Been on a bit of an environmentalist one recently. Just watched this, a film shown on UK Channel 4 about unorthodox views from within the environmentalist movement. It was difficult to watch - one 'green taboo' after another was demolished, advocates arguing for the use of nuclear power and GM food.
Made me think of Žižek's bit in An Examined Life:
The connection between the two is that they both identify ideology as the cause of an obscuration that prevents real insight into the problems that the planet faces and finding prompt ways to act. In the first film it is a residual hippy activist movement that is blind to the science that can treat the problems now. In Žižek, it is conservatism and secular religion lurking beneath our beloved Gaia. They both call for more technology: "We should become more alienated!"
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Jellyfish
The Horniman houses these creatures. The lack of flash on my camera means that you can't see the neon colouring they exhibit in UV light, but maybe you can imagine what an incredible sight it was.
Looking at animals is always a challenge to imagine life without ego-based consciousness and a more profound challenge to live an ethics of equality that takes life without ego-based consciousness into account. Reading a lot of Freud at the moment. I can't imagine that he ever imagined the different - without being less equal - consciousnesses that might inhabit creatures. But, I guess his work paves the way for us to.
Horniman Aquarium from Horniman Museum on Vimeo.
Just found this video when searching for the link to the Horniman Museum. It shows the jellyfish in all their glory.
Also discovered that there is an exhibition of Venkat Raman Singh Shyam and Rajendra Shyam on currently. I first discovered Gond art via BibliOdyssey: The Night Life of Trees It's wonderful.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Exhibitions 2
Enjoyed Wolfgang Tillmans at The Serpentine
Excited by Newspeak: British Art Now at The Saatchi Gallery
Still letting the thought of 'assemblage' float around. Both shows seemed to show an aesthetic of assemblage - the composition/juxtaposition/assemblage of different registers of meaning within one piece or installation.
Tillmans is all photography, but the images show great variety of subject matter and aim, and the installation is one of an experience reflected within the architecture of the gallery space. The experience conveyed is multi-faceted and complex.
The British Art Now exhibition is dominated by assemblages, both in the materiality e.g. sculptures by Daniel Silver, made from mixed materials - 'high' and 'low' materials in one, fabric and stone, with found or reclaimed wood - all seemingly retaining their own individual histories as a material, producing interesting new conglomerates that don't subsume these different (semiotically understood) codes into one new thing but a thing with its internal differences intact.
Daniel Silver, Untitled, 2010
The painting of the show shows a similar spirit of democracy, where different traditions are deployed to subvert each other in a mutual spirit of ironic re-invigoration (or mutual destruction).
Ged Quinn, The Ghost Of A Mountain, 2005
Excited by Newspeak: British Art Now at The Saatchi Gallery
Still letting the thought of 'assemblage' float around. Both shows seemed to show an aesthetic of assemblage - the composition/juxtaposition/assemblage of different registers of meaning within one piece or installation.
Tillmans is all photography, but the images show great variety of subject matter and aim, and the installation is one of an experience reflected within the architecture of the gallery space. The experience conveyed is multi-faceted and complex.
The British Art Now exhibition is dominated by assemblages, both in the materiality e.g. sculptures by Daniel Silver, made from mixed materials - 'high' and 'low' materials in one, fabric and stone, with found or reclaimed wood - all seemingly retaining their own individual histories as a material, producing interesting new conglomerates that don't subsume these different (semiotically understood) codes into one new thing but a thing with its internal differences intact.
Daniel Silver, Untitled, 2010
The painting of the show shows a similar spirit of democracy, where different traditions are deployed to subvert each other in a mutual spirit of ironic re-invigoration (or mutual destruction).
Ged Quinn, The Ghost Of A Mountain, 2005
Alastair MacKinven, Et Sick In Infinitum, 2008
Sunday, 25 July 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
A Return to the Thames
The first of these videos is a part of the view from a pub window, right on the Thames. It's the changing colours that made me want to record it.
As often happens, once you do something with the original impulse, some other interest wakes up. It's as if after videoing water, the next step is to think about the framing of that video of water. I find myself making another video with the conscious addition of structures.
