Body of Weeds

We are caught in the paralysis of the peoples paradox,

Between our own heresy and the same old orthodox.

For what we thought a cradle has now become a crypt,

For those of us who saw God as a mobius strip.

Amongst reeds and rushes and inter city buses,

Up among the things that the wind brushes.

Never envy the nightingale crow

There are places only those like us can go

Held back by akrasia we are straining for arcadia,

Or avalon or the eden deep inside of there

Everything and all the time somewhere inside your mind

This rain cloud a baptismal font fallin on your hair

For the storms coming soon now, sometime and some how

And no one is ever dry after it passes

We didn’t board the ark but instead braved the dark

And see each other now in lightning flashes.

Only loosely connected now

To this body of weeds

A collection of weird parts

And dandelion seeds

Sky observation: 23/11/20

The sky was a bruise over the city; smarting purple and a numb gray cloud.

Heaven had tripped and inflicted some blunt force trauma upon the troposphere's eastern pressure front. 

The evening was now limping into the late autumn night.

Me, then, walking home after an overnight shift. 

Both my knees unblemished but with puffy dark moons below my eyes. The same colour as the moody clouds that spooled over the hills on the western horizon- moving with the lazy pour of over-proofed bread dough. 

The sky over the sea was most likely clear and still a pale, dusty blue. 

We will have to imagine, as I did not turn round to check. I made my way down to home, through streets that were readying themselves for the night with a quiet bustle.

Intention in the Age of Digital Reproduction

This is an academic essay I wrote on whether the idea of intention remains important to art work in the modern day. Death of the author and all that. Since is was written as academically as I could, there are no many jokes. You have been warned.

The notion of intention is not only useful in regard to visual culture but vitally important. Any piece of visual culture we encounter has been consciously created for some purpose. That we ever come into contact with it indicates that great care has been taken to ensure that we do so. Why might this be? It is in hopes of influencing us, the viewer, in some way. Therefore, by recognising the notion of intention may help ourselves resist the unwanted promptings of propaganda and advertising. Before we begin, let us define what we mean by visual culture.  For the purpose of this essay, I will define visual culture as any created image of pigment or pixels. Paintings, posters and online posts are all included. Next, it is necessary to also decide whose intention we mean. There is, of course, the artist or designer who makes the image in the first place but there is also the curator, who is now not always human. By curator, I do not mean only the employee in an art gallery but, whoever or whatever is responsible in the decision-making process for a certain image to be presented in a certain space.

Despite this multiplicity of intentionalities behind the presentation of an image, we only need concern ourselves with the most recent intention that has placed it before us. In fact, in order to become aware of how we are meant to be influenced by the image and in doing so not be taken in by it, more attention must be paid to this context. Why so? Let us examine the work of two thinkers Walter Benjamin and Vilem Flusser. The following quote is from Flusser’s Towards a Philosophy of Photography: ‘It follows that images are not 'denotative' (unambiguous) complexes of symbols (like numbers, for example) but 'connotative' (ambiguous) complexes of symbols: They provide space for interpretation’. (Flusser, 1983, p8) Through this idea, we can see that the image itself is not wholly reliable as a vehicle for intention. It will always be interpreted differently with context. The viewer's personal interpretation remains beyond the control of even the most shrewd artist, journalist or propagandist. Therefore even if an image is made with a certain intention, it can be usurped and re-purposed by situating it in a new context. This is because although an image is ambiguous a caption, on the other hand, is unambiguous. Agreeing on this point Benjamin elaborates on the importance of context and explanatory annotations in the presentation of media in his short essay a Small History of Photography: ‘This is where the caption comes in, whereby photography turns all life’s relationships into literature, and without which all constructivist photography must remain arrested in the approximate’ (Benjamin,1931, p256). In discussion pertaining to visual culture ingenerall, not just photography, we can expand Benjamin’s idea of a caption to a photograph here to any informing surrounding that an image is curated into. This is not to say that an image does not hold internal power (part of what Benjamin would describe as the aura when describing the power of the original over reproductions), which is an entirely different question. In the context of this essay’s discussion, it is this turning of ‘all life’s relationships into literature’ which gives the caption, in other words, the informing surrounding, its power over an image. An example of this is the use of the appropriation of photographs in fine art such a Kruger’s ‘Your body is a battleground’ (Kruger,1989).

