Tuesday 28 March 2017

Blueprints : Anthropological Forms

We sense the reality of something precious and mysterious, which reaches out to us with a claim that is in some way not of this world.

This is no longer a person, but the 'mortal remains' of a person. And this thought fills us with a sense of the uncanny.



The body is being reclaimed for this world, by the rituals which acknowledge that it  also stands apart from it.

The human form is sacred for us because it bears the stamp of our embodiment.

Beauty, Roger Scruton

Botanical traces with leper graves
Cyanotype material on paper 1400x2400cm





Wednesday 15 March 2017

Clay/Jug and the Primacy of Being :The Potter and The Philosopher

Working Notes. Visuals and Text

Clay and the Primacy of Being
The Potter and The Philosopher

Innerness and Defined Space

Manifesting the everyday crafts of life in a physical form











The Potter ( Hans Coper) and the Philosopher (Martin Heidegger),
Throwing, Building, Dwelling, Thinking.


The innerness of a ceramic vessel can be seen to be dealing with presences and absences, as like that of a building it can demonstrate the presence of its making and the absence of that same presence.


The Philosopher. Martin Heidegger.

Building Dwelling Thinking. 1951
Heidegger “resolutely romanticised the rural and the low-tech before, during and after Nazism, skating dangerously close to fascist rhetoric of blood and soil.1

Architecture can help to centre people in the world; it can offer individuals places from which to inquire for themselves. Heidegger felt that this was how architecture had been understood in the past, and that the insatiable rise of technology had obscured that understanding.

Heidegger interested on centring his qualities of architecture around those of human experience, to reintegrate building with dwelling, making the qualities of its inhabitation become part of the buildings authenticity to its locality.

This almost vocational unfinished architecture finds itself more at home with the ongoing daily life than any sort of finished product.”2

Contemporary architects of which Peter Zumthor is an exemplary example utilise and readily acknowledge the influence of Heidegger’s thinking. The inner spaces, the materiality and the locality are all directly traceable to traits found in Heidegger’s notion of the value of human presence and inhabitation.

Heidegger claims for architecture “the authority of immediate experience3

As recorded in his most architectural writings.

The Origin of the Work of Art 1935/trans 1971
Being and Time 1927/1962
Art and Space 1971/1973

“To Heidegger, proper thinking was highly tuned to the fact of being and its traces. These traces, like our own shadow, the outline of the hills or the sounds of birdsong and stream, remain reminders of our miraculous presence,”4

Building locates human existence,
Heidegger “ believed that building was set out around human presence, configured by it but also configuring the activities of that presence over time”5

This almost vocational activity of building human presence it at the heart of what it means “to dwell”, the poetics of which form the phenomenological inquiry of Gaston Bachelard’s, Poetics of Space. Heidegger acknowledges that the inhabitants lives are in turn configured by the building.

Adam Sharr, notes that “for Heidegger, a building was built according to the specifics of place and inhabitants, shaped by its physical and human topography.”6

Heidegger on Thinking,
The forest track, the clearing, wandering from a starting point and remaining open to findings reached on the way, it could not be readily summarised or contained by a system. It was referential, mystical model that sought to promote the authority of being.

Heidegger on the Void at the centre of the Jug.7

Made from earth/clay/fire connected the human experience of earth and sky. Heidegger attributed sacred qualities to the jugs ability to give/to pour. Part of his fourfold cosmology of earth, sky, divinities and mortals. This “fourfold” represents Heidegger’s attempt at what he judges to be the most primary circumstances of existence, “ the inescapable pre-requisite of the world into which humans are thrown without consent (1962,164-168).

Mythic and mystical, far from the strictures of logical thinking.
Influences on the “fourfold”
Meister Eckhart/mystic theologian.
Lao Tse/eastern philosopher.
Friedrich Holderlin/poet.

George Steiner on the “fourfold” suggests it is a manifestation of an “ideolect” a personal language offered as universal.
Heidegger would refute this on the grounds that it is our technocratic conception of the world that is unhinged not his.

