Natural-Historical, Natural-Artificial, Natural-Cultural.... (beginnings)

There's a process that is being undertaken by reading a lot of philosophy, from entering into philosophy, within the philosophical. And as the categories and concepts that philosophy refers to are being interrogated - clarified, so it seems are the fundamental elements of life and living.

I'm thinking about images again.

I'm also thinking about nature, second nature and the dialectical dissolution of the difference between first and second nature.

I'm going to be writing my thesis on Adorno and nature and his concept of 'natural-history'. Adorno uses the idea of first and second nature to account for the way that we naturalise cultural phenomenon dialectically, which also accounts for how we can move through the one concept to the other - that by moving through the artificial (as second nature) we can reach the natural (as first nature). That's not merely that there is a hidden authentic natural behind our world, but that natural and artificial are always mutually constitutive, and the natural is found as much in our actions as is the artificial - in the moving itself.

These images came to mind as I was thinking about this. When I took them (in Bodmin 2009) I was thinking about shared shapes and processes by us and by nature, which seems at this point to concur with my recent reading of Adorno. If Adorno is right, or at least if he offers a viable means to get beyond the limitations of the artificial-natural distinction, then the act of photography would enter into its claim to naturalism as well as the chosen subject matter. I find that quite exciting.

Bitter Cold, Grey Park...

...look at the little feet!

Extracts

I have a habit of underlining bits of text as I read that feel particularly resonant to me in some way. Usually the resonance comes from an argument suddenly opening into another element or avenue (plane) that therefore connects up areas I hadn't before seen the linkage between. I thought I would extract these bits of text and see what they collate into as a collection of such openings.

"...the autonomy of the art object is something which is produced out of the social relations which constitute the institution of art itself." 1

"By defending a form of autonomy which is constituted through the negation of tradition, the irreconcilability of art is coextensive with the irreconcilability of the subject's consciousness of being-in-the-world." 2

"While it is a critical convention ... that people were exhorted to turn from the fascination of the world in order to attain eternal life, the situation is not as simple as this easy distinction between the sacred and the profane. It is the very point of the garden of love to show how the separation of the world, life, and love, into sacred and profane ... is a misprision; that the rift between sensation and understanding (between Eve and Adam) is an illusion..." 3

"The continual production of difference - that is, of uniqueness and particularity - is implicit in the singularity of things." 4

"...connection not renunciation..." 5

"...a continual benediction of emergence conceived as erotica and amoenita..." 6

"...a transformation 'of nature into culture to such an extent that the origin of love ... remains ambiguous' (Cherchi xiv)." 7

"For absolute freedom in art, always limited to a particular, comes into contradiction with the perennial unfreedom of the whole." 8

"...art sanctions the primacy of reality." 9

"Art can be understood only by its laws of movement, not according to any set of invariants." 10

"That artworks as windowless monads "represent" what they themselves are not can scarcely be understood except in that their own dynamic, their immanent historicity as a dialectic of nature and its domination, not only is of the same essence as the dialectic external to them but resembles it without imitating it." 11

"...and while this is the nominalist dilemma of all art after the readymade, we can only comprehend the distinctions we make through the frames of mind we do or do not have in common." 12

"The contemporary question of style must be pondered alongside this current "production" of subjectivity, whether emphasis is on regularized forms of self-fashioning or on the singular and less controllable aspects of becoming." 13

"...style may be seen as a key component of media apparatuses that are not just presentational frames but also social machines that integrate human minds and bodies as part of their functioning." 14

"Style is the man when the man himself is a stylus - as in geomancy, when one's body becomes a seismic needle for registering, in ink or sand or some other substance, the signals of the cosmos." 15

1,2 John Roberts, 'After Adorno: Art, Autonomy, and Critique', Historical Materialism 7 (Winter 2000)
3-7 Rod Barnett, 'Serpent of Pleasure: Emergence and Difference in the Medieval Garden of Love', Landscape Journal 28:2-09
8-11 Theodore Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans Hullot-Kentor, 1970
12 Michelle Kuo, 'Forms and Functions (Editor's Letter)', Art Forum, September 2010
13, 14 Ina Blom, 'Questions of Style', Art Forum, September 2010
15 Alexander Nagel, 'Questions of Style', Art Forum, September 2010

Novalis Essay

Re: post below...

