Vivi 1207713866|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
How do you feel that the overall discussion went?
Are there any questions you would like to see addressed that have not been addressed already?
michaelfrederick 1205187161|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Introduction: This is a rough version of the introduction to my thesis project which is covering the idea of dialogue as sacred space.
//Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
but the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel.
Pots are formed from clay,
but the empty space between it
is the essence of the pot.
Walls with windows and doors form the house,
but the empty space within it
is the essence of the house
-Uses of Not
Lao Tse, Taoist philosopher on the concept of Ma//
To draw out a map of the grounds I will be traversing through in this essay, I will first
begin with the end. A map is hardly useful for the nomadic wanderer, and although I enjoy going wherever my feet take me, for the purposes of this essay I wish to focus on a specific destination. So allow me briefly to lie out where we will be going and the ideas we will be touching on in order to assure that neither you (nor I) get lost along the way.
I propose to curate the space of listening. That is the space that exists in the in-between—The space between things. I aim to curate this space which is suspended in pure potentiality; knowing only itself as a means unto other means rooted within a complex system of rhizomatic relationships. In order to attempt such a seemingly abstract practice, first let us start with unpacking the notion of listening.
Foremost, it is important to understand the two forms of dialogue that need distinction in order to understand what it means to listen. The first form is dialogue disguised as monologue. Man, gifted with the ability to think, abuses dialogue as if it were a sport, speaking at each other without ceasing until one has overcome the other. This does not necessarily qualify itself as an active argument, but simply out-thinking, and out-speaking the other, as if to prove ones capacity for knowledge. The transaction lacks a receiver and fades away as it fails to reach the ears of the other. This dialogue, tainted by ego is hardly any dialogue at all. Rather, such a transaction might better be understood as mere monologue, disguised as such.
The second form of dialogue is a bit more complicated to unpack however, Buber seemed to have put it best when he described it as process of “becoming aware. ” This genuine form of dialogue is much more than simply exchanging ideas and forms. Rather it is the understanding and acknowledgement of the relationship in itself as a whole. It is a specific care towards the other, which is neither withdrawing from ones’ own self nor is it an objectification of the other. It is an act of taking into account the nature between you and the other. In a person to person exchange, dialogue—in its most essential form, is an organic reciprocal participation in the between nature of things. In short, dialogue is a reciprocal act of listening. In some cases, dialogue necessitates responsiveness. Here however, I wish not to limit it to simply that, for dialogue might also take form within silence.
I will be able to expand on these ideas later on in the essay, but for now let us set them aside so in order to return to the between space in which I am most interested in specifically as a venue for curatorial practice. It is impossible to be sure what exactly this idea fully means, but it does not negate or make arbitrary its sincere investigation. And as a sincere investigation, I wish to introduce the dialogue space.
Inspired by the Guatarri’s notion of the partial object, I wish to transform the galleries into a partial spaces. The partial object is a term that Guatarri refers to in Chaosmosis signifying an art form that refuses such categories as painting, sculpture and installation. The term is understood rather, as surfaces, volumes and devices which “dovetail within strategies of existence.” The partial object is a segment that lies upon a plane of infinite potentiality. Through transforming the ‘architecture’ of the gallery into a partial space, the mode of viewing transforms into a mode of participating within a space that fosters dialogue through panel discussions, readings, workshops, installations, and performances.
The dialogue space has three essential distinguishing characteristics that allow it to take shape. First of all, to begin with the obvious, there needs to be a dialogue. That is, a necessary ongoing exchange of ideas and a drawing awareness of relational values. Without dialogue, as an open-ended processing of space, an important dynamic becomes an idealized form, which prohibits an element of growth. Within the context of our contemporary age, the space needs room for transformation as the pace of our culture continually speeds up. This isn’t to say that the space needs to change with every whim of culture, for that would be only to its grave disadvantage. While making sure the space does not bend backwards to appease the unquenchable desires of society, we aim to brush against that tendency and form a space that counteracts with the patterns of the world and intercourse with it as it embarks upon great transformation. (this could perhaps use more explanation)
The second important characteristic of the dialogue space is modularity. The space needs to move. It has to be willing to be transformed without giving up its transformative qualities. It is a transitive relationship of both give and take. As such, it must be able to sustain itself within different contexts (culture, history, location etc). Originally, the dialogue space was going to exist as a single location. But as I was thinking it through, I felt that it is important for the space to have legs of its own. A single location would perhaps act as a limitation that could prohibit it from moving beyond itself. (this probably needs more explanation too)
The third aspect of the dialogue space that is intertwined with the previous two has both to do with critical and practical output. The previous two would only prove ambivalent without this third trait. To utilize dialogue and its module capacity to provoke and expound upon the between nature of things (through collaborative creative processes) is in its simplest form, what the dialogue space is about. Furthermore, as a collaborative space, the act of listening here is a profound, yet in many ways, a lost capacity. This is evident specifically within the Art world as a monologue disguised as dialogue.
In thinking about a specific practice, dealing with architecture of potential and spaces that are structured as non-structures, I have begun to think about dialogue in motion. Why designate a single space to all sorts of dialogue…wouldn’t that simply place your “non-structure” into a structural paradigm? What if you would continue to shed the skin of the gallery by curating spaces under bridges, at stop-lights, in restaurants, windows and inside other structures (such as museums)? What about curating in schools, theatres, churches and businesses? I want to pursue a curatorial practice that continually pushes against the objectified intentions of particular spaces to reveal the unrealized potentiality with them. If the dialogue space were to become a modular space that could be transported to different areas, different cities, different countries, it would require much more than a mere location scouting. Each location must allow (as would a person to the other in a dialogic relation) its surrounding environment, its people, its culture and traditions to influence how it goes about forming a dialogue with the community. What works in one city might not work in the other, just as what works with one person probably will not work with the other. It is a colliding of ideas, backgrounds and human beings that necessitates a healthy reciprocal communication. Each side has to offer itself to the other by grace as well as understanding in values.
