Kandinsky - Point and Line to Plane
Jorge Luis Borges - The geometry of Thlön, Babel's library, Caracters that read or tel their own stories.
Nostalgia - the sound of the sowing machine, the sound of the library in Rila, modernism and the repetitive work parallel to my grandmother knitting in front of the tv.
Science - fractal, uncertainty, pixel, digital made modern...
Minimalist aesthetics but a narrative, ontological instead of epistemological, the artists hand, intensity, narrative, performative, "duchampean" elements and connections.
sound/silêncio, light?, braile, age of mechanical reproduction, nostagia da modernidade, minimalism, conceptualism, nostalgia, thought, the art school situation, art and language. Pixel, Pics, Fish project connection. Three dots, symbology of number three. Intensity of the artistic gesture in the mechanicized action. finding forest. Rebecca horn installation. Subtileza. Repetition, Time.signature of intensity. Related to the language projects with the mirror and maybe even frame.
Cell, particula. Matrix and the concept of crafts, kniting. Mistakes, concentration and distractions. Percurtion and written music that performs itself when it is written.
More: The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
Eternal return. The responsibility of each instant.
19.1.07
Possible subjects in a really bad text
There are so many absurd topics I would love to write about but that would become nothing other then an exercise... I would love to expose the excessive pressure made on students to validate their practice through the use of references and its consequent contextualization. I dreamt of writing a strong text about the reflux that is so crucial in contemporary art not just through the ideas of eternal return but also the retro culture that is becoming stronger and stronger. It would be am inquiry on appropriation itself and as necessary for homage. In previous years I researched language and its interaction with the artistic practice but this is already producing its effects in the work that I’m currently making and would take me directly to the importance of criticism and tutoring, in which I should admit I’m losing my faith on. I would also love to pick two great references such as Nietzsche and Deleuze develop an investigation more or less superficial on two specific works such as The Will to Power and the book Deleuze wrote on Nietzsche but I have to admit it is too much of a task for this context (maybe not). Even other banal concepts could be quite interesting to explore in a text which only restrictions are the size and the fact that it should be academically relevant. These could include an exploration of the idea of temperature, physically and scientifically at first and intellectually as a side product of friction or any unconservative force in any activity. Just to finish mentioning all these possibilities that came to me I would like to write the obvious topics that usually come to our minds when one is struggling trying to pick one of many things to write about: "Unspecificity" and the activity of writing.
By writing and reading what I achieve is a feeling of ruin. I can feel death crawling in my back and steeling my health, my smile, my hair and the fortune of those that have youth and energy. Reading and writing that so far have been all I’ve learned to do in institutions is proving to be a frustrating and unproductive activity. If I’m supposed to die let it happen at once so I won’t have to bother suffering thinking about it. And then the contradiction of the stream of consciousness. And the certainty we wouldn’t be doing anything creative if we were not going to die – just because we believe it is another way to stay alive. These forces summed up are nothing but passion, belief and pain mixed in a blander and served as if they were posh. The factual side of words bores me. I wish I didn’t give the impression to people that I love writing just because I love philosophy, art and science. I only write as a consequence of my suffering. This can have origins in the academic pressure to hand in something with a certain number of words or it can be an emotional condition that invaded me (like it did before I accepted the fact that I wanted to give my life to Art and nothing else).
Is it possible to start constructing a draft of a text that will combine all the strong words I put in bold in the beginning of this text? Would it be any interesting just to take a model such as the ANT model and explore those concepts in the light of that systematization? I don’t think a mix of such profound and complex things and authors would ever be interesting not even if I used those recent interesting network definitions.
I have to go to sleep. I do not want to feel guilty for ever. I should find love, calmness, physical exercise, sleep, read for pleasure, paint what I feel like painting and finally forget all the pretentious stuff that I’ve been in contact with.
By writing and reading what I achieve is a feeling of ruin. I can feel death crawling in my back and steeling my health, my smile, my hair and the fortune of those that have youth and energy. Reading and writing that so far have been all I’ve learned to do in institutions is proving to be a frustrating and unproductive activity. If I’m supposed to die let it happen at once so I won’t have to bother suffering thinking about it. And then the contradiction of the stream of consciousness. And the certainty we wouldn’t be doing anything creative if we were not going to die – just because we believe it is another way to stay alive. These forces summed up are nothing but passion, belief and pain mixed in a blander and served as if they were posh. The factual side of words bores me. I wish I didn’t give the impression to people that I love writing just because I love philosophy, art and science. I only write as a consequence of my suffering. This can have origins in the academic pressure to hand in something with a certain number of words or it can be an emotional condition that invaded me (like it did before I accepted the fact that I wanted to give my life to Art and nothing else).
