#p finding something out of it and verso finding nothing

[revelry-in-severity]

An expedition 33 and lies of p crossover would go so hard

Painters, Writers, ...Inventors?

[fionaharnett]

LOOKING AT THE WORK OF ODETTE ENGLAND ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHER

LOVE NOTES

2019 -

Unique silver gelatin and color prints from folded film negatives

Ongoing work in progress.

PUNCHED

2018-2019

Unique original snapshots, hand-punched and layered

Chromogenic prints, silver gelatin prints, Polaroids, archival tape

With this work, I punch out the main subjects. It is a playful and provocative act. It transitions the subject to one of process, and imposes a different kind of viewing. The circular shape of the punches become little clouds of thought, or speech bubbles in space. Black holes where information or knowledge continues to leak out. These spaces invite the imagination to fill them back up again.

THE OUTSKIRTS

2018

Archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth; layered with original pages from vintage family photo albums 17 x 22"

Unique (not editioned). Signed and titled verso

I remove pages from old family photo albums and use them to shield the main subjects of snapshots, which I have re-photographed and enlarged. The album pages perform the role of censor, of veil, and by extension, a manipulator of content. Contrary to the original album pages being a site ‘to have and to hold’ family history, the pages restrain and enclose. The periphery becomes the focus.

THE LONG WAY HOME

2017 - ongoing

Archival pigment prints from buried Kodak negatives, on Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag Unique in size, ranging from approx. 33 x 43” to approx. 42 x 60”

Edition of 1 + 1 AP. Signed & titled

Before leaving Rhode Island in 2012 to return to my birthplace of South Australia, I buried some negatives near the house I rented. The damaged negatives were of my childhood home in Australia, now in ruin. I’d laid them to rest with flowers I’d pressed, flowers that reminded me of home. In the fall of 2017, having returned to Rhode Island and bought a house three blocks from where I’d lived, I tried to remember where I’d hidden the negatives. I had only memory to go by. I buried 25 of them, the age I was when I first left Australia to live abroad. So far, I have found seven.

Every week I walk the neighborhood searching for these decaying artifacts. As I do, I get to know better the place in which I now live but find difficult to call home.

EXCAVATIONS

2015

Archival pigment prints, hand sanded with professional grade sandpaper, on Canson Infinity Rag Photographique Print 14.5 x 14.3" on paper 18.5 x 18.3"

Edition of 1 + 1 AP. Signed & titled

Unique original snapshots hand sanded with professional grade sandpaper Various sizes ranging from approx. 2 x 2" to approx. 6 x 6"

'Excavations' explores the complexities of material interface with intangible concepts. The social space of family storytelling is an invisible process into which we are born. We share colorful narratives, sometimes using snapshots as cues. We on-tell these stories and join them, or add to them, through photography. As a child, I loved learning the friendly arguments from mis-remembering or embellishing the visual 'facts'. It is this exaggeration that using sandpaper afforded. I blurred detail, smoothed areas, roughened up patches, and removed people or landscapes altogether. Grinding and polishing these photographs also is a literal assault. There is a ‘no turning back’. But the act of sanding was not spurred by contempt. Instead, it re-choreographs stories beyond the album. The space of the photograph is reset. Reworking manipulates the past, remaking it in the present.

DEVELOP BEFORE

2014-2015

Archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth Print 20 x 20" on paper 24 x 24"

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS). Signed, numbered & titled

One of my grandpa's most curious collections was of Kodak 126 film boxes. On the outside of each box, where Kodak had printed 'Develop Before' together with the film’s expiry date (a practice that dates from the end of the 19th century) grandpa had circled the date in red pen. It was as if he wanted to ensure the snapshots he took would be revealed at their best and freshest.

There is homogeneity to how we make snapshots the world over. Grandpa's boxes have their own unique marks of age – wrinkles, scars, and marks – things we tend to avoid in family photography. They were also never intended to be subjects of photography: the boxes are trash – nothing of value, though to grandpa, they were worth something. I was compelled to photograph them using a modified Kodak Instamatic, expired chemistry and a scanner.

