σχέδιος

Searching for a title...

2012-01-25T16:06:00.005+01:00

Paragon

specimen

pattern

civilised/ wild – the unknowable dream

dream of death

Sacred (and profane) geometry

secret geometry

inner geometry

unknown

unknown regions

kelpie

Artemis

Acteon

Arabesque

Acteon's arabesque

shape shifter

changeling

messenger

corpus

Honeysuckle

ever green

memento mori

oracle

cipher

harmonic ratio

geomancy

geomancing

Clouds without water (after Alastair Crowley)

Those who know, do not speak; those who speak, do not know (Lao Tzu)

One: Magical Geometry

Perpetual Geometry

One: Myth & Perpetual Geometry

One: Acteon's Perpetual Geometry

One: The Myth of Acteon: Perpetual Geometry

One: The Myth of Acteon & Perpetual Geometry

One: Supernatural Geometry

Supernatural Geometry

Supernatural Geometry (fig. 1)

Acrylic on found Roe Deer Skull (2011)

Black Cloud: further reading

2012-01-19T22:37:00.003+01:00

A project by Ben Jeans Houghton

Publication and Edition — Special Launch Event

with talks and readings from:
Iris Priest, Dr. George Wake, Dr. Gail-Nina Anderson
and a new composition from
Rhodri Davies

Thursday 26 January 6 — 9 pm
£3 on the door

__

On the 19th of May 2011 a ferocious fire broke out in a scrapyard in Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne. The fire burnt for almost 24 hours and sent a column of smoke into the sky which was so huge and dense that it could be seen 30 miles away. The monstrous black cloud became a kind of portal to some who watched. Just as time seemed to slow under its shadow, so it became a locus for time to pool – past, present and future. In retrospect, it carried some back to a prior time: to a time when their ancestors similarly stood and gazed in alarm, excitement or awe as the cities ignited and burned with the elemental ingredients of industry; sulphur, naptha, tallow, potash and gunpowder.’
Extract from Black Cloud, text by Iris Priest

__

Black Cloud is a new project (consisting of a publication, limited edition print and talk event) developed by CIRCA Projects with Newcastle-based artist Ben Jeans Houghton. Taking Jeans Houghton’s photographs of the Byker Scrapyard fire in May 2011 as a starting point, the project draws parallels between this event and the Great Fire of Newcastle in 1854. Featuring a new text by regionally-based writer Iris Priest, Black Cloud explores Jeans Houghton’s beautiful photographs as documents of ‘a collective public spectacle and a pseudo-magical, highly subjective encounter’.

To celebrate the launch of the edition and publication, CIRCA and Ben Jeans Houghton have curated a special talk event. The evening will include short talks by guest speakers, intended to act as ‘further reading’ on the projects’ themes. In keeping with the event’s location in the historic Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle upon Tyne, Black Cloud: further reading will uncover fascinating and tangential topics addressed by emphatic specialists.

__

iris Priest: Black Cloud

Iris Priest will give a reading from her new text about Jeans Houghton’s photographs of the Byker Scrapyard fire in May 2011.

__

Dr George Wake: THE PLANTS OF THE GODS & ROCKS FROM SPACE

Scientist and Traveler Dr George Wake will present a lecture in two parts. ‘THE PLANTS OF THE GODS’ will focus on the ritual use of botanic entheogens throughout various cultures as ‘gateway’ drugs.

‘ROCKS FROM SPACE’ will cover Wake’s personal Interest in the collection of Asteroid and Meteorite materials many of which he sources from solo trips to the Sahara.

___

Gail-Nina Anderson: IN COMPANY WITH THE DEAD

Taboo or a legitimate matter of education? Idle curiosity or deep faith? Looking at human remains is not, in the main, something our culture encourages, yet when the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux were briefly on show in Newcastle, the event had something of the celebratory flavour of a royal visit. This talk looks at the changing etiquette of meeting the dead, our responses to archaeologically sanctioned museum displays of human remains, and the ideas that surround the visible (and invisible) relic.

__

Rhodri Davies: 1854 - 2012

Celebrated experimental musician and harpist Rhodri Davies will create a new improvised performance symbollising a conversation between 1854 and 2011. Through burning 157 holes into a piece of sheet music from 1854 (one for every year past) Davies will create a new piece – collapsing the weight of time between then and now.

___________________________________________________________________

Black Cloud: further reading
at The Literary and Philosophical Society
23 Westgate Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 1SE

Thurs 26 January
6 — 8 pm

£3 Entrance. All funds raised from entry and sales directly support the project,
event and CIRCA Projects’ future programme of free events and exhibitions.
No booking required, but RSVP essential due to limited numbers.

To RSVP email info@circaprojects.org

Special discounts will be available on the night, including a special 20% discount to members of Contemporary Art Society

2012-01-19T18:54:00.003+01:00

I think I'm starting to understand why I'm finding writing so hard...

In his 2004 talk on the concept of Flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about how people are happiest when they can achieve states of Flow in their work:

"...There's this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult,and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself,you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake..."

This is something that is very hard to achieve with the work that I'm doing. Both because I haven't been writing for a long time and am so extra conscious of everything I do and how it ought to be (but isn't) and because academic writing is basically a mash up of lots of existing ideas, well referenced, put together in a new way, that there's simply no scope for creativity or flow... I have no direct relationship with what I'm doing; it's almost entirely re-staging and restating. When you make art you don't need words - images and things occupy the space of words, and supersede them. Art is a language of itself and one which academic writing cannot occupy or embody. Poetry, maybe, can go some way. But there's no scope for poetry in essays.

I feel very low at the moment and I think it's because writing has cut my off from the world of real things and tangible experiences. You can't affect a world you're in if you are always mediated by other peoples words and ideas.

Or it could just be winter and being terribly poor.

Arts Council Bursary

2012-01-16T23:09:00.003+01:00

So with SUPERCONDUCTOR up and running at the NewBridge Project I'm busy writing the final essay for the Chance Finds Us group show which will be touring early next year beginning at MIMA.

Although it's been a tough winter (I've been inundated with writing projects from CFU to Allenheads Contemporary Arts and many things between) I have just heard that I'm one of the lucky recipients of The Arts Council Bursaries to attend The 2012 State of the Arts Conference in Salford http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/news/arts-council-news/book-now-state-arts-2012-artists-shaping-world/

Also, I'm doing a reading of a text I wrote for Ben Jeans Houghton's new book commissioned by CIRCA Projects Black Cloud. For more details about the event and to RSVP please go to the Black Cloud: Further Reading event page on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/314477181930592/

Finally, I have some burning ideas for work I would like to make in the print workshop... There's a few things I need to finish before I can make a start (Namely CFU essay and ACA essay) but seriously looking forward to getting around to MAKING THINGS AGAIN

2012-01-08T13:08:00.003+01:00

I'm about 2500 words into the final essay for Chance Finds Us...

I find the writing process variously bleak, impossible, enthralling, heart breaking and miserable. I don't know how long I've been writing and working on this specific piece for but I would estimate it's about 3 weeks( if you were taking about a 'normal' 9-5 sort of a scenario)... And I'm still far from finished... And of course writing runs like a river around and over and throughout... whole nights, squeezed between work and other commissions, tributaries into my dreams, it pervades everything.

I found myself today applying painterly techniques to the writing process... some of it is obvious like sketching out the shape of the whole then filling in the details, but specifically I recall my tutor in Glasgow telling me to mix a part of every colour into every other colour - thus creating a unified feeling across the whole canvas (though often barely perceptible it almost works on the level of resonance). The same happens with language throughout an essay - where you repeat words, motifs or branches of ideas throughout a text to unify the whole, to hint at the subtle underpainting of the subject matter...

Anyway, I better get back to my miserable solitary existence. Bah humbug.

2012-01-07T00:51:00.003+01:00

Richard Dawson Featured me on his website : )

http://www.richarddawson.net/iris.html

Just when I was giving up all hope of ever being an artist again...

Also, busy preparing for SUPERCONDUCTOR PART 1

MUSIC COMMAND

WHICH IS THIS MONDAY (THE 9TH OF JANUARY AT THE MINING INSTITUTE 7.30 PM)

For more details please go to http://www.edwinli.co.uk/

and the opening of SUPERCONDUCTOR (the show I'm curating at The NewBridge Project)

Just rediscovered... My Dissertation (2008)

2011-12-31T17:16:00.005+01:00

An Investigation into the Freudian concept of The Uncanny in the work of contemporary women artists – Mona Hatoum, Nina Saunders and Ann Hamilton

Iris Priest

Abstract

In 1919 Freud wrote Das Unheimlich (The Uncanny) as a psychoanalytical paper on what he delineated as a frightening, perceptual experience originating in repression.
Over 80 years since it’s original publication a number of contemporary artists are still utilizing or addressing this concept (although often in more expanded and diverse positions).

This dissertation thesis focuses specifically upon women artists, investigating why The Uncanny features in their work and how this concept may be relevant from a contemporary female perspective. The work of Mona Hatoum, Nina Saunders and Ann Hamilton is used as a lens for analysis of the phenomena, and what constitutes he Uncanny both as defined initially by Freud and then more recently by other theorists.

Freud’s failure to recognize his own inherent ideologies and his subjective authorship is examined in terms of how this influences the text’s authority and furthermore, how aspects of his ideas have been re-worked in contemporary times. This is paralleled by an evaluation of new forms of the uncanny e.g. displacement, migration, homelessness, and terrorism etc. These and more general aspects of contemporary life - evocative of Uncanny sensations – are manifest in the artist’s work and perspectives, often transposing viewers into the unsettling space of the displaced or homeless person.

The dialectical, marginal or dislocated states as described by both Freud and through the evaluation of contemporary instances of the Uncanny, are of key concern to the artists and manifest in their various sculptures and installations. Connections to the writings of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray are investigated as well as their theoretical approaches to language and the abject. This analysis offers a foundation for re-examining the notion of the feminine as peculiarly residing at the liminal and connected to the abject/ uncanny in society as it is part of what is repressed by the dominantly masculine hierarchies. The works discussed in the dissertation often force the viewer to place themselves upon borderlines – physically and theoretically – and to confront states of liminality and the uncanny.

In contrast to socially defined experiences of the Uncanny, the contemporary home is a microcosmic site for the Uncanny encounter. The Contemporary home has become an unstable/ uncertain environment, the boundaries of which have been eroded by new media. It is also (traditionally as well) a site for the repression of undesirable/ uncivilised tendencies and drives. Finally, the home tenders an irretrievable point of longing, and an infinite source of dislocating uncanny sensations connected to the unattainable past.

One of the identified issues for women artists using Freud’s text is its linear, literary and overbearingly patriarchal character. Women artists lending this concept are not necessarily representing themselves but relying upon a masculine defined system of signification. Contextualised with texts by Hélèn Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva, the thesis continues to explore how the artists use bodily, visceral, often ambiguous experiences and languages of an uncanny nature to overcome the dominance of phallocratic language and science systems, making their work more universally accessible (to both women, non-westerners, and non-middle class people).

Finally the text surmises with how the Uncanny is used by the artists to broaden viewers’ perspectives both on the world and their ways of interpreting it, by taking viewers into that uncertain place, the site of the repressed and the socially excluded other.

Introduction

The Dissertation thesis aims to present an investigation, and re-evaluation of The Uncanny (Freud 1919) in the context of contemporary women’s art, specifically focusing on the work of Mona Hatoum, Nina Saunders and Ann Hamilton.

The dissertation will begin by addressing the 1919 text in terms of both the possibilities and problems it presents contemporary women artists dealing with notions of the Uncanny. In the chapter Das Unheimlich, more recent analyses of the 1919 paper and alternative definitions of the phenomena are explored, alongside relevant extracts from the original text, in order to outline the parameters of the dissertation’s theoretical investigation.

Chapter two examines how, or whether, aspects of the contemporary context – i.e. the social, political, economic and artistic environments from 1997 to 2007 – have influenced the practitioners, specifically addressing whether there is anything about this period, at the beginning of the 21st Century, that made it decidedly susceptible to an insurgence in themes of the Uncanny in women’s art.

Chapter three focuses on the centrality of the home as a motif and site for Uncanny experiences. This investigation is then used comparatively to analyse the artist’s employment of domestic artefacts and spaces in the creation of unsettling works.

The Final Chapter explores the Uncanny – particularly (but not exclusively) experienced by women – inherent in linguistic/ signifying systems and bodily experience. The investigation draws upon Luce Irigaray’s theory of Le Parler Femme, Hélène Cixous’s Écriture féminine and Julia Kristeva’s concept of the Abject, in order to illuminate and analyse aspects of the artist’s work (but with particular emphasis on the work of Ann Hamilton).

The Conclusion presents a summarized overview of the thesis.

Chapter 1.

Das Unheimlich

This Chapter will begin with a synopsis of The Uncanny as defined by Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimlich before investigating more recent definitions of the phenomena. The breakdown of these different definitions will inform the subsequent analysis of the art works. The chapter continues into a critical reflection of Freud’s essay including the potential problems it may present to contemporary women artists dealing with the concept or its manifestation today (Haughton, 2003 p. xlii – xliii) and; secondly, whether Freud and his use of language, might entertain ideologies that make the text inherently biased or flawed (Irigaray, 1985, p.139).

At the outset of Das Unheimlich Freud describes the paper as a psychoanalytical investigation into an essentially “aesthetic” experience but one which, none-the-less, elicits feelings of unease and dread (Freud, 1919, p.123). The essay does not conform to the traditional systematic psychoanalytical paper format but also references literature and biography. Freud’s definitions are almost as contingent and ambiguous as the phenomenon itself (Cixous p.525):

“Unheimlich is clearly the opposite of heimlich, heimisch, vertraut, and it seems obvious that something should be frightening precisely because it is unknown and unfamiliar. But of course the converse is not true: not everything new and unfamiliar is frightening. All one can say is that what is novel may well prove frightening and uncanny…but by no means all.”

(Freud, 1919, p.124-5)

However, there are instances within the text where definitions of the Uncanny are conveyed more definitively. Some of the main instances are summarized by Hal Foster in his 1992 re-evaluation of the uncanny:

“…(1) an indistinction between the real and imagined… (2) a confusion between the animate and inanimate… (3) a usurpation of the referent by the sign or of physical reality by psychic reality…”

(Foster, 1992, p.7)

In all these circumstances it is the “intellectual uncertainty” (Freud, 1919, p.125) that elicits feelings of an Uncanny nature. Freud traces the parentage of all these disturbing experiences/ doubts to various forms of repression, either childhood or primordial, where what has been repressed – e.g. distressing memories, complexes or primitive supersitions etc (Freud, 1919, p.155) – returns to haunt an individual.

According to Freud’s definition, the Uncanny epitomises a specific genus of frightening encounters i.e. where an original experience or impulse has been transformed through repression into a subconscious source of fear and it is the subsequent return of the object of repression that induces feelings of an Uncanny nature (Freud, 1919, p.147).

Other Definitions

In Das Unheimlich Freud does not address any visual works of art, using instead references to literary imagery in addition to examples from patient studies. This chapter will now explore alternative definitions of The Uncanny, many of which re-appropriate aspects of Freud’s theory and/ or extend it into analyses of experiences connected to contemporary life and art.

In his interpretation of E. T. A. Hoffman’s vertiginous story The Sand man Freud places particular emphasis upon the ominous figure of the Sand man who allegedly tears out children’s eyes (Freud, 1919, p. 136). This primary theme – the anxiety surrounding the loss of one’s eyes – is described by Freud as being a substitutive metaphor for the phobia of oedipal castration and a definitive example of Uncannyness according to his psychoanalytical viewpoint (Freud, 1919).

However, this reading is contended – or at least advanced – in a post-Lacanian interpretation where it may not be necessary for the anxiety to be a surrogate for something else: in his writing on the mirror phase (Lacan, 1977, p.5-7) argued that most of our libido is invested in the specular image:

“The child is fixated by the [mirror] image, enamoured and captured by the specular double. The child’s triumphant delight and fixation prefigures the dynamics involved in all imaginary relations. These residues will later become defined as erotic/ libidinal and aggressive impulses or drives…”

(Grosz, 1990, p.37)

Taking this into consideration, the loss of one’s eyes and subsequent denial of scopophilic gratification is potentially parallel, and equivalent to, the fear of Oedipal castration delineated by Freud as the ultimate object of fear (Leader, Darian 2000).

Apart from in his examination of Hoffmann’s motifs (i.e. those relating to castration anxiety), Freud does not overtly discuss the uncanny in terms of sexual repression during the text. However, in her critical analysis Fiction and its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud’s Das Unheimliche (The “Uncanny”) Hélène Cixous postulates that there is a prevalently sexual aspect inherent in Freud’s explanation of the uncanny (one which, precisely because it is not addressed directly, is doubly repressed; a sign of the author’s own repressions):

“ Moreover, Schelling, at the moment of arrival, draws a curtain. “All that which should have remained hidden.” Schelling inks the Unheimliche to a lack of modesty. It is only at the end that the sexual threat emerges. But it had always been there latently, in the coupling itself and in the proliferation of the Heimlich and of the Unheimlich; when one makes contact with the other, it closes again and closes history of meaning upon itself…”

(Cixous, 1976, p.530)

The instant of the repressed emerging – in this case the “sexual threat” that Cixous outlines –reverberates in Freud’s later work Civilization and its Discontents (1929) where he describes what is repressed on a societal level i.e. mankind’s instinctual, uncivilized tendencies and animalistic drives (Freud, 1929, p.144). Such a return of supressed drives is explored in Nina Saunder’s work Refuge (2006) (Fig.15.) where a domiciliary, floral, armchair - redolent of middle-class, domestic affluence - is penetrated by the head of a fox.1

Where, in Freud’s paper, instances of “intellectual uncertainty” (Freud, 1919, p. 125) invoke the uncanny they tend to be connected to liminal or inbetween states e.g. between the animate and the inanimate (Freud, 1919, p.135), or between states of imagination and reality (Freud, 1919, p.154-155). The ambiguous, in-between states that the uncanny often occupies are summarised by Nicholas Royle in these terms:

“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…”

(Royle, 2003, p.vii)

These dialectical or marginal states are of key concern to Ann Hamilton in many of her sculptures and installations. For instance, in the seemingly intemporal space of Mattering (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9) where, immersed within the undulating orange vellum, the viewer’s normally bounded sense of material reality and ethereal imagination, and of the bodily self and hallucinatory other, is brought into question.

The final elaborated concept of the uncanny that will be considered during the dissertation is what Julia Kristeva outlined as Abjection in her thesis Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1988). The abject is similar to the uncanny in that it is often manifest in a feeling of horror directed towards the threat of an insurgent otherness (Kristeva, 1988, p.2 & p.15). Kristeva’s concept extends into a primeval and pre-lingual repression (Kristeva, 1988 p.10-11, 13-15 & 61) and, unlike the uncanny, is not necessarily embodied; it often belongs to what she describes as a sort of immaterial otherness: “…the phobic has no other object than the abject.” (Kristeva, 1988, p.6).

In her essay Kristeva asserts how societys, in order to maintain civilised order and the status quo, must expel those elements connected to the realm of the animal (and, therefore, primitive man, sex and death). What is necessarily excluded from society becomes symbolically abject and this includes bodily waste and dirt.

“It is as if dividing lines were set up between society and a certain nature… on the basis of the simple logic of excluding filth, which, promoted to the ritual level of defilement, founded the “self and clean” of each social group if not of each subject.
…Defilement is what is jettisoned from the “symbolic system.” It is what escapes that social rationality, that logical order on which a social aggregate is based, which then becomes differentiated from a temporary agglomeration of individuals and, in short, constitutes a classification system or a structure.”

(Kristeva, 1982, p. 65)

Thus, according to Kristeva, shed bodily matter such as hair exists upon, or just beyond, the border between self and other, cleanliness and abjection. In her installation Recollection (1995) (Fig. 13) Mona Hatoum hung strands of hair from the ceiling close to the entrance so that visitors to the exhibition had to pass through these, becoming only apparent with the cumulating physical sensation of the hairs brushing against their faces: “…perplexing at first and then discomforting, even repulsive…” (Brett, 1997, p.92). Inside the space balls of hair, simultaneously delicate and abhorrant, were dispersed across the floor. This encounter immerses the viewer in a psychophysical experience of borderlines.

“…The work horrifies some, who avoid contact with Hatoum’s bodily rejects as if they threaten defilement. A stray hair on a shirt or a dress or a coat is instantly brushed away. While connoting beauty and identity, the most delicate, eroticized and lasting of human materials is also considered unclean…”

(Archer, 1997, p.93)

The duality of this experience may cast doubt upon a viewer’s classification systems: in the work dirt and bodily waste are simultaneously revolting and beautiful.

The Problems with Reading Freud

In trying to write a theoretical treatise on a phenomena which is, by it’s very nature, illusive and immaterial, Freud endeavours to conceptualise something that exists at the margins of aesthetics and experience. Cixous, in her critical reading of Das Unheimlich, deciphers this as the insurmountable problem with the text and which Freud fails to recognise throughout his attempts to define the uncanny:

“Freud’s text may strike us to be less a discourse than a strange theoretical novel… Nothing turns out less reassuring for the reader than this niggling, cautious, yet wily and interminable pursuit (of ‘something’) – be it a domain, an emotional movement, a concept, impossible to determine yet variable in its form, intensity, quality and content)… the sense of strangeness imposes its secret necessity everywhere.”

(Cixous, 1976, p.525)

Cixous seems to point towards firstly; a duplicitous uncanny in the text itself and; secondly, to the particular impossibility encountered by Freud (and psychoanalysis) when trying to address things which fall outside of the established systems of knowledge and signification2 (Cixous, 1976). The second point may also, Cixous suggests, be the very source of the text’s disquieting strangeness as this impossible pursuit of the unknown fosters a splitting or doubling between both the uncertain analyst/author and the unnameable other/subject (Cixous, 1976, p.526)

Although Freud introduces the essay as an academic study in the category of “medico-psychological literature” (Freud, 1919, p.123), the essay circumvents the subject matter via dictionary citations (Freud, 1919, p.125-134), literary analyses (Freud, 1919, p.136-141 & 151) and biographical passages (Freud, 1919, p.144). Thus, the paper is also literary, betraying a certain degree of authorial voice on Freud’s part (Cixous, 1976, p.528-529). In addition, Freud’s choice of source material may be seen to affect the reader’s interpretation of the uncanny, through his selective omission, inclusion or emphasis of specific examples (Royle, 2003, p. 134).

