reflection

The Ritual of Walking

Alexis

 

Along the walk looking East at sunset, 10 December 2018

 

I have been going out for same walk at least once a week since the beginning of the term in October. I realise that this has become a ritual, one in which I meet with the sky and earth. I let the clouds bring in ideas from another place and the earth to ground me. Two scales: the untouchable above and the tiny world of the soil with its plants, beasts, fungi and detritus. I look up and I look down and see for three hundred and sixty degrees all around a horizon that changes with the weather and time of day, subject to what the clouds might bring from who knows where. I see beyond and see inside.

Ritual is an essential way of regulating the everyday into the long term. Rituals can govern how we respond to things. This is why it is important to know when something becomes a ritual, to understand its essence, its meaning, and how it affects us: whether a ritual is creative, constructive or damaging and subtractive. The walk takes time, but it is not time taken away from what I do but rather it allows what I do to come in and rearrange itself creatively, without me necessarily knowing. I may participate consciously in this process, or allow it to proceed independently while I engage in some other activity. I have already hinted at how the reshaping of content can happen subconsciously in an earlier post .

Today, the clouds in the East looked like mountains as they do on the edge of a plain. An illusory boundary which for an instant alters my view of the world: geography shapes who we are and how we respond to the vagaries of life. Humboldt observed this in how similar geographical locations gave rise to surprisingly similar ecosystems with comparable niches despite having completely different species. There are fundamental laws that govern every detail of existence and so it is with us whether we are aware of them or not. The role of the artist is to sense how we are moved by the unseen and make it visible, make it known in some way. 

Richard Long has made a public-private ritual of walking turning it into an art document, exposing the significance of a simple act. It is about the human rhythm that leaves a wake subject to the passing of time; leaving a trace waiting to be covered over by the waves of passing with only a resonating memory: a very human thing. I have come to see this current walk as a conscious act in my practice and I am documenting it photographically. As I do so what I see and observe, what I think and do, changes over time. My intention has not been for it to be an artwork, let alone part of the current project but to be part of the process. This may change over time but for now I see the record of these walks a possible collection of works which, however, run parallel to the project rather than a contiguous element. Why? Simply put, the paradigm by which I am recording the walks is, at least for now, inconsistent with the project proposal… but this may change.

 

Ancestral II

Alexis

I am what I was. And with each generation follows the shedding of some part unable to survive so that I become again and again. The smell, the tides, night and day I crawl and sleep and rise and fall in the silt. I am what they once were, a forgotten memory. They lie under the skin, waiting for a time when what I was might become what I will be. For in all that is contained within myself, is a constant dying and rebirth each time unknowing of the other. Each time I become what I was and a little bit more.

Mythopoiea and Metamorphosis

Alexis

 

Emperor and Four Ways of Being Inspired

 

Mythopoeia is the act of making myths. Today it takes its meaning from the title of a poem from J. R. R. Tolkien in his book the Tree and Leaf. His work takes from many strands and weaves them into his epic sagas, something I can relate to. The word today takes its contemporary meaning from his work as a genre of fiction that merges archetypes with traditional mythological themes.

My proposal is the beginnings of a myth expressed in primarily visual and sonic form. As I hinted in What is the Character of a Myth, I am not looking to create character and plot based narratives like the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. These are tightly composed works. My idea is more open in interpretation and focuses on mechanisms. 

It has taken a term to get to the point where I have finally found the overarching theme of the project proposal. With hindsight, I was heading this way all along but things are rarely that obvious when attempting to elaborate something new, that is cohesive, within a complex ecology of ideas. In the group session earlier this week, Jonathan introduced the idea of mixing, merging, hybridising, editing, scripting and scoring. This is pretty well what I have been doing as well as filtering, curating, and amplifying disparate ideas which somehow held together in my mind. 

In the post What is the Character of a Myth I looked at myth, not as characterisation but process. This led me to focus on underlying processes which are applicable to a variety of narratives. What underlies all creation myths and cosmogonies is change. This change can be gradual or catastrophic. For example, punctuated evolution proposes long periods of relative stasis in species evolution punctuated by brief periods of radical change, as opposed to the gradual changes that occur in classical Darwinism. Equally, the Garden of Eden in Genesis is a story of catastrophic change, with the expulsion of Adam and Eve and the disappearance of Eden things change radically after which things slow down, gradually moving towards a society, in which Jehovah destroys the world in a cataclysmic flood in readiness for a new beginning. 

