In her discussion of how to read pre-historic art and the 'abstract' work of contemporary hunter gatherer societies, Esther Pasztory uses the phrase 'blueprints of thought' in order to steer us away from an idea that these are works of aesthetic high value. In her classic text, 'Thinking with things', she is always at pains to get us to think about how images are used to carry ideas and information.
I do think her approach to understanding visual imagery is an excellent one, because it always forces me to ask myself questions as to how my own work comes to have meaning. For instance when discussing what pre-historic images might mean, she cites the importance of storytelling to several cultures and of how visual imagery is used alongside storytelling to reinforce spoken narratives.
I have referenced the sand drawings of the Vanuatu islanders before; ephemeral drawings that are made as stories are told. At one point when I was watching a video of a story teller at work I was captivated by the fact that the sand drawer used both hands. A left hand could trace significant moments of one character's story in the sand, and the right hand could be leaving a story/map of another character. Significant changes of direction in a line, would signify fulcrum points related to important action in the story and the drawing would link up its left and right halves at points when the two stories came back together. In this way a dot, or finger pushed hole in the sand, could just as easily represent a water hole where someone drowned, as a place where everyone sat down to eat. These types of drawings use multivalent symbols, that only make sense to the small groups of people who were there at their inception.
I was reminded of this when I was hosting my workshops on the visualisation of interoception. At the end of each workshop we had lots of animated discussions about what each drawing represented. Each maker had a story and as people had been working in pairs, often their partner would chip in to add an explanation as to what their marks represented. By the end we had often achieved a good level of communication, the drawings acting as supports for the stories told by the participants. But when taken out of context, when I tried to create further images from the drawings, the consensus of understanding began to fall away. My grand idea that there was some sort of universal visual language that could be used to communicate inner feelings, was questionable and perhaps I needed to rethink what I was doing in terms of how conversation and storytelling worked.
This has led me to re-think how a gallery could work as a space for the reception of visual thinking. Instead of seeing it as a neutral place, where people are given time and space to work out their own understanding of artwork, to position the gallery as a psychic centre, whereby people come together to tell somatic stories and to hear new ones, the work in the space operating as supportive material to give flavour and grounding for thoughts as they arrive. The gallery then becomes an active space for the generation of meaning, rather than a passive space designed for the reception of aesthetic value.
This new year, is perhaps a time whereby I will be able to integrate a more performative aspect of my practice into and alongside what I am doing already.
In the meantime I hope that this new year brings health and wellbeing to all the readers of this blog and that during the course of the year my various ramblings begin to make sense to you.
Reference:
Pasztory, E. (2005) Thinking with Things University of Texas Press
See also:
Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the shape of stories
Drawing for site specific proposals