Thursday, 13 June 2024
Sunday, 31 March 2024
Curatorial Architectures/Assemblages : Transactive through interventions/a sensorium for display.
Matter/Making in Space : Passages in Sculpture
Working Notes 2018/19
Curatorial Architectures/Assemblages
Speculative Spatial/Curatorial Practices incorporating Fine Art and Architecture.
The Studio is no longer a retreat but it now integrates.
It is all exterior.
Ways of Curating, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Constructing active research material that becomes transactive through interventions and installations of display.
Blurring art and the everyday rituals of creative enterprise and survival.
Seeking to create innovative and immersive exhibition formats/situations that seek to engage a discursive and informed audience.
Building Relationscapes
Movement, Art, Philosophy
Sensorium
Embodied Experience
Technologies and Contemporary Art
Erin Manning
Caroline A, Jones
Playing with INTERTEXTUALITY
Setting the Stage MAKE SPACE
Immersive
Alienated
Interrogative
Residue
Resistant
Adaptive
Interactive Workshop
Exhibition
Presentation
Open Texts
RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENTS
ARCHITECTURE, ART and Design Interiors
URBAN FALLOW (10 Days in the Laundry)
OPERATIVE DESIGN
CONDITIONAL DESIGN
ON MAKING SPACE
THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS
BODY, EMOTION and the Making of Consciousness
Art Practices : the chaos of subjectivity and the organisation of a creative environment.
Tuesday, 13 June 2023
Temporal Perspectives/Relationscapes : Urban Space and Place/Transactive Memory/Outpost Studio Space Norwich
Movement : Art : Philosophy : all a movement of thought that moves a body. Erin Manning
The Studio is no longer a retreat but it now integrates. It is all exterior.
Ways of Curating, Hans Ulrich Obrist. 2014
Temporal Perspectives : Urban Space and Place
Space and Place
The Perspective of Experience
Yi-Fu Tuan
Experiential Perspective
Space, Place, and the Child
Body, Personal Relations, and Spatial Values
Spaciousness and Crowding
Spatial Ability, Knowledge, and Place
Architectural Space and Awareness
Time in Experiential Space
Intimate Experiences of Place
Attachment to Homeland
Visibility : the Creation of Place
Time and Place
for
space
Doreen Massey
Living in Spatial Times
Instantaneity/depthlessness
A Relational Politics of The Spatial
Making and Contesting time-spaces
The Forum, Norwich : Research Outpost #2
RELATIONSCAPES
Movement, Art, Philosophy
Erin Manning
Prelude : What moves as a body returns as a movement of thought
Something in the world forces us to think. This something is not an object of recognition, but a fundamental encounter.
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
AN
ANTHROPOLOGY
OF
LANDSCAPE
Christoper Tilley, Kate Cameron-Daum
Materiality
From our perspective in this book representations of landscape, textual or pictorial, are of secondary significance and we should treat them as such; they are selective and partial, and often highly ideological, ways of seeing and knowing.
It forms a material medium in which we dwell and move and think.
Redirecting the study of landscape from representation to the materially grounded messiness of everyday life and the minutiae of material practices that constitute it.
Landscapes are contested, untidy and messy, tensioned, always in the making. Our landscapes of modernity are frequently on the move and peopled by diasporas and migrants of identity, people making homes in new places.
Field Observations
Spatial relations within the landscape are complex.
The manner in which persons and their bodies cannot be understood apart from the landscapes of which they are a part, reciprocally involved in forms of movement, action, awareness and social memory.
Embodied Identities
Art in and from the landscape
Fragile Environments : Nature and Culture
On Ways of Walking and Making Art
A personal reflection
M Collier
Making art is a practical application of phenomenology
Engaging with an embodied experience of space and depth (what Merleau-Ponty called the 'flesh of the world').
WATERLOG
Journeys Around An Exhibition
Landscape and Memory
AFTER SEBALD
Essays and Illuminations
Edited by Jon Cook
Transactive Memory
Systems Virtual Teams
The Body
Minds and Metaphors
Laban-CHOREUTICS
The Mind In The Cave
David Lewis-Williams
The Matter of The World
Minds and metaphors
Cathedrals of Intelligence
The 'Looking mind'
Information Processing and Performance in Traditional and Virtual Teams
The Role of Transactive Memory
Terri Griffith, Margaret A. Neale
Acquisition/Sharing of Implicit and Explicit Information
Organisations increasingly rely on teams to do much of the work traditionally accomplished by individuals.