This space, like all space is one of varying processes. A space willingly or not enters into history as a point upon a plane, where various phenomena of intercourse flow in and out. Space is subjected to itself and time. Space might be constructed, refurbished, torn down and or abandoned. It can be created, imagined and forgotten. Unlike these spaces however, the dialogue space will be specifically turned inward on itself in order to investigate these dynamic relationships that ebb and flow through it. Rather than fully defining space, the dialogue space will be a process of becoming, open to change and possibility. It will escape definition in order to allow its history, its culture and its inhabitants to take part in its overall creation. More importantly, the space will maintain an inward self-criticality that molds and shapes it. This molding will take place through literal creative processes that respond to the overall dialogue that takes place within it.
Now the difficulty in this is that there is no formula, no methodology or any sort of model that suits best. If this were the case, I would question its ability to take shape via potentiality. It is a structure that has only a foundation from which to begin where the remainder is suspended as an unrealized potentiality.
Through the remainder of this essay, I will be using the dialogue space as a venue that uses art as a means to understand these complex relationships between man and man (as individuals and as community), between man and nature (as the physical world including all natural phenomena and living things), and God (as an embodiment of both the absolute and infinite). By investigating these three essential relationships more specifically as the between nature of things, I will be able to clarify exactly where the notion of dialogue space originates from and its important implications within the contexts of art and art history.
michaelfrederick 1205187060|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Introduction
//Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
but the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel.
Pots are formed from clay,
but the empty space between it
is the essence of the pot.
Walls with windows and doors form the house,
but the empty space within it
is the essence of the house
-Uses of Not
Lao Tse, Taoist philosopher on the concept of Ma//
To draw out a map of the grounds I will be traversing through in this essay, I will first
begin with the end. A map is hardly useful for the nomadic wanderer, and although I enjoy going wherever my feet take me, for the purposes of this essay I wish to focus on a specific destination. So allow me briefly to lie out where we will be going and the ideas we will be touching on in order to assure that neither you (nor I) get lost along the way.
I propose to curate the space of listening. That is the space that exists in the in-between—The space between things. I aim to curate this space which is suspended in pure potentiality; knowing only itself as a means unto other means rooted within a complex system of rhizomatic relationships. In order to attempt such a seemingly abstract practice, first let us start with unpacking the notion of listening.
Foremost, it is important to understand the two forms of dialogue that need distinction in order to understand what it means to listen. The first form is dialogue disguised as monologue. Man, gifted with the ability to think, abuses dialogue as if it were a sport, speaking at each other without ceasing until one has overcome the other. This does not necessarily qualify itself as an active argument, but simply out-thinking, and out-speaking the other, as if to prove ones capacity for knowledge. The transaction lacks a receiver and fades away as it fails to reach the ears of the other. This dialogue, tainted by ego is hardly any dialogue at all. Rather, such a transaction might better be understood as mere monologue, disguised as such.
The second form of dialogue is a bit more complicated to unpack however, Buber seemed to have put it best when he described it as process of “becoming aware. ” This genuine form of dialogue is much more than simply exchanging ideas and forms. Rather it is the understanding and acknowledgement of the relationship in itself as a whole. It is a specific care towards the other, which is neither withdrawing from ones’ own self nor is it an objectification of the other. It is an act of taking into account the nature between you and the other. In a person to person exchange, dialogue—in its most essential form, is an organic reciprocal participation in the between nature of things. In short, dialogue is a reciprocal act of listening. In some cases, dialogue necessitates responsiveness. Here however, I wish not to limit it to simply that, for dialogue might also take form within silence.
I will be able to expand on these ideas later on in the essay, but for now let us set them aside so in order to return to the between space in which I am most interested in specifically as a venue for curatorial practice. It is impossible to be sure what exactly this idea fully means, but it does not negate or make arbitrary its sincere investigation. And as a sincere investigation, I wish to introduce the dialogue space.
Inspired by the Guatarri’s notion of the partial object, I wish to transform the galleries into a partial spaces. The partial object is a term that Guatarri refers to in Chaosmosis signifying an art form that refuses such categories as painting, sculpture and installation. The term is understood rather, as surfaces, volumes and devices which “dovetail within strategies of existence.” The partial object is a segment that lies upon a plane of infinite potentiality. Through transforming the ‘architecture’ of the gallery into a partial space, the mode of viewing transforms into a mode of participating within a space that fosters dialogue through panel discussions, readings, workshops, installations, and performances.
The dialogue space has three essential distinguishing characteristics that allow it to take shape. First of all, to begin with the obvious, there needs to be a dialogue. That is, a necessary ongoing exchange of ideas and a drawing awareness of relational values. Without dialogue, as an open-ended processing of space, an important dynamic becomes an idealized form, which prohibits an element of growth. Within the context of our contemporary age, the space needs room for transformation as the pace of our culture continually speeds up. This isn’t to say that the space needs to change with every whim of culture, for that would be only to its grave disadvantage. While making sure the space does not bend backwards to appease the unquenchable desires of society, we aim to brush against that tendency and form a space that counteracts with the patterns of the world and intercourse with it as it embarks upon great transformation. (this could perhaps use more explanation)
The second important characteristic of the dialogue space is modularity. The space needs to move. It has to be willing to be transformed without giving up its transformative qualities. It is a transitive relationship of both give and take. As such, it must be able to sustain itself within different contexts (culture, history, location etc). Originally, the dialogue space was going to exist as a single location. But as I was thinking it through, I felt that it is important for the space to have legs of its own. A single location would perhaps act as a limitation that could prohibit it from moving beyond itself. (this probably needs more explanation too)
The third aspect of the dialogue space that is intertwined with the previous two has both to do with critical and practical output. The previous two would only prove ambivalent without this third trait. To utilize dialogue and its module capacity to provoke and expound upon the between nature of things (through collaborative creative processes) is in its simplest form, what the dialogue space is about. Furthermore, as a collaborative space, the act of listening here is a profound, yet in many ways, a lost capacity. This is evident specifically within the Art world as a monologue disguised as dialogue.