Kruger did not take this photograph, they found it. Any intention the photographer may have had has been taken in and repurposed by Kruger who has become the curator of it, even as they are the artist for the new work. The caption they added over it adds a great deal but so too does the context in which it is placed. It was made as a poster for the 1989 Women's March on Washington in support of legal abortion. This demonstrates that the setting in which an image is curated is an important aspect of informing its meaning.  In order to highlight the use of intention as a concept in regards to visual culture, this essay will compare two settings in which visual culture is viewed. The gallery and the screen. The screen here including all the settings in which we come into contact with digital media and advertising mainly phones, tablets, and computers. We shall look at the differences in the ways images are presented in order to highlight the usefulness of the notion of intention in relation to visual culture.

The gallery

When the viewer comes into contact with visual culture in the gallery, they are fully aware that what they are about to observe will quite likely have a strong political or philosophical stance.

By the nature of art galleries, we are invited to question it and probe into the thinking behind it. Many curators will be seeking to enhance the intention behind the artwork, that intention being to open up conversations around a topic, communicate a certain issue or to simply to present the work in a clear and flattering manner. This intention might be elaborated through the usual means of the gallery setting; with an explanatory text in vinyl on the wall, leaflets available in normal print, large print, and braille and help gallery attendants who might be able to clarify anything a visitor finds ambiguous. Art in the gallery setting is, in general, not trying to sneak something past the public. Even if they are trying to share a certain viewpoint it is not propaganda in the common usage of the word as it is blatant and wears its heart on its sleeve. It acknowledges a broad conversation around its topics. Let us look at an example that elaborates this, so we may view visual culture encountered online in contrast.

This is the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei's piece Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995. Here a photographer captures (on the second attempt, two ancient urns were needed to get a clean take) the artist dropping a 2000-year-old urn onto the ground. What is the intention here? Ai Wei Wei is a well-known contemporary artist with a reputation for dealing with difficult political subject matter. It is undeniable that this work has been presented to us with the intention of communicating this political commentary. It is, however, far removed from the practice of behavioral influencing posters and adverts. The artist himself is in the image, not hiding the source of the material in any way. A large majority of people who have an interest in contemporary art will be able to recognise who this is and already know what the image might be communicating. The context informs the piece of visual culture as a statement, as art and as an image with something to say. It has been placed in a gallery and therefore has intended to become part of a greater dialogue. This contrasts as we shall see with the following category.

The screen.

In contrast to the gallery, we have the screen where visual culture is not presented as art but forms a ubiquitous backdrop to our everyday life. It attempts to make us forget that it the product of an intention towards us altogether. This difference is due largely to the most obvious difference between the two settings, that of exposure. We could, of course, resist any influence exerted by visual culture we come into contact with online by simply putting our devices down and walking away We would then escape the intentions of advertisers and campaign groups. In doing so we would render the notion of intentionality in regard to visual culture unimportant. We do not, however, appear inclined to do so. Current trends indicate that many people in the UK check their phones alone, not including any other devices) around 28 times (Barr, 2017) a day and therefore increase our exposure to the digital world. In this case, we do still need other methods of resistance. How does this high level of exposure relate to the notion of intention? It is because it allows curated and intentional images to become ubiquitous in our day to day lives. Just as Benjamin observed that lithography had ‘enabled graphic art to provide an illustrated accompaniment to everyday life’ (Benjamin, p253) only for this process to be ‘enormously accelerated’ [pg 253] by the widespread use of photography we, living in the information era of social media, are now in the bullet train era of visual accompaniment to everyday life. In the average person's digital commute they will visit sites multiple times a day, pounding the pavements of their digital block over and over. Thus, whereas they might pass a poster on the street once or twice a day, they might see the same digital advertisement in dozens of instances. This puts us increasingly into contact with the products of behavioral economics, a previous fringe theory that has become more and more accepted over the past decade. The recurrent contact with the same media that is described here is evocatively similar to Flusser’s description of how we engage with images in general: ‘It can return to an element of the image it has already seen, and 'before' can become 'after': The time reconstructed by scanning is an eternal recurrence of the same process. Simultaneously, however, one's gaze also produces significant relationships between elements of the image. It can return again and again to a specific element of the image and elevate it to the level of a carrier of the image's significance’. (Flusser,page 9) This perfectly describes the experience of our digital commute wherein we circle back on repeated adverts or posts over and over which on the surface may feel like trying to walk on a small pebble, simply a minor annoyance but will inevitably accrue meaning or significance to you through the simple act of overexposure. The objective of advertisement design is not to create a space for people to gather to, as an art gallery is. They seek to insert the advertisement into the everyday.