As a “scientific observer” it is notable that Freud does not – unlike Royle, Baudrillard, Benjamin or Vidler – take an extra observational step beyond the immediate topic to identify any conditions of the time/ context which may have contributed to an enhanced atmosphere of the Uncanny (or at least brought the topic to the fore). This blind spot in the thesis may also indicate Freud’s implicit (and therefore, unquestioned) ideologies that – although rarely evident in the paper itself – govern his perspective (Figes, 1970, p.136).

Freud’s attitudes were not only founded on his class status but also, as outlined in his studies on psychosexual development (Freud, 1973), on his gender. The embedded paradigm of masculine superiority/ feminine inferiority is epitomised in his theory of penis envy (Freud, 1956). where woman is situated as a deficient or inferior man because she “lacks” a phallus:

“His [Freud’s] use of light/darkness imagery, Irigaray argues, already reveals his subservience to the oldest of ‘phallocratic’ philosophical traditions. The Freudian theory of sexual difference is based on the visibility of difference… when he looks at a woman, Freud apparently sees nothing. The female difference is perceived as an absence or negation of the male norm…”

(Moi, Toril, 2002, p.131)

Chapter 2.

Contemporary Context

Sigmund Freud wrote The Uncanny in 1919, during the interwar period, an exceptionally disturbing and apprehensive moment in European history. In the introduction to The Architectural Uncanny, Vidler attributes the insurgent feeling of uncanniness, and Freud’s decision to write his analysis at this time, to this post-war context (i.e. the experience of mechanical warfare, of mass migration and the displacement of populations through bombing raids):

“… Themes of anxiety and dread, provoked by a real or imagined sense of “unhomeliness,” seemed particularly appropriate to a moment when, as Freud noted in 1915, the entire “homeland” of Europe, cradle and apparently secure house of western civilization, was in the process of barbaric regression; when the territorial security that had fostered the notion of a unified culture was broken…”

(Vidler, 1992, p.7)

While the age of pervasive mechanical warfare has, for the most part, been overcome in Western Europe, it has arguably been replaced by a new form of warfare where the threat from the exorbitant, alien forces has shifted from armed incursions/ air strikes to acts of terrorism (Royle, 2003, p.viii).

Freud circumvents the conditions of “intellectual uncertainty” (Freud, 1919, p.125) and “darkness” (Freud, 1919, p.153) as being evocative conditions of uncanny sensations: after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, it was precisely this “intellectual uncertainty” or unknowable aspect of the threat which, without a definable source or mantle, made it other and therefore, trenchantly unpredictable.

“…the fear of which one can speak, the one, therefore, that has a signifiable object, is a more belated and more logical product that assumes all earlier alarms of archaic, non-representable fear.”

(Kristeva, 1982, p.34)

One uncanny aspect of September 11th discerned by Royle (2003, p.viii), was that of recurrence, and this resonates to Freud’s description of the return of the repressed and “repetition” (Freud, 1919, 144-145). Freud also states that certain conditions and situations that are evocative of feelings of helplessness are also redolent with Uncanny sensations (Freud, 1919, p.144-145).

The repetition of September 11th - manifested by the unceasing media reportage on television, radio and in the newspapers - was extended beyond the immediate events and into a prior and post-tense. However, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11th a general ‘climate of fear’ had been developing perceptibly surrounding terrorist attacks in Lockerbie (1988), Tokyo (1995), Oklahoma (1995), U.S. Embassy Bombings, Paris (1996) and East Africa (1998)3, contributing to a sense of helplessness, on the part of the public/ unconnected bystander, to defend against, or even predict, a potentially destructive terrorist incident. This growing climate of fear was generated, or propagated, by profuse media coverage, the often unbalancing and disconcerting effects of which will be addressed in the following subsection.

The Media and Technology

Contemporary culture – dominated by commodity and saturated with media information and messages – is often cited as a fundamentally unbalanced order of being where humankind has lost it’s physical orientation with reality (Woodward, 2003). In his text Symbolic Exchange and Death Jean Baudrillard explores this phenomena in conjunction with his theory of “Hyperrealism”. The term conceptualises a state where reality, replicated through modern technologies such as photography and the media, has become disembodied and subsequently inseparable from it’s own image: reality as absolute simulacrum (Poster, 1998). This disturbing “sensorial mimeticism” (Poster, 1998, p.144) is challenged by Ann Hamilton in her work. For instance, in installations such as Myein (1999) (Fig. 1.), where she uses the tactile qualities of materials to re-immerse the viewer into a sensate-bodily awareness:

“In making work that is visceral and experiential through the body, what I’m trying to do is keep you at that place where the first impetus is not to name and rely on literary psychoanalytic traditions to interpret the work.”

(Hamilton, 1991)

The sort of sensorial epistemology extolled by Hamilton in her pieces is meant to encourage a haptic investigation and learning via materials and the senses: “…letting the work work up through your body instead of from your eyes down.” (Lauterbach, 1999, p.58). It seems to be her intention - in a world of increasingly synthesised/ controlled experiences and the feelings of estrangement promoted by high technology and virtuality (Poster, 1988) - to re-unite the viewer with tactile and tangible realities.

Globalization and Migration, us and them

With the development and increased access to modern technology and transport globalization and migration has increasingly eroded the definition of national borders and culturally/ geographically-defined identities (Woodward, 2003, p. 51). However, rather than encouraging more communal and inclusive societies, immigrants and asylum seekers are often viewed, by the ‘indigenous’ population, as representing an outsider threat e.g. to their cultural identity, economic stability, sovereignty or job opportunities (Bhabba,1990). Anxieties surrounding the arrival of immigrants and asylum seekers etc – heightened by political debate and media representation (Abrams, 1964) - may be seen as developing climates of civic/ ethnic hostility where minority groups are increasingly circumscribed and estranged by societies

The disturbing experiences of the migrant and the displaced/ homeless person is evoked by Mona Hatoum in works such as Mobile Home (2005) (Fig. 2). In the installation everyday household objects evocative of travel such as bedrolls, old suitcases etc were suspended on rows of strings which were, in turn, animated very slightly by a motorized system of pulleys (Aukeman, 2006), provoking doubt in the viewer as to the consistency of the environment:

“…While barely perceptible, the movement elicited queasiness, and the installation as a whole generated a sort of unease with one’s surroundings… Mobile Home is just that: the unstable environment that many of the world’s displaced find themselves occupying everyday.”

(Aukeman, 2006, p.146-147)

Hatoum’s elicitation of displacement and pervasive uncertainty in ones’ surroundings develops a physical and psychological uncertainty described by Freud as an essential condition for the uncanny occurrence (Freud, 1919, p.125).

Hatoum’s installation occupies the position of society’s “other” – of the refugee or migrant – implicating the viewer in this scenario and thereby exposing them to the disorientating uncertainty felt by people in this position (investigated further in Chapter 3 “The House and The Uncanny”).

The City and its Institutions

Mona Hatoum, Nina Saunders and Ann Hamilton have all dealt with issues surrounding the public institution, either through allusion or via site-specific installations/interventions4. In all these pieces the artists underscore the alienating and uncanny nature of societies divided along lines of institutionalised power structures. Their feminine interventions are particularly loaded as they parody (or even usurp) what are seen as predominantly male-dominated establishments.

In Pure Thought (1996) (Fig.4) Saunders utilized the processes of traditional ‘feminine’ craft, i.e. needlework and upholstery, to construct upholstered panels which blocked-up the windows of Jesus college, containing the ‘high’ segregated world of academia in with the vocabulary of ‘low’ suburban furnishings. Nina Saunders commented on the work that:

“The padding was about protection… if you are in a padded cell you are protected from yourself, but this was about a protected environment – not so much the university, but the whole class system.”

(Saunders, 2007, p.10-12)

The tendency for protectionism, as outlined by Saunders, articulates a disposition to shelter against the incursion of “otherness” or a broader world-view in societies and institutions.

Ann Hamilton’s installations Phora (2005) (Fig. 5) and earlier Myein (1999) (Fig. 1.) similarly address the tendencies of society for excluding or suppressing “otherness”. However, in Hamilton’s pieces she encourages a re-invocation of suppressed histories and broader world view(s) through bodily/ sensorial means, as opposed to the understanding received through language and imagery intrinsic to these systems of societal/ institutional repression. To illustrate, Myein (1999) (Fig. 1.) responded to the history of The American Pavilion building at the 48th Venice Biennale: a building emulating the style of 19th century neoclassical American architecture which would have been founded on the profits of slavery (Kline & Posner, 1999). It is this invisible, unstated history that Hamilton tries to make manifest through immersion in materials and sensations (Coffey, 2001).

While the installations are generally connected to civic spaces and the social formations/ strata they represent, works such as Nina Saunders’ Transit Zone (1996) (Fig. 6) address the uncomfortable divisions of society on a microcosmic scale, at the level of day-to-day life and experience. In Transit Zone (1996) (Fig. 6) the homogenous seating of corporate business (idiosyncratic of the furniture of banks and airport lounges etc) is dissected by screens of thick, tinted glass reminiscent of the bulletproof screens that separate the public from bank cashiers. However, imagining the experience of occupying this seat reveals the disquieting quality of something, which – while it maintains a visage of proximity to other sitters – sets up a startling physical division between individuals. Sarah Kent interprets this division as reminiscent of the exclusive boundaries around the realms of corporate business:

“The glass also refers to the screens behind which business is conducted with those allowed to enter the inner sanctum. It reminds one that even today, many companies are male reserves; a “glass ceiling” prevents female employees from rising too high. ‘Transit Zone’ draws attention to the actual and imaginary barriers erected to control behaviour.”

(Kent, S. 1996, p.13)

The marginalization of women in the privileged “inner sanctum” of business is reflected, conversely, in the statistics that locate the majority of daily servicing jobs i.e. cleaning etc as conducted by women, immigrants and people (mainly female) from ethnic minority groups (Sassen, 1998). This is something hinted at in Nina Saunders’ sculpture Hidden Agenda (1994) (Fig. 7) where a dustpan and brush have been secreted into the blue-tweed of a chair which seems indicative of a similarly corporate domain:

“…Neatly fitted into a recess in the seat… is a dustpan and brush upholstered in the same fabric so that it is all-but invisible. In order to impress, the immaculate company façade must appear natural and effortless; the labour of maintaining it must be concealed.”

(Kent, S. 1996, p.13)

The work and Kent’s description of the camouflaged “…labour of maintaining…” draws parallels to what Julia Kristeva delineates as that particularly violent, feminine form of the uncanny: the abject e.g. as attached to “filth” and “defilement”. The abject, Kristeva tells us, is what is necessarily excluded by patriarchal society in order to maintain placation and control (Kristeva, 1982, p.210).

The suppression of the abject, and simultaneous suppression of women into menial jobs with little or no remuneration, Saunders indicates, permits the continuation of masculine dominance in business and wider power structures. However, Hidden Agenda (Fig. 7) also seems to demonstrate the exclusion of women from these positions of power, meaning the dominant patriarchy is placed under perpetual threat from the suppressed, latent powers of the feminine (Figes, E. 1986).

Contemporary home/ context

The home, as the ultimate irretrievable object of longing, is most intensely missed by those who have been displaced or forcibly rendered homeless. In 2006 it was estimated that worldwide there are 9 million people living as refugees (Amnesty International, 2007). The Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said, comments on the experience of exile in relation to the work of Mona Hatoum:

“Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted…”

(Said, 2000, p.110)

In Homebound (Fig.14.) this “rift” is interposed physically by the stretched wires that are also reminiscent of the fences of detention centres and at border/ immigration control points. But these barriers, while they estrange the viewer, may also be interpreted as protecting them from the space’s hidden dangers. The place of return in Homebound (Fig.14.) is not one of comfort or homeliness but the site of further alienation; bare metallic objects and electrical current evoke associations with incarceration and torture (Reed Institute, 2000).

In Homebound (Fig.14.) Hatoum undermines the viewer’s pre-determined ideological construct of “home”, forcing them to question these notions of familial comfort by emulating the hostile and transitory experience of an immigrant or refugee.

Homebound (Fig.14.), while contained, is also essentially wall-less; the division between it and the exterior world is transparent. The distinction between public space and private space has been virtually removed; there is nowhere to retreat to. This erosion of the boundaries not only implicates the viewer into a reciprocal relationship with the work, but extends the theme even to the contented homes of the audience where electronic media such as the internet, mobile phones (Ørskou, 2003), etc disintegrate the once clearly defined regions of public and private space.

Chapter 3

The House and The Uncanny

In tracing the etymological roots of The Uncanny Freud relates that:

“The German word ‘unheimlich’… is obviously the opposite of ‘heimlich’ [‘homely’], ‘heimlisch [‘native’] the opposite of what is familiar…”

(Freud, 1919, p.124-125)

The home, this sheltered centre of comfort and stability, can therefore be understood as representing a particularly vulnerable site for encounters with the uncanny. However, Freud continues his analysis of the word’s significance by underlining its’ inherent ambiguity:

“In general we are reminded that the word ‘heimlich’… belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of site.”

(Freud, 1919, p.132)

This supplementary reading of the word Heimlich, marks the division of the home from the realms of the exterior and the public, simultaneously positing it as a site for the potential repression of uncivilized desires. The Uncanny's intrusion upon the domestic space occurs when what has been excluded (e.g. the wild, unpredictability of nature) or repressed (e.g. unpleasant childhood memories) returns:

“…unheimlich … applies to everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open.”

(Freud, 1919, p.132)

This chapter examines the artists’ use of domestic objects and spaces in their evocations of the Uncanny. Beginning from Freud’s’ text the analysis will concentrate on specific works and how they influence the viewer to arouse uncanny sensations and what implications they may offer upon contemporary notions of home.

Public/ Private

Mona Hatoum’s installation Homebound (2000) (Fig.14.) at Tate Britain (The Reed Institute, 2002) displaces a domestic scene – denoted by the specific array of household objects and utensils as a kitchen and bedroom – into the formal gallery space, exposing it to the public gaze. While the title may suggest the idyllic allure of the home, the viewer - though initially drawn-in by their affiliation to the objects and familiar space on display - is repelled from closer engagement; firstly, by the horizontal wires that are stretched taught around the scene and; secondly, by the latent physical threat invested by an electrical current that connects many of the objects (made apparent by the fluctuating lights and intermittent electrical buzz). By undermining this familial scene of domesticity Hatoum interrogates the viewer’s assumptions of the home as a place of comfort and security:

“…I see it as a work that shatters notions of the wholesomeness of the home environment, the household, and the domain where the feminine resides. Having always had an ambiguous relationship with notions of home, family, and the nurturing that is expected out of this situation, I often like to introduce a physical or psychological disturbance to confront those expectations…”

(Perry, 2004, p.271)

In this statement Hatoum outlines the home, as explored in her work, as a gendered site: “…the domain where the feminine resides.” Considered alongside Freud’s definition of das Heimlich (i.e. “…what is concealed and kept out of site.”), the piece could be construed as exposing or demythologising the “concealed” interior realm of the feminine.

Outside/Inside

In Homebound the intrusion of the Uncanny upon the sheltered terrain of the home comes from within, whereas, the disturbing encounter in Nina Saunder’s piece Refuge (2006) (Fig.15.) originates from the exterior: from the unpredictable and primordial realm of nature. Emma Williams, curator of Comfort Zones5 has written of this encounter:

“The animals… highlighted the boundaries between comfort and discomfort which many people feel about certain objects from the home…”

(Williams, 2007)

She attributes the subversion of the comfortable domestic space to the way in which the piece causes a “…blurring between the domestic and the natural world”. The foxes’ head, literally embedded in the body of the chair, is reminiscent of the motif in D.H. Lawrence’s’ short story The Fox, where the arrival of a fox on the sterile landscape of two spinsters’ domiciliary lives represents a manifestation of the untamed, animal impulses: of sexual potency and death:

“…She went out, and suddenly she knew it was the fox singing. He was very yellow and bright, like corn…she wanted to touch him. She stretched out her hand, but suddenly he bit her wrist, and at the same instant… the fox whisked his brush across her face, and it seemed the brush was on fire, for it seared and burnt her mouth with a great pain…”

(Lawrence, 2001, p.65)

In Refuge the house has lost its civilizing defences against the chaos of nature. The chair begins to droop in an organic manner, creating a strange slippage from authentic reality into an uncomfortable, dream-like surrealism. The piece recalls Freud’s citation of uncanniness when there is ambiguity as to whether an inanimate object may be actually animate/ alive (Freud, 1919, p. 135).

The idiosyncratic style of the chair locates it in relation to the specific identity and class of the absent owner i.e. the ‘niceness’ of the “quintessentially English” (Williams, 2007) middle-classes. In this anthropomorphic item of furniture Saunders makes manifest the underlying threats, and the psychosexual tensions, that thwart complacent bourgeois assertions of comfort and material stability.

The Irretrievable House

In artworks such as Mona Hatoum’s’ Homebound (Fig.14.), Welcome (Fig.16.) and Nina Saunders’ Never (Fig.17.), their appropriations (or replications) of objects from the home - which are manipulated or distorted in someway - defer the viewers’ comfort by denying a shared, familiar history. In his book The System of Objects, Baudrillard describes how the objects of our private pasts (or the pasts of our family and ancestors) access a certain consoling nostalgia:

“They are a way of escaping from everyday life, and no escape is more radical than escape in time, none so thorough going as escape into one’s own childhood…”

(Baudrillard, 2005, pp.85)

The metaphorical escape that Baudrillard elaborates here relates to his consideration of the antique object (Baudrillard, 2005, p.177-287), but may be equally applicable to the objects of the domestic interior as demonstrated by the artists. These objects serve as surrogate memories, they embody elements of a viewer’s former childhood/ home. Baudrillard asserts that, by possessing these objects – and the inherent moment of personal history they represent – a person feels they are able to reclaim something of their past; either of their primordial/ transcendental (Stewart, 1993, Preface) origins, or of an impossibly idyllic childhood, while simultaneously arresting the progression of time towards death. However, the objects presented by the artists, for instance Mona Hatoum’s Welcome (Fig.16.), in their dysfunctional, ruptured states comment on both the fragmentary and unattainable nature of our past but also the threat and even, in the example of Welcome (Fig.16.), violence that may often reside beneath idealisations or nostalgic projections of home (Hatoum, 2004).

Saunders’ sculpture Never (1999) (Fig.17.) selects a sofa taken from the recognisable idiom of a particular 1980s, British Kitsch (doused in florid, floral patterns). The associations to a specific social status (middle-class), gender (female), and age (late-middle to elderly), are so cogent in this anthropomorphic item of furniture that Nina Saunders’ intervention manifests almost as though it is a materialisation of psychological disturbance.

“…once repressed, the past, however blessed, cannot return so benignly, so auratically – precisely because it is damaged by repression. The demonic aspect of this recovered past is then the sign of this repression…this demonic aspect is often inscribed on the thing (the toy, the body) in the form of distortions…”

(Foster, 1993, p.164)

Never (Fig.17.) prevents the anticipated nourishment that such an object, and its genial owner, is expected to provide precisely because it has been displaced to the past and a malign undercurrent has broken through the dam between reality and the unknown. Never (Fig.17.), like Fosters’ description of the repressed, has become distorted and hence, unknowable and inaccessible.

Chapter 4.

Language and Bodily Experience: Uncanny Women
Divisional Language

One of Irigaray’s main aims in her 1985 text Speculum of the Other Woman was to demonstrate that existing language systems, which she defines as patriarchal and phallocentric, exclude women and negate their capacity for self expression.

“…this fault, this deficiency, this “hole,” inevitably affords woman too few figurations, images or representations by which to represent herself. It is not that she lacks some “master signifier” or that none is imposed upon her, but rather that access to a signifying economy… is difficult or even impossible for her because she remains an outsider, herself (a) subject to their norms. She borrows signifiers but cannot make her mark, or re-mark upon them. Which all surely keeps her deficient, empty, lacking …”

(Irigaray, 1985, p.71)

Irigaray claims, like psychoanalytical language, the existing language systems are essentially masculine, based around the sigular phallic system of signs (Moi, 2002). Woman, having no phallus, who has to therefore “borrow” representations, is always implicated as being on the deficient side of the ledger. Irigaray also illuminates here the crucial notion of woman being “an outsider” both to the signifying economy but also, to herself (Moi, 2002, p.144).

With no adequate means of self-expression Irigaray asserts that woman is divided; she is both the external, alien self, manifest in language and the internal, but voiceless, self. This division is of concern to Ann Hamilton and her engagement with it through her work is outlined in an interview in 2000:

“…words are all we have and they’re never enough… I think part of it is we make hierarchies and we privilege certain kinds of information. If something can be said in a discursive manner, then sometimes we’ll elevate that over other ways of being or knowing in the world…”

(Enright, 2000, Interview with Ann Hamilton)

Both Irigaray and Hamilton employ strategies to overcome the disembodying divisions of language as a means of expression and understanding. The proceeding chapter focuses on some of Hamilton’s installations (and, wherever relevant, examples of Mona Hatoum and Nina Saunder’s works), in parallel to Irigaray’s theory of Le Parler Femme, and Kristeva’s writing on abjection, the semiotic and poetic language.

Material Language, the voice

Irigaray’s concept of Le Parler Femme (or ‘woman speak’) extols a feminine form of language which is multifaceted, fluid and poetic, contrary to the unitary, hegemony of masculine language (Moi, 2002, p.152). Ann Hamilton discloses an intention for her work to exist in a similarly pseudo-poetic space:

“I want to stay within the assosiative thinking engendered by a certain kind of reading.”

(Enright, 2000, Interview with Ann Hamilton)

In her installation at the 48th Venice Biennale Myein (Fig. 1) Hamilton explored the space of language through its physical manifestation. Firstly, the sound of a whispering voice – fragmented into incomprehensibility – moved throughout the space; secondly, the walls were covered with a text – Charles Rezinkoff’s Testimony: The United States 1885 – 1915– translated into Braille and; thirdly, Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugral address deconstructed into international phonetic code and played back through multiple speakers into a room (Fox, 2003, p.12). In all these pieces, Hamilton appropriated texts from the written mode of language and reworked them into sound, material and semiotic pieces to be engaged with physically (through sound or touch) rather than read (Enright, 2000, p.3).

