Friday 23 May 2014

Letting things ‘happen’

One of the common difficulties we all face is being able to let things happen. We have a tendency to predict what we want an outcome to be, but within art practice this can often be a hindrance rather than a help. Within Buddhist thinking in order to be in the now, to live life without worrying about ‘self’ or trying to break away from the all-consuming need to be unique, you need to develop a form of concentration that sits outside of the self, you might think of this as a type of concentration that might focus on on a mark or a brushstroke or a piece of paper, this is when drawing becomes a practice very like meditation.

The philosopher Heidegger had a concept that he called ‘at hand’. As in what you have at hand, what is simply there to be used.  ‘At hand’ is what you do when you just pick something up and use it, you might for instance need the door propping open and use a chair because it was ‘at hand’. Richard Wentworth has a collection of photographs he calls ‘Making do and getting by’, which are examples of this type of activity. Basically it is unselfconscious making.  When you draw you are sometimes doing exactly this, just responding to what is there. In everyday life, even though we might try to, we are rarely able to control the outcomes of our actions, and we can embed this acceptance in practice. Acceptance is perhaps a key word here. One aspect of Buddhist thought is that if you are to develop acceptance you need to learn to avoid craving for things.

You could argue that one ‘craving’ some of us have is for sense to be made, and we sometimes use theory to help us make that sense. However, when you are in the process of making something you are often lost in the making. So how can you reconcile the fact that you are often asked to write about what you are doing and the fact that when you are drawing you need to ‘let go’ and allow the process of making to take over.

Barbara Bolt states; “Heidegger’s discussion of responsibility and indebtedness provide us with quite a different way to think about artistic practice. In the place of an instrumentalist understanding of our tools and material, this mode of thinking suggests that in the artistic process, objects have agency and it is through the establishing conjunctions with other contributing elements in the art that humans are co-responsible for letting art emerge.”

She is arguing that artists work directly with their materials and this ‘cooperation’ with a material, such as charcoal on paper, or clay or metal, allows for their work to ‘emerge’. This is a type of material thinking. It also puts a focus on art making as a process, rather than looking at it as a series of objects to be contemplated. This relates again to the concept of acceptance. If your pen nib breaks for example, you can either get a new one or in that moment respond to the new mark making possibilities it has; if your paper has a flaw in it you can build this in as part of the image making process. This is again using what is at hand. If this is the case the final outcome is always unknown, therefore it is more likely that we will discover new things.

So how can this work? Think of making work by setting up situations where your materials can behave naturally.  How does gravity affect them, how far can an ink spread or how thickly can paint be laid down, how does an applicator affect what is being applied? Think of how you might help these substances fulfill their potential. If working with images there can be a dialogue between this process of materials discovery and image development. Watercolour washes can hold within them the potential to also be read as people, landscapes or still-lifes and so can charcoal drawings, but they will become very different things. If you are working on a computer this is exactly the same process, what is the potential of Illustrator as a tool? It will shape and change your imagery as much as when you are trying to make an image using a pencil. The point is, you must be attuned to the possibilities that present themselves and remain sensitive to the media being used, rather than trying to force the materials to make what is already in your head. If not you will always be disappointed by the fact that what you are doing is not as good as what you wanted it to look like before you started making. Of course you need an idea to enable you to start, but ‘letting things happen’ might allow you to discover something far better than your initial idea. This is a deeper insight into materials handling.

Another way to look at this is an acceptance of accidents. Life itself has evolved because of successful mutations or errors in the process of replication. In order to ‘accept’ these changes an organism needs to adapt to them and adaptations contribute to the fitness and survival of individuals.

Going back for a moment to think about mimesis (see earlier posts) Stephen Halliwell points to "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation. In this case we have a “world simulating” theory of representation. The work evolves and emerges in a similar way to how other things in the world evolve and change in relation to their environment. This type of interaction is one of autopoiesis. The deeper implications of this are fleshed out in Fritiof Capra’s book ‘Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter’, which is a wonderful text that allows the reader to build a wider framework within which to think about our interactions with the totality of any environment.

 


David Hockney ‘Accident Caused by a Flaw in the Canvas’

Further reading
 


Bolt, B (2004) Heidegger, Handlability and Praxical Knowledge Melbourne: IBTauris
Download
 

Halliwell, S (2002) The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems New York: Princeston

Capra, F. (1997) Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter London: Anchor

Sennett, R (2009) The Craftsman London: Penguin

Pallasmaa, J (2009) The Thinking Hand London: John Wiley



Richard Wentworth 'Making do and getting by'

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