WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
©mac dunlop 7/10/96

The reality of being has to do with originality. That aspect of factual evidence, through which truth is extracted. Regarding the premise that Original = truth, in respect of documented or historical essence; as a metaphoric quality of living, and of standards which have meaning - insofar as meaning has any standard quality. In respect of which, meaning and truth are definitive as standards of belief without a definitive trace of originality. Understanding is based on knowledge, and also on belief, without any reference to a necessarily original state. This knowledge and belief relies on the production and interpretation of reproduction and copy. The evolution of reproductive production deprives knowledge and truth of evidential relation to an original, in that originals context or content. Context is continually reinventing; the result of recognizing the difference between one observer and another, or the difference between the same observer participating in an event at different times. In the case of the latter, there is no one event, i.e. experience of the same event at different times results in different and distinct experiences. In the case of different observers to the same event, there is the potential for different experiences within the same event for different observers, therefore different and distinct experiences must also apply.

For example, the event of this reading for the observer. Should the thematic concern be turned to another focus? The interpretation of the event for different observers will rely not only on the expressions made here as authorship, but on the expressions transformed as readership. The next quotation will be used to illustrate this:

" There's dog shit on my shoe, -I stepped on,
on the road, in front of you, 'car that has to stop',
for me to show you my shitty sole,
- made by a dog that took the same fateful step into the street,
to stand where I stand in front of you, on this road
that is all roads in britain so securely linked.
This dog was loose, upon the streets of britain,
as I am, as you are, as one tail wag, one heartbeat,
one fossil fuel ruminant."1.

Keith Moxey, author of the Practice of Theory, considers 'empirical' evidence as 'text-based'. That is considering objects - and therefore art objects - as contextualized or surrounded by text, i.e. history. An inevitable result of an empirical view. However the event of coming across, or to something- an artwork- doesn't enter history until the experience takes place. Which history then, is under inspection form that point of experience?

At what point can discussion be confidently shifted from what Walter Benjamin described as "original use" the initial event,to the point where it then passes into 'ritual use', or history? Derrida's concept of the 'signature' is similar. He refers to the idea that"... there will be a signature everytime that an event occurs everytime there is the production of a work, whose occurance is not limited to what can be semantically analysed."2. Derrida suggest this 'signature; is more a 'sign post' -the mark of an event -'something other than merely writing down one's own name. "It is an act, a performative by which one commits to something, by which one confirms... that one has done something...'3.

This 'act' is similar to Benjamin's 'original use' or first use as 'political' which once having taken place, then becomes 'ritual' through repetition, or representation.

Derrida states that:'the signature of the author isn't limited to the name of the author' and therefore "...the identity of the work isn't necessarily identified with the title it receives in its catalogue."

-However this identifies that there is a signature with a distinct temporal context. (the event-that between viewer and artwork for example with which an artwork can be identified.) Its existence, or non-existence when the artwork exists as represented, or re-presented at another moment with another 'event'. So that as well as what meaning, or what it means or why its there, is always /already there as well.

What this indicates is the potential inexhaustible nature of the possible discourses which can surround an artwork. Understanding that empirical evidence promotes a view of understanding historical knowledge as text based discourse which surrounds objects with significance and with signature.

" There's dog shit on my shoe, -I stepped on,
on the road, in front of you, 'car that has to stop',
for me to show you my shitty sole,"4.

The event of perceiving objects in this context is an event with a constructed 'signature'. Beyond its 'original use' (Benjamin)or its own existence, its "thereness' (Derrida) has moved into 'ritual' or 'remainder'.

Derrida refers to this remainder as 'countersignature' to include "the political and social" legitimization of something as a work of art through its position in the history of art. In this sense Derrida therefore considers that 'there is no signed work before the countersignature'. 5

So that while an object exists in its ;thereness', it is recognized by both its signature and its countersignature. Where the existence of a work attests to there being a signature, but its position, value, and criteria of interest are understood as much through its countersignature.

"Countersignature" refers to established criteria - both positively and negatively- and the significance of the cultural event or 'ritual' in which the work is positioned.

The involvement of history in the idea of 'countersignature' also requires definition. Dominic LaCapra discusses 'documentary' and 'workmanlike' aspects of historical knowledge in "Rethinking Intellectual History" . La Capra considers that documentative history is relative to recounting empirical evidence and workmanlike history is critical and transformative, for it deconstructs and reconstructs the given.

