Saturday 25 October 2014

Conceptual processes behind contemporary art practice

I’m starting to spend quite a lot of time talking around ideas at the moment. I have had quite a few conversations related to strategies of thinking; basically how to develop ideas from initial starting points. There is an issue about the relationship between closed and open ways of developing ideas. Often a way of thinking that appears closed at first, can sometimes take ideas into evocative and expansive territories. For instance I was taking to someone about a wooden object. They were using it as a starting point for work. They had lots of ideas but the ideas seemed to be too loose, too arbitrary and not focused enough on how the object itself could be the instigator of concepts.
So what do I mean by this? The object in question was made in a particular way, using particular materials, which were manufactured in a particular place, using wood sourced from a particular forest, which had been grown in a particular place because of a particular economic situation, and it had been left to be found because of a set of particular reasons. All of this information was embedded within the object, but very little of it was being used to direct ideas or to open out a meaning structure that might illuminate something about the world. Instead ideas were being ‘forced’ onto the object and extraneous materials were being brought into the situation which as far as I was concerned ‘muddied’ the waters and made it harder to realise what could be done, in fact it was easier to see possibilities once these additional ideas were stripped away and we could bring the object back into focus. First of all there were the physical realities of how it was made, how many nails, how much wood, what sort of wood, how was it cut, was it all cut from the same tree, why were the nails used in the way they were, why not screws, who manufactured the nails, who nailed them in, where was the sawmill, where was the forest, who worked the sawmill, who cut the trees down, who tended the forest etc etc? All rich information to begin developing narratives around.  Each piece of information could lead to a decision as to how an action could further illuminate it. For instance the object had a very clear grain and this was easily highlighted by making a rubbing. But with what? There are lots of materials that you can make a rubbing with, however in order to keep the concept ‘closed’ perhaps a piece of the object that had already broken off could be charcoaled and then used to make a rubbing. The wood effectively being used to record itself. This suggests a better intellectual closure than using just any available rubbing materials. If another structure is going to be made from the object, what could it be? If abstract, perhaps an ordering principle based on the internal existing structures of the object itself, divisions, thicknesses, ratios, numbers of nails used and pattern of their insertions. If more figurative or narrative, perhaps the wood could be used to make something else that reflected a significant piece of information that had been researched in relation to the object’s history. For instance it might be found that the wood came from Scandinavia and that at that latitude dog sleds were used to drag timber over frozen ice, you might therefore re-fashion the object to make a dog-sled and look to having it pulled by a team of dogs similar to those who took its basic materials on their initial journey. Or you might decide to illustrate the dogs and their labour by making large drawings in charcoal using up the wood by converting all of it into charcoal and making sure you used every last bit in the production of the images.  Other ideas might be to make large scale technical drawings using the charcoal to show how the wood manufacturing process operated, making lots of diagrams of wood machinery, transportation vehicles and/or the workforce behind these machines. You might decide to replace the trees from where the wood came from. Once traced, the wood’s history could reveal an area of deforestation and you might become actively involved in a project to plant new trees.  On the other hand your research might reveal something totally unexpected. Perhaps something about the nails? They might be made in a small family workshop in Cleckheaton, or mass produced in China, whatever the answer, a suggestion as to how to make another move arises. The nails could be melted down to make something or the wood given to a craftsman to make an object that had resonance in this opening story. The point being that as the ideas open out there is still a feeling of ‘closure’ because the ideas are directly related to the making and history of the object in question. Who owned it before it was found? What was it used for? Perhaps an idea might arise because of a conflict over ownership or you might want to pass a metaphorical ownership on to someone else. What other things does the owner own? Could a substitution be made? What would happen if the object didn’t exist, what would be the implications?
You are allowed of course to take an idea off in any direction, the point being however that the logic must somehow be impelled by qualities inherent in the object or events directly related to the object’s history.
One way you could look at it is that as an artist you are revealing some sort of meaning. Opening the object out into a wider series of associations that are already there but not yet visible.
The object could be linked to a situation, a memory, a political position or an action, as long as the ‘logic’ developed has a direct relationship with it, you cant be accused of making arbitrary decisions. However the narratives developed can often reveal that ‘life’ is weirder than anything you might invent yourself. It is how you play with the information that will eventually result in an interesting art-work.
For instance you may find that the pine used to make the object was also used to make simple children’s toys, why not use all the materials that went into the construction of the object to make the largest possible version of one of those toys. The poetics involved coming into play as the artist looks for an image or action that will have ‘resonance’ and yet will still remain active within the closed loop of information obtained directly through unpeeling the layers of information surrounding the object. A voyage may be decided upon that takes you back to the Scandinavian forests that ‘birthed’ the wood that the object was made from. The object of the voyage may be to return the wood to its ‘place of birth’. But in what format? Perhaps if the wood had been refashioned into a toy train, it may travel in a different method to one proposed if it was made into a toy boat. Each move of the game should imply another, associations often building upon each other, until a dense matrix of interconnected decisions are built, each decision having a certain ‘logic’ to it, but a poetic logic more akin to the logics developed by Duchamp, or if we go a little further back the logics opened out by Raymond Roussel in his classic book ‘Impressions of Africa’. See
There are many examples of this type of work, for instance the work of Simon Starling who describes his work as ‘the physical manifestation of a thought process’ a thought process that reveals hidden histories and relationships. His Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2) and One Ton, II  both from 2005 demonstrate a circularity of links that lie behind the generation of his poetic narratives. In ‘One Ton II’ one ton of ore, mined from a South African open cast mine, was used to produce just five handmade platinum prints of images of the mine. He was pointing to the fact that it takes one ton of ore to get enough platinum to make just 5 platinum prints, thus opening out issues surrounding the exploitation of both people and land associated with platinum production. Using video, film, slide projections, photography and sculpture, Starling’s work opens out complex histories, with sometimes quite elliptical connections. Cornelia Parker also works in a similar territory. A typical example being her ‘Pornographic Drawings’, images resembling Rorschach blots were made from pornographic videotapes dissolved in solvent. Rorschach blots were often used by psychiatrists to tap into people’s unconscious and as Freud based so many of his ideas on sexual repression, Parker is able to neatly bring the idea to a very satisfactory closure.

Cornelia Parker ‘Pornographic Drawing'

Chris Dobrowolski's work currently on exhibition at &Model demonstrates another variation of this approach. This is a wonderful exhibition, try and get there before it closes. See
This type of work developed out of the conceptual art movement of the late 60s and early 70s, which itself owed much to Duchamp’s previous example. It is only one of many strategies that can be used to generate ideas but a powerful one. Above all it allows for both an intellectual and a poetic engagement with any object or event. Theoretically this type of work can be supported by Benjamin’s concept of ur-history. Walter Benjamin looked at mass culture as a source of philosophical truth. The Paris Arcades that fascinated him being a 19th century "ur-form" of the modern shopping experience. Benjamin demonstrates how to read consumer products as both anticipations of social utopia and as gateways into a political critique of culture. A very good introduction to Benjamin’s thinking is ‘The Dialectics of Seeing, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project’ by Susan Buck-Morss.  
I realise this has been a long post, but working this way can be a very useful strategy and one that lies very close to the core of much contemporary practice.

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