THRICE UPON A TIME

2012

Archival pigment prints from damaged negatives, on Museo Portfolio Rag Print 27.3 x 36" on paper 31.3 x 40"

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS). Signed, numbered & titled

I grew up on a dairy farm in South Australia. Falling milk prices and rising maintenance costs forced my parents, under the threat of bankruptcy, to sell everything and leave in 1989.

Twenty-two years later, Mum and Dad performed a collaborative 'homecoming' on my behalf. Every month for one year, they revisited our former farm, wearing on the soles of their shoes a set of negatives I had made at the farm in 2005, when I took photographs of places where they had made snapshots of me as a child. As my parents walked the farm, the negatives became abraded and imprinted with local dirt and debris. The negatives were then returned to me, some so damaged they had to be pieced together with tweezers.

This series is a movement of reclamation and transcription. Since we no longer work the land with our hands, I work it through the lens, and tread, of my parents. The dominant motive for this work is my longing for an idealized vision of home. The resulting images mythologize my holy land.

SELF DIAGNOSIS

2011

Archival pigment prints on Canson Infinity Rag Photographique Print 6.5 x 9.3” on paper 8.5 x 11”

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS) Signed, numbered & titled

Self Diagnosis is a part-photographic, part-psychological study of failure. I expose personal snapshots on the back of each of the ten inkblots from the Rorschach inkblot test. The work investigates the consequences of opening myself up to visual interpretation; the exposure of items typically guarded; and the construction of truth versus fiction in the family album.

PHOTOS OF ME WITHOUT ME

2011

Unique snapshots, hand cut and mounted to Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Trimmed to 12 x 12”

In this series of unique original prints, I reenact the family album through the deliberate DIY act of scissoring myself from snapshots and then realigning the hand-cut splinters. The works are more than altered souvenirs of my childhood; they are gestural, spatial re-recordings. There is preciousness to my existing in the album, which I call into question. This exercise of elimination, re-appropriation, and change gives me the chance to re-determine and redesign how my past is displayed from hereon.

ATTENTIONAL LANDSCAPES

2007-2008

Archival digital c-prints Paper 35.6 x 35.6"

Edition of 3 + 1 AP (AP NFS). Signed, numbered & titled

The Ishihara Colour Test is the most common clinical test for color blindness. But like mirages, the circles of randomized dots are just optical phenomena. In this series, I undertake quasi-scientific experiments in manipulating the intended meaning and function of family photographs. Selectively and meticulously exposing snapshots through the Ishihara test plates, I explore how we search and process imagery.

[isslibrary]

New Books (late September)

Sorted by Call Number / Author. These are in the New Books section (by the superhero posters in the Reading Room) except the ones marked CI (Confucius Institute Collection titles) and ES which are in the new Spanish Section! It was exciting to put together a core collection of books in Spanish with Ms. Wald and to see her students reading

Buscando a Alaska

on Engel Terrace. Thank you to Dr. Thomas who donated jazz and blues materials.

As always, if you need help finding something or think of something that you need, please ask me or Mrs. VanHorn.

700 H

Harrison, Charles, 1942-2009. An introduction to art. New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, c2009. This original and inspiring book offers clear and wide-ranging introduction to the arts of painting and sculpture, to the principal artistic print media, and to the visual arts of modernism and post-modernism. Covering the entire history of art, from Paleolithic cave painting to contemporary art, it provides foundational guidance to the basic character and techniques of the different art forms, to the various genres of painting in the western tradition, and to the techniques of sculpture as they have been practiced over several millennia and across a wide range of cultures.

701.03 H

Helguera, Pablo. Education for socially engaged art : a materials and techniques handbook.

704.9 T

Living as form : socially engaged art from 1991-2011. 1st ed. New York : Creative Time Books ;, 2012. 'Living as Form' grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a 30-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of color images.

