Chance
Finds Us (extract)
“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose…”
Gerard
Manley Hopkins (1873, p.239)
In
this extract from his journal dated February 24, 1875, the poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins was reflecting on his observations of a snow
covered landscape beyond his bedroom window. Hopkin's concept of
“inscape” is illustrated through his earlier description of this
winter scene:
“In
the snow flat-topped hillocks and shoulders outlined with wavy edges,
ridge below ridge, very like the grain of wood in line and in
projection like relief maps.”
Hopkins
(1873)
In
finding equivalence between the landscape outside with other
microcosmic and macrocosmic phenomena, Hopkins is illustrating his
notion of “inscape” as both the unique and particular essence of
a thing (its design) and its existence within a universe of
infinitely repeating (though individual) arabesques and fractals. But
it is crucially this second concept, the notion of “chance”,
which brought this quote to the fore of the ChanceFinds Us project
and from where this exploration departs.
Whilst
there are some immediate and innate connections between the work of
all the artists in the ChanceFinds Us group
– from dedicated, rigorous processes which take place over
extensive periods of time to the finely balanced, exquisite rendering
of pieces – there are an equal number of important parallels and
dissonances which only start to unfold with thoughtful engagement and
careful contemplation of the work. The first of these possibilities
is the multifarious play of chance in the artists different
practices; whether it is the emergence of chance through the
application and 'playing through' of a systematised process (Sarah
Bray, James Hugonin, Anne Vibeke Mou) and relinquishing control (Alex
Charrington, Rachael Clewlow, Nick Kennedy) or the directed, chance
encounter with virtualities as a challenge to deterministic views of
the universe (Richard Rigg, Peter J Evans); chance is encountered
variously, and to different effects, in all their work.
Perhaps
one of the most significant aspects which connect the work of all the
artists in the Chance
Finds Us group
is the rigour, pace and longevity of their processes of artistic
creation (and from which many of the 'chance' encounters and
accidents emerge). These systematic and precise endeavours often take
weeks, months or even years of dedicated, almost ritualistic,
exploration and application to arrive at final pieces. Revisiting
conversations with the artists in their studios this section explores
the delicate and meticulous process of creation which is invested and
evident in all their work. It continues to question how, and perhaps
why, these artists have all (independently) arrived at a similar
systematic way of working and whether there is anything particular
about this context which invites, or lends itself to, these “sublime
pursuits” (Mou, 2011).
The
play of opposites, such as intuition and logic, chaos and order,
immanence and transcendence, in the work of the Chance
Finds Us group
is explored in the final chapter of the essay. This chapter goes on
to examine the ways in which some of the artists are questioning
received truths concerning perceived reality and how they are using
the unique medium of art to “go beyond itself” (Hugonin, 2011)
in order to question existing paradigms of science and logic or else
to make manifest the fleeting, the intangible, or the invisible flow
of time.
Ultimately,
however, Chance
Finds Us
comprises of a group of eight individuals with eight unique practices
and perspectives on the world. As such, no single narrative or
overview would be adequate in communicating the constellation of
intellectual, philosophical and art historical connections,
similarities and differences. It is the place of this essay not to
decode or condition the readers interpretation of the works and the
group as a whole but rather to offer a parallel dialogue exploring
some of the exciting thematic threads which have been identified
throughout a year long period of research and conversation.
Chapter
One - Chance Finds Us
“Chance
noun
[attributive]
verb
2
[with
object] informal
do (something) despite its being dangerous or uncertain outcome...”
Oxford
English Dictionary (2009)
“Chance comes in here to give us the unknown”
John
Cage to Pierre Boulez, (Jan 17, 1950)
The
operations of chance on the production of works have a long and
varied history in contemporary art. Notably in the late 1950s and
early 60s the revolutionary art movement Fluxus explored chance as a
means of questioning and undermining the hegemony of individual
artistic invention. In their 1962 manifesto the leader and great
exponent of the movement George Maciunas promoted this idea of
relinquishing the control of the individual in favour of a “living
art”5.
available to, and affected by, anyone or any of the forces of nature.
But whereas Fluxus used chance with an emphasis on critiquing agency
and authorial presence in the work, the Chance
Finds Us group
more
often use chance and indeterminacy to invite or engage with the
unpredictable or the unforeseen.
In
the current sociocultural context where subjective experience is
increasingly controlled and standardized, chance seems to be an
increasingly undesirable factor and something to avoid. The
capitalist projects' promotion of a sense of stability and permanence
through ownership and status is also informed and bolstered by market
research, risk management and game theory6.
It is interesting therefore, that within this context many of the CFU
artists appear to be employing increasingly complex and indeterminate
systems in the generation of work which, buffeted by chance, often
verge upon complete, chaotic flux. For instance, with the
introduction of a notated system in 2006-7, the complex compositions
of James Hugonins' paintings became even more volatile and less
predictable than with his previous system (which the artist carried
only in his head and repeated across the paintings' grid according to
a mixture of intuition and order) . As this notated system is 'played
out' across the grid of the painting and the tiny units of pigment
are gradually filled in, the orderly system begins to fragment and
break apart as the double helix of flickering colour comes up against
itself, resulting in a work full of unpredictable chance encounters
and even greater fluctuation7..
