Conceptual Theory

Qubits and rebuilding my world /  by Justin Harrison

Uh oh now I’m in trouble, I’d forgotten my interest in Quantum physics - that it also entertains the binary disruption by permitting both to be possible at the same time. And yet why do I separate my art and physics - psychologically I compartmentalise them, yet they are one and the same.

I discovered a short video on programming a Quantum Qubit and how it models the existence of non binary states. I don’t know how much I can get into this as its counter to my preferred ways of thinking - I’m not mathematical or science inclined so it’s a push.

Libby Heaney is an award winning, London based artist with an unusual background. She holds a PhD and worked as a researcher in quantum physics - a discipline Einstein called “spooky” and Penrose said “makes absolutely no sense”.

Now resident at Somerset House Studios in London, Heaney creates sticky entanglements between moving image, performance, installation, sculpture and print, usually combining these with advanced technologies such as machine learning, game engines & quantum computing - a new type of computer that processes information based on the weird laws of quantum physics.

Now this get’s interesting for me because it begins to draw the key areas I’m interested around Derrida - difference, Khora and kinetics out of academic theory into science and the physical world. She discusses removing the emphasis from the individual as modelled in modern western philosophy into a deep interconnectivity. To the point that with entanglement of atoms, photons they become impossibly connected and loose their individuality, so deeply connected - that if you try to remove an individual out it destroys the system.

She says that reality isn’t about individuality but relationality.

Again I feel the sense of the kinetic and the Khora. Somehow there is a remodelling of priorities down to a quantum level. What we count as the logic blocks of our existence are deconstructed and represented.

 

Khora: The Hermeneutics of Hyphenation /  by Justin Harrison

I found a curious connection whilst researching in a paper entitled Khora: The Hermeneutics of Hyphenation by John Manoussakis. I don’t understand it all and I don’t know that I agree with it all, but towards the end I did find some parts that are interesting.

Outside the city of Istanbul there is an ancient monastery that is known to all the sources under this odd name: the Monastery of Chora (an alternative transliteration for "khora").1 Its unusual eponymy is explained by its even more extraodinary frescos and mosaics that dated back to the fourteenth century. It’s iconographic program includes depictions of both Virgin Mary and Christ that bear the same inscription alike: The Khora

In the first of the two plates we can see a mosaic of the Virgin the inscription reads' {The Khora of the uncontainable).

In the second plate, Christ is depicted with an inscription that and reads as follows: ' (He Khora ton Zonton = the khora of the Living)


In the paper he goes on to explain:

During the Incarnation, Platonic khora, serves as the intermediate, the triton genos (man and the divine; she [Mary] is the point of contact between the the two poles of all dualisms (Greek or Jewish); she is the overlapping place of the two circles, their meeting place and of course, the hymen that hyphenates them. Like the receptive character of khora, Mary receives the entire deity within her body without appropriating it into herself. Thus, she becomes a paradox, an antinomy, the chore of the akhoron, a topos that sustains what is a-topos and u-topos: the receptacle of the un-receivable, the container of the uncontainable.

In the second plate, Christ is depicted with an inscription that runs in both sides and reads as follows: ' (He Khora ton Zonton = the chore of the Living). Christ is par excellence the khora that receives both humility creation in their entirety, but with no confusion, in His incarnate person. The Incarnate Christ bears the same characteristics that ruled over His hyphenated birth: neither exclusively God nor quite Human, but both God and Human; neither just the Word nor only Flesh, but the Word who became Flesh; neither high in the heavens nor down on the earth, but the channel through which the heavens emptied onto the earth and the earth ascended in the heavens.

I don’t fully understand this but then there are elements that I am very interested in, The Khora and emptying out in relation to Christ and Mary as intermediate - between man and divine. The liminal?

In his paper Manoussakis sources Derrida and John Caputo’s work on Derrida, a key source to my research. I like it when connections present themselves to me, its encouraging.


 

Notes on das ding /  by Justin Harrison

Been having a little root around the work of Rick Boothby and Das Ding. Another research rabbit hole courtesy of Jonathan K.

I need to get my head around this but I have the sneaky suspicion that there are some juicy connections to be found amongst, Das Ding (The Unkowable) and Differance. The Abyss, the void, the sacred and anxiety.

Sometimes I land upon certain words or the relationship between words - ‘points of intersection’. I guess that’s why I also write poetry within my work. And ‘anxiety’ has caught my attention. Boothby touches upon this and the Abyssal, the unknown

“What is unknown in the fellow human being”.

