adminicle

Documentary and other strategies

Is Whistling Copse okay?
I've been working on it for some time now- over a year. This is very luxurious but seems right for this project. It's a very solemn subject, after all (the murder of a gamekeeper by a poacher), and deserves my composure and respect. It's also a deep project, with many possible avenues of research leading into it. Quite early on in the project's history I realized that I might be looking at more than one book, more than one voice, and hence more than one method of investigation. I still think this is the case, and making it so will allow me to look at some abstractions (strategies) I've been formulating about practice. In particular:

Narrative Dialectic

where the "voice" is both the instrument of the artist and, oppositionally,a set of rules (a personality) in its own right. See the homunculus create a synthesis. My framing & the narrative voice's own energy.

Formalist Logic/Temporary Structure

I create frames for investigation that produce richness through their limitations. Also give me freedom to make more... freely. Having arbitrated the boundaries of the work (that is, having created a Temporary Structure) I can allow myself the full-blown romantic/expressive/illustrative frenzy that will feed more and more detail into the work. This seems to be a blueprint for making Fine Art as a bifurcated activity... one part cultural operation: creating formal games, temporary structures...other part filling it up with stuff. And then the processes of reflection and editing. Result: no fear of beauty, no fear of craft, no fear of illustration: no anxiety to produce lasting or wholly-transparent cultural matrices to sit the art into (an impossible task, anyway). The full embrace of the temporary gives me back all of my tools.

And this is where Text versus Image sits, too. There's no necessary divide between the forms of making. No fear of it. All working with the same limits. The writing chosen and couched as a particular voice. The digital medium helps too: the reduction to the same medium. Also helping is my...

Documentary-head

I'm telling stories. They need voices: they could be visual (annette messager...) or otherwise. happens that the written word is acceptable currency for the expression of documentary investigation.

A worry. I don't know what my exact relationship is to documentary. There are problematics of truth-value (not to mention use-value in documentary versus propaganda) even in direct testimony, far more so in artworks. I'm mining the problematics, not making documentaries... although, sort-of... I am. An exercise that arbitrates the boundaries- the frictions between fictive and documentary voices would be interesting. I don't know what value it would be to me though. Isn't it something I'm already doing in every researched work I make?

Which brings me back to Whistling Copse, and the ways it's going to help me beat the boundaries of these strategies.

To return to the things about documentary, and the things it looks at and how... documentaries are primarily good or bad because of the quality of their twin methodologies: the methodology of research and the methodology of how the film is created. This is a model for the bifurcation that exists for me where I am making artworks and also researching topics. The fact that I am not making straightforward documentaries illustrates a different methodology for story-telling. In Tiercel, for example, I'm retelling a story -the battle of maldon- that's originally cast in an old european paternalistic mode- a fascist epic as Susan Sontag might have it. Essentially a story about death and the glory of obedience. But I'm reframing it as something else, or trying to. I'm trying to create a more complex sort of tragic narrative...

I have a chance to explore this more consciously with Copse. I can choose to subvert the expected story. I was able to subvert the form more than the story in Tiercel, and with Remembrancer, I reframed a history in an emotional register that settled on a complex landscape of imperial guilt and nostalgia. I'm not sure that I'm not sometimes guilty of celebrating these things in a sort of "hinged" nostalgia: ie one that isn't deconstructed but has a few more degrees of freedom.

When I ask "is Whistling Copse okay?" I'm really saying "is my practice okay?". Running through these things has helped me to see some of the limitations, some of the rusted machinery. I am, however, getting to grips with some of the issues I've found most appealing. The thought of myself, of my books as a sort of documentary investigation is especially helpful, and might help me develop a few new modes of practice.

Touching on which, I suppose one might be the ways in which i deploy evidence- my research. Typically i have used poetry to edit, condense and reframe the things I've researched. I'm not finished with that, and want to take it further in itself, become more conscious of it. But what I also want to do is to find other ways of presenting narrative, particularly text. By validating my practice to myself as documentary, i may find that I am able to include transcripts or prose, or perhaps spoken or recorded words. What of the integration with the image? I think in the model I am constructing the guide will be to serve the investigation in whatever sense it comes to be. What might the investigation be in Copse?