709.04 K

Kwon, Miwon. One place after another : site-specific art and locational identity. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2002. Site-specific art emerged in the late 1960s in reaction to the growing commodification of art and the prevailing ideals of art's autonomy and universality. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as site-specific art intersected with land art, process art, performance art, conceptual art, installation art, institutional critique community-based art, and public art, its creators insisted on the inseparability of the work and its context. In recent years. however, the presumption of unrepeatability and immobility encapsulated in Richard Serra's famous dictum "to remove the work is to destroy the work" has been challenged by new models of site specificity and changes in institutional and market forces." "One Place after Another offers a critical history of site-specific art since the late 1960s and a theoretical framework for examining the rhetoric of aesthetic vanguardism and political progressivism associated with its many permutations. Informed by urban theory, postmodernist criticism in art and architecture, and debates concerning identity politics and the public sphere, the book addresses the siting of art as more than an artistic problem. It examines site specificity as a complex cipher of the unstable relationship between location and identity in the era of late capitalism. The book addresses the work of, among others, John Ahearn, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, Donald Judd, Renee Green, Susanne Lacy, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Richard Serra, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Fred Wilson.

709.4 B

Bishop, Claire. Artificial hells : participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. London ; : Verso Books, 2012. Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson. Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as "social practice." Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawel Althamer and Paul Chan.

781.643 C

Nothing but the blues : the music and the musicians. New York : Abbeville Press, c1993.

781.65 H

Havers, Richard, author. Uncompromising expression : Blue note, the finest in jazz since 1939. Purveyor of extraordinary jazz music and an arbiter of cool, Blue Note is the definitive jazz label--signing the best artists, pioneering the best recording techniques, and lead cover design trends with punchy, iconic artwork and typography that shaped the way we see the music itself. The roster of greats who cut indelible sides for the label include Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Bud Powell, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Smith, Norah Jones, and many more. Published for Blue Note's seventy-fifth anniversary, this landmark volume is the first official illustrated story of the label, from 1939 roots through its celebrated releases in the fifties and sixties to its renaissance today. Featuring classic album artwork, unseen contact sheets, rare ephemera from the Blue Note Archives, commentary from some of the biggest names in jazz today, and feature reviews of seventy-five key albums, this is the definitive book on the legendary label.

781.65 M

Motion, Tim. Jazz portraits : an eye for the sound : images of jazz and jazz musicians. New York : SMITHMARK, c1995.

808.83 C

Mothership : tales from afrofuturism and beyond. College Park, MD : Rosarium, c2013.

809.3 W

Womack, Ytasha. Afrofuturism : the world of black sci-fi and fantasy culture.

951 F

Fairbank, John King, 1907-1991. China : a new history. Enl. ed. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

CI 398.2 S

Song Shuhong. Drama Stories : Classic Stories of China. Beijing, China : China Intercontinental Press, 2011.

CI 495 F

Feng Lijuan. Chinese in Hand : Daily Chinese. Beijing, China : Confucius Institute, 2013.

CI 495 S

Shi Keyan. Chinese in Hand : Transportation Chinese. Beijing, China : Confucius Institute, 2013.

CI 641.3 L

Li Hong. Green Tea : Appreciating Chinese Tea. Beijing, China : China Intercontinental Press, 2009.

CI 641.3 P

Pan Wei. Oolong Tea : Appreciating Chinese Tea. Beijing, China : China Intercontinental Press, 2009.

CI 641.3 W

Wang Jidong. Pu-erh Tea : Appreciating Chinese Tea. Beijing, China : China Intercontinental Press, 2009.

CI DVD For

The Forbidden City : Twelve-episode Historical Documentary Series. Beijing, China : China Central Television and Palace Museum, 2008.

CI DVD Lea

Zhongguo cha yi : gen wo xue Zhongguo cha yi = China's art of enjoying tea : learn China's art of enjoying tea with me = Ch¿±goku no chagei. Beijing : Wai wen chu ban she, [2005]. This DVD introduces the origin of tea, tea sets and most sorts of tea with Chinese, English, and Japanese dialogue.

ES 976.4 C

Canion, Mira. Rebeldes de Tejas. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2009.

ES 92 Alou

Gaab, Carol. Felipe Alou : Desde los valles a las montañas. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2012.

ES 92 Kahlo

Placido, Kristy. Frida Kahlo. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2015.

ES F Ano

Anonymous. Vida y muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing.

ES F Bak

Baker, Katie. La Llorona de Mazatlán. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2013.

ES F Bla

Blasco, Melissa. Los Baker van a Perú. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2007.