What is troubling for the current situation in the digital arena, In regard to Benjamin’s idea of the caption, is that the context that informs our decoding of an image can be kept intentionally opaque to a much greater degree. Throughout our digital commute, various connections are made by advertising algorithms and groups interested in affecting our behavior. Let us take an example of an advert (Aggregate AIW, 2016) that appeared on Facebook during the 2016 campaign for the referendum on the United Kingdom leaving the European Union:

In isolation, it is not clear how this image argues for the UK leaving the EU. It is, however, one of many adverts created by Canadian company Aggregate AIQ for campaign group BeLeave. This series of advertisements were intended to make the viewer feel that the EU was reducing British citizens power and highlighting certain issues that might not appear immediately relevant such as the advert above. The intention was to make the viewer feel that they would have the power to change these issues if they vote a certain way in the upcoming referendum. Other issues featured in this series of advertisements were the British cup of tea, job security for young people and funding for the Nation Health Service. This advertisement was apparently aimed at animal lovers who were not likely to disagree with what it appeared to say. The meaning of the image changes however when it is viewed as part of a sequence that the viewer is intended to become emerged in. A fine example of intentional curation, aimed at influencing people's behavior. In Work of Art in the Age of Reproducibility Benjamin discusses how ‘An ancient statue of Venus[...] existed in a traditional context for the Greeks (who made it an object of worship) that was different from the context in which it existed for medieval clerics (who viewed it as a sinister idol)’ (Benjamin, p256). From the view of animal activists, the practice of bullfighting is animal abuse and is indeed something we should be working against, but we are mistaking to think this simple message is a benign and simple thing. Without knowing the intentions behind why we have been shown this we are unable to tell if we are really Greeks or medieval clerics, whatever our reaction to the statue. Another quote from Flusser highlights why adds like the one above can be so effective: ‘Technical images are difficult to decode, for a strange reason. To all appearances, they do not have to be decoded since their significance is automatically reflected on their surface - just like fingerprints, where the significance (the finger) is the cause and the image (the copy) is the consequence’. (Flusser, p14) For Flusser, a ‘technical image’(p14) is an image created by a use of an apparatus, as opposed to a drawing or painting.  One of the reasons why propaganda takes so much effort to decode is that it will appear to be stating something simple and agreeable or use numbers and data presented in some way that seems obvious and not in need of further scrutiny. This reaffirms the contrast between visual culture encountered in the art gallery and on social media. It is not that art in the gallery is unbiased, neutral or in some way free of political leanings. The difference is the surrounding context. The gallery is an institution for discussion, social media is a tool for convincing.

Thinkers who criticise their own side are often unpopular or divisive, but it is an important role in a movement. If we are to make decisions that work to bring about the world we wish to live in we must be willing to engage in this type of thinking for ourselves. The public today are exposed to an unprecedented amount of visual culture. The freedom of access to the work of artists, designers, and writers is a wonderful thing but not without its risks. To allow oneself to be taken unaware can be dangerous. Although often harmless and in some cases even beneficial to us, the behavioral altering potential of the visual culture that we are exposed to does affect many people. As mentioned in a study conducted for the UK government many more groups are ‘Drawing on psychology and the behavioral sciences, the basic insight of behavioral economics’(Dolan.P et al,2010) in order to gain influence over people. If we wish to be able to make fully informed decisions we require the tools to allow us to analyse what we take in. The usefulness of the notion of intention in regard to visual culture lies in its utility as a tool to help us accomplish this. Questions that lead from the notion of intention such as; ‘who has paid for this’ or ‘why has this been shown to me?’ are a good place to start. To help us reflect on the media we consume and afterward to make more informed and more certain decisions in our lives.

Bibliography/References list  

• Barr, S. (2017). ‘THE AVERAGE BRIT CHECKS THEIR PHONE 10,000 TIMES A YEAR, STUDY FINDS’., the Independent, 1st December, accessed 25.11.18  

• Benjamin,W. (1978). One way Street. London: Verso.