Successful groups are those who are able to create synergies in the form of information aggregation and innovation that is beyond the ability of any single member.
Nascent Knowledge
Information Diversity
Task Conflict
The knowledge and perspectives of group members from the same social networks may be more redundant than diversified. However a total diversity among work group members is not desirable; some 'redundancy' (agreement in perspective) among group members is necessary to ensure enough common ground to facilitate successful group interaction.
Transactive Memory : Knowing and Accessing What We Know
For teams to have synergy they must be able to access their information, it is important to know who does what.
Wegner 1987; 1995)
RELATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
TIME
Synchronous/ Asynchronous
COMMUNICATION
Transactive Memory : A Contemporary Analysis of the Group Mind
Daniel M. Wegner
The study of transactive memory is concerned with the prediction of group (and individual) behaviour through an understanding of the manner in which groups process and structure information.
Individual Memory
Information is entered into memory at the encoding stage, it resides in memory during a storage stage, and is bought back during the retrieval stage.
Organisation : differentiated/ integrated
Label
Location
THE LABAN SOURCEBOOK
Dick McCaw
Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was a pioneer in dance and movement, who found a extraordinary range of application for his ideas; from industry to drama, education to therapy. Laban believed that you can understand about human beings by observing how they move, and devised two complimentary methods of notating the shape and quality of movements.
Diagram : Three Planes of Movement from Choreography
Inner and Outer Tension : Inner and Outer Form
CHOREUTICS : Principles of Dynamic Space and Movement
Choreutics presents the grammar and syntax of spatial form in movement and the nature of movement's harmonic content.
Effort
Exertion of Power, Physical or/and Mental
Force
Space
Time
Flight
Indulging/Contending
SPACE Flexible/Direct
WEIGHT Light/Strong
TIME Sustained/Quick
FLOW Free/Bound
Shadow Moves
An acute observer of Shadow Movement of a person in different situations and at different times will show the consistency of that individual's basic attitude and personality.
Effort and Recovery
Movement Psychology
Thinking
Intuiting
Sensing
Feeling
POST STUDIO
Daniel Buren
Rem Koolhaas
The development of subjectivity as spatiality hinges on architectural construction and is written in the very articulation of architectural discourse.
Atlas of Emotion : Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. Giuliani Bruno
The Mobile Home
A space is something that has been made room for ... A boundary is not that at which something stops, but as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that which something begins its presencing. That is why the concept is that of horizons, that is, the horizon, the boundary. Space is in essence that which room has been made, that which let into its bounds. That for which room is made is ... joined, that is, gathered, by virtue of a location, that is by such a thing as a bridge.
Martin Heidegger. 'Building Dwelling Thinking'
House (Gendered House) is actually, both a private museum and a public library. It is a laboratory built on the threshold of diverse and interpretive and creative perimeters, binding architecture to the cinematic/everyday drama of statis and movement in the sensing of space.
The Voyage of Modernity, Guiliani Bruno.
Artist Statement re application for Outpost residency at Gildengate House, Norwich.
Using simple apparatuses (pinhole cameras) and the urban environment my practice gathers up time based evidence of everyday activities and render them into a surface of seamless abstractions. These surfaces prompt me to inquire into particularities of place, its after-image and our
subjectivity/objectivity of the photographic document that is itself permanently extracted from the flow of contexts.
I am interested in bringing these speculative findings/sequences into the interior space and time/situation of an exhibition.
The photographic surface has a pathology of looking built into its aesthetic, it takes the urban fabric of human circulation and the built environment and articulates a poetic of isolated complexities. I am interested in finding these spaces and presenting them for further analysis.
Selected Images : Pinhole Photography with texts, Winchester Library, Millennium Bridge, London.
Statement of Objectives
Set-up working environment, darkroom, space for large oil drum camera, drawing space and studio for the interaction of other creative/interested practitioners within the Gildengate House/Complex.