ES F Can

Canion, Mira. Pirates : del Caribe y el mapa secreto. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2008.

ES F Col

Collins, Suzanne. En Llamas. Barcelona : RBA Libros, 2012.

ES F Col

Collins, Suzanne. Los Juegos del Hambre. Barcelona : RBA Libros, 2012.

ES F Col

Collins, Suzanne. Sinsajo. Barcelona : RBA Libros, 2012.

ES F Gaa

Gaab, Carol. Brandon Brown quiere un perro. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2013.

ES F Gaa

Gaab, Carol. El nuevo Houdini. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2010.

ES F Gaa

Gaab, Carol. Esperanza. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2011.

ES F Gaa

Gaab, Carol. Los Piratas del Caribe el Triangulo de las Bermudas. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2012.

ES F Gaa

Gaab, Carol. Problemas en Paraíso. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2010.

ES F Gre

Green, John. Bajo la Misma Estrella. New York, NY : Vintage Español, 2012.

ES F Gre

Green, John. Buscando a Alaska. Mexico : Castillo de la Lectura, 2014.

ES F Gre

Green, John. Cuidades de Papel. New York, NY : Vintage Español, 2014.

ES F Kir

Kirby, Nathaniel. La Guerra Sucia. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2011.

ES F Kir

Kirby, Nathaniel. La maldición de la cabeza reducida : Written by Spanish students from Pinelands Regional High School under the direction of Nathaniel Kirby. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2009.

ES F Pla

Placido, Kristy. Brandon Brown Versus Yucatán. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2013.

ES F Pla

Placido, Kristy. Noche de oro. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2014.

ES F Pla

Placido, Kristy. Robo en la noche. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2009.

ES F Row

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter y el c©Łliz de fuego. 4th ed. Barcelona : Salamandra, c2001. Tras otro abominable verano con los Dursley, Harry se dispone a iniciar el cuarto curso en Hogwarts, la famosa escuela de magia y hechicer©Ưa.

ES F Row

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter y el misterio del pr©Ưncipe. 1. ed. Barcelona : Salamandra, 2006. Sixth-year Hogwarts student Harry Potter gains valuable insights into the boy Voldemort once was, even as his own world is transformed by maturing friendships, schoolwork assistance from an unexpected source, and devastating losses.

ES F Row

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban. 11a. ed. Barcelona : Salamandra, 2010, c2000. During his third year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter must confront the devious and dangerous wizard responsible for his parents' deaths.

ES F Row

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter : y la orden del F©♭nix. 1a. ed. Barcelona : Salamandra, 2004. As Harry faces his upcoming fifth year at Hogwarts Academy, there are increasing rumors of dark times coming and of Lord Voldemort's return to power, and a secret anti-Voldemort society, The Order of the Phoenix, begins meeting again.

ES F Row

Rowling, J. K., author. Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. 1a edici©đn. Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches.

ES F Row

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter y la camara secreta. Barcelona : Salamandra, 1999.

ES F Tot

Carrie Toth. La Calaca Alegre. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2013.

ES F Tot

Toth, Carrie. Bianca Nieves y Los 7 Toritos. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2015.

ES F Tot

Toth, Carrie. La Hija del Sastre. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2012.

ES F Pla

Placido, Kristy. Noches misteriosas en Granada. Chandler, AZ : TPRS Publishing, 2011.

[studentsinresistance]

Glossary of What I Think is Malaysia

by YVONNE TAN YIT FONG

It’s 2016, with Wawasan 2020 (Vision 2020) not so far down the road anymore. We will then become (or at least be labelled as) a fully developed nation. So, let’s recall the first “challenge” that Mahathir posed within his Wawasan 2020 speech – realising Bangsa Malaysia.

I entered Malaysia in the 1990s when modernisation was presumably at its peak during Mahathir ’s rule. Growing up with the grandiose ideas of 2020, one could look at the future of Malaysia with optimism. We would forge our very own place in this world.

Amidst this optimism, some concepts, terms, or keywords need to be revisited. At times, some of them were used to justify and promise what was/will make he great “Malaysian” identity; some other labels may point to a unique achievement and yet has grown to turn out otherwise.

