Northumbria University

Nathalie Bouleau Chabot

When he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?[i]

A system has become necessary: action interrupts contemplation. The computer plays an important role in defining my practice; the “medium” of the blogosphere has opened up a space where I can focus my practice on daily writings that chronicle the process of the work’s creation. A number of fundamental questions have been raised, which I work towards answering through a series of experiments. This development is directed in equal measures at the action and its temporal uniqueness; each piece of work has the possibility to last forever, transform or be erased completely.

The fragmentary images are echoes of unread words and a translation of them is not necessarily required; they form visual patterns, or codes, which communicate the logic of language, but one that on first inspection refuses to provide an accessible denotation; as meaning, description and narrative appear to have been eliminated. By collapsing and restructuring the text, the viewer’s gaze does not become distracted, but becomes more refined, creating an active rather than passive perception.

Paradoxical qualities dominate: reveal/conceal, substance/light, fragment/whole. Through the immaterial and transparent nature of projection, an internal process is transferred in to an external world; and a transfer of thoughts and experiences can literally be cast on to the viewer. There is a battle between aesthetic values and practical realities of production, which rests somewhere between our bodily experience and our intellectual understanding of the work. How can it be absorbed, and where is it’s relevance outside of the artists thinking?

[i] Plato (1991) ‘The Allegory of the Cave’ found in The Republic Benjamin Jowlett translation: Vintage

Degree show prep is coming along quite smoothly…surprisingly!

The projection works and looks good in the space (my biggest worry!) and I have decided to include the books I made from the installation in the same space as the blog. This means that I have included a piece which could last forever, one that has been transformed and one that will be erased quite soon!

A final statement will be added tomorrow.

Repetition–even in its most mechanical, quotidian, habitual, stereotypical forms–has a place within art…. For the only esthetic problem is how to insert art into everyday life. The more our daily life appears standardized, stereotyped, submitted to the accelerated reproduction of consumer goods, the more art must become part of life and rescue from it that small difference which operates between levels of repetition…so that, in the end, Difference can express itself…even if it’s only in the form of a contradiction here or there, thereby liberating the forces needed to destroy this world.

Gilles Deleuze, Répétition et différence

EVENTUALLY some stills from the video. I wasn’t sure whether to add them because of the public/private idea I was putting forward, but I feel that they don’t give away enough information when seen this small and as a still shot, so it’s ok!

There are four “scenes” all together, each lasting seven minutes and shown on a loop. I have only included two here.

Because to copy is to do nothing; it is to be the books being copied. It is to be this tiny protrusion of redoubled language, of discourse folded upon itself; this invisible existence transforms fleeting words into an enduring and distant murmur.

–Michel Foucault, “Fantasia of the Library,” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Selected Essays and Interviews.