Thinking about four recent projects (Other Side, HAL2009, FAIR FM, and Splendid), I reflect back upon my past works and consider how they functioned, how they were purposeful for me, what they did for me and/or allowed me to do? Recently, in examining my artistic practice, how it functions and what it does, and more importantly why this is valuable, I have come to some conclusions on the my process of reflection and the value of reflexivity in artistic practice, which I will discuss here.
I have adopted a new framework, or a thought structure, for thinking reflexively about my artworks and looking at my overall artistic practice (and other’s artistic practices for that matter). Setting up a binary structure of opposition, I try to think about each artwork on a descriptive level and on an analytical level. This can be further reduced to what the work is being, thus framing the work within descriptive questions of how it is and what it is; and what the work is doing, thus considering, or analysing what the work does, how it does it, and why it does it. The distinction lies within the separation of what something, a form, an action, an object, or a subject does as opposed to what it is.
Scaling out to a macrocosmic level of my overall practice as an artist, I can then consider the gestalt of my art as a relationship amongst a series of individual, microcosmic artworks, how they are, how they be (holistically) in relation to what my practice does, or what each artwork might do in relation to how my practice is and exists. These comparisons can quickly become complex as multiple works, and even multiple practices enter into the equation. This structure becomes necessary as a means of contrasting my processes and methods as an artist, as my works develop intuitively and much so through a felt and visceral knowledge of the world. This thought structure’s oppostional form, provides me with a very simple way of approaching each work and outlining its conceptual foundations, thus allowing me to create connections between multiple artworks, and thus begin to visualise an overall aesthetic or dynamic to my practice as an artist.
As I read through past descriptions of my practice, or of singular works of art I have produced, I would generalise how each artwork explored concepts of boundaries, disruption, and separation. These are the conceptual characteristics of the works that I identified with. By describing the work I would arrive at an analysis of how these characteristic functioned within the work, but for some reason I would stop just shy of considering what the purpose of this function of the work was doing for me. I was describing the art and what it might do for others within various cultural contexts, but not what it was doing for me, in a personal context. This prevented me from experiencing my practice on a macro scale, and rather kept me focused on the internal mechanism of the art that I produced. Perhaps, as the artist, as my self making the artwork, as it is felt, and intuited, there was no need to see the work on this scale, no need to think about the work. From this understanding, the work was for me.
What has changed? Why do I now feel it is important to think about the work, as it is felt and experienced? Thinking vs. feeling?
I am at a point of change within my practice as an artist. I have developed a large enough body of work, with multiple bodies within that some contrast begins to emerge, and thus there are immediate aesthetic divergencies and congruencies. It is here that the descriptions of these differences begin to develop into more fully realised analyses. As I begin to analyse my past work in contrast to my recent work, I find the communicative importance, the agency, the power of the artworks, in their abilities to communicate and span the margins within my self and between others. It is here that my practice congeals.
REFRACTORY ANALYSIS
As I begin to look at the work from another angle, or refract upon my work, I begin to see what the work was doing for me (as opposed to how I was doing it, or what the work was being). As I step out away from the processes involved, I can catch a glimpse different effects the work may have produced. Moreover, I another step out I could see my relationship to the work, beyond my attachment to it through the processes of conception, development, and creation. What was I actually doing in the process of making the work? This is a separation of being and doing, this is part of praxis and reflexivity. Moving to a place where I can understand this is empowering, as it gives me a broader vision of the multiple plains that this work exists upon. Taking this step back to look at myself making the work, going through the various processes and actions of collecting, transforming, distributing, disruption, displacement, and facilitating allows me to start to understand and decide how this is important to my self, outside my identity as an artist, how this as an extension of my self can be influential and important in relation to others.
This was a complexity inherent in my practice, as my artistic activities were strongly reflexive in their content. My work on one level is about looking at oneself suspended through the media that we extend through. I increasingly became the subject of my own practice. I was researching myself in a way, ever work was very personal, yet starkly impersonal and detached. In these works, mainly video installations, I simultaneously objectified and subjectified my self via media channels. Works such as PiP (2005), Beware! (2006), It happened like that (2007) all represented this displacement of self, this video objectification/subjectification. It is here that could communicate my self to myself in a way that is very unique, I could channel in on my self.
Coming back to the idea of stepping outside of my practice and witnessing myself in action, making art, it is here that I actually come to know these parts of my self in a ‘knew’ way. This is through a creative act of reflecting upon myself, through a reflexivity of reflection. As described above, I found mass and new forms of media to be highly versatile and practical medium for these creative communicative acts. The screen, in particular, affords a dimensionality to this form of reflexivity that supports its dynamism, and the ‘degrees of separation’ that a reflexive process and practice espouse.
This is the nature of my self as artist and my practice as me simultaneous being and doing me. This is me becoming or creating (doing/making) myself through the process of being myself. This is a form of self-reliance, self-exploration, self-consciousness. For me, this self-becoming is done intuitively, and it is through the conscious act of thinking, reflexively, that this can then be communicated, a communicative act. Therefore by describing this to you, I’m at once being and doing, and thus I am conflated once again, ready for the emancipatory process of reflexivity via artistic process.
This is the concept of ‘Dasein’, the concept of ‘presence’ that Heidegger theorizes on our experience of one self in the world. I, my self, am quite interested in Dasein as impacted by my concept of ‘uniplicity’ (a singleness exhibited amongst multiple subjects), particularly as it is influenced by forms of media, especially new media. Expressed through many past works, I have employed various forms of new media, i.e digital video, physical computing, Internet, etc. into this process of reflexive introspection, as well as traditional media forms, such as radio and printed text. These are the tools (objects) and processes by which I can transform parts of my self into forms that function within the reflexive situation of my practice.
Thinking about how these works subjectified my self as at once the object and subject of my observation, it becomes apparent that the art that I was concerned with was in my relationship to these works. I was at once objectified and subjectified through the mediafication of my self within my practice as an artist. From this perspective, the works were activated in my presence, and in effect, types of models waiting to be put into use in my absence.
I believe that all that is art, at times, demonstrates these qualities or a relationship to these reflexive qualities. This is the surplus value of art as described by Diederichsen (2008), or the interstice value contemplated by Marx via Bourriaud (1998), it is valuable in infinite contexts beyond itself. These artworks that I describe are not solely one thing. They do not only represent some thing in the world, they are some thing in the world at once. Just as we are at once a subject and an object, being and doing (making) our selves as individuals. This is the parallel dimensions of self, the mulitplicity of self and identity. So it is not a question of what does it mean, or what is it, or what anything… it is a question of why is it where and when it is and how is it to me, you, or us?