In thinking about a specific practice, dealing with architecture of potential and spaces that are structured as non-structures, I have begun to think about dialogue in motion. Why designate a single space to all sorts of dialogue…wouldn’t that simply place your “non-structure” into a structural paradigm? What if you would continue to shed the skin of the gallery by curating spaces under bridges, at stop-lights, in restaurants, windows and inside other structures (such as museums)? What about curating in schools, theatres, churches and businesses? I want to pursue a curatorial practice that continually pushes against the objectified intentions of particular spaces to reveal the unrealized potentiality with them. If the dialogue space were to become a modular space that could be transported to different areas, different cities, different countries, it would require much more than a mere location scouting. Each location must allow (as would a person to the other in a dialogic relation) its surrounding environment, its people, its culture and traditions to influence how it goes about forming a dialogue with the community. What works in one city might not work in the other, just as what works with one person probably will not work with the other. It is a colliding of ideas, backgrounds and human beings that necessitates a healthy reciprocal communication. Each side has to offer itself to the other by grace as well as understanding in values.
This space, like all space is one of varying processes. A space willingly or not enters into history as a point upon a plane, where various phenomena of intercourse flow in and out. Space is subjected to itself and time. Space might be constructed, refurbished, torn down and or abandoned. It can be created, imagined and forgotten. Unlike these spaces however, the dialogue space will be specifically turned inward on itself in order to investigate these dynamic relationships that ebb and flow through it. Rather than fully defining space, the dialogue space will be a process of becoming, open to change and possibility. It will escape definition in order to allow its history, its culture and its inhabitants to take part in its overall creation. More importantly, the space will maintain an inward self-criticality that molds and shapes it. This molding will take place through literal creative processes that respond to the overall dialogue that takes place within it.
Now the difficulty in this is that there is no formula, no methodology or any sort of model that suits best. If this were the case, I would question its ability to take shape via potentiality. It is a structure that has only a foundation from which to begin where the remainder is suspended as an unrealized potentiality.
Through the remainder of this essay, I will be using the dialogue space as a venue that uses art as a means to understand these complex relationships between man and man (as individuals and as community), between man and nature (as the physical world including all natural phenomena and living things), and God (as an embodiment of both the absolute and infinite). By investigating these three essential relationships more specifically as the between nature of things, I will be able to clarify exactly where the notion of dialogue space originates from and its important implications within the contexts of art and art history.
michaelfrederick 1178641904|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Lisa Norton, and the tuned objects class will be having their final critique, hosted by Viviana and a delectable five course meal.
AJR 1178633998|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Greetings -
So, I'm just here to cause problems, but as I mentioned last week, I do hope it's early enough in the game to maybe come up with a different name. It's not that I don't like "Stone Soup", it just seems… hm… a little too… I'm not sure. I like the story and everything, I'm just not super fond of the actual name itself. Perhaps people could post some more suggestions, or just out voice me and vote for stone soup. I don't have any suggestions at the moment… but I'll post one soon. Either way, I guess it's not super important. Ta.
Tony
michaelfrederick 1178320530|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
This post is simply a train of thought that I have been digging into lately and I wish to use this space to sort of continue a train of thought from our previous dinner event. It seems tangential, but if you make it to the end, you'll understand why I put it here.
The Paradox of Pure Plasticity
Object and Subject are two opposing discourses that have been lined against each other for as long as reason permitted it. This relationship has divided passionate thinkers to take a firm stand on varying degrees of the issue. He or she is perhaps a puritan at heart and believes that the two should remain divorced from one another so that the individual as subject should not be mistaken or perceived as object or a commodity form. He or she perhaps believes that the distinction in itself is a symptom of rationale that ought not be, due to its material nature. Or perhaps he or she is a positivist, like Mondrian (who I will return to later on in this subject) who believes that the eventual marrying of the two will bring about a social, universal reality through the breakage of its distinction. With terms that seem to be battling against one another, it seems legitimate to ask how such a distinction evolved. Here I convict reason, bringing it to the bench for further questioning.
As evident within (but not limited to) the historical fabric of art and literature, reason has surfaced as a particularly distinguishing element of modern culture as compared to reason during the middle ages and prior to. Reason itself has become an object of contemplation which is in its self a product of the evolution of thought into the modern age. The Enlightenment was a time of celebration for the emerging liberal arts and a new human existence. Little did they know that these new discoveries would bring uprisings and war as well as economic strife and an ongoing class struggle. Francis Bacon and RenÈ Descartes were optimistic about the future progress of science, technology and industry.
With the gradual secularization of values associated with the industrial revolution, the concept of happiness became increasingly linked to science, individualism, liberalism and freedom through the hope of progress. Happiness was lifted up as a right in conjunction with other rights such as the security of property, speech and to bare arms.
Adam Smith goes so far as to say that the selfish behaviors of the individual within a free market would maximize economic progress which would benefit all. This idea was followed up by Jeremy Bentham and the introduction of utilitarianism where the greatest happiness of the greatest number was its ultimate end.
I bring up these central ideas so that we can trace the history of subject and object from the standpoint of reason, and understand how they relate to each other through a continually abstract reality.
With the arising hedonistic, secular, individual frame of thought, it is vital to consider where such ideas came from and how such theories came into practice almost unconsciously.
The optimisms of the individual were interjected by figures like Aldous Huxley and Sigmund Frued in the late 19th and early 20th century. For Freud, theories of the workings of unisonous mind suggest that traditional rational notions of progress amount to nothing but sublimation. An age of affluence has eroded prior faith in material progress. These key figures saw the implications that a pleasure-seeking identity had in store for our future. And as anyone who is in such a position, they wrote, prolifically—Only to warn those who might happen to draw upon such ideas and act upon them. Their contribution perhaps affected the minds of people, as we can see now that nearly every critical theorist who references anyone goes back to Freud at some point, if not unknowingly. But such writings did not change the reality of our condition. And therefore we look back from a “post-post-modern” society, or “post-historical” society and romanticize about the past and being more human as if we actually were living prior to the industrial revolution. I don’t think there is anyone who has a greater remorse (or at least written about it) than Walter Benjamin. He identifies the erosion of positivism as more of an explosion that occurred during the First World War. Benjamin who draws much of his writing from a critique of Marxism points specifically to its shortcomings through the age of mechanical reproduction, an age where object and subject are at war with one another.