Heidegger: A mysticism that seems to border onto/into the realm of site specific art?
Waverley Project 2014.

Spaces and Shadows in Architecture, Defined Light and Volumes.
In Praise of Shadows. Junichiro Tanizaki
Architectural Voids/ Spaces only assessable whilst under construction, scaffolding and specific access points, maintenance and service corridors/rooms.

Kengo Kuma on “Ma” a void or pause, a rich emptiness, it can be created in many ways: through the
effect of light, or through attention to details.8

Being close to things, Heidegger on Nearness.

“The thing is not “in” nearness, “in” proximity, as if nearness were a container. Nearness is at work in bringing near, as the thinging of the thing,”(1971:177-178)9

This spatial complexity ( Critical Spatial Practices) suggests that we do indeed think through things, this is picked up by Tim Ingold in The Perception of the Environment (Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill) 2000.

Also see, The Politics of Things/Immediate Architectural Interventions : Durations and Effects. Alres/Lieberman 2013.

On building a house. Ingold.
“The architect, then, conceives the lineaments of the structure, while the builder’s task is to unite the structure with the material”10

Simon Unwin defines architecture as “the determination by which a mind gives intellectual structure to a building”, whereas building is “the performance of physical realization”, of which “a building” is the product. (Unwin. Understanding Architecture 2007)

Heidegger notes that “nearness is a fundamental aspect of human experience, and as such it can be experienced and appreciated through the tactile, cognitive and sociological familiarity of things”11

It is a this relationship of nearness to the daily intricacies of living, being/becoming and dwelling that Heidegger’s philosophy is appropriated into architectural theory and practice. “Nearness thus becomes a function of immediacy : in that one is near to what one finds immediate, however far away it may be.”

For Heidegger, the definite characteristic of a thing (of a pot) is its possibility to bring people nearer to themselves, to help them engage with their existence and the fourfold.12

Heidigger attributed both the Jug and Buildings the potential to gather up and to be able to carry connotations of meeting and assembly, the jug and the building both have a corresponding void, that has the potential to contain/embody his preconditions of existence (the fourfold). This sensing space/void/Ma, can be reflected in the interiors of architecture and can be found within innerness spaces of objects.

The pot like the building participates in daily life.
This can be further theorised into the realm of building social spaces.
In Heidegger’s reasoning by using a table we are in effect constituting ourselves in the process of dwelling, by moving the table to accommodate the needs of its users, we are in effect turning the room back into a building.

Heidegger’s building and dwelling take place together over time, forming ongoing relationships with the world. Like the Potter in his Studio, these critical spatial relations inform both the working practice and the situation and biography of their making.

“Heidegger suggested that it was this disruption of relations between building and dwelling, rather than the production of houses, that remained the most important plight in the contemporary world”13

Piety of Thinking. 1976 (Piety for Heidegger listened to and facilitated the world around)14
Quietude : Allow and enabling what is already there.
Silence in Ceramics. Coper/Rie.

Clay and the Primacy of Being.
Studio Spaces.
The residents’ dwelling was recorded over time in the fabric of the building and the paraphernalia of their lives placed there.
For the philosopher , buildings are rich in insight, comprising a “workshop of long experience and incessant practice. 1971,161.15



Notes:

1 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects.
2 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 3
3 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 3

4 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 7
5 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 9
6 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 10
7 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 30
8 Kengo Kuma. Sensing Spaces. Royal Academy of Arts. 2014, 65
9 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 35
10 Tim Ingold. Making. 59
11 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 35
12 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 35
13 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 43
14 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 45

15 Adam Sharr. Heidegger for Architects. 71


Wallace Stevens :  Anecdote of the Jar/Vessel takes dominion/Edmund de Waal



Related 

Jackie Leven ; Clay Jug (The Mystery of Love is greater than The Mystery of Death)







Tuesday 14 March 2017

The Architecture and Analogies found in Interior Spaces : Analogue Processes in Photography


 Analogue Processes in Photography 

"The imprint of light on emulsion"

"The alchemy of circumstance and chemistry"