Is it possible to start constructing a draft of a text that will combine all the strong words I put in bold in the beginning of this text? Would it be any interesting just to take a model such as the ANT model and explore those concepts in the light of that systematization? I don’t think a mix of such profound and complex things and authors would ever be interesting not even if I used those recent interesting network definitions.
I have to go to sleep. I do not want to feel guilty for ever. I should find love, calmness, physical exercise, sleep, read for pleasure, paint what I feel like painting and finally forget all the pretentious stuff that I’ve been in contact with.
Validation- an interaction between Art and Language
Validity is the property of anything that obeys to the rules of logic. Unlike truth which is the correspondence between a certain statement and reality (or more or less aparently verified facts), to define something as valid one only needs language and a set logical criteria to qualify the interaction between statements as valid. The process of validation as a consequence implies the definition of the language and a set of rules (criteria). To classify a text as valid one doesn’t need to know the meaning of each concept, just the language and its most basic elements. If something is valid it means that whatever it is saying it says that according to the rules of the pre-existing system.
Generally there are two general methods of validation of a statement: the classical and the scientific. The classical method is deductive (it starts stating generally accepted premisses) originating specific (usually obvious) conclusions. The scientific method of validation is experimental. It consists on verifying that a certain phenomena happens in a particular case and, through the repetition of that experience in a controled environment, concludes that those properties verified in those particular situations are actually generally applyable.
Baring this in mind I would like to explore the process of validation of Art via art school, criticism, curation and philosophical (or any other external) references.
Ubiquity
Authority
Generally there are two general methods of validation of a statement: the classical and the scientific. The classical method is deductive (it starts stating generally accepted premisses) originating specific (usually obvious) conclusions. The scientific method of validation is experimental. It consists on verifying that a certain phenomena happens in a particular case and, through the repetition of that experience in a controled environment, concludes that those properties verified in those particular situations are actually generally applyable.
Baring this in mind I would like to explore the process of validation of Art via art school, criticism, curation and philosophical (or any other external) references.
Ubiquity
Authority
How can I start to think or write about teaching?
The absurdity of the most comon perspectives on creativity as a professional activity, an academic arena or a necessary side product of certain mental deseases astonishes me for being so simplistic or folishly elaborate.
I’m not going to try to define creativity in here but I intend to point out what is inadequate to ofer as a model to explain the original production of concepts, ideas, feelings, texts or objects.
Some might argue that it is too defensive since it is much easier to destroy a system then it is to build one or give definitions of what something is. Let me argue non the less that we are talking about a very special area: we are dealing with the activity that leeds to exceptional results. However, I am going to try and propose directions which could be explored extensively in the persuit of artistic production and how to give that possibility to others.
First step
If knowledge in general has always been perceived as an historical production we can not say the same about art and creativity. Pre-historical periods provide us today with enough evidance for us to realize the primordial origin of original objects and images. We associate it with other kinds of languages. The written word wasn’t invented yet but the manipulation of conceps, ideas and speech was already pushing minds into the unavoidable power of making more or less useless things.
The reason why I need to mention this is because we can not talk about life without mentioning the miscelanious soup of organic molecules where life started to understand its properties. The same happens with art and creativity. There is, non-the less a big difference between these two words I’ve been using almost together. Creativity is frequently used for the resolution of practical products and usually produces useful solutions. Art for me is the “making” disreagarding function. Like a section of creativity with a bizare explanation for its existence and creation. To a certain extent one could say that only with categorization of functionality the word Art was necessary to the define everything creative that wasn’t useful. I don’t want to go deep is the linguistic origins of the word Duchamp mentioned superficially or argue for some antropological description of the religious funtion atributed to every prehistorical production we believe was artistic. It is irrelevant for this texts goal if all these massive problems are just mentioned of if they become the centre of these words I’m putting together as if I were working. The fact is that his is a persuit for the creation of a what is strong in the conception of what I’ve been doing and hopefully will always do.
I just commited the most stupid mistake: to start with the origin of life, dinossaurs, cave man and the transition to the Homo Sapiens sapiens. It is the same problem the teaching of history, portuguese, art, geography and any other area has. They start with what we believe is the beginning and cronologically bore to death the students that could be entusiastically enjoying a useful explanation of what is happening in from of them and slowly progress to the past in search for the justification or more information about recent past in even more distant events.
This aproach to what I believe about theory should start
I’m not going to try to define creativity in here but I intend to point out what is inadequate to ofer as a model to explain the original production of concepts, ideas, feelings, texts or objects.
