a way of creating an objective distance to help the debate, rather as a way of protecting itself from intruders as well as for commercial reasons (see above). Interestingly, the very people who seek to critique the medium from the inside (Hilliard, Arnett et al.), arguably do the opposite; the further alienate photography from a wider discourse?
2 I say the following reservedly, wanting to avoid a panicked inclusion of unnecessary material, but: You have done well to avoid bogging yourself down with too much of a description of quantum theory but I wonder if there is room for a little more help for the uninitiated reader? I suspect a few tweaks here and there could shift this impression. There is also a very good bit from Barad where she stresses classical and quantum models do not describe two different worlds. They describe the same world but from different points of view/perspectives. I already identified I should probably make sure that’s in there somewhere.
3 Does your conclusion adequately sum up your argument? Do you need to refer more to quantum theory here? Yes, I should. Or will this confuse rather than illuminate?
I agree with comments made on the document by hand that the conclusion needs to be longer. I will also delete the bits you say you got lost in – I have clearly been unable to describe myself properly there and am looking for areas to cut: the bits I can’t explain properly for lack of thorough understanding is probably a good place to start.
The main ‘flaw’ with the essay is that it is too big a subject to be dealt with in 5000+/- words. However, the issue is so pressing, so unbelievably important that the disadvantages of sticking with it are outweighed by the need. The hubris of the ‘single-authored’ hero mentality that dominates our culture has completely destroyed our habitat. Barad’s theory (which has been so important to New Materialism – a term I purposely didn’t mention in the essay as there were enough new words and categories to contend with) underpins a way of thinking that promotes the rejection of human (white/male/western) exceptionalism. Today, that is so pressing – and it cannot be stressed enough. As I write it, that mentality is being played out in the worst way possible. Perhaps my essay will not change many minds, but it will influence my circle of people and I have already seen some of these ideas have an impact on others. It’s vital that we all find small ways to shift the destructive mindset we Westerners have assumed is natural and fixed for too long.
“So what are the consequences of this for art? What trends or symptoms can we delineate? The most startling is the rise of so-called ‘art writing’, as both a recognised practice and an academic discipline, and with it the growth in the market for the quasi-literary journal. F.R.DAVID, Dot Dot Dot, 2HB, The Happy Hypocrite, Cabinet and a wealth of other eccentrically named journals/magazines/collections/ catalogues/zines reflect a burgeoning interest in the written word – and not just the written word, but the word transcribed in a perishable material object, a book. The rise of this bibliophile tendency has come hand-in-hand with an increased interest in archive studies and it reflects a renewed Foucauldian concern with how knowledge is produced and logged, who owns and interprets it, and who speaks and on behalf of whom. It has also paralleled the rise of the internet, the blog and the portable digital reading device. The relative safety of the paper-bound book within contemporary art circles may suggest a negative reaction to the digitising of artistic production, a skewed romanticism where books are the final ruins of modernity, a Tintern Abbey for the digital age.” (Douglas, 2011)
I found this article particularity interesting in relation to the experiments I have been doing – attempting to work as an interdisciplinary multi-media creator who uses images and text, along with digital processes – especially digital as I abhor the skewed romanticism we apply to older forms while denigrating newer forms. This is made even more unpalatable when you consider how accessible and potentially egalitarian the newer forms are. (See my DI&C essay).
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