ZARINA HASHMI /  by Justin Harrison

ZARINA HASHMI - I notice her work has similar motifs to the ‘Bundle’ drawings, in addition her work focuses a lot on displacement. I discovered her trying to wade through a lecture I found by Homi Bhabha. He’s messing with me in a wonderful way. He hits all the notes that connect. I think I’m actually starting to really enjoy researching. Language, displacement, translation, liminal. And I didn’t realise that he was so closely connected to the arts.

I need to investigate her work more.

57:30 These material practices that I have termed the poses of facture are more than mere surfaces of inscription or materials submitted to transformation. They're as active in their signification of cultural translation as any other discursive or semiotic system.

And I have often thought that we have been so trapped in the idea of face-to-faceness or in the idea of binaries or polarities, things that I have resisted thinking about, forms a foreignness or otherness or alterity that there are other ways in which the making of work is also the translation too, the making of work is the encounter with alterity and I find that very much in her(Zarina Hashmi) case.

Bhabha Homi

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

 

Minor Literature in a Major Culture Language - Deleuze /  by Justin Harrison

Minor Literature in a Major Culture Language

Cathedral Machine

Cathedral of Capitalism

Vectors of resistance

Deterritorialisation - Deleuze

Naustalgia

Does no the digital world lend itself to control and observation

Art might be absurd but is the status quo any less?

If Kafka's work is a rhizome, then its expression does not crystalize into a unifying form; instead the expression is a proliferation of different lines of growth. The work resembles crabgrass, a bewildering multiplicity of stems and roots which can cross at any point to form a variety of possible connections. Reading can participate in these connections; a reader makes connections as he reads. He need not interpret and say what the text means; he can discover where passages in the text lead, with what they can be connected. The result is not an interpretation but a map,a tool with which to find a way. 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."I The reader becomes a nomad; to borrow a phrase from Lyotard, reading becomes "a nomadic of intensities."7 As such it does not threaten minor perspectives; instead it entertains them, and minor literature works to produce a reading which will constitute its own affirmation.

Deleuze and Guattari - What is a minor Literature

In Kafka: pour une litterature mineure, Deleuze and Guattari enter Kafka's work by considering his mode of expression. What they discover is that expression in Kafka evades the linguistic models that might interpret it-in particular Hjelmslev's distinction between the form of the content and the form of the expression.' Kafka works toward an "unformed expressive material" which, on the one hand, leads to "less and less formalized contents" and, on the other hand, turns the most resistant formalizations into unformed contents as well. Kafka works toward a deterritorialization which cannot be reterritorialized by an interpreter: what he expresses are "states of desire independent of all interpretation," and he expresses these states not in a universal way but as a Jew in Prague, as the writer of a minor literature who finds that if expression provides an escape, it does so in connection with a specific cultural context

Deleuze and Guattari - What is a minor Literature

So Deleuze speaks of territoiralisation and interpretation, Bhabha also speaks at length on interpretation and then Derrida writes to a Japanese friend. In regards to language and it's codification - interpretation is a significant machine who's output is...dubious. How then do we approach the minor literature of art making? Interpreting Art?

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.

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.

Same, not the same /  by Justin Harrison

In the introduction to Foucault’s book ‘The order of Things’ the author references an old encyclopedia with various classifications, in which is a category of ‘Things that from far away look like flies’.

Whilst it is tempting to make comparisons, we must remember our positionality, not just spatially but temporally, conceptually, socially and critically.

Homi Bhabha describes that there are differing scalar effects of different angles of view through the intersticies. And perhaps I wonder - that one can be so far off that perception is skewed and really comparisons cannot be made.

Perhaps imagine a toy cow 🐄, go to a field of cows hold it up and they might even look the same, in colour, form and scale. However one is not a cow, you won’t get milk out of it. They are the same but not the same.

 

Cleft Paddle - Same, not the same. /  by Justin Harrison

Same, not the same.

More paddles, there is some kind of satisfaction in making these. Touching on presence and absence, time and space. I am also tempted to return to the ‘imaginary bundles’ stacking elements in and around. Items being grouped, bundled and divisible.

I do wonder about the drawing technique - is it too simplistic? Childish. I find it is a useful short hand to explore the negative, which I am also making up larger in card. I still want to make large drawings more involved and descriptive.

Also what am I saying about the paddle? Anish Kapoor talks with Homi Bhabha about making series - the value to it. But I don’t want to be repetitive and not develop my visual language alongside my research.

I keep on finding more connections to space and time and I’m not sure I can justifiable pull them altogether. I’ll try to document as much as possible but it feels like the accumulation of information and evidence is becoming overwhelming. Just trying to find a system to categorised and catalogue everything would be a work of art worthy of an MA in itself.

 

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.

 

Negative paddle recycled /  by Justin Harrison

A quick experiment/Physical sketch - gluing recycled packaging together, I plan to add black paint to emphasise the negative space. Also need more card. It came together relatively quickly and I hope to get it concluded pretty soon. I especially like the departure from straight lines caused by the indents in the packaging. It gives it a new dialect that I hadn’t anticipated.

