Title: Half Lives

Date: January 2011

Materials: Wood, found objects, sand, stone, concrete, paper, other.

Dimensions: Variable Dimensions

Location: Gallery Central, Northbridge, Western Australia

Keywords: Scale model, Bermuda, bridge, dimensional, tunnel, portal, studio

Description:

Half Lives was a project that resulted in a series of models that were shown in the exhibition what is displace?. These included a scaled model of a traditional covered wooden bridge from my home, Maine, USA entitled There ain’t no water down under…; a 2:1 scale model of the art studio worked in during the course of my doctoral research; a model of a tunnel to Bermuda; and a replica of a TransPerth public bus stop.

Inspired by readings of Michel Foucault’s (1967/1984) concept of heterotopia, Jorge Luis Borges’ Of Exactitude in Science (1946/1975), Deleuze’s (1968/1994) idea of the rhizome, and Jean Baudrillard’s (1994) conception of hyperreality, these models served to create a literal perspective-shift on my practice, creating spaces through which I could encounter my habitus as an artist and social situation/position and disposition within a field of practice. In the making of these sculptural models and installations I was attempting to create a space or spaces in which I could define, experience, and create myself spatially, which is inevitably tied to cultural and social forms. As I discuss below, each artwork functions to create a space in which I can develop and experience a form of separation and distance from as well as a form of connection to the place(s) of my practice, i.e. my home in Maine, USA, my art studio in Perth, Australia, the site of the exhibition, etc.

Model: There ain’t no water down under

There ain’t no water down under, Gallery Central, 2011.

There ain’t no water down under is a scaled model of Babb’s Bridge (Windham, Maine, USA) the oldest remaining covered wooden bridge in the state of Maine, USA. The original bridge was “burned by vandals” in 1973 and has since been rebuilt to original specifications. This model is re-constructed using Jarrah boards from a demolished wooden fence found on the side of the road in Jolimont, Western Australia. Upon peering into the entrance/exit of this model bridge, the audience would notice sections of the bridge were burned out, however the bridge continues on, seemingly into an infinite void.

In this model, the form of a bridge is important. A bridge is a structure that I identify with as connecting two places, yet delineating the separation of these spaces. This bridge was constructed in scale, however with a dimensional perspective that creates an illusion of an infinite void.

However, this particular form of bridge as a covered bridge is a form that was particular to my home in New England, a place where covered bridges were common. I was drawn to creating this particular bridge as it represented as space in my history, of growing up near the site of a covered wooden bridge.

A covered bridge forms a tunnel. The tunnel is a motif throughout my practice, as seen in the work Too Bermuda and the older work Other Side. The tunnel represents a voided space between places through which travel becomes possible. This tunnel represents a space in which I can experience an outside position in my narrative. Through the manipulation of scale in this work I transformed my embodied experience of space and place, thus creating an environment for multiple experiences to take place. Inspired in part by a reading of Deleuze’s concept of the “rhizome” which can be described as a chaotic system that connects different points in space and time. As O’ Sullivan (2005) describes, a rhizome is a structure ”[…] without centre or indeed any central organising motif. It is flat system in which the individual nodal points can, and are, connected to one another in a non-hierarchical manner… [fostering] transversal connections and communications between heterogeneous locations and events” (p. 12).

I interpret both the work and myself together as rhizomes, as the “multiplicity” manifest when I experience this work; the artwork as representation of myself as a place that is connected yet divided (as Debord (1967/1983) and Baudrillard (1994) have also discussed). It was this identification that spurred the act of burning portions of the bridge. After the structure of the bridge was constructed, I intentionally burned targeted sections of the bridge. Taken literally, the adage “to burn your bridges” means to destroy one’s social ties. This destruction of social ties became a powerful metaphor for past experiences of social structure in the creation and partial destruction of this work, which I needed to explore as a means of identifying the relational nature of subjective encounters on an abstracted scale.

Another intention involved in the creation of this sculpture was the dualism of the form as both a tunnel and a bridge. As such, this form is a form that exists in two places at once, and it is in this realisation that the work became activated in a sense that it allowed me to think about my own space as two places at once, similar to the idea of a “rhizome” that Deleuze discusses (O’ Sullivan, 2006, p. 35). However, this realisation urges the reflexive interrogation of myself: where I am from and where I am going? In this way, the There ain’t no water down under also functioned as a portal, transporting me to spaces that represented points of reference as experiences tied to places in the past and present of my self-narrative; serving as a reference point of change and transition between states of being in the making my of self. These models were referencing points in my identification of place, allowing me to explore my “multiplicity” of being, allowing me to break with my structure yet create that structure in representational terms.