During a visit to his Wooler studio in spring 2011 James
Hugonin described the system and process behind the painting he was
currently working on Binary
Rhythm (I):
“In
the current note book the system has been completely jumbled up;
chance and disorder have already built in an element of
unpredictability... it's core really...and that's what creates these
extraordinary things ... I want a painting to surprise me. I don't
want to do something that I know already or to just follow something
that I know is going to work...I want to take on something that might
not work, that might all end in tears...”
James
Hugonin (March 2011)
From
Hugonin's precise, complex system which he uses to construct a
painting's composition, to the predefined mode of production in Nick
Kennedy's series of Dice
Drawings,
many of the artists in the Chance
Finds Us
group employ rigorous rules or systems in the creation of art work.
It is through the relinquishing of control to a mediating system or
process that the work becomes more receptive to influences beyond the
artists direct authorship and opened to the subtle play of chance.
This is demonstrated in Alex Charrington's series of paintings
created with the use of painting machines. Though Charrington
retained absolute control over the system and the initial set of
conditions in the paintings generation - e.g. the mixing of colours,
the speed of the machine's revolutions, the points at which new lines
would be painted in – unexpected and uncontrollable results emerged
as a direct result of the machines' intermediary. For instance in
Untitled
at 6RPM (2006)
created using his first painting machine:
“...[Physics]
had an unpredictable influence on the painting's generation...
Because the turn table was quite 'Heath Robinson', as the motor
turned it would heat and expand, affecting the outcome of the final
work...”
Alex
Charrington (March 2011)
In
Sarah Bray’s intensive drawing practice it is the delicate, finely
balanced accumulation of marks and chance encounters which directly
lead to a drawings 'success' or 'failure'. The intensive drawing
process through which these works evolve requires a synergy of
intellect and intuition as Bray works across a vast expanse of linen,
balancing each subsequent set of marks within the network of
interrelated, existing marks whilst seeking to achieve balance
throughout. Similarly
in Nick Kennedy's multifarious drawing practice the proximity
between chance, accident and failure is industriously explored. In
his practice Kennedy employs a variety of techniques and systems in
order to surrender some of his authorial control (either by handing
the process over to other people or simply by following the
predetermined constraints of the process) and consequently allowing
the influence of chance and accident to affect the development and
final outcome of the work. Kennedy explained that these techniques
are a means of
“…questioning
control and failure through setting up a system and following it
through…”
Nick
Kennedy (March 2011)
For
instance, in his aforementioned Dice
Drawings
Kennedy developed a system or “rules of engagement” with which to
produce the drawings i.e. to throw a dice at a pre-determined spot on
a piece of paper, with each throw noting down the number of the throw
where the dice landed and if the role was 'successful' to alternate
from his right to his left hand and change the colour of the pencil
from blue to red (and vice versa). The result of this endeavour
(which takes place over days and weeks) is a nebulous, cloud-like
swarm of delicately hand-drawn numbers:
“essentially
an accumulation of all the imperfections of person and dice”
Nick
Kennedy (March 2011)
But
what does this “accumulation” of chance encounters or
“imperfections” in the Dice
Drawings
suggest? And what is the meaning or purpose behind the
various invitations for chance and “failure” to manifest
both within Kennedy's work and within the work of the other Chance
Finds Us artists?
Could the operations of chance and accident be a potential key for a
non deterministic understanding of the universe? Do these chance
operations in art connect it to the real (i.e. non artificial) world,
a world subject to the influences of external factors (as John Cage
described it “[Chance] imitating nature in its manner of
operation”8.)?
Or could this be interpreted as an invitation to an 'otherness' and
factors beyond the artists influence and imagination to emerge
through the act of making?
One
historical precursor to the summoning of chance into a preordained
system - and which resonates to many of the Chance
Finds Us artists
- can be found in the work and writings of the experimental composer
John Cage. Rather than offer a conventional explanation for his work,
Cage's approach emphasised the need to abandon traditional, academic
approaches to understanding as located in paradigmatic schools of
thought (science, music and art) and instead to develop a
receptiveness or susceptibility
to
the operations of sound and chance as part of the wider fabric of
human experience. The superlative example of this and of the
operation of chance in Cage's opus is demonstrated in his famous
composition 4'33"
(1952)
whose
four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence open the piece to,
and allows it to be completely conditioned by, the 'accidental'
sounds of the audience and environment. Though no sound is
deliberately played during 4'33"
the
score of the composition is divided into three separate movements (in
the original performance, the commencement of each signalled by the
lowering the lid of the piano's keys)9..
Thus a score is set and 'played through' both by the pianist and by
the incidental sounds of the performance's location.
