Potential Becoming Actual

Looking back at the work I’ve made and put up for the exhibition, 3 out of the 4 ‘potential’ works that hadn’t yet been made have now been completed and become actualities - the seeds, the deconstructed painting, and the signs of the paradox-of-nothing. Their previous potential has been proven, by turning them into actualities. Only the inferral-of-absence photos remain on the list of potential works. Of course, this is only on my short list and potential remains all around me at all times.

The seeds are coming along well, the test piece worked remarkably well but sadly my brain was not being very creative when it decided to plant the most obvious word of all - ‘Art’ - as a test piece. Still, the potential art has now become an actuality. Since then I’ve planted more words at different rates. Meanings will change as some plants grow alone, others later grow alongside them, and later still plants begin to die. Paradoxes will appear, and disappear.

Some plants are still no closer to even sprouting, so even I don’t know the potential that is, or isn’t, in there.

Potential Encounters

Spent most of today setting up my work for the assessment/exhibition, but today was also the day F and I had agreed to hand over the artwork for ‘recycling’. With the test piece we gave it other purposes, such as a tablecloth:

But with the actual ‘real’, (ie previously exhibited piece) I’d decided to opt out of all decisions regarding its future uses or potentials. In advance of the ‘handover’ I’d decided I would cut it up into a random number of pieces, of random sizes, and the only rule applied would be that I handed one piece over to everybody I spoke to after I cut the work up - mainly to avoid having any personal effect on its future potential. I speak to many people in a day - the postman, bus driver, art students, lecturers, neighbours, doctors, coffee shop assistants - people from all walks of life who would see its ‘potential’ (if any) in a variety of ways.

The painting was cut into 107 pieces. As of 19:04, as I’m writing this, there are 81 pieces remaining, so I have ‘redistributed’ 26 parts of the painting to 26 different people so far. It’s been quite amusing seeing people’s reaction to it - the first few were art students so perhaps it didn’t seem so bizarre to them. Some seemed puzzled and walked away looking slightly embarrassed, some asked what it was for and seemed interested, and a couple really liked the idea and we discussed the ideas of nothing and potential at length.

Sticking strictly to my rule of handing a piece over to everybody I spoke to, I found myself interacting on a different level than I would normally with various people. One was a random woman I bumped into in a toilet who simply said to me ‘excuse me’, so I replied ’sorry’ and duly moved out of the way. Once I’d opened my mouth, however, I figured this was now deemed ’speaking to someone’ as the dialogue had passed both ways - I duly stopped the lady in question and handed her a piece with only a very brief explanation. She didn’t seem too scared but I do wonder where that piece might be now…

Another random encounter was with a waitress in Starbucks. After ordering my cinnamon latte with an extra shot and paying the amount she asked for, I could see this dialogue was coming to an end and I must hand over the piece. This I did rapidly with the queue building up behind me, with a brief explanation that, as part of an art project, I was giving a piece to everybody I spoke to today. She was instantly confused and asked me to repeat it, which I did before walking away. She then stared at it for a few seconds before the woman in the queue behind me asked her what it was and they both looked in my direction.

I’m sure the vast majority of these pieces will end up in the bin, although they might hang around on tabletops, desks and handbags for a few hours or days, maybe even a week or two. Maybe they’ll elicit the odd memory of the bizarre encounter in the mind of the recipient before they dispose of it. But a few of them have already obtained new uses. One is acting as a bookmark, another is in someone’s sketchbook. One has been deemed a piece of art in its own right, another was used for polishing plastic for use in the exhibition, and one is acting as an example on my exhibition wall. As I talk to myself quite frequently I decided this was also a discussion and donated a piece to myself - this I used as a coaster in Starbuck’s:

It’s interesting seeing the potential in terms of its new uses, but also in its potential to strike up discussion and interaction between people who might previously have never said more than ‘excuse me’; ’sorry’; ‘£3.89 please’… Most conversations didn’t go far, but at least left an inkling of confusion in someone’s mind - but a few did evolve into something interesting that might never have happened before.

I love this potential. Just making something that somebody doesn’t understand on first glance (such as the lemon juice pictures) but is interested enough to ask questions about, leading to discussions that would otherwise never have happened.

