Suspending Thought: Holding Objects in Thinking.
There is always something lacking in description. Especially when trying to use forms to describe an object. There is always information missing or information that is close to, but not exactly what we are trying to describe. My method is to use materials that rely on this facet of “proto-signification that is always underway before distinctions are made between materials, forms or systems of signification.” [1]. This depence of the withdrawn elements of description, provides successful amplification of latency . In Jeff collins essay ‘Two Paintings in Painting’ an observation on Jacques Derrida’s observations on “spatial and other signifying systems”, [1] Collins draws upon a “common root”, articulated as a “‘secret power’ or resource.” Without trying to completely escape signification, the withdrawn - a term I use to contextualise what my work ‘does’ - relies on escaping “the orders of evidence.” This pre-supposed inscription of the absent is what Derrida referred to as a mark or trace. But, and this is important, where for Derrida, the trace signifies a valutative structure to the difference in naming things, predicated on an arbitration of the difference that exists between words themselves, the difference is the value of what can exist beyond evidence. This possibility of existence, for me is further strengthened when we use this tactic to secure the autonomy of the object outside of naming the object. This autonomy escapes the mark of “description or mastery in the terms of a science or theoretical discourse.” [2]So, why is this autonomy essential within what my work is doing? Escaping signification retains the counter. What this gives us is an alternative version of something in view that shakes off its description and stands in for something other. (see Derrida’s metaphor essay) [3] A successful escape should hopefully confront. Therefore, what previously wasn’t there now becomes present. Acting like François Laruelle’s Non-Philosophy, The artwork frees its definition as a form of dominant meaning and “mastery” [4] and quietly acts as '“a re-contextualisation of existing material (in this case conceptual) and a placing of these alongside newer discoveries.” [5] Thus, for the artwork to extend beyond the object as an autonomous entity of critical interaction, the work itself must escape definition. So, reflecting on these positions, I am able to inject this thinking into -for example my concrete lampshade (see fig. 1) - by allowing the work to rid itself of the ‘need’ to be sculpture or a functioning light fitting. Therefore, the work takes on a role of acting as a gateway to inquiry. this in turn allows deeper essentialisms - If they exist in relation to something ‘there, being’ - to unfold in the discursive nature of the fields of criticality.
Fig. 1 Concrete Lamp Shade (2020) An example of work that maintains an autonomy from a direct object relation fixed in definition alone.
[1] Jeff Collins, ‘Derrida’s Two Paintings in Painting’, Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research, ed. by K., Macleod and Lin Holdridge, (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2006). p. 213
[2] Ibid, p. 218
[3] Jacques Derrida, ‘The Retrait of Metaphor’, Psyche: Inventions of the Other, (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), p. 68.
[4] Andreas Fischer, ‘Post-Critical Painting’, Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory, Practice and Instruction, ed. by Pamela Fraser and Roger Rothman, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017) pp. 113 – 128 Here I follow Fischer’s inscription of the term mastery. In going beyond into the withdrawn, the object can then escape the same descriptive mastery that “reinscribes the same kinds of problematic power structures that criticism is supposed to expose.”
[5] David Burrows and Simon o’sullivan, (eds.) Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) p. 316