Again I notice I am repurposing rePlacing materials, a new identity and yet a previous history. Moving across time and intent and purpose. Making small spaces, aspects, interstices.


 

Studio Notes - Jointed Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

Previously I had cut a joint into a length of Holly. It had a resonance that I especially liked. So now I am embarking on making a full length paddle form. I don’t need it to perform or look exactly like a paddle but take essential qualities from one.

I find all the wood I use fallen and never cut it from a live tree. It’s left behind too. The branch is particularly straight but I suspect it could be interesting if it had a noticeable bend in it. But for now I just want to get this made and se what it says to me.

I need to cut two fairly good joints and I also wonder if its possible to make a ‘universal joint.’

The blade of the paddle is forming but I’m not entirely convinced I like it just yet, however I think it’s best to just let it evolve for now.

Another thought is if I could find a dead standing tree and put a joint into one of it’s larger branches…

 

Studio Notes - Cabinet Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

Cabinet Paddle. I’ve had an old draw knocking around. It’s been waiting for me to do something, so I set to it with a saw. The lock and holes to fit the handle still present, it’s former life still marked, haunting it. (I also like the connection to draws that I have been drawing.)

I’ll put in joints again, the other preoccupation I have, it’s purpose and use rePlaced.

I love the history to the materials again, more than just a cut of wood it’s history marks it and places it in and out of time. ‘Time is out of joint’. (The wood smelt peculiar when I cut it, it’s history was given up in it’s scent, mothballs and varnish and everyday life).

I hope to make this a little better than the current ‘Physical Sketches’, cut the joints nice.

I also had a practice carving it that I will need to cover somehow as it detracts from the dialogue. More copper cladding perhaps.

 

Studio notes Brittle Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

I’ve been in the studio a couple of times in the past week and have been trying to push through some of the ideas that are accumulating. Make lots.

The paddle as a motif and a series is a current preoccupation although I do wonder if it would benefit from abstracting more.

One ‘physical sketch’ came about by just having materials around and placing them together, I saw a relationship between them, brittle and splintered fencing panels)that I currently have ‘in stock’ around the studio) in various shades and tone, gave themselves to a loose form of a paddle - not exact just essences - I liked the departure form a formal representation.

(As a foot not to self the wire brush works really well at selectively removing layers and tones, it enables me to ‘draw’ upon the sculpture).

The paddle feels like it wants be a lot more than a signifier of of a navigational tool. making a series of them in drawing and making gives me time and space to contemplate it’s role which also ties into my research paper. Examining liminal spaces there function and characteristics.

I’m making work a lot looser and rougher than before, I’ve left the craft behind for ‘more production’ I think the work is benefitting from it. Before I erred on the side of craft, which slowed me down and I think sometimes was a cover for a lacking in m conceptual underpinning. That if it was pretty enough I could be forgiven for not really being able to describe what was happening.

All is left clamped up and gluing again, (with a cheeky addition copper that asked if it could be included).

I need to make some room - have a clear up there’s a lot on my workbench still…

 

Translation /  by Justin Harrison

I’m now obsessing which can be a good and a bad thing. The paddle is now a key object, I’m making them in my studio and in my drawings. The tool for navigation, immediate and resides in our hands, yet partners with a craft of some description.

I’ve been listening to Anish Kapoor interviews and reading text as research for y paper - and them there was a brief discussion about making a series of the same object or work can up, and I found it encouraging, to explore an idea - open it up and out. I think I worry that I am just repeating iterations endlessly and that there is no value to it. I am annoined that I feel like I need permission.

The drawings are strangely pleasing for me, I’m connecting with the way the ink bleeds out to granular and the empty negative that it creates.

This particular media I’m using was ironically made by Stuart Smeple in a reaction to Kappor’s Vantablack, it has a quality in its miss use that I especially like. When diluted it has a granular property that separates out into delicious bands of gradients, leaving small tidal marks and tracks. Something deeper in me connects to specific marks, moments. Yet it leaves this gritty feel, like BhaBha’s scalar interstices, the bundle divisable. Collective moments spread across time inconsistently. The bleeding through, the threshold melts, margins fade.

 

I AM EVERYTHING YOU DON'T WANT. I AM EVERYTHING YOU LEFT BEHIND #8 /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

This time I took the wood home. Carried it across London for 2 hours, cos I had other stuff to do. Walked into restaurants and shops clutching the abandoned under my arm, a surrogate father to the unwanted.

The plan is to make another paddle from only the constituent parts.

We’ll see there’s a lot of stuff mounting up in the studio that is half made…

 

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

 

Translation /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

Translation can be more than just. language:

Objects, people, time, thoughts, feelings, beliefs

Many things can be translated, their location and nature moved.

Categories are a important but not essential structure and often articles can 'bleed' through into another. Poetry can become a film, a book can become a painting. Death can become life.

In the moment of translation, something new and generative can happen. Through the interstices - Homi Bhabha.

There is a poetic sense that can be felt around the phenomena of translation, in addition it almost feels divine. That as an act it is the will of a deity becoming manifest.