Mapping of possible 'sites' within easy reach of the studio, walking the city with the camera to gather both qualitative and quantitative material, building possible narratives and points of departure for further inquiry.
The apparatus of the camera and its functionary act as spatial protagonists creating a psycho- geographical rendering of found and experienced places, this material is returned to the studio to be drawn from and collaged into documents of working ideas.
A dossier of activities and their observations as wall drawings or book works, will begin to form the documentation of the inquiry and suggest possible innovative methods of presentation for exhibition.
Possible Artist's Intentions for the Conclusion of the Residency
I am keen to display the working environment of my practice, its processes and the visualization of my findings, this could be achieved as a working photographic installation, I am reminded of Mike Nelson's installation at the Frieze Art Fair 2006. Other thoughts around dioramas and projections that evoke the feeling of between spaces of the everyday. I feel confident that the residency itself will craft its own innovative response to the agency and inquiry of my activities with others.
Art Based Exhibitions/Working Projects/Collaborative Events/Workshops
Anthropological Entanglements : Strange Tools/An Anthropology of Landscape
Conversations, Collages/Walks and Creative Consciousness. 2018
An exploratory approach into the archives of Waveney and Blyth Arts.
Setting up an inquiry that can become an opportunity for exploration, investigation and exhibition, as well as a place for mutual exchange and support.
Norfolk & Norwich Open Studios. 2018
Visual fine artist working with experimental photography, collage and interior design.
Interior Design MA Degree Show, Farnham UCA. 2015
Presentation of “The Scriptorium” as a speculative learning environment, realized through collage, model making and digital technologies.
The Art Barn, Brockwood Park School. 2015
Design and exhibition of A level student's work, art books, textiles, drawings and paintings.
Yard and Meter, 10 days Creative Collisions. 2013
Collaborative exchange between visual art and poetry. Cyanotype images used as a projection and inspiration for live poetry event and publication.
Angelus Gallery, Winchester College, Winchester. 2013
Setting up of a exhibition, artist's talk and workshop. Works displayed, large drawings, collage, artists journals and research material.
This exhibition attempted to create dialogues between Fine Art, Studio Practice and Interior Design.
Negative Capability, The Link Gallery, The Hyde Artist's Group. 2012
Art and Archaeological study from the site of the Leper Hospital, Morn Hill, Winchester.
Exhibition of large cyanotypes/anthropological forms and drawing frames with alternative photographic processes.
Back To Free School : Drawing out The Archive. Kilquhanity, Scotland. 2011
Speculative practiced based symposium, converted Pottery into a Camera Obscura, drawings and presentation of land art, pathways from sunrise to sunset.
10 Days in The City, Winchester. The Theatre Royal Winchester. 2011
Dressing Room Installation, Darkroom and Studio Space.
Teaching Academy/Re-Imagining Learning, Brockwood Park School. 2011
Performed alternative learning environments, hidden curriculum/architecture without architects in the library, walking/making/thinking in the landscape with clay.
Strong Voices/Interfaith part of Hyde 900. The Link Gallery, University of Winchester. 2010
The Human Body, absences/presences. traces left through drawing and field chalk on paper.
10 Days at The Laundry, Winchester. Urban Fallow Project/Thinking Sociologically. 2009
Large communal arts project organized by The Yard Artists and Winchester School of Art.
Developed a roving pinhole camera from a oil drum which was used as an apparatus and spatial practice from which to engage with other practitioners and members of the public.
Wolvesey Castle,Winchester, Live theatre, music and arts installations. 2007 Installation in the foundations and medieval drainage channels of the ruins.
Childhood “armada” oversized paper boats in restricted area, only accessed via raised viewing platform.
Hampshire Open Studios, Bramdean. 2006
Drawings, artist's books, photography and sculpture all housed in a temporary art space appropriated from a greenhouse (white washed interior throughout with limited access to 2-3 viewers at a time).
Drawing Spaces : Picturing Knowledge (an interactive artwork) 2006 Hartley Library. University of Southampton.