“At bottom anxiety is not without an object. It is directly related to the most profound object - das ding. The object that has no exactly known content. The Abyssal object. The primordial stimulant of anxiety.” Boothby reporting Lacan.

“The object potentially being the unrecognisable facet of another human or human object”

Subtracted space.

Uncertainty, Incompleteness. - What we cannot know. Das Ding. Unknowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmBOWQOrH7g

///

Inadvertently I also found a lecture by Stuart Hall on race as a floating signifier. which I need to explore. The notion of a sliding signifier feels like it has a relation to Differance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PodKki9g2Pw

 

Post paper reflections /  by Justin Harrison

Well I've submitted my research paper. And it's given me a lot to think about - been thinking a lot of things, a lot. Right now post submitting the paper I'm just please I can still dress myself in the morning. It's been challenging. The logic of writing formal papers is not something that comes easily to me and so it's taken a lot to pull the intuitive understanding into something cogent. I've had to dig deep and put in a lot of late nights.

In no particular order - more a brain dump, the following are the significant things that have arisen from writing the paper.

What I want to research following submitting the paper:

There is a Metric ton of stuff I want to look into further:

Derrida: Differance, Hauntology Spectral - Differance god creativity.

Bhabha: Translation and Displacement

Bhabha: Location of Culture - Read

Benjamin: translation

Reading the language of art through Derrida('s approaches).

Wittigstein

Marxism, and Karl Marx.

I do note that there are no artist listed her, I do find it hard to identify artists who's work I particularly like. Often it's bits and essences of one and then another.

The truth is II really kinda got lost in the research and it was hard to focus in to a specific area. Most of my summer was investigative. I covered a lot of ground and also feel like a discovered some significant commonality across key theory. Derrida, Deleuze, Bhabha, Cixous, Benjamin.

That what Homi Bhabha said about Anish Kapoor connected with what Derrida was saying about 'differance' and that connected with what Deleuze and Guittari were saying in 'Minor Literatures' and that came back to another lecture by Homi Bhabha on 'DIsplacement and Translation' which incidentally I am still working through as it touches heavily on the liminal, language and translation. That translation could be a significant area around the movement of language, meaning and identity. Which all then goes off into post colonial theory, displacement and hybrid identites - again not something I could fit into the paper.

'Sigh'... and then there's Hamlet which has now become way more interesting after investigating Derrida's 'Spectres of Marx', also socialism, Marxism and Karl Marx.

It's was hard for me to finalise on a title, and to be honest the paper was forming as I wrote it and rewrote it. The title came at about 2:00am Monday morning the day of the deadline. Probably not the best way to go about it, but that seemed to be my process - an intuitive understanding and attraction to certain ares of art, language and thinking. Which eventually coalesced.

I'm genuinely pleased with some of the things I've discovered and at the same time at concerned that they are bullshit and will get torn apart by a close reading. The framework for understanding the liminal feels like a really useful tool and I feel better able to work with it as a specific concept rather than a woolly vagueness that it seems to have become.

One thing that has been foremost in my mind, has been the conceptual underpinning of my practice, I’ve wanted it to be clearer and not inchoate. I’ve had a preoccupation about language for a long time and I am happy that it’s further being woven in. I realise that this sphere is huge and I have only just begun however seeing threads of commonality, weaving in is very satisfying.

I'm tentatively thinking about a 'Theory of incompleteness' which is part of the conclusion of the paper and research. And curiously was the subject of a discussion I was listening to today on Ludwig Wittgenstein. The more I research I see increasing variables and uncertainty, may be that's a good thing, being an artist and the state we live and make art work in.

I'd like to collate all the notes I've been making - I figure it could be quiet a useful document, to pull together all notes and thoughts that didn’t go into the paper.

I think especially what's been useful is to collect together specific things that appear in my art work and to begin to better understand elements that are appearing in my own practice. There is growing thought about the history of materials, the history they posses and how that can affect and appear in the work - a hauntology of materials the spectres of materials.

I feel like I need to be back in the studio - to have a time of reflection and meditation. There has been a lot happening and I don't think I have come close to processing it. There has-been change in some of the direction of the work especially around the group criteria we had, were it transpired that a short gift animation was working better than I had realised and this could be a direction that could open out my work.

I keep on wanting to write more as I feel that this has been a really significant experience but I also feel like I’m waffling - which in light of the past 2 months I could do with a break from.

