Liminal Landscapes /
Bodies without flesh or bone
Partially present
Dead Quiet in their slow overwhelming absence
Insubstantial
Far off the light might be fading
Or resisting
The map has bled into the earth
The colours and key, now clay
Navigation a vapour
A whisp
That briefly curls in the air
We stand on the shore
thresholds
We are Unable to cross
Boundaries
We are unable to comprehend
The mist
A veil
The land
Sleeps
I
Wander
Follow on from post: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time' /
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
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Piping-Nozzles-Stainless-Decorating-Cookies/dp/B085DL7RSW/ref=sr_1_41?keywords=extra+large+piping+nozzles&qid=1679841459&sr=8-41
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tabiger-Oversized-Decorating-Stainless-Supplies/dp/B09VGHPJS2/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=extra+large+piping+nozzles&qid=1679842267&sr=8-5
Ernst Haeckel /
Ernst Haeckel - inspiration of form and colour. Beautiful and yet loaded.
How can drawing convey more than the subject? How can tiny apertures release greatness?
Out of small comes abundance (TD Jakes)
I’m keen to use natural materials and not interfere - yet I do find key colours come that I am drawn to. Collect and muse upon.
Minor Post: Burnt Kenotics /
Burnt wood
Burning an emptying out of the self
Burning consumption reduction to carbon, heat, light
Forest fire
The forest poured out.
The liminal emptying out of the emptiness
Disintergration
Studio /
I don’t know what I’m doing to be honest. But It kinda feels ok or even right. I’ve constructed this monsterous stencil from collected disposed of card. Almost like what one would do when cast adrift on a desert island cobbling together some sort of improvised solution.
It’s growing into some large drawing, evolving. It’s not finished, I have more to do…when I figure it out.
I’m looking for the work to have ‘presence’ for the drawing to move in some way. I’m deliberating - what does it need want. How does it speak?
I stop the drawing for now and lay out more materials on my bench - various types of wood I’ve collected. This has now become part of my process, to collect and set out materials, give them space to breath and speak to me. I strip the laminated boards I found and break them down into slats constituent elements. I’m processing materials looking for dialogue.
It’s a mush mash of materials, I don’t know what I’m doing but its ok. I’m asking questions of the material and myself. I start sanding a fence panel and that feels ok or am I repeating everything? Am I genuinely experimenting? I want to develop more the initial trials that felt successful. The clay drawing. The looped animation, and where are the films I was promising to make?
And conclusions what can I conclude? Or do I just make…
Minor Post: Boundaries and boarders to translation. /
Boundaries and boarders to translation.
Restraint.
https://bcmcr.org/culturaltranslation/2018/05/13/key-readings-homi-bhabha-on-how-newness-enters-the-world/
Negative Lever II /
Exploring the Negative Lever in the studio, using the card frame as a template I took the outline and had begun to explore it looking at the boundaries and boards it makes.
It gives me the opportunity to work inside and outside, across positive and negative. I was tempted to fill the entire frame in black but something stopped me, something about the quality of the line - the fading and incompleteness…
…and there’s that word again incompleteness, I’m beginning to look at Homi Bhabha again: ‘Translation and Displacement’ and ‘How newness enters the world’. Engaging with boundaries and boarders.
Minor Post: Boundaries /
Boundaries and borders not just geographical but cultural, social, intellectual… how are they given, accepted, defined and disrupted?
Stuff /
Been getting into this guy for a while - I’m taking note of what. I naturally look at and ma drawn to. Lots of outdoor living - forest skills. Exploration of the wilds.
It’s the land, the spaces that are unoccupied, borderless boundaryless. No buildings, no people, no structures.
I am naturally looking at outdoors videos. Crafting temporary shelters. Navigating. Falling down.
Removing ourselves from what has been given to us as dwelling.
Dwelling.
Navigation. Where there is no land or territory.
Minor Posts /
I’m super busy at the moment with work and uncomfortably can feel I am loosing momentum. I am in the studio but in a different state, contemplating how my work can develop. I like the results of the fast studies but I do wonder how I conclude some of the work, not finish but draw to moment in the work that makes sense or is at least interesting.
I had a thought today and will try to make ‘Minor posts’ less writing more brief thoughts. I seem to do better when I am not labouring my ideas or work. Minor posts can be as simple as I like - the idea to be continually processing with out the burden of performance and can complment more considered posts. Well that’s the idea…
Poetic discovery of the hidden /
An interesting conversation in the MA group today, following so questions form JK Andrea gave me a very interesting challenge…
Describe my research/practivce - using new words, ones that I haven’t previously used. Also the word ‘multidisciplinary’ was banned too.
I felt the challenge - it was good one which made me think about my work differently - consider it from different interstices.
I found these words: Poetic discovery of the hidden.
Which felt really good, there was space in them and yet they articulate a lot of what I feel.
Negative Lever /
I’m in the studio processing materials I’ve collected. It’s been a week or so since I was in the forest and all I want to do is amass wood and bits. I think it’s because I am so led by my materials - the feel and presence and history. However I don’t feel comfortable just making cute little bundles. It feels like a ‘get out’ clause - just tie some bit’s together and it will pass as art. I really want more the presence of the artist upon the material leading to its transformation and meaning.
I’m trying to tie up unfinished/explored ideas, the wood I cut is for bundle and more pegs. I make another peg but split the wood nailing the leather into it, the wood is too thin the black tack butchers into it - clefting the slim peg I had cut - need to get some simmer tacks.
