'On' and 'another' matter

Postcard #3
(From Postcards from a Past'2003)
by the author

I can’t remember the sandpit but there is a photograph of me playing in it, left hand held high as I run towards the camera. Look at this, a daisy-chain, a fairy-chain, a strand of time.

Mention sand and I think of another time years later. Lying on my back staring up into the night; the sound of waves in the dark stars above: stars upon stars upon stars drawing ever upwards dissolving boundaries pondering the possibility of endlessness. There are shapes and pattens within the constellations but I do not countenance identification it tells me nothing of the possibilities above me as I lie in the still-warm slight-damp sand. I struggle to comprehend impose meaning while considering the possibility none is possible.

Infinity offers no explanation. It attempts to label the unnameable, beyond number beyond limit beyond being and by doing so ends up by limiting itself. It is labelling the known unknown (which in the act of naming must itself become known, it is the unknown unknown the other possibilities which lie beyond the horizon of knowing which draw me). 

The universe may be considered a fabric of reality knitted together in dark matter he tells me. The stars are visible points formed of light matter, dropped stitches within the dark cloth, loose networks of filaments stretching across time and space. Knit one purl one knit one purl one a binary code in repetition which shifts evolves in errors the hesitation dropped rhythm of stitch. Chaos theory string theory or loop quantum theory with space and time made of coiled ribbons, once tangled become particles. The many strands of time entangled enfolded envelope me.

It is this repetition of stitch and not the single stitch itself which offers consolation. The knitted stitch, one needle through the stitch on the other, strand forward and looped around the needle, stitch pulled through. Knit stitch, purl stitch, increase, decrease, cast off but not the universe.

(From 26 Object Project, 2008)

The arrival of Edgar Levensen's paper, 'The Enigma of the Unconscious' (2001) last Wednesday provided that leap of understanding that perhaps, just perhaps, the questions I had been asking early in this project about 'space' and within that the void and more recently the workings of 'smooth' space could be answered by the notion of  'hyperspace'. 

Levensen's paper is about the unconscious, and the role of the analyst in the process of treatment yet I believe he manages to open up all sorts of intriguing ideas which include D&G's concept of 'smooth space'. He states;

"Conscious thinking follows the rules of Greek logic--deduction, categorizing, inferring--our Western cultural heritage. [a form of 'striated space']. In contrast, unconscious thinking seems closer to free-ranging hypertext...where words and concepts are pursued to their most unexpected implications ['smooth space']. (p247--my emphases) 

The resulting text he points out, '...is a self-regenerating process'. Levensen then goes on to state:

 I think the brain is individual but mind is a field phenomenon, a network, a web. (p250--my emphasis)

It is that glimpse of possibility that the use of 'smooth space' can be helpful in generating new ways of seeing, new ways of hearing. An interactive 'cabinet of curiousity'

Wonder (4): connections--the cabinet, the blog

Bureau of Bureaucracy (1993-99)
by
Kim  Schmahmann
various wood veneers & hardwoods, mother of pearl,
gold leaf & brass

I saw this cabinet of curiosities ('...of Bureaucracy') in the Renwick Gallery Washington DC  when I visited in 2007.

Made by Kim Schmahmann, the workmanship is exquisite, personal yet universal--the lower drawers contain Schmahmann's birth certificate, marriage certificate and death certificate (not yet filled out).

(detail)

The more I think about it, the more connections I can find between such cabinets, the blog and the quilts. And returning to the Macquarie Chest, these become quite specific:

