Work Lines IV

"In Woman is incarnated in positive form the lack that the existant carries in his heart, and it is in seeking to be made whole through her that man hopes to attain self-realisation."
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p173

The White Ribbon

It takes a positive act to enable a gesture. In depression, contraction, the plane of extension, gesture, unfurling, action becomes inhibited.
All writing about depression is a paradox, or at least can only happen after the mood has passed, for no positive gesture is possible in the spirit of withdrawal.
What does one do with doubt? The paralysis engendered by lack of faith must eventually be overcome, for the world does indeed keep up its turning.

To find a way forward when confronted by the doubt of no-faith, we either create new faith or remove ourselves from the dilemma. Taking a step back, ironically isolating doubt as a phenomenon in its own right, bracketed off as a thing to be observed. To this end, doubt is masked from its own cause and takes the form of a generative state. We forget the reality that gives us doubt.

Dance.

Dogtooth

Rudolph Arnheim, The Creative Eye
Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking

It is the story of struggle rather than achievement, as allegory of process rather than synthesis. Translated into local codes of application.
~ Francis Alÿs, A Story of Deception, 2010

ego as structural edifice, dissolve
something given and the tense
structure gives way - no ego
Parochiality
Only seeing a narrow parameter

Tremendous relief in letting go.

Mary Martin - Abstraction vs. construction.

Untitled #5

Found on the Other Side of a 'To Do' List

Horror of groundlessness, of the reset button, of losing yourself in the attempt to uncover that elusive something worth believing in.
The reset button puts us back at the rawness of the experience, it sweeps away the illusions, self-fufilling structures of being that justify their own existance, the structures built to give us something to hold on to. We wipe them away and there is nothing to hide behind and the rawness of our response comes.

Overview

Trying to decide which of my photos might be appreciated as a gift for my two closest friends here in Chania. These are a few of my short list:





















In the end this process has become a bit of an assessment of all the photos I took whilst being away in Greece and Egypt. A natural closure.

Observations #4

I want to give some proper time to the blog and maybe some writing but the days are so hot that I am reduced to that of a Vogue reader (Martha Rosler antidote here).

I have been feeling recently that there is a kind of illogical aesthetic to Chania though the ubiquity of being here day in day out prevents me from satisfactorily grasping and articulating it. These two photos are rough attempts to record some of it and I hope I have a chance to take some more. Then maybe more ideas can come from a later meditation.

Observations #2

I'm getting tardy I know, but there are reasons.
Some observations recently in words:

So many birds in cages, birds singing gloriously, nailed to a crumbling wall, above the ancient woman who keeps them there.
Birds in cages outside the petshop. Chorus of competing singing and chirping to the accompaniment of terrifying Greek traffic on a tuesday morning. Birds calling to be noticed in cages.

A lone cockroach outside the supermarket. Retreating from the pavement as we pass. Returns to its position when we are gone.

A basketball court at night with the stars just visible despite the floodlight. Tall metal arms holding the hoops and their shadows falling over the court, one arm's shadow intersecting with an oilstain, interconnected, a centipede makes a quick scuttle across both and into the dark on the other side.

A rusty drain pipe protruding from the middle of a balcony four floors above us. Showering the street with soapy water. At midnight there were rivers of the stuff making inky landscapes all over our walk home.

A fish with a tail of fine silk billowing out behind it, locked in a never ending forward motion in a glass bowl. Glassy eyes that don't register me.

Blandness Transformed

Well, there are different ways of feeling down. I have been struggling a bit lately overcoming a stress-induced dead effect, being weighed down and with it not feeling inspiration or confidence about sharing. See-saw see-saw see-saw....

This photo I think is technically poor, but what I wanted to get at was the texture and blandness-transformed-into-something...



...and a sneaky pigeon...

One Hit Wanders

On to one photo posts at the mo, though I think the last couple of shots are strong enough to withstand it ;)

Woke with strange dreams of filming slugs and fishes in rising cave water this morning.

Observations

Like I've said before, there are so many reasons to write or to throw something out into the world. Today my ventures are like the lone survivor clinging to a piece of his broken ship, his desperate grasp at life before being dashed against the rocks in one of Poseidon's best storms. A little dramatic, but then maybe that's part of feeling melancholic - the dramatic, the performance, the identity in it.

Thought Themes To Build On (2)

There's a moment that happens when one event that we percieve jumps from its normal setting and seems to suddenly be from another reality, and in that moment the two (different) realities become one, transforming everything. I am finding these moments all over the place now and am thinking of it as phenomenological observation. I'm preoccupued trying to put the experience into words.

