#aidanmccarthy

[1957aidan]

[1957aidan]

Recently I have been feeling  particularly European…perhaps in anticipation of my forthcoming  and unwanted excommunication from that Community. Comme d’habitude, I found myself at the Tate Modern to consume Elton John’s  largely euro-centric  collection of photography…entitled The Radical Eye. A continuous tone of black and white modernism which fetishised  both the 20th century and the virtues of experimentation. Hugely satisfying, it was akin to imbibing the best part of a bottle of port attended by a sharp Manchego and a touch of sweet  Membrillo.  Unusually, I then found myself tempted, rather greedily, to sample another of the Tate’s exhibitions…in the way that one might finish off the evening with a gratuitous cocktail. That’s how I came to be intoxicated for the second time that day by the freshness and carnival spirit that was the Wolfgang Tillman’s display.

On entering the first room, my senses were assailed by both the scent of printer ink and an almost psychedelic colour palette. Acid lemons, limes and orange alongside deep blood reds and blue-blacks swirled around me like Athena’s Euminides. It was a diametric contrast and antidote to the chiaroscuro of Elton’s Radical Eye. Wolfgang is a long established figure in the Art World, recognised for his diverse practice exploring contemporary culture. He is celebrated, amongst other things, for his mantra…’if one thing matters everything matters’. His work is an exposition of visual democracy…there is no hierarchy among his subjects…and represents a voyage of discovery, aligned to a  commitment to using photography as an armature on which to hang his own interests. Which include his politics. For  Wolfgang, aesthetics and issues share the same space.

It probably isn’t useful for me to spend a lot of time analysing Wolfgang’s entire catalogue of work…there is plenty of speculation and deduction already out there when it comes to that…but I am interested in a statement that he made in an interview recently. He said something along the lines of  ‘the defining quality of art is that it is useless…so it can be free to be just whatever it wants to be’.  I like this idea.  That Art doesn’t necessarily have an obvious function. I think it’s true.  By the way…I don’t think that useless is the same thing as unimportant or without purpose. Art definitely has a purpose. That may be a discussion for another day. But it may be true that all Art and it's analogue, Culture, at it's best, is use-less. I’m inclined to quote Brian Eno, whose definition of Culture is ‘everything we don’t HAVE to do’.  So…we do need to eat... but we don’t need to create Teppanyaki. We need to be clothed... but we don’t need Haute Couture. We need to communicate but we don’t  need...Love Island. For instance. Of course, Eno has far more sophisticated examples than I do  to back his theories  up… which I won’t develop here… but you get my drift. It is my contention however that both Tillmans and Eno  are on to a similar thing. Being useless, and perhaps unnecessary  is great because it leaves us, the spectator, free to bring something  of our own to the artwork when we observe it. A grace note or a logical non sequitur. Consequently the artwork itself is free to fly in any direction...like a kite at the mercy of the wind. It may even be that the artwork doesn’t exist until we engage with it. This reminds me of the old philosophical conjecture about the tree that falls in the forest. Does it make a sound if nobody hears it? Can it be proved or disproved? That’s the problem with Art…it needs a witness before it is complete. And then the witness comes with their own individual circumstance, preconceptions, prejudices and experiences. Quite unlike anyone else’s. So I believe that there is no such thing as a single reading of a piece of Art. Only multiple readings. Jacques Derrida proseytized for this. Marcel Duchamp knew this. David Bowie also  knew this and exploited it brilliantly in his lyrics, which frequently floated between meaning and non-meaning, often by using William Burrough’s  cut-up techniques, or by deliberate obscurantism. Anish Kapoor is another artist who makes Artwork that at first glance doesn’t have too much to say. It leaves space for the spectator  to make of it what they will…and that may be nebulous…or ineffable. Good art, in my opinion is not result orientated. It may act on the viewer’s limbic system, or frontal cortex, or both at the same time .Those Foxes that practice associative thinking may have a more satisfying experience than the slightly banal counterpoint of the Hedgehogs that demand certainty and closure over the balance of probability or the unexplained. Art is not best experienced in the context of binding verdicts or the peer evaluated environment. I myself am trying, through my own work, to make photographs, and more accurately, series of photographs, that are elliptical propositions, open to interpretation. This I think reflects both my Socratic disposition and my own struggle to hang on to the mysterious and poetic in our existence, in the face of Science’s incontrovertible, dominant, and irresistible primacy over the fields of knowledge, explanation and  solution. I frequently feel torn between my desire to understand the world and a corresponding inability to know anything with any certainty. My challenge to myself is to make work that reflects that tension.

Francis Hodgson is a photographic educator, writer and critic who appears  to be far less conflicted about these things than I am. Perhaps he is a little better informed l than I am. I think it may be possible that he has acquired a superior appreciation of Art than I have. He has recently written a critique of the Tillmans exhibition at the Tate. Here it is ;

https://francishodgson.com/tag/wolfgang-tillmans/

He seems to be unhappy with both Wolfgang and The Tate, and has taken issue with the stochastic style, form and content of the display. He has written of his concern at the scale, the variety of pictographic language, it’s political content, and it’s apparent lack of a coherent message or obvious conclusions. He accuses Tillman’s of incontinence. And  triviality. Well, I think that he is wrong. In my opinion, Hodgson is a Hedgehog. Perhaps his scorn is a symptom of generational dissatisfaction. He does, after all, rather patronisingly also accuse Tillmans of teenage sentiment.  Or  perhaps  it is rooted in something that we can only speculate about. My feeling is that in an emerging post photography age, a Quantum age, where, in fact, a particle may be in two places at once, that reality itself is essentially indeterminate. That nothing is fixed despite our desire for reassurance. Photography is just one way that we have tried to freeze probability into solidity. I give you The Decisive Moment. But it isn’t so. Reality itself remains open to multiple overlapping and  complex  possibilities.  Bowie’s lyrics reflect just this. Attacking Tillmans for not coming to conclusions is missing the point. For me, Tillmans is in the Avant Garde. In the future ‘photography’ may no longer be valued as a document at all…rather as a type of flow chart for ambiguity.