Some might argue that it is too defensive since it is much easier to destroy a system then it is to build one or give definitions of what something is. Let me argue non the less that we are talking about a very special area: we are dealing with the activity that leeds to exceptional results. However, I am going to try and propose directions which could be explored extensively in the persuit of artistic production and how to give that possibility to others.
First step
If knowledge in general has always been perceived as an historical production we can not say the same about art and creativity. Pre-historical periods provide us today with enough evidance for us to realize the primordial origin of original objects and images. We associate it with other kinds of languages. The written word wasn’t invented yet but the manipulation of conceps, ideas and speech was already pushing minds into the unavoidable power of making more or less useless things.
The reason why I need to mention this is because we can not talk about life without mentioning the miscelanious soup of organic molecules where life started to understand its properties. The same happens with art and creativity. There is, non-the less a big difference between these two words I’ve been using almost together. Creativity is frequently used for the resolution of practical products and usually produces useful solutions. Art for me is the “making” disreagarding function. Like a section of creativity with a bizare explanation for its existence and creation. To a certain extent one could say that only with categorization of functionality the word Art was necessary to the define everything creative that wasn’t useful. I don’t want to go deep is the linguistic origins of the word Duchamp mentioned superficially or argue for some antropological description of the religious funtion atributed to every prehistorical production we believe was artistic. It is irrelevant for this texts goal if all these massive problems are just mentioned of if they become the centre of these words I’m putting together as if I were working. The fact is that his is a persuit for the creation of a what is strong in the conception of what I’ve been doing and hopefully will always do.
I just commited the most stupid mistake: to start with the origin of life, dinossaurs, cave man and the transition to the Homo Sapiens sapiens. It is the same problem the teaching of history, portuguese, art, geography and any other area has. They start with what we believe is the beginning and cronologically bore to death the students that could be entusiastically enjoying a useful explanation of what is happening in from of them and slowly progress to the past in search for the justification or more information about recent past in even more distant events.
This aproach to what I believe about theory should start
Old projects residues...
Question: If you left the refrigerator door open, what would happen to the room temperature and why?
Asked by: Sophie
Answer: The room would get warmer! Think of a refrigerator as a device that transfers heat from inside a box to its surroundings. The room around a refrigerator is warmed as it receives the heat removed from inside the box. If you leave the door open, heat is merely recycled from the room into the refrigerator, then back into the room. A net room temperature increase would result from the heat of the motor that would be constantly running to move energy around in a circle. It would be like hooking up a water pump to remove water from your basement and routing the discharge tube back to the basement.
Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor
Asked by: Sophie
Answer: The room would get warmer! Think of a refrigerator as a device that transfers heat from inside a box to its surroundings. The room around a refrigerator is warmed as it receives the heat removed from inside the box. If you leave the door open, heat is merely recycled from the room into the refrigerator, then back into the room. A net room temperature increase would result from the heat of the motor that would be constantly running to move energy around in a circle. It would be like hooking up a water pump to remove water from your basement and routing the discharge tube back to the basement.
Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor
Concerning the spoken and the written in particular
Isn’t the spoken more performative then the written? Are there intermediate mediums such as msn conversations? Film myself performing my dissertation. The philosophical problems interconnected to the written and the spoken. The importance of myth and mistery (maybe myth) in the spoken word (Buda, Jesus, Socrates… the difference between an artist talking or an artist writing). Authority of these different media for language and it’s implications. The effect and the affect. The unwritable and unsayable and the performative aspects of my work. The importance of the idea of space and the specificity of a venue and the effect it has on me. How does this connect to the importance of the image and the spoken language in post-modernism? Television, Radio, Internet and the battle between word and image being apparently sorted with sound and moving images (the bad consequences of this medium), conventional and new, book and report.Visual culture in the context of art and language. Understanding and engaging.
Myth should be replaced by uncertainty.
The random reflux of language and art. The application of language to specific projects such as the fridge project. The importance of temperature is still to unvail but it might be connected to the awareness of the phisical sensation even when that is not the best souce of knoledge.
Myth should be replaced by uncertainty.
The random reflux of language and art. The application of language to specific projects such as the fridge project. The importance of temperature is still to unvail but it might be connected to the awareness of the phisical sensation even when that is not the best souce of knoledge.
Random Reflux
“Chaos under control” – a book I dreamt about when I was a teenager
Rules are intellectual objects that help ordering functions in systems. The way this happens is based on the forced descriptive coincidence of the behaviour of that function with a cycle or with a constant characteristic. This usually applies to large scale scientific studies of the universe, periodicity of history (the largest scale we can study culture) and any other macroscopic sequence of events. On the other hand randomness, chaos, and the lack of what we would call rules are the basis of quantic systems. The relevance of this is that we live in between these two scales of events. If on one hand we live long enough and have a language that helps us realise the rules of long term weather (not just on the scale of summer and winter but for glacial ages as well) on the other hand most of the time our “rules” only give us a few days of forecast becoming completely irrelevant for the description of our daily lives where all particles (including our bodies) are chaotically shuffled into what we usually call our cultural melting pot.