Many
of the artists in CFU
use a similar mode of operation as in Cage's 4'33";
setting in motion a precise and regular system – such as in Peter J
Evans' Making
Twenty and
Rachael Clewlow’s ongoing series of diaries (examined further in
Chapter 3) – but which facilitates chance encounters, random
occurrences and imperfections. As in 4'33"
these
processes often begin to relocate or to readdress the position and
motivation of authorship; rather than originating from a single,
finite idea which must be communicated via the work it is the process
itself which acts as a vehicle for discovery and which invites a
certain passive state of listening (or looking) and thinking; a
receptiveness - both in the artist, the work and the audience - to
the flow of time and to the unknown chance encounter. In Taoism and
Chinese Buddhism - theologies which directly influenced Cage's early
development through the lectures of D.T. Suzuki - this state is also
known as tzu
jan
or self-so-ness 10.
Tzu
jan refers
to the essentially natural, spontaneous nature of life and goes some
way to explain the accommodation of chance and accident (such as ink
blots and smudges) in Zen painting and calligraphy as direct
manifestations of the rhythms and unpredictable, spontaneous
occurrences in nature. In his forward to the I
Ching
Carl Jung suggested that this preoccupation with chance and accident,
as a characteristic of much of Chinese Taoist and Buddhist thought,
offered a key to an a-causal, holistic understanding of reality 9.
For some of the artists in the Chance
Finds Us
group the accommodation of chance includes the acceptance of the
small errors and inconsistencies of the hand-made process. For
instance, although many of their systems could
be
generated with the use of a computer programme - such as James
Hugonins' annotated system of 197
colours and the pseudo-random series of events which condition Peter
J Evans hand-drawn prints Making
Twenty
– the artists have deliberately and consciously elected to retain
some of their intuitive, human influence over both the system and its
execution. In some of Peter J Evans' works such as The
Universe and You and
Making
Twenty the
suggestion of a non deterministic view of the universe begins to
quietly challenge and destabilize the authority of scientific reason
(the allusion towards scientific enquiry implicit in his use of
antiquated scientific graph paper and pared-down units of line and
colour). Unlike
a 'traditional' scientific process Evans'
The Universe and You
acknowledges (or exists because of) the interaction between the
observer and the observed phenomena. Much like the real operations of
the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle - which in
1925
stated
that it is impossible to know simultaneously the true position and
the momentum of a particle, demonstrating that Quantum Physics will
always exist in the realm of conjecture – the simultaneity of
phenomena in this drawing is difficult, if not impossible, to
visually accommodate. Whilst precise and meticulous, the organic
quality of Evans' hand-drawn marks (all of them ever so
microscopically different) are subtly evocative of the cumulation of
imperfections, idiosyncrasies and chance encounters which constitute
this work, ourselves, and the universe itself.
Whilst
the operations of chance are evident through the indexical marks and
idiosyncrasies of some of the works constructions - e.g. in Making
Twenty and
Binary Rhythm (I)
– in Richard Rigg’s sculptures and interventions there is no
trace of the artists hand. In contrast, Rigg meticulously observes
and immaculately recreates facsimiles of 'real world' objects and
scenes. In works such as Latent
Morning (2010)
and The
Broken Appearance of the Floor
(2010) chance is employed through the subtle, but highly calculated,
rupturing of perceived reality. The encounter with these ambiguous,
hallucinatory (but absolutely convincing) objects is akin to the
“intellectual uncertainty”10.
experienced in uncanny encounters where there is a jarring proximity
to the unknown:
“Uncanniness
entails a sense of uncertainty and suspense, however momentary and
unstable. As such it is often to be associated with an experience of
the threshold, liminality, margins, borders, frontiers…”
Nicholas
Royle (2003 p.vii)
(end of extract)
Iris Aspinall Priest
Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012
References
1. Hopkins, G. M. (1873) quoted in Cohen, B.L. ed. and Kujundžić, D. (2005) Provocations to reading: J. Hillis Miller and the democracy to come. Irvine: University of California.
2.
Mou, A. V. and Kennedy, N (2011)
Chance
Finds Us (About) [online]
<http://chancefindsus.com/about/
> [Last Accessed 27th
February 2012].
3.
Hugonin, J. (2011) James
Hugonin: Studio Visit
Interviewed by Iris Priest (9th
March, 2011)
4.
Oxford
(2009) Concise
Oxford English Dictionary 11th edition,
Oxford: OUP Oxford.
5.
John
Cage to Pierre Boulez, (Jan 17, 1950) Introduction
to The Boulez-Cage Correspondence By
Pierre Boulez, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, (27 Jan 1995)
6.
Charrington,
A. (2011) Alex
Charrington: Studio Visit Interviewed
with Iris Priest (4th
March, 2011)
7.
Kennedy,
N. (2011) Nick
Kennedy: Studio Visit Interviewed
with Iris Priest (March 2011)
8.
Cage,
J. (195-) quoted in Cage, J. and Retallack, J (1996) MUSICAGE:
Cage Muses on words, art, music,[Introduction]
Middletown:
Wesleyan
University Press.
9.
Solomon, L. J. (2002) [Online] The
Sounds of Silence John Cage and 4'33” Available
at: <http://solomonsmusic.net/4min33se.htm>
[Last
Accessed 27th
February 2012].
10.
Chang,
C-Y. (June 1968)
Creativity
and Taoism.
London: Harpercollins
College Div.
p.
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