Liminal

Rabbit Holes /  by Justin Harrison

In thinking and researching about ‘Belonging’, ‘Boundaries’, ‘Transformation’ ‘Formation’

I have been looking at Derrida a lot, his exploration of ‘Differance’ ‘Trace’ Deconstruction’, ‘Spectres’ and ‘Hauntology’. I have now discovered Homi Bhabha. I see similarities of thought and approach, descriptions and models. I don’t know either work well enough to specifically state what exact differences or similarities they share. However I do feel the readings I have already made around Derrida - help me to being to approach Bhaba’s work.

I am also aware that Bhaba criticises Derrida’s work in falling short and failing to address Ethnocentricity and yet…

I do find the exploration of Space more specifically the third space and linguistics very interesting and return to my own enquiries to the language of art, navigation of change and the liminal.

Translation, Afterlife, Ghosts.

It’s a Rabbit hole I fear to go down, the depth of both authors work feels beyond me.

Translating transformation by documenting change. Looking back at the afterlife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVQcdbSV6OI

 

On the floor /  by Justin Harrison

I’m sat in the library, although I might as well be sat on the floor. It feels a more comfortable place. I’m dizzy. In researching for my paper I’ve journeyed a lot with Ursula von Rydingsvard and her making from marginality. This is all in concern to the liminal and transformation. Derrida haunts me all the time with notions of difference and Hauntology, the phenomena or not of spectres. And now I’ve taken a sharp left and have started looking at Homi Bhabha. He speaks of the ‘Third space’ and ties it to creativity and making in concern to Anish Kapoor.

Kapoor repeatedly presents us with an ambiguity of locating the self in space and time. The void is cast before us in multiple iterations, refusing to abate. But I haven’t studied Kapoor so much and some days I find him pompous. Yet I do see the significance of his work.

So now I have books surrounding me on Kapoor, Bhabha, Derrida oh and Deleuze I’ve been avoiding him but it was unavoidable. I keep on finding connections with "‘Terrain’ and ‘Territory’ ‘Translation’ - the connections make me wonder if everyone is all speaking about the same thing, or are they nuance or completely different and deserve the nomenclature, and dense books assigned to them?

I feel like I’m on to something but I can’t quiet pull it all in. This formlessness that is the generative. The Difference that permits us to create, be, not be. Make some sort of meaning.

It’s 14:55 I need to write more - write an intelligible draft. But then there’s my work too. I see more threads between my making and preoccupations. I’d draw a map yet I fear it will be of no use the moment I finish it.

Deleuze says;


The map is the production of an experimental reading, the word experiment being used here as John Cage uses it, "not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success and failure, but simply as an act the outcome of which is unknown."
Deleuze and Guattari - What is a minor Literature

There is a thread at least, of time and space and thought. That in the fluidity there is movement, a freedom to create. In creativity there is the power to imagineer and realise the new. Ownership is hard in the liminal.

 

Bhabha, Kapoor, Space and the diagonal /  by Justin Harrison

I’m excited to have discovered a relationship between the sculpture Anish Kapoor and the Critical Theorist Homi Bhabha, There have been a few key conversations between the two and especially around the Liminal, they are using phrases like the ‘In-between’,’Third space’, looking at the way meaning is and isn’t made, how boundaries and identities are influenced, constructed, negotiated. This has interesting parallels with Derrida and ‘time being out of joint, hauntology and difference. I can’t quiet put my finger on the key connections but I feel like there are important resonances with my research, von Rydingsvard and my art work.

However I am also aware that Bhabha is talking about issues of identity forged against a white colonial background, and I want to be careful of my positionally and not to dilute or hijack the dialogue.

HB This in-between space is something that, for a moment, I want to bring back to our particular locations as artists or writers linked with a certain history. A history of migration, a history of coming from India, a history of cultural hybridity in our own lives. I think we constitute a particular genre of the producers of meanings and symbols and arguments. We have a trajectory that has been produced by the often unacknowledged cosmopolitanism of colonial cultures. I think there is something about the mixture of cultural traditions and ethnic boundaries, so that what actually happens in the interstices, in the in-between, is neither a simple interaction, consensual or disensual, of two given traditions, but the opening up of a space of “thirdness”, that reveals the “doubleness” of the self or one’s cultural provenance. I would like to ally that space to the occurrence of the not-there or the void. It’s not a space of inversions or reversals of previously given polarities or values or hierarchies. I think it is space where we are much more aware about how boundaries or identities are complex negotiations.

https://anishkapoor.com/976/homi-bhaba-and-anish-kapoor-a-conversation

On another note with the jointed paddle - adding a universal joint to the paddle then alters it's planes, lateral vertical and or other? Liminal navigation in the diagonal.