The material communication via physical prompts that Hamilton employs parallels Kristeva’s emphasis on the sensual elements of language (repetition, voice/ sound etc) potential to undermine dominant, phallocentric language systems:

“The semiotic is described by kristeva as destroying or eroding the symbolic; it is said to be ‘before’ meaning, as when a psychotic no longer uses words to signify. If the symbolic and the semiotic are understood as two modalities of language, and if the semiotic is understood to be generally repressed by the Symbolic, then language for Kristeva is understood as a system in which the symbolic remains hegemonic except when the semiotic disrupts its signifying process through elision, repetition, mere sound …”

(Butler, 2006, p.112)

Kristeva’s definition of the symbolic connects it with the paternal and established language systems, whereas the semiotic, associated with the maternal and repressed feminine language (Brooks, 1997, p.81), is an artwork to be experienced, contrary to traditional aesthetics, visually, but synaesthetically through the senses i.e. touch and sound (in addition to vision).

Scale, immersion and the multiple

Susan Stewart discusses the relationship between the individual and the gigantic in terms of the bodily experience of scale.

“…problems of inside and outside, visible and invisible… point to the primary position the body must take in my argument. The body is our mode of perceiving scale and, as the body of the other, becomes our antithetical mode of stating conventions of symmetry and balance on the one hand, and the grotesque and the disproportionate on the other…”

(Stewart, 1993, p.1)

This relationship is central to the experience and interpretation of Ann Hamilton’s installations – where the viewer is immersed in the work – such as Myein (Fig. 1) or Mattering (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9). This type of bodily-centred-perception is also manipulated by Mona Hatoum to elicit particularly disturbing effects in pieces such as Cage-à-deux (2002) (Fig. 10) and Le Grande Broyeuse (1999) (Fig.11).

In Mattering (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9) Hamilton cloaked the entire interior of an exhibition space in the Musée d´art contemporain de Montréal with nearly 500 square metres of orange vellum, animated constantly by a hidden mechanical system (Gagnon, 1999, P. 65). The experience of being enveloped in the space has been described as being initially seductive but, once surrounded by the fluxuating movement, also disorientating and unsettling (Gagnon, 1999, p.65). The destabilised space of Mattering (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9) effaces the boundary between reality and imagination, and between the interior self and, seemingly organic, exterior space. Vidler describes a bodily projection upon a space – or transposition of human qualities upon a space – as the origin of this disorientating ambiguity.

“In a first instance, the body, rather than forming the originating point of a centered projection, is itself almost literally placed in question… the owner of a conventional body is undeniably placed under threat as the reciprocal distortions and absences felt by the viewer, in response to the reflected projection of bodily empathy, operate almost viscerally on the body. We are contorted, racked, cut, wounded, dissected, intestinally revealed, impaled, immolated; we are suspended in a state of vertigo…”

(Vidler, 1992, p.78)

The immersion in this seemingly limitless space and “…projection of bodily empathy…” also seems reminiscent of a subconscious or in-uterine state, and perhaps, if we were to reference one of Freud’s definitions, the uncanny feeling evoked by the fear of regression to a state prior to birth (Freud, 1919, p.151). In Mona Hatoum’s Le Grande Broyeuse (1999) (Fig.11) the manipulation of scale firstly undermines the familiarity of this domestic utensil, and secondly, threatens to undermine the viewer’s physical/ psychological well-being.

“…Here presence of the gigantic tool transforms the body of the viewer into raw matter, an estranged substance, a pile of derelict “otherness” abandoned and distant from the individual rooted in kinship, tradition and the protection and comfort of sociality.”

(The Reed Institute (2002), p.31)

Here again the bodily (and psychic/ psychological), stability of the viewer is undermined by the “consumptive” scale (Stewart, 1993 p. 86) of the work and the transposition, or projection, of a bodily empathy upon this hostile or threatening object.

Feminine as Liminal

In order to overcome the ideologies and power structures inherent in language, Irigaray proposes that women’s language must occupy the liminal space between the masculine signifiers (Irigaray, 1985, p.22). Irigaray claims that the liminal – or the “inbetween” – is the only adequate channel for articulating the feminine, as using established signs (even comparatively) locates feminine discourse in the hierachical structure of binary oppositions (Moi, 2002), that inevitably position women, and femininity, as the “other” (passive, dark, inferior) side of the masculine (active, light, superior).

While there is no evidence to suggest it is employed with feminist consciousness or intent, Ann Hamilton similarly extols the “in between” states – between language and materials, between thought and matter etc - in her work:

“…BC: Do you actually sense that there is more meaning in the intricacies of the in-between, rather than in what's clear and direct?  AH: I think so. The thing that's not quite there and that's hidden is always the thing that we need to look at. I suppose it's being constantly at this edge--not quite in and not quite out. That's a very active place. Once things get named they get a mantle or a cloak around them…”

(Enright, 2000, p.27)

In some of Hamilton’s installations such as Mattering (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9) the hallucinatory quality of the fluxuating, highly chromatic space invokes a certain “intellectual uncertainty” (Freud, 1919, p.150) between what is physically certain/ materially stable and what is fluid (and an unstable psycho-sensual projection). The communicative potential of the liminal, or the inbetween, state is utilized by Hamilton in Whitecloth (Fig.12). In this piece Hamilton cut and divided a single black hand muff into two pieces, lining each with an interior glove. Thus, even if placed together, the gloves prevent any hands inserted from reaching one another (Princenthal, Nancy, 1999, p.62). In this instance the inbetween, suspended physical predicament evokes feelings of dislocation and psychological alienation (the idiomatic item of clothing also locates it as belonging specifically to a woman) (Princenthal, Nancy, 1999 p.62).

Conclusion

The difficulty in consolodating or arriving at any concise reevaluation of The Uncanny, originates precisely from the phenomenon’s illusive and liminal nature. The failure to fully recognise this also appears to be a significant obstacle in Freud’s text (Cixous, p.530) i.e. by conducting a psychoanalytical/ scientific analysis into an aesthetic experience which is inherently beyond both aesthetics and language. Freud’s paper is inadvertently caught in the trap of endless equivalence for the unseen and unnameable “otherness” that constitutes the Uncanny.

“… in the infinite game of substitutions, through which what constitutes the elusive moment of fear returns and eclipses itself again. It is this dodging from fear to fear, the unthinkable secret since it does not open on to any other meaning…”

(Cixous, 1976, p.536)

According to Cixous (1976, p.526), Figes (1986, p.136), and Royle (2003, p.134-5) another problem which threatens to undermine the authority of the 1919 text is related to Freud’s fluctuating, erroneous and often times misleading authorship. His biographical examples, distorted re-presentation of source material and hybridization of theory from literature and science (Royle, 2003, p.134) mitigates his reliability as an objective, scientific analyst. The deliberate manipulation of the text – through omission and adulteration of other texts as evidence etc (Royle, p.135) – coupled with Freud’s unwitting blind spot to his own ideologies, and the influences of the time/ context, expose Freud as a conceivably unreliable witness. None-the-less, aspects of the text (plus the phenomena as delineated by Freud) are certainly reflected in elements or effects of the artist’s works.

Whereas Freud takes a circuitous route through language and literary citations (Irigaray, 1974, p.14) many of the pieces interrogate the singular and cerebral interpretation of work, instead directing the viewer to engage with the “unnameable” (Kristeva, 1982, p.34) otherness of the Uncanny. For instance, in Nina Saunders Pure Thought I (Fig. 18) the underlying or repressed threat – from some invisible or exorbitant dimension of the imagination or psyche - manifests in a most unsettling manner upon the private, and privileged, domain of academia (which the idiosyncracys of the chair convey) (Barnett, Pennina, 1997, p.74).

“…if psychoanalytic theory is right in asserting that every affect arising from an emotional impulse – of whatever kind – is converted into fear by being repressed, it follows that among those things that are felt to be frightening there must be one group in which it can be shown that the frightening element is something that has been repressed and now returns. This species of the frightening would then constitute the uncanny.”

(Freud, 1919, p.147)

However, the precise meaning of the swelling in Pure Thought I (Fig. 18) may not be interpreted so singularly as just the disturbing return (or threat of return) of the repressed. Nina Saunders described how the ambiguity of the piece (and it’s inherent threat) was reflected in a diverse array of responses (Jardine, Lisa, 1996, p. 17), some people interpreting it as a fecund piece of furniture, while others thought of the swelling in terms of a malevolent tumurous growth.

The acknowledgement (or even encouragement) that the artists demonstrate in their work for evoking multiple significations and a plurality of possible meanings, also highlights the diverse perspectives and pluralized notion of the uncanny within their work. In Mona Hatoum’s installations Mobile Home (2005) (Fig. 2) and Homebound (2000) (Fig.14) the dislocated and disturbing experiences are those of the exiled and homeless migrant or refugee. Whereas, in Recollection (1995) (Fig. 13) the confrontation with the hairs illicit feelings of revulsion and abjection. Throughout all these works the deliberate blurring between self and other - either by implicating the viewer in the position of the “other” or via the encounter with bodily matter which was formerly part of the self but has, separated from the body, passed into becoming an abject substance of otherness, redolent of death (Kristeva, 1982, p. 65) – provokes feelings of an uncanny nature by confusing the viewer’s comfortable assertions and categorizations. The artist’s works all access a multiplicity of of perspectives and, if analysed according to the various definitions, bespeak a variety of different manifestations of the uncanny, from Freud’s 1919 text, to Baudrillard’s concept of Hyperreality and Kristeva’s notions on Abjection.

In the works examined the uncanny is manifest variously (as both a device and symptom) to undermine comfortable assertions, to broaden viewer’s perspectives or ways of understanding and deciphering the world (Enright, 2000, p.5), to make the viewer aware of inequalities/ the unrepresented minorities and the tendencies of societies and individuals to suppress otherness (Woodward, 2003, P.140).

Finally, the Uncanny is a potent space for the works to occupy as, although women artists have achieved increasingly prominent status over the last 10 years (Perry & Wood, 2004 p.238) the Uncanny always resides just below language and the visual. Therefore, the Uncanny in Women’s art represents an insidious, threatening incursion of the feminine (Kristeva,1982, p.70) upon the hegemony of the, still primarily masculine, artistic establishment. In Freud’s paper The Uncanny is imbricated in the oppressive ideologies of the times in which it was written, whereas, in 2007 the Uncanny in the work of Mona Hatoum, Nina Saunders and Ann Hamilton engages in an active participation with the feared ‘other’ in order to corrode divisional and exclusionary systems of categorization and hierarchy.

End Notes

Refuge (2006) (Fig.15.) discussed further in Chapter 3 The House and The Uncanny.

2 See Irigaray, Luce (1985), Speculum of the Other Woman, p. 139.

3 For more details see U.S. Department of State, Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/5902.htm

4 See Mona Hatoum’s Light Sentence (1992) (Fig.3), Nina Saunder’s Pure Thought (1996) (Fig.4) at Jesus College, Cambridge and Ann Hamilton’s Installation Phora (2005) (Fig. 5) at La Maison Rouge, Paris and her show at the 48th Venice Biennale Myein (1999) (Fig. 1.)

5 See Emma Williams interview (email) 23/ 07/ 2007.

References

Abrams, Charles (1964), Housing in the Modern World Man’s struggle for shelter in an urbanizing world, Faber & Faber, London. pp. 74-76

Amnesty international (2007), report Available from http://web.amnesty.org/pages/refugees-refugeeday06-eng (accessed: 15th October 2007)

Archer, Michael, Brett, Guy and de Zegher, Catherine (1997) Mona Hatoum, Contemporary Artists series, Phaidon Press, London. p.92

Aukeman, Anastasia (2006), Mona Hatoum at Alexander and Bonin, Art in America March 2006. p. 146-147.

Poster, Mark (1998) Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings, Stanford University Press, Chicago. p.144

Baudrillard, Jean (2005), The System of Objects , Verso, London.
p. 177-187.

Bhabba, H, K. (1990), DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation, Routledge, London and New York.

Butler, Judith (2006), Gender Trouble, Routledge Classics, London. p.112

Cixous, Hélène (Spring, 1976), Fiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud's Das Unheimliche (The "Uncanny"), New Literary History, Vol. 7, No. 3, Thinking in the Arts, Sciences, and Literature (Spring, 1976), pp. 525-548+619-645

Coffey, Mary Katherine, (2001) A Conversation with Ann Hamilton, Art Journal, Fall 2001.

Enright, Robert (2000) The Aesthetics of Wonder, Border Crossings, volume 19, number 2, issue no. 74, p.27.

Haughton, Hugh (2003) Introduction to Freud, Sigmund, The Uncanny, Penguin Books, London. p.x1ii-x1iii.

Figes, Eva (1986), Patriarchal Attitudes, Persea Books, New York. p.136

Foster, Hal. (1995) Compulsive Beauty, MIT Press, London. p.7 & 30.

Freud, Sigmund (1929), Civilization and Its Discontents W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (July, 1989)

Freud, Sigmund (1919) The Uncanny, Imago, London, p.123, 125.

Gagnon, Paulette (1999), Ann Hamilton: Mattering. Montreal, Quebec: Musee d’art Contemporain de Montreal; October 9 1998- January 17, 1999. [exhibition catalogue]. P.65

Grosz, Elizabeth (1990) Jacques Lacan A feminist Introduction, Routledge, London.
p.37

Hamilton, Ann and Clark, Kathryn (1991). view: ann hamilton/kathryn clark, WORKS Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, (exhibition brochure).

Harrison, C. and Wood, P (eds). (2002) Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas , Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.

Irigaray, Luce, (1974) Speculum of the Other Woman, Ithaca, New York. p.71 - 153

Jardine, Lisa (1997), Pregnant with meaning?, Modern Painters, v.10 (Autumn 1997) p. 17

Kristeva, Julia (1982), Powers of Horror An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, New York & West Sussex.
p. 2 – 65.

Lacan, Jacques (1977), âEcrits : a selection, Routledge, London.
p.5-7

Lawrence, D H in Fernihough, Anne (ed.) (2001) The Cambridge Companion to D H Lawrence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. p.65

Leader, Darian (2000) Some thoughts on Disquieting Strangeness, p.88 of In the Place of an Object, Journal of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, Aldgate Press, London.

Moi, Toril (2002) (2nd Edition), Sexual/ Textual Politics, Routledge, London. p. 131-146.

Ørskou, Gitte (2003) Home sweet home, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark.

Perry, Gill and Wood, Paul (2004) Themes in Contemporary Art, Yale University Press, London. p. 238-271.

Princenthal, Nancy (1999) Ann Hamilton: whitecloth (catalogue essay), The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut. P.62

Royle, Nicholas, (2003), The Uncanny, Manchester University Press , Manchester. p.vii, viii, 134

Said, Edward W., (2000) Mona Hatoum: The Entire World as a Foreign Land, Tate Publishing, London. p.110

Saunders, Nina, (2007) Hidden Agenda, Make, The Women’s Art Magazine, No.74 Febuary-March 2007. p.10-12

Stewart, Susan, (1993), On Longing : Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Duke University Press. p.1 & Preface.

Vidler, Anthony (1994), The Architectural Uncanny
Essays in the Modern Unhomely, MIT Press, Cambridge. p.7

Williams, Emma, (2007), Interview, Interviewed by Iris Priest, Email, 23rd July 2007.

Woodward, Keith (2003), Social Sciences: the big issues, Routledge, London. p. 140

Bibliography

Abrams, Charles. (1964), Housing in the Modern World Man’s struggle for shelter in an urbanizing world, Faber & Faber, London

Amnesty international report http://web.amnesty.org/pages/refugees-refugeeday06-eng last accessed: October 15th 2007

Archer, Michael, Brett, Guy and de Zegher, Catherine (1997) Mona Hatoum, Contemporary Artists series, Phaidon Press, London. p.92

Aukeman, Anastasia (2006), Mona Hatoum at Alexander and Bonin, Art in America March 2006

Barthes, Roland (1957), Mythologies, Vintage, London.

Baudrillard, Jean (2005), The System of Objects , Verso, London.

Beech, Dave (2006) Shock V Awe, Art Monthly, no.300, p. 1-4.

Beech, Dave & Hutchinson, Mark (2005) There is always an Alternative, temporarycontemporary, London.

Benjamin, Walter (1999) The Arcades Project, Belknap Press.

Bhabba, H, K. (1990), DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation, Routledge, London and New York.

Brennan, Teresa (1992) The Interpretation of the Flesh: Freud and Femininity, Routledge, London.

Butler, Judith (2006), Gender Trouble, Routledge Classics, London.

Carlos, Isabel and Herkenhoff, Paulo (1998) Adriana Varejao: Trading Images, Coumbia University Press, Lernout.

Cixous, Hélène (Spring, 1976), Fiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud's Das Unheimliche (The "Uncanny"), New Literary History, Vol. 7, No. 3, Thinking in the Arts, Sciences, and Literature (Spring, 1976).

Coffey, Mary Katherine, (2001) A Conversation with Ann Hamilton, Art Journal, Fall 2001.

Dean, Deborah (2005) (dis)comfort, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham.

De Zegher, Catherine & Brett, Guy & Archer, Michael (2003) Mona Hatoum, Phaidon Press Ltd, London.

Doherty, Claire (1998) Claustrophobia, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.

Enright, Robert (2000) The Aesthetics of Wonder, Border Crossings, volume 19, number 2, issue no. 74, 18-33.

Fernihough, Anne (ed.) (2001) The Cambridge Companion to D H Lawrence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Figes, Eva (1986), Patriarchal Attitudes, Persea Books, New York.

Foster, Hal. (1995) Compulsive Beauty, London: MIT Press.

Freud, Sigmund (1929), Civilization and Its Discontents W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (July, 1989)

Freud, Sigmund (1956). On Sexuality. Penguin Books Ltd, London.

Freud, Sigmund (1973) New Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis, Penguin, London.

Freud, Sigmund (1919) The Uncanny, Imago, London.

Gagnon, Paulette. Ann Hamilton: Mattering. Montreal, Quebec: Musee d’art Contemporain de Montreal; October 9 1998- January 17, 1999. [exhibition catalogue].

Gamman, Lorraine and Marshment, Margaret (ed.s) (1988) The Female Gaze Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, The Women’s Press Ltd, London.

Grosz, Elizabeth (1990) Jacques Lacan A feminist Introduction, Routledge, London.

Hamilton, Ann and Clark, Kathryn (1991). view: ann hamilton/kathryn clark, WORKS Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, (exhibition brochure)

Harrison, C. and Wood, P (eds). (2002) Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas , Blackwell Publishing: Oxford. Pp. 900-903, 906-910, 927-929 & 1018-1088.

Irigaray, Luce, (1974) Speculum of the Other Woman, Ithaca, New York

Jardine, Lisa (1997), Pregnant with meaning?, Modern Painters, v.10 (Autumn 1997). Pp.48-50.

Journal of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (2000), In the Place of an Object, Aldgate Press, London.

Kelley, Mike (2004), Mike Kelley: The Uncanny, Walther Konig, Köln.

Kellner, Douglas (ed.) (1994), Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, Blackwell, Oxford.

Kline, Katy & Posner, Helaine (Organisers) (1999), ann Hamilton myein, 48th Venice Biennale American Catalogue, A Cultural Presentation by the United States of America. Pp. 29-39.

Kristeva, Julia (1982), Powers of Horror An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, New York & West Sussex.

Lacan, Jacques (1977), âEcrits : a selection, Routledge, London.

Lauterbach, Ann (1999), Ann Hamilton: Whitecloth, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, U.S.A.

Leader, Darian and Groves, Judy (1995) Lacan for Beginners, Icon Books Ltd, Cambridge.

Leader, Darian (2000) Some thoughts on Disquieting Strangeness, p.88 of In the Place of an Object, Journal of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, Aldgate Press, London.

Lechte, John (1994) Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers, Routledge, London, pp. 20-24, pp 141-147 & 159-165.

Milner, R. (1996) Impure Thoughts: Gendering Architectural Space, Essay for exhibition Catalogue at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland.

Moi, Toril (2002) (2nd Edition), Sexual/ Textual Politics, Routledge, London

Ørskou, Gitte (2003) Home sweet home, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark.

O’Riley, Michael Kampen (2001) Art Beyond the West, Laurence King, London, pp. 304-315.

PBS, art: 21 Ann Hamilton ,http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hamilton/card4.html last accessed January 8th 2008.

Parker, Rozisha and Pollock, Griselda (1981) Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology Pandora, London. Pp 2-3 & 114-170.

Perry, Gill and Wood, Paul (2004) Themes in Contemporary Art, Yale University Press, London.

Pollock, Griselda (1988) Vision & Difference Feminists, Feminism and the Histories of Art, Routledge, London.

Poster, Mark (ed.) (1988) Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writing, Stanford University Press,

Princenthal, Nancy (1999) Ann Hamilton: whitecloth (catalogue essay), The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Princenthal, Nancy (2000) Doris Salcedo, Phaidon Press ltd, London.

Reed Institute, (2002) Mona Hatoum, (exhibition Catalogue) The Reed Institute, Portland.

Robinson, Hilary (2001) Feminism – Art-Theory An Anthology 1968-2000, Blackwell Publishing, London. Pp 440-445 & 474-486.

Rollason, Christopher (2002) The Passageways of Paris: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and contemporary cultural debate in the west, http://www.wbenjamin.org/passageways.html.

Royle, Nicholas, (2003), The Uncanny, Manchester University Press , Manchester.

Said, Edward W., (2000) Mona Hatoum: The Entire World as a Foreign Land, Tate Publishing, London.

Sassen, Saskia (1998) Globalization and its discontents. Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, New Press, New York.

Saunders, Nina, (2007) Hidden Agenda, Make, The Women’s Art Magazine, No.74 Febuary-March 2007. Pp. 10-12.

Schneider, Christiane (ed.) (2002) Rachael Whiteread, Haunch of Venison, London.

Stewart, Susan, (1993), On Longing : Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Duke University Press.

Thorkildsen, Asmund and Nochlin, Linda (2003) Robert Gober: Displacements, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo.