• Lost birds: the bird depicted (or 'noticeably' absent) from this series of small quilts is the Glossy Black Cockatoo. These are becoming increasing uncommon due to the felling of their food source, the casuarina (she-oak, or Botany Bay wood) tree. Identified by the early colonists as being particularly good for making furniture, it was used to make a number of the early cabinets used to store scientific collections. The Macquarie Chest, however, is made from Australian Red Cedar and Australian Rosewood (rose mahogany) both found in the Lower Hunter district (of NSW) but now quite uncommon due to their early popularity. The Red Cedar and Turpentine trees on the property where Pamela now lives was felled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The logs were brought out along snig tracks that form the basis of many of the walkways today.
• It was the convicts, transported from England, who worked the lumber yards in the early days of the colony, among these were cabinet-makers who also took on private commissions such as the Macquarie Chest.  (A connection to the 'Big House' series).
• The Callan Park estate was first settled by John Ryan Brenan who arrived in Sydney in 1834, only thirteen  years after Macquarie's time as Governor of NSW ended.
• It is their 'secret' histories that make these objects so intriguing--the personal details of the collector's life, the reasons behind the selections that make up the collection and, what has happened to the object in the years since. Each of these quilts bring to light histories of various kinds--of a particular site (the Gorge, Callan Park), of the 'others' in society (the mentally ill, those who have broken the law) and even the quilt itself, too often overlooked as a medium of personal expression and work of art.  

As I write this and search for even more connections (feeling certain there are some). I realise the obvious-- it is not the works themselves which are making the connections but my own mind. Just I choose the individual pieces of cloth to make a quilt, I am making connections and putting together stories that link the three quilts which make up this project. Thus a 'cabinet of curiosities' can be a metaphor for the mind, and this blog becomes a reflection of the way mine works...a performance of 'smooth thinking' (see my Post, 'Smooth Thought' dated January 19 this year). 

When I looked around Kim Schmahmann's website, I noticed the following statement and perhaps I shall use it as an epigraph to this project:

"We have become a planet filled with lines, lines that have become essential to our existence. We are so dependent on these lines we cannot imagine a world without them. We use lines to create countries, towns, time zones, production lines and deadlines. We live and die by these lines, and yet none of these lines exist except in our imaginations and through our actions. That is the power of lines.

As we continue to use lines to divide ourselves into parts, we lose a sense of the whole. We tend to forget that even as lines divide, they also connect. While we so readily express our differences, let us also acknowledge our common humanity." (source)

Notes:
Elizabeth Ellis, 'Rare & Curious'--for details of the Macquarie Chest

Wonder (3)--a response & more thoughts

I'm writing this in response to Ruth's comments to my Post, 'Wunderkammer/Wundernet' (August 28). Ruth asked certain questions which have helped me clarify my thoughts and the reasons why I made the link between Pamela's Lost birds series and the wunderkammer/cabinet of curiosities and here are some of my answers:

• When I opened the 'Spectrum' section of the week-end Sydney Morning Herald at John McDonald's review of Curious Colony, it was the image of the open Newcastle Chest that caught my eye--in the centre of which was Louise Weaver's Area (2010):

Louise Weaver: Melbourne-based artist Louise Weaver has responded to the Macquarie chest’s drawers and trays of taxidermied birds. Weaver’s drawer installation includes a native budgerigar, a zebra finch and a rainbow lorikeet, united by a wreath of wattle made from crocheted handblown-glass orbs. Weaver’s birds are ‘taxidermied from the outside’. Mummified in brightly coloured crotchet, they call into question our historical treatment of nature and our frenzied collecting and museumising.

 

Louise Weaver Arena 2010

hand-crocheted lambswool over taxidermied

zebra finch (Poephila guttata), budgerigar

(Melopsittacus undulatus), rainbow lorikeet

(Trichoglossus haematodus), hand-blown glass,

wooden beads, cotton embroidery thread, gold

leaf and mono filament, 8.2 x 47.0 x 36.0 cm

Photography by Mark Ashkanasy

courtesy the artist and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

^{[Image and text down loaded from the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery's website, 1/9/2010]}

