“In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.”
WG Sebald. The Rings of Saturn. (London: Vintage Books, 2002). Trans. Michael Hulse, p3.
Rosalind Krauss, Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America. Part 2. October, Vol 4, Autumn, (MIT Press: , 1977), p 58-67. http://www.jstor.com/stable/778480
“once movement is understood as something the body does not produce and is, instead, a circumstance that is registered on it (or, invisibly, within it), there is a fundamental alteration in the nature of the sign. Movement ceases to function symbolically, and takes on the character of an index. By index I mean that type of sign which arises as the physical manifestation of a cause, of which traces, imprints, and clues are examples”
Krauss (1977) p, 59.
Movement in the digital image is caused by the organisation or ordering of information, or data including pixels and, if printed, then the organisation or order of (CMYK) colour in lines from the printer. The index, in relation to the digital photograph is different to that of the analogue photograph. If viewed on screen then computer hardware and software, and perhaps online facilities are also indexical.
The reduction of a conventional sign to a trace, which then produces the need for a supplemental discourse.
A painting is an empty sign, one without meaning unless there is some external reference to it. For example, it is given by title, statement by the artist, interview, juxtaposition/installation.
David Green and Joanna Lowry, ‘From Presence to the Performative: Rethinking Photographic Indexicality’ in David Green (ed) Where is the Photograph (Photoworks and Photoforum, 2003), P.57 – 58.
Green and Lowry discuss the impact of digital technologies on photography, which caused it to have a similar fate to painting in that its death was subsequently announced. The connection to reality that photography claimed to have was now thrown into question with the arrival of digital photography. However, similarly to painting, this did not happen and as Green and Lowry state, a new generation of users came to photography keen to explore these concerns. This connection to the real, that was photography’s claim, was linked to its indexicality.
Ideas of photography’s indexicality can be traced back to Roland Barthes Camera Lucida. Barthes suggests that the link that photography has is to the past, to things that have once been there. He connects the photograph’s essence or indexical quality to death and memory through this.
The trace or mark of light through chemical processes links nature to the photograph. The photograph is a trace of this. Not the image, the iconic nature of the image, that resembles something, but the direct physical connection to nature through its making, leaving the trace of a photographic image. According to Barthes this allows photography to be a marker of loss and time past. Barthes suggests that this cannot be reached, it cannot be regained, the thing that was there has gone, that moment where something was, is now gone and can never return. He continues that this immediately links us to death, our own mortality, through this realisation.
I am interested in the photograph as it is utilised in the present—how is it linked to the past but used now? Through indexicality?
The indexical nature of photography has been re-examined in the new context of digital photography. Green and Lowry suggest that we should think beyond the limiting understanding of indexicality as a connection between now and the past and suggest looking to Pierce’s definition of the index to understand how it relates to current technological contexts. They suggest looking less at its causal origins and more at how it became to be inscripted—the act, or event, of taking a photograph. They suggest that there are two forms of indexicality, one that points to the physical nature of the photograph, which leaves a trace and the other as a performative event, or act, originating from the world, that causes an image of it to be captured.
Both these forms of indexicality the act of an event and the trace of it, point to photography according to Green and Lowry. They discuss photographer Jeff Wall’s observations that it was conceptual artists who, while using photojournalistic techniques of photographic documentation of their work, cemented its status as a depicter of reality. But also that at times, for example in the photographic work of Ed Ruscha, this was as parody and the full extent of photography’s use in conceptual art has been overlooked due to this. But they state that photography did more than just provide documentation, it provided the arena in which the work was acted out—constituted its realisation. Green and Lowry state that there is an interdependence between the performative act and the documentation of it. This, they suggest, points toward the twinned aspects of indexicality that are fundamental to photography (p 50). The act of photography might be seen as more of a moment of authentication, not the documentation, which has its limits. Conceptual art’s use of photography to point to something real that happened was often done ironically and this method itself allowed photography’s use as a performative act to be considered as the actual connection to the real.