Model: Too Bermuda…

Another sculptural model in the Half Lives series was the work, Too Bermuda…, a model of a subterranean tunnel through the core of the Earth to the remote North Atlantic island of Bermuda. From Perth, Australia (one of the most isolated capital cities in the world) a hole dug straight down would reach Hamilton, Bermuda (another extremely isolated location), strangely enough making these two places antipodes. This model tunnel, which is constructed within a scale model of my art studio is based on a scale replica of the Kalgoorlie Superpit (the largest open pit mine in Australia) transposed into an area of the city known as the “Perth Cultural Centre”, the location of Gallery Central, the art gallery in which this work was shown. Here, the form of a tunnel was further explored and developed into a site for self-exploration. The black hole at the mouth of this tunnel represents a point of the unknown, another void through which space could be created in an attempt to disembed myself; as a point of entry into the transition between here and there in a process of exploration. This tunnel provoked an abstracted sense of place and space, allowing for me to explore these relationships purely from my experience and understanding of the environments that shape my identity.

Developed out of a different project, A Third Life, the installation Too Bermuda…began as a 1:1 scale model of my art studio at Edith Cowan University, in which I was constructing an artist studio as a means of both creating an experience of making art and observing it. Through this project I sought to develop a simultaneous first and third person perspective on my practice as an artist. By making my studio as a model, I was attempting to create a site of a reflexive break with my practice. In order to do so, I would have to create a space that displaced the space in which I was creating it, thus the 1:1 scale model developed. In order to reflex to my practice, the work needed to present my practice in this process. Just as writer Jorge Borges’ famous allegory of simulation, Of Exactitude in Science (1946/1975), describes the Empire’s cartographers creating a map so detailed, comprehensive, and exact that it subsumed its own territory, in this artwork I seek to substitute a representation for reality in an attempt to know myself as an artist on such a scale. In my own way, through the process of constructing my practice as replicated model I give form to a phenomenon that French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1994) defines as the “precession of simulacra” (p. 1). In this theory, Baudrillard (1994) claims that contemporary modern society has substituted reality with its own simulation and that any human experience within this perceptual construct is simulated. Thus, reality as we know it, according to Baudrillard (1994), becomes hyperbolic or “hyperreal”. In reference to Borges’ fable Baudrillard (1994) suggests,

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. (p.1)

Rather than creating a solely representational space, like a model in conventional terms, in my practice, through this work of art, I constructed a reflexive space in which I was making both the spaces that defined and identified myself as artist in such a way that I became abstracted to a degree of virtual dimensions. I interpret this to extend into, “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal” as Baudrillard suggests (p.1). By doing so I was both creating a space that was simultaneously representational and relational; a space was both here and there, that represented my internalisations and my external environment(s)- thus exposing a working model of my habitus as an artist. By being in control and out of control of being here and there, I am able to confuse the normative structural boundaries involved in creating art and being an artist, which are informing my habitus. In doing so, I create a temporary rupture in the structure and process of my identity formation. This is a representation of a simulation of representation, thus my own model of self-simulacra. As a process of inverted deconstruction of the structures that I create in which I am an artist, my practice as a process of simulacra that precedes my reality as an artist.

The artwork, at this point, created a break between reality and imagination by replacing itself, by simulating itself. However, the shift from the image of myself as an artist creating my situation as an artist is only observable in the differenciation that occurs between states of being. As an external structure that could then become internalised through representational means, in order
Figure 38. Artist, Nathan Stevens, constructing Other Side, 2008.

for the work to continue in this disrupted state of structural continuity, I created another space for the project to evolve. To further explore this break, I modeled the studio within virtual terms by creating a three-dimensional rendering of this project using the computer program Sketch Up. It was here in this alternative mapping, this third space of creation, that I was able to define my practice and create enough of a perspective shift that the artwork (as my practice) could reclaim the imaginary that Baudrillard (1994) suggests dissolves in the process of simulation.

In this instance, the work again functions as hyperreal, which I interpret as an associative break with the doxa of reality. In Simulacra and Simulation (1994), Baudrillard describes a society, more or less an ethos, in which reality is superceded by its symbolism. The result of this formation of society is the disappearance of abstraction and separation of the real and imaginary. For Baudrillard, the “imaginary of representation disappears” in the simulation of reality that occurs in today’s society (p. 1). He writes, “A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of differences” (p. 2). However, does this work challenge a concept of hyperreality by recreating it? By creating a hyperreality of my own practice as an artist I am able to change it by reinvesting the imaginary as a construct within a certain version, or structure of reality.

