Gallery as the exhibition

This is a little catch up as I haven't updated the blog for a long time. These thoughts, are by now, a little out of date in terms of our current idea but nevertheless I'll include them.

Is the exhibition itself an alternative reality, another God and the gallery space the physical boundaries of the universe that contains it?

The thing is, is that we can temporarily attempt to ‘contain’ viewer’s thoughts but inevitably that spell or containment will probably fade outside of the gallery walls.

What legacy do we want to leave in the mind and or on the body of audience visiting?

baby thoughts...

What I was daydreaming about after reading the latest articles...

The Universe is the totality of everything that exits, it’s physic laws commonly looked at unimaginable and it’s size infinite. But do we really understand what it is? All our vocabulary helps us to understand, but immensely limits and frames its real meanning.

How would be able to compare something which is simply incomparable to us.

I mean, in a way we limit the infinity by titling it "infinity". I guess it calms us down, we master unexplainable in give it a tag, a definition.

The babies unconscious life dreading fears, which in early stages might be the desire of food or a warm motherhood is fascinating. I look it at as pure anxiety. The unexplainable anxieties "nameless dread" mention in joc’s article, which I guess lives in each of us. And likely a baby feels when it in a totally unknown environment. When the baby consciously realizes the unexplainable. I imagine it to be a feeling of helplessness and loneliness. Something similar the soldier feels in a life threatening position. Where conscious communicating does not to make sense. Where all post-experiences, definition, and words do not frame and limit its vast power. No thread to hold on to…

When I lay in my bed…when all my existential desires are satisfied and religion and science seem to be nothing more then entertainment, that's when I believe to feel a little drop of this pure anxiety, while realizing to be nothing more then an accidence of “nature”….

I was just thinking…quite silly though….. What would happen, when the Universe would be fully explained?

Atheism Vs God AKA establishment, Atheism Vs Agnostic.

Interesting. Quite old now but still related. Atheists Vs Religion AKA the establishment and Atheism Vs Agnostic.

He has compelling points and I agree with him that religion and God are a far fetched idea but I don't necessarily agree with him that the 'intelligentsia' are being robbed of power because of their religious or nonreligious view and that they, the 'intelligentsia' are the best placed people to govern. What about wisdom? Does intelligence always appropriate wisdom, look at Heidegger and Nazism (Josch's posts).

Is wisdom and intelligence related?

Neither do I accept that Agnostic is "atheism writ respectable". Maybe it is by some people but I genuinely believe that our existence and our creation and destiny is inconclusive.

But it is curious, this institutionalised abhorrence and fear of disbelief or at the very least a rejection of the acceptance that God could be make believe and science is just as, if not, more believable.

I know I said that I'd finished with this but it's just so fascinating and enraging. It's something that stirs us so if we can stir similar subconscious / conscious thoughts in others it must be worth communicating.

Bion and Beckett.

This is more of a footnote but interesting...

Beckett was Bion's first major case whilst a trainee therapist.

Beckett suffered from depression and physical manifestations of anxiety and came to England to receive treatment, which introduced him to Bion. There's some interesting writing on how this relationship effected the two men.

'Nameless Dread'

A ‘Nameless Dread’

I’ve been reading about a psychoanalytical term described as ‘nameless dread’ and the psychoanalyst who coined the term, Wilfred Bion (a pupil of Klein). The phrase alone is powerful and contains a certain amount of mysterious terror and the concept behind it, I think, is relevant to our work.

Bion’s theory relates to the anxieties of a baby and the mother’s way of dealing with them. He suggests that these anxieties at the most primitive level are associated with death, the infant’s ‘feeling, say, that it is dying’.

“A baby whose distress cannot be contained (by the mother) might experience what Bion calls ‘nameless dread’, a feeling that its anxieties are not only intolerable, but cannot be made sense of. Its anxieties fragment within the psyche, and are then felt to attack it...”

Basically the ‘nameless dread’ as I understand it is the un-understandable fear and anxieties that babies often experience faced with the unknown and without a mother to ‘contain’ and reassure them. In Bion’s case he related this infant experience / state to soldiers in the trenches.