Green and Lowry suggest the photographic act is a gesture, a pointing to something (that is happening). In the case of my work the camera is pointing to the studio desk, the act of not-painting, no painting is happening, but it is being prepared for, it is the start and the site if painting activity. The photograph is a gesture where I point to the place of making and it is at the same time a trace of that act. The translation of the image onto the paper, transfers the image, the site of making onto the paper. The gesture points to a translation of site, of studio, where the site of making will take place and in this blog site the photograph has been situated here, online.
Pierce’s concept of indexicality has been re-examined in this post-photographic era. Pierce stated that the index invloved a direct connection to the signified. In the case of the photograph thats always assumed to be the real world.
Emma Hart
How to Do Things With Cameras (thesis)
My research, along with Green and Lowry’s, agrees with most camera users in not differentiating between digital and silver based film and photography. Green
and Lowry argue that instead of the digital revolution prompting a rethink of photography’s indexicality, it is Austin’s notion of ‘performativity’ that provides a reason to look again. Through Austin, Green and Lowry offer another way of understanding the photograph’s indexicality, which they test out against the documentary use of photography by many conceptual artists in the 1970.
It will be obvious that our extension of the notion of the performative statement to include the photographic act is intended to foreground the idea of a gesture, a matter of pointing to something, that is similarly grounded in the specificity of a particular time and place. Yet, what is important here is that in formulating the issue in these terms, we must avoid the trap of inadvertently reinstating the idea of the photographic document, that is as the truthful record of something that has happened […J Performativity we are arguing was central to the use made of photography by the conceptual artists not so much for the fact that it provided the spectator with an indexical trace of the real through the recording ofthe event, but because it deictically invoked the real through ‘pointing to’ the event and, in effect, declaring it to be the case. (Green and Lowry in Emma Hart, p53/54)
Baking bread is something I have been doing more of in lockdown. It helps me focus. I have developed a good routine now where I can quickly begin the dough the night before. I spend the next day folding it regularly, letting it rise and baking while I work on my research. I move back and forth between bread-making and reading an article and note-taking. The bread is folded every twenty minutes and then given a final proof for an hour. It bakes for twenty minutes in the casserole dish then twenty minutes out. This gives me periods of an hour to read and note take and frequent twenty minute intervals to reflect on things. Then another hour to let the bread cool before I cut off the crusts and have a decent afternoon break.
I put dry yeast, salt, flour and water in my bread. Today I used a mix of white, wholemeal and a little rye flour. I add this to the sponge I made last night and mix it roughly. These are the things that are not visible when the bread is baked.
I find this helpful, this process of stepping away from material. In this case I get to step away from reading when I am baking and step away from baking when I am reading. This is the way I like to work, this to and fro-ing from more physical work to more cerebral. Obviously there is not such a thing as only doing physical work, the mind-body separation (as a dichotomy) does not exist. But although it is not a binary thing, there are instances where experience and learning take place through some of the senses of the body more than others. For example I can read and look at the instagram posts on bread-making, explore how the dough is left to rise for a final proof before going into a very hot oven, but until I actually make bread, until I get my hands on the sticky doughy material, I won’t actually learn how to make bread. Material learning takes time. While I am learning I can forget to do things, like grease or line the proofing container. Which I did today, causing the second loaf to stick to the sides and spread out flat and not rise as well. The first loaf did rise nicely, but I have made a few already with this technique, so I am getting used to the specific methods.
So there is no binary mind-body space, but there are perhaps areas of concentrated time-spaces where some element might be more apparent, or more experienced. So it is a more-than space, a more concentrated physical time-space perhaps and a more concentrated cognitive time-space*
*note to self—look at Begsonian/Deleuzean (cinematic) concepts of time. This makes me think of concentrated time-space, something I have been thinking about already in my paintings.
Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics, 2nd Edition, Routledge (London and New York: 2002), p 36-37.
