EXPERIMENTS WITH GROWING STONES
Lots of ideas in my head, plus just finished reading my son’s dissertation, Absurd Actions in Serious Scenarios: Francis Alys and the Contemporary Absurd which has been really useful in helping me identify and, to a certain extent understand one of the things which I hold as essential and invaluable in art – the absurd. These things, plus a sense of time running out (I start my 45 hour a week job on Wednesday for 12 weeks) are making me keen to DO some things.
Later…
Experiments with Growing Stones
Phase 1
Working on Schelling’s theory of Naturophilosophie that “all physical objects aspire to become something higher”, I’m going to offer the opportunity for some stones to try to make that leap in status. Using two different growing methods I will attempt to trigger growth from the stones using my experience of growing broad beans to inform the process. I’m going to use stones from a bag of pea-shingle in the hope that the vegetable association will improve the chances of viability.
Method 1: Fill a plant pot with soil, compost or other suitable growing medium. Plant the stone leaving a potential growing point just above the surface of the soil, water well and keep in a warm place until signs of growth are seen.
Method 2: Line a glass jar with water soaked blotting paper or other water retentive material. Position 3 pea-shingle stones around the sides of the jar. Keep in a warm place and ensure blotting paper is kept moist until signs of growth are seen.
WHAT IF…
I always have a sort of back-up plan of ideas in my head – things to pursue if nothing else is happening in my practice, but to be honest, I’m never really satisfied with work made this way, though it’s useful to have that back up plan so that it doesn’t feel as if you’re doing nothing. What is really exciting is when work starts to evolve that you could never have thought of or predicted except as part of doing and reading and thinking – not by planning.
This week I’ve been thinking about questions which start “What if…?” I’ve often wondered whether these questions could be the basis for some work but I’ve never quite known what the questions might be. Now some “What if…?” questions which seem to have some relevance have been becoming apparent to me.
I’ve needed to get some extra paid work and have just been offered a full time non-arts job for 3 months. I’m starting in just over a week and finish on the 13th August. I’m desperate to still be able to maintain some sort of continuity for my work during this period and recognize that I need to have something “started” which I can pick up and put down. Perhaps a “What if…” set of questions will give me that fixed starting point which I’ll need.
So:
Andy Holden in his Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape says “maybe there is no such thing as an inanimate object”; my question then is “What if stones could grow?” (I seem to have a bit of a random stone fixation at the moment but I’m trying to run with it and not feel too ridiculous about it). Also I have read and thought a lot about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein over the last few years (it featured heavily in my MA work) and wonder “What if Frankenstein’s monster had not looked like a monster, but just a normal looking guy?” This question also seems to fit in quite nicely with the fact that I’m currently reconfiguring work which I made for my MA in order to be able to show it in a different format.
IT’S NOT BEEN A GOOD WEEK FOR ART
It’s not been a good week for art in my house. Other commitments, the need to find more paid work, and a couple of days spent on Blue Monkey Network business, mean that yesterday, Sunday, was the first day in the studio since last weekend. This is very bad and far removed from my resolution to maintain some continuity and spend at least five half days each week in the studio. Another week is about to begin and there’s no reason why this one shouldn’t be better, but already I’ve lost the feeling of continuity which I was building.
My reading and research has been neglected, but in some ways perhaps a pause is not all bad. I’m thinking that maybe it’s time to move on from Schrodinger and Prof Cox and the Enlightenment and think about contemporary science for a bit. Perhaps time to see what sort of reaction will occur if I begin to mix up old and new; what sort of concoction will result from combining some of the information which I’ve been absorbing during the last few weeks with some new ideas from biomedical science and, perhaps some fables from the traditions of mystery, myth and mysticism which historically underpinned theories about the creation of the world and the making of new life through reproduction and birth. Add to this mix a few “what if” questions, and maybe things will start to get interesting.
I didn’t have an image today. So I made one. But it is void.
THE AGE OF WONDER
I suppose it was the dead frog and the reminder of Luigi Galvani that prompted me to revisit my research from a few years ago about science and philosophy around the time of the Enlightenment and the writing of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Experiments with corpses, both animal and human, and the development of the knowledge of anatomy and electricity were prompting theories of a “Life Force” and raising questions about what distinguished dead from living, and vegetable from animal.
Friedrich Schelling’s theory of Naturophilosophie speculated that “all physical objects “aspired” to become something higher.”… “All nature had a tendency to move towards a higher state. So carbon for example “aspired” to become diamond; plants aspired to become animals; animals aspired to become men…”*
John Thelwall’s theory of “Animal Vitality” proposed that “no spark of life was divinely conferred, and that no soul was implanted by some external source but that neither could a “life principle be simply explained by blood passing through the lungs”.
It was in Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein that questions were clearly articulated about what it was that would make a creature “human”: “would it have language, would it have a moral conscience, would it have human feelings and sympathies, would it have a soul?”**
So I suppose, the questions beginning to form in my mind are not so far removed from those of 300 years ago but must be applied to a modern-day context where scientists can now create life. What must we think of this new life? How can we categorise it? What respect must it be given? What status should it have? When does it begin to have a soul?
Perhaps a most pertinent question for me, what sort of work can I make that will help me think about these questions?
*Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder.
