The brain looks
My mind travels around and makes connections, in this case the image that was emerging felt as if it was making some sort of statement about what Jonathan Crary had to say about the role of the stereoscope in the quantification and formalisation of the physiological operation of binocular vision. He argued that optical devices such as the stereoscope, were related to a new (early 19th century) arrangement of knowledge about the body and its relationship with social power. Crary argued that these pieces of apparatus were inseparably connected to the remodelling of people as observers. He wrote that if we are to understand the present world of post-photography and CGI, we need to go back to the early 19th century, to see how the idea of an observer was changing back then and that the implications of that change, were still being felt now. Crary uses 'observer' rather than 'spectator' in this context, because of the association of the word 'observer' with the observing of rules. Human vision becomes 'measurable and thus exchangeable'. (1992, p.17) My image of the brain above is looking out, undertaking a binocular observing, a visualisation of a feeling or intuition of the type of monster that lies behind the screen of measurement that was being erected at the time and which I suspect is still behind so many 'scientific' observations. Usually the brain is joined up with all the other organs, but in science fiction it often emerges out of the body, becoming an entity in its own right and as such it often asserts a powerful agency.
The brain becoming sentient
Still from 'The Blob" 1958 Dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr and Russell Doughten
Hanzhi Zhong: Internal Censor
Hanzhi Zhong
She has like myself set fragments of the body out into the world, or at least envisioned them there, in the case above they penetrate a still life; as you look at it, it absorbs you into its form. Zhong's bringing together the 'vastness of nature' with 'the intricacies of the human body', is perhaps what I'm also searching for, or at least something like that. The body and landscape fused together into a new form. Like myself she uses printmaking, animation and working in 3D to realise her ideas, so it will be interesting to see where she gets to.
Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson is no longer supported by contemporary computer software as its over 20 years old. This fact reminds me of the work I did over 30 years ago using Hypercard stacks to animate ideas; I've become very aware that ideas are lost as well as fragmented as technology moves on. Jackson states, "My leg is always twitching, jumping, joggling. It wants to go places. It has had enough of waiting." I was intrigued that her leg had a voice, it was separately active. "Patchwork Girl" is a digital collage-narrative, collage being the go to cut-up technology of fragmented worlds. The monster States; "I am buried here. You can resurrect me, but only piecemeal. If you want to see the whole, you will have to sew me together yourself." Patchwork Girl was a work that acknowledged the importance of Frankenstein in our collective imagination, a body composed of parts, is also a frightening thought.
I'm sort of on board with the idea of the audience having to put all the parts together, but as yet I'm not sure I know where all the parts fit.
Some laid out body parts
Details from work exhibited at Barnsley Civic
The body suit that I made when trying to work building an image using both somatic feelings and intimations gathered from trying to communicate with someone via a computer screen, wasn't right either, but there were aspects of it that seemed to touch upon what I was feeling for.
Body suit
When I was in Venice two exhibits in particular helped me to think about these issues. The human/landscape work of Chiara Camoni and the installation by Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos, entitled, 'Efforescence/The way we wake'. Camoni had built landscapes out of sections of a human figure, hollowing out the form so that it could be inhabited by other things.
Chiara Camoni
The figure becoming as you saw it from the back, all landscape and then as you moved around the sections, they cohered into a reclining human. Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos, had dismembered their figure much more brutally, so that it appeared broken.
Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos
The various parts were though now becoming inhabited by other entities, as though a giant figure had died and then the landscape of its body, was now being inhabited by a nation of tiny people.
Osiris: Fitzwilliam Museum
However it is the ancient Egyptian myth of the dismemberment of Osiris that I think about most. The god Set dismembered Osiris and scattered the parts across Egypt. His wife Isis reassembled the fragments, and in doing so establishing an idea of the resurrection of the body. In Egyptology, it also describes how Egyptians conceptualised the human body as an association of independent anatomical parts. It was this aspect that in particular was working its way into the images I was making.
Osiris's wife Isis, Set's sister, was mortified, but she was determined not to be defeated by her brother's wiles and turning herself and her sister Nephthys into hawks, they flew over the area until they were informed of a strange tree that had exhibited unworldly powers. This strange and miraculous tree was a tamarisk and when the drifting coffin had washed ashore at Byblos on the Phoenician coast; the tree had suddenly shot up from the ground and rapidly grown around the beached coffin, completely enclosing it inside its living trunk. This trunk emitted a rich, sweet, and powerful fragrance that swept out across the sea and land, signaling its magic to both the gods and the local king. Intrigued by its supernatural growth and wonderful scent, the local king cut down the tree and installed the trunk as a main pillar in his palace hall, still housing Osiris within. Isis entered the kings palace in disguise as an old woman and was soon trusted to look after the kings son. She used her magic to try and make the king's baby son immortal, a sort of test as to whether or not she had the skills to revive Osiris. During this process whereby she bathed the baby in a magical fire, her identity was revealed and she demanded access to the sacred trunk. After Isis retrieved it, the magical tree was anointed with myrrh and wrapped in linen, an event that inspired the creation of the Djed pillar; the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for stability, endurance, and resurrection.