Poaching Class Hunting/Tracking/Stealth Guns Land Vegetation Blood Folk art Ceramics Food Night Murder Ownership Ballistics Trial/Law Proof/Knowledge Sport Clothing Pheasants Shotgun shells Mathematical distribution Photography Newspapers Reporting Police

The areas that seem most interesting from a historical culture point of view seem to me to be those of Class and Proof/Knowledge. The other things are a setting for these and if they struggle to illustrate my points perhaps that's alright. But what are my points? Am I dispassionately re recording what happened? No? What am I choosing to change, choosing to highlight. HOW AM I TELLING THE STORY? Up to now, I have been working on a poem that would sandwich images of poaching and hunting with the images of murder. This has some milage in it as far as illustrating some concerns about class goes, but less about the quality of judgement given to the story later. I had at one point thought of the project as two paired books (paired, not unlike rifles perhaps, or a brace of pheasant). One, Whistling Copse, and two, A Complete Science. I'm going to return to this model now, with a greater consciousness that I am using them in a deliberate and modular way to narrate a documentary.

I think, however, that I will also make a third piece, probably not in book form alone. I anticipate using video and voice recording. Armed with a good deal of research information I could make a video of myself as a sort of tourguide for the wood. Just clearly stating some impressions and recording my research: documentary as plain as I can make it. Then put it with the books...what will happen? Will it want to mutate. What else is there?

The other thing, and a thread I simply must chase up, is the existence of a BBC documentary that was made of the case in a series about an expert witness. I've not really had a chance to pursue this yet...

Aside from all this diverting thought, I really must get round to writing some of the stuff I'm meant to be doing.

Themes and Strategies in Practice

Documentary-head

Bigger!

Temporary Structures

Dialectic of character-formation: narrative strategy for authors

Trajectory/frame

Containment and its opposite

Site-specific research/research-specific site

Guerilla Bookbinding

Gave the "guerilla bookbinding" class today. My first all day class at Spike Island, and it went well. More soon.

I'm off to the small publisher's fair in Londres tomorrow. Hope it's fun.

research group weblog

I've just created aresearch group weblog on my own site, using typepress.

I'm still learning how to use the controls, and I'm having fun fiddling with the design. I must get hold of my fellow-researcher's contact details to invite them to contribute.

events

Illustrations to Bradford, went well. Piers & Fiona satisfied with results. Have sent new colour version of cover yesterday PM.

Heard from them this morning about my keys (Which I'd left in Bradford on A, foolishly. I should be made to live in a hut for not taking better care of my posessions.

At college today, later, then helping L move furniture. I should go in and do some litho work, probably will, but I need to check

Projector
Other materials (ie number of handouts, rulers, scalpels, bonefolders etc)

for the Spike course.

Also nerves frazzled from keys. Think I'll take the morning "off" and regain composure.

At library at 2 to help A Beeson and Sarah with "librarians books", so I'm getting in an hour's laziness now.

Guerilla Bookbinding

It looks like I'm going to be without a projector for my bookbinding class on Friday, which is a big pain the arse, though not a fatal one.

Some notes for talking follow.

The idea with these: to present a number of books for passing around. Some books illustrate some points, mostly this is a handling exercise, to show the simplicity of books and the effects they can quite easily produce. Some examples are well-finished, some push the book form a bit out of shape.

This is an introductory talk to help us to settle into the idea that we'll be talking about books all day: there is a richness to this that can carry us through...

Books

What is a book? Some conceptual notes.

Sequence
Container
Project
Presentation

This tells us, inevitably why binding is useful.

IE for Sequence
Container
Project
Presentation

Sequence

Bookforms not always sequential: often spatial. But they allude to sequential form and are readily accepted as such in a way a suite of prints, say, has to work harder to attain. Not all book artists would see this as desirable, and some want to push away from the boundaries of the book. Notwithstanding, their protest is predicated on the book form itself.

the idea of sequence leads to the idea of...