Film I also want to try and investigate film, that this could be a natural extension of my work, what it needs to further explore the thinking behind my work. Portraits of the ritualised tools of passage. I like portraits.

In researching form my paper I’ve found studying in depth Ursula von Rydingsvards practice very helpful to study; her way of making; her freedom - her use of uncertainty deep respect for her materials. I’ve heavily borrowed from her studio practice where she makes what she calls ‘little nothings’, shorter intuitive studies.

I also feel more confident to talk about my work my critical enquiries. Conceptual underpinning that integrates with my instincts, the connection to language through Derrida’s approaches to text and meaning. Then in a general notion to make as much as I think, rather than over think and not make. Which is a great temptation.

 

All Changes /  by Justin Harrison

I’m trying to pull everything together, I have various notes and ideas, there feels to be strong relationships between the elements I am discovering. So below are my latest notes and thoughts, for my research paper, which may need to change altogether from what I have submitted as a second draft….

Same not the same

"Strategy without finality" Derrida Differance - in Royale Nicholas Jacques Derrida p 153

There is no answer no unifying theory of everything

Change is constant

Territories and the liminal. Liminal Territories.

The liminal is constant change. The passage to transformation.

There will always be change - difference, differance. It brings creativity - progression - Transormation

Theory of incompleteness.

To accept change as a cleansing agent that protects us from structural stagnation.

"The question of difference within any society or culture is always conjunctural, ever-changing, and conditional. “Race” is not a permanent social category, but a historical product of slavery and human exploitation, an unequal relationship between social groups." Manning Marable Essay: https://items.ssrc.org/from-our-archives/black-studies-multiculturalism-and-the-future-of-american-education/

We cannot fill the void

We are incomplete

We will remain incomplete

The Liminal can never be resolved,

located in time

or space

or concept

The passage facilitates change

Movement

Accepting continuous change

Progressive generation.

"As he puts it in an essay entitled 'Ellipsis' (1967): 'Why would one mourn for the centre? Is not the centre, the absence of play and differance, another name for death?" Derrida in - Royale Jacques Derrida p 16

"For, always incomplete, of an incompletion which is not the negativity of lack, [deconstruction] is interminable, an' interminable analysis', ('theoretical and practical', as we used to say). As it is never closed into a system, as it is the deconstruction of the systemic totality, it needs some supplementary afterword each time it runs the risk of stabilising or saturating into formalised discourse (doctrine, method, delimitable and canonised corpus, teachable knowledge etc.)...[Deconstruction would be] afterword to the presence or presentation of the present itself." Derrida in - Royale Jacques Derrida p 145

The paddle as an agent of change/ movement

The presence and nature of change in UVR/artists work. Passage and Transformation.

UVR's Little nothings complete in their incompleteness.

Are her little nothings incomplete?

UVR Haunting of materials - age, presence agency, repetition

"After Derrida, one has to reckon with 'presences' that are neither simply inside nor categorically outside the text" Royal Nicholas, Jacques Derrida P149

Hauntings an 'incomplete presence' in the art, in the materials physicality, treatment and in the movement of the artist 'passaging'.

Neither inside or outside of the art. The meaning neither inside or outside the artwork

See below also 'Included Middle" as key connection, regarding the position of a thing as neither inside or outside.

The First Incompleteness Theorem provides a counterexample to completeness by exhibiting an arithmetic statement which is neither provable nor refutable in Peano arithmetic, though true in the standard model. The Second Incompleteness Theorem shows that the consistency of arithmetic cannot be proved in arithmetic itself. Thus Gödel’s theorems demonstrated the infeasibility of the Hilbert program, if it is to be characterized by those particular desiderata, consistency and completeness.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/

Heisenberg noticed that there are cases where the straightforward classical logic of A and not-A does not hold. He pointed out how the traditional law of Excluded Middle has to be modified in Quantum Mechanics. In general cases at the macro scale, the law of Excluded Middle would seem to hold. Either there is a table here, or there is not a table here. There is no third position. But in the Quantum Mechanical realm, there are the ideas of superposition and possibility, where both states could be true. 

