reflections

Spes Contra Spem

Alexis

 

I first came across this latin phrase while living in Montespertoli as the title for Renato Guttuso’s largely autobiographical triptych painted towards the end of the artist’s life after being diagnosed with lung cancer. 

 

 

Literally meaning hope against hope, this phrase is not only intriguing for its ambivalent meaning but the word spes is transformed into spem by its context. The nominative ‘against’ the accusative, subject vs object. I love the way words are transformed by where they sit in the sentence, it is like a game. 

But what does hope against hope actually mean? Is it to hope against all hope, hope despite hope, or the need for hoping becoming hope itself? There have been many interpretations and this kind of phrase appears repeatedly in the Bible. 

The preposition contra, meaning against can also be taken to mean towards. It could be taken to imply that it is not enough to hope, but that one needs to become hope. This is mentioned in Paul, Romans 4:18, where Abraham becomes the hope of his people. An alternative reading is that he hopes against hope that he becomes the leader of his people despite being childless. 

Contra here acts as allative case, a form not found in Latin but has been used in other languages such as old Finnish and Latvian. Denoting movement towards, in Latin something similar is used to mean towards a place. The place here would be hope itself, in which case one could interpret the meaning as, moving towards hope as a place in which one might inhabit.

Hope: an act and a place, verb and locus

 

Hieronymus Bosch had the motto, “contra spem spero . . . Et rideo” – “against all hope I hope… And I laugh”. This could be interpreted as Bosch laughing in the face of despair aided by hope. The ever optimistic pessimist, or perhaps the optimistic cynic.

But what does all this have to do with my work? During a tutorial with Jonathan my feelings towards existence and humanity came up in relation to the maquette What is the Difference I had just completed. Am I angry, despairing, curious, regarding the human condition? I think the Latin phrase partly sums how I feel, and I have some kind of kinship with the idea of the optimist cynic. This does not mean I think people are bad, on the contrary, I think that our nature, often self interested in many ways, is such that bad things happen; that individual dynamics are very different to group dynamics and it is for the individual to act in a way that enhances, rather than diminishes the world. This approach may not change the world radically, but it can halt negative cycles of behaviour and start new positive ones. Mahatma Gandhi expressed this as, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’.

My work is a personal response to the idea of humanity: one of connected continuity with things that might appear alien or separate but with which we share common elements that become manifest in a multitude of ways. 

 

Finding a Title

Alexis

 

 

Two small models to accompany the recumbent copy of the larger conversant piece. I feel I can now continue with making the larger work. These models will help me in deciding its size in relation to the already finished work which as it dries will shrink. This is why I made the measurements yesterday.

It differs in many aspects but the two emerge from the same formal stable of ideas but with different psychological aspects. The idea of spes contra spem, a phrase with many interpretations I have been fascinated with for years, seems to fit the works. I think I have found the title for these works which brings together belief and science, myth and theory. With this I can now move forward with sounds and words… It reminds me of what Picasso said, ‘I do not seek, I find’. Although this can be understood in many ways, Picasso was a great appropriator, I prefer to think that ideas often emerge after a time of subliminal thought when the conditions are right. As much was variously described by Henri Poincaré.
 

 

About to Start Unit 2

Alexis

 
I have been away from the studio now for over four weeks. I shall be back in around a week after a prolonged period abroad. I worked over the Summer months on 3D works, coded and learned some VR rendering. This has been a belated Summer coming at the right time. A chance to complete the Research Statement, curate the blog, reacquainting myself with the past year and clarifying the Project Proposal. I have flown, walked, swum, eaten and looked at some art but I have made none.  

Being away from my work has brought it closer and into greater focus. The work for the coming nine months is now much clearer: what to do, and more importantly, what not to do. Had I continued as I was, I would have been in a process of desperate and confusing accretion rather than distillation and consolidation.

The research statement is submitted, although I will continue to revise and resubmit it – it is a nervy process and something might come up nearer the deadline; I don’t think I have ever been so in hand with a piece of writing as this. The blog curation is nearly completed and I shall keep sifting through it, milling the information ever more finely. As for the Project Proposal, that is an ongoing document which for now has the lineaments of the final show and future work. 

