Constricted sky (2021). Photograph taken on a walk.

My work and thinking are consumed with, what is the gap.

In earlier essays throughout the degree I have always tried to gain an understanding of that which exists after matter. The objet becoming thing. Form as feature.

All these attributes of the object world create boundaries. Yet, how we encounter these places, edges, worlds, are experienced over time.

Time, meaning, witnessed, there seems to be a concentration in what it is I am trying to achieve with my research and practice. Artifact as a thing made, imbuing the non-solidity of the process, the thinking, the memory, the guesses, the assumption, the probability of what is about to happen.

Working with chance and procedure has started to inform my practice over the summer in whilst working in the field of ceramics. My process of producing artifact, giving shape to a material, opens as an unfolding of time happens. Something that starts to become, an emergence, a becoming manifests my question of what weight signifies. As a result, that which I get, that which is, becomes a definite article of a response.

Stuart Lee (2021) Notes from my journal.

These works, to me act as an exactness of two things happening, of all those undefined nebulous moments of making continue to be something that was and now is.

What wasn’t exact, now takes the form and shape of moments that come together to make an artifact. Secondly, how these artefacts read, is constituted in the structure and spatial tension of one thing existing thanks to a mechanical support.

So what does this mean? It means that as Levi R Bryant quotes below, that latency (that which is held back or delayed) is probably going to be the most potent force in my work as I strive to garner the latency behind relations as a tactic.

“Harman seems to say that no matter how tightly related things

might appear to be, no matter how dominated and defined by alienating signifiers they might

seem to be, no matter how defined they might seem to be, they always harbor hidden volcanic

potentials (I know he doesn't like the term "potential"), that hold the hope of being otherwise

Nothing is, for Harman, ever so defined, reduced, or dominated that it can't break free and be

otherwise. In a world of theory that had increasingly come to be defined by the pessimism of

Adorno's culture industry and Foucault's networks of power, this is a hopeful thesis. The

message is not that there aren't these institutional networks of power, discursive construction,

economics, etc., but that there's always an excess that allows the possibility of the "more", the

encore, and the otherwise. People, animals, minerals, technologies, and microbes are always

threatening to erupt and challenge all networks of power. At least this is what Harman's

withdrawal thesis has meant to me.

b) Caution: Graham's withdrawal thesis is also the thesis that objects always carry surprises.

We never fully know what an object will do. Sure, we learn a lot about how entities behave, but

again they can never be reduced to their "sensual presentations". From an ecological

standpoint, this is a tremendously powerful and important message. Like the new materialist

feminists, Harman cautions us against our narcissistic pretensions of mastery, reminding us

that entities always harbor hidden surprises and are liable to behave in ways that we

don't expect. Ethically this cautions us to be cautious about our technological interventions.

"There's more in heaven and earth than thought of in your philosophy, Horatio." We're never

sure what an object can do. I can scarcely think of a more powerful challenge to the "identity

philosophy" and it's drive towards domination that Adorno denounces, nor a more powerful

critique of the drive for domination, and calculative mastery that Heidegger denounces under

the title of "enframing". Graham builds it into the very fabric of being or existence. He shows

why, what I would characterize as the discourse of the master, university, and narcissistic

consumption are a priori a sham. Harman's got a lot of criticism for being a defender of

neoliberalism because he defends individual entities, but how can anyone fail to see that the

withdrawal thesis fundamentally challenges the theory of calculation and mastery upon which

neoliberal ideology is founded?”

The above chapter is typical of the research I engage in to underpin my philosophy of being as matter. Research as matter. The networks, the processes, the opportunities and most importantly -and this is a word I want to claim as a defining article- latency.
Each cast I make, and more importantly, each terrain I construct, explores the hidden, the potential, and the yet to be. The more I make these strange pots the more I am finding that I don’t want them to just exist as aesthetic artefacts. For me, this would be prosaic and banal, almost pointless. My research is about obtaining signposts that structure a pathway to further development of ideas in real time. There for my work is a result of response and reflex.
Bryant continues, “I translate Graham’s non-relation thesis into Deleuze’s thesis that “relations are external to their terms”. Why is this thesis so important (to me)?”

For me, this quote is key, the terms of each terrain are built on the fragile nature of each work. These ‘examples’ stand in as metaphor for further investigations in to being in a world. The cracks and breakages still manage to sustain and support other ‘things’. So therefor, what is important within my practice is to extract something that isn’t necessarily dependent on yet can still be linked to that which exists alongside.

Above is an early template of what it is I am trying to articulate materially. Each base I make acts as a plateau. From here I am able to explore the possibility of structure and support. The wood indexes the fundamental basis of footing. It becomes a framework that allows a building of differing verticalities. The wood is horizontal to the verticality of the wire. This perpendicular element is how the resting of a ceramic on the resultant lifted terrain, is critical in how dependent features register in the formation of the work.

Somewhere in between