The Included Middle is a conceptual model that overcomes dualism and opens a frame that is complex and multi-dimensional, not merely one of binary elements and simple linear causality. We have now come to comprehend and address our world as one that is complex as opposed to basic, and formal tools that support this investigation are crucial. The Included Middle helps to expose how our thinking process unfolds. When attempting to grasp anything new, a basic “A, not-A” logic could be the first step in understanding the situation. However, the idea is then to progress to the next step which is another level of thinking that holds both A and not-A. The Included Middle is a more robust model that has properties of both determinacy and indeterminacy, the universal and the particular, the part and the whole, and actuality and possibility. The Included Middle is a position of greater complexity and possibility for addressing any situation. Conceiving of a third space that holds two apparent contradictions of a problem is what the Included Middle might bring to contemporary challenges in consciousness, artificial intelligence, disease pathologies, and unified theories in physics and cosmology.

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27155

///

Draw on paddle with clay?

UVR Transformation of materials in form and concept?

What is this deep love of materials for her?

A strong sense of history and of time passed.

"I always have a specific vision of what I want in my head, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to start. Other than that, I rely on instinct. I honestly don’t understand it, but I also know something else so clearly. Earlier today, I was working on a required legal document and I felt like a child. I felt so stupid in regard to my lack of understanding and the fact that I don’t want to understand them, but I have to because I’m grown-up, or whatever. I feel completely different in the world where I make my art… it’s so clear to me that this is what I was born to do. And it’s not as though anything is absolute, or definite, or defined." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"Titles do have a meaning for me, but I don’t want them to have that meaning for anybody else. For this reason, many of the titles I give my works are in Polish and are often not translated. I refer to my sculptures as “bowls” but hate it because they are not bowls. They are an excuse to do all these things that can conceptually feel like fabric, or like the ocean waves. I cannot compete with actual waves, but I can make forms in an entirely new way. Trying my hand at these wave-like structures, I like when there is unexpected movement, or where it does something that it shouldn’t or is not supposed to. It’s as if they misbehave." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

When you attended Columbia in the early ’80s, Minimalism was all the rage. Did you ever connect to that movement?

If you made work with a figure, you’d be dead in the water without any hope to show in a gallery. The minimalists were really in power for many years and they had a haughty idea of what was right and what was wrong in art. The minimal look is minus feelings and full of philosophy and erudite high-end talk. It’s so not me, although it’s not that I didn’t borrow from them either. I borrowed the grid from Sol LeWitt, and their use of repetition. UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"The grid is my guardian." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"That’s the best thing about art, you can’t label it. You won’t find an answer, ever." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"I come from generations of Polish peasant farmers. I’ve always been inspired by their tools and wood piles. There is nothing that is superfluous." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

 

Interstices /  by Justin Harrison

In the intersticies the edges are blurred , indefined, indistinct. There is no clear demarcation, margin, boundary. Yet the apperature is clearly perceivable.

The liminal represents the free play, the opportunity for change. The change in the angle of vision, the change in space, time, concept. It is the opening up, where deconstruction can operate freely and generate the new. Broader passages of movement.

Hauntology, spectral, third space, void these too are different angles of vision through interstices.

Everything and nothing, liminal and void, inside and outside, interior and exterior. These appear binary terms - where is in between these? Differance?

We fear change. Being in passage. The moments of uncertainty. Movement.

Change - Passage - Is movement.

Again - Differance free play.

Stasis is a little death. Stagnancy.

Do I make ritualised tools of passage?

 

Same, not the same /  by Justin Harrison

In the introduction to Foucault’s book ‘The order of Things’ the author references an old encyclopedia with various classifications, in which is a category of ‘Things that from far away look like flies’.

Whilst it is tempting to make comparisons, we must remember our positionality, not just spatially but temporally, conceptually, socially and critically.

Homi Bhabha describes that there are differing scalar effects of different angles of view through the intersticies. And perhaps I wonder - that one can be so far off that perception is skewed and really comparisons cannot be made.

Perhaps imagine a toy cow 🐄, go to a field of cows hold it up and they might even look the same, in colour, form and scale. However one is not a cow, you won’t get milk out of it. They are the same but not the same.

 

Cleft Paddle - Same, not the same. /  by Justin Harrison

Same, not the same.

More paddles, there is some kind of satisfaction in making these. Touching on presence and absence, time and space. I am also tempted to return to the ‘imaginary bundles’ stacking elements in and around. Items being grouped, bundled and divisible.

I do wonder about the drawing technique - is it too simplistic? Childish. I find it is a useful short hand to explore the negative, which I am also making up larger in card. I still want to make large drawings more involved and descriptive.

