Metaphysics

Qubits and rebuilding my world by Justin Harrison


Uh oh now I’m in trouble, I’d forgotten my interest in Quantum physics - that it also entertains the binary disruption by permitting both to be possible at the same time. And yet why do I separate my art and physics - psychologically I compartmentalise them, yet they are one and the same.

I discovered a short video on programming a Quantum Qubit and how it models the existence of non binary states. I don’t know how much I can get into this as its counter to my preferred ways of thinking - I’m not mathematical or science inclined so it’s a push.

Libby Heaney is an award winning, London based artist with an unusual background. She holds a PhD and worked as a researcher in quantum physics - a discipline Einstein called “spooky” and Penrose said “makes absolutely no sense”.

Now resident at Somerset House Studios in London, Heaney creates sticky entanglements between moving image, performance, installation, sculpture and print, usually combining these with advanced technologies such as machine learning, game engines & quantum computing - a new type of computer that processes information based on the weird laws of quantum physics.

Now this get’s interesting for me because it begins to draw the key areas I’m interested around Derrida - difference, Khora and kinetics out of academic theory into science and the physical world. She discusses removing the emphasis from the individual as modelled in modern western philosophy into a deep interconnectivity. To the point that with entanglement of atoms, photons they become impossibly connected and loose their individuality, so deeply connected - that if you try to remove an individual out it destroys the system.

She says that reality isn’t about individuality but relationality.

Again I feel the sense of the kinetic and the Khora. Somehow there is a remodelling of priorities down to a quantum level. What we count as the logic blocks of our existence are deconstructed and represented.


 

Too Much by Justin Harrison

Image: My own


So here's my confession. I've been reading through some denser texts. Derrida and Daniel Dennett - Consciousness Explained. Whilst I find it interesting at moments, I also find it tedious most of the time - wading through Phenomenology, Cartesian Theatre models, and then Derrida refuting structualism, logocentric values, linguistics act... In an attempt to find a deeper understanding of beliefs and where they come from.

I started to delve deeper into theories of consciousness, neurologically and philosophically. However there is so much writing on this topic - like really a lot, not to mention 2 hr podcasts. Each time I pass through one school of belief I find another that contradicts it. Ok so I may not have read extensively but enough to know that this is not my passion.

The more honest part of this confession to my blog, is that I find myself wanting to have difficult and obtuse theory attached to my work to validate it in academic circles, to make it sound worthy of an MA. I think of the people who I want to intimidate with my dazzling intellect. Shame on me. I have previously written about honesty.

Some of my research is getting performative. And actually a little dull.

I looked back over the blog to reference some bits and found brief analysis of photos and film stills - much more interesting. So back to research of stuff that genuinely interests me, (which can still include Derrida and Neurology if it's genuinely interesting).


 

Belief and Intuition/// by Justin Harrison

Image: My own


I still like his notion of ‘intuition’ for dealing with the non factual or logic of our lives. As much as we deal with a hard reality; bills, trains, shopping and germs. We also need a system for dealing with the non factual spheres of our daily lives - a softer reality. That which sits beyond standard taxonomy /// Things which we cannot easily process with reason or even fit our language. That which resides beyond.

The ‘Nursery’ of our belief system. Where do our beliefs originate? I’m still trying to track a neurological model, but equally a philosophical model. That’s a lot of reading>>>

Then also there is that which is in us and that which is beyond us - outside of us. There is me, and then that which is not me and that which is me and not me at the same time.

Internal, external and mutually idependant or perhaps mutually interdependent?

In the sculpture we can engage with the space around the object as much as in. Creating a widening aura, and yet a blurring of boundaries///

///What belongs in a bundle? What must sit outside?


 

Notes from Presentation by Justin Harrison

 

Having already given the presentation on ‘Jacques Derrida’ By Nicolas Royle. This is more an ‘aid de memoire’ to remind me of the points I spoke about in the hope that I’ll remember.

