a few lines on the library lawn i will remember this
you will not
you will grow older
and i will die
i know you now
and for this
moment and you
will never realise.
How your mother tied
your shoe
lace
and wiped
your face from
when you fell
into her lap.
Picked up
your tiny pink
pack and
carried
you away.  ¶ 3:05 pm 0 Comments

  toiletpaper BOLLOCKS TO THAT

i found your bag
and i want to give it
back.
linguistics blah blah!
blah blah linguistics!
that's he breaking
out of meaning, the
breaking through the
concept of and
communicating to
another. No no, its
not the tree falling,
it's me communicating
to you, a fellow
dasein; blah blah
hypothetical, blah
blah presentation of
linguistics; just at
a singular level
a concept, devoid
of time and context, in a
context of time and
space. But you
cant. That Bollocks.
yes. yes. you can. Thats
bullshit. That's denying
that there's anything
outside of us,


he took my photo
and mistook me
for someone else
could've
been a Rembrant
i saw a pitcher
and a witch so,
could've been a
TIME magazine
but the colours
run.
the picture faded
another background
track in the bar
i want to be a
craftsman i want
to be a craftsman


found some clever
writing on the
wall put it in
my bag
they took
it away
won't give
it back
couldn't find the
street.
some u-turn
don that
one-way
so they took
it away that
bag
full of ideas
the people and
my peers
they seem not
to care that they
emptied it onto
the street
turned hose things
into litter
and now that
these fill the
streets the apathy
the apathy
they took my
bag
empty and bitter
numbers
from 0 to 9
but now there
is only the two
of us
and they
took my bag
away
used to carry it
around
under my arm
and in my hand
i used to carry it around
everyone could
see those things
that filled and
spilled
from my
bag but
they took it
away and emptied
it on the st.
where queens
form in their
sleep and the
rain tears at the
pavement
- streets.


those fucking bastards
put their country
into another scheme
of economic
rationalism.
i some times forget
those motives of
monetary movement
from the hands
of the many to
the hands of the
few.
those precious
representations of
human worth.
Here is the death
of your God. Fight
in his name and
seek your wealth
in this world.
The revolt, the victory,
the slave.


you got me burnt
in every corner
pony tail in a
knot. i shy away
farther - darker,
corner - see me
knot. not.

THAT STUPID FUCK

THOSE FUCKIN' CRONIES

RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIONS

LOST ON WORDS

ON YOUR ARSE

I DON'T AGREE



nearly burnt my
wings
'cause i flew
too high
shouldn't dive
shouldn't dive
shouldn't dive


those hopes and
dreams that
went begging
at the supermarket
somewhere between
aisle twelve and
sixteen.
the system never
educated but left
him without control
and only a choice.
So anything that followed
came down to the
day lightning
rain cloudy day.
Grab that sun and
find a bottle to take
it home.
Wrap it up in your
finest threads of
silk and polyester.
Those warm places
and empty spaces
comfy spaces
of choice.
Where you find
yourself retuned
through all your
changes.
Something universal
all inherently internal.
All struggle under
the same great sun
whether of the lowly
the father or of
the regina's son.
Covered in the same
dull earth, dulled
dulled by turps or sold on
worth. The maker
finds not what
is made the satisfaction
of the deed.  ¶ 7:14 pm 0 Comments

  The Proposal As I betrayed, his body’s snatched away
And taken by a demon, who controls it
Until the time arrives for it to die.
The soul then falls headlong into this tank.
Perhaps his body still appears above,
The shade who chirps his winter song behind me,
Dante’s Inferno

I believe that the artist doesn’t know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.
Marcel Duchamp

To examine and analyse the photographic image as a text. To understand the photographic image as a text that may transcend its time period through understanding (relating to its readers) universal concepts of society.

Explore the relationship between images and the ‘unspoken’ (or silent) word that Derrida concludes is the breaking out of the Heideggerian model of linguistics (dialogue). To relate this sliding to Hegel’s Dialectic in reference to its political implications.

To highlight the contextual importance of understanding. The place that photographic images inhibit within social understanding; contributing to society’s construction of truth. The political consequences associated with ‘spinning’ photographic context. The importance of perspective, the availability and skewing of diverse lines of view.

In practice I aim to produce a set of images that represent, examine and interrogate the three modern stages of political linguistic control that have passed in the previous century. The decision to practise in three parts was influenced by William Shakespeare; “in the telling of a story a triumvirate inherently causes conflict and resolution”, and Marcel Duchamp; “one is unity, two is double, duality, and three is the rest”. The work rests largely on the examination of the photographic image as a means of textual communication. The concept is not everything, but it is first and foremost.