Also what am I saying about the paddle? Anish Kapoor talks with Homi Bhabha about making series - the value to it. But I don’t want to be repetitive and not develop my visual language alongside my research.

I keep on finding more connections to space and time and I’m not sure I can justifiable pull them altogether. I’ll try to document as much as possible but it feels like the accumulation of information and evidence is becoming overwhelming. Just trying to find a system to categorised and catalogue everything would be a work of art worthy of an MA in itself.

 

Rabbit Holes /  by Justin Harrison

In thinking and researching about ‘Belonging’, ‘Boundaries’, ‘Transformation’ ‘Formation’

I have been looking at Derrida a lot, his exploration of ‘Differance’ ‘Trace’ Deconstruction’, ‘Spectres’ and ‘Hauntology’. I have now discovered Homi Bhabha. I see similarities of thought and approach, descriptions and models. I don’t know either work well enough to specifically state what exact differences or similarities they share. However I do feel the readings I have already made around Derrida - help me to being to approach Bhaba’s work.

I am also aware that Bhaba criticises Derrida’s work in falling short and failing to address Ethnocentricity and yet…

I do find the exploration of Space more specifically the third space and linguistics very interesting and return to my own enquiries to the language of art, navigation of change and the liminal.

Translation, Afterlife, Ghosts.

It’s a Rabbit hole I fear to go down, the depth of both authors work feels beyond me.

Translating transformation by documenting change. Looking back at the afterlife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVQcdbSV6OI

 

On the floor /  by Justin Harrison

I’m sat in the library, although I might as well be sat on the floor. It feels a more comfortable place. I’m dizzy. In researching for my paper I’ve journeyed a lot with Ursula von Rydingsvard and her making from marginality. This is all in concern to the liminal and transformation. Derrida haunts me all the time with notions of difference and Hauntology, the phenomena or not of spectres. And now I’ve taken a sharp left and have started looking at Homi Bhabha. He speaks of the ‘Third space’ and ties it to creativity and making in concern to Anish Kapoor.

Kapoor repeatedly presents us with an ambiguity of locating the self in space and time. The void is cast before us in multiple iterations, refusing to abate. But I haven’t studied Kapoor so much and some days I find him pompous. Yet I do see the significance of his work.

So now I have books surrounding me on Kapoor, Bhabha, Derrida oh and Deleuze I’ve been avoiding him but it was unavoidable. I keep on finding connections with "‘Terrain’ and ‘Territory’ ‘Translation’ - the connections make me wonder if everyone is all speaking about the same thing, or are they nuance or completely different and deserve the nomenclature, and dense books assigned to them?

I feel like I’m on to something but I can’t quiet pull it all in. This formlessness that is the generative. The Difference that permits us to create, be, not be. Make some sort of meaning.

It’s 14:55 I need to write more - write an intelligible draft. But then there’s my work too. I see more threads between my making and preoccupations. I’d draw a map yet I fear it will be of no use the moment I finish it.

Deleuze says;


The map is the production of an experimental reading, the word experiment being used here as John Cage uses it, "not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success and failure, but simply as an act the outcome of which is unknown."
Deleuze and Guattari - What is a minor Literature

There is a thread at least, of time and space and thought. That in the fluidity there is movement, a freedom to create. In creativity there is the power to imagineer and realise the new. Ownership is hard in the liminal.

 

Translation /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

Translation can be more than just. language:

Objects, people, time, thoughts, feelings, beliefs

Many things can be translated, their location and nature moved.

Categories are a important but not essential structure and often articles can 'bleed' through into another. Poetry can become a film, a book can become a painting. Death can become life.

In the moment of translation, something new and generative can happen. Through the interstices - Homi Bhabha.

There is a poetic sense that can be felt around the phenomena of translation, in addition it almost feels divine. That as an act it is the will of a deity becoming manifest.

 

Decay /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

Digital naustalgis - old school music and games

Safety of familiar

A structure that cannot decay is a structure that cannot provide space for the new. (Ref from video)

Also a structure that cannot decay cannot transform or have an afterlife, discover the new( (Depression of computers - Baudrillard))

Dragging behind the present

UvR’s work is decaying, but can have an afterlife.

Decay death transformation afterlife

brb

Video: Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg&t=1s

 

Age and time /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

In researching Ursula Von Rydingsvard for my research paper - I've come across a some ideas and material that connects with my practice - I'm curious about time, how it is perceived, approached and explored by the artist. Process is a key part of my practice and I see often that this relates to ideas of time and history. The layering of materials, techniques and processes. Building up and breaking down.

