memory. language, art. wittgenstein. books. ceramics.

all sorts of thinkings on memory, language, art, wittgenstein, books, etc, while I am getting on with my MA

Saturday 18 December 2010

Snow makes me very happy

We built this snowman today: a happy happy snowman :-)

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Drawing: the world is independent of my will.


"The world is independent of my will" (TLP, 6.373)

I had this A3 drawing ready for the MA Xmas party. Unfortunately, Lambeth dug up our road without warning today. Resurfacing. As a result I could not get to Camberwell.
Suddenly, Wittgenstein's quote seems very relevant.

Tuesday 14 December 2010

Burning books - no8

Introduction


The Getaway





I am taking books, that no longer have the society that supports them (uh! I have got a barn full of them!) and I reduce them to an immensely fragile state - so fragile, that they may disintegrate in hands - just like the memory of the times, that they represent.


Saturday 11 December 2010

Burning books - no7




I have started accumulating samples now to produce more predictable results.

The results are ephemeral and somewhat other-wordly indeed, but not so fragile, that I would not be able to touch or transport them.





I am taking books, that no longer have the society that supports them (uh! I have got a barn full of them!) and I reduce them to an immensely fragile state - so fragile, that they may disintegrate in hands - just like the memory of the times, that they represent.

Friday 10 December 2010

Porcelain airplanes.



Paper airplanes. In porcelain.

Headstones. Shatter. Gone.

As a late teenager I had a screensaver on my computer, that showed different ways to fold paper aircrafts. I do remember making one that actually flew.

Byproduct: glass in porcelain experiments.




Byproduct of experimentation with glass and porcelain. The light from the other side, coloured by glass.

Tuesday 7 December 2010

Burning books - no6


I cycled back grinning today. Isn't it glorious when things go right!

I have got the text. Yes, I have got all of the text on the pages of my books. They look ephemeral and other-worldly, translucent and extremely fragile. Beautiful. I am finally happy about something I have done.

Except - they are the wrong kind of books and, therefore, they have the wrong kind of text. My wheelbarrow is arriving to London in afew weeks time. In January, when the workshop reopens I will start firing them.




I am taking books, that no longer have the society that supports them (uh! I have got a barn full of them!) and I reduce them to an immensely fragile state - so fragile, that they may disintegrate in hands - just like the memory of the times, that they represent.

Thursday 2 December 2010

Thursday at Degree Art

Inflate Deflate (Karin Schlosser)

Degree Art has got a Christmas shopping show on now. Some very nice pieces indeed. My favorite was Karin Schlosser (above). Oh, and Julia Bailey, who's work I liked at our last year's MA show.
Anyway, everything is
extremely reasonably priced. Most of the pieces are well under a hundred! How do they manage that?










PS Unfortunately, I got caught up in a conversation with VJ, from Degree Art, and forgot to take the photos. There are more photos available from their website.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

ESSAY. Yeppee! and the problem of borders (book arts)

Essay submitted, done and dusted!

That essay research was certainly hugely beneficial for me: it answered a few important questions. Unfortunately, it has also revealed a few problems. For example, it is not helpful to come to this area of books from linguistics, having had focused on language and meaning structure  all those years (a bit like arriving to the wrong religion school: god is the same, but perspective is different). While it might be exploratory to question where the book/text/page/etc. starts and where it ends, I see those things distorted by the cognitive linguistics. Aristotelian classification does not work. Mental categories have prototype structure and fuzzy edges (uh. clever me.). Therefore, my category of books can extend right into periphery without questions about borders: no starts, no ends.

Well, this looking for borders is what I  find frustrating. Once they are established, some things become "in" and others - "out". For example, Johanna Drucker offers an alarmingly narrow view of what a book is. All of the stuff of my previous pages about the burnt books would be "out". Alternatively, it could be called "periphery".

Instead of trying to build the walls, to keep the wrong kind of books "out", it might be more productive to establish prototypes for the categories, so the rest of the group could locate itself somewhere around it. Just a thought.

Sure - it is not as simple as that. I was reading Stephen Davies recently. He mentioned "disjunctive definition". It sounds very Wittgensteinian, but - certainly more to the point (from my point of view).