Hampshire Open Studios, Bramdean. 2006
Drawings, artist's books, photography and sculpture all housed in a temporary art space appropriated from a greenhouse (white washed interior throughout with limited access to 2-3 viewers at a time).
Artist Statement 2018
Curatorial Architectures/Assemblages
Spatial Practice could be a program and a site for a critical approach to social engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Praxis could be the energy produced between combining research and creative embodiment as speculative strategies/assemblages.
The Reading Room
Materials and Objects in Social Space
Spatial Practices in The Politics of Things
'Ordinary things contain the deepest mysteries'
Russell Moreton has developed a practice that continues to explore and build interests between the post studio operations of the contemporary artist and the new curatorial assemblages of the 21st Century. He is actively constructing research material that becomes transactive through interventions and installations that are in affect blurring art and the everyday rituals of creative enterprise. Through processes of almost anthropological mappings he attempts to create innovative and immersive exhibition formats that seek to engage a discursive audience.
Museum Director, Curator, Collector. Artist, None of that means anything anymore.
J. Rhoades. 1998
The Studio is no longer a retreat but it now integrates. It is all exterior.
Ways of Curating, Hans Ulrich Obrist. 2014
Outpost Studio Application
Visual artist working with, drawing, alternative photographic processes and installation.
My contemporary practice utilises and explores the notion of creative working and learning spaces, I am interested in the ability that contemporary arts practitioners develop and craft a praxis between the practical aspects of their practice and its theoretical underpinnings/findinqs. I find these interior spaces and their unique subiectivities/ecologies to be the real value of contemporary arts production. My work seeks to explore and present these findings through, installations, workshops, drawings and photographic presentations.
I am currently developing ideas around immersive studio spaces/obiects/events that can act as catalysts/containers for my speculative researches into Gaston Bachelard's, Intuition of the Instant.
My reading of the text has opened up for me possibilities and thresholds that could be developed through installation, and spatial practices.
I am interested in using the studio space as both a speculative site that supports my practical experimentation and for theoretical research questions and contexts that may be further developed. The central urban location reflects my previous studio space in Winchester which allowed interactions through the fabric of the city and the social networks of institutions.
Selected Workshops and Short Courses
Lost Wax and Kiln Fired Glass : Liquid Glass Centre, Trowbridge 2006.
Pinhole Photography with Stuart Quinnell : Bradford on Avon 2005.
Drawing Course with Michael Grimshaw : Winchester School of Art 2004-2005
Mono Printing and Life Drawing : West Dean College 2002.
Life Sculpture with Les Johnson ; The Vine Centre Basingstoke 2001-2003
Life Drawing : Adult Education Weeke Centre Winchester 1993-2003
Photography Liquid Light with Yoko Matse : West Dean College 1998.
Picture Framing, Box Mounting and Art Conservation, West Dean College 1995.
Master Class in Glass Painting with Paul Quail: West Dean College 1987.
Russell Moreton a visual artist who uses simple gestures of drawn human traces gathered and presented amongst natural materials. Materials and processes are employed to further underpin our sense of place and time. The choice of materials gathered together implies a personal geography, with both an emotional and aesthetic sense of locality and place.
Currently using trace outlines from the human body, together with cyanotype liquid as a process for registering natural plant forms and other involuntary/found objects. Drawings are further annotated with astronomical charting and research notes from the practice. Previous experience in ceramics, glass and the construction industry is promoting my work into the realm of architectural space.
Tuesday, 4 April 2023
Open Studio/Cyanotypes and Collages : Harleston Revisited/Norfolk and Norwich 2018
Inside Public Art Museums
Carol Duncan
Julian Stair
Quietus reviewed
Archaeology of an exhibition
Spirituality in Contemporary Art
The Idea of the Numinous
Jungu Yoon
The Aesthetics of Silence
Susan Sontag
A Field Guide To Getting Lost
Rebecca Solnit
Essays On The Blurring Of Art And Life
Allan Kaprow
Ways of Curating
Hans Ulrich Obrist
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
On Show : Contemporary ceramics in the Goodison gift in the context of a historic museum collection.
A rare opportunity to hear different perspectives on how the art of display can animate objects and deepen insight into historical collections.
