'I swear I saw this' is the title of Michael Taussig's book of reflections on the use of fieldwork notebooks. Taussig is an anthropologist and like Tim Ingold, he has much to say about the role of drawing that is just as applicable to an artist, as to an anthropologist. In particular he unpicks that mix of observation and reflection that fills many people's drawing notebooks and gradually as he does so, he dives deeper and deeper into the process of thinking about thinking that many creative people do as they reflect back on experiences and how they effect them.
As he begins to write about the experience he opens out several issues about drawing and perception that intrigued me, in particular he begins to see a notebook as a sort of external mind, something that gives a physical shape to perception and its imaginative unfolding. At times he believes the notebook is like a magic fetish, something that has so much of him invested in it, that he has to be careful that it is not used against him. He sees the potential of the physical embodiment of his mind to be effected by means of shamanistic magic, in a similar way that voodoo magic works by affecting the mind of an individual through items that have been closely associated with them, such as a piece of old clothing or snips of hair or finger nails.
Of course as I began reading his book, I began to see parallels between the way he thought about his anthropologist's notebooks and my own sketchbooks, things that I would also argue carry within them an externalised mind, or perhaps 'are' externalised physical minds. You could think of a notebook therefore as a type of crystallised or fossilised brain; each image or note within it a frozen memory of a thought.
Taussig's issue though is how to unpick a moment of experience and how especially experiences that are highly emotionally charged, can be recorded. I think I know what he's getting at, but will have to explain the issues using a drawing of my own.
I was rushing to catch a train at Kings Cross and as I was going up one escalator on another one to my right there was an incident. A man began to topple backwards and someone behind him tried to hold him up. However he was too heavy and the person behind was also being pushed over backwards, this was leading to a calamity, as those behind were also now being knocked backwards by the weight of falling bodies. Then just as the whole thing seemed to be about to become a disaster, someone, it might have been my wife, was able to reach an emergency stop button and the escalator stopped and everyone was able to right themselves. In fact the first one up and marching straight on and out towards the station was the older man who had initially toppled backwards. Just as with Taussig, the incident took no more than a few seconds, but time seemed to freeze in the visual mind. There was something about the interrelationship between the man and the people that had tried to save him. Were they his relatives? He never thanked any one when he got to his feet and marched on, not even looking round, it seemed as if he was embarrassed. A suit wearer, he looked as if he was normally in control, but this incident had really fazed him. However I'm sure I heard someone call out 'dad' as he was falling. My mind hearing perhaps a sound I was tuned to hear as opposed to what had actually been shouted. There were three escalators, two side by side going up, which I supposed made sense as people find it hard to carry heavy bags up steps and one going down. That meant that in that brief moment there was a visual confusion, generated as a result of two sets of people going down, one due to the actual downwards momentum of people on the far right escalator and the other people on the central escalator, falling backwards, but at the same time being moved forwards. People on the down escalator were of course concerned with what was happening, but they were unable to do anything, except of course hit the emergency stop. The interaction of the people on my escalator, mirrored the one on the down escalator, we were all cast as spectators, and then all of us were thrown into unsteadiness as all the escalators suddenly stopped and we scrambled on our ways, looking backwards, as the people on the middle escalator also rushed to get back on track and the emergency services began to turn up. No one was I think badly hurt, some must have been bruised but that was not really the point. Taussig asked the question, 'What is the difference between seeing and believing?' The event I have just detailed was one I'm not actually sure I 'saw' as such. It was an event, an event that interlaced with other events, such as my journey to the station, and it sort of had a beginning and an end to it. But what did I see? The event began as I was not far from the bottom of the escalator, I believe I saw something that caught my eye as being an unusual movement ahead of me and to my right. I was of course always moving upwards, as my body was borne along by a rising escalator. But so was the escalator next to mine, so the event would have always been at the same distance from myself. However in my mind I see it getting ever closer, probably because as I 'understood' what was beginning to happen, I was anticipating lots of future events. As my mind ran through probabilities, most of which were centred on, will this effect me, it was also building up ideas of what was happening. Only gradually (and we are thinking seconds here) did my thoughts turn to how can I help? What action can I take? Then of course I, like I think a lot of other people, became aware that the emergency button needed pressing. But not until a few moments had passed, moments that seemed to go past very slowly. It was in that brief time that I decided that what had happened was that the older man, the father I had decided, was leading his family somewhere, somewhere that he was familiar with, and that he had lost concentration and footing as he had turned to his family to point something out. This being why the people behind him were so quickly trying to support him. However they were not used to handing a heavy body like his and were also agitated because they were aware of his fragile condition. (Another conjecture, but one that I'm sure I had at the time, belief being far more powerful in this situation than knowledge). All of this because I thought I heard the word 'dad'.
However as the man unfurled himself, he acknowledged no one, not even those who had tried to help him, and he strode off, looking red faced and slightly distressed, but with no regard for anyone else. So what had I seen?
Taussig's point is that even trained observers like him, are always having to contend with beliefs and it is beliefs that the mind uses as triggers for action, especially in relation to events that are fraction of a second encounters.
His second point is that these beliefs, such as the one he was building up in response to seeing people in such a deeply affecting situation, are much more powerful than we tend to think. In his case the experience was shaping a book full of reflections on the implications. In my own case, I did begin to wonder if something very peculiar had been going on between the older man and those immediately behind him. Why wouldn't he thank them for trying to help him, what was he doing that demanded such as forceful march away from the incident, was his bearing that of a military man and did that have any significance? The mind is always looking for stories, for patterns that make sense of behaviour.
I am supposed to be getting on with a series of drawings that explore interroception and a somatic understanding of our bodies, but like the perception of outside the body events, stories keep injecting themselves into the situation and I cant seem to avoid them. Perhaps the fact is that without stories my mind cant make sense of things and that everything I encounter can only be processed by my mind as a story of one sort or another.
I first came across Michael Taussig when I read his 'Mimesis and Alterity', a book that made me for the first time become aware of how strange my own life was. It is only when you see your life reflected in the views of others that you can really understand how peculiar all the things you take for normal really are. This was not the main point of Taussig's text, which was centred on a meditation on mimesis but a feeling of alienation in relation to my own world gradually came over me as I looked through some of the images in the book. In the image below for instance, the tie drawn down the front of the man in the pith helmet, reminded me of my own life and the strange roles ties had played in that life at various times.
The Mbari figures above are not from Taussig's book, but as they are very similar, I have used them to illustrate the feeling of alienation I had that emerged from its reading. Our look, our actions and our environments must seem very strange to anyone from a different society; but within our own culture these are our norms and perhaps one of the roles that artists need to take is to be an alien, someone with insect eyes, three noses and five ears, as well as other organs of perception that operate outside 'normal' human sensibilities. Perhaps artists need to develop a way of thinking that reminds us that our everyday is for others a dangerous journey; that our reality is for some people a fantasy world, where things happen as if by magic and what we see as logical behaviour is regarded by others as insanity.
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