In this sense, for the historian (and the researcher) "the very reconstruction of a 'context' or a 'reality' take place on the basis of textualized remainders of the past. This 'textuality' is however already 'implicated in problems of language use... it raises the question of both the possibilities, and the limits of meaning."6.

Therefore, there appears to be a relatively unexamined assumption that theoretical justification lies in or arises from the historical context in which works of art are produced. This historical context is already an aspect of the political/social countersignature to which Derrida refers. But the 'thereness' of an artwork inspires both historical and non-historical discourses.

"...made by a dog that took the same fateful step into the street, to stand where I stand in front of you, on this road that is all roads in britain so securely linked."7.

Film critic Christian Metz speaks of "subcodes of identification" in his essay "The Imaginary Signifier". These subcodes refer to the idea of a"standard formula" - and its variations - of film making and how it refers to authorship:
"Only one of them will detain me for the moment, the one which "expresses the viewpoint of the film maker" in the standard formula... unusual framings, uncommon angles, etc. In the standard definitions one thing strikes me; I do not see why these uncommon angles should express the viewpoint of the film maker any more than perfectly ordinary angles, closer to the horizontal. However, the definition is comprehensible even in its inaccuracy: precisely because it is uncommon, the uncommon angles makes us more aware of what we had merely forgotten to some extent in its absence :an identification with the camera (with the author's viewpoint)." "The ordinary framings are finally felt to be non-framings: I espouse the film maker's look (without which no cinema would be possible), but my consciousness is not too aware of it. The uncommon angle reawakens me and teaches me what I already knew. And then, it obliges my look to stop wandering freely over the screen for the moment and scan it along more precise lines of force which are imposed on me. Thus for a moment I become directly aware of the emplacement of my own presence-absence in the film simply because it has changed."8.

Authorship is then, also authorized. Even a cursory history of visual art for example, abounds with attributions, and anonymity, as much as with signature, and authenticity. Expert knowledge is not quantifiable, or qualifiable necessarily, it is more an aspect of how little, or how much there is to go on.

Famous fakers, such as Eric Hebborn unmask the falability of authenticity- the weakness of which has as its chief concern financial interest- through valuation and devaluation of objects such as art objects. This goes beyond the twentieth century - just as forgery and fakery does - and goes beyond Walter Benjamin's concern with the age of mechanical reproduction. However, it is through the latter, that such matters can be viewed with a more appropriate perspective, i.e. the subjugation of an original through any of a myriad reproductive processes.

Television for example, is impossible to consider without accounting for its objective forms. All the technical realizations which result in its reality - its objective form in the sense of the object of a television and its screen - which have to be considered in the perception of the medium of television itself.

Then, subscription can be made to the context - this objective form- out of which arises the content- its subject(s) or subjectivity. The messy part is how these constituents overlap in considering what is really there. The components are not so easily separated from whatever the whole of the perceptive experience of 'being there' entails.

This guides the observer to the perspective of understanding that the experience undertaken is not an experience per se, but a dependancy. A dependancy not only on what is there, but on what is known to be there by the observer, and therefore how much of it can be understood. Participation in the event of perception involves the understanding of taking part. Meaning, and experience therefore, are neither entirely the result of what is observed, or participated in: there is no such thing as an isolated experience.

Involvement in experience, predetermines interest. Curiousity is integral to the understanding of how something is constructed, as much as it is to reception/interpretation of meaning. In disrupting the style of construction, or as Mertz suggests, encouraging the viewer to "become directly aware of the emplacement of [one's] own presence-absence in the film simply because it has changed."9.

"this intersection of ignition
combusting like frozen lollipop sticks
frictionally activates
the hands of primitive animals.


That burning bush
the crossroads between your legs
you brave sitter,
my model of the universe in the eye of the beholder.


You, exception which makes the rule,
will be which will I inherit
whatever
I protest.


Key hole surgery stops
wondering where you're coming from
all the times you've told me
mary's sheets are clean.


I dropped
liquid like acid ate the table,
vivisected mother for father to appear between the doors,
at the gate of heaven, Sir.


In your eyes
was the 'toot!toot! chugga chugga"
of this transporter beam made flesh,
Like a credit card


I surgically removed
from the stomach of a wolverine
a dream of a future where skill
and your baser instincts


would whip the ground
and purify the water
more than
for an end in itself."10.