Verzotti, Giorgio (1999) Mona Hatoum, Charta, Milano.

Vidler, Anthony (1994), The Architectural Uncanny
Essays in the Modern Unhomely, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Wheale, Nigel (ed.) (1995) The Post Modern Arts, Routledge, London, pp. 55-59 and 118-125.

Williams, Emma, Interviewed by Iris Priest, Email, 23rd July 2007.

Woodward, Kath (2003), Social Sciences: The big issues, Routledge, London.

Illustrations

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Ann Hamilton, Myein, (1999), pigment and moulded braille characters (unspecified material). Image obtained from: http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/reviews/robinson/robinson6-10-7.asp.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Mona Hatoum, Mobile Home, (2005) furniture, household objects, suitcases, galvanized steel barriers, three electric motors and pulley system. 46 7/8 x 86 1/2 x 253 ¾ Inches. Image Obtained from Aukeman, Anastasia (2006), Mona Hatoum at Alexander and Bonin, Art in America March 2006. Pp. 146-147.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Mona Hatoum Light Sentence (1992), Mixed media, dimensions variable. Image obtained from http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/history/hatoum.htm 01/10/07

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Nina Saunders, Pure Thought, (1996), White Leatherette, Upholstery materials, Boards, Windows Installation in First Court, Jesus college, Cambridge. Image obtained from http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/news/sculpture/96works.html.
Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. Ann Hamilton, Phora (2005), Mixed Mediums. Installation (detail), La Maison Rouge, Paris. Image obtained from: http://www.art21.fr/expohamilton.php?PHPSESSID=45cbb9d68535363fc307773c1cc10c34 01/10/07

Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. Nina Saunders Transit Zone (1996), Installation, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, seating, three 3” thick glass sheets.

Fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Nina Saunders Hidden Agenda (1994). Image obtained from: http://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk/main.html 26/10/07

Fig. 8.

Fig 8. Ann Hamilton Mattering (1997) Installation at the Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon, France. Orange Fabric, Mechanical motion generator, Peacocks, Performer, blue type-writer ribbon, speakers. http://art.osu.edu/2_people/images/hamilton_ann/hamilton1A.jpg 01/10/07

Fig 9.

Fig 9. Ann Hamilton Mattering (1997) (ibid). http://art.osu.edu/2_people/images/hamilton_ann/hamilton1A.jpg 01/10/07

Fig 10.

Fig 10. Mona Hatoum Cage-à-deux (2002) Mild steel and painted MDF 79 5/16 x 124 x 78 9/16 in. (201.5 x 315 x 199.5 cm) image obtained from: http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images%5C424046260%5C129874.jpg 01/10/07

Fig. 11.

Fig. 11. Mona Hatoum Le Grande Broyeuse (Mouli-Julienne X17) (1999) Image obtained from Reed Institute, (2002) Mona Hatoum, (exhibition Catalogue) The Reed Institute, Portland.
Fig. 12.

Fig. 12. Ann Hamilton Whitecloth (detail) (1999), Black Organza hand muff, fabric. Part of Installation at Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Image obtained from Ann Hamilton Whitecloth, (1999), Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, p.6-37.

Fig. 13.

Fig. 13. Mona Hatoum Recollection (1995) (detail) Installation, Hair, wooden table, weaving tools. Image obtained from: http://www.muhka.be/images/large/large_image_1368.jpg 01/10/07

Fig.14.

Fig. 14. Mona Hatoum, Homebound (2000) Installation, wire, furniture, various domestic items, electrical current, speakers. Image obtained from Hatoum, Mona (1997) Mona Hatoum, Phaidon Press, London. P.17-133.

Fig. 15.

Fig. 15. Nina Saunders, Refuge (detail) (2006), Sanderson Fabric, fox mask, upholstery materials, 60 x 88 x 107 cm, private collection. Image obtained from Williams, Emma (ed.) (2007) Comfort Zones (exhibition Catalogue), Oriel Davies Gallery.
Fig. 16.

Fig.16. Mona Hatoum, Welcome (1996), steel pins, 45 x 60 x 9 cm. Image obtained from: http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2005/12/mona_hatoum_at.html 01/10/07

Fig.17.

Fig. 17. Nina Saunders Never (1999), The Contemporary Nordic Collection.
Image obtained from: http://www.karineriksson.se/blog/index.php?cat=6 01/10/07

Fig.18.

Fig.18. Nina Saunders, Pure Thought I, (1995) upholstered material, plastic and leatherette 36 x 47 x 32 ins. Image obtained from Barnett, Pennina, (1997) Hidden Agenda, Make: The Women’s Art Magazine, No.74, Febuary-March

Chance Finds Us - Final Essay Overview

2011-12-30T12:26:00.001+01:00

Introduction

Gerard Manley Hopkins Quote

Operation of chance – its uses to challenge hegemony of artist hero, to introduce the unknown, to work within an expanded field – the micro and macro of fractals and patterns

Artist as cypher – art as imminent but also transcendent (Hegel and the challenge to orthodoxy)

Processes/ systems/ longevity

Try to look at what it is that's unique about this context/ how and why group of artists working in similar ways both independently of one another and later with knowledge of one anothers practices..

Chapter 1. Chance

Operations of chance in their diverse practices; parallels, differences and connections to art and other philosophy (Zen, the I Ching)/ art history (Fluxus, Brecht, Kaprow, Duchamp).

Chance operations as opposed to current context i.e. where individual experience is highly controlled and standardized.

Determinism vs indeterminism (the interrogation of scientific and religious principles of an essentially deterministic universe – notions of nominalism, The limits of scientific enquiry/ paradoxes - The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle etc, Paul Fereyabend – Against Nature).

Chapter 2. Process and use of Systems

Look at the rigour/ pace which unites all of these artists work. The different systems/ mediating factors which they have introduced (i.e. setting up a programme or system and then unmanning it)

Why the use of systems? As a means for ordering the essentially chaotic experience of every day life?

Rigour and Ritual – parallels. The notion of flow in the process, the duration as experienced by the viewer/ alternative pace/ time scale to much of contemporary visual experience.

Chapter 3. Immanence and artist as cypher

Way of divining or mapping the incommunicable

Suggestion of divinity/ transcendence through the sublime pursuit.

Relationship to OTHERNESS particularly THE REAL REALITY (as opposed to the perceived reality – Russel Hoban, Scientific and philosophical heories of perception and reality).

Connections to Zen, voodoo, ritual, literature...

Conclusion

tbc

Music Command

2011-12-26T01:57:00.003+01:00

Sneak Preview of Edwin Li's Performance Music Command

Part of SUPERCONDUCTOR, A New Bridge Production

The Mining Institute January 9th @ 7.30

Tickets available HERE

2011-12-21T21:07:00.002+01:00

First attempt at using a negative scanner...

CALL FOR WRITERS

2011-12-19T18:34:00.001+01:00

CANNED is seeking submissions!!!

For the third edition of CANNED to be featured in February 2012, we are looking for detailed responses to the role of public engagement in contemporary art and how it relates to collaboration, exchange and collective action specifically.

Whatever your take, perspective or style we welcome your submission. As always, we are looking for really unique perspectives delivered with eloquence, clarity and character.

For this edition of CANNED, we are looking to push the boundaries of discussion and debate as far as we can. It will be more extensive and have more exposure than ever before, being sold internationally in such places as BALTIC Centre for Contermporary Art, Globe Gallery, Vane Gallery, Aye-Aye Books and the Newbridge Space Gallery. We will circulate 1000 paper copies, plus we will provide coverage on the CANNED and The NewBridge Project websites and through Social Networking/on-line Arts channels.

CANNED is an unpaid opportunity but is an excellent chance for all artists, writers and cultural critics to gain exposure and have a voice. CANNED has previously had articles featuring everything from emerging shows in small towns to exclusive interviews with Christo and Mark Leckey.

All articles have to be submitted by 31^st January 2012.

To apply, see below for details.

SUBMISSIONS

All submissions should be emailed to info@cannedmag.net with the following:

1. Attach your article to the email in Microsoft Word format. We will not accept PDF files or articles copied in an email. Below is our criteria for what we accept as material for CANNED, please follow carefully:

Length: Articles should be between 400-2500 words.

Language: This is an English-language magazine. If you feel comfortable submitting a piece in another language, you may do so, but in addition you must provide a good English translation. All submissions will be read in the English version.

Style: A variety of styles are encouraged but the magazine is primarily a platform for discursive critical writing on the Visual Arts. Properly cite sources to support your argument including links. If citing from other books, articles, journals or other publications please use standard footnotes as follows: Author, Title of Source, Place (e.g. London) : Publisher, Date. Within Word, include links within your text.

Deadlines: the deadline for entries for the first issue is 12pm on 31/1/2012. Entries submitted after this date will be considered for subsequent Issues.

2. Subject line should read with your first and last name: "First name, Last name Submission" (for example: Jockum Nordstrum, Submission).

3. Please attach a brief bio of yourself in one paragraph (approx. 3-5 sentences) and/or a CV For all further enquires or for more information please e-mail: info@cannedmag.net

We look forward to hearing from you!!!!

CANNED Magazine Online Marketing Officer | Art vacancies | Jobs and opps | a-n

2011-12-18T12:31:00.000+01:00

CANNED Magazine Online Marketing Officer | Art vacancies | Jobs and opps | a-n

2011-12-13T12:53:00.005+01:00

SUPERCONDUCTOR

January 13th – February 17th 2012

The NewBridge Space, Newcastle

Ove Kvavik, Edwin Li, Kate Liston, Iris Priest, Ben Jeans Houghton & Matthew Giraudeau

“The atomic individualism of patriarchy destroys much of the fabric of the human community. Such a damaged community is incapable of understanding the needs of its own members, much less of the nonhuman world.”

Michael Zimmerman

“The collective task of “reenchanting” our whole culture is, as I see it, one of the crucial tasks of our time...”

Suzi Gablik

In primeval times and tribal societies the stratification of art from life may not have always been so absolute. The creation of images and artefacts has been, throughout history, a necessary aspect of everyday life for many cultures; whether as a channel to communicate between other realms, as an agent for the divination of knowledge, for healing individuals and the wider community, or as an act of dedication to appease the spirit realms.

Superconductor seeks to usurp the antiquated paradigm of the autonomous artist loner, practising at the periphery of society. Instead the show suggests that - like the shaman of primitive cultures who connected communities and who traversed the Axis Mundi between the divine and earthly worlds - the artist of today is central for reinvesting everyday life with magic, mystery and meaning from Ben Jeans Houghton's dream like and labyrinthine films to Kate Liston 's evocation of the magical sensation of synchronicity.

Superconductor proposes that, rather than extraneous to everyday life, art is essential for connecting us imaginatively to the world in which we live and to one another. The show departs from Suzi Gablik's call for the imperative liberation of art from the disenchantment of materialism and the technocratic culture of disconnection and instead posits that Art is a lens through which we examine our own society and innate assumptions or prejudices, a mirror which reflects the myriad of wonderful and terrible aspects of life – as in Edwin Li's dystopic vision of future society - but also a locus for the exchange of ideas, participation and cultural democracy.

Whilst in recent years Democracy has become a dirty word and an illusive (often contradictory) concept Superconductor aims to reclaim the original meaning of democracy through work and events which are accessible, decentralised and which offer a platform of direct representation for different groups and communities. From open discussions on “The Role of the Artist in Society” to Occupy Newcastles' workshop on “Direct Democracy” Superconductor is an invitation for anyone and everyone to engage in the critical dialogue surrounding art supported by the wider programme of events and discussions within the gallery space itself.

The artists involved in Superconductor offer various new ways of experiencing and engaging with the world as epitomised in the uncertain destabilising of historical 'fact' stirred by Ove Kvavik's work Beyond the Limits of Control. Overall Superconductor underlines the social significance of art production, reception and effect. The show emphasises the unity between art and life as a means to create one's own cultural conditions and to affect social change. Both through the works in the show and through the programme of satellite activities, the exhibition becomes a hub for the generation and cross-pollination of new ideas and approaches to contemporary life and interaction. Superconductor invites engagement, contemplation and open-endedness over detachment, entertainment and the unequivocal.

Iris Aspinall Priest

11 artists for 2011

2011-12-11T01:23:00.003+01:00

11 for 2011 Artist Films - Iris Priest from Turning Point North East on Vimeo.

Absolute Colour Space @ Vane Gallery 20/10/11 – 17/12/11

2011-12-07T05:07:00.005+01:00

Absolute Colour Space

Adam Burns

“As in poetry, so with colours. It is the mystery of interior life which liberates, radiates and communicates. Beginnng there, a new language can be freely created.”

Sonia Delauny, 1966

Absolute Colour Space is an apt title for a show which elegantly explodes the autonomous space of painting. Linear shapes of translucent colour hover in a seemingly endless space; no longer bound by the limits of the paper or canvas these forms float upon, through and above a transparent ground of clear acrylic. Drawn from a multiplicity of horizon lines these oblique shapes exist within the space of pure visual illusion, a formless, abstract space of virtuality.

In discussing the show and generation of this series Burns described his interest in the relationship between the polaraties of the “concrete and illusion”. By pushing the limits of his own pre-determined system (a system based on his initial choice of 3 colours that he mixes from pigment and impasto) he is exploring the infinite through the finite; the endless permutations and possibilities of colour which shift with each remixing and which change from context to context, from viewer to viewer:

“The only limit to this system is the predetermined choice of colours ...the sky is the limit really...”

Adam Burns, 2011

Also presented in the show are a number of the formative studies in which the “colour stories” (the recipe or formula of the final paintings composition) are evolved and tested. In these experiments on acetate the forms are precisely etched above a key of perfect rectangular daubs of paint. This key includes the 3 initial colours and the genealogy of subsequent colours mixed from those. These studies are important in underscoring the relationship of the works to the pseudo-scientific process of their generation; one which is precise and methodical and yet open and inquisitive. The titles of the paintings reveal a similar methodical questionning; rather than a series of answers or solutions they are catalogued numerically according to the ratio of pigment to impasto and to the length of time of their creation. By titling works such as “401:126:118” there is a telling dialogue introduced between the resonant colours and hovering forms of the paintings and these integral, numerical titles, reminding us that colour is essentially the (measurable) wavelength of light. But this gap between the esoteric titling convention and the vivid, evocative paintings also suggests the possibility that words, numbers and scientific analysis are inadequate in delineating the operations and effects of colour and light as argued by Josef Albers in his classic text Interaction of Color:

“Practical exercises demonstrate through color deception (illusion)

The relativity and instability of color.

And experience teaches that in visual perception there is a discrepency

Between physical fact and psychic effect.”

Josef Albers, 1963

That Burns' colors are mixed and selected intuitively (i.e. he is not working from pre-mixed colours but using his own particular palette) extends this sense that it is a personal and perceptual science he is exploring, one which the paradigms and rules of traditional science do not fully accommodate.

The relativity of colour is a concern which has been explored by philosophy and science since Ancient Greece and the hypotheses of Aristotle on the individual nature of vision and perceptual sensation. In the early 20^th Century Erwin Schrödinger conducted extensive experiments in the area of colour perception testing individuals responses to light waves of fixed frequencies. Discovering that the same colour sensation could be produced by combining waves of different frequencies he suggested that this undermined previous assertions that the experience of colour was simply a direct correlation to wavelength. Following Schrödinger's departure from traditional science and art's attitudes to colour, Burns' application of it is not a means for creating a codification or a formula for specific phenomena but rather, an empirical study of colours' manifold - sometimes contradictory - innate qualities and possibilities. He is experimenting in the realms of the human science of colour perception i.e. A science which is multifarious, evasive and volatile

“I saw that the basis of colour is its instability”

Bridget Riley, 1995

In these paintings there is not a slavish relation of colour to form but rather the colours and forms (the hovering geometrical bodies) work in harmony to try and achieve a balance which transcends the limitations of either. They operate in an uncertain space - that of thought and experiment – but casting shadows on the gallery walls which simultaneously embue them with a real, physical presence.

It is important that Burns spent a significant amount of time before embarking on these paintings researching what might be constituted as the universaly accepted “perfect shape”. During his 2^nd and 3^rd years on the undergraduate degree at Northumbria University Burns conducted extensive studies and surveys into this subject. Though the general concensus tended towards citing a circle or sphere as the “ideal shape” he decided, conversely, to implement a form which was comparatively “harsh and diagrammatical”. Again, I believe, there is a sense of using a form to go beyond itself; to push the limits of a shape which appears “harsh” into a state of smoothness and sublimity. But it is also, as a form defined by it's relationship to the implied horizon lines, highly self-referential and located definitively in the domain of art and the illusion of painterly perspective.

Burns' specific choice of scale in these paintings and his project to find and implement the “perfect shape” resonates to the ancient search for the Golden Ratio (from the Pythagoreans and Plato through to the writings of Carl Jung on the Mandalas of Zen Buddhism) and the endeavour towards aesthetic harmony with the universe via the application of 'perfect proportions'. This concept of a sacred geometry (the belief that there is an underlying geometric rythm or pattern to the universe which the golden ratio taps into) is explored in forms as diverse as the rarefied arabesques of Islamic art, the 'perfect' proportions of Da Vincis' Vitruvian Man and in early Modernist architecture particularly Le Courbusiers' contributions to the International Style. In all these examples, and inherent in the paintings of Adam Burns, is a sense of the operation of perfect forms and dedicated process as a means for pusuing the transcendendent; of an attempt to communicate – via these forms and processes - with something beyond the limited form of artistic expression and human imagination.

“Both science and art are making us aware of the fact that time is a process of intensification, an evolution from the individual toward the universal, of the subjective towards the objective; toward the essence of things and of ourselves”

Piet Mondrian, 1937

Whilst Burns' paintings are at once too complex and too ambiguous to be likened to the stained glass of church windows there is a faint echo between both these forms in terms of the evanescence of light as a material. The coloured glass of Medieval churches sought to illustrate passages from the Bible for the illiterate congregation whilst metaphorically aluding to the light of God and creation. Whereas, in contrast, it is the luminescent and immaterial qualities of light itself (particularly coloured light) which directly resonates to the sublime in Burns' work.

Whilst he uses a highly systematic and rational approach to the production and composition of his paintings, Burns' compositions frequently generate unpredictable results. In some Eastern philosophies such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism, practitioners accomodate accidents and chance encounters within their processes and rituals as these are seen to keep them in harmony with the real, unpredictable nature of the universe (whether it is ink blots in drawing or the random fall of the hexagrams in the I Ching). Similarly, Burns enfolds and welcomes elements beyond his control into the work. Though adhering to a predetermined system the interaction of colour and it's infintessmal possibilities within the paintings is pushed to its limits, often invoking rogue colour-combinations or unanticipated counterpoints. Whilst he has complete control over the initial colour mixing as soon as the layers of colour are applied onto the acetate (it is flipped with each subsequent strata of colour, heightening the sensation of flight and weightlessness) the chiarascuro and colour mixing which takes place is entirely beyond his control. By fostering works whose eventual resonance and luminosity suprises even the artist, the final entities often seem to embody a shifting, unpredictable life of their own and though at the time of completion they are fully resolved Burns concedes that, with subsequent revisiting, he often sees something new or feels slightly differently about them. These paintings are as much about relativity, flux and chance within a dynamical system as they are about the interaction of colour and its infintessmal possibilities.

Through a questionning, alchemical process of precise colour mixing and meticulous layering Burns is developing a new, living vocabulary of painting. Unlike language however, it is not a finite or definite science. The lexis of colour and form that these paintings explore is as mutable, relative and full of questions as the traditional paradigms of science are fixed, objective and full of answers. In his own words

“...it's all about possibilities and possibility is about painting”

Absolute Colour Space is currently showing at Vane until the 17th of December 2011.

www.vane.org.uk

Iris Priest ©

Albers, Josef, Interaction of Color, Yale University Press, London, (1963) p. 2

Delauny, Sonia, Untitled text for a portfolio of prints, (1966) republished in Batchelor, David (ed.) Colour, Whitechapel, London, (2008) p. 133

Riley, Bridget, Dialogues on Art, Karsten Schubert, London, (2003) p.56

Bridie Jackson - Poster

2011-11-27T21:35:00.003+01:00

The Library of Ideas

2011-11-22T00:12:00.002+01:00

http://thelibraryofideas.com/i-have-an-idea/

Last Wednesday along with the 3 other Northumbria University AA2A artists - Deborah Bower, Yvette Hawkins and Jonathan Lynch - gave an introductory lecture into our work and what we hope to achieve on the AA2A residency...

I left my tiger suit at home but still managed to provoke a couple of giggles (not necessarily entirely intentional)...

Beyond providing an opportunity to showcase our individual art practice the talks also provided a platform for inviting students to participate in the projects and workshops we would all be running. I gave a short mention of The Library of Ideas which I'm setting up and illustration of the P.I. (Post Ideas) Boxes I've been making and which will be posted up in the University tomorrow.

Basically The Library of Ideas is an open source depository for ideas. It is a facility for people to deposit their unwanted or unrealised ideas* and to take out anything from the catalogue.

*These can be ideas for anything from projects, to inventions, artworks, policies, plays, recipes, manifestos, events, essentially anything you can think of but doesn't yet exist.

The ethos of the Library of Ideas is that of collective action, networking and exchange; authors are encouraged to allow their ideas to be fully accessed by readers who, in turn, may enrich and advance those original concepts. The intention is to create an organic bibliography of ideas which, through the collaboration between readers and writers, will help propel or realise unusual or ambitious ideas.

If you would like a P.I. Box or are interested to hear more about the project, please get in touch!

thelibraryofideas@gmail.com

Art is....

2011-11-19T00:50:00.003+01:00

Time travel.

Artists are time travellers... We are always living in an un-present: the work we make carries us through a trajectory from the past into an unknown future.

When a piece of art is finished, it quickly becomes dead matter. Even our 'greatest' masterpieces, even those that break through established thought and define new epochs... almost as soon as they are fully formed become nothings.

n + 1 = ∞

The Magic Bridge - Richard Dawson

2011-11-15T02:56:00.002+01:00

The Magic Bridge the latest album from Richard Dawson (a North East musical phenomenon) is not easily surmised in words. From the supreme delicacy of the opening song Junipter Berries Float Down The Stream to its elegiac final lullaby, the eponymous Magic Bridge, the album is a skilfully crafted, no hewn, bridge between us and another world. Each song in this collection meets the listener like an individual character, recounting a story which is uniquely their own. And yet, within this multiverse of singularities, there are motifs which recur throughout; transforming and transmuting with each retelling, gathering meaning just as a standing stone gathers moss.