At a point during its construction the studio the model became reduced in scale by one half, in order to continue working on it in my studio, both conceptually and physically. It was this point in shifting between full-scale to half-scale that afforded a reflexive opportunity to experience my place of creativity in two ways. Using remnants of the sculptural installation Other Side, I boxed up the studio model, containing it, capturing it within its own parcel.

However, I believe reflexivity quickly relapses into recursion making it necessary to continuously develop and explore new (reflexive) possibilities. At this point, the form of a tunnel to Bermuda entered into the project. Since my arrival to Perth, I had desired to create a tunnel, one which connected me to the opposite side of the Earth; a tunnel that could connect me to the other side, where I had come from. As within the project Other Side, in which I had created a model in which holes were dug into a section of earth, the artwork Too Bermuda… was an extension of this process of digging, and searching, however, with much more calculation and coordination. The accidental spilling of the earth and its contents within Other Side, took on a planned and organised excavation in the site of Too Bermuda… .

Creating the tunnel in the work Too Bermuda… represented a means of locating myself and developed as a way of making a connection, a direct physical and forced connection between a place of my past, Maine and a place of my present, Perth. While Perth and Maine are not antipodes, they are worlds apart, and I imagined that as locations in my life they were at opposite points on the Earth. Interestingly enough, after some geographical research, a tunnel originating in Perth dug straight through the Earth would reach the remote island of Bermuda, making Hamilton, Bermuda and Perth, Australia antipodes. In fact, it was only by a variation of 8 km that these two, strangely remote places, were not exact antipodes.

At this point, the idea of antipodes became conceptually poignant in my work; two places that could exist as the same point in space at different points in time. This notion seemed compelling and for this reason I chose to develop the work Too Bermuda… into an actual model. By constructing a model of this tunnel
Figure 41. Detail of tunnel opening in Too Bermuda…, 2011.

that would lead to an antipode, I was leading the way towards an understanding of a connection that I would make with myself.

The practice of map making or model making becomes a reflexive act in which I try to bend back upon myself through the abstraction created in these dimensional correspondences, articulated through the model, Too Bermuda…. In this way a multi-dimensionality exists for me as the maker at the intersection of self, time and space. It is here at this juncture in an abstract system of relations that I am able to almost step outside of the construct of one dimensionality and into another, much in the same way that I might be able to step into the model and change my relationship to myself on a physical scale. Passing through the threshold of the model, I enter into a not only a space, but a system of relations both subjective and objective, and it is here that I can experience myself from another perspective, in both image-form and…in both actual and virtual terms, in both representational and relational.

Model: LOSE WAY NOW

LOSE WAY NOW installed on the corner of Aberdeen and Beaufort, Northbridge, Western Australia, 2011.

LOSE WAY NOW is another scale model exhibited as part of Half Lives. Constructed from found materials, such as wood and concrete, this 1:1 scale model is a replica of a Transperth bus stop. Representative of the type of movement encountered in a process of self-modeling, this work references the disappearing reference points that Giddens (1990), Beck (2002), Virilio (1991), and Baudrillard (1994) all describe as occurring within a concept of reflexive modernity and global society. As the bus stop signifies both a point of departure and arrival it became a fitting symbol of the reflexive processes involved in my practice.

By modeling these spaces I am able to expose or externalise a structure that serve as markers within my travels. As points within a system of public transit, these bus stops serve to provide a network of connections, yet dislocated connections, becoming rhizomatic. As a system of dislocated connections, this suggests a circuit of movement and represent an abstraction of a structure that can govern our collective movement as individuals.

Within all of these artworks in the Half Lives series, opened and closed forms are present. Like windows into the private, symbolic spaces of the places in which I develop my sense of self-identity, responding to the internalisations that take place. These models in themselves become windows and doors into my habitus.

These models became the means to experience aspects of my identity through objective means, including allowing me to open closed off spaces in different ways. They functioned as objectifications of the world around me, which in turn manifest as subjective, internalisations, allowing me a space to move through into a position in which I might see myself differently, from another place and perspective; a place where I can control my change through creative means.

