In Nicolas Bourriaud’s introduction to Foucault’s ‘Manet
and the Object of Painting’, he points out that like other philosophers of the
time Derrida was a writer that explored the interval between the sign and the
trace, the space between things rather than things in terms of singular
objects, the event rather than the moment.
Traces are usually traces of moments of surface
contact. For example the imprint of feet as someone walks across a sandy beach,
wet soles of shoes marking a hallway, a hand-print left on a steamy bathroom
mirror. However traces can become more permanent, a tyre track left in mud can
become ‘cast’ in hard baked clay as the mud dries out during a hot summer. A
dead body sinks into a tar pit, becoming slowly materialized until revealed
millions of years later as a fossil. A car runs through a pool of spilled
paint, its tyres now leave a permanent print on the road.
Traces are incomplete records of events, but ones that
can often be read as signs. Traces of crumbs left on a table, can be signs of a
recently eaten meal. A deer leaves
‘traces’ of its passage, hoof-prints left in soft ground, velvet from its
antlers, brushed off and held by low lying tree branches. These traces can be read as signs, as a
language that can be used to understand the deer’s life. A complex
understanding will evolve as we learn to read the traces of its passage more
accurately. We can work out which direction the deer was going in by close
examination of its hoof-print, we can ascertain its height by measuring how far
from the ground a twig holds a scrap of antler velvet, we can guess its weight
from the depth of the hoof-track etc. We may even try to ascertain from the
traces of its passage its mental state; was it rushing away from an enemy or
calmly wondering through the woods?
The trace can be seen as at the root of the sign. The
possibility of language embedded within our ability to interpret traces.
Interpretation lays at the inception of the sign, it could mean this or that,
but once interpreted as one thing, this can stick. Through inductive reasoning
we shift the trace towards becoming a sign, i.e. we decide that something is
probable based on the evidence before us, the probability leaking eventually
into a generalization.
Traces are often imprints and therefore we can open
the dialogue of meaning out into associated words, such as prints and touch. We
might also include the idea of the cast, which could be seen as a three
dimensional print. However some of the most compelling issues surround the fact
that a trace or print taken from a three dimensional body is flat or two
dimensional.
At the core of much painting and drawing theory lies
the paradox of trying to reproduce images of a three-dimensional world on a
flat surface or two dimensional plane. (See Greenberg) However most three dimensional objects
can be thought of topographically as
types of continuous surfaces, and if so, these surfaces can be flattened out as
‘diagrammatic’ ideas. For instance a cube can be visualized as six squares laid
out in the form of a cross. However the
cross-like plan or net of a cube implies a ‘time of unfolding’, it suggests
that it could be returned to three-dimensionality by refolding.
The interesting issue, and one that was highlighted by
Abbot’s book ‘Flatland’ is that a two dimensional understanding of a three
dimensional world is always lacking. A pyramid slowly passing through a flat
plane initially appears as a dot, then as a triangle that is slowly increasing
in size, but never as a fully realised three-dimensional object. One way
therefore of thinking about a ‘trace’ is as a two dimensional piece of evidence
of a three dimensional object. If so, we can develop an account of how the incomplete
nature of this trace, in relation to the totality of the object, leads to an ambiguity of read. For instance the ‘imprint’
of a box left on the sand, doesn’t tell us anything about its height or whether
or not the top of the box is at right-angles to the bottom.
Traces are dependent on events happening between
objects or things. For instance a bird flies into a window and leaves a trace
or imprint of its collision.
A trace or imprint in a drawing or painting reinforces our awareness of the paper or canvas as a flat material plane. It highlights the idea that a drawing can be an object, a thing in the world that acts upon it and can be acted upon, rather than being an illusion or window on the world. In this way a drawing can be seen as a record of facts after the event. However an imprint can also be a representation, for instance a handprint not only captures a moment of touch between the paper and the hand, it operates as a representation of a hand. Drawing has this ability to operate in two ways at once. It can be simultaneously a copy or illusion of reality and reality itself. It can be both image and information, arena for action and/or window on the world. Every drawing could be seen as a collection of traces, marks left over from the hand’s passage, but as we step back from the image, some of these markings might look like landscapes, or portraits.
A trace of a bird that has left its imprint on a glass window
A trace or imprint in a drawing or painting reinforces our awareness of the paper or canvas as a flat material plane. It highlights the idea that a drawing can be an object, a thing in the world that acts upon it and can be acted upon, rather than being an illusion or window on the world. In this way a drawing can be seen as a record of facts after the event. However an imprint can also be a representation, for instance a handprint not only captures a moment of touch between the paper and the hand, it operates as a representation of a hand. Drawing has this ability to operate in two ways at once. It can be simultaneously a copy or illusion of reality and reality itself. It can be both image and information, arena for action and/or window on the world. Every drawing could be seen as a collection of traces, marks left over from the hand’s passage, but as we step back from the image, some of these markings might look like landscapes, or portraits.
