This blog was set up as a record for Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones, an international two-day Symposium and Live Art Event held on the 14 and 15 December 2009 at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. It was planned and organised by PhD students for PhD students and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Signing out...for the now.
Right now. It's 6pm, and I think I deserve a break, frankly. I'm going to participate in the World Cafe Evaluation and Prize Drawer. Can I have some final thoughts from you all please? We've had a great deal of fun over the last few days. Please go and enjoy some more...I certainly shall!
Over and ... for a while... out!
Over and ... for a while... out!
And So We Close...
At the end of a rich conference on entangled (im)material objects, Sue Pearce does us the honor of giving the closing address.
Neuroscience, and the sciences more generally, is going to have a huge impact upon the arts in the future. Mind, that intangible thing, is a product of the brain, that 'material thing at the top of our head'. What we usually call intellect or emotion has a physical basis. Thus culture, in all its forms, is material. This has been long understood...is the thought behind it material too?
There is no distinction, Sue Pearce argues, between the immaterial and the material. This has huge social and physical implications. We are animals as physical as they. We might consider ourselves more complex - but don't forget the dolphins!
Every human has about a hundred thousand neurons in their brain, each of which can have a hundred thousand connections. These shift and change, due to the impact of the external world through our senses (each of which senses are complex in their own right), through the collation of experience. These determine our almost infinate levels of experiences.
But this is not a computer. The brain is much messier and more complex than that. Because we are all individuals made up of experiences and memories, our neurological linkages and histories are as particular as we are. It is why one and the same person is capable of good and bad, why we irrationally respond to particular things.
One of our most important ways in which we apprehend the world is through sight. Our eyes, it seems, are capable of generating seven basic patterns. These patterns are grids, spirals, zig zags...the patterns that, across time and space, all cultures recognise. It is why we are capable of understanding, to an extent, each other's art. We may have different linkages in our brains, but they work in the same way - with a little help, the worlds of others can become open to us.
If we are all material, are our morals? Science is beginning to pin down where and when 'morals' began to arise. As cultures evolve (the cultures of ALL animals), co-operation for increased security shows that the material world is part and parcel of the way in which we construct our moral universe. We would stop a child reaching for a saucepan - an act which has both practical and moral aspects. But this is not bleak and deterministic materiality. We retain choices.
Beauty. There are some things which are beautiful across cultures - a nicely plaited cord, for example. It is beautiful and therefore good. It is regular, well made, satisfying.
Much work has been done on touch. As a social mechanism, it is different across societies. As you touch things, a particular area of the brain is engaged which reacts to nothing else.
But where does this leave museums in which we are seldom allowed to touch? The above being the case, there are in those institutions certain modes of information which we can never have access to. So a curator would never give an opinion on a thing without handling it.
There is related to this, a new growth of the idea that the material world can be an active agent too - or even a victim of our materiality. Some physicists are beginning to wonder if there are particles of apprehension or sensation. Is is just possible that we might find ourselves back with a material world in the place wherein we once placed the immaterial, spiritual realm?
It makes me think of stories. As in Mythago Wood, we build individual stories based on archetypes, of mythagos and images which are based in some deep part of our evolutionary past. Did myths, perhaps, always understand this on some level?
Arts and Sciences must begin to co-operate. The artist must prove the validity of their evidence to the scientist, and the scientist must show the artist how their world works. We are not either scientific or artistic creatures...we are just us. Just human. And there is something special about that.
Neuroscience, and the sciences more generally, is going to have a huge impact upon the arts in the future. Mind, that intangible thing, is a product of the brain, that 'material thing at the top of our head'. What we usually call intellect or emotion has a physical basis. Thus culture, in all its forms, is material. This has been long understood...is the thought behind it material too?
There is no distinction, Sue Pearce argues, between the immaterial and the material. This has huge social and physical implications. We are animals as physical as they. We might consider ourselves more complex - but don't forget the dolphins!
Every human has about a hundred thousand neurons in their brain, each of which can have a hundred thousand connections. These shift and change, due to the impact of the external world through our senses (each of which senses are complex in their own right), through the collation of experience. These determine our almost infinate levels of experiences.
But this is not a computer. The brain is much messier and more complex than that. Because we are all individuals made up of experiences and memories, our neurological linkages and histories are as particular as we are. It is why one and the same person is capable of good and bad, why we irrationally respond to particular things.
One of our most important ways in which we apprehend the world is through sight. Our eyes, it seems, are capable of generating seven basic patterns. These patterns are grids, spirals, zig zags...the patterns that, across time and space, all cultures recognise. It is why we are capable of understanding, to an extent, each other's art. We may have different linkages in our brains, but they work in the same way - with a little help, the worlds of others can become open to us.