Within a theory of a relational aesthetic, Half Lives didn’t so much function within the classical definition as a relational artwork, but operated within what I interpret as a ‘self-relational’ aesthetic, or in other words a ‘reflexive aesthetic’. As direct extensions of self-reflexive objects or situations, they created what I interpret as a democracy of perspective shifts through which I could observe my situation as a multiplicity. These works became shifting reference point within my practice, as both an enacted process of becoming an artist and an instance of observation. As both a thing and an action these works cut between the space that exists in being and doing, and therefore function within a concept of habitus. In this way, these works can be interpreted as self-portraits, not in the traditional sense in the way I see myself, but in an abstracted sense in the way see the habitus through which I become myself. In this way they are re-presentations or what I define as self-models. As a self-model this work operates similarly to the form of a mirror, as an expression of self-analysis in a romanticisation of the individual post-Enlightenment. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of a heterotopia as a place that exists between places, he likens the mirror as the liminal space between utopian and heterotopian sites. Here my focus is caught between sites and sights. As self-portraits, or self-models, these works do not function to solely represent an image of myself, but rather function to present images of myself, and in turn re-present myself in a recursive reflection, or a reflexion of images that I draw out from the subjective spaces and relational matrices of my practical experiences. From a psychoanalytical perspective these works can be interpreted, much in the same way a dream might be objectivised. In this way, these works function within a context of reflexivity, attempting the both break a separation and create a connection.

In ways these works imagine a break with myself, by modelling spaces that create an objective space to experience my artistic practice. In a way, my entire practice can be interpreted as a heterotopia within my identity, a location expressing reflexive perspectives on my practice of art. It is a place/non place of the environment(s) of my reflexive, fragmented self-identity as an artist, or another artist, i.e. Nath Allan, or a traveler, a research student, a husband, a son, a man, a person, etc. As a way of separating my sense of self from the place in which I develop this experience, these spaces served to allow me an opportunity to rethink myself, the reflex as an individual to the environments and circumstances within which I exist.

Within Giddens (1990, 1991) theoretical model of reflexivity terms, these works are interrogations of myself through location, and as I have discussed become reference points in space and time, within my self-narrative. As interrogations it is necessary they are formal and physical as a means of existing on a scale that is relational to my body. They are present as physical manifestations and interpretations of myself as both a body in space and time, yet also a subjective being. All focus on my relationship to a specific place or location, these artworks as self-models enable the necessary break with the world, both literally and figuratively, thus allowing for the apprehension of the habitual nature of my relationship to the environments or objects these models extract and abstract. Each model abstracts my relationship to the object or environment in a different means.

As a model, LOSE WAY NOW abstracts by replicating as a false image of an object that imagines a route of travel, thus extending this route into the unknown possibilities of the future. This artwork represents the ultimate reflexive model as this model as a replica can be reinserted into the world of social relations on a number of levels, within the field of artistic practice as an art object or within ‘real life’, as an actual, functioning bus stop.

Conversely, as models they also serve to reinforce my relationship to the places they model as representations. They locate me in space-time and serve as markers in the history of my self-identity.

It’s on now.  I’m three days into my debut solo exhibition (in actual terms).  Now I’m beginning to feel like an artist! The gallery is a comfortable space near down-town Perth, Western Australia, called Gallery Central. The show will be up for the next two weeks. Check it out at http://displace.me.

Here is the gist the exhibition:

“Transforming the gallery into his own deserted island, North American nomad Nathan Stevens leaves you stranded in this landscape of found and lost discoveries.  Influenced by ideas of cartography and communication breakdown, surveying and self-surveillance, this moving series of installations unpacks processes of personal displacement and dislocation through interactive broadcasts from a shipwrecked radio station; endless conversations with an auto-poetic artificial intelligence; a model for multi-dimensional travel to the Bermuda Triangle; and a body of unidentifiable glass objects.”

As you might notice, most of the work involves wood.  This is for a number of reasons, the most important being that the work is created from recycled/discarded shipping pallets (which are free ‘round these parts….). Another reason being that much of the work is ‘about’ travel, relocation, and placement. However, the most significant reason for the use of shipping pallets to create this body of work relates back to the first project I created (or better yet ‘craeted’) here in my journey ‘down under’, Other Side. In essence, these works are reconstructed from the ruins of that work.

