C a r l o s S e b a s t i á
A r t i s t
Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology of Perception
Merleau-Ponty understands the world as something that is there even before reflection. Regardless of the reflection. Unlike the Kantian thought where reality is constructed, in Phenomenological thought reality is discovered.
Space does not exist in itself but in relation to the subject and the phenomenal field of consciousness. Space is inside the subject and consciousness itself is spatial. Space is movement. To explore an object, I must move towards it by placing it at a certain distance. If I change the perspective, the perception of the object also changes.
Events do not develop successively but simultaneously, beyond the distinction between time and space. By claiming that reality only forms within memory, Ponty means that the past is not just an illusion of reality but, thanks to the temporal distance, can develop its meaning.
Perceiving is almost an act of immanence, which goes beyond the senses and stimulates the process of remembering. Remembering is more than just the idea we have of a photographic image and its perspectives.
Therefore we find in Ponty reflections on how we understand the objects that surround us, that he says has to be understood in an utterly analytic way and always about space and time in which our memories accumulate.
In my work, I try to rediscover reality displaying installation which let the spectator explore the space and the object from their recollections through the information they find deconstructed.
Henri Bergson
Matter and Memory
Such an encounter, or ‘accessing’ of the event, might involve what Henri Bergson calls attention; the suspension of normal motor activity which in itself allows other ‘planes’ of reality to become perceivable.
For Bergson, it is the brain, understood as complex matter, which opens up this gap. The brain functions as an exchange system, receiving perceptions and producing reactions, and yet because of its complexity, an interval is opened up between excitation and reaction. (p.46 Simon O'Sullivan - Art encounters Deleuze & Guattari‘)
Now, by means of this interval, something extraordinary is produced or embodied: creative emotion.
Following Bergson, we “see” only what we have already seen. We see only that which we are interested. Bergson suggests and involves “the discarding of what has no interest in our needs. (p.47 Spanish Ed)
Bergson considers memory not as a chronologically organized archive but as a compressed whole of experiences and events.
For him, the problems relate mainly to perception, time, space and memory. This concept is something after used by Ponty but criticized because he considers that Bergson does it from a very poetic point of view rather than analytical. Bergson proposes a philosophical model based on intuition, precisely because it assumes that our senses are altered by what we want to see. We can never be objective because our memories and emotions confuse our intelligence when it comes to perceiving.
Bergson’s concept of memory heavily depends on his understanding of sensory perception and the experience of time. Contrary to Platonic theories of memory, Bergson suggests that the past at all times coexists with the present through continuous movement (Lawlor 2003 55).
Sara Andersdotter
Chocking on the madeleine - Thesis
She bases her research mainly on the idea of memories itself as mundane memories, disconnected from any trauma or collective. Moreover, about memory metaphors, especially from the photography. The memory understood as something is not static (Bergson). The photograph in a widespread understanding makes as a way of preserving recollections. However, she starts proving that is a wrong concept. So, she asks herself how to make a different approach to memory from an artistic perspective.
Part of her thesis references to Simon O'Sullivan and the seven components of creating art in a contemporary world, based on Deleuze ideas of rethinking memories. Deleuze asks how, if it were not past at the same time as it were present, the present would be able to pass. He concludes that the present and the past should not be thought of as two linear points. One following the other; rather, it is preferable to think of the past as being ‘contemporaneous with the present that it has been’ In this way, the two concepts of the past and the present are seen as coexisting (p. 61)
1 - Encounter 2 - The effect 3 - The production of subjectivity 4 - The minor 5 - The virtual 6 - The event 7 - The mythopoesis
“The whole of our past is played, restarts, repeats itself, at the same time, on all the levels that it sketches out” (Deleuze 1968/1991 60-61). There needs to be something strange in the familiar, unfamiliar in the known, so to cause a simultaneous rupture and assertion; an encounter.
She created work bodies for her research based on undocumented recollections. From there, she looked for information to give shape to those memories. Those works following O'Sullivan precepts are “affective assemblages,” where using multiple images still and move images, sounds and 3d objects, she tries to explore the memory event from many different perspectives. Forcing encounters, as a way to push out the spectator from their habits of perception.
"In moving away from the use of the metaphor and its significations or sets of meanings, I am instead moving towards a form of practice that places emphasis on what the artwork does, rather than what it means" (p. 89)
Jacques Rancière
The emancipated spectator
Rancière questions the way in which an artistic work enhances the emancipation of the spectator. According to the author, the viewer is an active interpreter who makes his own readings appropriating the story, developing a personal intellectual adventure based on what he is looking for.
The artist is not authorized to instruct the observer. There are too many personal interferences that the artist can not take into account.
"We do not have to transform viewers into actors or ignorant into learned. What we have to do is recognize the knowledge that works in the ignorant and the activity of the spectator "(p.23 Spanish Ed.)
"In fact, it is rather the intellectuals and the artists who should be emancipated in the first place, freeing them from the belief in inequality in the name of which they attribute the mission of instructing and making active the ignorant and passive spectators."
"An image never goes alone, nor simply resends a collective imaginary thought of as a reserve of images."
"The effect of a work - whether it is the pleasure of the spectator, the feeling of beauty it feels or a political awareness - does not belong to the one who creates it"
“Representation is not the act of producing a visible form, but the act of offering an equivalent – something that speech does just as much as photography. The image is not the duplicate of a thing. It is a complex set of relations between the visible and the invisible, the visible and speech, the said and the unsaid. (p.76 Spanish Ed.)
Joan Jonas
Tate Modern (show)
In the Shadow a Shadow: The work of Joan Jonas (book)
As defined by the Tate, "Hero to a generation of younger artists, Joan Jonas is a pioneer of performance and video who has pushed the boundaries of art for the last five decades."
In this exhibition, there is a tour of his work since the 60s in both performance and video. I attended it the same week of its inauguration. At that time I already had many ideas in mind and sketches of what to do in my future project during the degree show. Screens, projections, double projections, shadows, etc. I do not say that I thought I had invented all this, I am not so ignorant, but seeing each of my ideas represented together in the exhibition by pieces of 40 years ago shocked me. Then, I bought the book "In the Shadow to Shadow - The Work of Joan Jonas." Only the title already includes a large part of my creative interest. It took me a while to recover, but what I have managed to get out of it has been much more potent than my initial idea.
The work of Jonas and mine is connected to the sensory elements rather than in the discursive ones. My work is not a feminist or animalistic work, I practically refuse the direct use of human presence or leave it almost on a testimonial level. However, his way of using video, his interest in research into the physical characteristics of it, the use of light and the surreal way in which she presents her installations connect me entirely with her work. There is one last element that I consider essential and is the continued reuse that she makes of her pieces. They move from installation to documentary recording and from there a new installation springs up.