***

Bion was a psychoanalyst during the 1st world war and a lot of his and other psychoanalysts of that time seem to have been informed in their theories by the primitive and raw effects of war on men and their psyche.

Apparently the most feared wound during the war in the trenches was evisceration which is a wound to the stomach or more accurately the effect of your guts being ripped from your belly by a metal gun shell. One account is of this soldier who had developed ‘war neurosis’ after an attack in the trenches...

“The victim had been flung by the force of a shell-blast into the distended stomach of a dead German, and his mouth was filled with the entrails.”

Can you imagine that... It’s horrific and I think the difference between the fear and anxiety that an infant experiences and that of the 1st world war trench soldier is that the baby’s ‘nameless dread’ is usually not real or not as big as it seems where as the soldier’s fear was very real. The baby’s fears can be ‘contained’ but the soldier’s fears can not be protected from being un’contained’ because there is a very real chance that their stomach could be ripped open and their guts may hang inside out.

This relates to another account of a soldier, who after his trench was shelled (bombed) was later found ‘...wandering into the open, taking off his clothes, and explaining that he was going to bed.’

The conclusion from this was made that the mental capacity for containing his anxiety had been destroyed along with the dug-out (trench). I also read in the same essay that babies do not like clothes coming between them and their mother, there is something that they find reassuring in skin contact and I guess you could read that into this situation, where the soldier has regressed to a childlike state, craving the comfort of mother.

So... I think this all relates to our modest (but significant) philosophical and psychological thoughts through our inquiries into the unknown, nothingness, the potential of an empty or un-understandable existence and our behaviour within this context.

I think the wolfgan link is interesting -the idea that everything which is complex may derive from something which is very simple is fascinating. I think it is relevant to our work and we may want to exploit in our workk, especially in the theme of transformations or metmorphoses.

I think our interest in black holes and cosmos in general is is not so much in the physical aspect but how it relates to the psychological/ philosophical .

Watching these programs on the bbc we realise even more than before that we are tiny minute specs, like little pieces of dust, probably entirely here by chance. We are drawn to the fact that perhaps we are completely unimportant and probably even superflous. We question our existence and also the existence of God. Personally it draws me away from the belief that there is one, this is quite scarry, because it takes away the idea away that I was created with some sort of mission, that I am especially here to fullfil some sort of task.

I just finished a book called nause. It is just like you say joc, everything that one reads seems to relate to the lines of thought going through the head. Anyway, It is about the feeling of a guy who suddenly has this realisation that we are hiding from the truth of what it really means to be in this world.

He says people give themselves false reasons and lead petite bourgouise lives because the feeling of why we exist is frightening. The emptynes, the vastness, the feeling that we are just here by chance only here existing and nothing more is frightening.

He started to analyse how life is build up in moments and whether one moment ever exists in itself. It is very much a study into time, space and what makes us who we are.

And yet the vast emptyness and nothingness also creates a space in which we are free. It is a different freedom than we usually think about because it can be quite unpleasant.

It is linked to the idea that nothing is predestined, in other words no god. To him life comes without any meaning and yet it is up to us to create one. It is why we always have to question and requestion everything and not just go along with what happens or simply operate as part of a larger system.

I have no idea if i understoof much of that book and it doesn’t really matter. But i thnk interesting is how studies of physics and science and psychological aspects are more and more being linked up to say similar things. Obviuously these are no revolutionary ideas but I but I have been thinking baout it quite a lot lately. And somehow I feel we are feeling the same things, perhaps in different ways though.

Having said all this I also think that perhaps we are searching too far in reference to testbed. We want to express everything in one piece of work and may get a bit lost on the way. We have to be careful not to think too much and try and think in concrete ideas.

Everything to Nothing.

Guys, I think everyone should have a honeymoon, it's great for thinking! Reading the blog it looks like my thoughts share something in common with the route that Josch has investigated.

Thinking of the universe, I see as a starting point or a metaphor. Faced with the possibility of nothingness or for some no god, I’ve kept returning to how that thought makes me feel and how others may feel and what the reaction to this potential reality may be? And the implications of the self.

I think the shift in focus from the collective to the individual is a natural one for us following on from our work with the group and its threat to the individual's identity. These thoughts have had me twisting though.


Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (and Charlotte Cotton’s Words Without Pics) really tickled some thoughts...

“It can be incredibly effective when three people work at it like that” Norwegian Wood

This seemed really uncanny; 3 people in a deeply socio-physcological-philosophical situation, who together could face the world and understand themselves better together.

In the face of fear and ‘nothingness’ we each create a comfort or look for a state of reassurance that will protect us, strengthen us against potential ‘nothingness’. There is always ‘I and him’, ‘I and her’, ‘I and us’, ‘I and God’, ‘I and science’. Even ‘I and nothing’ is something, it has some kind of substance, if only blackness or the letters of the word that it forms. This ‘something’, whatever it is that we surround ourselves with, elements of society for instance, shapes the I or self. The ‘self’ seems like light; without it we would have no trees, no flowers or rocks as we know them, the ‘something’ throws light onto the self and forms our view of it. I guess it’s our mirror.

It seems to me that us, JocJonJosch is not too different to this; with the thought that we have nothing and that we may continue to have and be nothing we have decided that we are stronger and more assured together. Therefore we have something.


From “everything to nothing” Norwegian Wood

This statement immediately reminded me of the description one of those scientists (in the Discovery series I edited) gave for the birth of the universe, “from nothing to everything’. And it seemed curious to look at it in reverse.

It’s interesting that this ‘everything’ or ‘something’ can be so fragile. So even after constructing our ‘something’ / comfort we are still very fragile and can be pushed into ‘nothingness’. What I mean is that if you are open to believing the possibility of nothingness or that there is no god, then anything is possible at any time which has the potential of hugely powerful implications both good and bad.

This fragility that follows us unnoticed like our own shadow until it claims us unannounced, stalks us all. It occurred to me that JocJonJosch must have it’s own ‘shadow’ too. So what if we were to introduce this ‘shadow’, a potential element of fragility into our own work and directly into our group? What if we were to invite another person or artist to interfere and challenge us and our work (whether it’s with sound, physically, whatever...). How would our work, us as three individuals and us as a group respond?

Of course fragility is not normally purposefully introduced into life so there would have to be some acceptance of that pretext but anything beyond that invitation is unscheduled as much as possible.

Wrap

hi,

I did meet one of the representative of Wrap 3 yesterday on one of the 100% design events.

have a look here : www.wrap3.co.uk

the latest cubes are projected from the inside so you don't cast a shadow when you stand in front of it. They also can do all kind of shapes...what would be pretty cool!

Wolfram

where science meets the eyes. very nice....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60P7717-XOQ



otherlinks:
http://www.wolfram.com/
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=black+hole

I have tried to think more about our work and the idea in the relation to the these of loosing ones identity and becoming part of something else in a group or collaboration and the process of this metamorphoses. It seems a topic that we have followed and I think it is an interesting one to continue.

As a starting point I thought about what actually makes us individual, or even more precisely: what is it that makes us what we are, what does it mean "to be" in the world. I think it is from this point that we can also analyze what it means to become part of something larger (in the case of our work so far, this is our collaboration)

there are for things I watched which seem interesting and related to this topic (I'm sure there are thousands more of course) , I will copy paste the links:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/heidegger-thinking-the-unthinkable/
This is a documentary about the philosopher Heidegger who revolutionized about how we think about ourselves.

Being is about a process of becoming, there is no such thing as a fixed human essence.
we are constantly projecting ourselves into the future, hence this idea of becoming.
The idea that 'one' is not actually 'one' was revolutionary (1920's).
All this stuff is fucking hard to understand and I'm struggling, watch and documentary).

The following Ted talk is also really interesting and in my naive opinion is that it is linked to heidegger, this time the focus is why are the way that we are and perceive the world in the way that we do:

http://blog.ted.com/2007/04/20/richard_dawkins_2/

Dawkins suggests that we are more like a permanent wave. "If you think back at an event in your childhood, you cannot say you were actually there. Not a single atom in your body which was there is here now. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are therefore, you are not made of the stuff of which you are made" - sort of mind bending.

http://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics.html
Here is a ted talk which is also interesting because it talks about how we are approaching a new era of evolution. Individuals are less important than the mass which are working together in collaboration to achieve certain goals though the use of new technologies (such as file sharing, sharing information etc.)
In some sense the indivifduality is less important, the emphasis on this speech is about retain the FREEDOM to do this, as we are constantly sabotaged by the industry against this natural way (check ted talk.)

