Time, Ladies and Gentlemen, please...

 There comes a point when I need a break from the seemingly endless French Flute Sonatas that haunt early morning (ie afternoon here) Radio 3, and I have had enough of shouting at yet another Tory who seems to have forgotten the UK has been suffering under the rule of the Eton 'elite' for a very long time.  In these times I turn to audiobooks, and scroll through endless stuff on Youtube in the hope of finding something interesting.

Yesterday I discovered a reading of J G Ballard's Kingdom Come.  This is set in the towns around Heathrow, and concerns the malign influence of a huge shopping mall and the rise of a fascist/consumer cult based on violence and racism, for when your life is defined by the wandering of a mall and the purchasing of consumer goods there is only violence to bring excitement.  Although deeply disturbing, there is an element of satire in the fact that the narrator is a failed advertising executive, and therefore partly responsible for the rise of the mall and the central position of shopping in everyone's lives.  I am still listening.

But yesterday there occured one of those odd moments, an strong sense of deja vu.  This was during a description of an apartment, the last home of the narrator's recently murdered father.  I knew the description, I knew every sentence before it had been uttered, and as the description continued there was a feeling of the world shrinking, of there only being the light on the table, the voice from the computer, and me listening to something I already knew.  I have not, as far as I can recall, read this novel, but at sometime I must have read that description, for the sense of familiarity was overwhelming.  But it felt as if I was split in time - there was me listening in the present, and, in a not too distant future I was listening as well, so that the present me was remembering what the future me was listening to.

At this point I should reach for various philosophical and scientific tomes on the nature of time - which is an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so (spot the quote).  But I think it is mostly due to present problems, to not venturing forth often enough as the weather has been less than friendly lately.  I do not like summer, and endless hot days fill me with despair, I am a child of winter and much prefer autumn. 

That sense of deja vu has caught me a number of times recently, is this because I am mining my own memories for ongoing artworks?  Maybe, maybe...

To quote Week Ending, "Makes you think...."

Angry Old Man 1

 

It has been some time since I last posted anything here, and I can't really understand why.  Except that, too often, I put stuff on Facebook or into turgid emails my poor friends have to wade through in order to discover the state of my mind, and if I need help, or cake, or coffee.  Mostly it is the last two.

However, I think it is time I began to write again, rather than discussing my views with the dog on our short walks taken before the heat rises from barely acceptable to utterly intolerable, which latter may in fact be how I feel about the artworld.

Having reached that stage where new opportunities have ceased hereabouts, and the only worthwhile things are in Europe (oh, and the UK, I forget we 'got Brexit done' and have utterly buggered the arts - and sciences - for years to come.  But hey, we got control of our borders, something we already had, but don't tell the Surrey rascists who still think Brexit a good idea) I have fallen to musing on (dot dot dot) curators.  I am sure that once upon a time there were more gallery directors, exhibition assistants, and curators lived mostly in museums.  Now there are more curators than artists it seems, and the curators vie for funds to produce publications and attend conferences and, and here is the point that affects my reason, get money for exhibition proposals and then search for artists to 'respond to the curatorial concept'. Meanwhile the artist just sits and waits, devoid of any ideas, a mere automaton requiring the magic formula of the curator's concept to kick start the corpse into life.  I am a mere lump of clay and need the slip of paper to animate my base material.  

I object to this, to having to bend my ideas to fit the views of a curator fresh from an MA in Curatorial studies.  Maybe curators should, post MA, do some on-the-job training - five years of being a technician in a gallery building walls and painting things white, a few years standing in a gallery looking after exhibitions, that kind of thing.  Actually, this would be good for everyone in the artworld.  Especially those cloistered in academia.

This is all deeply unfair, and many of the curators I know have indeed spent their time painting walls white and fiddling with lights while the opening deadline for the exhibition looms.  But I wish there were more open calls were curators would develop ideas with artists, rather than proscibing what the artist(s) can produce.  And then that artist can make the work and the curator can deal with all the other bits, like getting money, arranging transport, painting walls white...

 

 

Ghost Library: Catalogue text.

An anatomy of melancholy1.
Ghost libraries; fragments of texts and references.
Two visions haunt me. The first is of the interior of a vast circular library, with balconies that run the entire length of the walls, each with shelves of books reaching to the base of the next balcony. When you stand in the centre of this place you are surrounded by books, and by the knowledge the books contain.2
As the vision clarifies I realise that the lower balconies are only accessible by open spiral staircases, and that the higher floors cannot be reached. This fills me with a mix of terror and sorrow, for I cannot articulate the feeling of loss combined with a fear of the unknown, unreachable, knowledge that may destroy my prevailing view of the world.
The second vision is of an abandoned library, with empty bookcases that demonstrate the irredeemable absence of books. This is something more than loss, for that would mean there was some understanding of what had gone, this is a profound absence, as if knowledge had never existed. The end of all cognition.
It was at the close of the last century that I first encountered the metaphor of knowledge being likened to an endless series of rooms, so that no sooner had you begun the exploration of all that one room contained when you became aware of the open doors that led to further rooms to be explored.3 The implication was that it was impossible to know everything, for there would always be more, something perhaps unknown and unexpected. It is the architectural quality of this metaphor that draws me to it I am certain, that and the image of knowledge as something contained in fitfully lit rooms accessed only via seldom used corridors.
Museums and libraries fit this metaphor to perfection, with their rooms drawing you to follow a specific path, a teleology of epistemology. Ease of access to information for the visitor is paramount to the existence of these institutions.4 Yet when you are employed in such an institution you soon discover that this primary path through the cabinets of objects or the shelves of books is but one of many routes that could be taken, and that there are side rooms and dimly-lit corridors that lead you to places seldom visited. Even this is to discover only what is available to the general public, for there are also rooms that are barred except to researchers who wish to explore further their particular area of knowledge5. These closed rooms, with only a fading sign on the door or affixed to the wall to indicate what treasures may lie within, exert a fascination for a dreamer such as I, someone for whom the idea of the library as a site of possible wonders draws me to these institutions in the first place.