• That 'leap of connection with Pamela's Lost birds series was initially probably figurative, a visual connection with the subject matter (birds) but then I believe it goes deeper than that--it's that sense of the 'unexpected'and 'wonder' that I feel with both Pamela's and Louise Weaver's works
• And yes, the wunderkammer as an object intrigues me too, that sense of discovery. And yet I also associate it with a sense of 'loss'--and this is where early memories come in
• Memories of the museums from my childhood...the taxidermied animals, often rare, sometimes extinct; various bits and pieces, sometimes whole organisms, preserved in formaldehyde, the fusty bottles/jars carefully labelled in copper script handwriting. These museums were very different from the museums of today, they often had poor lighting and crowded shelves [I had already made this connection when I asked Pamela if I could use her Lost Birds in this project]
• my own boxes of objects precious--related through their perceived value to me personally rather than to each other. And as Helmut Lueckenhausen (quoting Milhaly Csikszentmihalyi) points out:

"These patterns, and many of the others that emerged from the data [his research], suggest that (at least in our culture and in the present historical period) objects do not create order in the viewer's mind by embodying principles of visual order; they do so by helping the viewer struggle for the ordering of his or her own experience." (p36)

This also leads on to a point I touched on in an earlier post. I believe the Lost birds series is different to other work by Pamela in certain ways:

• it contains figurative references (albeit silhouettes, chalk outlines of a body at the scene of a crime) 
• while it, as her other work, is linked to a profound sense of place  (the Bow Wow Gorge) and the process of time, it is a of a more recent 'time' (even to the present, the glossy black cockatoo is still around, if uncommon) than many of her other works which reference the Permian, a period in the earth's history 245-360 million years ago . It connects to the scientific work Pamela does as a conservationist; Pamela keeps a journal which documents the plant and bird species, and records rainfall as she returns most days to explore the creek, caves and ridges. 

Lost birds #4 (2006/7)

Pamela Fitzsimons

[scanned image]

^{Another work by Pamela Fitzsimons:}

Rock fissures (2005)

77 x 85 cm

plant dyed wool, layered and hand stitched

<sup>I find the nature (or essence) of 'wonder' in and of itself most difficult to put into words...it is an encounter which surprises in its 'unexpected', if not in it's completely 'unknown' nature.


[During the writing of this post, I have realised another coincidental connection with Yann Mantel's book, 'Beatrice and Virgil'--the main character, a writer called 'Henry' meets another character, also called 'Henry' (interesting 'doubling' here) who is a taxidermist. 'Beatrice' a donkey and, 'Virgil' a howler monkey are both taxidermied animals: Post August 8,  Blogbook August 2]</sup> 

Casting the net

"...finally he found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast farther then the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the haul, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch...and there, in four tenths of a second, he had his answer." (Yann Mantel, Beatrice and Virgil, 2010, 170)

In a recent issue of 'Abbey's Advocate'--a newsletter from Abbey's Bookshop in Sydney, I noticed a new book, The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember by Nicholas Carr. At first glance it seemed to pick up on the concern about the effect the digital could impact on the future of books as an object. But it appears to go further than that and argue that our use of the internet may be even be changing the very structure of our brains--internet search tools allow us to gather large amounts of nonlinear information from multiple sources very quickly but we risk losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation and reflection as our process of analyzing information is moving form "...the depths to the shallows" (#248).

This morning when taking a look at Arts & Letters Daily I came across a link to an article to The art of slow reading   which in addition to referring to Nicholas Carr's book, added comments from a number of academics in support of this view. The solution? Take time out for some 'slow reading' and re-reading of  they call 'physical' texts. [And for the slow art of quiltmaking...]

The structure of the mind and the internet also came up in a conversation a week or so back. We were discussing the internet and the suggestion was that the structure of the internet reflects the structure of our unconscious and explains how the experience of 'surfing the net' can elicit unexpected results and connections, just as ideas can come to mind from where we know not.   

 Cho'akpo for a Child Bride (2002) 150 x 150 cm, by Sarah Tucker (image: Fleur Shelton)

When I returned to my notes made at the beginning of this project (handwritten in a notebook I keep, if less regularly since I have been writing this blog) and I found a list of characteristics of Deleuze and Guattarri's 'smooth space': limitless, without distinction and linked with the unconscious.