Well, I’m currently somewhere in a place called the Third Space. To recap, Third Space is an international artist exchange-based collaborative initiative established between eight Australian artists and eight Chinese artists. We work in pairs towards creating a collaborative artwork that then exists within this third space, a space that exists at the margins of cultures when they (we) interact. The project impetus is drawn from cultural theorist Homi Bhabha’s notion that cultures share incommensurable differences, or share no commonality by which to measure, and therefore become hybridisations of the differences of identifying cultural traits. This of course creates tensions and incompatibility is eminent. We increasingly experience this in our daily lives, intensified especially in extremely urban and extremely rural settings. Even my self as a temporary American-Australian, experience this cultural difference, yet in a bizarre way, almost like living in a parallel dimension.

As Bhabha explains, “the incommesurable elements are the basis of cultural identities” [1]. Thus identity is informed by misunderstandings and miscommunications. When alien cultural and social systems make contact, identities are formed, yet not in a systematic way that can be attributed to solely either system. Identity becomes reactivated with every interaction, and eventually this hybridised marginal zone develops at the edges of each system, of each culture. This is a third space.

Coming back to the third space that we are presently floating through, above is an image, a snapshot of our exchange. Chinese artist Liu Qingqing and I have been exchanging virtually using video clips in order to create our own visual language system, in essence a third language consisting of time-based glyphs/pictographs, (maybe these can be called filmographs or videgraphs). Eventually we will produce our own ideo-cultural translations…

References:

[1] Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

After the past three months of critical introspection into my multi-dimensional artistic practice and reflexive self-analysis, the time has come to delve back into the “real world” and find myself making something again.  I’ve begun a new project after a brief hiatus from the more practical pursuits of being an artist. No better place to begin then in the third space! For sure.

The “Third Space” is an international collaborative art exchange developed through a unique creative partnership between the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (China) and Edith Cowan University (Australia).  The impetus for this project, according to Professor Clive Barstow (ECU), the chief coordinator, “[…] is based on what Homi Bhabha refers to as ‘the third space’ a notional space between cultures, and in our case a space in which we will engage through creative collaboration.

Bhabha describes this space as ‘incommensurable’, a space that creates tensions and incompatibility within cultural groups forced together through global migration:

” The non-synchronous temporality of global and national cultures opens up a cultural space — a third space—where the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences… Hybrid hyphenisations emphasize the incommensurable elements as the basis of cultural identities” 1 (Barstow, 2009).

Here, in the ‘third space’ there are some central themes that emerge ripe for artistic exploration.  Broadly, these include personal and cultural identity, communication, globalisation, and hybridisation.  Personally, I’m attracted to the concept of identity hybridity and how identities might develop collaboratively and communicatively within a ‘third space’.

Considering one’s identity outside of cultural boundaries, the ‘Third Space’ project focuses a concept asserted by Nikos Papastergiadis; “that what we are is where we are now, rather than where we were from” 2 suggesting that our cultural histories have little bearing on our current identity within a modern hybrid society.” (cited by Barstow, 2009).

This notion is of course contextual, in that our present context, being a matrix of our own trajectories (and histories), culminates in what we perceive as our current situation through which we create identification of self and other within various relational contexts, i.e. ontological, phenomenological, etc. In other words, our present context carries more weight in our understanding of who or what we are in comparison to the limiting perspective offered through the lens of all other past contexts. This train of thought seems to lead towards that old “the end of history” line. Are we continuously forgetting our past in exchange for a fresh mind for an open future, free from the restraints of historical ideology?

Before I forget what I was talking about…coming back to the project, the group consists of 16 artists, (eight Chinese artists and eight Australian artists). We are paired with a counterpart and given four months to collaborate on a work of art, exchanging the work either via snail mail or digitally via FTP. The work can be in any medium we choose to incorporate.

“This shared form of collaboration places certain demands on the artists, such as surrendering the individual right of ownership of the work along with many established methodologies of art production that are common to both western and Chinese cultures. A collaborative approach will promote the need for individuals to communicate across languages, and/or let the work communicate to prompt the partners response. Works should be exchanged a number of times to develop the notion of hybridity.” (Barstow, 2009).

Another interesting facet of the project is the final exhibition, which will be shown in Perth and Shanghai.  The exhibition will be visually communicated in its entirety. Designers from the School of Communications and Arts are given the task of designing the media for the exhibition and  “asked to explore non-textual and cross-cultural means of expressing time, place and direction.”

In the near future, we Australian artists will be off to Shanghai to kick off the project, beginning with a brief residency at USST where we will meet our partners and get a taste of Chinese contemporary art culture. This almost feels like cheating…..