To extend the sculptural interest in shape and form, in this case the object of the television, is not necessarily sufficient to account for the movement of meaning, its flux, just as it is difficult to account for the motion of the picture -or illusion of motion- itself. It is easily understood that the appearance of motion is dependant on an illusion of the eye, while that same illusion has the significant validity of appearing visually real. This position as an observer - that the apparent motion is an illusion - is difficult to maintain as a constant aspect of what it is that is apparently moving.

Translating such enigmatic and unfocused concerns into a written narrative such as this, constricts and contradicts the point of view. Written narrative has its own quality of technological components for both producer and consumer.


"You, exception which makes the rule,
will be which will I inherit
whatever
I protest."11.

Over the course of time since the first uses of the technology of written language, naturalisation and familiarization have occured - in this instance what is commonly called 'literacy' - determining in some way what is said, in both the context of its meaning, and the context of its shape and form. The latter is reference to criteria such as grammatical correctness for example -shape, form. The former refers to the intention of expressing ideas and thought-meaning. However both contexts intertwine in the production of meaning through the use of language in different forms, such as poetry, where the construction or deconstruction of the tautology of written language can in itself convey meaning. The simplest illustration of this would be the use of slang and dialect at the expense of the rule of grammar, such as the work of Robert Burns. Meaning here can be described as relative to understanding the breaking of convention on behalf of the reader- spelling, for instance - and the assumption that the breaking is intentional -meant to be recognized.

"...yet scarce as lang's a guid kail whittle, I'm unco queer."12.

An understanding of intention results in meaning being derrived, or assumed: it is the particular office of the observer or participant, that meaning is in flux dependant as much on interpretation, historical experience etc, as it is on the cultural conventions through which meaning may be either explained or applied. Just as easily, the author may adapt conventions, like the grammatical, to make meaning. Consider that when a poem such as Burns "Adam Armour's Prayer" is spoken, its phonetic arrangement makes more sense than when it is written. The dialect, in this instance a Scottish one, is pronounced by its being printed on the page, estranged from the familiarity of written language and making more significant the spoken. The participant then, is strongly reminded of the spoken attributes of language, through the interruption of the convention of the written language.

How then, can such meaning be located- in the sense of fixing a starting point, a locus, or focus from which interpreted meaning can be applied to the consideration of intended meaning? Or is it a mistake to search for a centre or 'lynchpin'?

If we consider for a moment art forms generally, can we apply meaning to authorship, as self expression, or as reader, viewer, whatever as interpreter? Are both equal/ unequal, is not so important as to begin by ascribing importance to both?

Mary Jane Jacobs considers these questions as integral to the intention of production: "...what if the location of art in the world was determined by trying to reach and engage that audience most effectively?"
"...what if the audience for art were considered as the goal at the center of art production, at the point of conception, as opposed to the modernist Western aim of self-expression?"13.
Sculpturally, this concern results in what Suzanne Lacy described as existing "...in the space between the words public and art" as "an unknown relationship between artist and audience, a relationship that may itself become the artwork." 14.

Lacy also discusses the concerns of another artist and writer, Lynn Hershman. Hershman explains "the relationship between mass culture, media, and engaged art " not through definition, but as an essential necessity simply because:"The image and values of the culture that produces the (television) programmes invade the subconscious cultural identity of its viewers. Its essential that the dialogue becomes two-way and interactive, respects and invites multiple points of view."15.

It may be too general a suggestion, however in order to continue, it is important to inject other qualities which return us to the discussion of shape and form, that is, toward objective considerations which become involved with the subjective.


I surgically removed
from the stomach of a wolverine
a dream of a future where skill
and your baser instincts


would whip the ground
and purify the water
more than
for an end in itself."16.

The late Keith Haring suggested in 1987 that: "Most modern painting" is lost in formal investigation, which better serves a pursuit of 'science of materials' than a true pursuit of image and intervention." He was referring as much to cubism and its interest in the science of perception as to the "... application of wax, straw, towels, broken plates, chairs, utensils and wood constructions, which serve to 'build up' the surface...", The early eighties work of Ansel Keiffer, for example. Further the reference was to a general view of visual art production, one which did not determine categories such as painting , sculpture, installation etc. but which could be confined to the production of art for the expressing and working toward articulating meanings made by the artist as producer.