I still have a great deal of learning and experimenting ahead, particularly with the digital and display aspects of the work. However, when I get back into the studio next week, I will be able to immerse myself fully in making with a clear direction of where to go and how to get there.
 

Treasure

Alexis

 

 

Collected these treasures on a beach in the South of France the day before yesterday. Janet picked up the biofacts and mineral objects. I was drawn to the glass worn by the incessant wave action. What would our distant, and perhaps not so distant ancestors have given for these coloured jewels? They would have certainly used them to adorn themselves and decorate their most precious possessions; traded them inland and held them as symbols of status, wealth and beauty. The irony is that these are today’s waste cast into the sea, transformed and neglected in the sands of a affluent watering hole. 

What will our descendants think of the pebbles and algae washed up on shore? The pebbles will always be there, or somewhere else. The algae, who knows. All too often, the natural environment is entangled with plastic and other detritus from our ‘evolved’ world. How will clean, natural things be seen in the future?

Janet and I collected different things, One the natural historian, the other the archaeologist. The two go hand in hand, and we did not ‘fight’ over any particular object. The truth is, that we helped each other to find the objects we sought. A meaningful juxtaposition arising out of a collaborative exploration on a modest scale. 

 

Palimpsest

Alexis

 

My initial project proposal was full of interrogatives and unknowns. I was looking for connective tissue, a means to create a whole, to move the making into a deep well of notions. This is perhaps what I have previously called the ineffable. I used to think that we are ruled by the tyranny of words. But words make up much of what we think and who we are. Today we live in a tyranny of image, graphic, moving, symbols and shortcuts to thought that like idioms, clichés and figures of speech. What is the difference? They all tug at one’s own reality.

I mean to inhabit multitudes and contain more than I can express. This is the conversation I seek with others…

 

Constellations of the Small Make the Universe

Alexis

 

 

Walking along the East England coast at Mablethorpe, against that watery panorama, the hidden drama of life below the waves was being cast onto the sand by the receding tide; empty detritus waiting for the wading birds, once star dust become flesh dismembered one by one of existence in an instant of countless moments. Was the crab or the jelly fish aware of its being as I of theirs and my own? Able to witness in the cloud of thoughts that is constantly shaped by constellations of cells inside my body I too will drift and bear their fate in a struggle, dispassionate and brutal that brings forth beauty and engenders awe.

 

 

A single starfish lies nearby, I toss it back, no thanks or waving arms, only my knowing, does that count in the grand scheme of things? I can not live its life but in that moment see myself thrown and saved in some fashion, it is the way of things. As we all were once inanimate, only I made in this present form am able to save my other self. 

 

 

How is this relevant to my project ? Mine is not an exercise in empathy, that cannot be for the subject is alien in form and substance. It is an expression of proximity to the other, I am made of the same paste, only arranged in a different ways, able to say this and pass it on. It is not entering some other life I seek but communion with that which is mute.

 

Third Phase of Unit One: Continued

Alexis

 

I have returned to Forest Hill from the Camberwell College library with an armful of books and eyes set on the horizon. In the previous post I took a broad, summary view of what I have done so far. One major characteristic of my methodology to date has been my intention to limit new artistic influences. My reasons for this are twofold: it has been an opportunity to re-evaluate my practice and articulate its synthesis whilst keeping things open and in order to do so maintain a clear view of the context and content. 

The need to write the Research Paper now, is catalysing a process of finding new sources from within the contemporary artistic field which lie outside my own familiar domain (in all senses). I see this period as a time for drilling into the content of my work and looking at new artistic sources within and external to the paper. The time has come to take off one set of clothes and put on another.

I am not looking for direction, that I have in abundance, but rather for greater depth of means and idea. I have to be mindful not to overcomplicate things but this I can avoid by paring down to the essentials what I elaborate, again selecting, distilling, in this case correspondences with writers and other artists. The cuttings themselves will be useful for some other projects. The books I have taken out today and will borrow in the future I feel will help me in this regard: whether confirming, refuting or synthesising my ideas, any of these processes arising will prove valuable along the way to build on my understanding of things.