Some pressing questions that I hope to work through:

Is there really a third space? Or, do we each develop our own third spaces?  If the third space is between culture, a space that has no common means of identification, and is incommesurable (having no common standard of comparability), is it possible to bridge this space? And if so what type of bridge can do it?

More to come… from a third space.

1 Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

2 Papastergiadis Nikos. 2003. Complex Entanglements Art, Globalisation and Cultural Difference: Rivers Oram London. Reviewed by Ian Maclean at http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-April-2004/maclean.html

Essentially, this is a defining article, a brief essay that sets out to reify some definition to my art, and its relationship to my self; and some definition of this self as espoused through the ensuing relationships.  This is essential in coming to any consequential understanding or meaningful perspective and experience of my existence as an artist, or at least current discourse on the topic might have us consider.

As I consider my artistic practice as a means of generating, developing, and exploring my self, it quickly becomes clear to me that this is a process that could stand to be mapped out and reconsidered within this context.

Thinking back through my past practice of art, I begin to see the patterns emerge from these works. Many of the projects involved producing a representation of myself, a part of myself, an image of myself within a specific context, which I became at once subjectified/objectified.  These works seem to place myself in such a manner that I could actually watch myself perform some strange activity within an equally bizarre context, i.e. pretending to bark like a Döberman pinscher on a television chained to a small doghouse in the basement of a popular contemporary art gallery.  This is diametrically opposed to, say, a version of this situation in a virtual dream state.

At the time of creation of such projects, I was simply using myself as an actor, or model, or participant, as I was really the only volunteer that I knew that was available 24/7, and for free (how much better can it get?). I suppose in some small, yet unrealised manner, I was very much aware that this was a possibility of the events that were unfolding.  As the work evolved intuitively from feeling, as opposed to a calculated and constructed action through thought and from concept, I might have known in the back of my mind that what I was doing was, in some context, very much introspective as it was an externalisation and expression of certain feelings towards situational circumstances of the (cultural) time, in this instance perhaps it was an expression of feelings of subordination to the media constrcuts through which we can be limited in our abilities to effectively communicate.

In other words, I knew that this was an exploration of the self, the concerns, attitudes, feelings, thoughts and beliefs I held at that point in time. Looking back upon this practice as a whole practice comprised a series of similar works, I see that in my volunteerism I was in another sense exploring myself as a subject, or an individual subject to cultural conditions, ideologies, and environmental circumstances.  Considering the ontology of my existence, within the microcosm of the sculpture studio, I was an adept supernummery, a qualified extra available for free.  However, within the macrocosm of my cultural circumstance (Western contemporary art culture in the early 21st century), I was an individual installation and media artist.

From this scaled perspective, at once being very different within in varied contexts; from a physical, animate body/entity to act on the camera, to an independent individual amidst a cultural field and all the levels in between, this practice which I regularly engaged with was a phenomenon of my being, my self, how I felt, what I thought, and the agency of this being to produce an expression of this consciousness.  Art was a means of both advancing and developing of my self as well as moving away from this self in order to generate an understand and gain knowledge of this (my) self. In fact, this specific body of work embodied this duality of 1st and 3rd person, the subject-object situation. As a means of objectifying myself within a video object, I was able to examine my self from an alter perspective.  Simultaneously acting as the subject and object of scrutiny, when in the presence of these works, I had the experience of being in the work and outside of the work at once. A personal impersonality. Similar to watch home movies of ourselves, or looking at photographs of ourselves, these types of observation are necessary for objectification of our life-world and our relationships to these phenomena.

These specific projects were more like real-time snapshots of dream sequences in their ethereal, outré characteristics. The gave me multiple perspectives as they traverse the void between the actual, the virtual, and the real.  Moreover, they operated as almost a form of metacommunication, or portals into an introspection of the role that my self plays through the cultural consctructs that afford this self the possibility to become, to develop language, meaning, and communicative practices; artistic practices.

Here is a good place to contextualise my current ontological stance in regards to the orientation and situation of existence. These writings are presupposed by a philosophy that the ‘world’, its being, knowledge and experience of this existence are existent as multiplicities, all co-habiting a simultaneous existence. In short, everything conceived exists, right now! This is sort of a phenomenological theory of relativity of self reification. It is the movement of perception and of the phenomena of these states of existence that, in part, determine the emplacement of its being and our epistemological, ontological, and phenomenological relationship to this phase/form/version of being.  Furthermore, existence is existent in terms of an experience or lack of experience of the possibility that a thing may or may not exist within any context, state, or representation of its existence.