• Benjamin, W., & Underwood, J. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (Great ideas). London: Penguin.

• Dolan.P et al, (2010). MINDSPACE: Influencing Behaviour through Public Policy, Institute for Government, 02/03/2010, accessed 15.11.18, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/MINDSPACE.pdf

• Flusser, V. (2000). Towards a philosophy of photography. London: Reaktion.

• Kruger, B. (1989). Your Body is a Battleground, Photographic Collage, accessed 21.11.18, http://www.barbarakruger.com/art/yourbody.jpg

• Wei Wei, A. (1995). Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Photographic triptych, accessed 19/11/208, https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/ai-weiwei

• ‘Vote Leave's targeted Brexit ads released by Facebook’, the BBC, 26/07/2018, accessed 26.11.18

A responce to Mark Fisher

Philosophies of the Imagination: Art Project Response.    Kris Thomassen

There is something missing from our lives which it is often hard to put our finger on. The philosopher Mark Fisher discusses the ways in which one might employ Derrida's concept of Hauntology to identify these voids. Hauntology is the study of spectres, of the things that are both present and unreal. It is an ontology of absence, or rather it pays attention to that which is absent from other ontologies. Building on this theme Fisher wrote about his thoughts on the concept of haunting more generally on his blog:

It is not accidental that the word 'haunting' often refers to that which inhabits* us but which we cannot ever grasp; we find 'haunting' precisely those Things which lurk at the back of our mind, on the tip of our tongue, just out of reach. (Fisher, 2006)

It is good that we have tools for identifying what is missing, as in Fisher's writing we are situated as living in the grips of capitalist realism, (Fisher, 2009) a form of cultural milieu in which all alternatives to the current state of affairs, as described by the neo-liberal world view, seem impossible.

In his book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2014) Jonathan Crary identifies sleep as something that cannot yet be exploited by capitalist realism. Therefore, the forces of capitalist realism have started to erode its place in our lives, aided by the digital apparatus of the buzzing and glowing information age.

I believe another phenomenon that can be hauntologically identified by its absence is silence. Sleep is a biological necessity; a so far immutable aspect of the human experience. Silence enjoys no such privilege and so must be reinforced in some way or else be eroded away soon after we have attempted to establish it. One may with all good intentions begin to find a way to bring silence into one's life, but how then do we continue to do so? What methods may we use to prevent falling back into the sea of total noise?

A solution might be found in the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas in her book Purity and Danger. If silence can be enshrined in a secular ritual, we are encouraged to invest more meaning in it. As Douglas describes:

Everyday symbolic enactment does several things. It provides a focusing mechanism, a method of mnemonics and a control for experience[...] So ritual focuses attention by framing; it enlivens the memory and links the present with the relevant past. In all this, it aids perception (Douglas,2002 pg.78)

Whereas we are prompted by our bodies to sleep each day, it takes a conscious effort to begin and maintain the practice of finding silence in our lives. By couching it in a ritual it may hold its own against the temptations that we could be doing something more exciting or more productive.

Is silence something we really need? Why not be more productive, learn a new language or free up time to volunteer? Or at least something more fun, life is short! Why not attempt to fit in as much entertainment as we can in our short time here on earth?

Firstly, there are many studies that demonstrate that taking time each day for contemplation or meditation has tremendous benefits to one's everyday life and can even help extend one’s life and health span. Two populations identified as blue zones, areas with a higher than usual percentage of healthy centurions, Okinawa, Japan, and Sicily, Italy, have a period of the day marked by slowing down and taking the time to observe religious or cultural observances. In Sicily, it is daily prayers and in Okinawa ancestor worship (Buettner,2013). These practices then are life improving and extending, but you cannot simply transplant parts of different cultures around like an anthropological jigsaw.  Although there are many Western adherents to Buddhist or Hindu spiritual practices it must be acknowledged that this is not for everyone. Those without a religious interest or interest in adopting the practices of other cultures ought to have the opportunity for this stillness and rejuvenation outside a church they do not believe in or a gimmick mindfulness app.

But other than the benefits to productivity and enjoyment, what else is there? To see moments of contemplation and silence simply as an aid in making us more productive is not to escape the domain of capitalist realism, but merely to mitigate our suffering inside it by performing the roles it demands of us more smoothly.