“Levi Strauss remarked on the laborious working process of layer-by-layer marking, sawing, and grinding, noting that “at each stage of the process, hundreds and thousands of marks were inscribedon the mass with pencil, saw, grinder and a variety of hand tools, adding up to a wearing down.” This ”adding up to a wearing down” Levi Strauss saw as “the back and forth of actual time, the time taken to mean it” and he added”

“Though this sculptor does not practice mimesis (her
humility precludes it), these human inscriptions
of eventfulness are echoed in the formation of tidepools, tree stumps,and river beds - minute quotidian world formative acts.
Thousands of marks made consciously,
leavened with kind cutsand crual, then leaded
down, blackened to absorb the light. A topology of
chambered need. An apparition of the dark.”

The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P 46 The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P 46

Also:


”Positioning her sculptures at the midpoint between metaphor and concreteness, she deliberately multiplies narrative possibilities through a va-et-vient of memory and action.” The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P89

And:

“Time puts all back into equalibrium, which is more in keeping with natural laws. I would like my work to be as though time acted upon it---avery long time.” UVR from her journal - (taken from The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard) p 82

Basic to her technique- which she surely developed in answer to a deep and indefinable need - is the element of repetition, the implicit statement that there are situations in life that have no beginning and no end. The arts in human history are threaded through with the impulse to escape calendar time (surely the basis of Islamic art), and many of von Rydingsvards routines suggest her need to enter the timeless universe of mythology. In casual remarks she has revealed her deep respect for ritual - the repetition of eternal gestures, always the same, in orderer to propriate the gods who themselves are always the same.” The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard p 60

To Ponder:

Time is variable and I don’t believe it can be considered constant, even atomic clocks cans show variance when subject to different gravities.

In addition the Ethiopian calendar and Persian calendar both differsto the Gregorian calendar commonly used by the west, what does this mean a global and then universal understanding of time? The Gregorian calendar cannot be the standard by which everything is measured.

By recycling and repurposing material like wood it’s age becomes multiple, the initial growth of the wood will have been progressively accumulated (demonstrated by the rings), then there will be the first intervention where it is constructed into an item - a chest of draws or scaffold plank, then the 2nd visitation rePlacing, rePurposing and refashioning where it can be made into another item, and then decomposition. Which age applies then tot he item and by what/who’s calendar? This relates again to Derrida and Spectres and time being ‘out of joint’

 

Spectres of Marx /  by Justin Harrison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJr0NwXWb6Q

Hamlet -”Time is out of joint”
Really useful video investigating Derrida’s concept of the Spectral. I’ve come back to this a couple of times. The idea of time manifesting in a non liar way creates space for reconsidering passage. And therefor the passage and place of transformation.

In looking to land on a specific line of enquiry for the research paper, I find this interesting. It sits well with the liminal and belonging. Expressions of the outsider and questioning who is on the inside, and how are these locations decided? Agreed upon and policed?

 

Paper Spectres /  by Justin Harrison

I realise I’m missing an opportunity after the MA sessions we have - I need to reflect on the sessions after each one, that I’m missing out on the thoughts and ideas that arise from each Thursday. Sounds obvious now I say it but I’ve been so focussed on my own practice that it didn’t occur to me. Plus I should just pretty much document anything - especially if everything is research.

Thursday’s photographic session was an interesting one as I didn’t have time to think, but just throw stuff together without too much consideration, the speed with which I wanted to work meant that it was very intuitive and unconscious. Normally I would have liked tie to think about what I would do and prepare materials. But coming straight from work and not quiet being sure of what was going to be asked, meant I had to work on the fly.

(((I find an interesting tension between working intentionally and intuitively, I see value in them both, but struggle to reconcile a way to work using both - although I wonder if this is the value to making the ‘little nothings’ that Ursula von Rydingsvard creates.)))

Taking the direnct transfer images I was still working true to my practice taking layered paper and collaging. It’s quiet close to my practice already. Accumulating images and working them back and forth. It’s a part of my visual language t he photographic image. I note how often I use photography as a means to thinking a nd documenting ideas.

What became more interesting was when I collated the images together and place. them as one long block on the Miro board. Putting all the images together made sense of them, the colours and movement through form, with elements being lost and captured.

