Friday 24 October
5.55am
posted 17.15
We have had no internet connection at home since Tuesday evening. This has left me with no chance to write this blog since my usual blogging times are late at night after the working day when I have some peace and solitude. However, it occurred to me last night that I could write something anyway and take it into college with me and send it from there. It is interesting how not having an internet connection made me feel that I couldn’t write anything at all. I even considered writing something in an notebook to be typed up later as if I were unable to use my computer at all without internet access.
Anyway, it’s been a very frustrating experience not to be online (as it always is now) and it makes me realise how dependent on the internet I have become. At the beginning of the week I developed some thoughts that I wanted to tell you about but the energy of that thinking seems to have dissipated somewhat and I haven’t been able to do the research (another late at night activity) to back it up.
It was to do with a news report I heard on R4 about The Foresight Commission which has come up with evidence of the links between a ‘mentally healthy’ populace and the economy. The representative of the research was speaking quite shamefacedly about how what he called ‘mental capital’ pays directly into the economy as revenue to the government. This, in conjunction with all the government sponsorship that is going into researching what creativity is led me to see how ideas are the next booty to be plundered by governments. As natural resources dwindle and it becomes increasingly perilous to get our hands on them without costly and unpopular wars we have to find another kind of asset to translate into dollars and what better material than people’s ideas. So I came up with the idea of ‘intellectual colonialism’ for this approach. I seem to have had several conversations with artists in various situations over the past year or so about our creative processes and have often detected a reluctance to give up the goods (as if they were secrets) of what one’s processes actually are. There is plenty of money going into university and schools projects aiming to find out what creativity is. Since the thinking goes that if we can turn ideas directly into capital in this technological age then to wrest how those ideas come about from creative people is the key to future economic wealth.
As I say, I have to research this more myself to see if there is any basis for some kind of theory. But if you have heard anything that would back this up then do get in touch.
Judith Kazantzis, poet, has sent me a response to the Incommensurable Banner as well as the image that accompanies this post, which is entitled 'war is pants':
"I meant to send this pic earlier, the woodcut I did after the 2 million march of 03. I am not familiar with pdf files but I think you can print it out for the banner you are making. I do hope that is going well. This last week I have been back to Fabrica to look at the show again (and with Cecile's brilliant tech help to ready a short light projection piece on art/war I want to start with in my 'War and Writing' workshop); for the first time I really made myself walk the length of the banner and look at every picture. That was on the third visit! I think the writeup on the website was very good, didn't mince matters. I look forward very much to visiting your blog, and thought I would try this out first on you. There are at least 3 other woodcuts all about Iraq, (jpegs) but this was the one I mentioned when we met."
Judith's own blog:
www.judikaz.blogspot.com
Taught my Critical Fine Art Practice students today all day in Fabrica sat around the large round discussion table in the gallery. It was part of my plan to explore new environments for teaching in. It went very well. The students fed back at the end of the day that they had enjoyed the round table and being in a 'proper gallery' and that it was good to be working and thinking about photography near Hirschhorn's banner, which was indeed a constant reference for our discussions.
I found myself saying at one point that the more I have thought about the banner the less I know about it. That it seems as if my thinking has broken down, is broken, like the bodies. And that if one of the bodies were to get up and reconstitute itself what radical potential there would be for new thought.
The students introduced very interesting perspectives on their own practices via texts they had chosen for presentation to the group. We looked at Mary Midgley's examination of human nature in 'Beast And Man', David Green's short essay 'Moving to Manual Override', an extract about gypsies and their persecution and extermination by the Nazis taken from 'The Gypsies' by Jean-Paul Clébert and Fredric Jameson's reading (in 'The Deconstruction of Expression') of Heidegger's reading of Van Gogh's painting of the peasant shoes.
I can't articulate my thoughts because there are too many in my head. About the role of the artist and the privilege that is still assumed to accrue to that role. Questioning that. I've tried just now to sketch out some questions about this but there's too much for now. I need to let it settle.
Some gold shoes.
The camera had trouble focussing on Georgia's shoes because they sparkled so much.
Been thinking a lot today about The Feminine, with a capital T and a capital F. About Ingeborg Bachmann. About using textiles. About domesticity. About wearing the trousers. About evading the role of the perpetrator in favour of occupying the territory of the victim. About Hirschhorn He and Diab She. About polarities and ambiguities. About the idea of keeping to an 'eye-line' – Whose eye? Whose line of vision? About aiming and firing. About shooting and framing.
Wondering how to get past and over it all.
Thinking about how little I know.
Disappearing. Like she did.
Between Ivan and Malina*
Into a crack.
But, how that is history.
We've progressed beyond that.
We learn, we move on.
You think?
*The two male protagonists in Bachmann's novel 'Malina'.
I have called my Ingeborg Bachmann piece I.B.
I've just realised this also stands for Incommensurable Banner.
The collective protest banner that I started off in the gallery is not working at all. I am considering ditching the whole endeavour. I have not managed to start it off in such a way that others want to keep it going. It would require, I can see, my active involvement in generating interest around it. But I am too busy being involved in what is happening with my work in my studio and in this blog and in talking to people while I am in the gallery. I talked to Jane Fordham today when I was at Fabrica about this. She said the collective banner project is too hidden. It is. It is in a box. I sent an email to Tasha last week to forward to all the volunteers to try to generate some new enthusiasm about it. It doesn't seem to have made much difference. I think I'll leave it for now and talk to Tila tomorrow about it if she is in.
Perhaps it is just too much to ask to expect people to want to leave a visual response to Hirschhorn's banner. I have been considering my own responses since April this year and for most visitors, their first view of the work does not leave them in a position to consider making a contribution to an ongoing art project.
In my statement to accompany our open studios exhibition about how we use photography I wrote that I am a lightning conductor for people's reactions to the work. Their reactions aren't bolts of lightning though; rather perceptible only as small flickers.