If we are all material, are our morals? Science is beginning to pin down where and when 'morals' began to arise. As cultures evolve (the cultures of ALL animals), co-operation for increased security shows that the material world is part and parcel of the way in which we construct our moral universe. We would stop a child reaching for a saucepan - an act which has both practical and moral aspects. But this is not bleak and deterministic materiality. We retain choices.
Beauty. There are some things which are beautiful across cultures - a nicely plaited cord, for example. It is beautiful and therefore good. It is regular, well made, satisfying.
Much work has been done on touch. As a social mechanism, it is different across societies. As you touch things, a particular area of the brain is engaged which reacts to nothing else.
But where does this leave museums in which we are seldom allowed to touch? The above being the case, there are in those institutions certain modes of information which we can never have access to. So a curator would never give an opinion on a thing without handling it.
There is related to this, a new growth of the idea that the material world can be an active agent too - or even a victim of our materiality. Some physicists are beginning to wonder if there are particles of apprehension or sensation. Is is just possible that we might find ourselves back with a material world in the place wherein we once placed the immaterial, spiritual realm?
It makes me think of stories. As in Mythago Wood, we build individual stories based on archetypes, of mythagos and images which are based in some deep part of our evolutionary past. Did myths, perhaps, always understand this on some level?
Arts and Sciences must begin to co-operate. The artist must prove the validity of their evidence to the scientist, and the scientist must show the artist how their world works. We are not either scientific or artistic creatures...we are just us. Just human. And there is something special about that.
Losing and Finding
The Mary Greg Collection at Manchester Art Gallery is mostly in storage. Since Collections for the Future was produced, a team has been looking into what should be done with such items. The Mary Grey Collection is just such a being - it is historically important, but as a social history collection it doesn't really fit in with the gallery.
So a different kind of interpretation was instigated. This resulted in 'Mary Mary Quite Contrary'...
Mary collected 'curiosities of bygone times'. Many of them have lost histories. The gallery also holds the correspondence that Mary had with the gallery over the period of her life. The array of material is astonishing. How best to engage with this?
The production of the blog Mary Mary Quite Contrary was part of a handover of curatorial control of the collection to the public. This really has begun with the contributions and interpretations of artists Hazel Jones and Sharon Blakey.
These seemingly insignificant objects, keys, spoons, tarnished and worn, the detritus of the everyday, are thus reformed as meaningful...almost magical. They build up a picture of the woman, the real person behind the collection, but also a picture of the museum and it's identity. Who and what we are are thus formed and reformed. The table of artefacts which Liz Mitchell, Alex Woodall along with Hazel and Sharon presented generated so much interest...I think a lot of people may soon be making visits to Manchester!
So a different kind of interpretation was instigated. This resulted in 'Mary Mary Quite Contrary'...
Mary collected 'curiosities of bygone times'. Many of them have lost histories. The gallery also holds the correspondence that Mary had with the gallery over the period of her life. The array of material is astonishing. How best to engage with this?
The production of the blog Mary Mary Quite Contrary was part of a handover of curatorial control of the collection to the public. This really has begun with the contributions and interpretations of artists Hazel Jones and Sharon Blakey.
These seemingly insignificant objects, keys, spoons, tarnished and worn, the detritus of the everyday, are thus reformed as meaningful...almost magical. They build up a picture of the woman, the real person behind the collection, but also a picture of the museum and it's identity. Who and what we are are thus formed and reformed. The table of artefacts which Liz Mitchell, Alex Woodall along with Hazel and Sharon presented generated so much interest...I think a lot of people may soon be making visits to Manchester!
The Diva Returns...and gives us lightsticks!
The room is lighter this time, but the circle of chairs remains. For what do we wait this time? People respond to lighting so differently now: they are chatting, this time, eating cake and collecting coffee and tea. There is darkness outside, but the room is cheerful. There is laughter and buzz.
Carol Leeming returned to talk about her work, 'The Lonliness of the Long Distance Diva' which, as described yesterday, uses digital visuals, still and animated, poetry and spoken word, a blog, and there will be music as the work evolves. Drawing on the ancient cultures of India, China and Africa, the work is part of Leicester's and the East Midlands' Cultural Olympiad. It is hoped that, in the future, there will be more community involvement as part of a bid to participate in the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
The work also draws on the history of Ancient Greece and is deeply influenced by the martial arts of all these cultures. Sports, in many cases, were children of wargames and martial practice. Stories of cultures and how these have been handed down and passed through diffusion are also a great point of interest for Carol. Each 'language' contains intangible elements, the successful practice of both often based in a philosophy of reconnection with the intangible self. The Diva of the work, then, is a mythological figure, an embodiment of orality through movement and sound.
Cultures have links across time and geography. Often imagery and stories are repeated and reinterpreted in different locations in different ages and it is through such representation and symbolism that humanity's intangible feelings and experiences are frequently expressed. Through literary and physical metaphor we come at once to understand our world and at the same time to build it anew.