With much inspiration being owed to Marcel Duchamp and Yasumasa Morimura the art practice will hark back to a few of their major works. In particular Duchamp’s “To Be Looked At (From The Other Side Of The Glass) With One Eye, Close To, For Almost An Hour” (aka Small Glass) and “La Mariee Mise A Nu Par Ses Celibataires” (aka Large Glass); and Morimura’s “Mona Lisa Series”.

I intend to use glass as a medium largely for two reasons. Firstly as a preservative of colour. Due to the nature of paint the colour fades during the oxidisation process. However sealing the paint in a glass chamber will not only slow the oxidation process but will eventually halt the chemical reaction from taking place. Secondly the use of glass allows the work to be seen from a variety of angels, each potentially giving a different viewing of the work. Duchamp’s work has not only inspired this practice in physical terms, but has also incited concept in relation to perspectives, viewpoints, and multiple truths.

The double play, double entente, irony, and shadow play in Morimura’s series has profoundly shaped art practice in my proposed work. The reworking, and appropriation of appropriated works and original works has lead my practice and conceptual art-making into new areas. Morimura’s work has taught me about the visual dialogue that may take place in an artwork and how that dialogue is performed as an act upon the audience. This has inspired me to work and experiment with appropriative styles and examine the relationships between Morimura’s philosophy of discourse with Derrida and Heidegger.

With the use of text and its forms of irony, satire, parody, pathos, obscurity (and the list goes on) the work will on one level involve written text directly.

The image will be a signifier for the concept. In the same sense that the speaker appropriates a word for a concept the work will be an appropriation of a concept. The use of visual juxtaposition, and textual provocation will be representative of the political and journalistic styles and conventions in current use. The justification for such art practice is to seek an interaction between an artistic truth and a journalistic truth.

An outline of the historical events in relationship to contemporary deconstructionalist and linguistic philosophy is in order to explain, elaborate and detail the conceptual work. The resulting difference of the historical events is what the work will appropriate and fundamentally seek to represent in both, simultaneously, an artistic and journalistic truth.

Since the Vietnam War contemporary media has been advertantly aware of the power of images, moving and still photographic images. The journalistic story that was so powerfully supported by the complimentary images flowing from war torn Indo-china influenced the society that was the target for such images. Two opposing truths were aimed at the populus (namely the American populus); an official government position supported by data, and the media news story that was supported by photographic truths. In retrospect, the reactions of the populus would lead one to believe that, while the official truth was soundly justified by social standards, the seeing for oneself, and the immediacy of photographic images over figures, changed the social truth. An overwhelming support of the war based on facts of communist aggression and ‘domino theory’ was overridden by photographic facts and the horrific realism presented by media images.

The Heideggarian sense that truth is bound to social dialogue is highlighted by the contrasting of the propaganda wars that were being played out in American society during the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and again in recent times while under the threat of terrorism. Under a slow but sure learning strategy adopted by the White House, information being fed to the population is undergoing a linguistic revolution. Working in three stages the American Governments have been able to control the flow of information, its validity and its longevity by the manipulation of the systems of language that on a social level formulate meanings of truth.

Via the replacement and reinvention of signifiers the official truth adequately removed the relevant concept from its context while leaving the element of truth virtually intact. Ferdinand De Saussure examined language in terms of the signifier and the signified. The signifier being the term that would signify the object, which would be the signified, and the meaning sprung out from the relationship between the signifier and signified to the concept. To illustrate the point in context for example: the public relations (media) office of the White House during the Vietnam war recontextualized the term frag to signify the act of killing one’s superior officer. Since the concept had not been created via the social linguistic system the truth-value of the term was lost. Thus the White House public release carried less truth-value than plain english news text accompanied by a photographic image.

Inevitably the embedded journalist posed a method by which the official truth could be reported by independent in-field journalists accompanied with photographic evidence. In this sense a true linguistic revelation took place. No longer were the conflicts of linguistic truth a major public concern; the confusion within the means of communication was replaced by a conflict of messages. In simultaneous instances the same image could appear in different sources with a different spin on each article. The public was pushed into the world of graphic context, image analysis and the differánce in language. A social consciousness of skepticism developed in a period of image doubt. The necessity of interpretation involved with a ‘news image’ forced the public to examine the context of the photographic image, not accepting a truth-value at face value. The digital revolution threw into question the entire relevance of the photographic image as a truth-bringer.

What will be examined conceptually, before the physical creation takes place, is the linguistic power relations between text and image, and image as text.

Language is not natural for man, but the act of creating a language is, and by its nature the systems of language have an inherent internal dialogue. In these systems of language the formation of concepts have also produced the counter-points for concepts so that within the dialogue of language there is also a dichotomy. This dichotomy allows the distinction of the other, things alien, to be recognised, and this being recognised is assigned a truth-value by the use of differánce.