How the images are captured on the paper has a ‘spectral’ quality (Derrida - Specters Of Marx) , it’s evidence of history, present and future across the same site. Unfixed the image won’t remain, and the image viewed is not how it will be in the future, or how it was. There is a ghostly presence on the paper which cannot be entreated to stay or name itself.

Currently I’m reading - Spectres of Marx by Derrida. I’ve moved onto this text following a conversation with someone more versed in Derrida and other associated writers. There are a number fo terms that Derrida uses in Literary critical analysis, Hymen, Trace, Differance, Spectural. Thera are all similar but different, and I need to get a little more familiar with them for the sake of my research and my sanity.

I’m especially liking the notion of the spectre it’s connects easily to what I am investigating with my research paper and own art practice. More time with it is needed, as there are nuanced motifs in what I am reading that play out in my own work - especially the choice of materials. In discussion with Jonathan during a turutorail we discussed how the history of a material (a fence panel) has a key role for me in the nature and language of the art work I am making. That it becomes woven into the heart of the artwork and it’s integrity, even though it may not be clear to the viewer.

 

Transformation and Thought /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

I’ve been pondering transformations, the working title of my Study Statement. What territories therein might I explore. Historically I’ve looked at death, however this area is a little heavy handed, prone to cliche, it potentially lacks subtlety and therefore limits the capacity of my research…potentially.

In my feedback from the assessment I was encouraged to consider smaller transformations and what they might look like. One that has come into view is that of our ‘thoughts’. Changing our mind. Changing out thoughts - changes us, can transform us and can even manifest physically. Although ‘thought’ also covers such a huge discipline and field of enquiry. However the mind is very interesting, it’s still an uncharted territory, with neurological breakthroughs and discoveries regularly being made, the sphere of our thought also holds its own great mysteries.

I find it interesting as Dr Caroline Leaf talks about how thoughts turn into real estate, chemicals and proteins, in her book ‘Switch On Your Brain’. Which connects to the idea ‘from nothing comes something’. Belief into substance. Similarly in Derridas work touches on the formless space/non space of Khora and differance.

Earlier I asked the question where is the nursery of our beliefs, where do beliefs herald from? Now I begin to wonder if beliefs are born of a seed thought sustained. A choice. We choose our beliefs. Yet such a small essence that can have global implications

So how does this play into my practice based research? What am I trying to say or explore? What is the passage and place of a thought?

Maybe more neurological research? However the fills me with dread - more dense text…

 

Dislocated /  by Justin Harrison

Transformation at my shoulder. (Image my own)

Reading Derrida’s ‘Structure Sign and Play’ is hard work. But then I didn’t expect it to be easy. I’m looking for something in his writing that I don’t even know if it’s there. I will push into some other peoples writing on him but I also wanted to look at his work firsthand.

There are some interesting phrases and I’m not sure that I properly grasp what he is investigating however I find it’s slow burn with him, that fragments gradually become more apparent and useful as I mulch over them.

Some key points/quotes for now:

  • The impossibility of the centre of a structure being inside the structure. (Paraphrase)

  • “The centre had no natural locus” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p2

  • “We have no language - no syntax and no lexicon - which is alien to this history; we cannot utter a single destructive proposition which has not already slipped the from, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p2

  • Evasion of the binary. Ideas and articles occupying more than one position at the same time.

  • “without the risk of erasing difference [altogether] in the self identity of a signified reducing into itself it’s signifier, or, what amounts to the same thing, simply expelling it outside itself”

  • “had been dislocated, driven from it’s locus, and forced to stop considering itself as the culture of reference.” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p3

  • “language bears within itself the necessity of it’s own critique” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p5

  • “The superabundance of the signifier, it’s supplementary character, is thus the result of a finitude, that is to say, the result of a lack which must be supplemented.” Derrida ‘Structure sign and Play’ p11

  • There is something about when reduction occurs, that it cannot but help be generative. Distillation seems impossible because that the act of it, creates the new. Similar to the decomposition of a body. The reduction is infinitely more generative. Death as a creative force.

 

T up >> T down<< /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

In writing my Study statement - I began to think about Transformation in a particular model. The problem with models is they are often wrong. Things don’t fit into categorisation or structure neatly - but it’s a way of temporarily holding the information for me, a way of looking at it - till I find a better way…

Actually a lot came out of writing my Assessment and Study statement, I’ve not considered my practice, art or interests so formally before. It was hard, I had a headache after posting it all. But so worth it, to find structure, plans and actually discover that my interests do connect.