It did not take long to grasp the general layout of the public areas of the building, the manner in which the architecture was designed to lead a visitor to follow a specified route to promote the official narrative. However, as anyone who has attempted to produce a linear description of the cultural manifestations of a civilisation can attest, such singular routes are misleading. It was possible to discover rooms that seemed to lead away from the main corridors, these rooms containing objects now regarded as merely the traces of ideas that no longer added to the present understanding of the development of culture.6 These seldom-visited rooms were my especial joy, for on the dusty shelves could be discovered volumes of uncertain provenance, and these allowed me to weave my own stories rather than be constrained by an adherence to official histories.
Museums and libraries often contain much more than the things that are displayed or available for public purview. In the building in which I worked at the time of this narrative the offices, storage rooms, archives, and private collections that lay behind the public areas were a complex warren where it was possible to become completely lost. Those that worked in this area knew only of their immediate surroundings, finding it no doubt unnecessary to explore the archives and libraries of the curators of the lesser-known disciplines. Even those who ventured between departments kept to well-defined routes, and curators would limit their explorations to the archives and libraries containing the volumes dealing mostly with the modern period.
I am sure you think it unlikely that a modern building would contain such mysterious areas as those alluded to above, yet you should also recall that the new building you encounter today was constructed on the foundations of much older structures, and that the basement of the present building connects to the corridors and abandoned rooms of these previous institutions, and that some of these remnants of the previous architecture are still used for the archiving of seldom-needed books and artefacts.7
It was indeed while pursuing my own research into the history of the institutions that once stood on this site, and whose corridors are said to form part of the deeper sub-basements of the present building, that I first ventured into these moribund storage areas. I was searching for the diary of a Professor N., a professor of Archaeology at the University of T., who had submitted a number of papers to an obscure publication dealing with bibliomania at the beginning of the last century. Many of these articles dealt with the libraries of eighteenth century Dutch explorers, and they demonstrated an almost obsessive focus on the fate of one particular collection of books of natural philosophy, now thought lost. My interest in the Professor’s diary, and indeed in his interest in the whereabouts of the books collected by one Hieronymous Schlaken, had been kindled by the chance discovery of an ink

and wash drawing of the local natural harbour, signed H. Schlaken. This was secreted between the pages of one of the volumes on geological formations that had been donated to the Museum Library upon the disappearance of the Professor.8 The drawing by Schlaken led me to assume that he must have been employed as a draughtsman on one of the voyages of exploration undertaken by Europeans in the pursuit of the projection of power, something the British had taken to perfection before their Empire, like all Empires must, had collapsed. I assumed that Schlaken had been, like William Hodges before him, both draughtsman and spy, engaged in describing local flora and fauna whilst surveying the land for possible naval bases.9
Upon his return to Europe Schlaken, now enriched as the result of the sale of curiosities he had amassed during the voyage, a collection that included a rather fine specimen of Haploteuthis ferox, began to purchase books from dealers throughout Europe.10 There exists in the Library of L. the correspondence between Schlaken and a bookseller in that city, which shows that Schlaken was chiefly interested in alchemy and the associated realms of knowledge where science interweaves with speculative philosophy11. Such a collection was not unusual for that period, although the manner with which it was pursued was remarked upon. The letters show Schlaken to be a difficult man. He was a recluse who used his status as an artist, for the paintings based on the drawings he made during his voyages were popular, despite being fantastical, as the excuse for his strange behaviour. He was seldom seen except at night, and all who chanced to encounter his heavily-cloaked figure in the dark streets of the city remarked on the sense of dread they felt. This emanated not so much from Schlaken himself, but from the feeling that there was someone following him, a barely-glimpsed shadow of great darkness that haunted the edges of the vision. Schlaken had the appearance of one being pursued12.
Schlaken’s body was never discovered, despite extensive searches of his now abandoned house. The library had been emptied of books, though there were scraps of burnt paper and ashes on all the shelves. Those who entered reported a palpable sense of unpleasantness, and the unshakeable feeling of being watched. Some of the more sensitive were sure they could hear voices, one speaking fearfully in Dutch, and the other in some strange language that seemed much older.13
This narrative I discovered from the extensive notes in Professor N.’s diary. I had almost given up the search for this volume, for all entries concerning its location had been erased from the pages of the library catalogues, and done so with a violence that had resulted in the pages being torn and disfigured14. This was not normal practice even in this institution. However, I found a small, badly-burnt, box on the shelves of the room reserved for uncatalogued items, and some whim made me take this to my office to examine it in detail. I was attempting to clean the ashes from the base with a small knife when a secret drawer opened, and within I discovered the diary and two documents15.