Art has the power to affect our thinking, changing not only the way we view and interact with the world but also how we create it. In Art and Mind, Ernst van Alphen probes this idea of art as a commanding force with the capacity to shape our intellect and intervene in our lives. Rather than interpreting art as merely a reflection of our social experience or a product of history, van Alphen here argues that art is a historical agent, or a cultural creator, that propels thought and experience forward.
Art in mind : How contemporary images shape thought
Ernst van Alphen
Walking and Mapping
Artists as Cartographers
Karen O'Rourke
A Bigger Splash
Painting after Performance
Catherine Wood
Wednesday, 18 January 2023
Post Studio Practices : Mattering in Situated Places.
Studio Apparatus/Scriptorium
Matter in Space : Passages in Sculpture.
The Sensing Of Spatial Agency.
Working Notes 2018/19
Curatorial Architectures/Assemblages
Speculative Spatial/Curatorial; Practices in Fine Art and Architectures
The Studio is no longer a retreat but it now integrates.
It is all exterior.
Ways of Curating, Hans Ulrich Obrist
Constructing active research material that becomes transactive through interventions and installations of display.
Blurring art and the everyday rituals of creative enterprise and survival.
Seeking to create innovative and immersive exhibition formats/situations that seek to engage a discursive and informed audience.
Building Relationscapes
Movement, Art, Philosophy
Sensorium
Embodied Experience
Technologies and Contemporary Art
Erin Manning
Caroline A, Jones
Playing with INTERTEXTUALITY
Setting the Stage MAKE SPACE
Immersive
Alienated
Interrogative
Residue
Resistant
Adaptive
Interactive Workshop
Exhibition
Presentation
Open Texts
RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENTS
ARCHITECTURE, ART and Design Interiors
URBAN FALLOW (10 Days in the Laundry)
THE CURSE OF THE CONTEMPORARY
OPERATIVE DESIGN
CONDITIONAL DESIGN
ON MAKING SPACE
THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS
BODY, EMOTION and the Making of Consciousness
Art Practices : the chaos of subjectivity and the organization of self
DRAWING, line, shape, volume, light.
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Studio Bookcases : Sociological Registers
Installation/Intervention of six research bookcase as diffractive elements in the studio space.
Sunday, 16 October 2022
Performative Documentation : Time as both a structure and an event
DID SOMEONE SAY PARTICIPATE? AN ATLAS OF SPATIAL PRACTICE.
Edited by Markus Miessen and Shumon Basar
A few notes relating to thoughts and critical theory around which I am beginning to formulate about my practice and its application as a site from which to “stage a performative discourse of exchange”. My Spatial Practice becoming more like a curatorial trans-disciplinary producer of “on-site” exchanges and relations.
PREFACE
PARTICIPATION LASTS FOREVER Hans Ulrich Obrist
The Museum as oscillating between object and process; the “ elastic museum ” as being flexible allowing displays to be placed within an adaptable building. Alexander Dorner,
Ways Beyond Art.
Hans Ulrich Obrist notes Dorners critical remark ’’the museum as a bridge built between artists and a variety of scientific disciplines”. This observation has been taken-up by contemporary curatorial practice with the inclusion of architects, philosophers, political thinkers/theorists and visual artists into the production of exhibitions and events. The contemporary exhibition can be viewed as part of an on-going and indeed a “complex dynamic learning system” quotes Obrist.
One should renounce the closed, paralysing homogeneity of the traditional exhibition master plan. Artworks would be allowed to extend tentacles to other works- and other fields of knowledge. The curator must not stand in the way of such growth. Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Working Spaces, Sites of Inquiry and Dialogue, Spatial Practices, Canterbury 2009
OPEN TEXTS.
Allow readers to have multiple interpretations, they allow for the possibility of “determinations”.
Relationality
Gaps between connecting and disconnecting.
Notion that categories hide and weaken our perceptions of reality.
Fluctuating networks of existential events.
Emergent state of contingences that create materials for relationality.