Put another way, so far during the first two phases I have been largely self-referential and self originating. I feel now in the position to absorb new influences into a robust framework that is stable enough not to be disrupted towards confusion and sufficiently flexible to adapt to new ideas and contexts.

 

Third Phase of Unit One

Alexis

 

Janet’s final show is now over. The works de-installed and packed, I now sit in the library at Camberwell looking at books. So many interesting books; it is a good way to introduce the third phase of unite one. The First phase was one of doing and as I did so, of looking around within a familiar space. From this space I moved in and out forming ideas, refuting others, articulating, clarifying and creating generalities out of which specifics could be selected, filtered and distilled.

The second phase has been one of articulating a thesis, closing some windows and passing through the one that is left to find myself in a vast landscape. It has been a time of deciding on a general direction and envisaging some sort of outcome partly manifest in the final show. I currently find myself in the narrow waist of an hourglass. Much time and many ideas have passed through and I now find myself on the threshold of what is to come. I have a clear idea of what that might be but I have yet to focus on particulars.

Being in Camberwell on and off for around three weeks has given me time away from the blog journal and making. I am forgetting and remembering, sloughing the superfluous which nevertheless has informed my journey. I now have a new perspective leading to a third phase.

The third phase is one where, although what I shall be concentrating on is more or less settled in form, the actual details of making, contextual framework, presentation, background are not yet clarified. This is a time where, having identified the domain in which I will be working, I can focus more deeply on every aspect of the work(s), layering deep sediments to form the body of this practice, making connections, meanings, engagements, and expressions, through techniques, symbols and tropes, modalities and affects.

It is a fascinating process because I now have to plan the works whilst keeping the process open. This I need to do because the making side of things can take a very long time. I also have to experiment new methods and techniques in order to incorporate the ideas I am working with. In addition, I have to contextualise those ideas and forms to position them meaningfully in the contemporary environment trying not to lose sight of where they have come from and the future.

What I have written here is a broad sense of what I am to do. What this is specifically, I shall write about later. For now I am still moving bodies in a mental space which are waiting to be reified and exposed. It is all so very open…

 

Sight and Touch: Molyneux’s Problem

Alexis

 

 

I came across an article about the 300 year old Molyneux’s Problem regarding the relationship between sight and touch as it concerns internal world building. This is something that has come to my mind many times in terms of the aesthetics of three dimensional objects and my approaches in making something tangible. 

What was once taken as purely a thought experiment due to the impossibility of giving sight to someone congenitally blind has now been presented with an empirically verifiable solution. 

In 2011 Richard Held and Dr. Pawan Sinha leading a team at Project Prakash (Prakash mean light in Sanskrit) demonstrated that which Locke had intuited. That the cognitive association between touch and sight have to be learnt and are not hard wired in our brains.

The experience of shape in each sense is independent of the other and they are not associated from birth. A congenitally blind person being given sight would not recognise a cube, say, on seeing it for the first time even if they were offered an identical one for comparison. However, they would soon learn to relate what they experience through touch with what they see. This seems self evident enough but it was not verifiable until recently with advances in eye surgery and indeed many thinkers thought otherwise. Look up dear old Bishop Berkeley: yes the one that thought if you turned your back on something it disappeared.  

How does this affect my ideas about making? I work a great deal with touch through my hands. I have been aware that if I were not able to see the composition of a work it would be very different using touch alone. The aesthetic qualities that would arise out of working blind would pertain to another world; one in which light is alien and the mind would navigate and construct form in quite a different way. 

 

 

I have often referred to navigating form in my mind with an inner eye, moving around the object in question in a virtual world. Although I am not using my eyes this ‘sighted’ world relies on having experienced sight. How different this would be had I been congenitally blind. So imagining being able to create in the absence of light experience would be well nigh impossible.