Marx looks at the blurring of object and subject as opposing forces through the emerging capitalist society. He observes the blurring as a product of estranged labor which in turn becomes an estrangement of man from himself, from man (as other) and ultimately an estrangement of man from nature. The condition of Subject and Object arise for Marx in terms of Private Property, where man recognizes his self as estranged.
“Private property” is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes; but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human.1”
This statement is a product of the evolution of object and subject relationships. Now, to bring into perspective how Mondrian, who idealizes estranged labor as a positive quality in his writing: “Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art” (1937), he also proposes an argument for a future marrying of the aesthetic and reality.
Mondrian distinguishes universal from individual as well as subjective from objective, but points out that the balance between them must be sought in practice, not merely in theory.2 Instead, however, of trying so fervently to distinguish between subject and object like so many Marxists dream, he calls for a marrying of the two. For Marx, where he sees the marrying of the two forces as a loss or more specifically, an estrangement, Mondrian embraces this abstraction as an essential move towards equilibrium.
“the only problem in art is to achieve balance between the subjective and the objective.3”
If non-figurative art is born of figurative art, it is obvious that the two factors of human duality have not only changed, but have also approached one another towards a mutual balance; towards unity. One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art.4
Not only does he see the transfusing of subject and object as necessary, but he adds that in order to create a work of art that practices this idea is to make it as objective as possible. As a result, the work should resemble an object that is produced or constructed as if by a machine. His goal was not a loss of the individual, but rather an entrance for the individual into the universal. The more the object resembled reality, or the more figurative it was, the less opportunity the viewer had to enter into the universal, spiritual realm.
This idea of finding “reality” or finding one’s “self” is a direct symptom of the capitalist society, or rather the enlightenment through the reasoning of reason. Once we understood reason, it wasn’t reasonable that we actually be our true self due to the repression of religion or political equality. The emergence of reason is for Mondrian, a divorce of subject and object that can be identified through abstraction and lived out through an experience with one’s self. It is a sort of reunification of man from his eternally repressed being as object.
“In removing completely from the work all objects, ‘the world is not separated from spirit’, but is on the contrary, put into a balanced opposition with the spirit, since the one and the other are purified. This creates a perfect unity between the two opposites.5”
In response to Mondrian’s abstraction, the marrying of subject and object is an irreversible process that will only be attained through an aesthetic reality. Reason’s divorcing of subject and object is an eternal divorce that can only be mimicked through the marrying of the two.
Mondrian embraces the evolution of man (even through the capitalist society) as if this were the natural course of the intellectual elite. And as such, he is not looking to undermine it or rebel against it (as so many communists ironically did), but rather continue on this course and eventually come to a conclusion about the essence of man through the marrying of subject and object. In their marriage, they will shed their heavy coats as particulars and universals and form into something new. Like Bacon and Descartes, he was essentially a positivist who understood this new form to be the hope of a new humanity.
Mondrian equated figurative as an extension, while non-figurative was intensification, and as such, no figure is neutral. He proposes that a harmony between extension and intensification is our hope into a universal reality.6 Therefore, he constructed paintings that were almost completely objective with pure form; the line and primary colors, with pure non-form; the grid. He was a true believer in evolution and allowed himself to act as a medium between the individual and the universal. He marked out the end of ancient figurative culture and highlighted the new culture of determined relations.
“Precisely by its existence non-figurative art shows that ‘art’ continues always on its true road. It shows that ‘art’ is not the expression of the appearance of reality such as we see it, nor of the life which we live, but that it is the expression of true reality and true life…indefinable but relizable in plastics.7”
Figurative work, for Mondrian, are transformed objects rather than objects presented as reality such as his grid paintings. Although such statements are not completely disagreeable, I would argue that perhaps the “reality” that Mondrian is pointing to through his work is a transformed reality which is simply a simulacrum of what the marrying of subject and object truly are. As stated, he is introducing an aesthetic reality. For once reason has delineated from absolute truth, the only reality that one might come about through reason would be nothing less than an “almost reality.” I do not wish to enter into a theology here, rather I simply want to propose that for an artist, to create an object that transcends reality (supposedly through the marrying of object and subject), it is a high claim to say that we as humans might enter into a universal truth (beyond the self) through an object that was created out of one’s self. If we ourselves are divorced objects and subjects, how is it that by making something that can only claim to be ‘almost’ completely objective such as Mondrian’s abstract grids, can such a feat be possible? “Almostness” is not “Holiness.” It is still bound and would produce all but something that is completely separate in form. I suppose what I’m getting at is no matter how objective the artist is in object making, the object will always be an extension of the artist’s hand, and to make something out of nothing is something that only God can claim. And if Mondrian is so adamant about producing something that resembles the work of a machine, which is in itself lesser than human, than why make art at all? Why not simply make machines that make art for us? Needless to say, this has been done many times subsequent to Mondrian.
So here, He admits that it is a great pity that those who are concerned with the social life in general do not realize the utility of abstract art.
“This consequence brings us, in a future perhaps remote, toward the end of art as a thing separated from our surrounding environment, which is the actual plastic reality. But this end is at the same time a new beginning. Art will not only continue but will realize itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting, a new plastic reality will be created. Painting and sculpture will not manifest themselves as separate objects, nor as ‘mural art’ which destroys architecture itself, nor as ‘applied’ art, but being purely constructive will aid the creation of an atmosphere not merely utilitarian or rational but also pure and complete in its beauty.8”
With such a degree of non-objective intensity, one cannot help but compare Mondrian to social Darwinism as well as a positivist. He embodied the idea of the human being as a mass of particles that happen to exist merely due to the survival of his kind. Concluding from his writing he seemed to embrace capitalism as a product of the elite social class. He rejected subject and object and allows them to be one and the same, simply divorced by immaterial reason.