"Joseph Bueys has already explored most of the territory of the ambiguous figurative abstraction that Julian Schnabel pretends to have invented." (March 20, 1987).

We are invited to think of 'territory' as more than simply a physical location, but one which is cerebally constructed, not simply imagined, but critically viewed. At the same time such statements illustrate that prior knowledge is significant to what understanding is arrived at. If a viewer was trying to understand Julian Schnabel, and knew nothing of the work of Joseph Bueys, a statement like Haring's, would be less likely. The idea that Schnabel 'invented' 'ambiguous figurative abstraction" may then seem justified for example, depending on how authorized Schnabel's countersignature appears to be.

The weight, or proof of such things remains a matter of perspective. Just as the phrase 'Columbus discovered America" points to a history of events, the concept of that "discovering" has to do with a Eurocentric historical fallacy. He may have been one of the first Europeans to bring back news of an unknown continent but was it comparable with the fame of the first native American to discover Columbus, as the Pinta neared the American coast? Or is it more likely that these aspects of fame and discovery have differing significances and meanings in different cultures and politics?17.

The reason these enigmas are mentioned is not to introduce a point which will prove the validity of one or the other. There is indication for example that one of the sailor's in the crew of the Pinta first spotted the Caribbean shoreline before Columbus. It was on the pronouncement of discovery by the crew member that Columbus insisted that he had in fact seen land the night before while everyone was asleep. The fact that a sum of money was to be paid to the first person to sight land on the expedition may have had something to do with it. The fact is that Columbus is not a hugely significant individual in the history of the world, but is conversely a very well known historical figure. Therefore, we should suspect that history's potential is to provide figures who are famous, and historic, who were marginal, while those who are now historically marginal were potentially significant. Even the best documented history is likely to ignore significant individuals, for whatever reasons.

"you brave sitter,
my model of the universe in the eye of the beholder."18

What then is to be assured as original? What meaning can be derrived from fakes? How is the marginalized to be included in any history? Finally, when does something move from being 'present' to being historic, and what does it take with it?

"The new developments are sometimes, to be sure, the result of the influence of tradition, but they need not be linked to that tradition merely by historical ties; sometimes it is the new art work themselves that help mark out just what that tradition is.' 19

Even Hegel refers to history, as having no 'immediate existence, but only the intellectual presentation of it'20.


"Whashisname?
"Fortune"?
"Plastic pillars"?
"Rock Salt"?
"Gestheman-mania"?


£cost a bomb-
gnashing teeth
hidden in the "cone of silence"
ticking away
measuring time by revolution.


this live's desperate to
me,
says I
fellow ship of the Sargossa...


£cost a bomb-
for a wall bracket to hold up against
this scepter-split Isle
I see from
prism to pragmaticism.


I left it too late
to say
tomorrow,
as if god had plans
and he could turn him/he
down


loaded in my image...
this veiled taliban
drew breath
& caught my eye


(wore a sharp suit with a slit up the side,
cumberbund arranged foetally round
his barging gut...)


Bolt upright,
the wrath of god -
green eyes,
palpitatin' wrists,
a hurricane of a whisper,
and twelve reindeer,


I swear,
it was blindin'
for the caning of a child:
could have shot them all
otherwise/somehow...


The T.V. felt
that stitch in time on the side
from holding a coffin@shoulder. height.com

(Anger is a natural part of any trauma event)


Accidents of breath,
inhale/exhale, whatever...
and tight halo rings
fingertips of neutronic bombs.


The midas touch:
perfect corrosion
wears out the eyes -
comets appear in the skies
above the funeral.


My toupee didn't just go grey,
it died,
my cold head thought of (paradise)
the points I'd never spend
accumulated over a thousand discount cards
I visioned air miles
and wondered about
hiring a flight straight up.

But god, it would £cost a bomb -


The circus would be an improvement,
or an umbrella,
some form of protection...
a volcanic glacier
in a sugar cone
with a flake.
Okay? Please? Okay?


They don't make making up like that anymore,
when whale oil lit up the night sky,
instead of earth blood and cow farts.
But it £cost a bomb -


to get Mister Minister
to pop the question
and admit
to mass conception
on a local scale." 21.