Like the first ever rendering of the Fibonacci sequence, the album begins with a tenuous sketch. Single notes are left to ring into the silence of a recording that has the dull quality of an analogue cassette tape, or of cheap sketch book paper. Rather than being banal though, this locates the music in a real, tactile world (at a comforting distance from the HD, hyperreal quality of facetless, atemporal digital media). Even as patterns and rhythm start to emerge they are suffused with gently dissonant, formless sounds which lend Junipter Berries Float Down The Stream the quality of a growing plant; as the seeds of sound germinate they branch and unfurl in unpredictable ways, occasionally flowering, sometimes sprouting brambles or half-formed fruits. The organic quality of this song is carried throughout an album which - though obviously well rehearsed - often flourishes with unusual or dissonant swells and branches, lending the whole body of work a feeling of 'liveness'.

If you can honestly listen to Black Dog In The Sky and not get goose-pimples, it might be questionable as to whether you are human at all. Dawsons voice, which seems to come from the earth itself; old, coarse and wizened, recounts a story which is (to begin with) as gently humorous as it is awful. As the story unfurls the supernatural being of British legend (The Black Dog) emerges in a grotesque, tangible manifestation. The dark, uncertain essence of the spectre is breathed life through the singers straining voice and mauling guitar. Drawn irrevocably onwards through the darkness of the song and the “ocean of fog” we are propelled helplessly towards the songs' illuminated culmination. This deeply resonant, timeless fog is not dispersed however, as we stumble into it again during the chilling recount of Grandads Deathbed Hallucinations and even later, enshrouding The Magical Bridge itself. This inescapable fog seems to embody both a feeling of frustrated sight and the presence of the unknown but also the proximity of nature and the supernatural world which pervades the whole album.

How can one man construct a whole universe of sound and meaning from a single object? Well, there's definitely a contender for it in the wonderfully understated Wooden Bag. Like the ritual oracles of voodoo or sub-Saharan tribal cultures the oak knapsack of the song is loaded with potent history and otherworldly meaning. Deceptively simple, Dawson carves the image of a bag whose significance is doubly implied through the history he narrates and via the wondrous, penetrating music which strips the listener back to their barest humanity. His minute observation of this personal artefact (whether real or imagined) stages the commonplace debris of every day life (from a toffee bar to a strip of pills) as a portrait of the bags former owner.

The Bamburgh Beast is one of four instrumental tracks on the album (along with Junipter Berries …The Cumberland Rag and Newcastle) which - through the kaleidoscope of this lustrous music - testify to the deftness of Dawsons performance; of his skill to invoke archetypal monsters or take us on a walk through the personal map of psychic landscapes. The Bamburgh Beast seems to grow from the initially close and minute, extending in all directions (linearly and vertically), into the crashing and gigantic. This song makes me remember those momentous stories of mythical beasts which stoked our childhood imaginations; from the iconic Beast of Bodmin and Black Dogs of Death to our own personal, local legends - such as the ghost train and flesh-eating cockerel - tales that we would weave and elaborate upon during dark evenings, watching the other children’s faces turn white amidst the unravelling fantasies.

The unease that laces through much of this album – that uncomfortable feeling of occupying a space too close to another human being – is tested to its limits in Grandads Deathbed Hallucinations. Intimate, empathic and gently surreal, this song oscillates between private narrative and a musical dissonance that, at moments, seems to rattle the listeners very being and to shake and crack any complacent faith in reality as being either substantial or stable. Though often dark and resonant Grandads Deathbed Hallucinations is also a tender and extremely humane account of a passage in the life of an individual on the edge of the precipice, now reliving their wartime memories in vivid detail. Towards the songs end history, memory and dream seem to become increasingly fragmented and confabulated. In his last hours “beautiful butterflies” dance about the elderly man in a crazy motion as though suspended on elastic, animated by the weird, escalating frenzy of Dawson's jarring, shuddering vocals and guitar.

One of my favourite pearls amidst this album of treasures is the instrumental track Newcastle. Beginning so humbly amidst the warm sound of it's own recording (is it an ancient tape recorder that we can hear whirring and clicking?) this song rapidly breaks into an intricate, exquisite ascent. Even without taking the title into account there is a real sense of the historical continuum within this work; of theses notes and small sequences emerging from the strata of musical history; from the first primitive stringed instruments, to medieval lutes and on to the classical guitars of the renaissance. Through the lanes of this song we move between quiet, murky back streets to the inevitable, raucous plateaus (reminiscent of the Bigg Market on a Saturday Night only one with less vomit and sexy nurse outfits). Occasionally a familiar refrain from earlier in the song reappears like a lost friend, these lovely episodes which punctuate the song remind me of the way in which, when wandering the Newcastle streets in a mildly intoxicated haze, you're often surprised to stumble across a scene, or a character, or to notice an architectural flourish you hadn't previously, and the magical power of that loaded, resounding instant of apophenia.

With a voice that originates from the greyest corner of your pencil box but which subsequently vaults into shining immanence, Man Has Been Struck Down By Hands Unseen is an extraordinary passage of silence and absolute sound... Dawsons powerful music and poetic verse conjure invisible worlds from beyond the terrain of human experience, imbuing them with blood, guts and heart. In contrast, The Magic Bridge begins with a supreme delicacy and beauty which will seduce you into an ultimately uncertain, heart breaking, lullaby.

Following the publication of Ulysses James Joyce once explained that the reason he returned time and again to Dublin as the scene and muse for his work was because “In the particular is contained the universal.”. In Richard Dawsons' The Magic Bridge his minutiae observations of the local landscape, of the commonplace and everyday are what transport us onwards into encounters with the macrocosmic and the universal. The iridescent weaving of language and music is expertly poised; a matching of the finite and the firmament, the singular and the absolute; they serve to feed and extend one another ad infinitum; this is a work greater than the sum of its parts. But prior to all of this is the really devastating humanity of this album. Full of tenderness, pain, nightmares, raptures, love and death, The Magic Bridge is both the bridge of our childhoods under which trolls lurked, a shamanic bridge between worlds but also, crucially, it is a bridge between people. Though it may be impossible and immaterial, The Magic Bridge is nonetheless a bridge between one life and another, between one deftly rendered human's universe and the next.

Iris Aspinall Priest

http://www.richarddawson.net/

Notes

2011-11-13T21:04:00.000+01:00

You should buy this album - http://www.richarddawson.net/themagicbridge.html

Review coming soon.....

Richard Dawson – The Magic Bridge

Notes/ Initial observations

Each song of this collection is an individual, a character who tells you a story that is uniquely there's... and yet there are motifs that recur throughout, transforming and transmuting, their meaning ever-layered, compounded and extended by each subsequent passage... the bridge...the fog...

A crafted, no HEWN, album...

Track 1. Junipter Berries Float Down the stream

Tenuous notes, the beauty of tiny gestures (quality of recording); distant, yet the tactile quality of a home tape recording – familiar, patina (unlike HD disconnected 'ultra real')... a salve to the hyperreal...

waits until a single note has finished chiming, not always perfect... but resounding, like a Tibetan prayer bowl (a singing bowl) ... a guitar, a single thing of wood and metal used to communicate with us and with a great beyond...

forming relationships between these that are so well rehearsed and yet have the rawness/ immediacy of great improv/ on the spot...

patterns start to form in the formlessnes – a fibonaci sequence of tiny sounds? A great work that begins with a sketch (tenuous, exploring, marking the way hesitantly? Learning as it moves, the hearing note)...

Delicate, occassionally rough or dissonant

the form that emerge – infused with this unpatterned pattern – full of formlessness/ emerging shapes and sounds....

Gentle

unimpossible

semi-recognisable/ familiar motifs that are carried on the surf of the music...

even in it's most patterned plateaus there are those single plucks or sounds that retain something of the unusual – it evolves like that... a seed that germinates an ever changing, unpredictable plant, flowers, brambles, shoots, trembling leaves...

Track 2. Black Dog in The Sky

Something which begins with such supreme delicacy that, if it's the first time you've heard it, there is a degree of hearing that is required – it isn't a tune that comes easily, this is no pop anthem, but it is a story that, like the best stories pulled from the hearts of men, is difficult and uneven but which speaks of more than words alone convey...

“As I rode to your house, I was beaten and robbed by a band of moon faced vagabonds”

A voice that is old and wizened (akin to Tom Waits) but humorous, poetic, seeing the magic and gently humerus in the awful

The supernatural (The Black Dog in The Sky) – the real myth – the living, breathing, pissing nightmare/ archetype of British Legend – the devil – the shadow “the perfume” of death... Guardian of the underworld – right that he (and this song) should sit at the beginning of this album – the whole story of a bridge...

Goosepimples – challenge you not to be unnerved and touched by this song...

“Those poor children” the children (robbers) of the song and an infinite number of others...

Is the Black Dog real? A phantom? An intervention by God? Richard?

“I see entrails dripping in the trees”

“who pisses and slobbers all over the world”... “he slowly devours the land” The Black Dog as described by Winston Churchill (a metaphor for his chronic depression)

“through an ocean of fog I am ceaselessly drawn to the lantern in your window” - it's an image, a motion that is age old, hear it in so many folk songs, tales, in books, this undercurrent that carries us through such gore, horrors, trivialities, the star crossed lovers, the currents beyond our will...

The illumination in the midst of this DARK song... comes at the right point – at the end – this lighted force that propels the action (unknown)

Track 3. Wooden Bag

How one man can construct a universe of sound and meaning... begins with the too-and-fro beat (two notes)

“A napsack made of oak, purchased for thirty francs from a market in Geneva in nineteen sixty eight...”

Sense of the materials potency (much like a ritual object) history and meaning, implied, invoked, uncovered by the song...

Voice foregrounded in such a delicate way – tender invitation/ offering – the personal quality of a voice – of yourself put out into the world, imperfect, idiosyncratic, secret, public...

his choice of words so particular/ resonant

In harmony with the speaking guitar... deceptively simple, the words just sung whilst the guitar carves the image, the shape of the song... this wooden bag...

“carved from a single piece of wood”

as his description develops and ascends so does the music, drawn helplessly along with this elegant charming tale... (will be singing along too in no time)... voice almost cracking at summit

“many rain storms” how he paints these rainstorms in sound and word, pure poetry

Though the stories are told, the unknowable quality of an objects history that didn't belong to the current owner epitomised by his use of the guitar (twiddles? Flourishes?)

“a piece of sky coloured felt” sense that the metaphors not only a key in but endowing this inanimate (real??) object with impossible/ other qualities

Minutely observed “the shape of a bumble bee blown in glass”

The way, listened to as a whole, at times both/either his voice or guitar seem to receed or foreground one another in such harmony … like the advice “you shouldn't be able to see the frame” - you shouldn't be able to see the operations of one on the other and, swept along by the magic of it, you don't...

The passion invested in this object “at the centre of each flower lies a bead of wood OOOOH OOOH OOOOH OOOH I CAN'T THROW THIS BAG AWAY”

so penetrating, shaken almost to tears

the contents – the meaningfulness of the common place from a bar of toffee to anadin extra... “half a dozen of those tiny Ladbrooks pens” - forming a portrait of the absent owner – the portraits of ourselves through the debris that is left over, the significance it is endowed with here and now...

The particular in the geographical references “shells collected from the shore at Newton by the Sea”

“a cloth bound diary filled with cartography countries that you saw whilst you were asleep” the beauty of language aswell – this two way relationship between language/ word and song/meaning feeding one another and propelling, enlarging any single aspect...working in such a harmony...

(high point, moving down) “...I can see a bridge of moonlight flowing oh through the page” - this metaphor of the bridge that recurs, is reworked – a bridge in geography, in dreams, a real and imaginary bridge (the bridges of Newcastle, the bridges of our childhood under which trolls lurk, the bridges of the gods and the shaman between worlds, between life and death, the motion of moving through time and space, of transition from one state or place (loaded with meaning) to another, from one known place or world to another (known or unknown), THIS ALBUM AS A BRIDGE, between us...

that you are always you and I am always I and we can never occupy the same space, the magical bridge is an illusion, a dream, but one we dream to tread every day of our waking lives...

also between people – between you and I, between he and she... between mother and baby, between the living and the dead... between our selves (past, present and future)

“I can feel it in my molecules” fuck, so can we Richard, bone shaking, strips you back to bare humanity – so raw...

Track 4. The Bamburgh Beast

Instrumental

The Myth, The Micro, The Macro...

that progresses from the close, the minute, growing in all directions, linearly, vertically,

at moments HUGE sounds punctuate – the myth of the beasts of our childhood that would rock our beings and imaginations – the beast of bodmin, the wild animals and monsters that inhabit our dream landscapes (our psychic geographies)

construction, like waves, that continue in the same pattern but not wholly predictable – there are ebbs, breaks, flutters and beautiful details – a substance as changeable as the sea – it cannot be wholly occupied by your mind because it doesn't exist simply within those perimeters of the song...

Track 5. Grandads Deathbed Hallucinations

(Coincidentally found myself listening to/ writing about this on Memorial Sunday – something which is increasingly forgotten by contemporary imagination as our grandparents and ancestors die out... the reality of trench war fare that I can't help but shake the re-imagined memory of from our own families stories)...

Some deep, dark resonance that comes in early, such an intimate scene, laced with death, nightmares, the proximity to a dying human so real/ tangible...

We're carried through those nightmares, through the fog on the tide of this song... I guess the way storytellers of old would have done, enchanting their listeners, evoking worlds unknown.

Uncomfortable dissonance

the tiny, toy-like soldiers “running to the future, advancing...” music serves to illustrate what Shakespeare did “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” in a quickened, heavier pace... we find ourselves advancing into the future too...

Thicket of sound and word

The description of his Grandfather's recurring dream we are immersed in, the mud sounds, the strain at the edge of reason and emotion...

“is there any room for a little un?” narrating his Grandfather's stories... such understatement, humanity in the story of war, feel ourselves amidst it; that confusing, overwhelming feeling of a young, Northern lad caught in the bowels of a monster which devoured so many of his generation...

Something about the North and being closer to your history?

“ascending a tiny step ladder a balding man in overalls who took a brush the size of a postage stamp and brightened a corner of that dreary room”

Dreamlike... this strange, surreal description that is so like those moments of apophenia – humanities incomparable, crazy ability to find magic and enchantment even in the most dreary or dire circumstances...

In his final moments, home, “yorkshire puddings”

the dizzying, dissonant, scrambled description of “so many beautiful butterflies” - butterflies on elastic, crazed... carried on this single note as far as it will go, then breaks off...

“ooohoohooohoooh is there any room for a little un?” the way memory, past, present become confabulated, conflated and confused in old age, particularly on the edge of death – when memory, dream and reality broken up and mixed together...

the unease that runs through much of this album – the uncomfortable feeling of occupying a space so close to another human – of feeling yourself exposed, of them, of your empathy and imagination tested to its limits and beyond... of the instability and unsubstantial of everything...

Track 6. The Cumberland Rag

Instrumental

I believe rag is the name some people give to a newspaper, having grown up in Cumbria, and knowing the eponymous newspaper there quite well, that would seem befitting... but it also means clothes and, significantly, a tell-tale or persistent moaner.... or a scrap of fabric... or... if you're “on the rag” - on your period...

delicate climbs between, over, through notes...

to narrate a tale without words

the music that gives life and essence to an idea – to something

clamorous at times – strings vibrate and rattle (both exterior and in your ears) – but also that subtleness... occasionally lovely sounds...

the sound that isn't there carves a path...

(occasionally grating) kaleidoscope

Track 7. We Picked Berries in a Churchyard Freshly mowed

Tender beginning steps, nostalgic

His gritty voice reaching for angelic heights... some inevitable trouble here... “the flight of flies pepper the sky”

Longing, inevitability, doom “sunshine between my legs” meets “the labyrinth of the dead”

Sex and Death

“Hold me” appeal “and never let me go” - an arundel tomb (living) THE FRUIT they have gathered, “spiders drowning in a silver spiral” dying amidst life, living amidst death... of the greatest peaks suffused with the lowest lows...

Shifts in space/ time “I am listening for your key in the door” the weighty significance of small actions/ objects... iconic too...

“I awake to the screech of the fox in street carrying your soul in its teeth through the snow” “I invite the forest in to my bed” despair, nature, darkness, ruins, “my bed which is a river” - the flow of time, of the inevitable

Track 8. Newcastle

Instrumental

Tiny, the whirring clicking of what?... an obsolete tape recorder?... stuck, the way they do... familiar, warm...

describing a landscape as if through history – the way we create spaces – part known, part (mis) remembered, part told... history of the place...

then breaks into this intricate, expert, escalating music... whirling upwards, to a plateau – a conversant section?

Almost as though following a path through the city in the evening – from the quiet little streets onto the raucous, ineviatble hoards of the Bigg Market – full of noise and life and human limits... but always punctuated with these lovely episodes – the way you do stumble across something new... a friend or a strange and curious scene...

that Richard Dawson is a local phenomenon – well of course – he's found his subject and he's plundering it – you can find the whole universe in a small place if you're really looking

“For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

- James Joyce

Sense of historicity and weight to this song (or am I imagining it? Superimposing it?)

A map in song, interesting, a personal map and yet this song sounds different to all the others...

pauses in the middle, just that faintly whirring, clicking sound marking the passing of time...

starts to climb back, like someone knocked down, re-finding their balance (damaged) a longing... a reaching...

a familiar refrain from earlier, like a lost friend, reappears...

almost silence again then the wonderful ascending episode starts again, I feel like I'm being carried up a Helter Skelter... all kinds of interesting things on the way up, glittering, strewn, discarded, rough, familiar...

The name 'New' 'Castle' – something don't examine too often but surely that's incredible, a historic castle that was once called new... we are those future histories, only not, totally ephemeral (our presence) though the Sage and the Baltic and St James's will endure long after we're dead...

Ends, something muffled – obviously taped over – sense of the scrap book, of the living reality of this album... of it's genuine, untainted by post production ness...

Track 9. Newcastle Man Has Been Struck Down by hands Unseen

Again, starts with walking, a pace of the heart, of the feet... gradually developing like a stone gathering moss... the disordered order to his rhythm and sounds, occassionally breaks through with a kind of gritty weight that propels the whole body of the song further, higher... somehow what is (in terms of time) quite a long song, doesn't seem it... could happily continue for another 9 minutes and noone would blink...

Not a huge amount happens here but what does is careful, without sounding too deliberate, clever, without being wanky...

A voice that starts in the bottom of your greyist pencil pallette “ a grade of starling blood...forming between the cracks of the paving stones...” something small endowed with great significance...”soaking through my shoes, crawling up through the walls these magical, unseen, invisible worlds somewhere beyond the terrain of experience but close enough to feel their real presence and heat...

“man has been struck down by hands unseen”

Elegaic

Magical Realism

The proximity of otherness/ the unexplicable... (remember that we are a frontier town)

“I thought the moon had fallen down from it's moorings...” apocalyptic NOW, the forces of nature (within and without) that shape our being... love, death, paranoia, sex... the spirit... APOPHENIA

Compulsive, seductive

But also almost harsh at moments... the strings at their limit... bent, reverberating, singing, buzzing...

Weaving this extraordinary scene of silence and absolute sound... “the slow coagulation of the sky” - like astronomy – between the momentous and the minute/ human... the meaningfulness of everything...

Sung with SUCH HEART AND GUTS

maaaaaaaaagic Briiiiiiiiiidge “here I am... I am waiting” - bridge between here and where? The fog

THE WAKING DREAM

Compulsive to sing along to

Track 10. The Magic Bridge

This is like a lullaby that sings all through you, beautiful, dreamy and gritty...

infant

ancient

our ancient selves/ past lives... “buried our ghosts in to the future”

the part of us that is connected to the world and to one another... “the loss grows stronger day by day”

“I don't know if I can get over this”

(No, me neither)

His voice that comes from the earth and carries us into ourselves and beyond...

Ends with “I don't know where we go from here” in ultimate, human uncertainty...

Hunger for more! Could listen to all day and then some....

Superconductor

2011-11-11T14:42:00.003+01:00

Below is the proposal for a show I'm hoping to curate at The New Bridge Space from january to February next year. I'm just in the process of inviting artists and trying to source some funding...

“The atomic individualism of patriarchy destroys much of the fabric of the human community. Such a damaged community is incapable of understanding the needs of its own members, much less of the nonhuman world.”

Michael Zimmerman

“The collective task of “reenchanting” our whole culture is, as I see it, one of the crucial tasks of our time...”

Suzi Gablik

Superconductor proposes that, rather than extraneous to everyday life, art is essential for connecting us imaginatively to the world in which we live and to one another. The show departs from Suzi Gablik's call for the imperative liberation of art from the disenchantment of materialism and the technocratic culture of disconnection.

Superconductor seeks to usurp the antiquated paradigm of the autonomous artist loner, practising at the periphery of society and instead suggests that - like the shaman of primitive cultures who traversed the Axis Mundi between the divine and earthly worlds - the artist of today reinvests everyday life with magic, mystery and meaning.

The artists involved in Superconductor offer various new ways of experiencing and engaging with the world; whether through collaboration and collective action or directly through the objects, images and ideals their work invites the viewer to engage with. Superconductor underlines the social significance of art production, reception and effect. The show emphasises the unity between art and life as a means to create one's own cultural conditions and to affect social change. Both through the works in the show and through the programme of satellite activities, the exhibition becomes a hub for the generation and cross-pollination of new ideas and approaches to contemporary life and interaction. Superconductor invites engagement, contemplation and open-endedness over detachment, entertainment and the unequivocal.