RACE

Sorry folks, we can’t seem to escape the race rhetoric. The British colonial ideology of “divide and conquer ” continues its legacy. It emphasises our differences but yet cal l s us to live in harmony and unity with “values” such as tolerance and mutual respect. And it has been this way since the day we stepped into our schools, vernacular or not, and so as Malaysia’s governance, which is still run by race-based politics: Malay, Chinese, Indian. Bumiputera, Pendatang, Pendatang. Ampang, Cheras, Brickfields. In this politics of identity, we already know what’s problematic here off hand – the omission of other ethnicities and the aborigines. Just within the collective label of the “Orang Asal” we have:

1) The Orang Asli in the Peninsular, a term for the Semangs, Senois, and other Proto-Malays; 2) The Dayaks consisting of Ibans, Bidayuhs, and Orang Ulus of Sarawak and; 3) Kadazan-Dusun, Bajau, and Murut in Sabah.

By definition these labels are also problematic, including the definition of the “Malay race” by the federal constitution as “a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay Language, [and] conforms to Malay custom”, one of whom would be eligible for Bumiputera rights.

We all have friends who def y these rigid labels. The Pakistani-Chinese who wears a hijab and speaks fluent Mandarin or the one with Malay and Chindian parents who converses primarily in English. Yes, those are my friends who are all eligible for “sons of the soil” status. At this rate that we’re going, I personally would like to see the day when we are all eligible.

In Malaysia, race is institutionalised and ossified into a set of status and entitlements. There are undeniable forms of segregation that trickle down from these institutions, but I believe we will still go to our local mamak stalls without hesitation together. Hardly anyone says no to cheap (I can’t find a better word for this but) Malaysian food and to cheer on our sports teams. And did I hear you say “May 13”? Well, it might loom around our heads whenever there arises an inter-racial conflict, but no, we would never avoid another race as though they were out there to kill us.

(Afterthought: as a pendatang myself, I hope our history books will at the very least in future provide a fair representation to the new wave of immigrants in Malaysia. The Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Burmese, Filipinos, and Nepalese that some of our distant relatives were once in their position in this country too. In fact I am partially excited at the prospect of integrating with their cultures. No one would be surprised that they have given their whole lives to the development of this country and ultimately “ Vision 2020”, which, ironically, plans to oust them.)

SHOPPING MALL

H&M, Uniqlo, Gap, Adidas, Superdry, Forever 21, and just about every other international department store brands that we, or rather the developers, feel the need to have it in every location in the country. Some yearn with nostalgia knowing that Pavilion was once the Bukit Bintang Girl’s School, that KLCC was once Selangor Turf Club. While an upcoming Bukit Bintang City Centre (BBCC) that is built on the grounds of the Pudu Jail, puzzles some. Within the last few years in Klang Valley alone, we have (brace yourselves) IOI City Mall, Nu Sentral, Sunway Velocity Lifestyle Mall, Sunway Putra Mall, Quill City Mall, D’Pulze, and The Strand. Priding ourselves as a shopping destination, maybe these malls reveal a collective ideal of modernity. That the way forward lies within a globalised consumer culture and rapid urbanisation. Without a doubt change will keep pressing and some have chosen change in the form of consumerism.

PETRONAS TWIN TOWERS

The Petronas Twin Towers is plastered across tourism ads, and is today, probably how the rest of the world would associate Malaysia with, just in case they thought we lived in jungles. The skyscraper used to be the tallest building (my bad, still is the tallest twin towers) in the world.

The twin towers are supposed to be a symbol of modernity and nationalism, through Mahathir ’s Look East Policy. The ambitious project is a reminder that Malaysia can achieve such economic and architectural feats yet being known for two look-alike phalluses. But the allure of it fades over-time being another shopping mall with overpriced parking , although with a park that is nice at night. The promise of modernity expressed by the Twin Towers is of the “economic imperatives (capitalism) as ‘good’ modernity ” while we pay little attention to “its cultural effects (Westoxification) as ‘bad’ m-dernity, makes it seem as if these two spheres are mutually exclusive of each other and not, as they are in reality, conjoined”.[1] Maybe then the Twin Towers represents our split uneasy relationship with modernity for what Sheryll Stothard calls the “cari makan-makna question”.[2] As a symbol for our nation, it can’t just end at the representation of economic well-being, the “cari makan” side, leaving the cultural “makna” side void.