The Handover

Handing over the first cut piece

Organising my Nothings - towards Potential Art

Preparing for the Assessment and Exhibition, I’m gathering together what I’ve read, thought, made and fiddled around with the last few weeks. I seem to have several categories going on here:

1) Nothing as an Absence of any Physical Thing - I demonstrated this a lot at the beginning, when investigating the existence and meaning of ‘Nothing’. Physically it appears I can look at, point to, measure, make, draw Nothing - but logically it is a paradox. It is a problem of language. Or of expecting to see Something but seeing Something Else.

2) Nothing as an Absence of Art - the Archive board as a mark or memory of art-that-used-to-be-here. Absence of art.

3) Nothing in terms of Art That Hasn’t Been Made Yet. Leads on from 1 and 2 in terms of Absence, but brings something else into the equation - Potential. With Lists or Catalogues of art that I haven’t yet made - the art doesn’t exist but there is now a list with the potential that it could be made… There is something, a start, a beginning, a hint, a possibility - an arrow in the direction of something that might be…

4) Nothing in terms of Potential Art - Latent Art - the lemon juice that hasn’t been ironed yet, ‘latent images’ or artworks on film, DVDs and memory cards; the records of the moment-before-the-shutter-has-been-pressed; html colour coded to the background so you need to highlight it to find it.

5) Nothing in terms of Readymade Potential Art in the ‘External World’ - records of Potential Art that is all around us, as images left in their original location.

1 & 2 are along the same lines - Nothing as Absence of Thing.
3, 4 & 5 are connected in another way - Potential to Be a Thing. Where 1 & 2 were about not seeing Something where you expected to see it, 3, 4 & 5 are about the Potential of Something Becoming under the right circumstances.

What are the right circumstances? What are the circumstances under which there is a potential-to-become? What makes ‘it’ in that in-between place - not Nothing (which by definition doesn’t exist), but not yet Something? The lemon in my fridge and the paper on my desk are not art. But if I squeeze the lemon, draw a picture with it and iron it it could become art. At what point does this Potential begin? Before I’d thought of the idea I couldnt really say the lemon and the paper had any more potential in them than the milk, the bread, the door, the street or anything else. But I can hint at potential by pointing at things as readymades, like in the photo-of-the-photo-of-my-foot.

What gives something the Potential to be Something Else? The arrow, the pointer of a direction of what it might Become…?

A List of Potential Art

A list of art that I haven’t made yet.

It could be things I’ve thought of at length. It could be things I’ve got halfway to organising. It could be things that have only just crossed my mind. Or it could just be things I’d never thought of in my life before.

But this is a short list of pieces of art that I have not yet made.

The Precise Size of Various Nothings

Camouflage - potential art and minimalism

I’ve tried the Camouflage photo idea on a few other objects (see Gallery 1 and Gallery 2) with varying degrees of success. First, what I like about it - I like the effect of the photo of x left within its original “place in the (normal, external, non-art) world”. I still like the simplicity of the first picture better. I like the interaction between the world and people, man and material, - the need for people for art. I like the way it refers to ideas beyond minimalism - in relation to the idea of bringing art down to its foundations, the ultimate concept of foundational art being art-that-hasn’t-been-made-yet; hasn’t even been thought of yet - then it is all around us. Everything is potential art. So photographing it seems to frame it and categorise it as art but still leave it in its original context - rather than taking a readymade out of its original context and putting it into the art context. This points at the original context and leaves it there. The un-noticed is as valid as anything else.

I’ve been directed at Victor Burgin’s Photopath:

which is a very similar idea, but while I like its simplicity and scale I also like the less-obvious quality that having something smaller brings, the fact you have to look infers that it is all around you and is not immediately obvious.

I appreciate the paradox in making it art and not-art, but my point is to bring up the idea, the question for the viewer to consider. (Ideally the photos would be left on the original but for archiving/documentation I’ve used photos of the photos-on-the-original.)