As a social Darwinist, like many others who drew from Origin of Species to push their political or philosophical agenda, Mondrian is playing upon a dangerous territory between individualism and acting as a Deity form. His ideology that embodies the structure of creation of an aesthetic reality, Mondrian equates the individual as truth and goes so far as to introduce a protocol so that we as artists might enter into a plastic reality merely because this is the next logical step that reason has brought us to.
Reason for the sake of purification is a product of evolution. Even though it always existed, it was either repressed or it was simply in a state of evolving. If you were to look at Darwin, you might say that those who are reasonable survive. When lining up reason with progress, one walks on unstable ground for progress in its material nature has reasoned out God. God is “unreasonable.” And so through modernism, it only makes sense to look towards mathematics and science (specifically to explain the origin of man).
I don’t wish to proselytize here, as much as I simply wish to parcel out the history of reason. Reason is currently used as a vehicle to legitimize, or to prove something.
Reason which can be defined through terms such as practical, justification, or prove right or reasonable leads to the idea of justice. Justice, which is an administering of Law can find its first historical basis from the 10 commandments, or the Law given by God. I only say this to define why human beings go back to reason in order to justify their actions, and in doing so they completely dismiss the origin of reason.
So to complete this idea of reality and aesthetic reality, it is a historical contradiction to propose a new reality simply because of reason which has brought about an evolution of the rational. What is real, and what is true, must be unchanging in order for there to be an evolution possible that is truly reasonable. Therefore, it is only reasonable to not rely on reason to distinguish that which is reasonable and that which is unreasonable.
1 Karl Marx, selections from: the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (“Estranged Labor,”)
2 Mondrian, Piet Art in Theory, 1900-2000, an anthology of changing ideas (New Edition): “Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art.” Blackwell Publishing. Oxford, UK. 2003.
3 Mondrian.
4 Mondrian
5 Mondrian
6 Mondrian
7 Mondrian
8 Mondrian :
(c) Michael Frederick Langhoff
michaelfrederick, 1178320530|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
michaelfrederick 1178319704|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
The Paradox of Pure Plasticity
Object and Subject are two opposing discourses that have been lined against each other for as long as reason permitted it. This relationship has divided passionate thinkers to take a firm stand on varying degrees of the issue. He or she is perhaps a puritan at heart and believes that the two should remain divorced from one another so that the individual as subject should not be mistaken or perceived as object or a commodity form. He or she perhaps believes that the distinction in itself is a symptom of rationale that ought not be, due to its material nature. Or perhaps he or she is a positivist, like Mondrian (who I will return to later on in this subject) who believes that the eventual marrying of the two will bring about a social, universal reality through the breakage of its distinction. With terms that seem to be battling against one another, it seems legitimate to ask how such a distinction evolved. Here I convict reason, bringing it to the bench for further questioning.
As evident within (but not limited to) the historical fabric of art and literature, reason has surfaced as a particularly distinguishing element of modern culture as compared to reason during the middle ages and prior to. Reason itself has become an object of contemplation which is in its self a product of the evolution of thought into the modern age. The Enlightenment was a time of celebration for the emerging liberal arts and a new human existence. Little did they know that these new discoveries would bring uprisings and war as well as economic strife and an ongoing class struggle. Francis Bacon and RenÈ Descartes were optimistic about the future progress of science, technology and industry.
With the gradual secularization of values associated with the industrial revolution, the concept of happiness became increasingly linked to science, individualism, liberalism and freedom through the hope of progress. Happiness was lifted up as a right in conjunction with other rights such as the security of property, speech and to bare arms.
Adam Smith goes so far as to say that the selfish behaviors of the individual within a free market would maximize economic progress which would benefit all. This idea was followed up by Jeremy Bentham and the introduction of utilitarianism where the greatest happiness of the greatest number was its ultimate end.
I bring up these central ideas so that we can trace the history of subject and object from the standpoint of reason, and understand how they relate to each other through a continually abstract reality.
With the arising hedonistic, secular, individual frame of thought, it is vital to consider where such ideas came from and how such theories came into practice almost unconsciously.
The optimisms of the individual were interjected by figures like Aldous Huxley and Sigmund Frued in the late 19th and early 20th century. For Freud, theories of the workings of unisonous mind suggest that traditional rational notions of progress amount to nothing but sublimation. An age of affluence has eroded prior faith in material progress. These key figures saw the implications that a pleasure-seeking identity had in store for our future. And as anyone who is in such a position, they wrote, prolifically—Only to warn those who might happen to draw upon such ideas and act upon them. Their contribution perhaps affected the minds of people, as we can see now that nearly every critical theorist who references anyone goes back to Freud at some point, if not unknowingly. But such writings did not change the reality of our condition. And therefore we look back from a “post-post-modern” society, or “post-historical” society and romanticize about the past and being more human as if we actually were living prior to the industrial revolution. I don’t think there is anyone who has a greater remorse (or at least written about it) than Walter Benjamin. He identifies the erosion of positivism as more of an explosion that occurred during the First World War. Benjamin who draws much of his writing from a critique of Marxism points specifically to its shortcomings through the age of mechanical reproduction, an age where object and subject are at war with one another.
Marx looks at the blurring of object and subject as opposing forces through the emerging capitalist society. He observes the blurring as a product of estranged labor which in turn becomes an estrangement of man from himself, from man (as other) and ultimately an estrangement of man from nature. The condition of Subject and Object arise for Marx in terms of Private Property, where man recognizes his self as estranged.
“Private property” is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes; but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human.1”
This statement is a product of the evolution of object and subject relationships. Now, to bring into perspective how Mondrian, who idealizes estranged labor as a positive quality in his writing: “Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art” (1937), he also proposes an argument for a future marrying of the aesthetic and reality.
Mondrian distinguishes universal from individual as well as subjective from objective, but points out that the balance between them must be sought in practice, not merely in theory.2 Instead, however, of trying so fervently to distinguish between subject and object like so many Marxists dream, he calls for a marrying of the two. For Marx, where he sees the marrying of the two forces as a loss or more specifically, an estrangement, Mondrian embraces this abstraction as an essential move towards equilibrium.