Tacita Dean : Filmworks, Kodak Analogue, page 96/97


Analogue : On Zoe Leonard and Tacita Dean. Margaret Iversen 2012

It is only now, with the rise of digitalization and the near-obsolescence of traditional technology, that we are becoming fully aware of the distinctive character of analogue photography. This owl-of-Minerva-like appreciation of the analogue has prompted photographic art practices that mine the medium for its specificity. Indeed, one could argue that analogue photography has only recently become a medium in the fullest sense of the term, for it is only when artists refuse to switch over to digital photographic technologies that the question of what constitutes analogue photography as a medium is selfconsciously posed. While the benefits of digitalization—in terms of accessibility, dissemination, speed, and efficiency—are universally acknowledged, some people are also beginning to reflect on what is being lost in this great technological revolution

http://murrayguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Iversen-Critical-Inquiry-36-4-Summer-20121.pdf

Translucency/Waverley Abbey, (Harold Brakspear FSA, courtesy of Damien Blower)
Pinhole Photography, Winchester Discovery Centre and Library.

In Solarized Light : The Unbound Body #2
Photogram from Victorian corset.

Concrete Surfaces : Anatomy #2
Dark Gothic Sensuality
Contact Photography
Science and Art

Alternative Processes, Tate Modern.
Photography and Architectural Space.
Cyanotype from Pinhole Camera

Clay Impression : Form and Segments
Surrounding Objects : Critical Proximity ~2
Research Material
Photographic Drawings

PETER ZUMTHOR                 ATMOSPHERES 

Architectural Environments
Surrounding Objects
2006 Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland.

Geodesic Drawings : Observatory #2

Core, Periphery and Semiperiphery : Spatial Drawings #1

EMULSION : Photographic Landscape

A few feet below the ground a thick line of rock would mark us off from all that had gone before. Condensed into that six-inch sooty layer would be our cities, vehicles, roads, bridges, weapons. Also, all sorts of chemical compounds not found in the previous geological record.

Ian McEwan : The Children Act,  2014.


Reverberations from excavated land #1 (Excavated Shells)
Reverberations from excavated land #5 (Leper Graves)

The Leper Hospital : Anthropomorphic Geography/Landscape on Photographic Ground
Against SPACE : Place-Movement-Knowledge

"I wish to argue, in this chapter against the notion of space. Of all the terms we use to describe the world we inhabit, it is the most abstract, the most empty, the most detached from the realities of life and experience."

Tim Ingold

Environments
Land
Earth
Pastures
Country
Ground
Landscape
Indoors
Open
Sky

Air

Excavated Landscapes : Morn Hill #2

































Friday 10 March 2017

Clay : Drawing Forms and Vessels

The vessel inhabits rich, liminal territory of uncertainty and abstraction. (Daintry2007:12)

CLAY : Speculative City : From Pilgrim to Tourist
From Pilgrim To Tourist (or a short history of identity). Zygmunt Bauman.

Clay drawing/situation/collage based on a performative script/reading

Constructed in-situ at the Yard,Winchester. A life-size record and memory of a human presence as a site for mutual introspection.

 Inspired in part from the novel  " The  Children of Men "  by P D James.



Artist Statement/Chapel Arts Residency

Practitioner using the creative receptiveness of material together with the inclusion of drawing to harbour transits and passages of human presence, vulnerabilities centred around the human condition. My work adopts strategies which articulate a sense of absence and anonymity within the abandonment of the work to its location. I feel drawn to this registering of passage, encounter together with its farewell. The choice of materials gathered together implies a personal geography, with both an emotional and aesthetic sense of locality and place. The performative recording by physical means which renders itself as a trace of human presence, now becomes a vacant territory open for the consideration of others.
My work continues to investigate this sense of material response with the performative trace of a human absences. The place-ment of these acts attempts to promote thresholds from which to reflect upon spatial, sociological and psychological conditions and perceptions.
Currently working in clay, low fired to produce and promote a fragile vessel. This vessel is installed to act as a dwelling presence reverberating in a resting place. from which work is drawn into the human form to register a surface of absences resulting from past gestures and solitudes.

