liminal

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.


 

Follow on from post: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time' by Justin Harrison


There are a few experiments that I’d like to follow up on, from the past year. One of which is the mud paddle drawn on a tree. It’s been busy season and hopefully I’m moving into one where I can give a little more time to expanding upon my practice and research, and upon previous experiments. A season of development following on from season of generation.

If the Liminal is generative then ideally following is growth and development. Perhaps a sign that one is exiting the liminal.

The drawings are sketches that I am keen to collate as I tend to deposit them all over the place and loose the thread of my thinking.

I’m still interested in boundaries and borders and translation which carries us across. Another form of transformation from change.

These drawings I plan to make at my next opportunity. Another chance to spend time in the woods. The rhythmic lines articulating an absence. Clay taken from the nearby earth. A passing. A passage. An emptying? And then what comes to rightfully occupy?

Why the tree? Because it feels like. partnership. There may be other reasons but I’ll figure those in the making.

Also could I cast the whole trunk of the tree?

Something about these drawing as I look at them feels like a form of positive agency, ’ assistance in the liminal’. For what guidance do we have in disruption?

Foot note could I use an icing bag to apply the lines? Must visit a cook shop… or can I make a heavy duty one out of waxed cotton and thread?

Can that become a part of the work?

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On another note.

A key element to this course is finding rhythms of researching and making to support and augment our practice. Initially I had understood this to be a regular repetitive rhythm, however I am now beginning to realise that it’s much more complex, that the rhythm is ‘seasonal’ and follows a more organic structure. Perhaps closer to the rhythmic cycle of of a bear, hibernate when it’s cold, eat fish when they are in season, eat berries when they are not, rest when your tired, fight when under threat.

“Biological rhythms, such as rhythms in activity and body temperature, are usually highly synchronized and entrained by environmental conditions, such as photoperiod. However, how the expression of these rhythms changes during hibernation, when the perception of environmental cues is limited, has not yet been fully understood for all hibernators, especially in the wild. The brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Scandinavia lives in a highly seasonal environment and adapts to harsh winter conditions by exhibiting hibernation, characterized by reduced metabolism and activity. In this study, we aimed to explore the expression of biological rhythms in activity, body temperature and heart rate of free-ranging brown bears over the annual cycle, including active, hibernation and the transition states around den entry and exit. We found that rhythms in physiology and activity are mostly synchronized and entrained by the light-dark cycle during the bears’ active state with predominantly diel and ultradian rhythms for body temperature, activity and heart rate. However, during hibernation, rhythms in body temperature and heart rate were considerably slowed down to infradian rhythms, influenced by the amount of snow in the denning area, whereas rhythms in activity remained diel. Rhythms in the transition states when bears prepared for entering or coming out of hibernation state displayed a combination of infradian and diel rhythms, indicating the preparation of the body for the change in environmental conditions.” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.785706/full

Diel Rythmn: involving a 24-hour period that usually includes a day and the adjoining night.

Day and night. Night and day.

Ultradian rhythms: are your body's biological cycles that take place within 24 hours, which can include everything from a human heartbeat, to blinking, to digestion. While the more commonly known term “circadian rhythm” occurs over a 24-hour period, ultradian rhythms are shorter and are repeated during that time.

///Shopping notes

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Why the forest? by Justin Harrison

Image my own


During my first tutorial Jonathan asked me ‘why the forest’? ‘Why am I drawn to it’? Now I think the forests significance is because it’s a strong liminal place, ever shifting and changing, constantly in decay and growth - always moving. It’s a site that is not occupied but free of dominating presence and technology. Natural and free of intent. In the space time feels slower and is of less consequence to the forest, it posses it’s own language, one I only barely understand intuitively and where my words are of little significance, finally the forest shares a rhizomatic consciousness, it thinks in community.

There's a neutrality to it, a reset. I get tired of all the demands that come from the digital world and to be honest I actually dislike a lot of it. I do find it useful and use it, but I don't like the way it kidnaps my time and energy.

I like making work that is devoid of this, and in a conversation with George, he mused on it having a 'prehistoric' feel to it. Which led to us wondering about the final show, could it just be a set of coordinates to site specific work in forest somewhere, or if that warrants the use of GPS, just some hand written directions. In rejection of the capitalist gallery space and commodification of creativity.


 

The liminal and void are the same, not the same by Justin Harrison

The liminal and the void are the same, not the same. They share qualities essences sensibilities and lacking. Yet the void by its nature must be empty. The liminal is thick and soupy,. In both locations references become null, maps Undraw themselves and time frays.

In both codes and coordinates unravel, like nets cast upon the world to create order. To locate the self.

But to exit the void leaves what?

To exit the liminal leaves the old behind and ushers forth the new, change, transformation.

There are a number of references which need to be kept apart and should not be used interchangeably. The liminal, the void, the in-between. The non place. The Third Space. The middle.

Specifically the liminal has a vectorality of the passage.

The liminal is full.

The void empty

Maybe in Kapoors work the void correctly identifies what is generated by imperialism, a consuming absence. Where as UvR’s work identifies the marginal liminal experience - not so removed. Not empty but ambiguous.

With my artwork things are the same not the same. I use an objects history to locate a vector, but replace it in time establishing another vector. In the materiality I am using its history. It’s Hauntology. With the fence panels I have in my work I am engaging in the history of a friend who’s now passed.  It’s  purpose haunts. A fence a boundary a margin. The materials history , purpose and materiality become part of the minor literature.

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

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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.

 

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 

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