In the garden.

Tunisia (2)

Tunisia (1)

No thoughts yet, just some photos. Wish I'd taken more.

Another two from Paris

My thinking on images is continually buffeted around by new ideas. I'm reading Cassirer's Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms (vol 1, Language) and am enjoying it. So far it affirms my own epistemological beliefs, that knowledge of the world is mediated, meaning is not fixed,  and that we deal mostly (entirely?) with fictions. I'm not sure yet if Cassirer is as sceptical as me, I hope to find out. It's interesting though how Cassirer posits language as one of several independent modes of symbolic formation - language, art, myth, science/reason and religion each function through their own cultural forms and the meanings attributed to them, unlike the Saussurians who would place language as the most basic means by which all the different cultural forms function. As I am reading Cassirer it is easy to imagine that photography possesses the dignity of a fully qualified category of epistemology, because the aesthetic imagination is treated as essential to our basic experiencing of the world. Although Cassirer was against Heidegger ('being' as the basic ground of philosophy is constantly rejected), I am reminded of when I read 'The Origin of the Work of Art' because of the same sense of the fundamental importance of representation, of an image inserting itself between us and the world. However, Cassirer rejects the concept of representation too, because for him there is no guaranteed already-existing external world for us to make copies of. It is us that forms the criteria, categories, of perception in an ever constant process of relations between that which we have already formed as symbols and the world that comes to us through them.

Paris

My four favourite images (so far):

Thought Jan 2012

Just going to quickly jot some thoughts down.
Thinking about the role of symbols in our thought. How images that we carry in our minds mold our subsequent cognition, how it is as if the form of the images/representations that we take of the world come to delimit what we are then able to see/think, or at least, to influence it, maybe to facilitate it. Our representations as symbols, because they facilitate a transition somehow, the transition of the thought process itself. The transition of inner mental experience mediated/mediating our experience of the outer world.
Saw this today:
http://www.ravenrow.org/current/asier_mendizabal/
And there was talk of collective symbolisation in objects and in political representation.
I am thinking too about constructing house like structures within our imagination in order to 'house' our thought - that place that makes the ingestion of our experiences possible. What would your house be made from?
The faculties, as in Kant's, need a certain imagination space in order to fantasize. The fantasy, our visions, are secreted by the experience of living life, both physically and cognitively. Those visions are related to the thinking and experiencing, and are necessary for true comprehension to occur.
In which case we need space to be imaginative.

Classification is fascinating

A while ago, Mr. shaj mohan said that my work was always about taking something away. I wasn't sure what he meant, but just this week I think I might be getting an idea. My work is always a focus or close up on something, with an interest in transforming what that thing is a little, making it look a bit like it's not the thing that it is. I can see now, that the taking away, could be about removing the means of identification that would give it its normal identity. 


I've been thinking a lot about being a relativist, that I don't think things are essentially themselves. They always require a relationship or context in order for us to define them. 


I like the contrast in the lower picture here - the purple sky and dark branches, with the gold branches below.

Life is a series of adjustments to the present

mewet

mute (adj.)

late 14c., mewet "silent," from O.Fr. muet, dim. of mut, mo, from L. mutus "silent, dumb," probably from imitative base *mu- (cf. Skt. mukah "dumb," Gk. myein "to be shut," of the mouth). Assimilated in form in 16c. to L. mutus. The verb is first attested 1861. Related: Muted; muting. Musical noun sense first recorded 1811, of stringed instruments, 1841, of horns.

Muted

Getting Into Natural History

I've been away, and pondering on this notion of natural history (since I'm writing a thesis on Adorno's take on it). A new found fascination for animal classification and the natural world as object of study is burgeoning, though these pictures don't really reflect that as they are still very romantic and I'm not sure they pull off any convincing scientific objectivity. Wow, without even trying the dualism/opposition is set up! It's not a dualism that I'm interested in - the affirmation of an opposition between subjective and scientific ways of seeing the natural world. It's the entwinement of the two that is interesting, triggering thoughts on culture/nature as one and semiotics. 

I'm thinking to keep and collect the references to NH and animals... see what they grow into. Reading Afterall today, I was enjoying this article by Francis McKee on Minerva Cuevas: Anarchy in the Hive, with its introductory discussion of a cultural tradition of anthropomorphism being replaced by science, which does of course mean that science has retained something of the function of the old anthropomorphism to society, whatever that was.
 