The documents were puzzling, for they were both architectural plans of some sort. After careful examination I realised that one was a copy of the original designs for Schlaken’s library. The second was an old plan of the deeper levels of the present Museum, with a room marked as the location for the rebuilding of Schlaken’s Library. This second plan was also covered in small drawings that seemed similar to diagrams I had once seen in a copy of the Seal of Solomon16. These were produced by the application of thin lines of charcoal, but, as soon as I tried to look at them closely they were dissipated by a sudden motion of the air. There are no windows in my office, and I was at a loss to explain this occurrence.
I am not versed in the language of architectural plans, so it took some time to understand how a plan for a library related to the present structure, and to locate the whereabouts of the entrance, if indeed such a library had ever been constructed. Given the labyrinthine nature of the building, and the manner in which Professor N. had been, according to contemporary accounts of his time at the University of T., able to convince his colleagues of the necessity for numerous experiments of a highly questionable nature, it seemed likely that getting a small library constructed in the sub-basement of the Museum was entirely within his powers.
I determined to explore the corridors in the general direction indicated by the plans, and with this in mind I informed the keeper of the keys that I would be working late, and that he should leave me with the means to lock the outer doors when I left.
Although I was used to being in the Museum, the experience of the closed and silent institution was unsettling17. I took my flashlight, and began to walk in the direction mapped out by the plan. At first the corridors were familiar, lined with shelves and cupboards containing specimens and illustrated volumes of artefacts, but eventually the spaces became narrow, with alcoves containing objects that produces strange shadows when my light chanced to illuminate their contours. As I progressed I became aware of an odd sensation, the feeling that someone was following me, and I was sure I felt a breath of air on the back of neck, as if someone very close had exhaled behind me. But when I turned there was no one there.
Eventually the corridors began to slope downwards, and the construction of the walls changed from old concrete to blocks of stone, which, though old, had been carefully wrought to produce a seamless surface. The shelves that now lined the walls were dusty, bending under the weight of boxes that had not been opened for many years. Rounding a corner I came across a shelf that had collapsed, strewing boxes and contents across the stone floor. In the light cast by my torch I could discern scraps of cloth and small bones amongst the dust, but nothing recognisable18.

I was now nearing the area indicated as containing the Schlaken Library, and therefore I began to examine the walls for any sign of the entrance to such a place. I discovered few doorways, and those that I encountered led only to small and empty offices, though often these contained furniture and personal effects that implied that the inhabitant had vacated the room precipitately those many years ago.
After a few hours of meandering I began to grow weary, and was on the point of retracing my steps and returning to my office when I became aware of a slight glimmer of light at the end of the furthest corridor. As I neared this juncture I realised that the light was coming from the window of a small door in the middle of the wall of the left-hand passage that led from the present corridor. The light was greenish in tint, which I assumed as being the result of the years of dust on the window, but, upon opening the door, I discerned the illumination beyond as being of this colour, and indeed of coming from no easily distinguishable source. As soon as I entered the light seemed to dim markedly, leaving me to rely on the illumination from my torch
The room I entered was large, and twice the height of the main galleries of the museum. At first I could make out no details, for the air was filled with dust and had the odour of decay, but eventually I saw a long balcony running the length of the far end of the room. I approach this, and as I neared I discovered that this balcony was lined with bookcases, and my light caught the gold lettering on the spines of many fine volumes. I was drawn irresistibly towards the books, trying to make out the titles, but no matter how much I tried to focus my vision the books seemed to fade and grow transparent, as if hardy there but solely the mere apparition of the book.
As I stood gazing up I became aware of three doors that gave access to the balcony of books, and no sooner had I noticed these than the window of the central one became illuminated, and a shadow darkened the aperture.
I watched as the door slowly opened, and a dark form filled the doorway blotting out all light. I shone my torch at the figure, but there was only a void, an emptiness that seemed to pull the light into itself. And I felt myself being pulled into this nothingness.
I recall stumbling back up the corridors towards the museum fitfully, and only regained full consciousness of my surroundings upon the arrival of daylight. I was huddled close to the main door of the building, facing the direction of the rising sun, as if praying for light to drive away the darkness. My clothes were covered in mould and stank of the grave.


1 The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is a library in one book, a cabinet of curiosities, a strange, book about sadness. It cannot be assigned to any category, being philosophy, psychology, literature, medicine (though I would be wary of the cures within).
2 The Picton Library in Liverpool is the instigator of this vision, for it has such balconies of books. I recall searching for The Order of Things, slowly circumnavigating the central space from the vantage point of the second balcony. I realized that I no longer cared if I found the book, for this wandering existence in this world of books was more than enough. I am reminded of The Library of Babel, by Borges.
3 This image is from a play, though what play I have never been able to discover. All I recall is glancing through a collected volume of plays (Howard Brenton?) in the library and coming across the quote, but never being able to find the quote again. Did I make it up? It only matters in academia, nowhere else. The joy of libraries is the chance encounter.
4 Books on museum design show this to perfection. If you wish, read The Birth of the Museum. Tony Bennet connects museums to the institutional structures of knowledge, tying together museums and prisons, which though true seems unfair. Buildings and Power is also an excellent volume, with the added advantage of diagrams that show how museums, prisons, libraries are all part of an institutional structure designed to produce a good citizen.
5 A design for the Natural History Museum in London (all part of the disagreements between Huxley and Owen on what such a museum should be) had glass cabinets that ran the length of the galleries, with access to the public on one side, and access for researchers on the other. The production of knowledge as part of the display, which seems very contemporary. See Nature’s Museums by Carla Yanni.
6 It could be argued that the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is exactly this, a place of wonders yet based on an outmoded way of thinking about the world. I suggest reading the chapter on collecting in Interpreting Objects and Collections, by Susan M. Pearce.
7 Rereading this I am reminded of Gormenghast, which I now recall has much to do with books and tradition. 
8 Schlaken was a minor painter of the time of Rembrandt (who was not a minor painter). He is the subject of a ghost story by J.S. LeFanu, which was subsequently made into an excellent short film, directed by Leslie Megahey.
9 The paintings of William Hodges are in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. They were worked up from drawings made on the second voyage of Captain Cook, and retain the sense of the utter strangeness of the scenes encounter.
10 Haploteuthis ferox is the Latin name given to the carnivorous octopi who invade the South Coast of England in H.G. Wells The Sea Invaders. See any of the various editions of H.G. Wells The Collected Short Stories.
11 The now clear-cut divisions between were not always so, and the example I think of in this regard is Dr. John Dee. The Queen’s Conjuror by Benjamin Woolley is a good biography, and there is a fascinating chapter in The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age by Frances Yates on Dee in relations to Spencer’s The Faerie Queene.  
12 This idea of someone being haunted comes from M.R. James, see The Collected Ghost Stories, especially Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.
13 This is a reference to H.P. Lovecraft and his myriad of stories centring on the Cthulhu myths. I am still fascinated by these stories, despite their obvious formulaic narratives. The best of the longer stories is At the Mountains of Madness. See The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson for an overview of the work of Lovecraft in relation to the literature of supernatural.
 14 The library of Sir Francis Willoughby, of Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, UK, was said to contain many volumes where the words ‘the Pope’ had been erased with great violence. The architect of Wollaton Hall was Robert Smythson, see Robert Smythson by M. Girouard for details of this strange place, and the (possible) source of the story.
15 This refers to the discovery of fragments of the diary of Dr. Dee in the hidden drawer of a large (burnt by the Great Fire of London) box.
16 The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish is a good reference for the appearance of these occult diagrams.
17 Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum begins with a wonderful description of the uncanniness of the closed museum.
18 The idea of the sloping paths to the unknown, and of the fragments of cloth, are both references to the H.G. Wells story The Time Machine. In the far future reached by the narrator is a ruined edifice called The Palace of Green Porcelain, and here he encounters the fragments of a long-abandoned library. This leads to the realization that for the future generations all the knowledge contained in books will be of no meaning. It may be that we are embarking on that journey now, as ‘information’ overtakes knowledge.