“the only problem in art is to achieve balance between the subjective and the objective.3”
If non-figurative art is born of figurative art, it is obvious that the two factors of human duality have not only changed, but have also approached one another towards a mutual balance; towards unity. One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art.4
Not only does he see the transfusing of subject and object as necessary, but he adds that in order to create a work of art that practices this idea is to make it as objective as possible. As a result, the work should resemble an object that is produced or constructed as if by a machine. His goal was not a loss of the individual, but rather an entrance for the individual into the universal. The more the object resembled reality, or the more figurative it was, the less opportunity the viewer had to enter into the universal, spiritual realm.
This idea of finding “reality” or finding one’s “self” is a direct symptom of the capitalist society, or rather the enlightenment through the reasoning of reason. Once we understood reason, it wasn’t reasonable that we actually be our true self due to the repression of religion or political equality. The emergence of reason is for Mondrian, a divorce of subject and object that can be identified through abstraction and lived out through an experience with one’s self. It is a sort of reunification of man from his eternally repressed being as object.
“In removing completely from the work all objects, ‘the world is not separated from spirit’, but is on the contrary, put into a balanced opposition with the spirit, since the one and the other are purified. This creates a perfect unity between the two opposites.5”
In response to Mondrian’s abstraction, the marrying of subject and object is an irreversible process that will only be attained through an aesthetic reality. Reason’s divorcing of subject and object is an eternal divorce that can only be mimicked through the marrying of the two.
Mondrian embraces the evolution of man (even through the capitalist society) as if this were the natural course of the intellectual elite. And as such, he is not looking to undermine it or rebel against it (as so many communists ironically did), but rather continue on this course and eventually come to a conclusion about the essence of man through the marrying of subject and object. In their marriage, they will shed their heavy coats as particulars and universals and form into something new. Like Bacon and Descartes, he was essentially a positivist who understood this new form to be the hope of a new humanity.
Mondrian equated figurative as an extension, while non-figurative was intensification, and as such, no figure is neutral. He proposes that a harmony between extension and intensification is our hope into a universal reality.6 Therefore, he constructed paintings that were almost completely objective with pure form; the line and primary colors, with pure non-form; the grid. He was a true believer in evolution and allowed himself to act as a medium between the individual and the universal. He marked out the end of ancient figurative culture and highlighted the new culture of determined relations.
“Precisely by its existence non-figurative art shows that ‘art’ continues always on its true road. It shows that ‘art’ is not the expression of the appearance of reality such as we see it, nor of the life which we live, but that it is the expression of true reality and true life…indefinable but relizable in plastics.7”
Figurative work, for Mondrian, are transformed objects rather than objects presented as reality such as his grid paintings. Although such statements are not completely disagreeable, I would argue that perhaps the “reality” that Mondrian is pointing to through his work is a transformed reality which is simply a simulacrum of what the marrying of subject and object truly are. As stated, he is introducing an aesthetic reality. For once reason has delineated from absolute truth, the only reality that one might come about through reason would be nothing less than an “almost reality.” I do not wish to enter into a theology here, rather I simply want to propose that for an artist, to create an object that transcends reality (supposedly through the marrying of object and subject), it is a high claim to say that we as humans might enter into a universal truth (beyond the self) through an object that was created out of one’s self. If we ourselves are divorced objects and subjects, how is it that by making something that can only claim to be ‘almost’ completely objective such as Mondrian’s abstract grids, can such a feat be possible? “Almostness” is not “Holiness.” It is still bound and would produce all but something that is completely separate in form. I suppose what I’m getting at is no matter how objective the artist is in object making, the object will always be an extension of the artist’s hand, and to make something out of nothing is something that only God can claim. And if Mondrian is so adamant about producing something that resembles the work of a machine, which is in itself lesser than human, than why make art at all? Why not simply make machines that make art for us? Needless to say, this has been done many times subsequent to Mondrian.
So here, He admits that it is a great pity that those who are concerned with the social life in general do not realize the utility of abstract art.
“This consequence brings us, in a future perhaps remote, toward the end of art as a thing separated from our surrounding environment, which is the actual plastic reality. But this end is at the same time a new beginning. Art will not only continue but will realize itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting, a new plastic reality will be created. Painting and sculpture will not manifest themselves as separate objects, nor as ‘mural art’ which destroys architecture itself, nor as ‘applied’ art, but being purely constructive will aid the creation of an atmosphere not merely utilitarian or rational but also pure and complete in its beauty.8”
With such a degree of non-objective intensity, one cannot help but compare Mondrian to social Darwinism as well as a positivist. He embodied the idea of the human being as a mass of particles that happen to exist merely due to the survival of his kind. Concluding from his writing he seemed to embrace capitalism as a product of the elite social class. He rejected subject and object and allows them to be one and the same, simply divorced by immaterial reason.
As a social Darwinist, like many others who drew from Origin of Species to push their political or philosophical agenda, Mondrian is playing upon a dangerous territory between individualism and acting as a Deity form. His ideology that embodies the structure of creation of an aesthetic reality, Mondrian equates the individual as truth and goes so far as to introduce a protocol so that we as artists might enter into a plastic reality merely because this is the next logical step that reason has brought us to.
Reason for the sake of purification is a product of evolution. Even though it always existed, it was either repressed or it was simply in a state of evolving. If you were to look at Darwin, you might say that those who are reasonable survive. When lining up reason with progress, one walks on unstable ground for progress in its material nature has reasoned out God. God is “unreasonable.” And so through modernism, it only makes sense to look towards mathematics and science (specifically to explain the origin of man).
I don’t wish to proselytize here, as much as I simply wish to parcel out the history of reason. Reason is currently used as a vehicle to legitimize, or to prove something.
Reason which can be defined through terms such as practical, justification, or prove right or reasonable leads to the idea of justice. Justice, which is an administering of Law can find its first historical basis from the 10 commandments, or the Law given by God. I only say this to define why human beings go back to reason in order to justify their actions, and in doing so they completely dismiss the origin of reason.