Also the importance of surface Bhabha and Kapoor discuss surface and it’s roll, which could connect to von Rydingsvard who so heavily investigates surface in her work.

Submerging on the other hand would do ...a deferral of surface? Secondry removal?

HB Would it be a simplification to say, first of all, that the strategy of this space, to put it in concrete terms, is not dissimilar from the strategy of the space when we actually see it physically in the work. It is not just darkness versus light; or the smoothness of the black versus the wrinkling of the stone; or the frangible surface of the pigment versus the hard shape inside. It is much more the way in which the void is unavoidably present in all the surfaces of presence. To look for a positive statement of this shape, of the void, we will not be able to find it in the way in which other positive presences and positive forms of naming are found. There is a sense in which it is thought that clarity of thought lies in making statements in the affirmative, not in the negative. Don’t tell us what a thing is not, tell us what it is – but that is so complicit, with a certain historical and cultural notion of knowledge. I often say to people, why? Why can’t I say things as a gathering of negatives, and why can you not accept that it is somehow rhetorically, and even formally, in-between the saying of the one thing and the re-saying of it that something may exist? There is a particular philosophical tradition of putting things in the positive, so I think we should try, but I don’t think we should be overly hung up on that..

https://anishkapoor.com/976/homi-bhaba-and-anish-kapoor-a-conversation

The diaganol///

In voicing the void, Kapoor returns us to the discourse of the diagonal. How does the transitional nature of true making – spatially out of balance, temporally in between – relate to the myth of 'originality'? I have argued that the shape of the void and the sign of emptiness must be conceived of in a logic of doubling; like the transitional object, they are unified at the point in space and time of their separation and differentiation. Such a mode of representation does not contain, deep within its being, an 'object' that unfolds, in its own time, to reveal its unitary presence. Kapoor's elision of the 'first instance' or the 'very first moment' does not lead to a final reckoning in which all will be revealed. In this instance, presentness is not grace, to take liberties with Michael Friedes's striking modernist dictum, for there is no promise in the work of 'a continuous and entire presentness… a kind of instantaneousness… [because] at every moment the work itself is wholly manifest'.33 The 'delay' in the presence of the work discloses faces, aspects, elements or media that do not metonymically signify some immanent whole, or some complete, though repressed, narrative.

https://anishkapoor.com/185/making-emptiness-by-homi-k-bhabha

 

Spectres of Marx /  by Justin Harrison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJr0NwXWb6Q

Hamlet -”Time is out of joint”
Really useful video investigating Derrida’s concept of the Spectral. I’ve come back to this a couple of times. The idea of time manifesting in a non liar way creates space for reconsidering passage. And therefor the passage and place of transformation.

In looking to land on a specific line of enquiry for the research paper, I find this interesting. It sits well with the liminal and belonging. Expressions of the outsider and questioning who is on the inside, and how are these locations decided? Agreed upon and policed?

 

Chest /  by Justin Harrison

I still want to make large scale drawings. The desire burns slowly at the back of my consciousness, something inside of me wants them to come into being, to exist. There is something to say.

The chest of draws and the ribcage have a connections through the ‘Chest’. In addition I like the chest of draws as a site, as vessel and an agent of …something I haven’t quite figured yet. So I draw. It’s a better place of meditation for me as I try to distill what all these ideas are leading to.

I do not the presence of vertical columns again.
”For from you are all things and to you are all things”’

I used a sepia ink and it doesn’t give the deep blacks I like, or the range of tone. I’ll try agin with Indian ink and also with the Acrylic which granulates nicely but has less control.

 

Initiating a pact with the impossible /  by Justin Harrison

 

There is a place. 

Outside. 

Impossible to find but always here.