Book: Jacques Derrida By Nicolas Royle

Why oh why did I choose Derrida?

Derrida is a French linguist, writer and literary Critical Analysts, philosopher and political commentator and much more.
Written many books especially on textual analysis.
He’s notoriously dense and complex.
Just when I think I have understood I realise I don’t.

Maddening is a phrase I’ve read somewhere...

Famous for:
Deconstruction 
Literary analysis
Semiotics
Grammar the difference
Political


I’ve come back to this book as I find Royle’s writing more accessible. He articulates well the unique challenges that come with Derrida’s thinking and writing.

Specifically I’ve been thinking/looking at deconstruction. 

What it is not and ways to approaching what it could be.

But even that is optimistic as Derrida’s thinking and writing resists simple or reductionalist summisations of ‘This is this and means this’. Royle explores this not offering neat answers. In the chapter it even states how Derrida dislikes even the word deconstruction, and that he feels that it’s wrong to use it as a ‘ism’ or practice.

Rather Royle gives a useful if fragmented overview, he describes how Derrida likes to explore at a phorensic level. He explains how Derrida evades, is elusive in what is meant for him, by deconstruction.

Royle demonstrates examples of what Deconstructuon is not - throughout most of the book we are shown what Derrida is not, but not told what it and he is. Rather we are shown where he/it might be at work. Where a ‘trace’ or a ‘Ghost’ might be, and it’s this approach that leaves space to work in.

It’s not an answer it’s a deep approach. A constant undoing of ones own beliefs

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I keep returning to Derrida, to this book. A starter. A basic introduction. (Sigh)

Although I am currently liking this uncomfortable wrestling. I have been looking for answers and Derrida won’t give them. Only a way of approaching. And I think that's the thing with Derrida, the moment you look for a neat of final answer - things vaporise - it doesn't work.

Royle frequently in this chapter talks of the unravelling that seems to happen often.

And then for me the language of my work is very important, from the thinking to the language of the symbols and materials. Unravelling of my materials, my practice, my thinking.

Specifically in my practice

Royles chapter has given me specifically some very engaging thoughts that I am exploring as I make.

“Every thing is Divisable” - this phrase alone has me.

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I am interested in belief, it’s nature and how it manifests. 

In the liminal, the threshold, transforming spaces.

And something of Derrida's work touches on these thin and elusive environments.

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The more I read, the more I realised I didn’t understand, now I suspect that’s the point.

Royles description of Derrida and his practice in this chapter leads us to a constant questioning of our thinking, our beliefs. And this could be a kind of Deconstruction>>>

>>>A constant examining, undoing and again examining of ones own beliefs. Including my beliefs about beliefs.

 

Encombrer by Justin Harrison


I walked past the scene and had to return and photograph it. There was something desperate and poetic about it for me. The ground had be broken up overturned and left naked and encumbered. Exposed and discarded.

It was though It had been dismantled in an arbitrary way. Difficult in it’s intentional disinterest.

Another road victim, but this time it’s the road.

A division of the aggregate, once homologous, now rendered to parts.
It could b rendered down further, smaller lumps then stones lacquered with bitumen, then stone chips and oil, dust and liquid///


 

Derrida by Justin Harrison


"Great works [philosophy/literature/writing] transform the context of their reception and this takes time". Royle Nicholas - Jacques Derrida Routledge P73

What if writing or a work of art could physically change the space/ landscape around us because of the power of the text/ message/ essence of the meaning. Quantum physics - transforming the environment similar to the word? Observed particles behave differently///

Pharmakon poison and remedy, both or sacrifice (Human)//////

"Adrian Mróz, a Polish-American philosopher and musician, analyses its application to art and argues that pharmakon is any physical, mental, or behavioral object[7] which can cut (techne). In other words, pharmaka are agential and responsible for changes in consciousness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy)