This is what happens when Spring eases into Summer and the Cicadas begin and we are all sweating in the lazy sleepy and quiet afternoons.

Thought Themes To Build On (1)

Current topics of interest:

crystalise - a moment in time, of time, a realising, the birth of a structure
revelation as disclosure, uncovering
phenomenological description vs writerly imagination
mothering, mothership, as a state and concept
facing the world with our viewfinders already configured to see according to the structures we already know
destroying structures, destroying worldviews, in order to see reality again

the experience of being absolutely structureless and out in the world
despair

rebuilding

Like A Flash

On our walk home last night we sang the Beatles' Across the Universe and talked about God and the godlessness of modernity. Somehow the Twentieth Century appears to me now like a flash of brutal ideologies and the very force of it and the drive towards secularisation is exhausting.

Sweet thoughts and feelings about beauty and God and higher feelings.

A Treat

Some Van Gogh for us as I tired myself out reading Introduction to Phenomenology well into the night. Really enjoyed Gadamer's optimism and Arendt might be a new hero of mine... (what a photo on that link!).

Crete

Shut Eye

More Liminal

It is a beautiful bright sunny morning here in Greece, still quiet before the traffic. I just read the Wikipedia excerpt on liminality again and am turning the concept round in my mind.

Imaginitively, the line marks the edge of one thing and the beginning of another - a road to cross. Liminality becomes no man's land between two worlds, the threshold before dissolution of identity, disorientation and a relaxation of normal thought, self-understanding and behaviour. Out of this period of liminality we emerge again with new perspective, as a new person.

Now I'm near the end, I feel somehow that my time in Greece has been entirely for this reason.

I'm going to do something a bit cheeky now. I just did a Google image search with 'liminal' and found that the word is a popular one with artists. So, I don my curator hat and present a select few. I haven't asked permission, but copyright and credit lies with the artists and any objections will be graciously adhered to.


Liminal Condition Detail copyright Susan Palmisano


Land-Care Yuccas copyright Kurt Brereton


Liminality copyright Kevin Sargent


Copyright Er| Naem & X.iso for album Liminal Sampler 2008 by Various (Liminal Recs)


Liminal copyright Andrew Rose

Still thinking on structure.

These are two mediocre photos from my recent snaps. The flower might be nice because of its very delicate and papery stance against the thorns below. I wish the plastic bag photo was in better focus - and I do have one like that, but this has the shadow and I like the unreality of it. I can't see an image like this without thinking of American Beauty, not a bad thing.

Just listened to another Frieze podcast, this one on art criticism: Empathy and Criticality, how should one respond to being affected by art?
Tough listening but invigorating too. The critics stuck fast to their position as newspaper reviewers/writers and eschewed any kind of ideology or objectivity in what they do. They came across as quite arrogant and incredibly self-assured (always a bit suspicious), but if they are paid to have opinions then I'm not surprised.

It was quite refreshing to think about opinion arising from having seen a lot of art and nothing more - no intention in the approach to the art, no looking for something.

How do we look at art? What are we looking for?

There was stuff though that I didn't agree with, like, continuing the idea that looking at art is decipherment - 'working it out'. I have problems with this model. And also the idea that criticism is translation. There may be an element of that in criticism but it reflects badly on the art. If there's a problem then it is in how we look, not that art needs translating for us to get something from it.

Funny, I was reading something yesterday about this, hang on, ok, on signandsight.com in a review of Notation, calculation and form in the arts. They say: "There are images which are tricky to slot into the index of representation. Perhaps because they consist of numbers or writing systems and as such are intended not so much to demonstrate as to be deciphered". (1) So there is a divide between decipherment and demonstration? Not sure that this is always true.

Thought we could have something a bit porky in light of the current pandemic.

Spent much of last night trying to bend my already-sleeping-brain round the problem of making a viable table for Blogger. I had in mind that the previous post would be nicely ordered and allow me to contribute over time, the entrees lining up in their little boxes, the frame jumping to accomodate my new ideas. Fried myself.

I don't know if I like these pictures yet, though I recognise this line as the edge of a difference mirror.

Metaphors of Subjectivity (with non-specific parameters)

black holes, centre of gravity, artist, consumer, traveller, student, hero, artificial intelligence, central processing unit, god(s), actor, animal, writer, another brick in the wall, machines, more computers, texts, organs, sheep, machine, composer, program, curator, cyborg,

Just found this and this, and am pleased. I'll come back with more soon.

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