Container

A book is a container. Amongst other things it contains the narrative function and sets the boundaries of the narrative within its covers. It has a certain amount of play within these borders, but nonetheless is a container we can work with or out of. Its virtues as a container allow it to create a "microclimate" for creative activity. We can isolate a part of practice within the borders of a book in order that we may explore more easily.

the idea of container leads into the idea of...

Project

The book is a tremendous way of manipulating visual practice and research into projects. Because we can use the book as a container for sequence, for relating one idea to another and articulating one with another, we can pusue complex ideas in them. This isn't unique to books of course, but as a strategy for creating permissions for oneself to work, it's a good strategy. Books can also be private: what is within is not necessarily ostentatiously displayed.

Presentation

The way a book displays the ideas within has powerful potential to create narrative drama, coolness, atmosphere, certain effects of play.

This section would link quite well into my existing introductory notes about structures and planning of books.

I might like to say something as an afterword about what happens to the book after it's out of the hand of the artist: its durability, its life in the hand (its portability), its ability to support readings, its ability to present the artistic intention in an extended way.

The Ten Strategies

An ongoing list of projects, schemes and brainwaves that will characterise the time between now and the end of term...Probably more than ten, but the idea is to sound out the activities I'm engaged with... some complex, some simple. Probably, to limit to ten, and to better embrace the concept of strategies, I should distill and recombine these notions to approaches- so rather than saying "will read J.Searle Book" I'll eventually say "Read key texts"

Today, though, I'm firefighting: too many deadlines.

Things I'm going to do in the near future.

GO to fairs/ small publisher/LAB, any openings that i can get to
Films to watch?
Research at National Gallery: people and books in portraiture
reading I'll undertake? Includes Searle, Drucker
My list of artists: their enthusiasms and why they matter: this is going
Themes of practice: the way I'll be organising my slideshow taps into this
Running course at Spike: this should, I hope, elucidate certain tropes within bookbinding for me

sidenote: my bookbinding talk :
]
what being able to bind gives you: the ability to organise and compartmentalise

I'm going to chase up and try to read as many of the original theoretical texts on book art that I can find. (eg Carrion, etc)

I'm going to be writing a piece that will point a key text (searle) at an older artists book, and a more contemporary one, in order to show my conceptual tool
kit at work and in order to road-test some of my assumptions

More exploratory essays to condense and concatenate some areas which would otherwise be problematic to me: eg history of books and printing/ spatiality of books/ some assessment of the philosophical supermarket of conceptual tools that are available.

I'm going to continue to work on an artists book and reflect on progress. I think this constitutes 2 activities, namely:

An engagement with an actual project- the praxis of practice, so to speak. [Specifically, developing my work on Whistling Copse]. Photos, collating research. Writing-into research.
A self reflexive monitoring of this which is recorded in my journal, adminicle

Assembling a pictorial resource that will allow me to create lectures and talks on a number of topics associated with the book arts. I'll also be thinking of "modular" sets of ideas that I can use to create a number of different talks from, based on my areas of interest and expertise.

I'm going to be showing books , prints and drawings at several exhibitions (Bradford/LAB, small publisher's fair) : producing work and showing it. Also illustration work.

I'm going to be designing a floorplan for the library, thinking about visual communication: one thing that has occurred is the problem of differentiating rules for representation by simile and by symbol- the task of cartography to indicate yet simplify, and the task of design to unify, yet differentiate.

Series of notes pertaining to "personal buzzwords": phrases that capture some of my current concerns in artistic practice. I'm going to make a seperate "parking lot" post for this...

I'm going to be working at the library, helping develop an artists book with Anthony Beeson for Sarah's librarians books project, as well as developing a book for the project myself.

I'll be taking part in a binding workshop organised by Sarah.

I'll be becoming familiar with the litho workshop and hopefully starting work on an editioned book there in the next few weeks.

Tutorial With Iain and Sarah

We talked about the things which I had written about in the draft of my RDa. At the moment the proposal is a net too widely cast to be of much use except as a sort of prospectus for my interests. Not so bad as a breezy introduction to things, but not the guide to research- the series of useful guideposts that I could wish for. Sarah and Iain are of the same mind.

