Derrida

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"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?

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Holly is a sticky wood

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Out on location in woods. Looked for and found a resource of wood to process for ‘bundle 1’.

A number de-limbed branches were on the ground so I took the opportunity.

Again to hold materials in my hands feels good and adjusts the course of my thinking.

I realise that this project is going to take longer and more energy. The holly doesn’t give up its bark easily and is a stick wood to work with when green but pleasingly dense and heavy, and to process a number of large poles will take some time in addition to resourcing them.

I stripped one shirt Barton and left a little bark which gave a texture that spoke differently to what I expected.

I was short of time and didn’t get to burn the wood or test it against copper. However I processed a pile of wood and worked up a sweat despite the cold. I want to capture the whiteness of the wood Before it greys. The contrast to be pronounced when I burn one end.

Staining paper to in preparation for drawing letting the inks ‘bleed out’, possibley another form of dismantling my work.

Research: artists, context and connecting theory.

During making I also recorded the sound of me working - I thought of my friend who I’m collaborating, with who’s first instinct is a musician, I figured it would be fun and provocative to make a recording of the sounds of me working on the sculpture for our collaboration and send it to him instead of pictures///

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Currently Reading///Researching

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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

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Trashed

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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///

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Key wOrds///

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Key words from drawing and researching today, in no specific order///

Burnt sugar

Bundle

Wad

Banding

Strap

Steps (descend ascend)

Return>>>

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I feel like making large format drawings in oil. Large greasy drawings, I desire to see thick black and sepia marks commanding the paper.

Portraiture

I still really enjoy making drawings. I feel guilty as though I am old fashioned stuck in craft, but I find making marks, making certain drawings so satisfying. The feel it has, the presence it carries. I worry as it feels as though there is no concept, idea or thought in the work. Just self indulgence and showing off. That there isn’t really a place for it in contemporary art. Is representational art over.

What is the purpose of portraiture today? Where does the thinking and conceptual value lie? Observation? Deep observation of an individual.

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Bundles

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Note: The blog doesn’t have to be journalistically written. It’s too self conscious, lacks honesty as it’s more performative. It can be notes, lists, images. A subconscious free flow is perhaps better. I have also included a bad photo and resisted the temptation to edit too much.

Bundles today I like bundling objects - multiples. I want bundles of all sorts of things.

Plaster dipped burnt wood. Pelican feathers. Sculpt a pelican in hard plaster?

It was good to get my hands on materials - finally collecting some copper and wicks. The materials tease me. Just their presence goads next to create, something anything.

I’m conscious that I want this blog to be written in a much more analytical and academic fashion, with pithy insight and formal art history references. But I will leave it at… today I like bundles and materials.

Re Image/// The place of drawing. I love these organic and diagramming drawings. They feel like they have such a strong place in art/ artists process.

Image from: Theaster Gates P112

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Vertical and Horizontal

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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

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Theres a maxim

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?

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It's not funny

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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.

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Relief

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I made the relief as a demonstration for a student. Pulled up an image of a masters work. Albrecht Durer. It was a image of an old man again, can’t get enough of them although I still haven’t ascertained why. (My own aging? A too easy an explanation)

The materials felt good in my hands and the work came together quickly. It doesn’t feel finished but it felt good to leave it where it was. I could refine it to a much more finished level but that seems dull and trite somehow.

Yet there is something that happens when I make things, physical materials in my hands. I love the crafting. But it seems self indulgent and absent of thought.

Why make it?

Who cares?

What purpose does it serve beyond a teaching aid?

But still it feels satisfying and perhaps hidden deeper is a purpose, a thing that needs to be made, an idea as yet brought to realisation.

Elusive in its simplicity.

There are a number of pieces I want to make:

Immerse sculpture

Axe for the boundaries

Portraiture in drawing and relief

Abstract prints

Not sure how they all relate and are they worth pursuing?

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Honesty///

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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

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Proof & Approval

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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

Half Blind Prophet

Wild haired, wild eyed, truth teller. The half blind prophet. Sometimes I discover a person who noticeably unsettles me, their way of seeing, speaking, being, some minutiae that burrows into my psyche and irritates me, not permitting me to carry on the way I have been.

Red Biro Number 3

The drawings are becoming about a particular kind of strength now - not a physical prowess but a resilience, experience balanced with focus.

This might become a thing.

Old men rendered in red biro. No I don't know if this has more meaning to it yet, but I kinda like the idea of finding out. It feels good - strange how some work can connect on different unspoken levels. I really just like drawing like this.

Something about drawing...

There is something about drawing I love, can't leave behind. I find my mind wanders magnificently to completely unrelated topics, during the process of mark making.

Leather Quiver Commision

FInished and exactly on time (very proud of that). Made in collaboration with Jono Retallick.
Larger format leather quiver embossed, hand cut, formed and stitched. Took a bit of figuring out but came together really well.