Ontology

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.

 

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.

 

Ghosts, partial presences Spectres /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own (Digitally edited). It’s a failed digital photo but I love it, I confess I found it in my photo album, and have no idea how I made it.

If the ghosts of UVR past haunt her work, ghost being actual history imagined history and environmental and inherited history both direct and indirect

Something that has theoretically died, returns as a spectre. Revenant. Not just people but also  concepts, values beliefs. Returned but transformed.

Something of the past has returned and is revenant in and through UvRs art. A spectre, a ghost.

Her father, the camps, the wood, the people. More importantly her geographical imagings - simulacra - ghost of a ghost. All manifest around her work.

If the ghosts of UVR past haunt her work, the ghost being Rydingsvards lived history, her inherited history both direct and indirect and her imagined history . Then what of it? What does this mean. What does this mean for the liminal?

The liminal is the naturally occurring 'differance', that brings us the necessary temporary relief from our rightful and wrongful structures, to allow change to enter.

Ghosts are the active but partially agency that differs from the liminal inactive

Wood the Ghosts of trees liminal agents in the in between

Working with the ghosts of materials

Disturbing Ghosts:

Does the liminal disrupt language because of translation? The need for translation. Which creates a change i the angle of vision?

Disruption of language. Hamlets father . Is he called father, ghost or king? As a spectre he is all three and none, for his body is dead and gone he cannot embody the king or father and a ghost is not embodied.

 

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?

 

Coding of Space /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

In thinking about the Summer school - ‘Rivers the Jugular veins of Empire’:
The coded language used in the past and now is key. E.g ‘Exploring party’ or ‘Civilising Mission’- this is not correct or transparent, but something else - more sinister, treacherous and obfuscating. Perhaps more accurate would be ‘Murderous pillaging of assets’ and ‘A mission to aggressively encode a people in preparation to enter the financial machine of empire’.

Then the concept of space: Ownership, occupation and outworking.

Can Space be described as occupying 3/ possibly more realms:

1.Physical space
2.Temporal space
3.Conceptual space.

How can/should this space be occupied in light of what we know and what has been learnt from history. (All history)

Other unorganised thoughts:
Space: giving/using space in film - temporal, spatial, conceptual?

Relationship of belonging to/in space. 

Again the idea of belonging is one that I find challenging and multifaceted.

Historical ref of Belonging: set against empire and obstacles overcome to this point.

Cultures erased by colonialism in name of ‘civilisation’ were/are subject to an aggressive recoding to financial production.

An aggressive re-coding to financial production.