Once again, this access to the artistic process of creation is fascinating, especially given our physical experience of the work in practice yesterday. It brings into more critical relief the experience of yesterday afternoon, without negating our ability to have experienced that. Technology is a huge player in this access, as a new mediator of the flow of energy and information.
And today our own role as mediators is highlighted. We move with lightsticks, we are in and of the music. From our own controlled motion to a directed shaking of the sticks we create intangible forms of light which are part of us, and yet unreal. We share in languages of music and movement, though we may speak them differently. Through these material languages, we produce and pass on the intangible.
Carol Leeming returned to talk about her work, 'The Lonliness of the Long Distance Diva' which, as described yesterday, uses digital visuals, still and animated, poetry and spoken word, a blog, and there will be music as the work evolves. Drawing on the ancient cultures of India, China and Africa, the work is part of Leicester's and the East Midlands' Cultural Olympiad. It is hoped that, in the future, there will be more community involvement as part of a bid to participate in the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
The work also draws on the history of Ancient Greece and is deeply influenced by the martial arts of all these cultures. Sports, in many cases, were children of wargames and martial practice. Stories of cultures and how these have been handed down and passed through diffusion are also a great point of interest for Carol. Each 'language' contains intangible elements, the successful practice of both often based in a philosophy of reconnection with the intangible self. The Diva of the work, then, is a mythological figure, an embodiment of orality through movement and sound.
Cultures have links across time and geography. Often imagery and stories are repeated and reinterpreted in different locations in different ages and it is through such representation and symbolism that humanity's intangible feelings and experiences are frequently expressed. Through literary and physical metaphor we come at once to understand our world and at the same time to build it anew.
Once again, this access to the artistic process of creation is fascinating, especially given our physical experience of the work in practice yesterday. It brings into more critical relief the experience of yesterday afternoon, without negating our ability to have experienced that. Technology is a huge player in this access, as a new mediator of the flow of energy and information.
And today our own role as mediators is highlighted. We move with lightsticks, we are in and of the music. From our own controlled motion to a directed shaking of the sticks we create intangible forms of light which are part of us, and yet unreal. We share in languages of music and movement, though we may speak them differently. Through these material languages, we produce and pass on the intangible.
Boundaries, Archives, Fragments
The archive of the exhibition is neither complete, nor cohesive - but this is a characteristic of the archive, a device which fragments, selects...and therefore discards...particular traces. The archive is a 'boundary of knowability', rather than the uncontested truth of history. We are, now, beginning to recognise the objects of the archive as such 'traces' and 'fragments'. Rebecca Wade's discussion of the archive of the 1839 Leeds Public Exhibition highlights just these complex facts.
Much of what is saved in archives is the 'officially sanctioned' version. They are records of the power and authority of particular individuals. Where, though, are the other voices? Are there less official resources? Such questions, importantly, do not negate the importance of the offical archive - all material traces are shot through with bias, and it is the recognition of this which validates them as historical records rather than as fiction or propaganda.
This, it is, that the historian must recognise and use. The link between fiction and history, between the storyteller and the historian is deep. Their methodologies and products are often very similar, and even their political and social aims may be seen as such. It is their deployment and reception, however, which is different. Ideologies always impact upon any presentation and there is always a fictive element in any historical construction - documentary and physically reconstructive.
The documentation of transient events can never rebuild the events themselves. Through neither the memories of the perceiver nor officially recorded reports can the in-the-moment-ness of the event ever be recalled. These memories are objects - but they are, as I have said here before, not substitutes for the 'original', but are 'originals' in themselves.
When, where and how does history become fiction, does fiction become myth? When does the document become an object itself? As I was discussing with Kostas over lunch, where does the simulation become an object in its own right and how do we or should we recognise it as such?
Much of what is saved in archives is the 'officially sanctioned' version. They are records of the power and authority of particular individuals. Where, though, are the other voices? Are there less official resources? Such questions, importantly, do not negate the importance of the offical archive - all material traces are shot through with bias, and it is the recognition of this which validates them as historical records rather than as fiction or propaganda.
This, it is, that the historian must recognise and use. The link between fiction and history, between the storyteller and the historian is deep. Their methodologies and products are often very similar, and even their political and social aims may be seen as such. It is their deployment and reception, however, which is different. Ideologies always impact upon any presentation and there is always a fictive element in any historical construction - documentary and physically reconstructive.
The documentation of transient events can never rebuild the events themselves. Through neither the memories of the perceiver nor officially recorded reports can the in-the-moment-ness of the event ever be recalled. These memories are objects - but they are, as I have said here before, not substitutes for the 'original', but are 'originals' in themselves.
When, where and how does history become fiction, does fiction become myth? When does the document become an object itself? As I was discussing with Kostas over lunch, where does the simulation become an object in its own right and how do we or should we recognise it as such?
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