Does transformation exist in two differing states that cycle round:

Transformation down <<

In the transformation down<<<  the process of deconstruction, decomposition. The gradual and eventual disassembly of structure, division of cells, molecules and elements.  

A rendering down to constituent parts.

“Everything is divisable” (Derrida)

Transformation up >>

In transformation up>>> looking at the coalescence, aggregation, cumulation of elements or events. The newness of creation. Being RePlaced. Becoming new, becoming more.

A circle of transformation cycling through stages of Life>>>Death >>> Decomposition >>> Creation>>>New life>>>

“Far from being ‘dead,’ however, a rotting corpse is teeming with life. A growing number of scientists view a rotting corpse as the cornerstone of a vast and complex ecosystem, which emerges soon after death and flourishes and evolves as decomposition proceeds.” (Mo Costandi (2017). Life after death: the science of human decomposition. [online] the Guardian).

So in light of the nature of Derrida's approach to deconstructions and undecidability - where in his thinking does he reference a constructive approach? What if anything isn’t left undone -  Reinscription? Somewhere I read about a part of his work that touched on this but cannot remember which book it was.

I need to locate more specific and rigorous texts that at least allude to something akin to Transformation up>>>

 

Disrupted averages /  by Justin Harrison

Image: My own

Disrupted averages (Concept - Jonathan Kearney)

In the studio I have an hour or so.

Not long///

I have left items out on the desk from my last visit. I do it to provoke myself. It’s irritating and funny at the same time. Pieces of textured leather  - favourite tools. It all makes me want to make things immediately - the materials speak, not a language I entirely understand but it is language none the less.

I hang some large watercolour paper I have plans for - been day dreaming about making huge black ink drawings. Bold and sensitive, ink dispersing to granular clouds of vapour.

My phone is a pain in the arse and kepis turning off ###

Disrupt your averages/// 

I tried to make something in a hurry tonight. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I decide I have to make something in the next hour, using what I have collected or hoarded around me. This means working fast, the opposite of what I normally do, usually I take long, considering, measuring, crafting experimenting. This has to go out the window.

So I begin, I keep it simple. I take two pieces of wood  cut the other day. I had plans for them, but I can always cut more. (I have a generous supply of old fence panel wood stashed in the corner). Playing with the two pieces in different arrangements I decide I want to join them somehow, I consider plaster but know this will take too long, instead I cut a small piece of leather with the intention to make a cuff to join them.

I’m already breaking my own rules by not sharpening my head knife first - it should cut in one or two passes - it takes too many and leaves slight double edge. I cringe internally and move on.

Then get annoyed an go back and clean it up, but quickly. Next I soak the leather to wet form it. I run it under a tap - ideally I’d leave it in a clean bowl of warm water and watch the bubbles ecstatically escape the back of the leather but again this all takes time. The skin takes long to relax under the cold water. Like me it's cold.

As I fold the leather around the wood and clamp it - I realise that it’s too small compositionally, intuitively I want a larger cuff - to have more presence. I should have seen this before I started.

Then I have a some realisations as the hour comes to a close///

  1. I’m no way gonna finish in time.

  2. I failed and that’s fine.

  3. I will need to cut more leather and reform it and wait for it to dry.

    Thats annoying ### It’s annoying as its wasteful, and is gonna cost me time and finance. Then it occurs to me that this is an issue for me. Like a big issue. I don’t like to waste anything, because I can’t afford to. I realise that historically I have always worked very carefully and methodically and meticulously. I thought it was because I liked well made work. (I do - but that’s not the point) It’s mostly because I’m afraid to make mistakes. I’ve learnt to work this way to not spend money or make errors.

I think about the maxim - the rich stay rich while the poor get poorer. (This week it was announced that the worlds 10 richest men have doubled their wealth over the past two years whilst more people have fallen into poverty).

I wonder if rich culture increases and advances, because it can innovate far quicker, it doesn’t need to conserve its resources. It can afford to waste a few prototypes, raw materials, money and make mistakes. Where as poorer cultures work must work carefully and methodically with the precious few commodities or compromise instead, still creative and innovative, but advancing at a slower speed.

I also realise:

  1. All the work I've done is really useful and informative and it's ok to experiment and waste a little bit of leather. No time has been wasted but well spent exploring. It's informative.

So. interesting. I disrupted my average tonight and I saw something in myself, my practice and perhaps my culture.

IMAGES+++

My own