The method - hand holding the camera made the pictures with and without photo too variable, no matter how hard I tried to line perspective up with the original, so I tried with a tripod. This made it too precise though, I need some difference for it to be noticeable at all, although it was interesting to have one or two of these, to hint at it being around you and not only do you not notice it, you have to actively look for it. I’ve experimented with different amounts of editing from the original in tone, contrast etc but it works much better if I keep it as close to the original as possible with just a faint line/shadow showing a slightly different plane and making the viewer question if what they are seeing is the real scenario. Too much editing looks too obvious and doesn’t leave much to question. It also works better with good lighting to give shade below the photo and make it clearer where the border lies.

I’m quite keen on the shots having an interaction between nature and man eg the tractor tracks, the felled tree - as is a manmade product, there is no ‘category’ in the absence of people. These are probably the photos that went less well though so if I took it further it’d need more work.

A few people have asked me if I’d used a mirror and were interested in how the mirror showed an almost exact replica of the underneath. I found this quite interesting – although it wasn’t intended, it does remind me of Robert Smithson’s Mirror Displacement :

– having both a physical aspect and a non-physical/metaphysical or cognitive aspect. I might experiment with mirrors to see where they could take me.

So what don’t I like about it? Ultimately I don’t like it because does it really mean anything, is it at all clear any meaning or activity behind it? In itself, no. It doesn’t communicate anything much about Nothingness, it got sidetracked away from Potential Art or Nothingness towards mimimalism in conceptual art.

But along with other pieces I’ve had a go at regarding Nothingness and its meaning, yes. And that’s really what I’m getting at in what I’m thinking about regarding art – in itself it is not clear, it’s pretty meaningless - it’s the concept, meaning, understanding behind it that’s important. I want to make it clearer to myself what I mean by Nothingness, what I mean by conceptual art. So as a process it has a function but in itself it is meaningless.

Camouflage

The Language of Nothing

Just going back to the beginning today, looking where I came from in thinking of Nothing, I looked at the definition again on the net:

and it struck me what a huge, complex Something ‘Nothing’ is defined as…Nine meanings and nineteen subsections…

Definition 3 struck me the most:

No matter what we do we can’t escape from Nothing. All there is is what is - Something.

In trying to define it, it is automatically a paradox. There is no such thing as Nothing, so ‘it’ cannot be defined. All of the above ‘Nothings’ are not really Nothing at all, they are attempts to define ’something’ which doesn’t exist. Something none of us have ever perceived…I’m tempted to say ‘by definition’ - but that is where the problem lies - in our language - our definition is of ’something’ that doesn’t exist, we apply a label to ‘it’ in our daily lives. But there is no ‘it’. All that there is, is.

Again. Something that is…nonexistent. Something that is…not.

Nothing is not a Something.

Nothing just Is Not.

Some more Potential Art

As well as ideas of latent images - in photography, invisible ink or lemon juice - what else is ‘hidden’? Not Nothing, but not yet really Something? Stored Media as I posted yesterday - film, memory cards, cassette tape, DVD.

Why are things not seen? Camouflage, coding, masking.

Here is some camouflage:

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Does this sentence exist? It’s here but you can’t see it. So how do you know it’s here? By the context of the sentence maybe, you see a gap where you are expecting text, you see paragraphs talking along the lines of camouflage so you might intentionally go looking for it, dragging your mouse over the area to highlight the content.

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But what if you’re not expecting it? What if it is all around you? What is in camouflage or hidden in your everyday life - that you aren’t expecting so not missing?

Coding, how about coding? HTML art - what it would look like if you uploaded it.

Instructions of what to do or think, like Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit?

Yes, camouflage, coding… what goes un-noticed but has the potential to be Something if you notice it. I like this idea.

Institutions and Media

Whilst reading around other artists ideas on Nothingness - generally not so much the philosophy of Nothing but other peoples mimimalist references to it - I came across this this blog from someone in Australia. He has made parodies of different aspects of art. I mostly watched the mimimalist and postmodernist sketches, but one series he calls Blank Canvas (I, II and III) happen to be based around what I was thinking about the other day, and Ryman in particular.

His sketches are kind of funny and ironic - talking about how it takes years to gain the style, technique and skills to get idea in your head onto canvas and make a living from it - only to produce a sealed, readymade canvas and say it expresses everything he wants to say so it’s finished.