The Djed pillar;
However when Isis finally managed to get to the coffin and open it, she found that Osiris was dead. Isis was though a being of great magical power, therefore after she had recovered the chest and found the body of Osiris, she hid it, knowing that at some point in the future she would be able to use her powers to resuscitate it. However Set discovered that Isis had brought her husband's body home and he set out to find it, and then when he did, in a rage, he tore the corpse into 14 separate pieces that he scattered across all of Egypt, so that Osiris could never be found and brought back to life. Once again, Isis refused to give up on her husband and she traveled through the Egyptian swamps in a papyrus boat until she had found every single piece of her husband. Eventually she collected 13 pieces, but a fish had eaten his phallus, so she used her magic to make a golden replacement piece to complete his body. The magic required the help of Anubis, the god of mummification, and they reassembled and wrapped the body, creating the first mummy, as part of the ritual needed to bring back life. Using powerful spells, Isis temporarily revived Osiris, which was long enough for them to conceive their divine son, Horus. However Osiris had been permanently damaged and although he had returned to some form of life, it was a half life, a life that was only vital when it walked the realms of the dead, leading him to become the supreme king and judge of the underworld. Effectively he was now a form of living death.
The myth suggest that life continues past death. Osiris's revival offers humans hope for an afterlife. The myth also suggests the annual flooding of the Nile and accompanying planting cycles, Osiris representing crops dying and sprouting anew. However, the seasons are eternal, and fixed. They represent absolute qualities like time, life and death or divinity. Osiris now presiding as the judge of the underworld embeds and establishes a moral accountability, as being central to the fixed laws of the universe. The myth of Osiris is an idea that helps us accept our materiality and which folds that acceptance into a deeper significance, the fact we will die is balanced with the fact that we will be re-born, our seeds are our children and while we are inhabiting our physical existence, we also need to remember that we have a moral accountability to the world.
Stories mutate and if we look at the images of Sobek above, the crocodile God carrying a deceased Osiris mummy on its back, we confront an alternative story, whereby Sobek, the son of Isis and Osiris, becomes the gatherer of the dismembered body parts of his father. After the Middle Kingdom, in some parts of Egypt, Horus became associated with the crocodile god Sobek, who in a new version of the Osiris myth, traveled through the watery Nile landscapes to search for the remains of his murdered father, in order to bring him back to life. As helpers of Osiris, Sobek and his children (crocodiles) were thus, perhaps strangely in our eyes, regarded as saviours. However Chinese dragons (loong) are also positive symbols. They represent wisdom, luck, power and ultimate goodness, being thought of as benevolent protectors as well as bringers of life-giving water. From the Late Period onward, images of crocodiles bearing mummies became common, portraying Horus in this form as the saviour of his father.
Sobek carrying the body of Osiris: Staatliche Museum Berlin
It is as this point that I circle back to the origins of art. I wrote a while ago when looking at art's etymological roots, that the morpheme derived from the Sanskrit language, that the word 'art' evolved from, was 'rt', a concept still in use in relation to the original meaning of 'rta' a word in Sanskrit that represents the ‘cosmic order of things’. 'Rta' as a concept combines both the 'cosmic order of things' as a physical order of the universe and as a moral ordering of the universe. Therefore 'Rta' is a pivot between the physical and the intellectual, between matter and spirit. It has been argued that this looking for 'rightness' is the oldest idea known to humans and it is what I believe I'm feeling, when I sense that when I'm lost in the making of things, that what I'm doing is 'right', another word that has evolved from the 'rt' morpheme. By conjoining with a material force that sits outside of myself, we shape an idea together, in doing so an external mind is made, something that proves that inanimate matter can be infused with life.
My need to go back to old myths is based on an intuition that our remodelling as observers is wrong. Crary's argument that we need to understand the present world as being one shaped by the technologies of photography, CGI and their latest home the mobile phone, might hold water, but the deeper neurological connections our brains make are wired by millions of years of experience and associated evolution. I believe that we need to accept that as a species we will always need art forms that are grounded in a need to re-connect us with deep myth and a desire to become an integral part of the world, a necessary balance to other disciplines and sociological imperatives that shape us into unconnected observers.
As I make body fragments, I also begin to place them into situations whereby I can see the potential for them to be reconstructed as new forms. In my mind the fragmented body always has a metaphorical Isis hovering over it, always seeking to reconnect the parts and as they come together, looking to use that moment to give life to a new beginning.
I'm also very aware that the fragmented body is something we normally associate with death. in Buddhist thought the concept of Patikulamanasikara, is generally translated as "reflections on the repulsiveness of the body". However, it is through meditation on the fragmented body that we can come to an acceptance of its mortality and thus begin to let go of our anxiety and worry about everyday things. Out of death emerges new life.
Reference
Crary, J. (1992) Techniques of the observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century: London: MIT Press
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