International Print Biennale

2011-11-10T19:04:00.004+01:00

Nous Vous, 'Being Good', Print, 2011. Courtesy: Nous Vous

Please see a-n Interface's Reviews Unedited page for my write up of the International Print Biennale, commissioned by All points North.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/1685694

http://allpointsnorth.info/

Human Library - Wunderbar Festival

2011-11-06T15:37:00.002+01:00

Browsing the catalogue of the Human Library I am greeted with an array of troubling and lovely possibilities from a remarkable 19 year old with a brain tumour Something Wrong With My Head to a free thinking Muslim born in Sunderland Mackem Motor-Mouth Muslim. Stood beside the issue desk you cannot see the human library but I can't help but indulge in the image of an old dark wood library shelf stacked with human-sized books which twitter and giggle, telling one another wonderful and secret stories...

The librarian issues me with a Reader's Ticket and a Request Slip which lists all the titles stocked by the Human Library. The tactile quality of it all kicks me with a small pang of nostalgia for the library system before barcode readers and self service check in desks, when the date insert in the front of library books was an indexical history of use and, for those rare or outsized and dusty art books, you had to fill in a Request Slip by hand,invariably incorrectly, provoking the inevitable snorts and stamping of feet of the librarian.

It takes me a long time to choose a book, but eventually I decide to start with German and Proud. The Librarian asks me to make sure I've read and understood 'The Rights Of The Reader' and 'The Rights Of The Book' whilst she goes to collect the book from the bookshelf. I'm silently revelling in this delightful extended metaphor which includes in the 'Rights Of The Human Book': “Human Books have the right to be returned in the same condition in which they were issued” when my book arrives.

How do you start reading a book? That sounds like a ridiculous question, right?... usually you just start from the beginning and follow it through. Pursuing all the narrative twists, turns, denouements and metaphors, to the end. You don't have to introduce yourself, or steer the plot developments, all this unfolds in your own private imagination, who you are and what you think is superfluous to the story itself. But, for the first time in my life, a book asks me, directly

“What do you want to know?”

German and Proud talks keenly about her family history and her German grandmother who suffered from prejudice all her life after moving from Köln to a small north east mining town in England. She tells me about the divide, in her own family, between the German and English branches, not from great cultural difference but simply through a lack of common linguistic ground. I tell her about my faltering German lessons and she says “The way to a man's soul is through the language he speaks.” My book is full of real life fairy tales of her time in a corner of Southern Germany (monsters and all). Part of the way through she asks me if I have any questions and I ask her something I've been desperate to know for a long time...

“Where in the UK can you get REALLY good pretzels?”

With great gusto and animated gestures, she tells me the answer to my question... (If you want to know, I recommend you go and read German and Proud)...

When I return my book to the issue desk all of the other books are on loan so I decide to take a break. I wander up to the second floor and have a look at the Day of the Dead exhibition and all those wonderful, garish dancing skeletons. I look around the café and wonder which, if any, of these are human books. And then it dawns on me... They all are. Their titles may not appear in the catalogue of the Human Library but everyone is a book, unread, not to be judged by their covers, but full of stories and subplots, written and still in progress, possessing innumerable possibilities and interpretations depending upon the reader.

For my second title I choose The Dragon And The Monkey. This is a book of euphoric highs and devastating lows. The extended, central metaphors of the dragon and the monkey were a way of making manifest, explicable and (in part) comprehensible the two conflicting influences on the life and story of the book; the symptoms of Bi Polar disorder. My book asks me why I wanted to read his story and what relevance it has to my life and interests. For the second time today a dialogue is taking place between the book I am reading and myself; my motivations for reading are being interrogated. And this is important; that it isn't a one way conversation. The Dragon And The Monkey tells me he questions everything. Twice.

The interior landscapes of The Dragon And The Monkey and his experiences of living with a mental illness are made manifest through elaborate metaphors; “The sleeping Dragon” refers to the dormant (but lethal) manifestations of the illness “...I have to keep him asleep...or he will burn me alive...”. Whilst the monkey is a benevolent character which symbolises the persistent need to keep the dragon, and all other chaos, in check. Containing 65 years of narrative this book is, none the less, tellingly light on details about his life story. The key moments which he refers to - his marriage, his moving back to the North East, his finding and loosing of an important job - parallel the metaphorical “sign posts” which he uses to navigate his way through “the dark city at night”. These similes and allegory’s function as keys into the illness for the reader as well as an insight into a sufferers means of coping with an often debilitating, invisible, illness.

As the story comes towards an end (though not a conclusion) I ask the book why he wanted to take part in the festival. What he tells me, I think, epitomises the purpose and intent of the whole Human Library project: “...to tackle stigmas... because most prejudice is born out of ignorance”. Reading a human book is not the same as reading a bound book of paper and ink; though it may present perspectives and illuminate concepts or possibilities previously unconsidered by a reader, a paper book is always contained within that form; it can be put down, fitted between bedtime and sleep or 5 minutes crammed in to a bus journey. A paper book exists in the finite space of printed text and internalised reading. A human book, however, exists in the real four-dimensional scope of human experience. The reader can't skip bits or neglect their book, a human book requires fixed attention and, through that intimate engagement with another's story, invites empathy through real human engagement.

Iris Aspinall Priest

WRITING

2011-11-04T08:26:00.003+01:00

My review of This is the Future at Allenheads Contemporary Arts

http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/1656267

My write up of A School for Wunderbar Festival (part one of 2)

http://www.wunderbarfestival.co.uk/blog

Also just finished the review of The International Print Biennale for All Points North. More details as and when I hear them....

Glorious Review

2011-11-01T22:54:00.005+01:00

Glorious

Rajni Shah Projects/ Tuesday 1st November/ Northumbria University Students Union

It started well, with an interesting concept for a musical production i.e. relinquishing control to chance encounters (letters left by passing strangers in Eldon Square shopping centre, Newcastle). The first act began with a solo performance from Rajni Shah, dressed in a stiff felt dress/ costume which reminded me simultaneously of Joseph Boyce's Felt Suit and, with the illuminated Golden hoop circling the dresses waist, some archetypal angel of death. She sang lines with familiar resonance mentioning Kielder and the pangs of teenage-esque love, rejection and longing, all the time accompanied on piano but which was, for my tastes, a little too 'School Assembly'. Shah sang about 'Home' a constant concept, reworked infinitely in the imaginations of humanity... she sang about the houses/landscapes we occupy almost in terms of a constant, slowly changing backdrop to humanity which is in constant flux, decay and change...

Following this were spoken pieces by the 5 local participants (who had written those letters and left them at the Eldon Square meeting place). These were about the course of a human life over a day, a year, letters to absent (perhaps dead) friends from the past. As they spoke I wondered at why all the letters were so personal, perhaps it's just the nature of letter writing; it's written from an intimate, deeply personal "I" to an imagined/ absent other... whisper-like?...

( Do we use words to form a hard shell over soft wordlessness... but, even so, this may not such a bad thing?....)

But this didn't underscore the individual humanity of everyone involved but rather, I believe, eroded it. By fitting their personal stories into this purpose built format and by gradually paring down their words into silence (through the preceding acts where their spoken parts were purged and altered then finaly, in the last act, everyone exited the stage one by one like gassed butterflys) - just seemed to demonstrate that we are all the same 'stuff' of humanity but in slightly different manifestations (all comes back to love, loss, ageing, illness and grief etc).

I felt too, increasingly as the performance wore on, that there was a certain sense of these artists having been being 'parachuted in'. I felt there was something a bit grimy about the whole affair; that these middle class, paid artists were producing this performance centred around and dependent upon mainly working class, unpaid people - exploiting their deeply personal stories for musical performance with no lasting legacy. Or much artistic integrity.

The music which was developed more in acts 2 and 3 smacked of being a 'middle way' achieved by colliding lots of diverse (and talented) musicians into one place with the need for a unified outcome... In a way I thought it sounded too timid and mediocre, and perhaps it would have actually functioned better had they all been aloud to shake off that imposed restraint and perform as they would be inclined to (everyone recognised that stunning funk bassist who busks on Northumberland street and the guitarist's attempts to reign in his inclination to rock-guitar solos).

Overall, this concept of life and humanity being "Glorious" wasn't achieved at all. The musical failed to really create that feeling of apotheinia i.e. that everything is "Glorious" (from the road sweeper to the brightly coloured pink diamond on the wall of an American Diner). This failure was only cemented as, when trying inversely to illuminate that concept, the performance utilized increasingly elaborate props/ dress accessories; if everything is glorious you should be able to illustrate this in the most simple means e.g. through a mobile phone, a notch in the pavement, through the commonplace and everyday not the spectacular and manufactured.

http://www.rajnishah.com/glorious

http://www.wunderbarfestival.co.uk/

AA2A

2011-10-26T19:44:00.007+02:00

I have an AA2A page now, you can follow my progress from my profile:http://aa2a.biz/pg/profile/iris via blog posts, image updates and, if you want to, voting for me there also.

Below are a couple of images of what's been happening so far (today I spent 3 hours in the totally delicious media suite printing images for the open studios/portfolio/residency)...

The Studio (amongst a nice bunch of 2nd and 3rd year painters)

The notebook (well, some of it)...

The post boxes (a work in progress)...

25093

2011-10-26T11:28:00.001+02:00

25093, a photo by little miss incoherent on Flickr.

2011-10-25T03:13:00.001+02:00

Write up of my studio Visit to see Anne Vibeke Mou earlier this month here.

CANNED 2 LAUNCH

2011-10-25T00:15:00.004+02:00

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=303512436342104

After The NewBridge Project Open Studios preview on Saturday 29th October, you are invited to celebrate the launch of CANNED ISSUE 02 on the first floor of NewBridge Studio.

Richard Dawson

Nathalie Stern

Shit Whisperer

... DJs late into the night...

2011-10-24T01:42:00.002+02:00

My article on the show The Profane Myth, Curated by Dawn Bothwell currently showing at The Lit & Phil and the Mining Institute http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews/single/1610173

2011-10-23T22:23:00.002+02:00

Transcript Anne Vibeke Mou Studio Visit

2011-10-20T12:35:00.000+02:00

14^th October 2011

AVM: “...lenses... spectacle lenses, there's a sort of an intimacy and it's the subjective view and it's the singular person wears the pair of glasses and you know there is that sort of, on the one hand, that sort of ghostly thing about when you look at those antique lenses and you wonder what sights have been experienced through those lenses, you know what's embedded in the glass. But also it's a very intimate, subjective thing to work on so that's why I'm attracted to them.”

IAP: “Are they new lenses or old?”

AVM: “No they're antique, which is also why it's partially to do with, I think, they're a different kind of glass because obviously if you go and compare a modern pair of glasses and they're anti scratch and they're sort of quite dense, whereas the antique ones seem to be a slightly different kind of glass so they're much softer to work on. But that's sort of an aside, no it was really the fact that they've had a life and they've had a use which is unknowable to us, it's something that we can't, you know it's almost like a series of Binder's old photographs, layered inside that glass. You can't read it but you know it's there and I quite like that. So its like, again, it's that little, almost invisible material that in a way contains all those things and so I was quite attracted to be able to sort of work on that. So instead of just having them on their own as a piece, you know, maybe try and do a series which, in a way, has a sense of visions about them. You show them as if it's a vision on this glass. (2.04) And then I've thought about..the ability of glass, unlike many other materials, is to let light to pass through it unbroken. But as soon as you mark the glass it breaks the light and it traps it. So really you can make drawings of light, which I really quite like...the idea that the drawing's actually made with light. So there's something sublime about that; the fact that you can hold this thing... that you can use light in and as a material itself. So the imagery that I've started working with, which is very very far from resolved, is... trying to describe things purely by how they reflect the light. So I've tried, you know surface of the water, because when the wind moves and the waves change, you know the way that you see the waves is how light is reflected and so its very much a starting point and so that's something that I’m looking at and I don't know exactly where it's going to go but I like that thing that a tiny little object can sometimes hold something which is beyond us, beyond tangibility somehow...”

IAP: “It's interesting working with a material with a history though isn't it opposed to your drawings which are very much from a starting point of, not nothingness...but without facets”

AVM: “It's a clean slate, yeah, (3.54) also I think that they're not of this world in a way... that you don't have to deal with... there's always an allusion to real things, so there's a sense of light that's real, there's a sense of landscape... but the process is an abstract process; a ritualistic, fragmented process which creates an image. So you're almost going from a minimal starting point and working towards a sense of something within the world, whereas these ones [indicating the lenses] are of the world, they contain within them facets of the real and in a way I'm trying to find how to work, with individual little fractures, to marry that into the real somehow. I mean it's the wrong time to really talk about it, because I don't have any answers yet but... you know when you have a feeling there's something there that will eventually... they have to be exquisite that's the only thing, when you're working with the miniature they have to be exquisite... and it's impossible to know how that clicks into place because you can only focus in, on the one hand on that scale you focus in on something quite closely... But that series [indicating the drawings] I think is going to run for a while (5.56) and it's just the same starting point from a white sheet of paper and it's a square, it's a perfect square which means that it doesn't dictate... I suppose in a way the circular of the lens is a sort of a self-contained frame...

IAP: “Have you read that book...The Miniature, The Gigantic and the Collection?”

AVM: “...Another thing that I haven't read yet but... that I've sort of picked up is, again one of those parallels that doesn't necessarily marry up, but... I went in to the church...on Westgate road on the corner... the only reason I wanted to go in there was because it was raining really heavily and I just wanted to shelter (8.00) and then the church warden came up and said “well, you know, would you like me to show you around?”... and it actually turned out that they had a window which was, during the reformation... smashed as they smashed all the windows (it was a Catholic Church), and someone had constructed a window of all the fragments from all the old windows. And then there was an anchorage which I didn't know actually, there was a little cross  and the anchorage still existed but obviously totally bricked off and he told me about Julian of Norwich and how her text, in his opinion anyway, has sort of become the rule book for hermits and anchorites (8.49). And so I thought I'd have a read about that...I'm quite interested in the sense of dedicating yourself to visions and to fragmenting them, making them into some system that makes sense... I've looked at that anyway, the same as with the research in Greenland and how people use the natural environment and perishable materials to almost systematise those things that are beyond their knowledge and beyond their control, so it's creating a system to deal with the vastness or the infinite... so you take a piece of wood, or a piece of skin or bones or whatever and through putting them through a mystical process you make an object which somehow embodies your needs and your longings and deals with them in a sensible...you know, it's all about mysticism and religion and belief and all these things that... seem to take responsibility away from the individual it's kind of interesting... I think what I'm particularly interested in is how we construct these systems around us to deal with that hole around us that we don't otherwise know how to deal with... because I'm not religious remotely but (10.54) I think it's interesting that whether you're religious, whether you're not religious, that you always need to systematise – whether it's a routine or something else – your approach to the world... Otherwise you sort of... float...
...And I also think it's quite interesting, again with the parallel to this work which, as you say, the very sort of blank start; you start with something that does not have facets to it... you start with a blank and build up... that tradition of shutting yourself away to gain understanding. The hermit practice or the anchorite practice that you almost shut yourself away from the world and find a very sort of simplistic routine in order to gain some sort of revelation... which I think is dodgy but there are elements of that in this kind of practice... you really do look for the answer in a highly sort of ritualised process and the thing is it is infinite because there's never going to be a finite one (12.32), there's never going to be a finite shape, there's never going to be a finite... presence. So it's something that you do in order to... I don't know... make sense of time? It's how you systematise yourself I suppose... But I think also there's sort of a shutting away and a breaking things down to individual marks; be it a singular mark with the diamond point or with the tungsten point in the glass or a little block, mark with the pencil, there's a desire to be able to break things down into little building blocks or little fragments and yet there's, another way I can explain it, the drawings start with a very systematised way; I have one pencil, one mark and then that mark is repeated and the layering is repeated very systematically but then over time, and its probably a couple of weeks, thatre's sort of systematic layering starts to encounter some sense of imagery so there's sort of a point where the systematic approach or the ritual approach moves over to become an active promotion of an image, a sort of conjuring up of an image so you become aware that there is some sense of image and you start to work into it... and there's always a sort of a funny, well, it's an interesting moment; it's almost as if you know you have to depart from only working systematically to actually putting your awareness into... it becomes subjective at that point because you (15.03) start to make decisions that aren’t to do with a system that you've created... I don't have rules about where I put the marks; I do the first layer and then the marks sort of go on wherever... it's almost like dimming down the tones in a way and then there comes that point where you become aware there's an image and you start to work on that image which becomes a recognition that there is an image which is, again, it seems to hover between being fully abstract, or between being a process and a landscape which is sort of, of the world, in a way......And I think that's the thing with the glass; that when you're working on glass you have to deal with what's beyond the glass as you're always looking through to that... and so in a way it's what I like about it but it's also the challenge: it's very difficult... there's the same contrast I suppose with these; there's the desire to keep it all as individual marks and process but also you can't deny at some point the real world knocks on the door...But I think I put a lot of emphasis on using the material almost as a base element (17.21) so with pencil, pencil is not just a material; its a H pencil so its the amount of layers that create the tones rather than a differentiating of softnesses or hardnesses of pencil and so it's again about using the basic material and almost pushing that material to be, you know, almost to conjure things up out of a single basic material... and almost reveal everything it can be; so it can be dense it can be light and like with the glass it can be invisible and it can be entirely there. And that's why, when I work with glass, I don't work with colour; it's entirely about turning it in on itself by just fracturing slightly it goes from being invisible to being entirely present... and luminous. In a way I think with the pencil, I think it's quite amazing that you can take a dense, dark material and create a sense of light from it, make it luminous... So you're almost turning it in on itself, finding its opposites within itself (19.29)...(clock ticks)

But again, you said about slowness or slowed, that there's always that question about something; about when is it finished? Because it's always a process, its almost as if the process has merely momentarily slowed or stopped or frozen so that, when I'm adding marks in the process, its a constantly shifting image, its a constantly shifting thing...and then suddenly, with these ones, there's a certain sort of intensity of light when it feels that they actually start to shine and then you stop but it is sort of just something that is momentarily stopped or slowed because you could keep adding to it and it would shift and shift and shift...

IAP: Have you ever documented yourself doing that, documented one of the drawings emerging?

AVM: No, but I have thought about it in terms of the window of the church; trying to film it over time because it shifts so much depending upon the light and the season...but I did think about with the drawing as well but they happen over such a long time...but it would be interesting because you would have this sort of formation which would be constantly shifting around...
But I think that, with this especially there's also a pushing the very subtle things so also how little do you do, how faint can it be and still be present? (22.18) and with the glass it's like that as well... you work to the light source in a way, you work so that it's graspable but not overpowering. And with the glass it's a constant adjustment depending on whether the glass is being viewed in a north facing position or against the sun, it's an entirely different piece so you have to constantly negotiate, which is probably also why I like glass... you constantly have to negotiate something that is always ever so slightly beyond your control because you can't control the weather, the day...

IAP: even with the drawings you're sort of doing that aren't you; the negotiation between the system that takes it out of your hands. And I know that you called it 'subjective' when an image starts to emerge but... it's still something that's going on that you're not necessarily directing...You're responding to what's been put down before...

AVM: Well that's the thing as it does come as a kind of revelation, it was never consciously directed so you do have to respond to what emerges, on the one hand you’re feeding it but you're also battling against it and as I don't remove any single mark, once you put a mark down you commit to it and you deal with it and in the same way something that emerges from the drawing you work with and at times, with every drawing, you think 'this isn't right'... but you're constantly responding to it, which I suppose it isn't subjective...(25.17)... I think there is a desire for something to arrive... you take the material and you find a place; it's the encounter of chance but you use the material and you let the material provide something that is beyond your control... and for me it is that taking the material to that point where it provides you with something that you could have not directed or conceived of yourself....Because the material does what it does, it's sort of implicit. It's an implicit quality that you're just responding to...
But I'd like to make a series, quite an extensive series of these and put them in a room, put them in a space (because at the moment I'm working with them as individual squares) but I think it would be quite interesting to see them together and really push how little of a presence and how much is going on, so you can see something else going on; a traversing across the works and across space (27.11) so there's that other element; once you've resolved them as individuals... ...I think it would be interesting to keep going with them almost as a sort of routine that's going on, and view them together and how, whatever it is that's in there, travels across the space, traverses the work and I think with these works there's a sense of a conjuring up of light in the glass work it's making drawings of light, so in one your drawing a sense of light and in the other you're directing the actual... whether that's relevant or not I've no idea... but I did propose for an exhibition to do one side of the gallery being just these, and working on the windows on the other side... because when you're working on the glass the drawing will constantly shift, the character of the thing will constantly move between presence and absence, ever-changing... and with these they're very fixed but could easily shift with the addition of more marks .... but they're very slow, it seems strange that I keep being surprised about how many layers you can put on something – the more layers you seem to put on something the more they seem to shine... and I quite like that paradox (29.56) and I think the time that I stop with them is right at that moment when you can sense the individual mark – you can sense that the image is made up of individual marks but there is a moment when they blend together, they start to sort of dissolve, and there's a point between those two where it hasn't become completely even, it's still speckled but there's not any one individual mark that seems to stand out and so that's sort of... maybe there's something that the individual mark is so important and yet they seem to be, whether it's dissolved or destroyed as they seem to get sort of absorbed into the whole which is...

IAP: So are the marks...dictated by your hand?


AVM: Yes, with the glass it's a single point, and with these [going over to the drawings] it's almost like a scribble and there not measured so... even though I try to make them the same size they always change slightly in size... and the movement is like this [picks up a pencil and chooses a point to begin at, seemingly intuitively] so there is sort of a block but you don't measure it so it could be quite a bit out so it is a little mark that's a filling in exercise aswell, a little square... ...and so even within the mark there's a sort of a change of tone and with the glass each mark is like a finite, so the only way the mark becomes denser than another mark is if it hits directly on to another mark, so there's kind of equality of marks whereas in these ones ]indicating the drawings] there's a movement within the mark for a change of tone, a change of intensity. But I think the marks have developed like that because it is a filling in of the square... whereas with the glass it's a piercing and a fracturing... you know layering versus subtraction...(34.00)...I mean I played around with this, which is not actually successful, but I’ll show it to you anyway... because I thought 'well I wonder, because I like to look at a lot of old etchings, I think I'm attracted to them because it's a way of negotiating, or illustrating the world in a finite amount of marks, whereas with etching or engraving you have to describe everything with lines or dots... so the world becomes fragmented into these signs almost so I thought I'd try and play around with that... so I thought I'd use a very banal material, you know that's just a biro pen, and use it as an instrument so that it decides to blotch in some places and in some places it gives off more ink than in other places... and then use that as n active element and just do lines...but, I don't know... I think it was a playing around with colour as well, trying to use colour and finding whether I could do a singular layer image; because this is just one layer ...but again it's one of those things that I've made but it doesn’t entirely sit with me yet so I've put it away...(35.59) There's sort of a flatness to it... that's disappointing...