MERDEKA (INDEPENDENCE DAY)

If the Petronas Twin Towers is synonymous with Mahathir, Merdeka is synonymous with Tunku Abdul Rahman. Balibar argues that “in the history of every modern nation, wherever the argument can apply, there is never more than one single founding revolutionary event which explains both the permanent temptation to repeat its forms, to imitate its episodes and characters”.[3] If we have to pick an event over centuries of our history, I would say it’s 31st August 1957. It is ingrained in us and remains as the definitive reference point that we always return to. Be it measuring our country’s “age” against that faithful date (Happy 59th Merdeka!) or throwing celebrations on that day where we can feel the full extent of patriotism. The day is supposed to be exemplary on how Malaysia managed freedom from the British colonials through “peaceful negotiations” with the main character, Tunku Abdul Rahman, leader of the UMNO party and the Alliance.

But we know that Malaysia’s independence wasn’t as straightforward and clear cut as the mainstream media informs us. Overtime, our fervour for Merdeka wanes as it becomes another justification for the current ruling party to continue their rule, to reiterate their own version of history. Heck , even the race and religion of our leader is still mandatorily kept the same after all this while.

MILO

Need I say more? There is a reason why we put Milo in everything and why it has been with everyone here across generations. Hot chocolate just won’t do it for us. It tastes like nothing else, just Milo. Made by the Australian Nestlé company in 1934, it has (safe to say) become our national drink.[4]

1MDB

1MDB is the most scandalous controversy of Najib Tun Razak . We started off with several promises, but things magically took for a turn into bankruptcy with a RM12 billion debt, a figure well ensuring us that we’re on our way to hell.

I can’t seem to be able to say much either after witnessing powerhouses such as The Malaysian Insider, The Sarawak Report, and Mahathir being taken down to ground zero. Regular citizens huddling among 29 million of us aren’t spared. With the recently enforced Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, we see arrests over Facebook , Twitter, and even Whatsapp posts.

Just like a good dystopian story arc, it has ignited public outcry for change. Although through negative cohesion against those in power, we reinstate our freedom to do so. It has made us re-evaluate the meaning of democracy here and to exercise our right to work towards a better, or at the very least decent Malaysia, however slowly, against the monopoly. You know something is up when the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) denied the allegations from the Wall Street Journal that RM2.6 billion transferred to Najib’s personal accounts were from 1MDB.

===

Notes:

[1] Khoo Gaik Cheng, Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), p. 130.

[2] A word play: cari makan means “to earn a livelihood”, while cari makna means “to find meaning”. See Amir Muhammad, Kam Raslan, & Sheryll Stothard (eds.), Generation: A Collection of Contemporary Malaysian Ideas (Kuala Lumpur: Hikayat Press, 1997), p. 47.

[3] Étienne Balibar & Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class (London: Verso, 1991), p. 87.

[4] Andreas Zangger, The Swiss in Singapore (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2013), p. 198.

[laurenredhead]

Nicholas Bourriaud: The Exform

I am on research leave currently, and have been meaning to post about what I have been doing. Thus far in, I have not yet really had time. However, I have been working on a project that takes some ideas from Nicholas Bourriaud's most recent book, The Exform. As part of the work, I wrote a sumamry of the ideas in the book and thought it migh be worth sharing here for those interested in his thought

Nicholas Bourriaud, The Exform, trans. by Erik Butler, Verso Futures (London: Verso, 2016)

Nicholas Bourriad’s most recent book, The Exform, makes an argument for the role of art and politics in contemporary society. His previous work has variously explored many ways that artists make use of borrowed material in their works, and the ways that this can be explained beyond the post-modern. This book acknowledges that not only are types of artistic production altered, the means of production are also altered - in a way that has consequences for the production of art, its meaning-making and its ideologies.