There may be little in common between these two timelines, but one thing is shared by both, change. It is fundamental in all cosmogonies whether scientific or faith-based. And what is the nature of this change? Metamorphosis. This may be a transformation of form, relationship, organisation or, as in many myths, from the divine to the mortal after which we enter into the territory of folklore.

Metamorphosis can be intra-organismal within a single lifetime, as in the case of the frog or the butterfly or over longer periods of time in the evolution of species. Metamorphosis can be the process of making a mortal eternal, as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses or whole belief systems can undergo fundamental change, as described by Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. History shows us how metamorphoses within societies, revolution, war, disease, commerce, technology, and everyday politics, leading to radical changes in the way people live. Metamorphosis is the essence of existence, process.

What I find interesting is that metamorphosis is a concept that applies to so many of the ideas that interest me and is at the core of artistic transformations: taking matter or concept and altering its properties to give rise to something new: from the metamorphosis of clay into fired stone to that of manipulated sound, to the evolution of ideas. I can see this as a rich seam beginning to be uncovered for mining when it comes to the Research Statement. 

And what is the relevance to the contemporary world? We live in a world undergoing great change at all levels of society and in the very fabric of our environment. This time of great change now called the Anthropocene, has profound implications for us all and more so for future generations. Expressing them in ways that connect with origins and their past transformations gives continuity to our world and meaning to the future, reminding us of what is at stake.

 

What is the Character of a Myth?

Alexis

 

Theriomorph. fired clay, height 94 mm

I have been thinking for some time about the fact that mythical protagonists are almost always animal, human or both. At times, natural phenomena may come together to give rise to cyclopean offspring as in early Greek mythology or Polynesian tales. These unions tend to occur at the beginning of time after which, almost invariably the main characters behave in a human-like fashion whatever they might be. Much has been written about what stands for what and how, whether crossing between the spiritual and real world, creating the world or giving rise to what takes place in ordinary life. However, what about the mechanisms? These are often left to the explanation, the reading of the myth, the hermeneutics of scholars. Take the garden of Eden for instance, it has been given many meanings, from a literal reading of the Genesis text to cultural transitioning to psychoanalytical interpretations. Whatever the case might be, it is difficult to get away from focusing on the characterisation of ideas through theriomorphism or anthropomorphism.

But what if I were to focus, not on characters but mechanisms? Even in Big History, a contemporary explanation – some would say a modern myth – for how the world came to be and how life emerged on this planet, we are compelled to look at the ancestral fossil record and visualise evolution as a series of animal and plant transformations. But there are deeper principles at work than, as in this case, hyperlapses from one body form to another. I feel that to solely concentrate on characterisation might be somewhat trite and predictable; what if I were to explore the mechanisms that drive myths? What if I were to create works that act as representations, metaphors, analogies or some other trope of these mechanisms? This would free me from the usual narratives, from having to contextualise in a forced manner, from fixing the ideas in a temporal locus. These ideas are timeless, without boundaries; they are not confined to any given period. By releasing my thinking from structuralist or post-structuralist constraints, from period context, from contemporary fashions, the relevance of the ideas embodied in myths might become self-evidently natural rather than contrivance. 

This is not an easy thing to do. It is a way of creating an alchemical admixture of ideas and material form: I hope not too obscure. I shall not speak of these mechanism yet. I need to think more clearly, allowing the idea to walk hand in hand with the making: the concept with the affect and aesthetic.

 

Oracle: Maquette 3 – End of a Phase

Alexis
Studies: graphite on paper, 316 x 237 mm. From the maquette

When evolving an idea, there comes a time for leaving the process to the subconscious; to open it out to other influences and make new connections: this takes time. I remember when taking my physics A level at school, the best strategy for solving a particularly difficult problem was to read what was needed, identify the equations and methodology, understand the variables, try a few things out and then sleep on it. Perhaps the next day or a little later, the solution would present itself as though the most natural of outcomes. I am not saying that solving a physics question is comparable to producing a work of art. I only mention this because the mind continues working in the most wonderful ways while we are distracted elsewhere. By going to sleep on a problem, we dream and see things from different perspectives in different contexts. This enables solutions to arise that would otherwise be constrained by fixed thinking. My attention is now turning to sound, relics, shadows and other things. I leave this particular part of the project in a place where, of its own account, it can respond to different ideas and methodologies and await a refreshed return.  