I then clear my bench and take a drawing from the card form I had made some time back from disgarded boxes. it’s been on my wall for a while, because I wasn’t entirely sure why I had made it. But I did feel potential to it and now it may lad to sculptural work.
The paper is so large it takes up all available space in the studio and I have to stand in my bench and the paper to work.
The drawing is interesting- nothing too dramatic but I still like it. I would like to make it in black ink and in negative with a watered black wash. It also occurs to me that it would be interesting to make the form in stacked found wood. And a version in negative in stacked found wood. I still have more fence panels and I imagine stacking and gluing it.
SO maybe potential. But also thinking realistically about where I take this all for the MA show…
And what is this piece about - I’ve called it a Negative Lever. More tools for navigation of uncertainty.
A benevolence of dirt /
An experiment in placing words alongside the image. Perhaps more of a graphic design approach to my work but I don’t mind it…for now.
Capitalism doesn't work. A benevolence of dirt. We perform but we don't act.
Also a subtle fast food vendor reference for bonus points…
Also encouraging is that this work has now been accepted for an exhibtion- ‘The Festival of Dissent’. I’ve printed it up to A1 which was pushing the image as it was originally shot on a iPhone. There’s always something and you just have to push and make it work. I’m a little unsure how I feel about it as it’s gone very graphical, but then it also works as magazine spread but a disruption of that media and culture where we obsess about food and being seen eating. Out culture is obscene in how it wastes food stuffs, we have a growing crisis with a huge increase in the use of food banks. We can’t live in denial. Oh and there’s achy reference to fast food to but one subtly.
Refill /
I’m back in the woods harvesting material. I’ve had an idea that’s pressing on me, although I suspect the raw materials won’t be here. I do find something of interest and set to it - cutting disks off a larger fallen tree, It’s hard work - as I cut I looking for an efficiency and wonder what this means also. Why be efficient? Why is production so important. Does efficiency matter in the Liminal?
I like that it’s all cut bulky hand but the novelty is beginning to em wear off.
More importantly I think is that I am in the forest. It’s a place of refilling - even if I don’t get much made. The head space I find is likely more productive…but then do I need to be productive? Or is that a capatilaist conditioned relfex?
Notes on das ding /
Been having a little root around the work of Rick Boothby and Das Ding. Another research rabbit hole courtesy of Jonathan K.
I need to get my head around this but I have the sneaky suspicion that there are some juicy connections to be found amongst, Das Ding (The Unkowable) and Differance. The Abyss, the void, the sacred and anxiety.
Sometimes I land upon certain words or the relationship between words - ‘points of intersection’. I guess that’s why I also write poetry within my work. And ‘anxiety’ has caught my attention. Boothby touches upon this and the Abyssal, the unknown
“What is unknown in the fellow human being”.
“At bottom anxiety is not without an object. It is directly related to the most profound object - das ding. The object that has no exactly known content. The Abyssal object. The primordial stimulant of anxiety.” Boothby reporting Lacan.
“The object potentially being the unrecognisable facet of another human or human object”
Subtracted space.
Uncertainty, Incompleteness. - What we cannot know. Das Ding. Unknowing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmBOWQOrH7g
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Inadvertently I also found a lecture by Stuart Hall on race as a floating signifier. which I need to explore. The notion of a sliding signifier feels like it has a relation to Differance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PodKki9g2Pw
Salt and Sand /
\\\
Salt and sand
Grains of being
Macro essences built into fragile castles
Born of mold and pressure
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Coercion
Scattered by the wind
Breath and bone
Fragile structures stand in obedience
Fall in
///
Root Ball /
///
Assigned passages,
managed,
coerced.
Cursed gates
///
Envicerate the machine
Root ball
Bastard knot
Break the lock
///
FFYAAT /
Kinda wanting to jump start my head, I feel it’s a little soupy right now - I know there is good thread of work to follow, if I could just unravel it from the birds nest of daily weft.
Still wanting to keep some level of animation to my work, not necessarily in any traditional sense but more an energy and activation. Movement/Differance.
Thinking about forest work, buoys to dwell amongst the trees, markers of the liminal, of differance.
Colour tests /
So a whole session in the studio has been spent hand sanding a large diameter copper pipe. I’m allowing myself this indulgence of protracted fussing as I had also just made some faster pieces. It’s a balance right? Well maybe therapy, I had planned to use an angle grinder but it just felt wrong - disrespectful to the metals nature, the spirit of what I want to make. So I make my way up the grit papers. I was planning to go for a mirror polish but it feels tawdry somehow. I plan to knock it back by a grade or two.
It’s a test piece for my collaboration. I felt intimidated by the size and time it required so this a simplified stripped down version. Drawing should have been made at this point. but they are still in the atmosphere - I’ll pull them down later.
The copper is to test it’s reflective capabilities in low light. If it works then Jon and I can push on and develope the piece.
I do feel excited that this can develope and expand, I just need to stay relaxed and flow.
As I edit the photos for this post I also realise - that a comment made by Jonathan has sunk into my mind, and has been resurfacing from time to time. He had mentioned about my use of colour - I need to discuss this through a little more as I’m not entirely sure what he meant but it was encouraging none the less, and I become more aware as I examine the images - some colour and compositional tests.
I also wonder about etching drawing onto the copper, embroiling it and setting things, ideas and feelings into the fabric of the piece.
Also the music I’m listening to is filtering in. connecting and encouraging me. I need to keep a log as I easily forget what blesses my heart and making.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xrmTND6Jo4