Cho'akpo for a Child Bride 2002 (detail of installation, image Nick Tucker)

And so what implications does this have for this project?

I find each post is triggered by an idea/comment/image and as I write I find associations emerge which I can document via links (hyper-links) as I go, illustrating my text with images or by making connections with other texts I have found during the process of writing. The result, this weblog, is most like a lab book I might use to describe an experiment and record results, with any notes I make along the way. So I do not intend it to be an end in itself but something, I hope, which will lead to something else completely. Writing which will exist in the physical world as well as in the virtual.

Fragments: The material and the virtual

Some fragments, out-of-order but somehow related within the experience of blogging, that nagging question--what am I going here, and what is the blog anyway? Not only am I questioning the form (and already inferring materiality here, when a blog is situated within the internet somewhere in cyberspace) but keep finding the language itself keeps breaking down as I struggle to work out differences between the material and the virtual...I had thought it would be easy but it's not.  

• a short article in the Australian newspaper on May 13, One click from blog to blah, blah, blah, written by 'Susan Wyndham (Literary Editor)'. She quotes Cate Kennedy (author of The World Beneath) who '...fears our addition to the internet is killing literature'. Kennedy maintains fiction requires '...quiet, slow reflection by writers and readers' and I'd agree but I can't see how the internet/blog in particular can compete with literature or even with the notebook (for the latter's convenience in time and place...my internet connection failed yesterday when I planned to work on this post, so instead I put my ideas in my notebook, or rather the one of the many of notebooks that happened to be on my desk at that moment). Should I be worried? Will my writing process be  damaged beyond repair?
• I spent a day at the Sydney Writers' Festival and noticed a number of session on the effect of what is termed, 'The Digital Age'. James Stuart opened the session 'Beyond The Book' by  speaking about the 'materiality of language' and his work 'The Material Poem' an anthology (Stuart is the editor) concerned with 'the material' but available on-line, so not totally committed to it...or is it?
• 16th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial, a matter of time includes a work by Andrew Nicholls --an  image of a piece of cloth projected onto the gallery wall, Time After Time (2004 - 2006), the only piece in the exhibition to have no material form 
• A visit to the Twelve By Twelve exhibition which opened  at the Gosford Regional Gallery at the beginning of June. This is an (ongoing) collaborative project by twelve quiltmakers who communicate via their blog to produce a series of twelve inch square quilts on a given theme. The first series (twelve of the themes) is now a touring exhibition. An example of the virtual (the members are scattered around the globe, no one member knows all the others) becoming material...
• Recent visit to the Accademia in Florence and the series of unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo, the Prisoners the sculptures themselves seem to struggle to free themselves from the marble blocks from which they are made...these take me away from the argument surrounding the blog and to something altogether more fundamental, and that is that the virtual and the material are related through language and the process of creativity...the one preceding the other in the process of making. 

Post stared on June 5 and completed on July 6 2010 [a three week visit to Europe inbetween!]

Language and the coming into being creatively

On Sunday I finished reading the poet Gregory Orr's autobiography, 'The Blessing'. On Monday I started reading Siri Hustvedt's 'The Shaking Woman (or A History of My Nerves)', also autobiographical.
Orr's narrative tells how he became a poet--when I first read his poetry, I found it difficult to withstand the unresolved grief at its centre--I could not 'face' it.
He had shot and killed his younger brother in a hunting accident when he was 12 years old, the book tells the story of what followed in luminous text, not a word is superfluous, not a word out-of-place (it is indeed a telling set in 'place': the two houses where he grew up, the hairy-scary outings with his father, the family's year in Haiti, Orr's time in Mississippi  as Civil Rights activist, his moment of revelation in a field of iron statues). His coming-to-be-the-poet.
And when I moved from 'The Caged Owl' poems which had threatened to undo me--to his more recent 'Concerning the Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved', I not only sensed the shift but began to see the sense of it.