For me this curatorial setting could be an interesting set of relations that might be rehearsed and re-presented within a “site” ( an intervention and interruption into our notion of place and placed relations).The notion that one could become an active agent and on-site translator amongst this “ trans- disciplinarily” would be worth investigating . The opportunity to be in the position to have dialogue with other practitioners and to negotiate and expand that dialogue between the different realities and fields made apparent by “site“ could produce new relational meanings.
My particular interest is with the production of ephemeral values and situations, free spaces and sites created from the interruption of place. Photography and installation have been used as an intervention into place. The artists Jane and Louise Wilson have successfully used it to present work around the psychology of architectural spaces. This value of psychology tied up with our psychological reality created by the motion of our own emotions as we project ourselves into space, could be presented by some analogy (working device) to theories, or rather theorising with the camera obscura.
Photographic Laboratory, roving camera and apparatuses during the arts event 10 Days in The Laundry, Winchester.
Performative work using the simple enchantment of the pinhole camera to question and explore the extrusive nature of time, performativity and site.
Proposed Title, Molecular Sieve/Photographic Apparatus/Theorising Object
Currently using a spatial practice to investigate issues around architectural influences on the placed self. Utilising the mobility and awkwardness of an appropriated object as an apparatus to both theorise and register spatial relations/phenomena. interested in using the values and traits of transparency and superimposures to describe the dimensionality of dwelling in place, how might these “on-site” recordings become registered into the possibility of a surface membrane of material metaphors of memory?
A performative documentation that makes visible the extrusive nature of time as it accumulates and is deposited on a photographic surface.
This performative investigation utilises a large pinhole chamber which is allowed mobility through the attachment of castors to its base and the use of a sack-barrow for undulating terrain. This apparatus produces through its very inclusion into the “space” a theoretical device centred around and relational to spatial values and influences. My aim is to utilise this device as a means of registering “worksite” both in the duration of the event and in its pre-per formative state. The mobility of this research device could be used to investigate, register and illustrate a constantly changing set of dynamics throughout the site and its event. The use of perhaps adjacent wall surfaces or even a “sandwich-board” could render a tangible re-presentation of spatial information for the visitor. Darkroom facilities could be arranged on-site to complement this work as a “working site” functioning within the orbits of both the other works and their prospective guests.
Contextual Issues. Urban Fallow-Sites.
Brief description about methodologies and goals. Urban Fallow,
Solentcentre for architecture and design.
Urban Fallow aims to develop a pragmatic but fluid approach to public access, cultural intervention, use and temporary transformation of urban spaces.
Urban Fallow is interested in using vacant urban land and spaces. The project is about reanimating these sites through the use of artists, architects, performers and other professionals, all of which have an interest in engaging with the public. This could be undertaken by the use of temporary events and per formative interventions, this would also have an effect on reducing urban blight and help to reinvigorate interest in these sites for potential investment.
Other longer term legacies might include the provision of longer term public access and cultural use even the possibility of a permanent change of use for a chosen site. To help to deliver an “improved perception and identity of the space for the public together with current user groups and prospective developers.”
Winchester, Hyde Abbey Laundry.
A site of approximately 1500 square metres made up of redundant industrial buildings together with a yard. The property is close to Winchester School of Art and the town centre. The Laundry closed in 2007 and has been vacant ever since then. The building in its current state of dis-repair is unsuitable for most purposes. However it is being viewed by creative practitioners from a broad range of practices as potential studio spaces.
Other Documents,
List re, Participating artists, actors, writers, musicians and chef.
Artist Statement/Work Statement as public handouts, made available (resting on apparatus) for visitors. 10 Days at the Laundry, on flickr site with installation images.
The Apparatus/Device/Research Collage
Time as both a structure and an event, photographic image from a moving apparatus
Brief comment around my use of “apparatuses” researched and questioned through the text “The Apparatus” Vilian Flusser.
Definitions, An Apparatus would be a thing that lies in wait or in readiness for something, and a preparatus would be a thing that waits patiently for something.
The photographic apparatus (a camera) lies in wait for photography. A camera is a tool whose intention is to produce photographs. Tools inform the materials, they “work” them.
This fact/interpretation that tools inform materials has interesting consequences. Flusser states, ’’The object( the thing the tool acts on) acquires an unnatural and improvable form, it becomes cultural. The issue is to keep the definition of “apparatus” open and refrain from referring it as a “tool in the service of photography.”