I'm okay about the tasks arising from it, though there are a couple of things that I'm rather nervous about, to the point of feeling almost upset about it at the moment... which isn't the most useful attitude. To be exact, I'm to produce a couple of pieces of work which establish a characteristic critical method for the project, and I have to introduce a couple of exemplars within the field of artists books to talk about. Only I know quite how little I feel I know about either artists books or the vast supermarket of critical tools available. This is a rather disheartening thing. (I wanted to write "realization", but it isn't: I've felt the lack of background for some time).

This is not to do myself in: I'm quite capable of fielding a couple of perfectly decent exemplars that will serve exactly the roles they are intended to serve. But I don't feel I have a command of the canon that they belong to. That has to change, and will. Likewise, I don't have a wide range of knowledge of critical tools for approaching visual culture, although I do have quite a good knowledge of a modest range of things. I'm not going to worry about that right now: the aim at present is to narrow down the critical approach to something that can be written about.

On the more positive side, I have good native critical awareness and originality. Sometimes this gets me into trouble, but I'm glad of it. Secondly, I can structure my writing quite well and I write with reasonable legibility, given some grounding in my subject. Actually writing cogently shouldn't be a problem, I think. The exegesis of my method will be a task I will warm to quite well: what concerns me just now is the strange fear I still have of this task before me. But let me look at it anew: all we are trying to do is to introduce a localised critical language: a set of smaller questions that we can tool around in.

Localise. Yes.

I wrote earlier about a part of my thinking on methodology whereby my framing of the subject and method would produce a series of "clients' that would generate a "brief" that would commission the work, and that the process of interpreting the results would be revealing, and would inform my conclusions. We spoke about this a little and discussed the possibility of including external influences and review in this process: I would have the commissioning process and the results interpreted by others as well as by myself. This isn't a specifically illustrative commission, it's a way of formalising the relationship of the artwork to the research.

Anyway, here are my notes from the meeting:

-2 sides of A4: take an exemplary text (John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality) and mine its main planks and critical method for my language. Use the critical method thus outlined to critique an older artists' book and a more contemporary one. The idea is to establish the critical method i will be using in my research.

Arguing with the text to illuminate the problematics that arise out of its application.

My characterisation of books as containers: temporary structures. (A dialectic of difference and similarity). Iain mentions Kearney on this point. Certainly I can see how the patterns of story and the errrr... transactions of narrative are poised between the universal and the particular. Solipsism and language. How culture overcomes aloneness...ramble ramble...

-Refine RDa: firstly excise the "junk dna". I'll be building up from a chosen critical language from now on. (Of course this will change a good deal)

-Client Model is good: some external review of "briefs" formed will be useful ini establishing critical method.

-Meetings with other candidates would be good: likely on a Tuesday. I am to look into the possibility of a group blog to share text and other input.

-Some advice on dealing with reading by condensing. I do need to keep my interests streamlined and a bit of ruthless reduction will help.

Staking the Claim

The danger factors uppermost in mind at the moment as regards my research are those of, on the one hand, the Reader's Digest History of the World syndrome, and the danger that I'll promise the earth and deliver a thin scraping of nothing much on the other. Both problems arise from my natural curiosity and equally natural lack of focus on individual issues.

There is a certain amount of artificiality involved in trying to focus down onto a few specific topics within a field, especially in a fine art milieu, where every possible locus of study is a kaleidoscope of subject and object, and where literally everything is a cultural artifact. Staking out the ground is going to be one of the most difficult things I do, it seems. The staking-a-claim metaphor seems oddly apt: I have some idea that the general region I want to excavate holds some promise, but the material matter of the work is still essentially subterranean.

The exercises I'm going through just now are intended as aids to giving shape to my own interests in artistic practice, and as such should allow me to examine the scope of exemplars I pull into my field. Although this will definitely produce an area of general interest too large for any one study to comprehend, it will hopefully pitch up enough for me to conduct a broad analysis of the common tropes I could use to delimit the terms of my interests and hence the terms of comparison my practical output could be measured against- in the sense of an explicit critical analysis.