I haven't commented on the sounds. They're important, as two sensations overlapping to create the moment, and perhaps in an incongruous manner. The fad for 'assemblage' has been stimulating my thoughts recently. For the 2nd video I went outside and we lost the hubbub of people and beer.
As often happens, once you do something with the original impulse, some other interest wakes up. It's as if after videoing water, the next step is to think about the framing of that video of water. I find myself making another video with the conscious addition of structures.
I haven't commented on the sounds. They're important, as two sensations overlapping to create the moment, and perhaps in an incongruous manner. The fad for 'assemblage' has been stimulating my thoughts recently. For the 2nd video I went outside and we lost the hubbub of people and beer.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Work Lines III (continuous update)
Edward Abbey
Mugabe and the White African, Channel 4
The fold of one 'half' over the other - a geological fold, physical land based in my imagination.
The camera, we/I moves from the partition (head on) between the halves and takes the dominant's side.
Woman is folded over,
unseen unheard from beneath Man's enfoldment.
Man seeks/achieves transcendence by overcoming Woman (animal) - Woman seeks transcendence by overcoming her animality. Again, Man's viewpoint - Woman nothing more than animal. To what extent is our language of this talk contributing to this understanding?
Language - rational, of man's domain?
Where is Woman subsumed? Within language?
Investigate animality.
The difference between knowing something through language and learning something through experience.
Investing the material with the spiritual - sacred earth vs. sacred thought, sacred feeling, sacred energy.
The feeling of fabric against skin - erotic, not because it fits idea of the erotic.
The moment of realisation - crystallisation, condensement, reification of new reality where the elements/conditions rearranged.
Division between sensible and conceptual/Idea - how this translates into 'eco', Natural, concepts of.
"The proper test is not that of finality, but of progress."
A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, Free Press corrected edition, p14
Quite nice having only limited powers of perception or sensitivity to things. Less responsibility to the chains of effect that lead out of every event, moment, thing.
Sensitivity: to take on - suffer - great imprints from things; to be impressed upon in great depth and length by the imprint of things.
- Not only prone to being hurt.
How do you make a structure? How do you make a visual representation of a structure?
Doomed to fail.
Francis Alÿs a structuralist - the pictures, the walking. Re-inscribing structure(s).
A painting reduces all elements, conditions, to an equality of substance and makes possible the re-rendering of both visible and invisible components on this new plane, for the ready communication of this portrayal and recreation within this new plane's substance.
The absurdity of trying to represent, make real/sensible structures, that are inherently non-representable. Or even just obscured too much for us to recognise this structual form. If it exists, visibly/sensibly or not, can we re-present it in sensible form?
By attempting, Man exercises his capacity for freedom and action and the right to transcend it, change it, have control of his destination.
Mugabe and the White African, Channel 4
The fold of one 'half' over the other - a geological fold, physical land based in my imagination.
The camera, we/I moves from the partition (head on) between the halves and takes the dominant's side.
Woman is folded over,
unseen unheard from beneath Man's enfoldment.
Man seeks/achieves transcendence by overcoming Woman (animal) - Woman seeks transcendence by overcoming her animality. Again, Man's viewpoint - Woman nothing more than animal. To what extent is our language of this talk contributing to this understanding?
Language - rational, of man's domain?
Where is Woman subsumed? Within language?
Investigate animality.
The difference between knowing something through language and learning something through experience.
Investing the material with the spiritual - sacred earth vs. sacred thought, sacred feeling, sacred energy.
The feeling of fabric against skin - erotic, not because it fits idea of the erotic.
The moment of realisation - crystallisation, condensement, reification of new reality where the elements/conditions rearranged.
Division between sensible and conceptual/Idea - how this translates into 'eco', Natural, concepts of.
"The proper test is not that of finality, but of progress."
A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, Free Press corrected edition, p14
Quite nice having only limited powers of perception or sensitivity to things. Less responsibility to the chains of effect that lead out of every event, moment, thing.
Sensitivity: to take on - suffer - great imprints from things; to be impressed upon in great depth and length by the imprint of things.
- Not only prone to being hurt.
How do you make a structure? How do you make a visual representation of a structure?
Doomed to fail.
Francis Alÿs a structuralist - the pictures, the walking. Re-inscribing structure(s).