More reading in Pharmakon?///

Deconstruction

"Derrida has spoken of what impels his writing as a trembling, a 'shaking' or a 'soliciting'. He has written again and again, but always differently, about 'producing a force of dislocation that spreads itself throughout the entire system', about deconstruction as 'de-sedimantation', about a force of irruption that '[disorganises] the entire inherited order'" Royle Nicholas - Jacques Derrida, Routledge P25

"Even the most apparently simple statement is subject to fission or fissure. This is deconstruction as destabilisation always already on the move within. 'There is no atom', as Derrida remarks what is one of his most succinct and most quietly, subterraneously explosive formulations. Everything is divisible. Unity, coherence, univocality are effects produced out of division and divisibility. This is what gives rise to the elaboration of terms such as differance, iterability, the trace, the supplement"  Royle Nicholas - Jacques Derrida, Routledge P26

"It is about shaking up, dislocating, and transforming the verbal, conceptual, psychological, textual, aesthetic, historical, ethical, social, political, and religious landscape. It's concern is to disturb, to de-sediment, to deconstruct". Royle Nicholas - Jacques Derrida, Routledge P26

  • Print Derrida - A letter to a friend - read and pull threads about Phramakon, deconstruction, atoms, everything is divisible, constituent parts, diagrams. Liminal?

  • Read Liminal - Greg V 

  • Find Artists to research

  • Find Book from Christian Perspective? Scripture?


 

Currently Reading///Researching by Justin Harrison


Collections

Sculpture as constituent parts///

Language and it's relationship to compositional elements of sculpture or artmaking

Deconstruction in language and the physical.

Derrida it appears has a dislike of the term Deconstruction and the resistance to it becoming an 'ism'

‘Deconstructualism is a word used by idiots.’(McQuillan 2000, 41)

Everything is divisible rather than deconstructible.

How is this reflected if at all by atomic structure and constituent parts?

Letter to a Japanese Friend"///Jacques Derrida///10 July 1983

Derrida and Differance, ed. Wood & Bernasconi, Warwick: Parousia Press 1985, p. 1-5

An insight into the problematic nature of using 'deconstruction'

Jacques Derrida /// Nicholas Royle///Routledge 2003

Not sure the below statement is true... but I like the idea of interrogation. Scrutinisng our understanding of Law and Justice. Isn't this what Jesus did?

For him it was both ‘foreseeable and desirable that studies of deconstructive style should culminate in the problematic of law and justice.’2 Deconstruction is therefore a means of interrogating the relationship between the two.

https://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/05/27/jacques-derrida-deconstruction/

Interrogating Law and Justice - But who's law and justice?

Thread to Physics ____

Thread to Language____

Thread to Sculpture____

Thread to Spirituality____

Further reading required?: 

Derrida Difference

Deconstruction

Law and Justice







 

Trashed by Justin Harrison


I feel like my mind has the landscape of an angry 3yr olds bedroom. everything is everywhere and nothing resides in its proper place. It's all out and on the floor. I'm filling pages of my sketchbook with odd disjointed ideas, some manifestations from years ago, some from just now.

I've gone down rabbit hole with Derrida and doubt I'll ever return from that one with any useful information other than he makes your nose bleed if you read too much.

Continuing to build up a glossary of random words I like:

Passage///

Diagram///

Constituent///

Honouring///

Threshold///

Threshing Floor///

Refine///

Filter///


 

Vertical and Horizontal by Justin Harrison


More of this preoccupation with the horizontal and vertical. A liminal place of threshold and transition. Yet a more positive one with a clear exit.

I like the tangle of the cold metal, Interrupted by colour. Inference in ascension.

///The temporary outcast

“It is in this interim space and time that, while old symbols and pardigms are destroyed, new ones are generated, which can eventually feed back into the central arenas of society.”

