Richard Long: A Line made by Walking
Continuing thoughts on material thinking.
As I was walking home the other day I took a well-trodden
route over Button Hill in order to save time. The path is well worn by
countless other feet taking the same short cut and it reminds me of Richard
Long’s walking pieces. But in this case the line of walking is simply made in
order to get from one place to another, there is no art intended. However it
can be understood in several ways. It tells a story of its own making, it is
evidence of how humans shape the world, but perhaps a shaping that is no
different to any other encounters between things. For instance there are paths just
off my route frequented by animals, these animal runs connect to places where they find food,
water or cover. These runs are much narrower than the tracks made by humans,
but are they any different? I can read them as signs of passage just as well as
I can read the fact that humans walked this way. There are secondary signs too.
In muddy places along my route I can spot both human boot prints and animal
tracks. These allow me to be more specific in my interpretations. Big boot prints
implying a heavy man passing, toe and heel prints implying someone running
rather than walking, paw prints suggesting that a dog passed this way. However
there are other material encounters with this landscape. As I work my way down
the hill I pass a shallow dip which acts as a funnel for rain water. Each time
it rains earth is washed down a slowly forming gulley and over the years I have
walked this way the gulley has gradually widened, making a clear drainage path.
People, animals and material forces are all testing themselves out against the
world and each leaves traces of actions taken. These events are about material
flow, the shape of the environment changing through elemental confrontations, wind and rain pushing elements against each other, a basic testing ground that includes the
humans walking in curved lines to avoid large trees or too steep inclines, animals making runs
through areas that give them good cover from predators, and water running down
the easiest route towards the stream below. These things are just what happens.
I’m getting older and as I make these notes with a
pencil I’m aware that my fingers are thickening with arthritis, the cartilage
that used to cushion my finger joints has worn away, my joints no longer move
smoothly and I’m slowing down. This physical change is inevitable and my body
is responding to years of wear and tear, continuously reshaping itself in response to its interaction
with the world. I am slowing down, until eventually I will reach the same speed
as a stone.
From the stone’s point of view I’m moving at a
very accelerated pace. The pebble that emerges from the path in front of me was
shaped millions of years ago on some far distant sea shore only now to emerge
back into daylight as the latest rain storm washes out the earth from around
it. Before it was a stone it was part of a rock face, itself composed of billions
of tiny compressed sea creatures, which themselves had processed other water dissolved
rocks in their making.
The stone is like myself
composed of a constantly changing material history. Over time the elements are
rearranged into new configurations, these configurations being responsive to
the environmental conditions that happen to be there during any particular time
period. Whether these elements are combined into organic or inorganic
relationships doesn’t matter, the line between the two being from the stone’s
point of view very blurred.
So what happens when the human being picks up the
stone and begins to draw with it? Looking at this from the stone’s point of
view it has simply entered into another abrasive encounter with the world. It
deposits some of its outer molecules onto the surface of another complex
material composite. However the human may consider these traces as being of
special significance, the traces may form the shape of an arrow for other
humans to follow or may be combined into some form of complex drawing. But it
could be argued that this is no different to the path made by walking. Some
people might look at the path and interpret it as a place where people run and
walk, some people might look at the marks and interpret them as an artistic
drawing and others as just marks. Consciousness allows the human to think about
the actions performed, but rarely about the whole situation, usually a human’s
awareness is focused on how the action will benefit humans.
Awareness is you could argue something that exists
on a sliding scale. Last week I heard a sharp crying noise outside and thought
it was a cat in some sort of confrontation with another feline. However when
I went outside to see, the noise was being emitted from a screaming frog that a cat had trapped in a corner of the porch. The frog was obviously in distress and
I rescued it and put it back in the pond, but it was a salutary reminder that
we are not the only life-form that has a high level of vital awareness.
We are descended from amphibians, which are the descendants
of fish, which are descended from...etc. all the way back to the moment when abiogenesis occurred. (The moment when life itself began) Every change in species was the
result of an environmental shift, but so too were the changes in material
formation. The atomic environment of suns shaping and creating elements by
first of all fusing hydrogen atoms into helium that then fuse to create beryllium, a process that
eventually will create every element
up to and including iron.