In his words:

You lost the beloved.
You thought: her page
Is torn from the book
Of life. You thought
It's as if he never lived

How wrong you were:
Loss writes so many
Poems in the Book,
Writes until its hand aches,
Till it's exhausted
And can't write anymore.

Then it sings a song.

(Gregory Orr, 'Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved', p194)

And now I am two-thirds through Siri Hustvedt's search for an understanding of her shaking condition. She documents a journey through neurology and psychiatry, through the history of philosophy and psychology. It is a narrative of her search through 'space', not 'place' and yet she continually brings the theory back to her personal experience, her own body within that space. It is more extended essay then narrative, more a coming-to-language itself.

But how and why do these books concern me so? And they do.
I find myself connected to each of the texts, emotionally and intellectually but especially emotionally. And the gift of looking within--their stories, their losses, their questions. And mine.

First binding of '26 Poems I have Encountered' (2009)

Truth and Lies

What started out as as a collection of questions about how when a half-truth becomes a lie and how (self)deception can be have serious repercussions shifted diection when I bought a copy of 'The Monthly' magazine which contains an essay by Sebastian Smee on 'The Outsiders: Art and Mental Illness' (February 2010, p44).
The essay, written as a series of fragments, operates on a number of levels: the tragic deaths of a father and daughter, the mentally ill as outsiders, and how mental illness and creativity is perceived to be connected (thus treament will obstruct or even destroy the creative impulse--a serious and potentially dangerous belief which Smee comes close to but doesn't confront). As such, the essay is not so much about art and mental illness, as it is about the misconceptions which surround such illnesses and how fearful we can be of individuals who suffer from them.
And while I attempt to make sense of the mix of emotions I feel while attempting to understand this essay and the issues it raises, I wonder if I am also having serious difficulties with this topic and not just Sebastian Smee.
How difficult and at times impossible it is to deal with altered realities within ourselves or those we love, and how much easier its is to exist in a state of denial and self-deception (itself an alternative reality). Although I understand very little about the true nature of creativity,  I do know that the mind in a psychotic state has little opportunity for creativity.

Postscript:
The next issue of 'The Monthly' published a letter in response to Smee's article sent in by Mike Parr ('Degenerate Art', in Correspondence, March 2010, p72). Parr starts off his letter: I was utterly shocked by Sebastian Smee's irresponsible article...and goes on to take Smee to task over most of the points he makes in the original article. I found myself agreeing with many of the issues Kelly raised, some corresponded with my own response response but I had probably taken Smee's essay too personally and felt grateful Mike Parr had taken the trouble to write to The Monthly and  the position he took .
The discussion continued in the next issue, with a response from Sebastian Smee to what he describes as Mike Parr's angry letter, and in which Smee defends his position in his original essay ('No Easy Answers', in Correspondence, April 2010, p73). Yet I don't feel Smee was able to make amends with this letter or resurrect his essay.
I will end with Mike Parr's last sentence:

The essayist is a coward and his 'essay' is an ignorant, cowardly attack on a vast population of loved ones who suffer the terrible isolation and loneliness of mental illness.

Harsh words but the experience of mental illness is considerably harsher.

Why Smoke?

No, I'm not advocating the benefits of taking up smoking but I did come across an interesting article in a rercent issue of 'Cosmos' magazine (#29) entitled, Why Schizophrenics Smoke (p16).

Statistics suggest over three times as many people suffering from schizophrenia smoke when compared to the population as a whole (the short article quotes work done by psychiatrist Ruth Barr at Queen's University Belfast, so I suspect the numbers are based on the UK population). It had been thought that the benenfits of nicotine were assosicated with overcoming the symptoms of smoking/nicotine withdrawal (I take this to be studies using nicotine patches to help smokers quit). Whereas this study investigated the link between the high incidence of smoking and the effect of nicotine on the symptoms of the illness and suggests it helps attention span, memory and reduces impulsive behaviour. So it may go at least part of the way to explain why so many people who suffer from schizophrenia smoke (...and help their family more understanding of their smoking...well perhaps!).