Whereas the sciences are not so troubled by aesthetic justifications, fine art is -unless we consider that science can decide upon what constitutes good and bad science aesthetics based on some historical scientific model. It is not conclusive however, that visual art practice is entirely an aesthetic one with entirely aesthetic intentions. Dada depended on an anti-aesthetic for example, which could only be rationalized within aesthetic theory as an anti-aesthetic or anti- theory. The problem is that these elements are not themselves in diametric opposition. Anti-aesthetics is not simply the polar opposite of aesthetics. In becoming an aspect of aesthetics in modernism however, the theory itself could not be sustained as an aspect of 'beauty' only increasingly as an aspect of its own discourse, a discourse whose meaning is only apparent in the attempt to apply its descriptions to things through intellectual argument and discussion.

Like the body, any reference to the figure is not only a consideration of narrative, but one which includes the viewer who in having a body refers themselves to the artwork or vica versa. The human form in art is not only an image understood through its relationship to other representations of the same subject throughout art history. It is also this delicate instance of meeting where the figure of the painting has recourse to the figure of the viewer, and the relative or possibly unique experience any particular viewer bring to the experience themselves. Experience which may or may not involve understanding of art, or aesthetics for example. It may simply be the circumstance of inhabiting a human form "always/already" and the associative response in seeing one in a painting or sculpture, or film.

(Anger is a natural part of any trauma event)22.

But what is that? Is the response to be categorized as erotic, romantic? Are the signs which make up these repertoires of emotion now so overflowing that the artwork succumbs to the mass produced images of advertising and selling , in short is the reference point of the human form, now a photograph more than a personal three dimensional human form? Have we ceased to see the history from which an object stems because we are distanced by the overwhelming availability of images before we come to that which is labelled 'art'? (Is this bad?)

Is this tempting aspect of reproduction suggesting a shift in the interpretation of artwork, or a shift in the intention of artwork? Conversely can it be assumed that the technical and social developments which have taken place since the advent of photography drastically changed the viewing experience? Is there surety in the suggestion that how art was viewed prior to cinematic motion images hasn't been affected by the introduction of that cinema? While scientific knowledge in the area of perspective may have advanced, can we assume that with that knowledge we view things differently? Does awareness of the illusion of film influence the experience of viewing of the illusion? The photographic image has already plunged us into the lost original, and the perfect copy. perfect at least to our late twentieth century eyes.

"down


loaded in my image...
this veiled taliban
drew breath
& caught my eye"23.

(end)

notes:

1 "Poem"30/9/94. the shift of topic from prose to poetry is disruption of writing convention- the flow of thought - and as such imposes a dynamic which is determined by the author, and translatable by the reader. the meaning of this disruption is not explained within the flow of text, but is interpretable of the basis of the activity of reading. The observer can - does not have to - concern themselves with the significance of introducing dog shit into the text, or the significance of introducing poetry into the flow of the prose. These are footnoted here as examples of possible interpretive curiosities, i.e. questions raised for consideration, or as example of author-ative control.

2 Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: Art Media Architecture, ed P. Brunette, and D. Wills.

3 ibid.

4 see 1.

5 see 2. pg 18

6 "Rethinking Intellectual History" .pg 26/27 La Capra.

7 see 1.

8 The Imaginary Signifier, Christian Metz, Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, a film theory reader,
edited by Philip Rosen, published by Columbia University Press, 1986.

9 The Imaginary Signifier, Christian Metz, Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, a film theory reader,
edited by Philip Rosen, published by Columbia University Press, 1986.

10 the cross of fire, 6/10/96

11 ibid.

12 from "Adam Armour's Prayer", pg 175,The Poetical Works of Robert Burns, Sands and Co.

13 Mary Jane Jacobs, An unfashionable audience, Mapping the Terrain. pg.50

14 Suzanne Lacy, M.t.t intro. pg 20

15 pg. 26 S. Lacy, intro. MTT.

16 see 10.

17 Actually, that should be first native Caribbean, and illustrates further how vague any history can be when viewed from the surface.
Perhaps that is an enigma as well, at what point for example does the surface of a field of knowledge change into what lies beneath the surface?

18 see 10.

19 pg. 77 But is it Art? The Value of Art and the Temptation of Theory, B.R. Tilghman , pub. Basil Blackwell Inc. NY. ISBN 0-631-13663-0,1984.

20 pg. 11

21 "£cost a bomb'. 6/10/96

22 ibid.

23 ibid.

m.d.