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Still reading The Disappearance of Rituals…

The urge to Produce, to provide Content is rife. But the problem is with the sort of art work I do, if I am too intent on the product and not the process, I miss things. It’s too fast. It’s too target driven. 

I wrote a couple of posts ago about the benefits of lingering. It could be argued that lingering creates time and space in which to play and think, and that being obsessed by outcomes removes the thought required to make meaningful work. I only ever write here about my own work, my own thoughts. I am not at all saying this is the only way to be. I’m just trying to find the best way for me.

“Thinking has the character of play” *

Free thinking is playful, dancing. 

What I shall try to now do intentionally is to resist the urge to produce and post, resist the urge to tell people what I have made, in order for the meaning to find itself.

I shall stick with playing around with my signifiers, and leave the signified under wraps… it doesn’t need to be presented with written instructions all the time.

Why do artists feel the need to explain? Is it the desire for validation and understanding? It takes a certain level of confidence, and some might think arrogance to let the work speak for itself. I had a conversation with another artist recently about titling work. What is a title for? Identification? To signal cleverness? To provide clues? To give a point of access? I do like to title my work. I do think I use the titles to provide clues or a point of access for the viewer, or a starting point for a conversation at least.

But instead of explaining myself, why not stick with those signifiers: those wrapped twigs signifying the children living in poverty? I could either leave the twigs unexplained. Or, why not head straight for what I am trying to signify and present the raw data? If I am going to explain it all, why bother with the twigs? And if I’m going to present the twigs as an installation, with a set of particular rules and aesthetics, why bother with the statistics?

If I am concerned (as I am) with how much I can do, how deep I can delve by using signs and symbols and metaphor in my visual works and in my writing, does it not ruin the whole thing if I reveal it immediately?  Is it like blurting out the punchline before we tell the joke? Premature ejaculation?

Is it not more seductive to keep the signified to myself for a while? It gives me more space to play and think before committing myself.

Does the luxury of non-revelation only arrive after ten, fifteen, twenty years of working towards (or around?) something ignorantly, while not really knowing what I’m aiming at?

Having laid out all the clues, enough of the clues, and, let’s face it, blatant statements of what my work is about, can I now not bother?

Am I by privilege of age and experience now allowed to not write an artist’s statement on all of my work? Surely I don’t need to write what it is all about if I have made what it is all about? Is this a matter of a lack of confidence or insecurity that makes me add words?

Is it arrogant to not allow my audience a way in? And am I bothered if people think I am arrogant? Yes. I probably am.

I may have confused myself. This requires more thought. And play.

*The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han p82

While I was making the work for Five, Six, Pick up Sticks, it was very important to me to collect real twigs, pick them up from the ground, consider them carefully for wrapping. I still have all these wrapped twigs, and I am using them in all sorts of other contexts, making them work in different ways, say different things.

But also, I have recently been making twigs out of recycled packaging paper. I think this is a continuation of the residency with Stuart: considering materials and playing with their inherent properties… seeing what I can make them do. I know they are not real twigs, and when you handle them you know they are not real, but they do have enough twiggishness about them for me to continue the experiments. They are waste materials, bound tightly from the huge reel of linen thread I bought in the second hand warehouse in Örebro. The scrunching and binding is different every time, so the individuality can continue. By tearing the paper differently I can get different shapes, sizes and forking arrangements. It is another quiet and meditative activity, that at the moment has no real end-game. Another one of those activities where the multiples play a key role. I haven’t got enough yet to know what they can do.

I am usually a bit of a stickler for authenticity, a twig should be a twig… and then I make that twig signify something. So why can’t I take it back another step and make the materials signify a twig?

Thank you again Stuart for pushing my thinking in a different direction by allowing the time and space to play.

Those who read this blog, or who follow me on social media when they meet me they say “You’re SO busy aren’t you?” And yes, it does appear so, and I am tired so it must be true! Some of that is the pressure to produce “content” which I outwardly abhor, but inwardly I still feel the need to succumb to. But I am attempting to slow myself a little. For one thing, this Busy-ness is unsustainable. Also I find myself stepping back to analyse my need for it. Is there a need to be SEEN to be busy, as well as a need to FEEL busy, that one is producing work?

