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farnsworth2

  farnsworth2 
  Originally uploaded by aesop.

Farnsworth. My collapsible goat.

This is his song.

Christo/Holzer/Finlay/Space/Books

Writing at the library now. Yesterday's work at college had me in the UWE library, collecting materials on Christo and Jeanne Claude , Jenny Holzer and Tony Cragg. I've been writing about them for my visual database/cabinet. Writing about Chr & JC in particular was something of a revelation, because, as I wrote, i found myself dragged into the expression of how I interpret the work in ways I hadn't been prepared for...

I began to write about the spatial aspect of their work and the part it plays in landscapes which are, at the same time as being real landscapes, cultural landscapes. Then I wrote about how wrapping up a building or erecting a lot of giant umbrellas or putting a curtain across a canyon not only parcelled off a bit of the landscape- it turned it, temporarily, into a sign for itself (a notion I get from the wrapped items most of all. The curtain and the umbrellas work differently, and I haven't explored my thoughts about that). We still know it's the Reichstag under there, in all its lurking pungent aura of power and history, and we encounter this new, hulking silver shape with a sort of distressed reverence towards what it has become: a symbol for the Reichstag. I tried to make the point that it was, somehow, like walking into a book. This is something that perhaps the freestanding things do better, and Jenny Holzer's projected texts and site-specific installations, not to mention Ian Hamilton Finlay and Roni Horn do something similar on different scales and using different objects to do it with.

Walking across the road to a Christo sculpture, entering the valley of the umbrellas, looking across to an island whose shoreline has been wrapped, we enter spaces which have been mediated out of the norm. The things in them are mediated, contained, transformed. They present a symbol of themselves and they radiate this reflexivity to the context around them. To be in Berlin while the Reichstag is wrapped could be to enter a city that was reflecting on itself. The valley of umbrellas is a geological and cultural wedge into American and Japanese history. These sculptures are actions that prise open awareness of context by putting the context into a temporary structure, a game that can enclose the notions at play. Just like an artists' book does. It priveleges meaning within contexts it can establish. The book builds a geography from scratch, Christo and others work to transform existing real geographies into the same sort of temporary space, radiating autonomy and a suspension of mundane quotidian realities that would crush the sense of history, of reverie, of here-ness that such structures can produce and witness.

Earlier I mentioned Roni Horn. She's best known for her series of photographs, I think. Sometimes heavily footnoted, subtle relations creep between apparently unrelated things, or perhaps lots of pictures of apparently the same thing gradually become charged with separate meanings. Some of her new work involves pictures on individual stands- an idea I am keen to steal in order to distribute a book across a space. (My visual language is profoundly different to hers. It remains to be seen whether or not it would work). But I also thought about taking this idea into specific places, making a distributed book n a site specific way that could actuate a space into a narrative space. I thought of Christo's curtain too, and thought of a long book that would bisect a space in a manner like a Serra sculpture, but with a different sort of mass entirely.

The ground zero of my work undertaken in pursuit of my research is my existing body of work and knowledge.

My research, broadly speaking, involves artists’ books and my work has centred on books for almost ten years. Over that time I have lived with the many elements of usage and personal enquiry one develops as one uses a particular medium or form. My research is developing from a desire to become more conscious of what had up till then been concerns roughly experienced as problems which were overcome in particular projects or as opportunities to exploit the form that would give me cause for reflection. In short, I want to better understand the unique properties of Artists’ Books.

This description, then, of my “ground zero”, encompasses a range of practical skills in book production, desktop publishing, image manipulation, photography and narrative skills that were my tools as I continued to produce a series of artists’ books. As I have said, I had had a growing desire to examine more fully the nature of the form I had found myself using, and a desire to make available, somehow, the excitement I felt about what I suspected were the unusual if not unique qualities of artists’ books.

With these goals in mind I enrolled as a PhD/MPhil candidate, and since that point I have been trying various ways to express these goals through my evolution of a research project that could address feasible points of research in artists’ books and simultaneously fit in with the areas of interest native to me and to my work.