My impression just now is that this is an area of knowledge-production that will be more useful in terms of problem-finding than solution-finding. The "solution" is artistic practice: a notoriously infinite progression of gestures whose lifeblood is the continuing search for solutions rather than the solution itself. There are areas of research in art colleges that deal with materials and media in more amenable and more technical ways. I seem to be working with:

a critical background

the history of a medium

the integration of both with artistic practice

the transferability of these structures to digital media.

Now, this is an enormous framework, but narrowing it down, though necessary, carries the largely aesthetic problem of long-title syndrome. I could quite feasibly end up with a title that set boundaries so prescriptive, so defined, that it would look absurd, and might reasonably be of almost no use to anyone. I'd rather not.

What's to be done?

What have I got? Well, I will have a vocabulary of exemplars for the tropes that interest me; those artists will belong to categorisable groups I can start to define and start to narrow things down there. This will also give me a timeframe.

I'll be choosing a few key critical texts that I will either pay tribute to or attempt to argue with. Although there are bound to be a few cases where footnotes will have a tendency to spread off into the ether, this choice of a limited canon (or organum?) will probably help me hedge my topics in a bit, too. There is a fear in me that, because I haven't read literally everything, this is at root arbitrary, literature search or no.

I'll be working with real artifacts. There will be books I make and other projects (films, digital projects) that will become my evidence. The conversation between the artworks themselves and the methodology I try to establish to "commission" them under will produce a dialectic I can study in and of itself. My suspicion is that the comparison of what actually gets produced with what I formulate as my methodology will constitute an important part of what I do: that my exposition of how I am interpreting the results will be as important, and as revealing as the other parts.

The other parts, while I'm thinking this way, would be:

The articulation of a field (the exemplars, the medium, the present critical situation)

The articulation of method/approach (the background to the critical situation, the identification of problems to be examined, the things I hope to find out and how)

The body of work, commissioned by the method

The description (ekphrasis) of the work. (I just mean the recording of the artwork. This would also be by exhibition or photography or print. I just mean the presence of the work's appearance, so that we can see in as objective a way as can be managed, what's being talked about.)

The interpretation of the work by way of the method: an analysis of the work with reference to artistic and critical exemplars identified earlier. An assessment of the work's success in achieving an example of work produced by the methods laid down, and value in the light of the critical framework given.

The articulation of the differences between the method and the interpreted results: the interesting ways in which the work refuses to conform to the critical framework (or attempts to frustrate it); the interpretation of the results in terms of significant divergence from the existing critical background.

The conclusions drawn from the results, and their significance to the field: what the work says is happening; what happened.

The more I write about this, the more I feel the need of a wider vocabulary of analysis. For example, the clarity of expression needed to separate the interpretation of a work of art by way of its success in fulfilling the brief of a particular methodology, and on the other hand, the articulation of the map of accumulated differences encountered in that interpretation is no simple matter, and in fact deserves tabulation in simplistic forms:

1: how the work fulfilled the brief 2: what the ways in which it failed are and what that seems to tell me about how making the work differs from the way i imagined it when I constructed the original methodology

Then, this is followed by:

3: What the difference between the methodology and the results of my interpretation of the artwork have to say to the field at large (remembering that I have defined the field with reference to its history, exemplars, literature and key critical texts.

Actually, this seems to make some sense, even if there probably are better ways to put it, and probably cleaner lines of organisation available. What symbols are the dials on the dashboard of this machine going to show, though? What and who are these exemplars, these key texts? How do I analyse the work? How do I construct commissions as experiments having decided who these "clients" are?

Nonetheless, this seems to be a set of tasks that call for some balance, but which are tasks, and can be performed to achieve the aim without recourse to magic.

Derrida Dead

There's a Simon Jeffes/Penguin Café tune called "Cage Dead" that plods along like Thomas Tallis and beats the muffled drum over the author of so many temporary structures. I'm thinking of it now after a friend sent me a link to the news item where I found out that Jacques Derrida had died.

I wonder if he's left a will, and finally, literally transformed his volition/will/intention into text?