Moon walk

Alexis

The moon broke free last night. Leaving the earth she hurtled towards the sun leaving pieces of her behind as trees reached out to pull her back by her wake and got their fingers scorched by the sun who gloated, and sunk behind a blackened horizon. Finding herself free of all things, the moon lost interest and decided to drift, like a lover, content with her waxing belly, as men sent shiny rockets full of tiny people vertically, past the trees and past the moon, their roars swallowed by the immense distance, turned to comets. The earth in its shyness turned over and waited for the grubs to wake the soil.

Impetus

Alexis

The worn graphite pencil glides to and fro searching form, trying to enter the flat surface bounded by the small parcel of paper. Changing faces, it deftly leaves a trace that grows careful not to mark the paper indelibly with a false word. Thought is suspended in the uncertainty of emergence, I keep quiet and let the form tell me what to do. I am in its embrace, as the pewter carbon slates off the point until, it asks me, what shall I do next? We are now partners in shaping this tiny world. For now it must be all the world, no distraction except for breath. Time does not count in this place, movement reckons change: too much and life is extinguished, too little and we are left wondering what if. Imperfections must be left behind; corrections will unravel all that has been done as lines coalesce into form, light and shade becoming sensible with words of recognition. And so the meaning passes onto me as I hear the other’s voice grow faint in this world. My hope is that it waits for me in the next.

Drawing 4: Some Sort of Story Starts to Emerge

Alexis
Studies: graphite on paper, 237 x 316 mm

Today has been the darkest day of the season; rain and cloud but it is not cold. Does the weather influence work? It may do but what it most certainly does is influence mood and interpretation. If interpretation is part of the work, particularly in-action reflection, then the weather must in some way influence the work.

These sketches unlike the previous ones are more of a sequence than a series. It appears to me that one sketch led to another and that by the time I had reached the final vignettes a narrative had started to emerge. I really was not trying to create a narrative but it seems to have come about spontaneously. Is this because subconsciously I look for a narrative or is it that having completed the previous series of drawings, I am becoming more fluent and synthetic? Is it that I am linking the images despite myself?

I was not aware of any particular theme at the outset but during the course of the sketches, a familiar notion has started to show its face.

Leaving Breadcrumbs and Getting Lost in the Process, Outcome and Acceptance

Alexis

I am constantly leaving breadcrumbs as I wander through the forest.

The process of this MA is very much about that, process. I am willing to get lost in it as I search for a path towards finding new things and ways. I am consciously entering unchartered domains despite my having established a practice over the years. I feel to not have done so would have been complacent of me. Instead, I have elected to relearn. The drawings are emblematic of this, the way I feel about doing them is an acceptance of being in the process and allowing myself to get lost. It is also a return to origins, to what I did first. However, the point is that each time I explore and find new things I am in danger of getting lost to such an extent that to find my way out again might prove costly in terms of my relationship with my work. What I am in fact doing is looking to create small outcomes along the way, as in Post Truth Hurtling, and the drawings. These are signposts I am planting as I map unknown territories. Each marker keeps me located and the path taken made retraceable. That is one purpose for keeping a journal. To keep everything in the head is not good for my own sanity: the exploration may be conceptual in nature but the outcome is the concrete ballast that keeps me from capsizing against the storm of ideas that I face.

Drawing Studies

Alexis
Studies: graphite on paper, 237 x 316 mm

These rough sketches are a change of stance from the previous drawings, approaching the idea called for now ‘Oracle’. Exploring the inside and out of an imaginary prototype, I inhabit the space. This is not an aesthetic exercise in drawing, neither is it a testing ground for the work. It is more of an immersion into the idea, to understand where its physical form comes from. It lives in a landscape but is trapped in the context in which it is found: should be in a desert but it must sit in a room, an exhibit collected and appropriated from the imagination and displayed… for now. It is small yet pyramid-like in conception, is it to be simple or ornate? Is it a temple or a receptacle for sound; the Holy of Holies or a profane Pandora’s box; a landscape contained in the sounds that enters it, sounds processed and altered as a message must be arranged and packaged for its destination

It is now evening and having thought about the work’s geographical limitation, the idea has come to me that, although contained and relatively small, the sculpture can contain the world. Instead of the microphones collecting the sound being located within the same space, they could transmit from anywhere that they might be placed. The sculpture is then no longer limited to its location but it can encompass the world… or at least a greater part of it than before.