A painting reduces all elements, conditions, to an equality of substance and makes possible the re-rendering of both visible and invisible components on this new plane, for the ready communication of this portrayal and recreation within this new plane's substance.
The absurdity of trying to represent, make real/sensible structures, that are inherently non-representable. Or even just obscured too much for us to recognise this structual form. If it exists, visibly/sensibly or not, can we re-present it in sensible form?
By attempting, Man exercises his capacity for freedom and action and the right to transcend it, change it, have control of his destination.
Work Lines II (continuous update)
Agacinski
The sensitive object
TO TRY
Empiricism vs. Conceptualism
╚►
out of this an -No Theory
experiential mode
of DOING art emerges.
Representing the non-representable through the transformation of painting, through the mystery of the process of painting making real the mystery of the object (Idea or otherwise) itself. And visa versa...
Art being the act, the simple narrative of how it works.
Bernstein
Rationalism being a cognition of dead objects.
Living is deligitimised.
What would be the affinities between existences?
Wielding the critical axe - scything through the problem to pit the various conditions of the concept, question, problem against itself. Re-forming or reconfiguring the problem to produce a new object.
I am like a weather vane.
Where J. stands in for the cynic
<—> making both ways. All experiences, events, people, things like tokens, signs, symbols, for the meaning we have associated with them/it. For our own universe/service. Works both ways —> what happens as this tokenography works the other way?
Empty ourselves out from centre of universe - we are locus for other peoples!
David B. Smith
Charlotte Street
www.speculativeheresy.wordpress.com
www.planomenology.wordpress.com
http://www.k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/
laura douglas
Georges Braque
Bottle and Fishes, 1910-2
At losing ones job:
raw despair
at the primordial fear at prospect
of not being able
to support oneself,
elated at the
promise of new beginnings,
new chances, new
opportunities. Maybe
things'll get better!
Sick of this place
anyway.
Brutal anger at the
injustice of it all.
How has this been
allowed to happen?
www.opelori.com
MONOSKOP
PDFs.
Duty
manager
scoffing
the biscuits
The Overlap Series: Jogger
(with comic event)
2000-1
The Emancipatory.
Emancipation
as
revelation
Sacrifice
-McCarthy
Carly Simon
What's the rule?
Adorno?
(internalising the law/s)
Baldessari
Colouring my mind
Romanticism w/ its
cheap promise of c o m p l e t i o n
plays itself out at my mercy
Imagine, being given edifaces and abysses with our
birth and box of characteristics. The abyss we carry and on the other side of the cut
lies All That We Cannot See. All That We Cannot See - our blindnesses, our abjects, our beasts.
We cannot see them. They look like merky areas
of unseeing.
They unleash themselves on all that we encounter, colouring our perceptions, unknown to us.
Our neighbours,
the other beings we come into contact with can see,
they see our blindnesses, they make form
from what we don't delimit. Their eyes and their
powers make things out of our unseeing and give them back to us as real life encounters, the incidences, the bus stop chats with strangers, the friend round for tea, the kiss, the supermarket queue.
Other people see out blindnessess.
Bird song anchor points
To elevate
Come back to
yourself
Feel your periphery again
Feel your edge.
John Buckens
The sensitive object
TO TRY
Empiricism vs. Conceptualism
╚►
out of this an -No Theory
experiential mode
of DOING art emerges.
Representing the non-representable through the transformation of painting, through the mystery of the process of painting making real the mystery of the object (Idea or otherwise) itself. And visa versa...
Art being the act, the simple narrative of how it works.
Bernstein
Rationalism being a cognition of dead objects.
Living is deligitimised.
What would be the affinities between existences?
Wielding the critical axe - scything through the problem to pit the various conditions of the concept, question, problem against itself. Re-forming or reconfiguring the problem to produce a new object.
I am like a weather vane.
Where J. stands in for the cynic
<—> making both ways. All experiences, events, people, things like tokens, signs, symbols, for the meaning we have associated with them/it. For our own universe/service. Works both ways —> what happens as this tokenography works the other way?
Empty ourselves out from centre of universe - we are locus for other peoples!