Essentially, what my work undertaken to date so far has consisted of has been a series of runs at developing a proposal for a research project. This has been augmented over time by further awareness of the existing writing on the topic of Artists’ Books. This has led to my reading and making notes on several of these and the construction of a reading list that will eventually see me having read the important texts of this specialised canon.  Of course, I am continuing to develop this reading list alongside a growing awareness of likely sources of information, with a concomitantly expanding potential bibliography, and, admittedly, a growing sense of urgency that I should manage somehow to encompass the existing literature in my field. Parallel to this, I have also tried to apply various theoretical planks to the notional research ideas that are evolving from the notes and queries arising from my readings.

Alongside my acquisition of new sources and familiarisation with my “local canon” as it were, I’ve also been attending a series of meetings where fellow artists are presenting their work.  One of the outcomes of this is that it has become necessary to refine and codify some of my thoughts regarding the nature of my artwork and the strategies I use to make it.  This has suggested various categories or keywords or strategies (they are, in this sense, interchangeable). For example, If I use concepts such as space, the dichotomy of interior and exterior, the idea of a narrative space, then these are the hooks on which I hang my conversation, my interaction, and, despite the mistakes, false dawns and rhetorical dead-ends I may be producing,  I am gaining a vocabulary by which to lay down a set of interests and strategies within my work. That such a vocabulary is influenced by my reading, and that my critical reflection on both my reading and my work steer together by a common piloting of enquiry, is no surprise.

The aims of my research will depend on what my research project is, finally.

My most recent (undiscussed) simplification of the process has led to the question “Are artists’ books enabling to the artists who make them?” My own case is that I think that they are.

However, I am choosing this question as a Trojan horse for several other concerns: from artistic intention to concerns of narrative and presence.  I hope that such a question would pull out strands of discussion about what Artists’ Books do for the artist who makes them. Such a question is relatively unexplored, with many sources being more to do with the positioning of the Artists’ Book as an artform in its various cultural milieux. I want instead, to know whether Artists’ Books can do anything special for the artists who use them. My hope is that I would be able to draw some conclusions about the possibilities inherent in the artists book as a vehicle for accomplishing feats of narrative, intention and space that are (arguably) uniquely or not-so-uniquely to do with artists’ books. By presenting research that outlines ways in which book forms are used by artists to produce particular effects, I would be outlining some of the Artists’ Book’s areas of usefulness, turning to a discussion of Artists’ Books that comes from the artists making them and their estimations of how successful their efforts have been. This is the other side of the historical panorama on which Artists’ Books appear, and I would like to make some document of what my contemporaries are using the form for, and why (and whether) they think it works for them. I don’t want to deny myself the pleasure of some abstruse processing of my thoughts on the medium through the lens of various theoretical regimens, and, in truth, I haven’t made up my mind about which particular signposts or critical tools will best serve my purposes. Accordingly my reading continues on a fairly wide basis in these matters. Given that I want to give myself as much studio time as possible, I am perhaps better advised to steer clear of anything too exotic.
My researches so far, have, as outlined above, been at the stage of trying to draw a focus on specific areas of enquiry, and on trying to draw up a vocabulary of personal and theoretical practice that will answer for the evolving notions of what it is that I’m doing.