Other issues regard the “recording of something” as an image and the “registering of information” about a specific duration or experiment. Further issues of “intension” and “reading for what destination/purpose” will need to be clarified to continue. At this point I began to view the perspective of the “apparatus” as a sort of carrier and container, a sensor for some type of “isotope.” I imagined that the apparatus was just some sort of “litmus paper” something that functioned as a sort of barometer in the proximity of “site relations” the architectural. The sociological and the encountering and relational element of human curiosity. This rather spatialised concept envisaged human subjectivity as a mapping around scientific and sociological phenomena, a geography brought about by the performativity of place, time as both a structure and an event.
Francis Aly's, POLITICS OF REHEARSAL
“While everything Aly's creates has a simplicity that makes it instantly accessible, his work also offers a complexity that continues to resonate long after it has been seen”. Anne Philbin Directors Forward, Politics of Rehearsal;
Francis Aly's work has up to this point emphasized issues of place (Mexico City in particular becoming his adopted home).Aly's originally trained as an Architect and was practicing as such in Belgium. When he moved to Mexico City in the early 1990s where he began to experiment with art which reflected his own inclination to avoid definite conclusions.
In this sense he was already formulating the notion of a “rehearsal for a presentation that may or not be completed".1 The use of interventional tactics and strategies as a result of a “reaction” to Mexico City and also a way of positioning himself. It is interesting that Aly's continues to make fresh interventions into apparently completed works.
Aly's describes his work in these terms ”a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors or parables, staging the experience of time in Latin America”.2
The Politics of Rehearsal deals with issues around the concepts of rehearsal and repetition, with its “open ended” process which allows specific details to be retained whilst also allow the possibility of others to be reviewed/worked over and possibly changed. This creates an “open site” prescribed around “key” or interlocutory relations that can then be literally presented as being a “presentation” of a process rehearsing for its re-presentation.
This sense of an evolutionary on-going situation, a working site that permit’s the interventions of other activities that pass through and beyond the register of its own narrative space.
What interests me is the notions/propositions of “the rehearsal” as a non-consecutive chronological structure, which does not have to render a specific conclusion, it only has to announce that it is over/finished or ended. It can even announce/negate that their will be “no-rehearsal” thereby paradoxically marking its proposal and place but then deigning its presence in place.
Rehearsal also offers up its space/time relation for performers to re-start, stop and begin again, it allows a multiplicity of spatial relations to be configured in segmented intervals/time slots under a durational influence which is driven by the purpose and intension of a proposal to perform. Aly"s has also utilised the use of the chronicle.
The proposal of “to Chronicle” to record occurrences, a chronicle is always in the end a record of a series of consecutive events, of which there might be no final resolution, but what a chronicle sets out unequivocally and without adjusting the flow of events is to give a precise record/witness that one thing exists prior to the recording of the next.
This particularity is mirrored in some respects by the duration and entropic nature of the photographic surface, what it has in common with the nature of being able to chronicle is that of “times arrow” a precise directional flow, mediated by the amount of light,(too little, no visible traces remain, too much, and what had been recorded is over-written to the point of total obliteration through too much information) The surface literal becomes spent, used up by agencies and proportions of the light based durations. The chronicle remains readable because it keeps-up this the unfolding of events, whilst the photographic surface is rendered un-readable unless it bracketed into individual but sequential episodes.
The notion of episodes and chronicles both require a pre-determination from the outset to create their form, they in effect act by framing segments of “what is occurring” into a prescribed duration or form.
The photographic surface renders consecutive occurrences via a transposition of transparency which produces a superimposure as a direct unequivocal evidence of something having existed before something else.
This marking out, in scripting, overlaying of occurrences as factual specific/spatial realities become relational to themselves through the negative/positive aspect of their physicality.
What the photographic surface lacks is a definitive time-line a frame of reference in proximity to the information which has become abstractively distant.
The relations of a material or form that can register consecutive occurrences and still register the totality of an event as a surface, a transparency of episodes.
1 Russell Ferguson, Politics of Rehearsal, (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2008)
2 Interview with Russell Ferguson.