Parody or not it brought me yet again back to thinking how this is the way art is seen from the ‘outside world’, past the elite art-world ‘institution’, to what ‘the public’ think. They ‘know’ Tracey Emin’s bed or Damien Hirst’s cow ‘is art’ because they’ve been told it is by various institutions - but on the whole would they be able to tell you i) why it is categorised as art and ii) why it was made this way in the first place? What is the purpose behind it, and/or what is it trying to say? Maybe there’s both an internal and an external question there.

Institutionalist and capitalist theories aside, does etourist2’s parody-personality himself understand why Ryman decided to make his work how he did? OK so it’s a sketch, its meant to be ironic, but reading over the rest of his site (eg Nothing on a Grand Scale) he seems to be a painter with a major dislike for conceptual art.

(This brings up the categorisation again - people have departmentalised art for themselves and don’t like to give their labels away. The Stuckists don’t want to be in the same category as Damien Hirst. “It’s not Art with a capital A”. But highbrow, lowbrow, whatever label you apply to it the content is the same. The content expresses something to me.)

The paradox is he repeatedly keeps asking what the point is. But I could ask that equally about his paintings. What is the point? Are they supposed to be making a statement? Conveying some kind of message? Are they just there to look pretty on his wall or blend in with the surroundings? Are they to make him muchos $$$ off Joe Public? What is their ‘purpose’? Is he as guilty of interior design, (if that’s a crime) as he claims Ryman is?

Among the comments at the bottom of his page are:

“I often wonder how much the artist was paid for the “artwork” and think to myself, “why didn’t I do that, and make a killing?“

“Apparently this kind of art does speak to some artists enough to emulate it.“

“Yes I have seen that too, but just because they do it doesn’t mean it’s worth emulating.“

“I’ve seen it time and time again where some emerging artist has produced this kind of art for reasons that are beyond me.“

Interesting - “why didn’t I do that, and make a killing?“

“As an artist I don’t understand how anyone can claim to express anything through a blank canvas“. But why not? I can see what Ryman was expressing so if someone (eg etourist2’s parody), ‘doesn’t think you can express anything through a blank canvas’, is it that they don’t understand it? If so, is that because they expect the thing in front of them alone to give them information directly, with no thought and no background info? Or is it just that the work itself isn’t successful, it’s not communicating clearly what it was intended to, it’s just not very good art? More importantly does any art really communicate whatever its is intending to in just one object in a gallery?

Its good to make people think but you need something to start with. Then again, as ever my problem is that the object at the end is pretty meaningless, its the process you go through in researching and producing it and the reasons you did what you did that matter. This tends to not be available to the end viewer unless they follow you like a stalker…

“Apparently this kind of art does speak to some artists” - much art doesn’t speak to me, either for the reasons above, I haven’t understood the point in it, I just don’t ‘get’ whatever it is other people are getting. Or it can just be repetitive - for example minimalism has a point in its fundamental questions - but I don’t need eight thousand different examples of it making its point. Most conceptual art I don’t really need to even see to get the point. That isn’t to say I don’t find conceptual art fascinating - but I only really need the concept.

etourist2 says Robert Ryman has made a career out of painting surfaces white…the blank canvas as a ‘concept’ has been over done. Which is true as I said above - once you understand the concept it doesn’t need to be repeated. However does “it’s time to get back to actually painting something on the canvas” fare any better? Hasn’t that been done to death as well?

This is why I prefer philosophy - the ideas are the medium. Art is a tool I use to gain ideas, or to rearrange ideas to uncover new ideas. But my end result is always ideas, or understanding - or occasionally communicating ideas to other people, although it can be pretty narcissistic. But relating to “Apparently this kind of art does speak to some artists” - why don’t paintings speak to me? The vast, vast majority of them have no particular message, feeling or even look particularly interesting or attractive. When they do have a message it seems it could have been said more clearly, better or more ‘interestingly’ by some other method or medium. I just don’t ‘see the point in’ painting. Even painting that isn’t aiming to have any message. “Oh yes that looks nice“. Now lets move on.