So to complete this idea of reality and aesthetic reality, it is a historical contradiction to propose a new reality simply because of reason which has brought about an evolution of the rational. What is real, and what is true, must be unchanging in order for there to be an evolution possible that is truly reasonable. Therefore, it is only reasonable to not rely on reason to distinguish that which is reasonable and that which is unreasonable.
1 Karl Marx, selections from: the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (“Estranged Labor,”)
2 Mondrian, Piet Art in Theory, 1900-2000, an anthology of changing ideas (New Edition): “Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art.” Blackwell Publishing. Oxford, UK. 2003.
3 Mondrian.
4 Mondrian
5 Mondrian
6 Mondrian
7 Mondrian
8 Mondrian :
(c) Michael Frederick Langhoff
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This past weeks dinner event was a major step in the right direction and we hope to continue this discussion next week. In the mean time, if you have any interjections or ideas that went unsaid during this past Sunday's event, we encourage your comments and or responses here. For a reminder, here are a few things that we addressed:
I know we talked about a lot of things, but these are just to spark a reminder as to how our dialog evolved.
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This is a quick response to the re-enchantment symposium.
Re-enchantment: a response
To say the least, the Re-enchantment symposium was anything but re-enchanting. All of the panelists either specialized in art or religion, but only one was actually a practicing “religionist” (as james elkins referred to) with a degree in the arts; and he only filled in for one of the panelists who couldn’t continue to part two.
The exchange of thoughts were continually disagreed upon and each person with a different background seemed to have a different idea of what the symposium was about.
Two of the speakers, Tomoko Masuzawa and Kajri Jain were specialists in religion but had little to bring when it came to practice in the art world.
The fact that Elkins introduced the symposium as a dangerously ineffectual discussion set the tone for the rest of afternoon. Each person brought to the table what they understood to be the problem of religion and art. Which I believe was a bit problematic as nobody really proposed how to move past this problem other than Greg Bordowitz who saw no problem at all and is in fact one of the few practicing artists on the panel.
The reason this symposium was such a disaster was because each person (called to look at religion and art critically) are called to make a distinction as to what religion is. This is the first impossible task. Then, to call it something is to objectify it and disallow it to be religion in the true sense, and form it into what one understands religion to be.
There are 6.5 billion people in this world and for each person there is a varying degree of understanding as to what religion is.
To take religion out of the context of the practice is to objectify it into a discourse and through which you are no longer talking about religion, but “religion” as something concrete. Therefore, when talking about it you cannot prevent a massive disagreement due to the varying degrees of practice. And yet, that’s what the panel continued to do. The talked about religion as discourse, which is not to talk about religion at all. Religion is only religion when in practice, but the discourse is the only way a critic can even being to talk about such things.
As a result, I would say that the symposium was counterproductive in a sense bringing less clarity than a mixed and blended pot of ideas. Although, I did feel that this discussion is very much a symptom of the post-modern condition where people are trying to move back to the spiritual due to the loss of identity through the mass media, popular culture and the commodity form. So here, the discussion is important as a sort of benchmark as to the train of thought of the individuals, but it just wasn’t organized in a way that catered to the either the art world or the religious arenas in understanding their dichotomy.
The discussion was tiresome and a bit frustrating as a practicing Christian in the arts community. I feel there are genuine religious artists (“religionists”) that are doing great things in the art world. I feel the discussion shouldn’t be so much about this thing people are calling the art world and trying to fortify a system of refusals to the religionists in order to keep something so “pure” – for that is the hope of the genuine religious artist.
Along with what Bordowitz claims that there is no problem and there is no system of refusals, only people who participate in that system and uphold them in vain. Bordowitz claims to deal with religious material in his work and finds to problems with his relationship to the art world.
As a religious practicing artist, it is encouraging to see that these questions are being raised and that their incommensurable relationship between religion and art will only transpire into further investigation.
(c) Michael Frederick Langhoff
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Response to the readings should be included under this post.
these readings were al submitted by the panelists who were invited by Elkins to the round-table.
Readings
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/de-Duve-1.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/de-Duve-2.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Doniger.doc
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Elkins-chapter-4.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Elkins-chapter-5.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Elkins-chapter-7.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Groys.doc
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Jain.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Masuzawa-1.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Masuzawa-2.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Masuzawa-3.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Morgan-1.doc
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Morgan-2.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Morgan-3.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Morgan-4.pdf
http://www.imagehistory.org/temporary/Re-enchantment/Worley.pdf
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To start of the re-enchantement forum for the roundtable discussion, it should be noted that today's event @ 6:00pm in the SAIC auditorium will be a sort of pre-enchantment talk by James Elkins.
If you interested in this topic of art and religion and haven't been able to make it to the classes/lectures by Elkins, check out the Bad at sports podcast: Episode 84: Elkins-Morgan-Edmar talking about art and religion.
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Mono-ha, and Gu-tai are two artists movements who took what was once an Eastern practice and through modernist texts, they have appropriated it as an eastern philosophy. In doing so, it loses its form and leads to the beginning stages of what is known as self-orientalizing. This text is a small essay on the two art movements and how they contributed to the modernist movement in the west and how they were simultaneously modernized by looking at Japanese tradition through Western philosophy.
Gripping the ephemeral
To talk about Japanese art in from the perspective of a traditional Western education, it is imperative to take the necessary precautions to avoid as much misappropriation as possible. Likewise, it is equally as important to the take similar necessary steps before talking about Western culture from the perspective of a traditional Japanese education.
In art, the East and West offer very distinct approaches, and yet, over a period of hundreds of years, the distinction has become a bit blurred. You have art that resembles abstract expressionism, ink drawings that resemble impressionist sketches, and even performance art that offers a spectacle not so short of our very own happenings in the late 1950s through the 1960s and 70s. History has its way of overlapping and even blending cultures that is especially evident through the advent of modern art.
Two specific examples of Japanese movements that formed out of the modern age were Gu-Tai, and Mono-ha artists. Both with similar beliefs at root, but very different results through their art practices.