Accordingly, I’ve been reading about Artists’ Books and trying to apply or find suitable lines of theory to run my suppositions through. Not always successfully. Books by well-known commentators such as Johanna Drucker, Stephen Bury, Cornelia Lauf and Clive Phillpot and Cathy Courtney have chimed against readings in Bachelar, Derrida, Heidegger, John R. Searle and others. As I’ve made notes on my readings, I’ve also been constructing applications of theory to the evolving notion of book art that’s still, however occluded it sometimes seems, at the core of my research. What this means in practice is that my notes are littered with rhetorical questions and parallels of imagery, metaphor and form that intrigue me. Of late, I’ve been looking more at books by other artists (so far I’ve visited Edinburgh City Art Library’s collection, and U.W.E’s collection) and other artworks to which I have some sort of relationship, trying to write honestly about what it is in them I feel I have some relationship to. Accordingly, this is a widely-spread net, which stretches from Isaac Julien to Joseph Cornell, to Helen Douglas and Nic Roeg, from J.S. Bach to Peter Greenaway. The point of this is to expose a vocabulary which I commonly use to describe my relationship to these artworks, in a process akin to that which surfaces when talking and thinking about my own. As I write just now, I’m still going over many of the other artists on this long-ish list, making notes preparatory to a review of what my major tropes seem to have been. Not to be too disingenuous about my awareness of these surfacing concepts, I have already identified several areas in my own practice that are consistently of interest to me. For example, the notion of “temporary structure” and the attendant qualities of games are something I see enacted in my work and in the work of others. Reconstruction, refiguring, interpretation is also a method I’ve frequently picked up. Notions to do with the immersion of books and a comparison to the immersion in other media- VR and panoramic techniques- and what these have to do with the senses and intention of artist and reader are still-forming areas that I want my work and writing to explore in the future.

My consciousness of and reflections on these notions and their evolving, shifting place in my work and thought is in itself a very affecting factor in how my work now proceeds. It will be remembered that it was my explicit wish that I should form a more conscious set of ideas, within the nimbus of which my practice would proceed. Indeed, I find myself in my current studio project, Whistling Copse, attending as much to studio journals and the mapping of potential context as I am to the making of images. (Perhaps, for the moment, more so. I am still coming to terms with returning to an academic environment.) In practical terms however, I’m being drawn towards a more radical experimentation with the book form, and a (fairly conservative) experimentation with narrative. I’m interested in challenging my existing, comfortable relations with “temporary structure” “reconstruction” and “immersion” and have been drawing up notes for bookworks which are not familiar book forms at all, and a matrix of research material on my subject (woodlands, poaching, murder, ballistics, evidence) that I can present as several ‘vectors” of narrative in a series of books.
I still have a great deal to do. As I write I feel that I am further away from developing a decision about the exact nature of my research than ever (though I’m told that I’m doing okay in this respect). What seems to have been happening over the last few months has been about drawing out reflective practice and coining a vocabulary from the material gained. This vocabulary has gone on to shape thought and practice, whilst I simultaneously garner together resources, both material and conceptual, that are currently the subject of my ongoing meditations and slow accretion of a workable problem, critical toolkit and methodology. These two more-or-less separate activities: of reflection and review, and, on the other hand a review of my field and the critical resources used to examine it, have been coming together for some time. At the moment I’m not sure that they- “my work” and “my field” will quite match up.

However, for the present, I can see that a further review of what has gone before is imminent, that an expression of my reflections and research to date is going to be useful, and that this should form the basis for a new formulation of my PhD proposal. I intend to continue with the exercises and reading I’m currently using and try to train them towards the goal of summing up my notions what my problem is and how I intend to solve it.

I have already characterised some rough ideas about how I am interested in how artists’ books enable artists, and that I am therefore interested in how artists work with them. This will certainly be addressed by some closely recorded work of my own, and by as much contact with other contemporary book artists as possible. I would love, for example, to write up the whole of a book’s production from first formal ideas to production. Interviewing and close contact would therefore be required. These practicalities await the formal construction of a research question before I commit more time and thought to them, however, and so my activities now are centred more on reading and reflecting on artists’ books and my practical and critical relationship to them.

Short Whistling Copse film

A short film about Whistling copse, produced with the scintillatingly great Slideroll

again?

Slideshows

I'm stilll working out the interface, so my editing is a bit scraggy, but I think this could evolve, for me, into something I could use to tell short narratives like la jetee. (apologies for lack of acute e)

testing slideshow...