A personal view of psychogeography; text for a talk given in Tainan, Taiwan, 2019

A wander through the idea, with diversions.

A personal view

Although the term psychogeography was coined at a specific identifiable moment of time, and in the specific context of the Situationist movement, it has long escaped this original context.  The exploration, wandering of a city (or indeed a landscape) following no conventional map, but being alive to the interplay of history, politics, memory, myths, can be seen to stretch back in time, and to be a way of engaging with our place in the world that is certainly common in the large urban conurbations that now cover the Earth.  The maps we use to navigate our way around a city are mere abstractions, a way of getting from A to B (or Z) to enable us to be good citizens of the great capitalist enterprises, aided by excellent travel systems that ensure we arrive at the office in time to begin another day of sending emails.  Why it is necessary to send all these emails, to arrange meetings in order to send more emails, is not to be questioned.

Once the maps we carried were physical objects, and every inhabitant of London (for example) carried a pocket A – Z Guide to the city, dog-eared and rain-stained, but still useful.  Then Google took over, and we follow that moving dot on the screen as if it really is us – and so we stare at the abstraction of lines and pixelate symbols and ignore the world we wander through.  Maps are not perfection, and as with the A –Z Guide – where the leap from one page to the next was a perilous affair – Google has glitches, and moves the geography of the world to fit into its abstractions.  And so the Longitude zero line – a real physical line that demarked East from West, and the basis of all modern navigation – has been shifted to a litter bin in the park.

The excitement of thinking psychogeographically, and throwing away our conventional maps, is that it enables us to re-engage with the world, to be alive to the cities we have made and the strata of memory that composes their substance.  Not only cities, but the entire environment contains the traces and fragments of human habitation, the political and psychological map that overlays the landscape and sits at variance to the official meaning imposed by power.  It should always be remembered that those in power design the city to tell their version of events, so that your journey to work bypasses the monument to the man(!) whose example you should follow, or commemorates the victory that must never be forgotten.  Such monuments are nearly always forgotten, and become memorials to being invisible.  Such contradictions are to be found everywhere, and make a pyschogeographic wander a process of creative and critical rediscovery, as we become archaeologists of the forgotten.

Although the concept is articulated in France, there is a parallel collection of writers and artists working in the UK whose projects can fit within this loose category.  In the symbiotic relationships that have developed between literature, architectural theory and practice, sculpture, site-specific installation, video, painting have provided an open and rich field that encourages a process of critical wandering and engagement with the urban and rural environment (the latter perhaps because artists now find it too expensive to live in big cities).

There is a long tradition of novelists and poets seeing the city through the lens of a personal vision – William Blake walks through the park at Peckham Rye (which is within walking distance of my studio in London) and sees angels singing in a tree – the metaphysical interacting with the actual.  For Blake this is not a vision, it is just that he is able to see the world as it really is.

Thomas De Quincey has opium-induced visions of the city as he wanders the streets, poor and starving.  His later accounts of the dream city that shimmered over the real become central to his autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium Eater

This idea, of there being another London that somehow exists alongside the one that is encountered by the everyday inhabitant, returns in the contemporary fiction of Neil Gaiman.  His concept of London Below (in the novel Neverwhere) is of a subterranean parallel city that intersects with the real at various important (and usually old) sites, with areas that make use of the names and myths of the real place.  The name itself is an allusion to the poor underclass that has been made invisible during the great financial boom.

The slippages of both time and space that is in Neverwhere is also in the fiction of Peter Ackroyd, whose book Hawksmoor is based in Spitalfields, an area of London that is a swirling fog of myths and history.  The book takes as its central point the church in Spitalfields built by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (), and from this builds a narrative that involves the past intersecting with the present, and with a fictional interpretation of the possible magical significance of the church.

Spitalfields, and in particular the area around Brick Lane, is central to an entirely different narrative, one that shows the problem with allowing a view of history that focuses on the supposed mystical significance of events and people.  I am drawn to strange stories, yet these must be treated with caution lest they become the only interpretation of places.

Brick Lane and its surrounding area has always been the place in London where immigrants have first settled.  In the beginning it was French Catholics fleeing persecution, and many of the buildings and workshops in the area owe their origins to this first wave of refugees.  Later it was those of the Jewish faith fleeing the pogroms in Russia, and then in the 1960’s it was Muslim immigrants from Pakistan.  This has produced an area with layers of religions and cultures, as each group has settled in the area, made a living, and eventually moved on.  The one constant has been working with cloth and clothing, which means that my current location in Wanhua reminds me, oddly, of East London in the 1970’s.

There is one building in the area that is an encapsulation of the different waves of migration – built first as a Catholic Church, then converted to a Synagogue, and now it is a Mosque. 