What else then, can it do for us?

These practices should be evidenced as increasing some aspect of ourselves or our experience that does not translate into increased production, but simply make our lives better in some aspect beyond the financial and economic.  

These practices can also foster kindness, which stands as the antithesis of capitalist realism. As the Lutheran pastrix Nadia Bolz-Weber states;  ‘Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people’ (2018). To act out of kindness is to not be acting in the interests of generating capital but in generating safety, dignity or compassion, famously unproductive things.

It is in practices of silence that these things are often found. In the Quaker meeting, friends are prompted to focus on what George Fox names that of God in everyone and there is a strong belief that the discipline of silence can help develop the kinder aspects of our personality (Religious Society of Friends,1994). In Buddhist meditation traditions, there are often specific practices to act as training for meta, or loving-kindness (Harvey,2000). In so many traditions that employ silence one may observe the belief that one may emerge from the silence a kinder person, more capable of acting out of compassion rather than self-interest.

I am not attempting to make this piece some sort of instructional experience or attempting to frame it as a viable replacement for such practices. I do not think that one simple art installation has the power to transform someone's life so dramatically. The intention is simply to draw attention to what could be.

The art piece I have created for this project is a double tryptic. In the first and third prints of both triptych would be text which is interrupted by the second by an image. The first tryptic features text elaborating on the longing for something missing from someone's life, it is in chaos. It is interrupted by a depiction of an object that causes this.  It could have been an alarm clock or mobile phone but I chose a digital wristwatch whose alarm I often turn on accidentally. Although these devices can be silenced, it is always temporary. They retain the potential and the promise of future noise. A snoozed alarm clock is only waiting to be noisy again.

The text of the second tryptic describes someone's suffering in an environment of total noise, without hope of escape. It is interrupted by an empty chair, an invitation into silence, stillness, and contemplation. After hanging these I would invite people to join me in a prolonged moment of silence, inspired by the Quaker silent meeting for worship. A simple gesture and demonstration of the attitude the prints are hoping to demonstrate.

The aesthetic influence for these posters comes from a Google image search for ‘80’s poster art’ as a reference for Fisher's concern that we are currently unable to break free from nostalgia; what he calls the cancellation of the future (2009). To be honest I am a big fan poster aesthetics from prior decades so did not believe the first step should be trying to break this habit. Rather I began at step one of recovery: admitting you have a problem. I believe this helps strengthen the connection to Fisher's philosophy by guiltily playing into the trap of nostalgia, unable to make a new aesthetic decision and move culture forward. The images that are produced from this Google search are mostly not real posters from the ’80s but are a current re-imagining of imagery in the popular imagination version of an 80’s poster style. It utilises colour fades, especially pink and blue with mostly dark or black.

This work forms a dialectic with my main studio practice where the artworks are made under the assumption that dissenting therapies such as silence must be incorporated into our day to day and will not work sufficiently if corralled into a separate part of our lives. I hope that by working with both sides of this argument I will personally arrive at a conclusion in the future.

This is why I do not believe my point could be made by a single piece but instead that my argument emerges in a network from the various pieces. Perhaps ironically I am attempting to execute a project about silence via a conversation between works.

Ideally, this work would have been framed in materials reminiscent of the industrial world. The boards made of modified construction scaffolding as if the work was being framed in the context of the working world, the means of production, and the mindset that causes all this trouble for us. This was prohibited firstly by the price of materials and secondly by the skill needed to utilise these unfamiliar materials.

Reference List

Crary, J. (2014) 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. Verso

Douglas. M. (2002). Purity and Danger. Routledge Classics

Fisher. M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? 0 Books

Fisher. M. (2006) ‘HAUNTOLOGY NOW’, k-punk, 17 January. Available at: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007230.html [Accessed 17 march 2019]

Harvey. P. (2000) An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues. Cambridge

The Religious Society of Friends (1995) Quaker Faith and Practice The Religious Society of Friends

Blessed Are the Unemployed, Unimpressive, and Underrepresented | Have a Little Faith (2018) YouTube video, added by MAKERS [online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctcjNCrGyT8 [Accessed 14 march]

How to live to be 100+ - Dan Buettner (2013) YouTube video, added by Ted-Ed [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff40YiMmVkU [Accessed 25 March 2019]