Art allows one to experiment with one’s position within the fields in which they awaken. We awaken in different fields continuously, throughout our being. The activity involved with the creation and realisation of art, the processes of art, is our means or technique of engaging with our self within these fields.

This is a technique of self, or a technical knowledge of the self which is adjacent to a relational model of work (technical) knowledge, practical knowledge, and emancipatory knowledge as suggested by Jürgen Habermas (Foucault, 1993).  Foucault (1993) describes this concept of the technology of self as an additional technique of the individual within society:
“…in all societies whatever they are, another type of techniques [exist]: techniques which permit individuals to effect, by their own means, a certain number of operations on their own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on their own conduct, and this in a manner so as to transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state of perfection, of happiness, of purity, of supernatural power, and so on. Let’s call this kind of techniques a techniques or technology of the self? “

Art, in this context, is an agency of self, or a method of this technology of self, made possible by the cultural conditions that foster the possibility of an individual within a society.  The concept of society is founded on the basis of the existence of selves, or individuals acting (working) independently and democratically within a structure that incurs interaction and counteraction,  interdependence and counterdependence.  This is evidenced in the relationship between self and other, as demonstrated through society.

My practice as an artist has allowed my to come to an understanding of my existence, the existence of my practice as an artist, and the relationship between my self and this practice through the emplacement of my self and this practice within various frameworks, one being my practice as an artist amongst other artists within a field of art, another being my practice as an individual amongst others within a social framework or field, such as art or the academy.

Furthermore, as this practice, and the reflection of this practice are not separate but co-exist in an evolving relationship my practice is reflexively shaped by my exploration of it, and extensions that develop through presentation and representation of this practice, .ie. media.  This is a type of emancipatory knowledge production that exists (Habermas).

Because the concept of self is a reality within a broader social reality, or at least conferred by this social state, and art too is a specific form or field within this broader field of social reality, art can exist as a means of constructing the self in relation to the social reality that constitutes and contextualises the existence of the other (in this case me and the things that I do and make within this context).

Because I exist in relation to others, I perceive and experience my self as a self amongst other  selves, and ‘theirfore’ constituted by this relationship.  I often think that if no other existed, or was experienced in any possibility of the definition, would I exist (in the epistemological and phenomenological sense of the concept)?  If the only entity in existence was my self, I would have no frame, no point of reference, no horizon to measure up against, I would correspond to nothing, relational to only a singular dimension of my self (perhaps not even ‘my’ could exist, but rather a self, which would yield to the oblivion of being or the creation of an other).  I envision this as the point where either a singularity (white hole) or a black hole becomes.

Coming back down to Earth, where I exist with my practice, my peers, and all my art surrounding me in boxes it is here within these relationships that my self develops. Self projects acquire meaning through their situation in relation to other self projects within an approximate cultural correspondence.

Unpacking these boxes in a specific place, with specific conditions (physical, cultural, environmental, etc.) avails certain relations. If I unpack the art in one time and place, I might see it as valuable to a specific project, at another time and place it may remain undiscovered, unrelated and too distanced to promote capital; dependent on the strength and value of the relationships that are produced through a relational presence. However, art as capital seems to operate under different circumstances than other types of capital.

Art carries a surplus value, as Diederichsen (2008) puts it. The surplus value of art is the added bonus that releases art from the subordination to any globally dominant law, such as economic value, or meaning.  Art is an interstice, a space that can exist outside of normal relations (Bourriaud, 1998).  Artistic Mehrwert, according to Diederichsen,  “...refers to the fact that art is ‘good for something’ and therefore has a use; it is legitimate and must exist, despite the fact that its meaning lies precisely in not being useful. “(1)

It is precisely here, that art as a field, yet a field with no edges, it is a desert of a field, slowly expanding and consuming its periphery as it gains relational ground through the multiple practices occurring within its margins.

References

Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Les presses du réel.

Diederichsen, D. (2008). On (Surplus) Value in Art. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Witte de With Publishers.

Foucault, M. “About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth”. Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1993, 198-227.)

Habermas, J. (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press.

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?

Meaning is meaningful. It’s what we all search for, often relentlessly in all that we do.  Are we looking for value in a valueless world?  Do we want assurance of a purpose as conscious beings?  Do we merely need to experience ourselves as part something, part of a greater significance or symbolism than the economic, political, and social systems that we manufacture and perpetuate in this search?