Above a synagogue was the locked room of the caretaker.  He had disappeared sometime in the 1960’s, but the room was not opened for thirty years.

Upon the forcing of the door what was revealed within was an abandoned apartment, with all the possessions still intact of someone who had seemingly vanished.  An urban myth grew up around this person – that he had been engaged in strange and secret activities, that his sudden disappearance was the result of secret researches he was undertaking, and the traces of which could be seen in the books in different languages, the maps of London with carefully traced routes throughout the city…a man of mystery.

The truth is more prosaic.  Rodinsky (the name of the inhabitant of the room) was an average poor person, but with an interest in self-education and in learning languages (hence the notes in strange scripts…actually Chinese).  He walked to see his sister and few friends, the routes traced out on the maps were these journeys noted down for future reference (an not something involving a secret agenda).  He had simply set out to visit someone, fallen ill, and died.

The true narrative was uncovered by the artist Rachel Lichenstein, who together with the writer Iain Sinclair wrote Rodinsky’s Room.  Originally they had planned to make a site-specific work centring on the actual room, a project funded by Artangel (of whom more later).  They wanted to make a work that rescued the real Rodinsky from the myth, but this proved difficult as the desire for the myth proved too strong (a desire fuelled by the money that could be made from the story of the ‘disappeared occultist’, as this all coincides with the time when Spitalfields shifts from being a run-down inner city area to an up-and-coming area for trendy cafes). 

Iain Sinclair has written a number of books that explore the multiple narratives of (specifically East) London.  His books are a poetic evocation of the personal and the political history of areas of the city, allied with a critical view of contemporary developments as finance and the global rich turn areas of the city into gated apartments and empty other places of community.

In London Orbital he follows the route of the M25 motorway that encircles the city.  He does this in a series of walks accompanied by friends from a variety of different backgrounds (from workers to film-makers), and it is the conversational interplay between Sinclair and his companions, together with the reportage of the conversations with people they meet on the way allied with the historical background of this outer fringe of London that provides the subject of the book.  This area is a place of low-grade recycling industries, out-of-town offices and call-centres, places associated with the ‘secret-state’ (military and security), and derelict mental hospitals being converted to up-market apartments.

Sinclair’s works of urban psychogeography have a basis in actual explorations of the city, using specific places to critically examine the underlying political currents that affect decisions over the use and mis-use of space – a prime example being the manner in which the London Olympics of 2012 allowed the privatisation of what had once been public space (this can also be seen in the manner in which shopping malls turn public streets into private spaces).

Rings of Saturn, by WG Sebald, reads as if it is a factual account of a walking tour undertaken by the author in the East of England.  There are even faded photographs, and digressions into history (for example the history of silk production and the Taiping revolt  in China) that relate to, yet lead from, the main narrative of the walk.  Yet it is not possible to follow the route of the walk, for the distances and geography have been shifted in order to amplify Sebald’s melancholy observations on history.  Even the photographs are fictions, taken by the author and then subject to a process of fading by being photocopied multiple times, until the right level of obscurity is achieved.  It is as if Sebald had decided on the associations of history and memory he wished to explore, and then reconstructed the landscape to fir this narrative, producing a wander through his own version of the east of England.  In truth that is how we encounter the world, remaking it as a landscape that fits our own pre-occupations, and editing out the rest except as incidental.  The nature of the pre-occupations this reveals, is however, telling.

Both Sinclair and Sebald are important writers for visual artists, with their observations on history and memory in connection to the environment that bears the traces of humanity chiming with much current practice.  Artangel has already been mentioned with connection to Sinclair, and together with Locus+, it is an important curatorial organisation that works closely with artists to produce site-specific projects.

One early project commissioned by Artangel drew inspiration from a book called The Old Straight Track.  This was written by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins in the 1925, and promulgated Watkin’s theory of ley lines.  The UK countryside is dotted with various sites of antiquity, from medieval churches (usually built on the sites of much older religious buildings) to standing stones, to ancient burial mounds.  On a map it is possible to draw a straight line between such sites, connecting them with a network that can be seen reflected in the ancient pathways connecting the site.  Watkins’ idea was that this was an aid for navigation in the days before Google (or any maps), a series of significant landmarks of ritual significance.  In the 1960’s this was further developed to see the lines as actual lines of some sort of mystical energy that the initiate could tap directly.  A kind of psychic power grid or ancient wi-fi.  The idea has turned up in multiple novels, films, usually in connections with ancient aliens or elder gods.  Yet, despite the obvious unlikely nature of the idea, the concept of the landscape being more than the physical reality we see does not go away…

And this mystical view of the landscape of the UK has its parallel in contemporary cities, where significant sites that promote lines of visibility is implicit to he various official monuments that are the traces of the imposition of power.  Monuments and memorials are designed to be seen from a distance, to exert a powerful influence by the nature of their symbolism and visibility.   Monumental statues and symbolic architecture are now seen as the province of the dictator, yet perhaps the towers that dominate our cities are the new monuments to the triumph of global capital (and such buildings as The Shard often turn up in contemporary fictions as the site of mysterious powerful entities).

The Shard is only the latest in the ecology of towers that has overtaken London.  Among the first was Canary Wharf, which can be seen to symbolise the beginning of the social changes to the east of London that have destroyed communities and driven the poor to invisibility.  The changes that have overtaken the UK, and specifically England, have formed the subject matter for the films of Patrick Keiller.  Described as ‘an architect who makes films, and a film maker who makes installations’  Keiller’s three major films (Robinson in Ruins, Robinson in Space, London) are records of the journeys of the fictional Robinson as he attempts to understand the changes that are happening to the country – and here country means both the place as urban and rural environment, and the political construct that is the UK.

Where once the monuments of the UK were forgotten, the myth of Empire has arisen.  It will destroy my country.