Symbol
“A mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional—so that this relationship must be agreed upon and learned: e.g. language in general (plus specific languages, alphabetical letters, punctuation marks, words phrases and sentences), numbers, morse code, traffic lights).”
Icon
“A mode in which the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified (recognisably looking, feeling, tasting or smelling like it)—being similar in possessing some of its qualities: e.g. a portrait, metaphors, cartoon, gestures, dubbed film soundtrack.”
Index
“A mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or causally) to the signified (regardless of intention)—this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. ‘natural signs'(smoke, thunder, footprints, echoes, medical symptoms (pain, rash, pulse-rate), measuring instruments (thermometer, clock, spirit-level), ‘signals’ (knock on the door, phone ring), pointers (pointing ‘index’ finger, sign post), recordings (photograph, film, tv, audio), personal trademarks (handwriting, catchphrases).”
Chandler (2002)
Adopting Piercean concepts of indexicality and iconicity means no longer isolating the referent, but pointing to something outside of it. Iconicity, in photography, would refer to a perceived resemblance to the referent, whereas indexicality is based on a (perceived) direct connection to it. It allows us to move beyond the boundaries of the Saussurean model of semiotics, one which Roman Jakobson adopted in his structuralist and linguistic framework of semiotics, which was used in early translation theory (by, for example, Umberto Eco).
Thinking about semiotics within a wider triadic, post-structuralist framework allows context to be considered within the processes of meaning-making.
Letters, words and language in general are symbols, they have no direct connection to the signified—the things they refer to. Metaphors or other vehicles for language are considered iconic in that they resemble, or possess some of the qualities that language or words have, which is the thing they refer to. They physically have words in them. Handwriting is indexical, in that it has a direct connection to the things it refers to but is not arbitrary, it is based on a perceived connection to it. Ie the presence of a specific person, an individual who wrote the words. Symbols are visible, Icons are visible? The index relates to the thing outside of itself which is not seen but directly referred to. The index is invisible—perceived, directly connected to, not arbitrary, but invisible.
Laura Mulvey, A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai), Oxford Art journal. Vol 30, 1. Oxford: University Press, 2007) pp, 29-37.
Mulvey notes that the photograph, composed by Jeff Wall, contains ‘seemingly incompatible temporalities’ through its reference to different periods in the history of photography. The photograph initially appears as though it was taken in an instant, however was staged, composed, photo-manipulated and multi-layered by Wall. The combination of instantaneous and performed presence are unsettling, what Mulvey refers to as a technological uncanny, hovering on the border between old and new technology, providing the tension between both. The image refers, nostalgically to instant, point and shoot photography of the past as it connects nature and technology by reference to natural light and photosensitive materials. This reference to historic uses of photography is connected through its indexicality—its connection to a referent, although there is no referent (to the natural world) as such since the image is staged and digitally manipulated. The referent is cultural—a staged performance of a Japanese print. Wall states that his images have ‘no outside’ and perhaps he is referring to the staged nature of the work, but this image is also a containment of cultural elements rather than being directly connected to nature. My photograph above, does have an ‘outside’ referent, it refers the the site of making—the studio. In Walls photograph, the connection to nature is perhaps only through the presence of the artist and viewer?
The image refers to periods in time of photographic history. It also connects itself to printmaking (After Hokusai, who was a commercial printmaker who recorded everyday moments in life with his woodblock print) and the fine arts which is a slower, more layered process with complex time-space relationships that are quite different to analogue photograph. Mulvey suggests it is a nostalgic view of a perfect moment in the past, where an event is instantly captured by the camera. It is a staged and almost too perfect rendition of this moment, made possible only through digital technology. It encapsulates Barthes paradox of time in photography.It refers to a fantasy that we have of the past, the impossible fantasy of the past that, according to Barthes, was about reconciling the past (dead) with the present (living) and being unable to reconcile them. Wall discusses the different time-space relationships in his images compared with their normal use in everyday life that always imply a time space continuum.