IAP:... it's interesting though that all drawings translate the world into a language that doesn't exist I mean, line doesn't exist; it's a way of transcribing the world into another...

AVM: ...I was thinking; I've been looking at ochre sandy Carmen? Which is where nuns used to sit and do these, it would be with real gold with gold thread, being the most divine earthly material, and because it reflects light it has a sense of illumination and because they used to sit for ridiculous amounts of time and stitch and weave these religious imagery so you know how the popes robes have this sort of gold work to them; that's a residue of that... and it would be religious imagery but I was thinking about that sort of practice in terms of communication and image making it's so ridiculously slow...what you do is take little bits of gold thread and you layer them onto silk thread and then you lay it on to material, so you're laying gold down in tiny little sort of stitched lines. So it's something I was looking at, it would be quite (38.03) interesting to make a drawing like that but, there's still people out there who can do it, obviously it's so time consuming that commissioning that sort of stuff is extremely costly, what I think attracted me to that was the use of a material that is, it's not purely for its decorative element it's a purity almost like an alchemy; that if you can create gold you've discovered the divine secret, the ultimate secret, you know you see through everything it's magical. So there's something about the purity of materials that I was attracted to with that because we use that sense of purity as parallel or linked to the divine... so it's something I'd like to explore but we'll see... and I suppose working with something which is as much about the reflectiveness of it, because it almost isn't a stationary thing – it constantly reflects light and in that lies it's grandeur I suppose... 
...it's a funny thing isn't it because when you're writing, well writing feels like quite a finite thing (40.16), like when you're an artists writing an essay it feels like quite a finite presentation but you, well I, always have all these strands that aren't resolved that might just be put away forever, things of non committal...

IAP: That's a weird contradiction as well about writing about art because you do have to put things which are essentially mutable and non finite into language which is so finite...

AVM: And also because it's forever... somehow written word is forever and you feel like you're really chiselling it into the stone...

Katrin Auld at 25 Stratford Grove

2011-10-12T14:35:00.000+02:00

Thursday 8^th September 2011

I am sat in a warm and familiar room of 25 Stratford Grove, both a terraced house, a home and an artist run space, located in a leafy corner of Newcastle. The house, for anyone who doesn't know it, is a hub for the generation of fresh ideas, experimentation and new work with an emphasis on supporting innovative approaches and alternative perspectives, particularly through participation, collaboration and live art events.

During the winter of 2010/ 2011 25 Stratford Grove underwent a significant renovation and changes to its layout. Since then, Katrin Auld had deliberately chosen to exclude herself from the programme of events and happenings, instead holding back for the opportunity to explore this new space through her senses other than sight i.e. holistically developing an image of the space through touch, smell, hearing, taste and any other senses.

We are here, myself and four other artists/friends, because each of us received a personal invitation to participate in what Katrin described in her email as “...not a performance but rather a 'drawing'/exploration...”. Gathered in the recently refurbished main downstairs room, our gentle chatter subsides as we hear the latch of the back gate open and Katrin, her left elbow supported by Carole Luby, steps a little shakily into the front yard.

Her eyes are closed.

We watch through a large bay window as they make their way to the back door of the house. Katrin touches the plants with the hesitance and delicacy of a young child, stopping to smell for flowers. Her feet slide along the floor, tentatively groping for steps and solid foot holds. Upon entering the house she carefully feels her way along the walls and worktops - talking as she goes; comparing how it feels now to what she remembers of the space - gradually making her way down into the room where we are all sitting. As Katrin kneels on the floor, I feel slightly uneasy somehow, as if I'm a voyeur on an intensely personal moment. Carole follows her closely, watching her progress with an almost maternal care, every now and again putting her hand on Katrins shoulder for reassurance. As she feels her way along the floor Katrin describes to us the patina of the smooth, new wood and compares it to her memory of the floorboards in the old room. She exclaims at the sudden, evocative smell of baking bread and, as she nears the hot face of the oven, I feel the first (but not the last) collective drawing-in-of-breath.

Later that evening, when we gathered in the unchanged living room of 25 Stratford Grove, Katrin (with her eyes open) began to explore that relationship between the remembered (visual) space of the past and the felt (sensory) space of the present. She described her experience of the perceived vastness of the new space :

“It was really eerie that it was never ending...”

In the context of this cosy and familiar domestic setting her description evoked (for me) an unsettling sensation; that of standing on the precipice of a great, unfamiliar darkness; of the formlessness of a universe no longer experienced through visual perception and a single perspective (the projective geometry of perspective beginning with ourselves and seemingly beaming outwards into the world). Katrin went on to describe how it had been her intention to explore the space through those alternative means of sense; as a sort of site-responsive drawing in the dark and compared this approach to the way in which Pina Bausch had danced her part in Café Müller blindfold “...to really explore how her body reacted to the space and her movements.” But whereas Pina Bausch's dance had been a visceral, expressive externalisation of inner worlds, Katin Auld's piece had been a quiet, intimate exploration of a space, primarily experienced by her internally.

Whilst our main point of access to the work began with the commentary accompanying Katrin's experience (the space and her mental image of it as ciphered through her physical experience of it) this continued to extend and evolve through our conversation afterwards. The discussion did not follow a single line of enquiry but rather, reflecting the scope of individuals at the event, embarked through many different perspectives and avenues of discussion. The work, and the discourse proceeding it, reminded me of the Jainist concept of Anekāntavāda as illustrated by the fable of 'The blind men and the elephant'. Anekāntavāda, which translates as “non-absoluteism”, proposes the idea that reality is multifaceted and beyond the comprehension of any single perspective or experience of it (and, as such, encourages practitioners to engage with alternative perspectives, ideologies and backgrounds). In the fable six blind men meet an elephant but each man, touching a different part of the elephant (his leg, his side, his tail, his tusk etc), form a different image of what they believe the elephant to be like. When they disagree a sighted man tells them that they are all right in part but that the entirety of the elephant can only be imagined by putting all of these perspectives together. Similarly, as we sit in a circle in Carole's front room, we are talking about different aspects of an elephant we cannot wholly see or understand but instead work collaboratively to trace a map of it according to our various perspectives and ideas. These aspects of the elephant vary from the 'tabboo' of touch and confabulation of memory (Jane); the “ hunt for reassurance” and exploration of the familiar and the unfamiliar through alternative senses (Andrew); the gap or slippage between reality and perceptions of the world when experienced through senses other than sight (Rachael); the metaphorical possibilities and interpretations of 'blindness' and the way one must adapt to loosing their “most loved senses” (Carole); or the prioritising of senses (particularly sight) and incomplete or misinformed realities this constructs (Iris).

The event itself which Katrin had originally proposed as an “exploration” or a sort of site-responsive “drawing” invited a kind of paradox in terms of writing about it... Writing, and the finite words with which we use to describe a thing, being themselves rooted in the tangible and finite syntax of signs and images. What her drawing invited us to explore (both those in attendance and people experiencing it afterwards) was another construction of reality; an interrogation of our own ways of perceiving to search for alternative means and possibilities; to grope to understand the world through the experiences of another. In short, what this work created was not a singular finished performance or event but a key to accessing the world through a multiplicity of perspectives and approaches.

Iris Aspinall Priest©

http://25sg.org/

News

2011-10-07T22:28:00.000+02:00

I've been accepted on to Northumbria Universities AA2A (Artists Access 2 Art Colleges) Residency! Beginning on the 19th of October....

Also, have a couple of writing commissions; one for Allenheads Contemporary Arts on their recent project Collections curated by Andrew Wilson; the second for the upcoming Wunderbar Festival, forming part of their epic satellite of reportage/dialogue. Event's I'll be reporting on include: Human Library, A School and Life Without buildings details on Wunderbar's Programme available at; http://www.wunderbarfestival.co.uk/

Lastly, I'm putting on a show in January... though still need to finalise the proposal and I've got a cold so working at 50%... CANNED Magazine (Issue 2) is finally together and almost ready for the printers though....Currently working on the write up of the studio visit to see Anne at Cobalt and a piece/ live drawing/ exploration without sight Katrin Auld conducted at 25SG ...

Below is an image of the completed Roe Deer Skull....

CALL FOR WRITERS

2011-10-07T13:29:00.000+02:00

CALL FOR WRITERS

CANNED is seeking submissions!!!

We are now looking for work to be featured in our January 2012 edition of CANNED, which we are already busy developing.

For the third edition, we are seeking discursive articles concerning collaboration and exchange in the visual arts. Whatever your take, perspective or style we welcome your submission. As always, we are looking for really unique perspectives delivered with eloquence, clarity and character.

We will circulate 1000 paper copies nationally and internationally (through various galleries and shops), plus we will provide coverage on the CANNED and The NewBridge Project websites and through Social Networking/on-line Arts channels.

Coming out of The NewBridge Project in Newcastle upon Tyne, the third edition of CANNED is an unpaid opportunity but is an excellent chance for all artists, writers and cultural critics to gain exposure and have a voice.

To apply, visit www.CANNEDmag.net for details

txt JAMBON

2011-10-02T15:00:00.000+02:00

JAMBON are an arts group of three Fine Art graduates from Northumbria University; Graeme Durant, Andrew Maughan and Mike Pratt. JAMBON represent a group of individuals who explore similar interests and influences through idiosyncratic means. Unlike many of their precursors in the history of arts collectives JAMBON do not begin with a manifesto or mission statement but with common experience; From the crucible of their shared studio their originates a camaraderie and a cross-pollination of ideas and influences from popular culture, films and tv, through to music, process and art. Theirs is not a movement of collective action but an open-ended conversation which, like all good conversations, is full of cohesion, overlaps and agreement but also dissonriance, slippage and variance as it is spoken and explored through the three separate vocabularies i.e. those of Durant, Maughan and Pratt and their individual artistic practices.

There are more parallels between the group than their starting points however; operating in the time of high speed telecommunications and YouTube mashups JAMBON navigate this daily cornucopia of images with a satirical ease; borrowing, appropriating and down right stealing anything from art history or the heroism of Greek mythology to the quotidian and banal of builders' expanding foam and office furniture. The work itself is often pitched at the speed of consumption; immediate, bold and exhibitionist. In the average 7 seconds a viewer will spend looking at a piece of art they will have grasped the all-over surface qualities, the materiality, the references, the irony and the seeming spirit of provocation. But equally JAMBON, these three cynical magpies of appropriation, stage their work (whether full of plundered references or cyclic self-reference) in such a calculated and deliberate incoherence that fast or neat interpretation is endlessly obfuscated.

Idle thoughts whilst painting on a deer skull...

2011-09-22T15:25:00.000+02:00

1. Remembering, what Martin Fowler once said to me about the importance of collating your own bank of imagery/ developing your own personal visual vocabulary or lexis... I've been resistant to this for a long time, partly because I don't want to become an artist whose identified for their 'style' but mainly because my thoughts/concerns/themes are so broad that it's been impossible to 'hone in' on one singular way of working/ set of motifs... But I think it's getting to a point where I need to do this, even if only temporarily, to focus down on one branch of my work or one (broad) strand of thinking and interrogate it for a while...

2. I need to draw every day. (Based on whatever route of ideas I choose to take/ focus on now).

3. I should read Alasdair Gray's Lanark

4. The Artist :: The Shaman :: The Sage :: The Fool

5. I should frame some work (drawings, prints etc) in time for the open studios event on the 29th of October at NewBridge.

6. Why isn't there an Art Equivalent of Last.fm? Maybe I should make one?

7. Staring at the sun feels like mental feedback.

8. What is the role of chance in my work now? Should I go back to employing it in the generation of images/ objects?... Or do I need to be more sophisticated about its usage?

9. I wonder if I'll ever afford to go on holiday ever again.

2011-09-21T20:43:00.000+02:00

Image for the CD cover of Benjamin Freeth's performance for Render 11 @ Culture Lab, Newcastle. Private View Saturday 24th fom 9pm.

3EHИT ZENIT

2011-09-20T01:37:00.001+02:00

I luv u

2011-09-15T21:51:00.000+02:00

The Profane Myth

Transcript from Interview with Dawn Bothwell

10^th September 2011

IP What is the concept of the 'Profane Myth'?

DB I guess there's more than one concept overall but I think the general motivation for it was taken from different ideologies... and kind of, I guess, considering that it's quite a well promoted idea - that we live in a time where religion is at once neutral towards the West in some ways but then in others it's sort of volatile because of the terrorist attacks – and they're all really well rehearsed ideas but I guess just led me to kind of wonder why society is the way that it is. And, going further back, how it is an impossible or an awkward situation... because the way that we perceive things is completely built up upon both sort of Christianity and Western mythology. Even through language, we're constantly referring back to them...and just thinking about ideas like how even the things that are... like Capitalism's the new religion, that's the new model that everyone follows and it's how we live our lives and if you try and deny that then consider where you would be without any money because that's just the world that we live in; we're completely submissive to it but, at the same time, that model ...completely denies religion but at the same time it embodies certain aspects of it. Like, that you're being required to 'buy into' an idea or even the fact that different brands reference mythology directly through brand names like Nike or whatever... I think it's interesting because in a world where we've – in the development of signs – written religion out of the picture, for some reason mythology keeps creeping up and it's sort of an inherent desire to mythologise within the individual because ultimately as human beings you want to know that there's something more than what you see in front of you... (3.17)

IP It's kind of something I've been interested in recently because, like, reading about Theatre – planning these performances at Northern Stage and that whole 'Festival of Humanity' – and how... plays are all, or a lot of them, they not only use a language which existed before them but they also exist in a whole structure that has gone on since ancient Greece and has been endlessly translated and transmuted and different influences have been taken on board. And that every time it's a 'new wave' thing or it's a new breakout form of theatre, it's still defined by relationships to that... And the same with film... I think that's interesting, you know the way you end the text about the Profane Myth: stating that art has the potential to create a new language... and thinking about those movements that have happened in film and theatre... trying to extract or move away from all those relics and vestiges (like Godard did and Brecht) it's, I don't know, it's impossible...

DB ...it's impossible to create without referring back to those models?

IP Yeah, without it being embedded...

DB (4.51) I think that's one of the things that...yeah, I think it's impossible because the way you perceive the world or an art form is defined by how you've learnt about it... so obviously that's your primary grasp of understanding it and it's always going to sort of refer back to that... I think it's always impossible to break away from it completely... I think as well though, in general, we live less in a time when people are actually consciously trying to break away from certain structures. Like in the past with Christianity or whatever, as opposed to now, people are just indifferent to it...

...I think it's definitely a worth while question to ask; what is the role of the artist and I think that it's important to challenge that position and for the artist to to try and break away from the traditional ways of seeing and to accept perhaps it is impossible to invent an entirely new way of seeing things. But that through the endeavour of trying, that's where you're going to try and take things into a new territory and that's really important (6.43)...

IP What made you decide you wanted to work with the Lit and Phil* and the Mining Institute?

DB I think first of all I had the idea for the exhibition before I decided I wanted to hold it in those two places so I wouldn't say they completely defined the exhibition in any way, but at the same time there is a relationship there with the Lit and Phil, but also with the Mining Institute as well. I think there's a history of quite rigid academic framework that exists with those institutions which is quite interesting to challenge. I think if you're artists like, say for instance, Steven Claydon's work, really looks at how we've sort of shaped our vision of the world through a very linear process of documenting history and then learning about it. And I think it's interesting to present works that challenge that idea itself within institutions that embody that idea. It's not by any means a critique of them at all but, I guess, in that sense it sort of adds more weight to the argument because in a white cube you would just be looking at it as if it was a metaphor or something. Within that actual space it becomes more of an attempt to delve into the roots of what the institution means and what their motivations have been. And I've tried to push into that idea a bit more with Steven Claydon's work; it being presented in the lecture theatre at the mining institute which is modelled on an early 1900's Royal Society Lecture theatre, so you've got all of those associations – like learning being for the academia or at a certain level, being for the elite and that in turn maybe shaping what people have prioritised in the past, which is pretty much what Claydon's work is about; (9.57) trying to create a wider picture of it...

IP Maybe we could talk a little bit about the other artists involved?

DB Ok, well, we'll maybe start with Alasdair Gray, I think that my interest in showing his work in particular came from, I'm showing the prints he's worked on to go with the book Lanark because his position as an artist is quite interesting because obviously he's a very well known writer but also an artist and in particular looks at that relationship between imagery and text and how it can be used to sort of push that much further and to communicate his perspective of things much more clearly to the reader, like through his illuminated texts. But in particular, within that idea, to communicate his interests in showing the prints from Lanark, partly in reference to some of his ideas that are within the book when he kind of discusses notions of the position of the artist within society and sort of talks about the importance of that role and presents a world where art isn't taken seriously and the result of that being a very dank and dour city where people can't experience the place that they're living in at all because they can't live in it imaginatively and how, maybe by putting forward that idea, sort of challenging that idea of 'how would it be possible to have a society where the artist held a more recognised position'? where they were somebody that were actually giving value to a specific place. I think people don't really consider that because art is, well, it's a commodity in a way, but that side of it where it's sort of a set of values and shaping perspectives of a place and that's a very real thing even if it's unquantifiable (13.31) it doesn't mean that it's not important. I guess that's also the ultimate conundrum too because we live in a sort of capitalist society it's always going to be the main drive so people don't want to think about things that can't be commodified and exchanged in a real way, in monetary terms. And that's probably got a lot to do with why people sort of write out spirituality at the same time because it doesn't really fit in with how people think and what they prioritise in life... So I guess Alasdair Gray's work is a kind of critique of a society without artists whereas Bradley Pitt's work THE ELLIPSOIDAL INTROSPECTIVE OPTIC (EIO) mirror, that's more towards the east and eastern philosophy in a way, but it's also talking about modern science and kind of one of the ideas behind the work is that relationship between art and science and the set of values which they use to judge whether some thing’s been successful or not but the possibility within science to create this spiritual experience. But at the same time, the idea of looking infinitely from one eye into the other eye is referencing that idea of the Ko-an where you sort of have to acknowledge the nothingness, the void or whatever, you have to continuously look inwards. I think it's kind of an amusing piece of work as well because it's been built up using CAT scans from his body itself, so there's that question present of whether that art work, as an embodiment of his practice, is purely self directed in that way... it would work to an extent for other people but it's kind of, that question's always going to be in your mind when you're looking at it; if he sees the same thing or if he sees something different. So it's pretty subjective...

2011-09-13T13:40:00.000+02:00

Hello gentle reader,

In some more 'NEWS', I just completed the writing commission for Creative Partnerships and Nine Dots Centre for Creativity and Learning. You can see the pieces in their new website:

http://www.ninedots.org.uk/search?search_term=iris+priest

Or the specific projects:

amu (case study) http://www.ninedots.org.uk/projects/amu

Creating Connections (case study) http://www.ninedots.org.uk/projects/creating-connections

Hide/Reveal (case study, story and interview piece) http://www.ninedots.org.uk/projects/hide-reveal

Shared Words (case study and story) http://www.ninedots.org.uk/projects/shared-words

tsu (short review) http://www.ninedots.org.uk/projects/tsu

xxx

Oh, also the northern stage show is finally on their website: http://www.northernstage.co.uk/whats-on/tree-lined-dead-ends

2011-09-10T16:04:00.000+02:00

Tree Lined Dead Ends @ Northern Stage

Friday 9th September - Tuesday 1st November

“I wanted to see you, to see if I'd want to see you.”

In the theatre, the distinction between art and life might traditionally be marked by the threshold between stage and stalls, between actors and audience. Actors perform, audience observe. When a player steps onto the stage their movements, words, gestures and relationships are governed and predetermined by the external forces of script, stage direction, by plots and sub plots. As the audience we watch, observe, absorb, analyse, quietly critique but don't intervene. This isn't life we're watching but art. Even in our daily lives we are all - actors and audience alike – spectators. But we are doubly so; spectators aware of other spectators, of our being observed. We behave in ways according to that awareness that we are watched - consciously or not - we perform roles according to context and to our audience (public, private, professional or intimate).

“I wanted to see you, to see if I'd want to see you.” is a series of performances which will be taking place in the public areas of Northern Stage until the end of September. “I wanted to see you, to see if I'd want to see you.” explodes the idea of the performative nature of our everyday lives by testing this mutable and unstable boundary between art and life, questioning when one gesture is 'performed' and another 'lived'. Without being announced or publicised, real people and real situations will inform the matrix of this ongoing project. Many of the performances reference words, lines, conversations, gestures and directions from popular movies, interrogating the ways in which our means for self expression are not our own but informed, affected or re appropriated from the paradigms of visual culture.

Etiquette

2011-08-31T18:43:00.000+02:00

This is the article I wrote for the next edition of CANNED (well, I started 2 others but this is the one I followed through)...

et·i·quette

noun

conventional requirements as to social behaviour; properties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion.
A prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of ceremony, as at a court or in official or other formal observances.
The code of ethical behaviour regarding professional practice or action among the members of a profession in their dealings with each other e.g. medical etiquette.

It's unspoken, difficult to communicate and seemingly mutable depending on the particular event or social situation you find yourself in, but etiquette has a subtle and pervasive influence on all our words and actions spoken or conducted in public. It performs the essential role of reigning in our uncivilized or inappropriate tendencies so that we can be accepted as part of a club or network whilst simultaneously protecting and perpetuating the status quo. The problem is, at the risk of sounding cynical, etiquette in Art can seriously dampen the potential for critical dialogue...

A while ago I was at an artist's performance in Newcastle. The nature of the work required that the audience enter a small, enclosed space to interact with the performance, either in small groups or one-on-one. Afterwards there was scheduled a discussion and feedback session. As I readied myself for a penetrating critique (the kind I remember from Art School), dredging up references to art history, questions about intimacy, spectacle and form, the conversation began around me in delicate and hushed tones... But - rather than the interrogating analysis I had been anticipating - only generous congratulations and expressions of awe were bequeathed to the (now somewhat abashed) artist. As the compliments and adulation escalated I quickly made my excuses, muttered something about how I'd email, and hastily departed the scene.