Bourriaud begins with an hauntology of “things” and “phenomena”. He observes that capitalism desires frictionless movement of “commodities (beings/objects)” (p8) but that capitalism also wastes energy through its methods of production. These two points are fundamentally antithetical to each other. He also describes how ‘waste’ as a metaphor is found in economics: part of the use of this metaphor is to describe anything that is not “at work” in capitalism. The proletarian is now no longer descried as one alienated from the products of their labour but as someone who has “been stripped of experience […] and forced to replace being with having.” (p9)

Whilst this can be identified as a facet of contemporary life, this ideology and its inherent tensions can also be seen in contemporary art. Bourriaud writes that, “the characteristic dance of a given epoch [is seen] through relations between art and politics” (p9), and that since the nineteenth century in art and society there has been a “categorical rejection of certain signs, objects and images.” (p9) The avant-garde concurrently resist this narrative and pursue it, since avant-garde artists “recycle putative waste and make it a source of energy.” (p10)

Bourriaud then describes as realist: “art that resists the operation of triage” (p10) into aesthetic-political designations such as politically correct art, simple denunciation, etc. These realist works are this that, “lift the ideological veils which apparatuses of power drape over the mechanism of expulsion and its refuse, whether material or not.” (p10) This, then, is not a method of simply re-presenting reality back to the audience in order to make it grotesque but of resisting engagement in ideological narrative of contemporary society completely.

Such works are “exformal”. Bourriaud describes the exformal as: “the site where border negotiations unfold between what is rejected and what is admitted, products and waste.” (p10) Furthermore, he writes that the exform, “designates a point of contact, a ‘socket’ or ‘plug’ in the process of exclusion and inclusion—a sign that switches between centre and periphery, floating between dissidence and power.” (p10) He writes that it is, “an authentically organic link between the aesthetic and the political.” (p10) The exformal, then, exists at the boundaries of artistic designations, resisting the narratives of waste that are inherent to capitalism and society. Bourriaud writes, “what is an artist if not someone who deems that anything at all—including the foulest refuse—is capable of acquiring aesthetic value?” (p11) The exformal is therefore a kind of materialism, but one with a specific purpose beyond the material. Of this Bourriaud writes, “[m]aterialism is not the reversal or the inversion of idealist discourse […] it substitutes a ‘generalised decentering’ for other social movements.” (pp11-12).

Next Bourriaud goes on to describe how Althusser’s thought is central to his understanding of aesthetics and politics, and how this mode of thought has fallen out of fashion from the 1980s onwards. He claims that the ‘rediscovery’ of Marxism after 2008 has helped to decontextualise Althusser’s writing from some of its negative connotations that are related to Althusser’s own personal life. In terms of art and life he invokes Althusser’s concept of Durcharbeiten or “working-through”: this term applies to repetitive labour, for example going over the same scenes. In contrast, he writes that, “psychoanalysis seeks to set chains of signification in motion.” (p19)

Despite art’s ideals of moving beyond every day life, art has not managed to escape the narratives of waste and production in capitalism. He writes, “[s]ince the 1960s […] the individual work has been measured in terms of general production: its formats of visibility and social conditions, whether spatial or temporary. In other words, reflection of the norm represents the point of departure.” (p20) In contrast, Althusser’s work is in favour of a kind of materialism that is working towards a work without waste. In some ways this is compared to the psychoanalytic cure: as the subconscious analyses itself in this case, nothing is wasted.

The modes of meaning-making in art can therefore be also compared with psychoanalysis. Bourriaud states, “[i]f art were a machine it would be a kind of eidetic generator: attitudes, gestures, scenarios, discussions, human relations—the vaguest and most unstable matters—can take shape here. The common denominator of the varied activities comprising the field of art is formalisation.” (p21) This is a facet of all artistic production: “[t]ranslating an idea, a sensation, into organisation and order gives it new meaning.”

Bourriaud turns further to Althusser’s Writings on Psychoanalysis, finding some parallels with the work of the Birmingham School of Cultural studies He quotes the ideas of “aleatory materialism” (Althusser, p22 quoted in Bourriaud p23) and describes this as “the logic of emergence”: “something new begins to function in an autonomous manner.” quoted in Bourriaud (Althusser, p42 quoted in Bourriaud p23). Just as there is no outside or remainder in psychoanalysis (and hence no waste), Althusser defines history as “process without subject.” (p30) For Bourriaud this can be compared to Stuart Hall’s description of ideology “as practices rather than systems of ideas” (Stuart Hall (1980) Culture, Media and Language, p21 quoted in Bourriaud p32).