If we try and relate these simplistic thoughts to art and other creative productions we will realize that language is what we use to define rules and patterns. Even when we think about creative writing as stream of consciousness we will realize its main function is to define the breaking point of order. It almost touches the unsayable / unwritable but it doesn’t obviously overcome that because even if interpretation becomes absurd the object was still written or said. Chaos is somehow interconnected to intuition, deconstruction, explosion, randomness, high temperatures, microscopic objects and the apparent impossibilities that actually happen.
“This video is so random!”
The observer’s reflux
– relational aesthetics, the pathway around the work and gallery is the same as a reflux of liquid
– The need to be critical for certain types of work to be effective such as the gallery wall ripped off. The waste of gallery space being the subject matter of the work implies that if people just believe that is good work it stops being good work at all. To write about this project would be enough if people just though it was a good piece. It wouldn’t be enough. The fact that the realization of the project is beyond the language capability of communication is essential. It produces an effect maybe an affect (check Deleuze’s definition) on people that react critically and realize they start being upset because of the opportunity to do something with the rest of the space. The truth is that if the artist had done anything else to space this hole discussion wouldn't have happened. Because people feel irritated and provoked I believe this is still a good work – but it is only good while there is someone that sees it and hates it.
Conceptual reflux
– Hegel, Eternal return (Nietzsche), Deleuze
– Temperature – scientific definition (functional) – the temperature of art movements – post modernism is dead and it didn’t have a long life. People are trying to feed on a corps. What is beyond language being helped by language – Fridge installation – the permanence of the work – the counter-intuitive environments – the open system (it is receiving electricity) – the way cold is produced – YBA’s Mark queen and Damien’s lack of depth and energy – there isn’t one machine with a 100% efficiency rate – the notion of self (the inside and outside are one single space) – politics (cfc –recycling- environment-public property). The diagnose of he creative death – temperature based
Rules are intellectual objects that help ordering functions in systems. The way this happens is based on the forced descriptive coincidence of the behaviour of that function with a cycle or with a constant characteristic. This usually applies to large scale scientific studies of the universe, periodicity of history (the largest scale we can study culture) and any other macroscopic sequence of events. On the other hand randomness, chaos, and the lack of what we would call rules are the basis of quantic systems. The relevance of this is that we live in between these two scales of events. If on one hand we live long enough and have a language that helps us realise the rules of long term weather (not just on the scale of summer and winter but for glacial ages as well) on the other hand most of the time our “rules” only give us a few days of forecast becoming completely irrelevant for the description of our daily lives where all particles (including our bodies) are chaotically shuffled into what we usually call our cultural melting pot.
If we try and relate these simplistic thoughts to art and other creative productions we will realize that language is what we use to define rules and patterns. Even when we think about creative writing as stream of consciousness we will realize its main function is to define the breaking point of order. It almost touches the unsayable / unwritable but it doesn’t obviously overcome that because even if interpretation becomes absurd the object was still written or said. Chaos is somehow interconnected to intuition, deconstruction, explosion, randomness, high temperatures, microscopic objects and the apparent impossibilities that actually happen.
“This video is so random!”
The observer’s reflux
– relational aesthetics, the pathway around the work and gallery is the same as a reflux of liquid
– The need to be critical for certain types of work to be effective such as the gallery wall ripped off. The waste of gallery space being the subject matter of the work implies that if people just believe that is good work it stops being good work at all. To write about this project would be enough if people just though it was a good piece. It wouldn’t be enough. The fact that the realization of the project is beyond the language capability of communication is essential. It produces an effect maybe an affect (check Deleuze’s definition) on people that react critically and realize they start being upset because of the opportunity to do something with the rest of the space. The truth is that if the artist had done anything else to space this hole discussion wouldn't have happened. Because people feel irritated and provoked I believe this is still a good work – but it is only good while there is someone that sees it and hates it.
Conceptual reflux
– Hegel, Eternal return (Nietzsche), Deleuze
– Temperature – scientific definition (functional) – the temperature of art movements – post modernism is dead and it didn’t have a long life. People are trying to feed on a corps. What is beyond language being helped by language – Fridge installation – the permanence of the work – the counter-intuitive environments – the open system (it is receiving electricity) – the way cold is produced – YBA’s Mark queen and Damien’s lack of depth and energy – there isn’t one machine with a 100% efficiency rate – the notion of self (the inside and outside are one single space) – politics (cfc –recycling- environment-public property). The diagnose of he creative death – temperature based
17.1.07
The 500 words we were asked for...