Formless.

Where from nothing, comes something. 

Birthed.

I thought I was alone.

Mistaken.

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“Sans savior, sans avoir, sans voir”

“Initiating a pact with the impossible”

Caputo J - The tears and prayers of Jacques Derrida - p xx

 

Khôra and the Impossible /  by Justin Harrison

Khôra - Ink and acrylic on paper

“Sans savoir, sans avoir, sans voir.”
Caputo J : Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Introduction p20

“Without knowing, without having, without seeing”

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Vertical forms suspended in space

A host.

Khôra - the liminal - the place of transformation 

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Khôra (also chora; Ancient Greek: χώρα) was the territory of the Ancient Greek polis outside the city proper. The term has been used in philosophy by Plato to designate a receptacle (as a "third kind" [triton genos]; Timaeus 48e4), a space, a material substratum, or an interval. In Plato's account, khôrais described as a formless interval, alike to a non-being, in between which the "Forms" were received from the intelligible realm (where they were originally held) and were "copied", shaping into the transitory forms of the sensible realm; it "gives space" and has maternal overtones (a womb, matrix)
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khôra

Also:

“So likewise it is right that the substance which is to be fitted to receive frequently over its whole extent the copies of all things intelligible and eternal should itself, of its own nature, be void of all the forms. Wherefore, let us not speak of her that is the Mother and Receptacle of this generated world, which is perceptible by sight and all the senses, by the name of earth or air or fire or water, or any aggregates or constituents thereof: rather, if we describe her as a Kind invisible and unshaped, all-receptive, and in some most perplexing and most baffling partaking of the intelligible, we shall describe her truly.”
— Plato, Timaeus, 51a[1]

“As we will see, Derrida easily made the "no" stick. He dispatched this accusation, or deferred this congratulation, effectively and effI ciently, persuasively arguing that whatever their "syntactical" similarities there is a deep "semantic" divide between God and différance, that "it," différance, is not the God of negative theology. (We cannot fail to notice that "God" here is not exactly Yahweh, not the God of prophets like Amos or Isaiah, a God who wants justice, but the God of Christian Neoplatonism.) However highly it is esteemed, différance is not God. Negative theology is always on the track of a "hyper essentiality," of something hyper-present, hyper-real or sur-real, so really real that we are never satisfied simply to say that it is merely real. Différance, on the other hand, is less than real, not quite real, never gets as far as being or entity or presence, which is why it is emblematized by insubstantial quasi-beings like ashes and ghosts which flutter between existence and nonexistence, or with humble khöra, say, rather than with the prestigious Platonic Sun. Differance is but a quasi-transcendental anteriority, not a supereminent, transcendent ulteriority.

Caputo J : Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida p2

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In a previous blog I had commented on-

So in light of the nature of Derrida's approach to deconstructions and undecidability - where in his thinking does he reference a constructive approach? What if anything isn’t left undone -  Reinscription? Somewhere I read about a part of his work that touched on this but cannot remember which book it was.

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Caputo goes on from the quote about to discuss that the direction of deconstruction ultimately points up - ‘a passion for the impossible’ p3, whilst also contextualising difference, in a contructive/ generative way.

'"Translating" in deconstruction is nothing reductionistic, and that is because différance opens things up rather than barring the door closed.” P4

There is a place for generation rather than reduction. Reduction being the popular misnomer of Deconstruction.

Useful phrases from p2-4

“Initiating a pact with the impossible”

“Tout autre est tout autre” - every other is wholly other

Think about essence becoming real. Emerging from the Khôra. Extensia.

Do I emerge from the Khôra every day. Transformed by renewing my mind? Is the Khôra a limiting phrase? Just another addressing of the same thing? And how does this impact my research and art?

What I do like is this addressing of the’ impossible’, and a possible/impossible place of transformation across many manifestations, from major to minor. And then there is the inverted value system. Cultrally we like the dramatic the demostratable, the evidential. Yet these texts allude to the small the innocuous, being key. That maybe transformation is effected by the granular. The macro. The mustard seed.

God resides in and out of the impossible. Which is impossible.