David B. Smith
Charlotte Street
www.speculativeheresy.wordpress.com
www.planomenology.wordpress.com
http://www.k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/
laura douglas
Georges Braque
Bottle and Fishes, 1910-2
At losing ones job:
raw despair
at the primordial fear at prospect
of not being able
to support oneself,
elated at the
promise of new beginnings,
new chances, new
opportunities. Maybe
things'll get better!
Sick of this place
anyway.
Brutal anger at the
injustice of it all.
How has this been
allowed to happen?
www.opelori.com
MONOSKOP
PDFs.
Duty
manager
scoffing
the biscuits
The Overlap Series: Jogger
(with comic event)
2000-1
The Emancipatory.
Emancipation
as
revelation
Sacrifice
-McCarthy
Carly Simon
What's the rule?
Adorno?
(internalising the law/s)
Baldessari
Colouring my mind
Romanticism w/ its
cheap promise of c o m p l e t i o n
plays itself out at my mercy
Imagine, being given edifaces and abysses with our
birth and box of characteristics. The abyss we carry and on the other side of the cut
lies All That We Cannot See. All That We Cannot See - our blindnesses, our abjects, our beasts.
We cannot see them. They look like merky areas
of unseeing.
They unleash themselves on all that we encounter, colouring our perceptions, unknown to us.
Our neighbours,
the other beings we come into contact with can see,
they see our blindnesses, they make form
from what we don't delimit. Their eyes and their
powers make things out of our unseeing and give them back to us as real life encounters, the incidences, the bus stop chats with strangers, the friend round for tea, the kiss, the supermarket queue.
Other people see out blindnessess.
Bird song anchor points
To elevate
Come back to
yourself
Feel your periphery again
Feel your edge.
John Buckens
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Exhibitions
Am greatly enjoying the Haris Epaminonda exhibition at Tate Modern. I may or may not write about why.
Saw the exhibition Unto This Last at Raven Row. One piece, 'Common Knowledge' really chimed with me. Again, may or may not write about why.
Saw the exhibition Unto This Last at Raven Row. One piece, 'Common Knowledge' really chimed with me. Again, may or may not write about why.
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Treen
Just arrived back in London after a week camping in Cornwall. Still glowing with the wonder of it. A glimpse:
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
The Canal
We took these yesterday, on a delicious walk from Broadway Market to Regent's Park, all across North London and along the canal. Beasts to follow.
My favourites..
My favourites..
Sunday, 2 May 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.
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.
Still Intending
Hola!
Grappling a bit with intention again. Not only trying to decide what I want this blog to become, but wondering how to make the changes take hold of me enough to make me apply them.
For the sake of bringing abstract theoretical thoughts into life, it might be nice to post regularly about the philosophy I'm studying and how it interacts with life.
Gonna try this.
Grappling a bit with intention again. Not only trying to decide what I want this blog to become, but wondering how to make the changes take hold of me enough to make me apply them.
For the sake of bringing abstract theoretical thoughts into life, it might be nice to post regularly about the philosophy I'm studying and how it interacts with life.
Gonna try this.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Continuity? Consistency?
I haven't posted for three months. The lack of continuity bothers me, but I don't necessarily think inspiration should be forced. My main reasoning was that I haven't had easy internet access. And when studying I think things are going in rather than coming out. Now I'm wandering if I'll start to produce again...
I started this blog last year when I was still in Crete, and it amazes me now how far away that world seems. I miss all the creative activity and the great openness I felt. England, the winter, the loss of light, and work work work have dampened me somewhat. I still hold aloft the ideal of that wonderful sense of inspiration again.
Is this an end post, a new beginning post or just a stop gap?
I started this blog last year when I was still in Crete, and it amazes me now how far away that world seems. I miss all the creative activity and the great openness I felt. England, the winter, the loss of light, and work work work have dampened me somewhat. I still hold aloft the ideal of that wonderful sense of inspiration again.
Is this an end post, a new beginning post or just a stop gap?
It's been a long time coming...
These images were taken on a ramble through Hertfordshire in February, the day before Valentine's Day. They are probably a bit dreary, but then English Winter is.
Tree lines and structures...
Tree lines, rivers, routes, veins, lungs....
Monday, 4 January 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