Thus it follows if differánce does work in the social constructs of the systems of language than the emancipation of the public from the embedded truth (embedded journalist) is inevitable. Examining the photographic image in a textual analysis the result is the same. Current marketing trends suggest that the public is growing fervently to tend away from assigning truth at face value and that a certain deconstruction takes place. In this sense it can be understood that the audience will attempt to understand an image by examining its context and the reliability of its sources.

The current political climate in the face of terrorism allows for the power relationship structures to be feigned in such a way that the public is no longer a body, in its units [family, community, association, state], but rather a collective of individuals with each as equally alien to each other. In this way the institution places itself at the epitome for social truth because it is the only remaining power structure that is not foreign to the individual. On a linguistic level the institution places all positive language in reference to itself while disregarding any negative language and re-inventing the foreign as in opposition with the institution – in opposition to the only remaining factor that is non-foreign. In this sense the coining of terms such as un-American are invented and used to describe the alien, and therefore an inherent threat is implied. In the same way on a textual level a similar process is being manufactured to photographic images. The truth of the image is within relation to the institution, and any alien image must by default be untrue (perhaps untruth = un-American).

However Gadamer suggests that it is the nature of language to ultimately incorporate the other into itself in the same Heideggerian model that a thesis must be opposed by an anti-thesis and eventually via cognitive thought and dialogue a synthesis is reached. This is apparently brought about by the inherent resolving nature of language and the ‘horizon of understanding’. Because people are social creatures they must interact and to do so communication via language is necessary; a synthesis therefore must be reached in order for understanding to take place, because understanding (or learning) is reached over common ground where concessions are made and the foreign is re-interpreted.

It is then my conceptual mission to understand what it is to reach a graphic synthesis of the ‘horizon of understanding’. The graphic representation therefore must inherently be a horizon to be understood by the audience. The audience must at least understand what they are doing.




References

Benveniste, Emile – The Nature of Pronouns

Burroughs, William S. – Interzone

Chomsky, Noam – Manufacturing Consent.

Derrida, Jacques – Margins of Philosophy

Derrida, Jacques – From Restricted to General Economy

Derrida, Jacques – Semiology and Grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva

Foucault, Michel – The Discourse On Language

Gonzalo, Pilar – The Body As Sign

Hegel, G. W. F – Phenomenology Of Spirit

Heidegger, Martin – Being-there as Understanding

Klein, Noami – No Logo

Morimura, Yasumasa – Historia Del Arte

Ricketson, Mathew – Writing Feature Stories

Saussure, Ferdinand De – Course In General Linguistics  ¶ 2:54 pm 0 Comments

  i propose... As you may or not be aware i am currently experiencing difficulties with the powers that be employed at the university i am currently attending. I am following reassessment procedures so on and so forth, not without personal and beuaracratic difficulties. nevertheless i am continuing with the course and yet again i am requested to write a proposal for the work i intend to accomplish in this new semester. propose my aims, outcomes, expected successes and failures, timeline for such aims to be reached and a strategy for how i may self assess my work.

(how long did it take for the course conveners to come up with that course structure i will never know.)

being the consientious student i am, i have been reading the three previous proposals i have submitted in reference to the same work. Yes i have had to propose the same work three times already. needless to say the first one recieved high marks and with minor adjustments (spelling grammar format etc) the following two recieved even higher marks. i wonder what ever shall i do for the fourth?

on looking over my previous proposals i found my aims and objectives. those things that would at the end of the session prove my failure or sucess. i found a statement clearly outlining that my work in the previous session would consist largely of research and minimal photographic production. the lecturers seemed to be satisfied with these outcomes and marked my proposal accordingly. yet a fail grade i recieve, on the basis that insuficient evidence of photographic experimentation was provided.  ¶ 2:42 pm 0 Comments

  trilogy a cookbook.
a calender.
a delectable and timely story.

dollar amount in which to spend
on food items.
fruit and veg
basic condiments and cooking
necessities.

as though it were an amount from a greater budget.

food helps you in the way you feel.
tired or angry.
excited and sexy.

but a meal, like intercourse,
extends beyond its consumption.

BrEakFasT
LuncH
and
DinNeR

formatting is crucial. one must always start with an appetiser.
moving right along to entree.
the main course - broken
into salad
or soup
then pasta
or stir-fry

dessert as an essential.

one must not leave out the
left-overs.

over one month
two pay cheques
three stores
four weeks
twenty-eight days
eighty-four meals


lots of numbers
lists


photos would be nice  ¶ 1:45 pm 0 Comments