 

Encombre 3 /  by Justin Harrison

 

It’s the orange glove, otherwise I might have skipped the scene, as just repeating previous work. But there’s this disembodied skin again - cast against the fragments stone and grit, lying prone, limp and deflated. It had purpose, briefly, visceral and present, now it’s passing through. The black plastic is encroaching, soon to suffocate everything that has been rendered.

Passage and place. Briefly.

Now limp like a dead game bird from a flemish painting.

 

Encombre #2 Continued /  by Justin Harrison

Encombre #2 broken landscapes. With an odd, but makes sense to me reference to the movie the Joker, (previously touched upon in a blog on the 13th of October)

It’s the colours the stark muted tones dropping to black, but punctuated by a stark vibrant and synthetic yellow. In the movie it jars along with the narrative.

In the street images the yellow road markings sit incongruous, whilst a greater drama ensues. One of transformation in what has become a liminal place, or perhaps a liminal moment>>>

Images///

Image stil - taken from movie: Joker
Directed and produced by Todd Phillips 2019
Joker was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Films in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, Bron Creative and Joint Effort.

All other images my own.


 

Encombre #2 /  by Justin Harrison

I’ve been wanting to add video sketches to my work for a while, and finally found the opportunity. I took an alternative route to work and discovered this delicious spectacle.

The ground had opened up and ushered forth. The tarmac blacked and fractured. Sunken and violent. The street transformed from it’s passive state to a site of unknown menace and promise. I felt that were I to enter the water could be relocated to another space. Transformed. Passage.

 

I am everything you left behind. I am everything you don't want #4 /  by Justin Harrison

Another discovery, at 2am this time. Not quiet what I’m looking for… I like when the subject has undergone some form of transformation. However it has this cinematic feel with the lighting, in addition the arrangement of 3 items has some from of aggregation. So I guess it counts.

The subject has this sense of semi-passive/dysfunctional patience to it. ‘Waiting for Godot’. It sits mutely in it’s incompleteness (Half a sofa), somehow stalwart in the belief that it has purpose. This whole image has a late middle aged feel to it. Or is that just me?

I find the first image works best, the lighting and confrontation perspective.

Less of the dead horse in these - which I find disappointing.

 

Liminal/Threasholds, Threashing Floor and a sneaky Star Wars reference /  by Justin Harrison

I found a curious connection between the films: Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back/Revenant/Man in the wilderness/Rivers of Fundament (Matthew Barney). The visceral and jarring motif of entering and exiting an enviscerated horse/ cow/ tonton for survival and as a metaphor for death, rebirth and transformation. I’m not sure if there is a classical reference that precedes these films - or any myths or stories. .(I’m not sure how ‘Fine Art’ Starwars is but I’m gonna crowbar it in cos… well it’s Star Wars).

However the motif has caught my attention as it also demonstrates the metaphor of a Liminal place a space where a transformation occurs or a threshold crossed - albeit a psychological one perhaps.

In addition in these contexts there is a dual form of sacrifice:
1.The host animal/ mothering agent.
2. The form of a ‘little death’ of the subject ( a passing through) and then a transformation upon exiting.

In Barneys film there is an uncomfortable feel as the Demi God character enters what appears to be a very dead and decaying carcass, which asks the question what kind of transformation would occur in this context?. Much of Barney’s work is unsettling and visual grotesque so it almost suggest something sinister and perhaps rather than a transformation it would be a corruption and deformation////

A place we fear to look ||||||||||||||

The envisceration is profound - a forced space for the incumbent. Perhaps this is what is jarring is the ‘manufacturing’ of a liminal space. I wonder if true transformation can only come through a naturally occurring spiritual liminal space. Fabricated ceremonies lead to a performance of transformation where perhaps the change is only superficial. Which we could say of Revenant, which actually has two moments the first being when Hugh Glass is partially buried being believed to be near death, and then the act of survival where he uses his horses carcass to shelter from a snow storm.

Death and Rebirth///

Tranformation//?

Deformation///

Threshold///

Threashing floor///

This has also had me thinking of the biblical reference fo the threshing floor - a metaphor for separation of the good form the bad - it also has a liminal essence to it for those who are prepared to confront their own short comings and be transformed by a purification process.

More to be extrapolated but I keep loosing my train of thought////

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZy99QDPhpw

 

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

 

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.