Piazza - Discourses of identity in liminal places and spaces 

\\\ 1 + 1 = 3


 

Theres a maxim by Justin Harrison

Charlie.jpg

There’s a maxim that says to question everything. Which makes sense and yet is impossible. I can’t question everything I don’t have the time or mental capacity. Yet I do question a lot and it’s tiring. I do want some truth some safety. A small patch of ground to stand on. 

So much art made is ‘questioning’ and today I am irritated by it. It feels lazy, especially as so much questioning art doesn’t offer anything but the question - ‘great thanks more fundamental queries to add to my existential anxiety’.

So what? What am I asking for? Art that offers answers? I would be very mistrusting of that.

Honesty is that it? Am I back on wanting honest art when I’m not even sure I can do that myself?


 

It's not funny by Justin Harrison

IMG_4664.jpg

I need to figure out why I like this image so much. Taken from Todd Philips ‘Joker’ this scene shows Arthur collapsed after being beaten by youths. He’s in the throws of pain and humiliation and incapacitation, laying prone in the middle of a side alley. Somehow the bright colours add to the jarring nature of the spectacle. The buildings and passage frame him in and out of darkness. I wonder if this could be described as a liminal place but one absent of a ‘master of ceremonies’ to lead him through, no ritualised pattern to follow and exit from a rite of passage. One that Arthur has to deliver himself out of transformed but not transcendent.

A joke, but it’s him, he’s the joke.

But he’s not funny.

The role of the Joker, in some cultures is the trickster, who by their nature stand on the threshold of the sacred and profane, the heyókȟa in Lakota Culture. Stood between the two worlds they exist between the lines.

Also Cayote in indigenous American stories, is a trickster straddling two worlds.

Liminal spaces in ‘rites of passage’ serve a constructive purpose. But when there is no rite to be led through and no leader, then there is decay.


 

Honesty/// by Justin Harrison


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I talked with a good friend and told them about the MA course, about the Blog. They are a creative practitioner and immediately ‘got it’ - thought it was a great idea, understanding the benefits and value to creative reflection… and then we came to discuss honesty.

/// If the blog is really to be of value then it needs to be honest, not performative.

When I write this blog, am I writing openly and honestly? Or am I trying to impress people?

It’s bad enough to give myself away in my artwork - am I now I’m gonna confess all my weird shit in words too?

It makes me realise how much I hold back>>> everyday. 

/// In fact how authentic am I? When I am at work, when I am out - who am I? It’s an unnerving thought that I might perform - more than I am actually myself.

///Currently reading:::
This blog and my presentation repeatedly - if I’m honest


 

Proof & Approval by Justin Harrison


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I noticed a connection between the words approval and prove - that had not occurred to me before.

The two set an interdependent in a negative frame. That to have approval I must prove myself, yet this is a futile task. My identity should not be scaffolded by others approval that I must first evidence.

My subconscious harangues me…

“If you really are…

…an artist

…intelligent

…likeable

…worthy to do an MA”

 >>>Or insert any other angst based self-defeating doubt>>>

…then prove it…(by fact based action…)

It seems the moment we step out, we come under unfair and unjust scrutiny. Rather than be encouraged to take risks, make new work or suggest a new way. Eeverything must be first justified and evidenced.

Prove///Approve - it’s a shitty equation.

How would you describe 'a healthy artistic environment’?

One free from the need to prove myself. 
Challenging yet collaborative.
A space where risks are taken.
A fringe space liberated from standard cultural capital.

Thinking about what my fellow students are doing to enhance my social and learning experiences; What do I most value in them?

Honest, challenging and rigorous discussion.
Experience beyond my own frame.
Kindness and understanding.

Thinking about what I am doing to enhance my fellow students social and learning experiences; What do they most value in me?

Experience outside of themselves.
Kindness and understanding.
Honest, challenging and rigorous discussion.

Sorry to be cheesy but I can’t ask something of someone I’m not prepared to give myself.

///Currently reading::: 
Theastre Gates:::Carol Becker, Lisa Yun Lee, Achim Borchardt-Hume