Thinking of that now, through the perspective of time, I still get a hot flush of embarrassment. Why didn't I ask those pertinent questions? Why did I surrender to the general,magnanimous and warm-hearted consensus? And what, I found myself asking, is so fragile about the arts community that we can't afford to potentially offend anyone with the truth of our opinions?

Perhaps it is 'community' that is precisely the issue here; is being part of a relatively small, regional art world makes us inclined to be supportive rather than challenging? Perhaps it would be easier to be honest (and critical) with the greater anonymity afforded by a big city or the distance of the blogosphere?

And anway, why can't we benefit from being simply benign and encouraging? If everything's essentially OK we might as well just continue to operate comfortably in this mediocre state, right? I mean, Meret Oppenheim would have continued to have a stellar career without that formidable conversation with her friends Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar that inspired her Object (fur covered tea cup, saucer and spoon). And Jack Vettriano continues to do wonders for painting, without any formal schooling or intervention from art critics...

Criticism is not the same thing as cruelty. Even value judgements of a person's art work are not the same thing as a comment on them as individuals. I'm not advocating being rude or needlessly cutting (apart from, perhaps, about Jack Vettriano), but what I am calling for is open, honest and stimulating dialogue. How else are we going to advance if we're not challenged? By letting things go uncontested and unquestioned we're only allowing the problems, beliefs and systems which already exist to become more deeply entrenched, further confirmed and consolidated. By bowing to compliments rather than constructive critique we're depriving our friends, colleagues and peers of the benefit of our perspectives, learning and opinions. We're depriving critical dialogue of its impetus, its momentum and of the potential for development and evolution.

Toughen up artists! It's a cruel world out there! Next exhibition opening or performance, lets not kowtow to friendly but impotent etiquette but encourage and participate in engaging, constructive criticism.

Oh, the Humanity

2011-08-29T23:28:00.001+02:00

See, the latest edition, a beautiful Roe deer skull....

I'm going to be working on this for the next couple of weeks along with a performance piece at Northern Stage (part of a group show to accompany their upcoming mini Festival of Humanity and production Oh, The Humanity and other good intentions)... More details to come....

Plus I've 4 articles to write this week and it's the deadline for submissions for the second edition of CANNED on Thursday...

Busy Busy....

Studio Visit: Nick Kennedy

2011-08-25T03:00:00.000+02:00

New blog post for Chance Finds Us, studio visit with the Newcastle based artist Nick Kennedy. Click here...

CENTREFOLD OPPORTUNITY

2011-08-19T18:02:00.000+02:00

CENTREFOLD OPPORTUNITY

CANNED, the exciting and original new magazine of art and contemporary culture is inviting submissions of art for the centre fold of its second edition.

We welcome submissions from artists, photographers and designers of all backgrounds and from any stage of their careers. What we're interested in seeing are works which are unique, arresting or forward-thinking.

The selected work will take prime place at the centre of the magazine and is a great opportunity for exposure as the selected piece will be published in 500 paper copies of the magazine (distributed nationally and internationally) and on the CANNED website.

The magazine is black and white with one spot colour and the centre page is 297mm (high) by 416mm (wide). So please consider the appropriateness of submissions i.e. landscape, high resolution (360 dpi or higher), good contrast.

SUBMISSIONS

All submissions should be emailed to info@cannedmag.net no later than midday on Friday the Second of September with the following:

• Submission

• Details about the piece (Dimensions, media, date, credits)

• Any links to websites and artist contact details

CRITERIA

1. Attach your work as either a JPEG, TIFF, GIF or PNG file. We will not accept PDF files or images copied into an email.

2. Subject line should read with your first and last name: "First name Last name Centrefold Submission" (for example: Jockum Nordstrum Centrefold Submission).

3. Any links to websites or portfolios.

For all further enquires or for more information please e-mail: info@cannedmag.net

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Useful (Business) links...

2011-08-17T11:14:00.000+02:00

http://www.freelance-writers.co.uk/

http://www.freelancewritersdatabase.co,uk/

http://www.freelanceuk.com/find-a-freelancer/

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) provides free business

workshops on topics including 'Newly self-employed' and

'Becoming an employer'. Go to www.hmrc.gov.uk/bst/adviceteam-

events/work1.htm for details.

The Artists' Collecting Society (ACS) collects artists' resale rights

payments and distributes them to artists.

Tel: 0845 112 2400

Website: www.artistscollectingsociety.org.uk

The Designers and Artists Copyright Service (DACS) handles licensing

and resale rights payments for artists.

Tel: (020) 7336 8811

Website: www.dacs.org.uk

The Federation of British Artists is an umbrella organisation for nine

leading art societies, including the Royal Society of British Artists.

Tel: (020) 7930 6844

Website: www.mallgalleries.org.uk

The Royal Society of British Artists promotes high standards in various

forms of visual art.

Website: www.royalsocietyofbritishartists.org.uk

www.publicartonline.org.uk

www.writersandartist.co.uk

Yell.com

Arts & Business (www.artsandbusiness.org.uk) is an online

resource for businesses involved in the art industry. It provides

news and advice and conducts sector research.

'Art Business Today' magazine (www.fineart.co.uk/Public/

Art_Business_Today/Art_Business_Today_public.aspx) is

published by the Fine Art Trade Guild for art business professionals

and covers news, research and advice.

'Art Monthly' magazine (www.artmonthly.co.uk) includes news

and features on the UK's contemporary visual art scene, as well

as event listings and reviews.

'Creative Review' (www.creativereview.co.uk) is a monthly

magazine for any professional working in the visual arts industry.

It features articles and showcases a range of artwork.

The Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) publishes a newsletter

for its members twice a year, with news and features relating to

the art industry. Go to www.royalsocietyofbritishartists.org.uk/

rba-newsletters.asp for details.

Writing

'The Freelance Writer's Handbook: How to make money and enjoy

your life', by Andrew Crofts, is a practical guide containing tips

on how to get commissioned, find new markets and deal with

agents.

Freelance Advisor is an online forum for freelancers, which

provides information on networking events including those relevant

for journalists and freelance writers. Go to www.freelance

advisor.co.uk/category/events for information.

www.digitaljournal.com

From @Cobweb information:

Contracts with clients

A freelance writer will often work without a formal written contract,

with the terms of a particular job being agreed verbally on the

telephone or in an e-mail. However, in some circumstances, for

example if the freelance writer is writing a book, a contract will be

provided, outlining the terms of the agreement and stating the rights

that the agreement includes.

The contract will usually include:

• A warranty from the author that the work is their own and does

not contain anything libellous.

• A statement that the writer is offering publishing rights to the

publisher.

• Details of the publisher's commitment to publication and payment.

• Details of which subsidiary rights, for example translation rights

and movie rights for a book, are included in the agreement. The

writer should aim to retain as many rights as possible as this can

be an area where large profits are made.

• Copyright ownership and issues.

• Penalties for late submissions, unsatisfactory work or

cancellations.

Trade associations such as the Writers' Guild can offer specific

guidance on individual contracts.

www.londonfreelance.org/feesguide

www.guru.com/pro

Useful contacts

The Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) is the professional

association for the industry and offers training, industry accreditation

and a regular newsletter.

Tel: (020) 8785 5617

Website: www.sfep.org.uk

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) provides representation,

training and legal advice for those in the industry.

Tel: (020) 7278 7916

Website: www.nuj.org.uk

The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) is the trade

body that oversees training in associated professions.

Tel: (01799) 544014

Website: www.nctj.com

The Publishing Training Centre at Book House provides details of a

variety of learning options and course details for book and journal

publishers and associated professions.

Tel: (020) 8874 2718

Website: www.train4publishing.co.uk

Freelance Copywriters UK circulates writing opportunities to its

members.

Tel: (020) 7993 6741

Website: www.freelance-copy.co.uk

The Professional Contractors Group (PCG) represents freelance

editorial workers in the UK.

Tel: (020) 8897 9970

Website: www.pcg.org.uk

Useful sector websites and portals

The Electric Editors website runs a discussion group for editorial

workers and also links to resources such as dictionaries,

encyclopaedias and style guides.

Website: www.electriceditors.net

Freelance UK, owned by Contractor Ltd, provides web access to

information about working as a freelancer for those working in design,

marketing, photography and journalism. Services include specialist's

forums and a directory of freelancers.

Website: www.freelanceuk.com

Freelance Alliance, part of Freelance UK, is an online network for

media and creative freelancers based in the UK. Companies, agencies

and other freelancers can search for freelance workers and post jobs

on the freelance notice board.

Website: www.freelanceuk.com/find-a-freelancer/what-is-fa.phtml

Write Better English is a website aimed at novices and professionals

who want to improve their written English. It offers free tips, free and

discounted e-books, reviews and access to blogs and forums where

members can post questions and answers on grammar and style

issues.

Website: www.write-better-english.com

2011-08-15T12:19:00.000+02:00

...it's a well trodden adage that it sometimes takes distance to attain a new perspective on things... While geographically County Clare in Ireland isn't a great distance from Newcastle (with similar landscapes gouged by shared glacial and political histories) it was far enough from the familiar and everyday to offer a new vantage point on my life at home...

 I wondered why I do the things I do... Why do I write? Why do I make art? Why do I live in Newcastle? Why don't I do something different? Why don't I live somewhere else? What's stopping me from doing something else in another place? What's really important anyway?   ...I haven't thought of the answers yet. But I've thought of some things I'd like to make: council estate lilliput (i.e. Lilliput lane houses but in red brick, some with litter in the garden, others with burnt out cars parked infront of the paved drive)...  I'm also going to be part of a show at Northern Stage beginning on the 1st(ish) of September... I'm making new work which will be sympathetic both to the themes and space we have to operate within... But don't want to give anything away just yet...  There's also going to be a show of my print In That Beyond on Friday the 9th of September at Lime Street Gallery in Ouseburn (details tbc)...

And we've set up a new blog for CANNED Magazine, details of that and new posts to follow soon...

 Lastly I have a small commission to do (painterly!), a few more pieces of writing (for Nine Dots Centre for Creativity and Learning, and for Chance Finds Us) along with the wee CANNED business to attend to (call outs to write and publicise, minutes and agendas to type up, emails to send/reply to, press release and launch part to organise, submissions to read through, etc)...   I just did that annoying thing didn't I?... Oh well, at least I know where I'm up to now....  Xx

Ireland

2011-08-13T23:39:00.000+02:00

Today

Inniu

Loves

ancIent

balMy

accEnt,

an alabaSter

Token

ruiNed and

Endless nothings

"...Who put that bloody stone circle there?!"

2011-08-11T00:45:00.000+02:00

I am reminded of the quote from Withnail and I

"We've gone on holiday by mistake!"

Not that I have, by any measure, wound up incomprehensibly stranded in the wilds, or regretting washing up on the tide of a fallout generation... though we leave burning cities behind us...

It can just be difficult to feel completely at ease being away and knowing how much work I have to do, and emails to reply to (well, thoughtfully, articulately, but while I'm here, having a nice time)... between states... not entirely in either...

White Noise and the Sound of the Universe

Outside the lightning surges, all the lights in the house dip, for a moment we are in darkness, just a single candle and the sound of the rain on the windows - the consistency and regularity of the static on an untuned tv - trace the shape of the room. The lights return, thunder spreads across the sky above us, rumbling for what feels like an extravagantly long time (is this the thunder of some ITV melodrama, misdirected to hang over County Clare?). Warm faces turn back to the cake crumbs and conversation...

"...I had this wobbly moment, when the scales on my eyes seemed to fall
away... and I realised that nothing was as it seemed..."

Sat in an antiseptic airport departure lounge, gazing at the unlikely business coupling of a man who looked like a twenty-something-year-old-boy-racer and a middle aged lady with cropped hair, gold rimmed 'librarian' glasses and round, mottled arms, I listened to the insubstantiality of reality as recently discovered... Empirically found, with hands in the ground and thoughts of the colour green, and how, in parts of Africa, there is no word for blue (as seperate from green), sometimes refferred to as 'grue' in English... That in some peoples eyes there is no distinction, whilst some animals, birds and insects can see ultra violet light... And, subsuquently, thoughts questionning how much of what we percieve as reality is in fact a consequence of/conditioned by our culture, context and biological programming...

Drochshaol

1171 Henry the first and the Normans invaded Ireland and set the light of feudalism.

I have a confession to make... When I heard there would be Woofers staying in our friends converted farm house whilst we were here I imagined some large, shaggy, great dane sort of creatures... that they came from 3 different continents perplexed me momentarily... until it dawned on me that they were almost definately humans... It's a very interesting concept though and one I'm going to look more into (though I'd probably make a pretty poor woofer as even Basil withers under my grue fingers)...

I watched a harvester, drawn by two huge, beautiful, shining-black mares, reap the Spelt and Rye crops... The double, slicing blades, slashing with mechanical rythm through the air, ankle height...the sheaves of grain stalks hurled out of the cage and onto the ground, gathered together and stacked in shocks by the onlookers... a child growling like a dog, another plucking the green weeds out of the base of the shocks... all of this victorian, Amish-esque scene filmed on an iphone...

In Ireland artists, writers and composers are tax exempt until their first €40,000 per annum of profits or gains...

hmm....

We are buried somewhere, in a sort of verdant heartland... I could point it out on a map but that doesn't really show it for where it is... somewhere other... people talk at ease, are comfortable in their own

2011-08-07T23:59:00.000+02:00

"I thought about what I could not imagine..."

2011-08-07T15:37:00.000+02:00

Interview with Alec Finlay (Extract)
Shared Words/ Poetry in Schools
Tuesday 2nd August 2011

AF: So how'd you like to start?

IP: erm well I have some questions but on the other hand it's sort of just about getting...I mean my role is sort of do a write up on the one hand about the Shared Words Project but sort of picking out the interesting things about that so I think that, as you rightly said, about your work in schools generally/ working in different forms of poetry and maybe just to find out a bit about the background of where that started and how that's evolved... and go from there?

AF: It started at Baltic by accident really. I had a very good relationship with the education department there. They were really the main people I worked with - more than the curators. I suppose because they liked what I did and they would bring school groups in and I started by default to do workshops with them because they were in my space and then out of that I got asked to do my first projects and the people I learnt from and that I first worked with were Darren, Lorna and Catherine and Grainne. We've all gone onto different things. In some ways you could say that was their training too. I'm quite aware that CP was quite important regionally in the arts, not just schools work – I think that's something to note. There's very little opportunity for curators here. And they've gone onto the Glass Centre and the Olympics... They had a real vision about people they work with. They work with erm, I'm going to make one distinction that I don't mean to generalise and don't intend to be taken critically but it's important just to make it to start with. Which is there are schools artists and then artists who work in schools. And it seemed to me that they were very good at inviting visionary artists to do projects even though those artists had no background and weren't doing the expected things – storytelling - and I guess that's what I think CP was most important for. And you know, in summary, it was essentially (again this is just to generalise) my training as an artist. I always think, it is essentially about creative problem solving and I like to think that you can take me almost anywhere and if the right questions are being asked, I'll suggest some answers, and I just treated schools like that. And I would treat anywhere like that.
And that goes against some of the conventions - that one should specialise and have training and I'm not meaning to ... it's not my place to evaluate, I never ever wanted to become a schools artist, I never thought like that. But I never wanted to become an anything artist. I'm an artist. I've talked too much I'll stop there and you can ask.

IP: OK. So, um, with the work that you started with the Baltic was that with the um, the 'questions' project?

AF: The basic summary of the way I work with kids in general is the same way I work with adults, which is I use simple forms, a form that anyone can understand: questions, mesostics became very important as a teaching tool ..that's a mesostic....Eyes ….as in a single kind of photograph...so I used those forms...A Renga which I used it in terms of Haiku, linked Haiku, make Renga which kids get. So I, at Baltic, I did all of those things – that's what I did with kids in my studio for twenty minutes and then that was the kind of thing I took when I was asked by Darren to work in Westlea Primary School. So I'd also worked with those forms with adults. But I use simple forms. It's a French Philosopher who said 'Simple forms, complex operations', I think meaning that with having something simple you can demonstrate the complexity of what's possible. Does that make sense?

IP: Yeah

AF: And it so happened that mesostics were very good for kids. It happened that they were particularly good with boys who had problems with language because they found it comforting to have – they call it the 'stem' word - so here it would be Academy [Alec indicates a postcard with the mysostics poem on based around the stem word Academy]. They treat it as a kind of puzzle. Whereas if you give them a blank sheet of paper they get very threatened, emotionally. Another phrase I sometimes use is 'Shared Consciousness', in other words, that if you had something simple, you and I could both meet around it, we could both understand it without necessarily you feeling that the form is something that only I understand. So we can, you can, I can meet with a seven-year-old/eight-year-old and that was a useful as a tool. So that's what I did really.

IP: What do you think the significant influences have been from that work with children on your own practice? If it's tangible?

AF: Income. The very, very good budgets which allowed me to exist. I mean literally kept me going for the first year after Baltic. They gave me a confidence in the forms themselves. I'd even go so far as to say I thought that...no...I became sure that those projects I'd run could be repeated in any school and I don't mean that I needed to be there because in a sense id learned about Mesostics from avant-garde poetry so I realised that it was possible for me to come up with something that ...I mean ...I don't ...again I risk saying it but it could have a national application and I'm not saying it has but every school uses Haiku and Acrosstics. Well Mestostics are a lot better than Acrosstics – creatively - and Renga is a lot more interesting that Haiku and they haven't been adopted but I have encouraged a lot of people to use them and so CP used to have a kind of mantra I think that was in a sense that “the project hasn't worked unless the skills are left behind with the teachers” and I think that, I'm not saying always, but my projects always have the potential for that to happen. I don't think that's been true of some of the events that were more based on an event, a performance – do you see what I mean – they had their value, you know they might have released emotion and confidence in the kids, might have encouraged some of the kids to think of a career in performing arts. I thought of what I was doing more being about the curriculum itself. We did poems on the whole curriculum in a few schools not...this was in Milton Keynes – so we're trying to actually say to the school, “Why do you study these things?”, “What are they for?”. So to give them a way of analysing their own activity. I'm modest about what we did but I can see its applicability and that's always interesting for an artist, when you move beyond your own expression. Does that make sense?

IP: Yeah it does.

AF: And I'd not necessarily anticipated that. I came into it as someone who wasn't sure what to do with kids. I had no background. And I've had a lot of support from the other people I've worked with in that the four of us were there. I'll tell you another story... We did a project in Durham/Sunderland where we did a word map – it's just that, a map with words – a map of the school. It was a Renga, so we worked with different classes to write verses that described where it was, the atmosphere of the place, their school itself, the community, the calendar, Christmas, different times of year, and I went back to one of the schools and we would always review the verses before because it's like being passed from class to class - this class had been involved and it had come back to them and we looked at the verses and there was this little boy and each verse he went, “Stephanie wrote that... Ryan wrote that...”, and he'd remembered over a month or maybe even two and that's quite something.

A lot of the work I was doing was trying to free the kids up from their own work and making it shared, which is very radical if you think of contemporary government policy where everything has to be individual so that it can be marked. And this kid wasn't going “That's my verse, he was going...” [Alec points his finger imitating the recognition] and that was very touching. That was in effect an emotion he was having about recognising the gifts of other people. He couldn't have done that as easily...no, that's not true, I was going say that he couldn't have done that as easily if they'd all just written a poem as such, do you know what I mean? It's not quite that but he couldn't have seen that if each of them belonged to their own framework... If they'd each written a poem alone it would have been that poem's better than this poem...

2011-08-07T01:18:00.000+02:00

Writing about writing

2011-08-05T11:56:00.001+02:00

I've never considered myself to be a writer exactly... but when you realise you've spent every day for the last five and a half months writing it becomes fairly irrefutable...

At the moment I'm still finishing off the work for Chance Finds Us (a write up of the studio visit with Nick Kennedy, going to see Anne Viebeke Mou and a final essay). I've also just finished a piece on Ben Jeans Houghton's series of Photographs BLACCLOUD (working title) for CIRCA which will be in a limited edition publication later this year. But mainly I've been working on a few pieces for Nine Dots Centre for Creativity and Learning/ Creative partnerships... As part of this I've been fortunate enought to interview a number of artists, CP agents and a few teachers about the different projects they worked on and more generally about creative approaches to learning in schools. These pieces will appear on the new Nine Dots website later this year as part of their portfolio of recent and significant earlier CP projects.

Writing is a strange activity, as it seems to go on in secret... there isn't much tangible evidence for the days and nights spent writing, thinking, reading, processing. There've been moments over the last few weeks where I've felt pretty disheartened by this - It takes me a long time to write a piece. This is mainly to do with my relationship to language as a vehicle for understanding... I think it's very important to use the best, most succinct language one can but also to use it intelligently... If I'm writing about an artist's practice, i need to understand their universe, their principals for working and the menaing beneath their language before adopting it myself. In our daily lives we use and appropriate so many borrowed signs and signifiers, from words to songs to clothing and images in order to present ourselves and project our self image. I'm just increasingly concerned with needing to use these various signs with understanding and awareness, not dumbly or because they look good. But this of course, takes time. And this is a time that isn't evidenced anywhere apart from the invisible connections forming on my brain... All I can hope is that some of it comes through the writing...

It's interesting too, learning a language of writing that isn't the words themselves but, rather like drawing or painting, about the process and the application. It's one thing to be good at writing (at presenting an articulate, well rounded piece of text) but I'm also coming to discover that this isn't the same thing as being a good writer. I think, before now, I may have been creating interesting and thoughtfull pieces of writing but my execution of them has not been exactly professional (meandering, inconsistent, time consuming)... so I'm also trying to figure that out... how to write well....

Perhaps this begins with just writing more, and not always being so precious/ needing to load it with meaning... So, like the daily sketches I used to do to train my hand and eye, now I'm starting daily writing, to train those strange, remote muscles...

So, until I go back to producing art my aims are:

To write every day (both for these commissions and just as practice)

To take one photo every day and post it here

To get a handle on this self-employed business....err.....

Tonight is my leaving party from work, last night I dreamt the place crumbled onto Pilgrim street, lumps of it crashing through the night, burning as they went.... Edwin made a giant cake so that we could evacuate the PopUp studios, people jumping out of windows and onto this giant victoria sponge...