Mulvey discusses how many photographers have commented on the moving nature away from technology of the camera into a less indexical and more compositional form, similar in many ways to painting. Photography always contained a moment of shutter release, a signifier of a moment, an instant in time, whereas painting contains elements of past, present and future. Some things that can co-exist in a painting could never in the real world. This is now the case for digital photography.
“Now it is becoming apparent that electronic and digital information systems emanating from video and computers will replace photographic film across a broad range of image-making processes. To me, this is neither good nor bad necessarily, but if this happens there will be a new displacement of water in photography”.
Jeff Wall
Wall adds that the relationship of water will change post-photography, where water was initially part of the technical process of developing, it now has a different relationship to digital photographic images. This is something interesting to consider in its relationship to painting and printmaking.
In writing up my year’s summary. I am thinking about how I sat with the photograph, for a year. I knew it related to the site of making as much as the desk, but I didn’t begin to engage with the photograph in a fully embodied way, that is I didn’t engage with the objects in the space until I moved out of the studio. Questions I need to ask myself are why did it take moving from the studio, being engaged with the table, throwing it out, to think of making an object? How do I read the photograph? How do I engage with it? Is the answer in the word read? How does it differ from the way I work with objects? I did work with the photograph as an object. Why did I not want to re-create the table, or use it to make an installation when I was looking at the photograph? It took losing the table to stimulate a translation of the table, a recreation, trying to bring something back. Loss of the table. I used the chest of drawers and didn’t mind throwing them out? I didn’t have the same emotional reaction. It was an intense feeling of loss. Literally going through five stages of grief over a table. Because I thought it was the only possibility. What was lost when I threw out the table, when I moved studios? What is lost in the photograph?
Building the thesis over the next few months will give me the opportunity to go back to this. The photograph, Blank Canvas and photographed marks, drawn marks will be explored further in this context. There is a change of direction from the table to the book. Now I can return to the photograph with the knowledge gained from working with the objects. This order of working (photo—object—photo) may be important in how elements of interaction (questions, concerns, resolutions) develop further.
There may be a reason why this path was chosen i.e why I went from photo back to photo.
Also, this back and forth rhythm, leaving and returning is visible more, a(s in running post). Leaving, or going back and forth, seems integral to problem solving in some way.
The loss of the body? What part of the self is lost in each medium? What is visible? Painting is most connected? ????
*Also, explore standardisation of variables as a way of validating subjective information (scientific) limiting or controlling ‘interference’, statistically valid, as science is.
**The marks on the table were marks I considered to be of low value, i.e they were not in any paintings, but on the outside, left over. They were given value through the loss of the table. The traces or accumulation of presence over the past years of working. Text, within the context of the thesis could this be considered in a similar way? Text (as material?) is not seen as of value, the behind the scenes stuff from making a painting, the expanded field of my practice. I am now defining painting and exploring this expanded, contextual material. Explore.
1 February 2020
Repetition, change, possibility. The context is the location in which I am framed, where my expression is heard or spoken, the context, is the place for the expression of who I am. Multiple perspectives build up a self, it depends on your context to . how this is spoken, how you come across. Multiple perspectives and possibilities. It is important for me to use painting as a framework as it provides a set of rules and a structure from which to work from, from where I can see these multiple perspectives and bring them together in one form.
29 December 2019
There is a distance between all of these versions of I. But is one any closer to I than the other? Shouldn’t or aren’t they naturally all a distance from each other? Which one is the right one when they are collectively on the page or in the painting in a set.
29 December 2019
The I in text, the pronouns he, she, they, him, her, I and how is this in painting? The I is a photograph, a drawing, a painting, the I is object. The I is performer, participant, observer, reader, viewer? The roles. The repetition of roles to make the performance, difference, performer.
