8th of September 2022 - memory and time

One of my professors mentioned to me how the use of previous work may relate to memory and time - an avenue of thought I am now curious to explore more thoroughly.

Previously, my reasoning for incorporating my old work was that: 

1. They feature nature in some way, thus I have left other old works up on my wall since they do not relate to this theme of nature I am interested in. 

2. They were on my wall, and I wanted to make space for other collaging material. 

3. I wanted to see how placing these old works in a new context would change the way I looked at my artwork. To elaborate , when thinking back to Ugo Carrego's Concrete Poetry Manifesto, I wanted to see how adding all of these "graphic stones" would feel like when read all together: what would this visual poetry sound like?

4. I wanted to incorporate some of the studio environment and the context of my art into the artwork itself. 

Looking at them through this new lens of memory and time however, first conjures thoughts about time capsules and time travel where my present self is talking to my past self through my painting. It makes me want to imagine and look back on what I said or predicted would happen to these artworks in the future for comparison. I suppose in a way it is a compliment, that I liked my artwork enough to include it in a collage - and not totally erase it like Robert Rauschenburg did with De Kooning's drawing. That being said, I'm not quite sure if John's actually disliked De Kooning's drawings, but was more intending to be provocative. The history of the drawing is still there after all. 

Now this is where my cohesive thoughts stop. 

I think I need to read more about how other artist's approach memory and time before I can fully articulate my thoughts on the matter. 

Here are sources I found most thought provoking during my research and reflection so far:

> Page 8 of At The Same Time by Susan  Sontag (Sontag 2005)

"Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once … and space exists so that it all doesn’t happen to you."

Whilst I greatly appreciate this quote, even finding some sort of comfort in it, I think it presupposes that the universe was created for us - something that I do not believe to be the case. In my own opinion, we are simply fortunate that we exist in a stable habitable planet where the arrow of time moves steadily forwards. Especially on the quantum level matter behaves very differently to what we experience on a macro level; whilst orbiting an atom can exist everywhere all at once until they are observed. 

> The book On Photography by Susan Sontag (Sontag 1979) 

> The quote by Man Ray as selected and re-printed by Sontag on page 186 of her book On Photography (Sontag 1979)

"I photograph what I do not wish to paint and I paint what I cannot photograph"

This is a sentiment I can relate to.

> The quote by Franz Kafka as selected and re-printed by Sontag on page 206 of her book On Photography (Sontag 1979)

"Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens. One has to grope for it by feeling .... This automatic camera doesn't multiply men's eyes but only gives a fantastically simplified fly eye's view."

> Art Agenda Meta article by Saul Anton (Anton 2020) - 

" The critical description of a work of art is first and foremost a complex act of memory — always after the fact, even if it’s done while standing right in front of the work."

> Walter Benjamin and his theory on the essence of an artwork - in it's original form and when reproduced. Listening to the In our Time podcast on this topic was both very entertaining and informative: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014710  (Bragg et al. 2022).

I went to go read a copy of Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Benjamin 2009)to see for myself the ideas that the professors were talking about in the podcast. Despite the many benefits of reproduction detailed by Benjamin, that of a film camera that can "capture the images as rapidly as the actor speaks." and lithography that can create graphics in "different designs daily", in reproducing an artwork you are "shattering the aura" of it. Since it is "through reproduction, it even mines similarity from what happens only once.".

Thus, through photographing my self - contained biome, I have captured  it's diminished 'aura'. This is compounded by the way I have included photographs of photographs that have been drawn over and altered with black pen.

 Likewise, David Hockney has also captured a diminished aura of his subjects with photographic collages like Celia Making Tea. In my collage, however, the photographs and old artworks have been rearranged and situated in a new context unique to that moment. That being said, this is less the case with Celia Making Tea since it is an edition of 20, so that moment of arranging photographs of Celia has been reproduced 20 times. Nevertheless, in reassembling these photographs into a new context, we have both made mosaic of shattered auras. Then from these aura shards a new aura can emerge - like consciousness from the connected and organised neurons of a brain.

Thinking about memories in the context of Walter Benjamin's theory of aura (Benjamin 2009), made me realise that memories may also be seen as imperfect reproductions with a diminished aura of an instance in time. 

Bibliography:

Anton, Saul. 2020. "Seeing Is Remembering: The Expanded Field Of Art Writing - Criticism - Art-Agenda". Art-Agenda.Com. https://www.art-agenda.com/criticism/362084/seeing-is-remembering-the-expanded-field-of-art-writing.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in the book One-Way Street and Other Writings.London ; New York: Penguin, 2009.

Bragg, Melvyn, Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger, and Simon Tillotson. 2022. "Walter Benjamin". Podcast. BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014710.

Sontag, Susan. “AT THE SAME TIME ... (THE NOVELIST AND MORAL REASONING).” English Studies in Africa 48, no. 1 (2005): 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138390508691327.

Sontag, Susan. 1979. On Photography. London: Penguin Books.

Appendix:

1. Everything is language. 

2. I therefore do not see why poetry must continue to make use of only words.

3. My senses reject a theory that is not operative. 

4. I write what I think in the moment in which I write and think. 

5. We need an art like the science of art. 

6. What I write must be presented like I write it. 

7. A stone is a word. 

8. A sign on a page is a graphic stone. 

9. I can not write about what I do since I do it. 

10. Language is everything.

Carrega, Ugo and Vergine, Lea. Manifesto on Concrete Poetry, Art on the Cutting Edge : a Guide to Contemporary Movements. Milan: Skira, 2001, https://libsearch.ncl.ac.uk/permalink/f/rm84mo/NCL_ALMA2157124250002411.

Hockney, David. 2022. Celia Making Tea. Photo collage on paper. New York: CLAMP.

Rauschenberg, Robert. 1953. Erased De Kooning Drawing. Traces of drawing media on paper with label and gilded frame. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

(Rauschenberg 1953)