I think it is a shame that Hodgson has felt the need to be so negative about this exhibition. Not just because he obviously experienced it in a different way to myself. For me it was a refreshing and inspirational moment. But it’s much more that I feel there is no need to pin the butterfly down. The artists responsibility is firstly only to himself and secondly to make other people care about his or her obsessions…and then for those people to experience and process them as their own . It’s actually the Incomplete Principle that fascinates us and draws us back to the Art, time and time again.

 Perhaps it’s even the case that the only way to defeat mortality is to transform all that precedes it  into a search for answers. That’s for the Scientists to deal with. The Artists need only point at the questions.

I have posted some of my own images from the Tillmans show…in the hope that they will suggest  the joy that I experienced as I navigated  a couple of hours one May afternoon in  London.

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CIRCLE OF CONFUSION

Are you feeling anxious? I am. I am feeling anxious. I’m not exactly sure what it is I’m feeling anxious about…but I do have some anxiety. It may be some sort of uncertainty but it’s not clear what in particular is at the root of my anxiety. I am aware of it as a sort of low level hum in the background of life. At sub-conscious level. Liminal. But I am definitely aware of it. Maybe I have always had it …but I don’t really remember it from when I was younger. Of course there have always been reasons to be anxious…I mean,like nearly everybody, I have never really had enough money. In a First World way. And occasionally we all fret about our health and that of our loved ones. In a NHS way .And I suppose the Cold War was a bit of a worry. In a sort of abstract way. But there was always the pub and the telly to take our minds off things and keep calm and carry on way.

I’m being slightly facetious of course. Anxiety has always been a companion to the human condition. Actually, although some might say that us baby boomers have got off a bit lightly, in the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune stakes…the last century was one of the most fraught and stress inducing ever. Revolution. Wars. The Bomb. Poverty. Famine. Disorder. Disease. etc etc.

However…my feeling is… that we, in this century, may be presently experiencing levels of anxiety on an individual and collective scale…every day…that many, at least in the so called First World, have not had to before. Some people claim that we are all living with Millenial Anxiety. Now,I know that this is a term usually applied to a particular demographic…loosely that generation who followed The Baby Boomers…but perhaps we could also apply it to the years since The Millenium…and I might argue more specifically since September 11th 2001. I think there is a before and after.

There is a contention that the events of that day initiated a profound change in the global psyche. That’s a statement that’s perhaps slightly facile but nevertheless can be defended. However…significantly, it now also looks as if this event occurred at the very point when what we call The Digital Platform was also transforming our existence. And I don’t just mean in Photography.In the future it will be known as the early digital age when we were also switching perhaps from a Newtonian reading of science and technology to a Quantum one. Where a particle may now be in two places at once. No wonder our brains hurt. We are already a long way down the road to a fully digital economy in addition to the rise of digital communication systems…by which I am referring to and include the incredible proliferation of 24 hour digital television channels ,internet, world wide web, 5G phone technologies ,virtual reality and of course, the often hostile and divisive social media platforms. We are all mediated now. Or, as the brilliant Thomas De Zengotita has put it…What Counts Is The Code. We are being saturated by information. Overload. Passwords. We are more connected and less connected simultaneously. We have to rely on technology far more than ever before. And I don’t think we can all cope with this. We aren’t all ready. Perhaps the frontal cortex needs a bit more development (which it will probably get as neoroscience and biogenetics are already aiding and abetting it’s natural evolution). We are all aware of the media stories about how anxiety and mental health issues are sweeping through Generation Y as it is known. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if we are anxious. I have come up with a list of some of the contemporary lightning conductors for anxiety that I think may be indexical of our new century neurosis in a way that was not so exaggerated in the last one. Airports and travel generally. Security. Surveillance. Global Violence. Terror. Mistrust of established Political Systems and Politicians. Job Insecurity (especially among the middle classes now).Privatisation. Automation. Big Pharma. Human Rights and Personal Identity. Isolation. Alienation. Body Image (especially among the young). Turbo powered advertising and consumerism….or the need to be defined by what you have rather than what you are. That’s quite a list and I think it could go on and on… In May 2002 I travelled to New York as a professional photographer on assignment. I visited Ground Zero and was, like many other people, profoundly moved by what I saw there. I was unable to make a photograph of what I saw there at the time but later felt compelled to make the series of works which now constitute my book Circle of Confusion. This work is not a travelogue but an attempt not only to record my feelings about what I saw at Ground Zero, but also an attempt to reflect or document the new inner and outer anxieties of the modern age. It’s about how we live now.

My book has been published and designed by Sutherl&Editions, a really lovely niche independent publisher who specialise in beautiful high quality productions. .To date, both Foyles and The Photographers Gallery bookshop have Circle of Confusion in stock now, and I am hopeful that some other well known bookshops will follow suit shortly. I will not be selling through Amazon as I would like analogue bookshops to survive in the face of that overwhelming competition. If you would like to either see or purchase a copy please contact me directly on… aidanmccarthy@onetel.com