Whilst this cultural assessment is correct with respect to ideology and signification, Bourriaud notes that idealisation of mass culture, by way of cultural studies, has led to an inverted elitism where the origins of production are of the utmost importance over other artistic properties. This also denies waste (from bourgeois culture) since everything can be considered as art. This is the “mass line” of popular culture, and Bourriaud writes that “contemporary artists, when they manipulate popular culture from a hermeneutic and cultural perspective, unlimitedly inherit this ‘mass line.’” (p34) Through denying involvement with this “mass line” artists can avoid inheriting its ideologies. Bourriaud writes: “cultural production offers an immense constellation of signs from heterogenous spaces and times—or, to use another metaphorical register, a heap of rubble. Classifications and hierarchies belong to another universe: a world of norms, precalibrated forms and categories—in other words, all that stems from the fixative power of ideology.” (p34) When they deal with waste, artists avoid norms.

Art must look to ways to deal with these issues in the present. This is also a temporal issue because in the present one experiences traces of the past. Bourriaud writes, “[t]he present is uncertain by nature—forever flashing and oscillating between traces left by history and the potential they contain.” (p38) Aleatory materialism is a way to deal with this. It is compared with dialectical materialism, that Bourriaud describes as “merely idealism in disguise.” (p40) This is because dialectical materialism does not question the nature of the system but seeks to understand it. He writes, “[t]o oppose a system, one must first conceive its nature as precarious,” (p42) and further that, “[n]othing can unsettle this power [of the present] more than the display of ruins, scattered debris and images of fragility which contemporary artists extract from the archives: their provocation takes aim at the defensive illusionism proclaiming the order of things stems form ineluctable fatality.” (pp42-3)

Bourriaud then considers historical necessity as a paradox: he writes that, “every work of art affects both the past and the future: a site of temporal bifurcation, it opens paths that other artists will walk down and, at the same time, offers a perspective for re-reading the past.” (p44) This is because, “the work of art does not offer formal content alone; it also presents a corresponding interpretative and historical context: that is, it produces genealogies as well as outlooks.” (p45) It is linked with the political act of the production of art which cannot be avoided: “for any artist at all, then, situating oneself in a political space signifies, first and foremost, choosing the historical narrative within which she or he positions and displays his or her work.” (pp45-6)

The picture of the present and society that is available through the experience with contemporary art is available because it, “post-produces social reality: by formal means, it illuminates the montages constituting it—which are formal, too. Thus, one of the essential elements of contemporary art’s political programme is that of bringing the world into a precarious state—in other words, constantly affirming the transitory and circumstantial nature of the institutions that structure social life, the rules governing individual and collective behaviour.” (p46) This destabilising is central. It means that art does not just resist its current circumstances but has the ability to resist ongoing ideologies in cultural life. This, says Bourriaud is the “central political task of contemporary art”: it “does not involve denouncing any current ‘political’ fact in particular. Instead, the point is to bring precarity to mind: to keep the notation alive that intervention in the world is possible.” (p47) As a result, contemporary art is not only in the present, just as the present is itself tempered by the past: “contemporary art postulates multiple temporalities—a representation of time evoking the constellation” (p49)

Bourriaud offers many examples from contemporary art of works that deal with time, materiality and temporarily in exactly these ways. These works are all exformal. They are where “the writing of history and psychoanalysis” meet up. The idea of waste is inescapable in art and life, as Bourriaud observes that, “what the process of production leaves behind has assumed a preponderant position in politics, economy and culture.’ (p84) This has a temporary dimension because, ‘[t]he past is not only reactivated by the present; the very nature of ‘necessity’ (which is supposed to direct it) depends on the vagaries of the present.’ Again, he reiterates that art is not only its materials, writing that, “[t]he work of art offers not just formal content but corresponding interpretative and historical contexts.” How to deal with this is the open question offered to artists today.