I wander through cities, and the weather is cool and I wish to escape the studio and think – the best philosophy is always undertaken when walking.  In the distant past I would carry my Olympus OM10, and have to make definite choices over which encounters were deserving of one of the 36 shots on a standard role of film.  I am still affected by this mindset, despite the almost limitless capacity of phones to retain an image of almost everything (especially every meal).

I wander in various cities, hoping to encounter traces, fragments of histories and fossils of ideas, untold narratives awaiting uncovering, or melancholic reminders of failed dreams.

The ornaments, Newtown, Powys.

It was a glint of light that caught my eye that day, something on the ground reflecting the sun.

On the grave was a globe, similar to an upturned goldfish globe, covering an arrangement of flowers sculpted in ceramic.  A petrified world encapsulated under glass.

There were more, many undamaged, some broken with the ceramic blooms overtaken by their living counterparts.   I had wandered in this place often, yet never once noticed these memorials, now the flash of light had attuned my vision to their existence.

I have not seen these frozen floral tributes anywhere else.  Like rare fossils, these are perhaps the only surviving trace of a wider phenomena, the production of petrified bouquets as everlasting tributes.  Seen through the glass they are the floral equivalent of a taxidermy specimen.

What was once a memorial – a memory – that had to be endlessly renewed, each placing of flowers reinvigorating the contract with the deceased, that by this action memory is kept fresh and forgetting deferred – is in these ceramic blooms a memory frozen at the act of placing fresh flowers.

Un-decaying and everlasting, the brittle hardness replacing the organic inevitability of decay, these simple blooms stand at contrast to their context.  The memorials proper signal their status as constructs, they are signs and text, each element making reference to a nexus of beliefs.  There is no attempt at mimetic reproduction, the angel is not seen as truly there for all the attention to the biological detail of its wings.  The ceramic flowers seem to be something else, though there are numerous other representations of flora throughout the cemetery, stone vines climbing up broken pillars, bunches of flowers clutched by marble Madonnas.  It is both the quotidian nature of what is represented, the wreath of foliage, and the way it is presented.  The glass globe is there to protect, to place apart from the change that is inevitable. 

A workshop...

I have difficulty with curators.  Not, I hasten to add, on an individual basis, but with the prevailing over-importance (self-importance?) of ‘the curator’.  When I began to exhibit, and indeed to work, in public galleries there were few curators.  Instead there were exhibition officers, and this designation covered the remit to perfection by placing exhibition at the forefront.  Exhibition officers (and exhibition assistants) would be involved closely with the exhibition in both a conceptual and a physical manner, even going so far as to get their hands dirty, painting the walls or running out to purchase materials.

Now it seems as if everyone is a curator.  Artists are reduced to mere technicians, or to being an interesting presence in the bar, and any idea of engagement with the public has dissipated.  Curators hold seminars with other curators, with little need to discuss anything outside of the closed loop of those who read the orthodox texts.  I suppose this is a further example of the rise of the manager, which has seen the developed world (pause for ironic reflection) now awash with people whose main function is the sending of emails, the production of spreadsheets, the arranging of meetings.  A world whose inhabitants exist between Office and, on the way home, Candy Crush Saga.

Yes, curators are a necessary part of the art-world infrastructure, though when they were exhibition officers they were not imbued with the current god-like status.  Let us not forget that without artists there would be nothing to curate, and without the audience there would be no reason to curate.  But now there seems to be more curators and wannabe curators than anything else, and the complex relationships of art-world, space, contextual factors, and public engagement is overwhelmed.  There are endless symposia, while exhibitions become the illustration of curatorial texts.

I am, of course, envious.  Unable to match the intellectual rigour of the young curator I am assigned the role of the has-been, or maybe never-was, and must stand in the wings and watch the play you are playing, while my heart gently weeps.

Such is the fate of the producer of installations.

Something you lean on - musings on sculpture.

The following is the text of talk given at the Ju Ming Museum on October 3rd 2015.  The conference concerned sculpture, and so I decided to explore my problems with definitions of practice.

“Something you lean on while you look at the paintings.”

I will begin with a joke, a possible definition of sculpture- sculpture is something you lean on while you stand back to look at the paintings.

This joke, in common with most humorous utterances, contains a germ of truth, and it is the manner in which this joke makes important points not only about sculpture, but also about art, that I wish to examine.

At the outset I have a problem, for I find the term ‘sculpture’ problematic.  I think it is no longer possible to easily define artworks, and, although I recognize the usefulness of such definitions in certain circumstances, splitting art into distinct areas plays against much of contemporary practice.        There is, I contend, a wide field of objects and events that fit within the definition ‘art’ , and within this field are objects that may be termed ‘sculpture’, but such terms, like the term ‘art’ itself, are fluid.       

The problem I have with definitions, with categories, stems not only from uncertainties concerning easy or fixed definitions, but also from the baggage such terms bring in their wake, and this is especially true when one is asked to define oneself. 

On the landing card on my recent flight to Japan it asks for a definition of my role (for we are all assigned roles these days, to enable us to be fitted into the neat categories assigned by bureaucracy), and at this point I hesitate.  Artist?

There is an important point here, for even defining myself as an artist is something I do reluctantly, and this stems from the great suitcase of ancillary meanings such a definition carries.  “Artist” too often is a term that sets us apart, implying a “mortal who is beyond the common herd of humanity, someone set apart and touched by genius” (or madness). On the contrary, I think I (we) have just been lucky to have the chance to use our creativity in the production of something. The particularities of my background produces such thoughts. I am from a working-class family in Liverpool, and nearest thing to an artist was my grandfather, who fixed old clocks. The fact that I am here, that I make art, comes from being able to make use of certain (now destroyed) opportunities. Much of what I do can be traced back to the influence of my background, a love of small-scale construction for example, and this connection to my working class upbringing is important, for it keeps me grounded.  I hear my dad asking ‘what is that supposed to be?’