As has already been mentioned, traces are often
imprints of three-dimensional solid bodies left on flat planes. Therefore
another word we can use is ‘touch’. These traces are memories of what happened
when one object ‘touched’ another. One of the oldest images we have is that of
a human hand ‘printed’ onto a cave wall, the artist literally touching the
surface in order to make an image.
The Oxford English Dictionary
defines touch as “That sense by which a material
object is perceived by means of the contact with it of some part of the body.” We can by analogy ‘touch’ one object with another. When my coffee cup
is put down on the table it can be seen as ‘touching’ the table and a record of
this touching might be the ring stains of spilt coffee that have run down the
sides of the cup.
One of the key issues about touch is
that it is both immediate and
unmediated. There is no time-delay, no medium between the subject and the
object, the sensing organ is in direct contact with the sensed object.
Similarly a print from the surface of an object is a record of a direct
contact, a one to one relationship.
Touch is also identified with the real. If you can’t believe your eyes or
ears, and believe that taste is
subjective, you can still argue that to touch is to prove. In this way we come to another area of meaning
surrounding traces, that of the direct imprint, a print off an original that
suggests that what we have is a more authentic record than a drawn or painted
copy because this trace or print maintains some form of original surface
contact with an original.
Associated with touch is the idea of a
‘print’, defined as “to press upon a substance or surface, so as to leave an
indentation or imprint” We conjoin the two terms touch and print of course when
finger-prints are taken. Our most sensitive organs of touch are also our most
unique attribute, the ends of our fingers having swirls that are always singular
to ourselves. The most common parts of our body to be used to print with being
those we associate with intimate close contact with others, the lipstick prints
on millions of cups and mugs, perhaps in sheer numbers being higher than the
millions of fingertip prints taken throughout the world’s police offices.
Susan Collis
Artists working in this area include Anna Barriball,
her graphite rubbings are intense enough to eventually become as perceptually
dense and solid as the originals; Dan Shaw-Town uses rubbing, erasing and
sanding as well as folding techniques, Alice Channer has developed a body of
work around skin, prints and stained surfaces, Susan Collis makes crafted
versions of traces such as paint spills, Sian Bowen has worked with archaeological
sites and is interested in touch, Dieter
Roth’s ‘worktables’ were drawings that are actual traces left over from his
working process, local Leeds artist Hondartza Fraga has done some interesting rubbings of old maritime
books as part of a residency in Hull, the Ian Kiaer recent exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute
displayed some of his traces of practice pieces, Max Ernst explored ‘frottage’
techniques to stimulate his imagination, these techniques nearly always consisted
of taking rubbings from textured surfaces, Jasper Johns’ image ‘Study for Skin,
1. 1962’ is a direct imprint/trace of himself and Gyotaku or ‘fish rubbing’ printing is an established
tradition in Japan. In popular culture the legend of the Turin Shroud
highlights the emotional impact of the body as an imprint and one aspect of
archeological practice was to take Lottin de Laval type rubbings of
inscriptions, a response to these saw a terrific exhibition at the Henry Moore
Centre in Leeds. As these were two dimensional casts from the surfaces of three
dimensional buildings, they could be re-presented as both two and three
dimensional representations.
A Lottin de Lavel rubbing taken from an Angkor Wat temple
Anna Barriball 'Door' Graphite rubbing on paper
Dieter Roth 'Worktable' 1979 Worktable top with stains
Ian Kiaer Black tulip, offset, stain, 2012: Tape, cardboard, aluminium, coffee and
tea stains, glitter
Finally an accidental image, that is definitely a trace and is made by human beings but is it a drawing? Whatever it is it is a powerful image.
The imprint of a crashed Zero fighter plane on the side of a destroyer.
Books mentioned
Abbott, E (1992) Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions New York:
Dover
Foucault (2011) Manet and the Object of Painting London: Tate
The
debate surrounding Derrida and his understanding of how the trace becomes the
sign is fleshed out in:
Critchley, S (2005) The Ethics of Deconstruction London: Motilal
Banarsidass
In
particular see page 37
‘The
present is constituted by a differential network of traces.’ (Critchley, 2005,
p.37)
‘The
sign is what Derrida calls a trace, a past that has never been present.’ (Ibid)
‘The
sign represents the present in its absence. It takes the place of the present.’
(Ibid)
See also:
The Chicago School of media theory has a wonderful
blog which can be used to open out more theory behind these things, see for example:
Artists
Hondartza Fraga
Ingrid Calame on tracing
Where stains and traces meet
Drawing as the trace of a touch
Ingrid Calame on tracing
Where stains and traces meet
Drawing as the trace of a touch
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