Russell Moreton a visual artist uses simple gestures of drawn Human traces gathered and presented amongst natural materials. Exploring themes around the Human condition, vulnerability and abandonment. Materials are employed to further underpin our sense of place and time. The act and gesture of drawing adds a ephemeral mark amongst the materiality and locality of place. Currently using clay to register these themes, installing work Augury Vessel 2010 into Chapel Arts as part of their research residency programme.








































Vessel as a fundamental expression of being and non-being a ‘no-thing’

A vessel is both a hollow receptacle for liquid, and also a place where
“The mind of man balances and reconciles opposites” Tom Chetwynd,

“We turn clay to make a vessel; but it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.” Tzu, Lao, Tao Te Ching.



Around Form and Formlessness.
A Vessel is an effortless three-dimensional manifestation of form and formlessness.

‘The benign existential riddle of the vessel is that we only see the material bit that holds our coffee.’ (Daintry2007:8)



One comes about as a result of the other, and this search has a particular resonance at the beginning of this fledgling millennium as technological progress masks a perilous sense of physical and psychological uncertainty. (Daintry2007:6)

Pottery is bound up with the elemental needs of civilisation.
The search of form/cultural and individual through participating with the potters’ wheel.

Alternative “Thinking”States, Sensing, Doing and Being.

‘Its not easy to talk about sensing, doing and being. They’re not concepts as such, neat little fixed shiny packages of ideas, but more existential states which shift and move as you inhabit them-more amorphous, like clay.’ (Daintry2007:6)

Amorphous values of things/memory manifested through existential states (as a spatial device/movement/atmosphere) in architectural spaces?
Zumthor, Holl,Paalasa, Bachelard.

For the potter the making of a cup or bowl through the opening up or hollowing out of clay is itself ‘an essay into abstraction, a clothing of emptiness’; for a vessel is as much defined by the negative space in and around it, as the skin of the ceramic itself.

This skin is a sort of negotiation between inside and outside, between solid and fluid, and where they intersect. A vessel embodies something and nothing and is an effortless three-dimension manifestation of form and formlessness. (Daintry2007:8)













Thursday 9 March 2017

Fake Fish : Hidden Curriculum (Life-Sensation)

In Defence of Sensuality :  John Cowper Powys 1930.

               
                  Foreword.


The author feels that perhaps some explanation is due to the reader for the rather unusual employment of the word "Sensuality" which serves as the title of this work. The advantage given to the author by the use of this particular expression is that it enables him to proceed from rock-bottom upwards as far as he likes. A more refined title would have cut him off, in his method of developing his idea, from the physical roots of existence; for while it is easy to indicate the overtones and undertones of Sensuality it would be hard to bring a gentle, vague word, like the word "sensuousness" down to the bare, stark, stoically-stripped Life-Sensation which is the subject of this book.


                                                            J.C.P.

                 Dedicated to the memory of that great
                  and much-abused man

                Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Tim Ingold

MAKING 2013
Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture.

Practical Geometry

The Architect and The Carpenter

The Cathedral and The Laboratory

Templates and Geometry

The Return to Alchemy























Tuesday 7 March 2017

The waste City - Perfomance El Prado



Audiovisual product of an artistic project titled The Waste City. 
Consisting of an action with Danza Butoh dancers in the Prado Museum, Madrid's most famous monument. 

Sunday 5 March 2017

A Sense of Looking : A Vicarious Topography

Drawings : Speculative Constructions in Photography

fig478 Photographic Forms/Intervals
Art as Spatial Practice.
Space folds : Containing "Spatialities around historicality and sociality"

"All that is solid melts into air"

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
(Poetic observation concerning the constant revolutionizing of social conditions)

Perceptions now gathering at the end of the millennium. Spatiality, Robert T. Tally Jr. 2013

Possible Worlds
 The Sensual Reciprocity of This Enchanted Isle

fig604 Light is doing things

Autonomous Project/Creative Anarchism
Psychogeography : The Skies over East Anglia (35mm film)

Corporal Trace/Movement
A Sense of Looking : A Vicarious Topography