I was cleaning out my art studio the other day. As I was pulling off sticky-note after sticky-note of unrealised projects and halfed-up ideas, when it dawned on me that all of the sketches and scribblings had something in common.  In all that ‘data’ there was some kind of meaning that could be attached to it. There was meaning in the message, a pattern emerged. (PAUSE). I realised that all of these projects seemed to be centered around or tangent to some form of singularity. Black holes, the ‘ice man’, amoebas, time capsules, chameleons…the list goes on.  These were all images that popped into my head at some point of time while hanging out in the studio brainstorming new installations and art projects.  As I restacked this pile of sticky-notes, it became  increasingly evident.  All of these projects were about something that was  inspiring in its singularity.  These forms, the ice man, a black hole are essentially anomalies, the differences that provide enough contrast or distance from subjective being to offer a glimpse of something sublime and perfect, something truly meaningful.  Additionally, there is also something nearly magical about the these things, at least for me personally.  Something non-descript, something that might be called beauty?

So how do these projects relate to me.  This is the ad-infinitum question of the hour.  Are they metonyms of my conscious existence? Do they signal a quest for absolute greatness, not dissimilar to a Holy Grail of consciousness?

Thinking about reasons for why I have this creative urge that assumes these singular anomalies, I began to think about myself as something singularly unique in my individuality.  Not only in my form as matter, but also in my identity, my conscious being. So what exactly makes these other forms of singularities, and beyond that what gives them reason to be attractive?  Why would I even care about this idea of a black hole?  Well, I suppose behind the facade of its imagery, it reminds me of something, something personal, something inside me that I know.  Perhaps something that I am, something that we all are.

These objects, forms, things are not solely attractive or of interest to me alone.  For this reason alone I can only assume that due to the fact that others hold stock in the idea of a black hole, enough to construct the world’s largest particle accelerator in order to study it, the idea must hold some meaning; it must be important and of special consequence.  So why I am I attracted to them?

Are they symbolic?  I suppose another factor is that many of these singularities I have never actually seen, or witnessed with any acute sensibility.  Therefore I am only aware of the black hole through representation of it in images, words, and stories. The other quality about the black hole is “Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can reveal its presence through interaction with other matter.”

It is here that we can observe something.

How does the concept of a black hole relate to me?  I started to think about myself, if I were a black hole how would I feel? Black holes can never look in the mirror, so reflecting upon ones self isn’t possible.  Black holes become ones self continuously. Black holes are because they are absorbing everything else, and only know to exist through their “interaction with other matter”.

(REWIND)… the amoeba is similar but in an opposite kind of way.

Back to meaning. From these perspectives…Can there be meaning in any one singular thing, if the singular thing is always becoming through everything surrounding it?

Perhaps meaning cannot exist within the singularity.  There is no meaning in one single thing alone, as is matter in a black hole, but rather meaning is constructed by proximities and relationships. Furthermore, it is not simple a spatial or relational matter, but also a matter of agreement, communicated agreement.  As artists we are continuously explore new and changing ways of communicating agreements.

Moving these ideas to the concept of value, this concept suggest that we are not valuable in our selves. As humans, as people, as artists. In fact art may as well have no value. According to Bourriaud (1998), contemporary art and its delivery can operate in many arenas as a “social interstice…a space in human relations which fits more or less harmoniously and openly in to the overall system, but suggests other trading possibilities other than those in effect within this system” (p.16). As Bourriaud describes, “It has been said of art, and Marx was the first, that it represents the ‘absolute merchandise’, because it is the actual image of the value” (p. 42). Art is immediately devoted to, and often created solely, for the worlds of exchange, communication, and commerce.

Just as art acquires an exchange value, people too can embody this value. We, as some-one, are nothing without someone else, or are we?  We are conferred and confirmed through the awareness of another, through our differences and deviations.  It is the through the connections between ‘some-ones’ that anything meaningful can even be considered, yet communicated.

Much of my past work as an artist has been near these ideas.  In many ways I’ve been concerned with singularity. I’ve been concerned with examining myself in relation. Through the use of media as a vehicular mechanism of communication to communicate myself to myself at a singular point in time-space.  In this way, I bend back upon myself.  Like making a media-instant clone of myself that somehow got caught in a feedback loop before I could communicate something to myself.

I think of watching myself watch myself in a hall of mirrors.  I am my audience.

One question that is begging an answer.  Do I have anything meaningful to communicate to myself?