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/sartre-the-road-to-freedom/
I thought this documentary about jean paul sartre was really interesting too. "man adrift in a godless universe, hostage to his own freedom".

have fun...

i know you guys thought it funny but I still think it is interesting that the camera, by it's method of catching light is a way capturing memory and the reklationship to the black hole which literally draws in light. If light or its expansion is what makes time, then black holes draw in memories. Would be interesting if we managed to send memories into the black holes, what would happen to them?

I like the reference to balka and to roger hiorns, the feeling of experiencing something when you enter a space.

I think james turell is also relevant and his work is also about unity and space.

the roden cxrater project is interesting and here also link to his wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roden_Crater

" Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach." Sol Lewitt

Conceptual unification of black holes and the primordial states of the universe

The unification of black holes and elementary particles is at the center of theoretical physics today and astroparticle physics. It has long been searched, but never successfully accomplished. For the first time, this unification is proposed in a conceptual way, by a researcher in Paris Observatory, and includes the primordial states of the universe: the states describing inflation (whose existence is supported by the recent cosmic microwave background observations) and the states describing an earlier (more microscopic or more quantum) phase for which is predicted a discrete spectrum and a new phase transition.

the black whole, a place in which matter disappears, in one sense it unifies everything because everything which was separate comes together in one place; but instead of growing it disappears into an uncertain space, into something we call nothing.

so it in a sense you are right, it is a unity but we don't know what grows out of it, it unifies in order to strip it down into a black space

Antony Gormley

"Gormley said the work addressed a simple question: where does the human project fit inside the bigger question of the planet's future?" Guardian

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited ;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


Another in a similar tone to The Impercipient. Here there's also a slight at the recently past Romantics and their pretty ideologies.

The Impercipient

THAT from this bright believing band
An outcast I should be,
That faiths by which my comrades stand
Seem fantasies to me,
And mirage-mists their Shining Land,	5
Is a drear destiny.
Why thus my soul should be consigned
To infelicity,
Why always I must feel as blind
To sights my brethren see,	10
Why joys they’ve found I cannot find,
Abides a mystery.
Since heart of mine knows not that ease
Which they know; since it be
That He who breathes All’s Well to these	15
Breathes no All’s Well to me,
My lack might move their sympathies
And Christian charity!
I am like a gazer who should mark
An inland company	20
Standing upfingered, with, “Hark! hark!
The glorious distant sea!”
And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon dark
And wind-swept pine to me!”
Yet I would bear my shortcomings	25
With meet tranquillity,
But for the charge that blessed things
I’d liefer have unbe.
O, doth a bird deprived of wings
Go earth-bound wilfully! . . . .	30
Enough. As yet disquiet clings
About us. Rest shall we.

Thomas Hardy's poems of dissilusionment and strain to believe and feel religion / spitiuality have some resonance, I think, with the subject of our existence.

It's funny that the title of the poem is The Impercipient, meaning imperceptive suggesting that he is the one who is not perceptive to the notions and presence of spirituality or religion, that he is missing something in the world. He seems to perceive the holes in religious rational as his failing.

It's as if he is pondering the possibility of following along with these believers in spite of his missgivings, he at least questions whether that's possible.

He sounds very modern for his time to me, in touch with the possibilities of our universe and existence but unaware of what that means and ambivalent.

Anyway I get the feeling of his lost-ness, the scenario of someone aware of a massive unknown, it's almost as if his sense of confusion and lost-ness is doubled by not only being lost by his own missgivings but also by feeling to be an "outcast" amongst his comrades.

Star Dust.

We are all made from the stars...

Star Size.

The massive size of stars and the relative tininess of our home, Earth.

The Density of a Black Hole

The density of a black hole.

One-on-one theatre: behind the curtain

If the video's not working embedded, click through to this One-on-on theatre link...

Toni Parpan

Roger Hiorns

Richard Wilson

Miroslaw Balka