Good Question…

I am making arrangements for the RBSA’s Professor of Painting, John Devane, also of Coventry University, to visit me in my studio, to talk about all this activity, product, content… and cast a fresh pair of eyes over it and take stock a little. 

Just as I am thinking about this, I have started reading a new book, lent to me by my son, called “The Disappearance of Rituals”. I am still only in the first chapter, but I am gratified to read something that chimes with my own thinking, at just the right time. Author Byung-Chul Han talks of rituals being the means humans take to make themselves at home in the world. We need around us familiarity, repetition, recognition. “Recognition elicits the permanent from the transient” (Han quotes this from Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful p47).

Instagram “content” is the most transient of media. Instead of scrolling endlessly for the new and fresh, what I want actually, is something familiar that I can ponder. Something to ponder is reliable. The act of pondering is comforting. One should linger, tarry and dawdle.

One can watch the cycle of annual feast days and seasons and hold the rituals they are tied to. These mark out the year and give it structure, stability and meaning. They slow things down so we can appreciate the year and the seasons, and repeat the same old rituals, be they religious, or social, or familial. These things endure. 

While creating content, for others to consume, our communication becomes meaningless, it passes, does not endure, we don’t linger over it, we don’t ponder the existence of it. Our connections are EXTENSIVE but not INTENSIVE.

So, while I tarry a-while and contemplate… linger… ponder… maybe I can appreciate more the things I have achieved while I have been “SOOOO busy!” And actually take the time to review what they mean.

This has been illustrated perfectly by the time spent with Stuart in Sweden. Instead of the emails, collected and read when convenient, and the photo on Insta, that we click “like” and move on, we had the opportunity to take our time with each other, and each other’s thoughts. 

In the five days, we established a few rituals: rising early; eating breakfast together; discussing the day ahead; me washing up while Stuart gets ready; Stuart preparing food while I sit and watch him… hahaha!; small seemingly insignificant habits that soon become fixed and speak of home, settledness, comfort. These things are INTENSIVE.

Our working together in the project room was also intensive: establishing a common language and pattern of working, a repetitiveness derived from the need to sit back and ponder, and drink tea. 

We talked a lot, and as Stuart said in his post, not always about the work, but often about these things that make our lives what they are, the rituals with friends, with our work colleagues, our families.

So, yes, I agree, going to Sweden for a residency does seem “busy” … but actually, once there, there was plenty of time for pondering, and lingering, and establishing small rituals to add meaning to it all.

Thinking about my own work in relation to what I am reading, I look at the repetition in the way I work; the cyclical nature of it; the pattern that my studio days always follow.

I am always looking at relationships: what is it that we do that creates and upholds them? How can this be fostered when it starts to break down? What do we do to recognise and appreciate the ones that endure? 

So I am going to let this writing stand, as it is, no pictures of work in progress, no fleeting Content… just words to linger over, and reflect upon.

Back in the studio, the effects of Sweden are still swimming around in me. I’m hoping that it lasts.

I have taken down all the large drawings of sticks and stones, feeling that they have done as much as I needed them to do. They might return, once I’ve taken another turn around the mountain.

The things on the wall facing me now are the pods and the aprons, waiting for Helen and I to configure them, and still the wrapped twigs. I have on my table a pile of textiles, including the sheet and pillow case given to me by Stuart, and the vintage cot sheet and baby pillow case I bought at the huge second hand shop in Örebro (amongst many other items ). Following on from the residency I am carrying on with the arranging and rearranging. I find it fascinating how a pile of twigs in one formation doesn’t work, but when I shuffle them round into a different configuration, they work. I suppose it is a matter of language, of semiotics… pile them up on a tablecloth, no, line them along the floor, no, arranged like a nest in a baking tin? No, but nearly… Cram as many as I can into a pillow case… yes. The pillowcase does it. These symbols work. I am thinking I might submit this piece to the RBSA Prize show. It speaks to me, it’s now just a matter of whether it speaks to the selectors. These twigs are still standing as signifiers for the children living in poverty. The wrapping and the pillow case is an attempt by me to give them comfort. I think the title will be “How Do They Sleep at Night?” Which works for me, in the week before the election… I’m full of hope, somewhat desperate hope, that there will be change soon.