The term Gu-Tai itself is reference to the body as a tool which in itself as an object is a notion take from modernist aesthetics. Although, through this name, the body as a tool I simply a intermediary between a relationship of material and the immaterial self, or rather, selfhood (being more globally and socially committed). Gu is more oriented towards the spirit of material, and Tai as the artists body. Their dialectical relationship acts as an entry point into understanding the truth of the concrete world. Although Gu-Tai is fundamentally Eastern in origin, it has its traces of influence from the Western spirit of interest in materiality and the tangible.
One of the major thrusts of Gu-Tai is to create something that is absolutely new. This act of creation is not so much for the product to be revealed (as in the west) as much as it is about the allowing of one’s self to experience the new as a liberating force between material and the body. This may sound similar to Western modernist movements, however there is a distinction to be made.
It is very easy to misinterpret Gu-Tai like abstract expressionism, (this sort of going back to the material), but in a sense, it is something very different. It is a global connection, a sort of priest-like attitude of the artist involved with this sort of work, whereas the abstract expressionist is moving towards the individual in the processes of going back the material, and understanding the self. There is a fundamental disconnect between humans with material and also with human relationships and the relationships to the natural world. Gu-Tai is interested in regaining that lost relationship with the material.
Unlike Pollock, or Rothko however, Gu-Tai functions as more of the priest or priestess to the material world who has lost that relationship with the material. Artists in the west are more accustom to be made as objects of veneration themselves where their work is a sort of product of the celebrity. They do not teach as much as they simply spearhead a movement towards a new form of creating which cycles back into the materiality of the Western art world.
One of the forerunners of the movement would be Jiro Yoshihara. As a painter he was known for his circle paintings that he did during the mid 60s. With a reference to Zen Buddhism, these paintings would embody both infinite and potentiality while simultaneously defining the concrete and complete nature of material. These paintings are a great illustration of the philosophy of Gu-Tia. It as an object can be looked upon, but never quite definitive. Seemingly concrete in nature, its function is a marrying of material with the viewer as body. In pointing towards the infinite, the viewer is confronted with his relationship towards the object, but the object is only a means to the experience of liberation. The paintings act as stepping stones to a transcendent experience with the material.
Looking at Gu-Tai and how they have trickled in and out of the modernist movement, it is also fruitful to look at the Mono-ha movement that was going on around the same time.
Mono-ha which roughly translates as “thing school” is seen as an inaccurate label upon what the school of thought was about. The movement was driven by reclamation of Japanese thought and practice, specifically that of Zen Buddhism. They were interested in the natural materials and a balance of kinetic energies. They were focused on the recovery of that lost relationship with participation of material through the activating of a moment in space.
Although their initial intent was opposite that of the modernist movement, it is ironic that the outcome was nearly indistinguishable from what was going on in the west. In the format of the gallery space, these Mono-ha installations would resemble much of what was happening in the New York art scene.
“cut off hang” by Yoshida Katsuro in 1969 was an installation involving a large wooden pillar that is tied to a rock which is holding its weight so to prevent the pillar from falling on top of it. Using natural materials and this sort of kinetic tension to bring the viewer into a third party relationship was a very common gesture throughout modernism. (insert example in the museum with the metal cylinder and metal pole leaning against the wall). Despite Mono-ha’s disdain for the western capitalist mind, the work that came out of the movement was strikingly similar.
The distinguishing element between materiality of Gu-Tai and Mono-ha and Western thought is the function, or spirit of materiality. In the West, material is equated with concrete and identified as a complete autonomous object. To speak of material from an Eastern standpoint, it is a constant interaction with its surroundings. It is physically in constant flux from moment to moment and therefore, to talk of an object as concrete would be to contradict its spirit. This train of thought begins to overlap the western philosophy and aesthetics, but they never quite meet due to their very opposite foundations.
Western modernism has a strict relationship to body as material. Through the enlightenment and consequently the industrial revolution, the age of mechanical reproduction has brought about a Western fascination with the socio-economic repercussions of the object form. How we relate to material and how material relates back can be observed simply by looking at technology and science, if not psychology, philosophy and not to mention, economics. I’m not blaming capitalism as a form that has driven our society to relate to the world in objects, but it is most definitely a symptom. Traces of object forms can be traced back to the history of religion and the venerated statues. However, once the ritualized object form separated itself from religion it turned into a mirror that points back to society. Arguably it points back to society as an object as a whole through its mastering of ideology through the veneration of the human form.
In looking at both Gu-Tai, and Mono-ha in retrospect, they both have their similarities as well as their major distinctions from the modernist movement in the west. Gu-Tai resonates with Shinto and what has been through. The term Zen isn’t was it was before the 1900s through the influences of D.T. Suziki and Nishida Kitaro. And it is the separation from history, tradition and culture that these movements are looking to overcome.
Mono-ha, however succumbs to the very nature in which it sets out to rise above. Mono-ha is claiming that everything is independent and that all is simply in relation to everything else. But they also claim that these ideas are strictly Japanese. In doing so, they disallow the practice to be an interdependent relationship. It is through the distinction of East from west that succumbs to the nature of objectification, which Mono-ha tries so diligently to break down. This is the beginning stages of self-orientalizing. To encapsulate an identity that cannot be encapsulated, they contradict the liberating practice that they historically cling to.
Here, it is important to consider is not just the west’s precautions to talking about eastern art, or the east talking about western art, but also the east and west talking about their own culture through the language, or ideas of their neighbor’s beliefs. This not only perpetuates as sort of ‘self-orientalizing’ but a re-embedded misappropriation by the spectator who is trying to observe such culture from the outside. It is a vicious cycle of misappropriation that calls for a distinction between terms and ideas before even entering into conversations anymore. We have to spend more time defining the terms we use while neglecting the issue at hand. Perhaps this is a drawn out, seemingly arbitrary act, but due to the state of affairs that our world is in, it is utterly imperative that we make these distinctions so that we as well as future generations will not be left in a dust of confusion.
(c) Michael Frederick Langhoff
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This past fridays dinner was definitely all over the place, but there are a few things that I would like to see responses to.
(I will be writing on some of these ideas shortly)