This preamble should be kept in mind as I return to leaning on the sculpture while looking at the paintings.  What drew me to this joke is the manner in which it can be used to examine certain ideas about sculpture, and about art. Initially, the phrase can be seen as a recognition that sculptures exist in the context of paintings (or the other way around). 

This obvious observation can further be seen as a demonstration of the fact that all artworks exist in a series of interrelationships to each other – no artwork is produced, or exhibited, in total isolation, as if free-floating in a white cube.

This series of relationships between artworks can be seen as conceptual, and as physical.

Conceptual, for the debates within the world of art (and there are many, from both critics and practitioners) predominantly focus on the connections of the artist and artwork to further conceptual, philosophical, and social dialogues, and these debates are common to all art forms.  By this I mean to indicate that the debates, by their nature as concerning ideas, shift across multiple artforms, so that, to take one example, the concepts of the relationship with the environment will be addressed not only in the visual arts, but in multiple artistic productions (for example, music). The issues that are addressed are no longer concerned with the specific possibilities of media or techniques. 

To define an art practice by media is to reduce the possibilities of the practice to mere technology, as if sculpture could be defined by categories such as ‘drill driver’, rather than to see art as an overall concept (a diffuse concept) that is part of the wider national and international cultural nexus.  

 

And this can extend further, to bring in philosophy, science. In my own practice I cite poetry, philosophy, architecture, literature, film and music.  And theatre….the idea that artforms are ‘pure’ is counter to all actual experience.

The physical relationship between art-works within the space of an exhibition is obvious, yet sometimes neglected.  To continue with the slight element of autobiography, I have worked in museums and galleries as a technician, employed to install art of all kinds.  This physical engagement with artworks, and with the various relationships between the artworks and the space of exhibition, is where exhibitions are made (from the conceptual to the actual). 

To stand back and lean on a sculpture while looking at the painting is to be an embodied presence in the space of the exhibition, engaged with the spatial relationships between the works of art and with all the contingent factors that are involved. 

The relationships are often not only a matter of pure aesthetics, but a matter of the down-to-earth physical, with what is possible within a given set of parameters, from the dimensions of the space to what is can take place in that space (I know of at least one exhibition where the layout of the works in the gallery was dictated by the load-bearing properties of the gallery floor).  And then there is light…

This relationship to the space of exhibition is, obviously, a relationship to architecture, and to the multiple meanings and connections of the architectonic.  Exhibition spaces now range from the purpose built museum and gallery, to the temporary site that retains the trace of its former incarnation.  Each of these contexts proposes both a physical and a further conceptual set of parameters for the works, and the relationships between the works.

It is commonplace to recognise the ‘white cube’ as a space laden with meaning, including the fiction of the neutrality of such a space, yet it is easy to forget how this works, and to be seduced by the need to make all spaces follow this model.  Too often I think buildings are ‘gallery-fied’, and lose the specifics that can make them a site that proposes different ways of thinking about the possible.

We can utilise this connection of the art-work to the architectonic to see how this ties art further into the network of connections, for each exhibition space, each manifestation of the ‘exhibitionary complex’ (to steal a term from museology) is in the site of the city (though there are exceptions, but the model holds good), and as components of the built environment are part of the pyschogeographical experience of the city, the multiple meanings that are part of our personal experience of the urban.

The dialogue between this experience (or set of experiences) and the artwork is a crucial part of the meaning of the work.  A pertinent example of this was Ghost by Rachel Whiteread.

The first exhibition of this work was in the Chisenhale Gallery, which is sited in an area of London that, at that time, comprised streets of run-down housing from the 19^th century and earlier, the same kind of housing where the cast of the room that formed Ghost had been taken.  The encounter with the cast of one of the many rooms in the surrounding streets affected how the viewer subsequently regarded the houses, each house now being imbued with the further ghost of the solidification of the interior space, a fossilisation of the memory of those who had breathed in that space.  These kinds of houses had a pathos, inscribed with the hopes of those trying to make a living in the first rise of the capitalisitic excess that would turn London into a site of increasing social separation.  House, the work that grew from Ghost, continued this connection.  When you encounter Ghost in another exhibition site (my next sighting of the work was in Sensation at the Royal Academy) it has lost that relationship to immediate environment, and this turns it into a nostalgic work, divorced from the ancillary meanings that gave it power.

In the joke there is a further element, an important presence in all of the foregoing.  For the space of the exhibition, the architecture and – importantly – the artworks themselves, all exist in relationship to that singular yet multiple person, that mix of adults, children, mothers and fathers, artists, curators, workers, that is all of us, the public, who encounter art in all of its forms. 

The viewer, the audience.

And without this viewer, there could be no art….for if no one encounters a work of art, if it stays in the studio, then it is only a proposal towards a work of art.  Art is a form of communication, a dialogue that opens up possibilities and proposes questions, and this always has to be in the context of an audience, otherwise we are shouting our ideas into the void.

The viewer leaning on the sculpture (and trying not to trip up and fall through a painting) is the important part of the equation, this viewer who is, perhaps, wondering about what she is encountering.  This brings in further ideas of context, of how any artwork is not only in a network of relationships to other artforms, to the exhibition site and the further sites of the city, but also to the people (the public) who are involved in the dialogue with the work, for art is always a dialogue, never the imposition of a singular viewpoint.

One of the most important developments within art, within sculpture especially, is the widening of the possibilities of what can be utilised as material within the work, and of what techniques are employed.  This opening out, a shift away from materials that could once be seen to symbolise ‘Art’, has been crucially important for the development of my practice.  In the UK I would haunt do-it-yourself stores, or read builders catalogues, or explore flea markets.

Here, in Taiwan, it is so much easier…for materials exist in abundance.

And not only have the boundaries of the possible been disrupted, so that sculpture can run the gamut from the found object subject to minimal intervention that discovers its poetic possibilities

to the use of materials that carry a critique of assumption concerning feminine crafts, via the act of mapping and walking as art, to the concept of the ‘life as sculpture’, but equally (and following from the above) the everyday is inscribed with the possibility of being art.  This possibility is all around us, for it is a matter of re-cognition, of seeing anew.