This material
awareness it should be hoped helps us rethink our belief in the special nature
of ourselves. It should help us think about our localised experiences as being
about direct physical contact with other elements, be these organic or inorganic
and to by conceptual projection begin to think of the global nature of existence
as being something that goes far beyond the human. Hopefully it allows us to
find universal truths in everyday experiences and to become more aware that new
possibilities of material formulations should not be the result of our forceful
control of nature but should be the result of finding a more autopoietic*
relationship with our environment. (*Autopoietic systems are
"structurally coupled" with their medium and embedded in a dynamic of
changes)
One way to think about drawing is as the trace of an action. This definition allows us to see drawing as an expanded field and gets us away from having to describe drawings as marks on paper. However it does raise some issues as to how drawing is also art, especially if expression is seen as a fundamental element.
Individual expression has
been a central issue for many artists, the idea of the signature work or
identifiable personal style is key to the way the art market works. The 20th
century saw an increasing focus on the inner life of humans. Psycho-analytical
theory was an important lens through which we were led to believe we could look
at our subconscious motivations and art appeared to be a way of articulating
this inner world. Surrealism and Expressionism in particular were rooted in
these beliefs and their offshoots including Abstract Expressionism relied on
sets of values that elevated the idea of the unique individual. We have been sold
the idea that we need to satisfy our inner needs and advertising has developed
a whole set of tools to ensure that we are constantly craving for things that
we feel will satisfy these desires. We are rarely encouraged to just be, to see
ourselves simply as part of the material flow of life; we are instead treated
as consumers. But as we consume the world we eat it up and if you eat more than
you need you also produce waste. Our waste has now reached the point that it
pollutes the whole earth, so perhaps it’s time to rethink the hubris of
personal expression.
There have been artists in
many cultures that didn’t sign their name to what they did, they operated more
like facilitators or people with making skills that helped that particular
society articulate certain ideas.
So how can a definition of
drawing as the leaving of material traces help anyone to do anything? Perhaps
the scratched mark that signalled the fact that someone went in a certain
direction gives us a clue. A tracker moving through unknown territory may make
marks on stones or trees so that others can follow, and the tracker has also
provided a way of finding a way back without getting lost. These marks are both
useful and can be used to communicate to others. We can though explore unknown territory
conceptually as well as physically, the things we do and make leaving traces
that can both guide others towards these concepts and make ourselves aware of
where we have been. It seems odd to argue that traces of our own actions allow
ourselves to become more aware of what we have done, but for many of us whilst
we are engaged with the flow of materials play, forms seem to emerge without
any conscious control.
Others as well as ourselves
can look back at the walk we have taken and see where we went, tracing our
steps back by looking at the flattened grass or muddy footprints. Because that
walk allowed us to get from A to B it will also allow others to do the same.
The first person to ever walk the route I took over Button Hill blazed a trail
that is still used every day by other people. So was that first walk across unknown
territory art? Not in the sense that we now understand it, but it would seem to
me that it could be useful to bring this idea back into the way we think about
what art is.
Various posts on this blog
have looked at approaches to communicating information through drawing;
mapping, tracing, technical drawing processes, drawing as performance, as
political statement, as document, as
materials investigation or as perceptual record, the best of the drawings used
as illustrations to these approaches I believe set out first of all to solve a
problem or to articulate an idea, and as the drawing attempts to do this, it evolves
in close relationship with the materials at hand and the ability of the maker
to sympathetically control these materials.
I am therefore suggesting
that self-expression should not be the central concern of the artist. By having
something to investigate that has purpose you can get lost both in the
investigation and in the making. The focus should be in the ‘now’ of discovery
and choosing appropriate methods and materials that can carry the ideas that
arrive from your investigations, as well as developing a feel for your chosen
materials or technologies, so that you can use them well.
Look at what is going on
around you and examine it closely, why are the things you see and experience
like they are? Try to develop a particular interest and research it in depth,
and make more and more trials and tests when trying out ways to articulate your
ideas, both to build up your skills and to put yourself into the situation
whereby you can discover what it is that you are doing. In the initial stages
of the research use as many approaches to drawing as possible.
Perhaps the most important
issue is to not worry about making art; that is something that can come much
later.
Joseph Beuys trained as a scientist, so was very aware of the physical properties of the world around him, later as an artist in both his teaching and in his actions he suggested that "art" might not ultimately constitute a specialised profession but, rather a heightened humanitarian attitude or way of conducting your life. The blurred territory between art and life, and the material nature of art thinking both suggest that we need to take more responsibility for a continuing re-evaluation of what it is to be an artist and perhaps in doing this will be able to embrace a much wider field of thinking. Today perhaps you need to draw and think like a geologist and tomorrow as a biologist but next week as an architectural technician.
Joseph Beuys
See also:
The imprint and the trace
Drawing as the trace of a touch
Drawing as material thinking