The research area I want to explore and exploit this year is related to the multiple interactions between language and studio work. This will not be reduced to investigations in literature or science as an influence, but will most of all consider the philosophical and artistic roots of postmodernism and the challenges it presented to contemporary culture.
One of the topics I would like to start with is the difference between language when written, spoken, absent, used for analysis and for the creation of will/difference in the creative process or even supporting an exhibition/project.
This will be approached initially from a deconstructive point of view and will probably develop and problematize Derrida and Deleuze’s thoughts specifically. During that process I hope to oppose those ideas to Roland Barthes structuralism and maybe even Freud’s psychoanalysis. The idea of the work as a semiotic object or as an unreadable text will probably be in conflict.
Friction will hopefully be one of my goals while writing this document. And I hope the rubbing between the formal (visual) and the conceptual (language related) issues will produce something I will be aiming to decompose and analyse. Maybe it will increase my “intellectual temperature” maybe it will just inform the way I present my work with words.
I believe the several approaches and references to Plato’s “mimetic critic” to art by Nietzsche, Susan Sontag and Deleuze will be part of this performative writing project. It might make sense to approach a few other problems related to how clearly things are said or written by taking in consideration Wittgenstein’s rigid approach and Derrida’s loose attitude which gave the reader interpretative freedom.
Art historically I will be paying careful attention to Installation art (and the way it was historically influenced by language) and to specific movements such as Art & Language.
The reason why I believe these subjects are so important for my practical work is because I’ve been perceiving a big connection between the way installations are experienced by an immersed observer and the way I experience language (as a reader or a writing student). Besides the resemblances I believe there are between those processes and the way they mutually influence each other, there are also conflicts and mutual aggressions I am extremely interested in.
I also have high expectations on books I’m reading on imagination, coincidence and vast areas I’ve researched to a certain extent such as New Historicism, Criticism, Hermeneutics and Phenomenology. I will also be sensitive to discussions and journals I’ll engage with and make sure those become part of the process of writing possibly using new atmospheres and forms of writing such as “chat computer programs” (i.e. msn messenger, etc).
Finally I would like to put forward the possibility of exploring only one of these topics if it becomes crucial or maybe exploring exclusively a couple of philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger because of their extreme importance and complexity.
One of the topics I would like to start with is the difference between language when written, spoken, absent, used for analysis and for the creation of will/difference in the creative process or even supporting an exhibition/project.
This will be approached initially from a deconstructive point of view and will probably develop and problematize Derrida and Deleuze’s thoughts specifically. During that process I hope to oppose those ideas to Roland Barthes structuralism and maybe even Freud’s psychoanalysis. The idea of the work as a semiotic object or as an unreadable text will probably be in conflict.
Friction will hopefully be one of my goals while writing this document. And I hope the rubbing between the formal (visual) and the conceptual (language related) issues will produce something I will be aiming to decompose and analyse. Maybe it will increase my “intellectual temperature” maybe it will just inform the way I present my work with words.
I believe the several approaches and references to Plato’s “mimetic critic” to art by Nietzsche, Susan Sontag and Deleuze will be part of this performative writing project. It might make sense to approach a few other problems related to how clearly things are said or written by taking in consideration Wittgenstein’s rigid approach and Derrida’s loose attitude which gave the reader interpretative freedom.
Art historically I will be paying careful attention to Installation art (and the way it was historically influenced by language) and to specific movements such as Art & Language.
The reason why I believe these subjects are so important for my practical work is because I’ve been perceiving a big connection between the way installations are experienced by an immersed observer and the way I experience language (as a reader or a writing student). Besides the resemblances I believe there are between those processes and the way they mutually influence each other, there are also conflicts and mutual aggressions I am extremely interested in.
I also have high expectations on books I’m reading on imagination, coincidence and vast areas I’ve researched to a certain extent such as New Historicism, Criticism, Hermeneutics and Phenomenology. I will also be sensitive to discussions and journals I’ll engage with and make sure those become part of the process of writing possibly using new atmospheres and forms of writing such as “chat computer programs” (i.e. msn messenger, etc).
Finally I would like to put forward the possibility of exploring only one of these topics if it becomes crucial or maybe exploring exclusively a couple of philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger because of their extreme importance and complexity.
3.1.07
I do not want to be here
Pain is not a game. Just a fact that will always be more truthful than anything else.
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