This, however, is not something that happens purely in one direction, that the ‘artist’ takes things from the world and places them upon a (conceptual of actual) pedestal.  The process is a dialogue, so that the utilisation of standard construction techniques in the production of a sculpture or an installation is also a way of increasing communication with the viewer(s).

Art is seen as an activity – a way of thinking - that uses the quotidian, the everyday, the recognisable, in a creative (or eccentric) way.  It is only the recognition of the inherent possibilities, the possibilities of challenging the accepted, that places the artist in a slightly different position (not necessarily any notion of genius).

One important point that follows from this is that the viewer does not need to have artworks ‘explained’ – subject to an official view as to the meaning of the work, as if there is ever a single definable, closed-down explanation to any artwork.  The viewer recognises a connection in the artworks to the everyday world we inhabit and know (a world that is anything but ‘everyday’ in its possibilities).  The use of the everyday becomes a key that enables the viewer to begin the engagement with the artwork – and where that leads will depend on the knowledge and experiences the viewer brings to the dialogue.

All of this involves a recognition of the creativity of the commonplace, that is that ways of thinking and doing are inscribed with creativity.  Here in Taiwan I encounter on a daily basis things that exhibit both accidental – or maybe subconscious – creativity (poetry) and surprising combinations.  By recognising the importance of the found/chance encounter, it is possible to raise questions over the nature of art itself, seeing art as not something special – and thereby only fit to be the subject of speculative collection and consumption – but as an inherent and necessary part of being human.

Let me cite two examples.  Both exhibit the creativity of the commonplace, yet paradoxically both are anything but ‘commonplace’, for they slip beyond the mundane to become something strangely creative.  The first is the ‘road robot’, a manufactured item whose uncanny qualities can be overlooked (though perhaps, as with the appearance of the ghost in bright sunlight in the film of “Turn of the Screw”, it is the unexpected visibility that makes us wish to not see).  This is a truly unsettling thing, for anywhere else it would just be a flashing sign, but here it is a presence, a population of androids….It is not necessary to indulge in the tactic of the found object (imagine filling a room in Taipei Fine Art Museum with 500 of these beings, the animism of the road sign), for it is the encounter with the robots in the site of the city that is important, as if the tableaux of Kienholz had expanded and fragmented, and the whole city become the artwork.  I know that the reason underlying the existence of these – beings - is financial, yet it is that leap from the need to provide a road sign, to producing the sign as a figure, where the creativity lies, and then the further creative steps in how each one becomes individualised.

In the spaces of the city are many further examples of unnoticed creativity, of accidental encounters. 

There is a shop interior in Tainan, a sewing machine shop.  Yet the manner in which the sewing machines are displayed, each in its own vitrine, turning each into something akin to a specimen in a museum, that produces a shock of dis-recognition.  The accidental encounter in a commercial establishment of a sewing machine and a museum display cabinet, to misquote Lautreamont.  This is one of the many ‘found installations’ I have – found – in wanders around the cities of Taiwan (the consequence of being without a scooter, and being English, and thereby  prone to wandering – going for a stroll).

Wandering the city – going for a stroll, allowing psychogeography to take hold, is not only to discover and recognise that the ways things are combined has an aesthetic interest (and maybe raises questions over the notion of the aesthetic), but also means that the layers of history within the city can be discerned.  It is still possible to discover fragments and ruins, still-used structures and the recently abandoned, in a wander in Taipei.  The city is a palimpsest, and the continuing exploration of this is important, for it is a constantly changing site, and things once lost can never be recovered.  Maybe we can think of this in terms of art, of the city as a complete ‘found installation’, allowing the construction of multiple narratives that disrupt a single (officially sanctioned) reading.  Ignore the monuments (except when dancing) and go down the side streets.

This is the importance of the viewer, for she is free to re-think at every turn, to see art as something that connects to the world she knows.  In a sense the viewer becomes free to make the artwork by the wander around the city, being alive to the chance discovery.

There is a difficulty here, for one of the reasons why people feel uncomfortable with art is that there is often a misunderstanding concerning its function.  My view is that, at its core, art exists to raise questions (and not to provide answers), to raise multiple questions over the perception of beauty, over the differences in culture, over history and interpretation…and to do this in ways that are engaging, and so that the experience is never reducible to singular narratives.

It is the question over history, over what we think we know and how that is presented in the spaces of the institutions, that is at stake.  For one consequence of recognising the inherent creativity in what is around us , from the everyday manner in which things are done, to the poetry of the chance encounter (and the found installation), is to raise questions over what counts as art, and what does not.

 If you wish to have a salutary encounter with how what is perceived as important changes, then go into the storage areas of any large public art gallery in the UK, for there you will find racks of paintings once considered prime examples of art.  This in itself may only be of interest to a minority (ie, us), but what further follows is a questioning of how all institutions make decisions over what is considered the truth, and then present these decisions.

The questioning, the dialogue, over what can be seen as art can therefore extend to questioning the interpretation of history and memory, to questioning the perceived importance of certain sites and how such sites are symbolised (for example is a villa once lived in by a government official more important than a house of a worker?), to questioning the current set of understandings and thinking about the future.  What things currently regarded as disposable will eventually be seen as of importance?  In the relentless drive for the new we could destroy our sense of who we are, and where we come from.

In the joke one point could be that the sculpture is not seen as important, for it does not fit into the category of art, a category reserved for painting.  In some cases this is still the case, as a wander around an art fair will demonstrate. 

Contemporary practice deals in no such simplistic distinctions, but continues to expand the boundaries of the possible.  This is crucial, for interrogating the given is the most important thing we can all do.  Herein lies further creative interrogation, for what do we question becomes part of the question as well.