Writing an essay on Novalis' text Fichte Studies. Mostly I'm thinking about how to re-enact the movements he employs in both the concepts he explores and the flow of his text.

The movement is like this:

One thing moves forward. It meets something that divides it into two. Two things move forward. They meet something that synthesises them back together. Synthesis is more ideal than real and there is a discrepancy in the resolution. This pulls the thing ever more forward towards its resolution.

That probably seems really dull, but somehow I find it fascinating. Lets apply it to something:

I, a person/subject/consciousness posit myself and am promptly divided into two by this positing. The act of reflection on myself slices me into myself and my knowledge of myself, I become two. The two parts of me seek identity (what is known as an 'absolute I') and this search for absolutisation propels me forward. Identity is an ideal that I strive for but it is unachievable. The quest propels me forward.

I am not quite sure yet whether the is a convincing closure to the movement or not.

I want to write about the rhythm of the text and how the ideas Novalis posits follow their own momentum - a rhythmic, choreographical movement.

Flow.

It's a rain all day kind of day outside. Quite beautiful.

Moorhen Blues

The sound of a moorhen crying from the other side of the river during my run this morning was a jolt. It was the sound of an animal communicating in a language I will never understand. It was a very lonely feeling.

I also saw a giant fish leap out of the water.

Observations #3

Ach Thoughts.

I am deliberating over how much word I want to put on the blog. For the sake of visitors I tend to think pictures and minimal writing is enough; sometimes though I am in the mood to talk.

I just went off on one with an opinion on someone else's blog:

Jane McCoy's post brushing off the chips

I read myself in your excellent blogpost, not just in the persona but in the analysing it after. I've spent good hours negotiating the 'show myself/hide myself' dichotemy and thought I might share some thoughts with you (if you don't mind).

1) Coolness is always as we perceive. I have on several occasions been informed that it was me who appeared 'cool' at school despite the fact I was a nervous wreck. I am at the conclusion that everyone feels sensitive in the end, it just varies how we display it.

2) I come to the belief that there is something inherent to art-production that is about uncovering/covering or hiding/showing. It lead me to Heidegger.. blah blah and too much intellectualising later, I feel that the process of making art is experienced within us bodily as we bodily become extensions of the object we wish to manifest (or something..). Anyway, what I'm (taking too long) saying is that the negativity we experience is a crucial part of the dialectic and life and art-making - the boundaries, the retraction, assessment, etc. etc. Our abilities to be self-critical are not just psychologically the 'tortured artist' stereotype but just a necessary part of bringing something into the world. Being sensitive to it is because making art fine tunes our listening abilities precisely for this making process (and responding to the world around). If we had no doubt then we would be running ourselves and our art riot all over the world - a violent and monolithic way of making a mark. Ok, maybe I will make this into my own blog post... not sure... sorry to impose.... Keep up the good work, I like your drawings.

I have decided to re-post it here because it collates some of my thinking on this subject of disclosure, uncovering, truth, the ground of truth.. and the role of doubt in this process. Having suffered from doubt in various forms of discomfort/self abasement, it comes to me as something in the end that must be necessary. There is nothing more grounding than the continual return to making, producing, thinking, writing - even if this production is just the debris or excess of a kind of striving, aspiration.

Was writing a little recently on the violence of totality and the drive towards totalisation. I come to this from reading some discussions on the nature of knowledge (being a drive towards co-opting every 'thing' out there into the system of knowledge), and I live this through the disappointment of hearing sentences that I have somehow heard before, and before, and before... I'm not asking for pure originality (what's that?!) but instead am just recognising how homogeneous we insist on being in the name of our insertion into the world. I make a case for subtlety, listening, small things, sensitivities, taking the time to respond honestly, a commitment to letting ourselves respond.

(This last paragraph is woefully without references and steps rudely onto Derrida's toes. I will return to it as I think Derrida is right and that there is nothing really grounding beneath it all. But this is another post.... ach! thoughts!)

Derrida Drawing

Not sure if this will work but anyway...



..it's the product of the last talk on Derrida I attended at LSE, over a year ago now. I don't know if it works because the pencil is too fine really for the scan, but maybe the general idea is there - responding to the discussion with both words and doodles or free-flowing pencil marks, like automatic drawing...