Create a Free Flash Slideshow

Beuys at Tate

There's going to be a big Beuys show at the Tate Modern in May. This is good, because it means I can begin to construct some better ideas of what he means to me. is he a charlatan or actually a magician? Is it lazy to expect someone else to do all the transforming for you? I'm looking forward to it. Not least because I found him a tricky winkle to pick when writing a few lines for my visual database. (I've got to find a better name for it. Some sort of "cabinet"? http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/

Voodoo...and Farnsworth.

Send the day futzing with VoodooPad and putting together a visual database of artists books and writing notes for things ranging from Doug Aitken's "Electric Earth", to Tony Meeuwissen's "Key to the Kingdom" deck of transformation cards. Projected work over the next couple of days, apart from the library, includes putting together the first few sketches for the ale and porter show.

I just heard that I will be paid, albeit nominally, for the piece about Spike Island Printmakers. It's great just on principle to be paid for one's work, even if it's just a peppercorn. It's not merely a question of vanity, nor indeed of the money itself, though Lord knows I've got to keep my belly from rumblin'. More importantly is the way it helps me take myself seriously as an artist and writer, and helps me envisage things all the more professionally.

I've also uploaded Farnsworth to Flickr, preparatory to invoking the mighty engines of CaféPress to produce some Farnsworth-based daftness.

bachelard notes

p 155, the chapter on miniature:

"...the miniscule, a narrow gate, opens up an entire world. The details of a thing can be the sign of a new world which, like all  worlds, contains the attributes of greatness.

Miniature is one of the refuges of greatness."

p 161

"Why should a metaphysician not confront this [miniature] world? It would permit him to renew, at little cost, his experiences of "an opening onto the world," of "entrance into the world."...Such formulas as: being-in-the-world and world-being are too majestic for me and I do not suceed in exoeriencing them. In fact, I feel more at home in miniature worlds which are, for me, dominated worlds. And when I live them I feel waves emanating from my dreaming self. For me, the vastness of the world has becomme merely the jamming of these waves. To have experienced miniature sincerely detaches me from the surrounding world and helps me to resist dissolution of the surrounding atmosphere."

My thoughts on temporary structures, meaning, for me in this study, books, would tend towards enclosure, but also towards a miniaturisation of the life-support-systems of cultural operation (the systems pertinent to the ontology of making artworks, if you will). I relate strongly to Bachelard's words here, and his words later on the commerce between inner and outer that is a containment, a predicate, a problematic that encloses the miniature whenever it occurs- for it occurs as a virtual world within a real world. But that does not mean that the phenomenology of the miniature is altered. It still harbours imaginations like Bachelard's and the poet's (and the maker of books) in a nurturing, enabling structure.

I want to mention a thought that occurs to me now on Tarot. That the world of relations in the Tarot is a miniaturisation of the real world, a schematic of an individual's understanding of his surroundings, past present and future. But the Tarot paradoxically asserts that it has not only a miniature view, but a wider view than that afforded by reality. It purports to be a window onto a universe with further dimensions. So the Tarot asserts a triple identity:  as a miniature, as a comprehensive scheme of the real, and as an indicator of something beyond normal reality. My understanding would be that these identities are furnished by imagination rather than by some supernatural force (unless one allows that imagination itself is super-natural). I wonder if the Tarot's model of input and output, and its agglomeration of an identity by our questing interpretation of it, by our interaction with it, can tell us something about how we encounter artists' books. There are many differences to be sure, but I want to note this observation to myself.

p 184 "intimate immensity"

"Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world which is immense, Indeed, immensity is the movement of motionless man. It is one of the dynamic characteristics of quiet  daydreaming."

Isn't reading a way of producing this state of aloneness? Isn't the book's act of enclosure tantamount to the study of Saint Jerome: a paradoxical immensity and openness achieved by enclosure and miniaturisation. A comparison, also of the differences in presence of a panorama or virtual reality artwork and one which is actuated by a reader through a narrative immersion. Different immersions. One is foisted on the sensorium of the viewer, the other depends tenuously on the quiet daydreaming intention of the viewer and is all the more immense for it, since it enlists the imagination, the inner senses.