Things In Themselves

Just giving myself a moment of distraction while reading Adorno's Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems. He has it that all concepts initially arise as abstractions from matter, and therefor, concepts refer to the residual material world - the two are tied, and when we conceptualise, conceptualising does not occur at the cost of the material it supersedes (idealism) but is in fact a result of the material. Things, materiality, the natural, particularities and that which changes, are accordingly elevated by this schema, without our schema merely replacing those things' materiality with another set of concepts. The material is left to exist as material, whilst not being relegated to an inferior status in relation to the immutability of concepts.

These images come from a recent trip to HMS Belfast on the river Thames in London. I managed to utterly fail at learning anything about the ship and its life at war, nor much about the lives of the men who lived and worked in it. I did get very excited about the fixtures though and took a lot of photos that I'm excited to work on. In this philosophical dualism of form and content, I wonder at the role of photography. Does the camera impose a form upon the matter? And where is the matter - in the material of objects' physical makeup, or in their relationships to human activity? I like this thought that the concept refers to its material content - it is as if the form of these objects bring with them the memory of the industry and functionality of the warship.

Tribute/Tributary

In a discussion this evening I was reminded of an image I took in Greece, 2008, and how I had been thinking of Eva Hesse when I had composed it.

It's nice to see it again.

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.

London and its Deep Topography

This is the only excerpt I could find of 'London' by Patrick Keiller (1992) on youtube. I didn't want to focus on the political element of the film, but as I said, it's the only bit I could find. The film is WONDERFUL and well well worth a watch for it's ideas, beautiful shots, interesting composition... A narrative is spoken by Paul Scofield of his journey through London with Robinson, his companion who is conducting some sort of research into the city and whereupon is able to cite historical and literary and other art related snippets in - what could be called - a 'deep topographical' manner.

It's funny that I've ended up with the most political part of the film. After watching it I realised that my co-viewer wasn't very impressed by this overtly leftwing rant. Perhaps I was trying to justify the politics within the 'art' of the film, but it felt to me that the pessimism à la 1992 Tory victory was merely a further reference to the Frankfurt school as Walter Benjamin seems to be only just about acknowledged source of much of the idea content of the film. I appreciate the presence of the political, but do suspect that 'the political' is necessarily transformed somehow by being relegated to the status of a device within the wider artness of the film. Or is it.

This is from the sequel 'Robinson In Space':

Loved this one too, and feel I should say that it is less political - is it? More focus on structures - big, industrial structures in the landscape.

And to finish, I'm listening to Ventures and Adventures in Topography which is where I get 'deep topography' from. They also are on to Patrick Keiller and Walter Benjamin (episode 1). Thanks to Some Landscapes for the pointer.

Cornish Landscape V

This will be the last installment of posts from my trip to Cornwall in December. I welcome the distance that a bit of time passing grants me when selecting images - I felt in December after taking the photos the immediate rush of quantity and possibility, now I'm more -er- discerning.

The first two images continue a formal interest of mine - using the photograph's rectangle shape to draw in different elements around a central composite of accidental things. That sounds a bit abstract, what I mean is the hope that the object(s) of the photograph are photographed in a way that their interrelatedness with the things around them and their setting are apparent - empirically and aesthetically.

I have spoken as clumsily about related thinking in writing form here, and the lower of these images is a favourite of mine that I think is the most obvious example of this aggregation thinking.

I'm not sure yet if I'm succeeding at an aggregation, conglomeration thing... These two images (above) do have a centralising orientation where the different bits are already organised around each other, but what is interesting to me is the accidental nature of this conglomeration - the bits of rubbish sit within their own damp halo or frame, an emphasis that I hope questions their status as things, raising it perhaps. Other images of mine that are dealing with these issues are more constructed (and on an aside, I see that 'construction' has nearly risen to the top of my tags tower on the right - interesting...).

The bottom two are just views from Cornwall. After tinkering with images from Egypt it is apparent how grey Cornwall is! UK winter is dark compared to the golden bright light of Egyptian winter.

Congratulations to Egypt - what an inspiration you are!

In this amazing moment that Egypt has created for all of us, I'll slip in some more photos from Egypt, winter 2008/9.

Alexandria

 

(The Mediterranean)

Abu Simbel

 

Aswan

Luxor

The Nile