Some Light Shaping

Hermeneutics

4th June 2009

Souvlaki yoghurt round our lips, cold flat chips left neglected, perhaps my writing is nothing more than an excersize in self-deception. Effect, building a life, beer to drink.

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.

Muted Colours

A feature on the BBC photo blog has resonated with me this morning. It is about muted colours in photography. Here in Greece we have been experiencing Summer proper and the period between 3pm and 6pm - siesta - has struck me for its muted colours too, though of a different sort to the photo I show here. Under the strength of the sun at this time it is difficult to raise our eyes as the brightness is overpowering, and in the squint the world becomes either flattened black shadow or bleached bright glare.

The two sides of the line again; the view rendered black or white, hot or cold, though both light and shadow as difficult to see into, as the other, against the other.

Siesta time here is also gloriously silent.

Aesthetics Making

Aesthetics making belief,
love in at number 14, below beasts,
order
and,
sense.

A Kind of Play of Surfaces

A kind of play of surfaces, for what are surfaces other than interfaces? The meeting of two different impressions where one substance throws to light the differences of the other. The waves move rhythmically in a corner of my view and shine like flashes of light caught on hammered pewter. The sea, framed by sugar paper mountains and the little box houses that look out with hooded windows are all cast in hues of shadow and are all still but for the waves. The sun shines on me and my squinting expression will be tan-lines when I go home.

The sweet solitary chirp of a singular bird slips into the space between car engines and dogs barking. It pierces the distance as if to emphasise height, for what is distance other than a view? The clouds have become a heavy blue and the sun’s rays are beaming with the certainty of geometry, a heavenly pathway if I ever saw one. Earlier today the harbour was awash with swollen ocean, smacking pungent black weed at my feet. Frothy and sensual, the green made by a sea churned in wild storms to a brooding murky mint, all vital movement and white spray. The sun is sinking now and the light is soft golden as a tired finale to the day and the hubbub of the street rises but can’t touch this gentle vision, opened and unfolding even as the light fades. The sun moves so quietly to the little bird's song.

Empathy and Criticality

Coming back to an earlier post, I am wondering about empathy and criticality. The statement creates a relationship between the two, perhaps one of opposition, perhaps one of kinship. It seems to say to art that we approach it with either hope of connection or suspicious reticence.

Empathy = feeling?
Criticality = thought?

There is much to stew on here.

Sketchy thinking, ideas, analysis on dating sites.

When we join a dating site we write something about 'who we are' and 'what we are looking for'. Sometimes we write this first, when we join, before looking at other people's writing. Sometimes we write ours after. A lot of the time we start with 'I don't know what to write here' or 'this is weird for me'. Either way there is a process that takes place upon our engaging with the dating community:

Presumably we approach the site with sincerity and hope. The hope may well take the form in our minds of a roughly sketched partner of perfection.
When we read other people's profiles we assess our own in relation to theirs, seeing what other people write as the blueprint. We shop around for ideas and we see that other people are more savvy about the internet dating process.
We re-write or edit our writings to communicate with an impression we gathered from reading other people's profiles, our assessment was a social one.
Hence all the profiles that say the same thing.
When we don't partake in this process our profile fails to involve itself with the language of internet dating and subsequently it is unreadable or fails to offer meaning (within the framework of internet dating).
As a result it would appear from Guardian Soulmates that all people are the same: like: travel, walking by the canal, etc.

Personality traits are 'memes'? of personality that we adopt or not. GS is a chance to showcase the particular memes we subscribe to.
Successful profiles are the ones that seem to lead the way in social currents
Confidence pitted against non-confidence being the flipside/darkside of the same thing - celebration comes in validation of someone's alterity or sophisticated antithetical nature
When we read a profile we don't look for the facts but more the ability of the writer to communicate, looking for a similar skill at this form of communication to ourselves. We use identification for this...

Another subjectivity machine, composer, program, curator...


Blah blah......

Am feeling slightly anxious about a new phenomenon I seem to have gotten myself into: deportation countdown. On Twitter I am recieving regular updates from Anselme Noumbiwa as he reaches the climax of his asylum bid to stay in the UK. It is pretty horrible and I'm at a loss to add anything here to round this entry or the story off.



Some more fish swimming together.

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.