4 November 2019
Maybe in some ways the practice-led work is trying to discover what it is I am trying to discover. [Trying to connect with myself]. Sometimes I don’t know what I am looking for. Sometimes I have no idea what the question is. I think sometimes it reveals itself in the images that I put together and in that way it’s hard to formulate a question before but after you have made some discoveries you can formulate a question, but not before. Maybe in some ways it’s revealing the things that you don’t realise you are thinking when you put things together and discover what the questions are, what your interests are, what you want to look at. Thats a translation, thats definitely a translation of everything thats gone before an accumulation of things that create these new associations but essentially its still the same thing you are trying to discover. It’s maybe a different angle, perspective of it.
8 October 2019
Scan the Sebald book, take the reference and return it tomorrow. Take the translation book to work and start taking some proper notes on it, possibly put it in the blog. The blog seems like a good place to collect all your thoughts and the pictures. Then, maybe look at the post with the detail, the post with the hands and maybe go back to the Deleuze article and then start to copy and paste the section you have already written about and put it into the detail section and start to discuss your own work a bit more, why you put hands into your work. Document this walking and thinking as a to do list and a blog post, briefly. Then go back to the Rannoch Moor post and maybe put the studio picture in the corner in the top left corner and talk about how it relates to the digital and how these spaces co-exist. Those two spaces. The thumbnail image and talk about that in terms of building images and then discuss maybe in more detail your own image building and thoughts on it. Put the studio picture in that blog post, it’s important that reference goes into the blog post and shows the steps and the spaces and the consideration of space. That you’re not in that space, but that space is in your mind, or its somewhere and talk about where that space is. Black and white. Sebald. Yep.
20 November 2018
The fact that it possibly takes a painter to translate because thats their area of translation, whereas if a translator or an adapter had to translate a painting then they wouldn’t know where to start. Whereas its medium specific, so painters understand it. Possibly that’s why there aren’t any decent visual translations?
19 November 2018
I am going to have to keep my mind open about what kind of translation I use, however I will let my work lead this and in fact most of the theory of translation has been developed through practice from what I can see, so maybe I can argue a case for myself [existing] in a space within translation studies. So I think its about keeping an eye open and letting the work lead the process, but making sure I read all the literature to find out exactly where I am positioned.
*texts/transcribed audio to self.
I like to run. It connects me to my body and to the world around me, It takes me away from thoughts of what was or what might be about to happen. The past and the future sit alongside the present. Running is like meditation. I use the rhythm of my breathing and my feet on the ground as a metronome. Thoughts come in and leave; the awareness of a pain in my left knee comes and then goes, the burning in my thighs is there for a short while, then disappears. I breathe in to a count of four and breathe out to a count of four, sometimes breathing out to a count of six, but the pattern is always in a set of two. My left foot and right foot hit the ground to secure the pattern. Two breaths, two feet. Moving. Working. After a minute or two of running, when my feet and breath are in the same pattern, I can let my mind go and feel the rhythm through my body. My mind is free to wander. It goes off into thoughts and comes back to the rhythm, sometimes slowly and sometimes with a sudden awareness. I think about my day, but the images disappear, I think about yesterday and that drifts away too. I empty my mind and become aware of the sun in my eyes as it appears and disappears through holes in the trees. I feel the wind blowing at my hat and the sweat and heat on my back and arms. I run past and around dogs, puddles and other people out walking and running. I start to feel the strength in my body, muscles contracting harder as I run up a longer, steady incline on the way back, no pain, just strength. As I run, images and words appear in my mind, layers that I work my way through. Ideas about painting arise. I wonder if they have the space to be heard at other times. I think about some non-essential items I need to buy at the shop. I try to remember the list while out running and it becomes part of the rhythm. I add green veg to create a set of four breaths and although I don’t need it, I commit to it, knowing it won’t be wasted. I drift in and out of remembering this list, thinking other thoughts in between. At one point I forget it. Four items. Tiredness, stress, the wind, getting older every second, dog distractions, festive overindulgence, pre-menstrual fog maybe, but its impossible to pin down. I try not to worry about that and keep running.
Blank Canvas 