Precious Wendy 6    pixels on screen, variable dimensions

This is from a while ago, about a year. It relates somewhat to an awareness of the historical social contextualization  of women as object. And in a sense, art object. An ornament and compliment to a located ego’s social mirror and status within said.

It related to a broader series which encompassed the idea of woman as pharmaceutical; as anaesthesia, which is certainly how woman as an idea often function within an economy and social sphere of images.  I’m not saying this out of some notion of woman as victim (indeed, one can find legion of women who are complicit in such a notion), nor from a condemnatory view (as I have certainly in past participated in such a positing), merely commenting upon an observation.

I haven’t worked on ‘photo/text/concept’ work as this for some time, as I’ve had other aesthetic concerns, (only a nominal amount of which is presented here, a situation which arguably I should rectify) but concerns whose ‘products’ I feel could be served by works as these in fashions which I hope to expound upon(both visually and textually)  shortly.

Failures of Imagination I ; Trinity Test Site with Groves And Oppenheimer 36″x48″ acrylic on board

I remember after coming along a bit, painting this, how the subject matter, I didn’t think it justified heroisization. The Manhattan project, it seemed to me a gross failure of humanity, of human imagination. In the 20th century a radical new set of models and conceptions about the nature of the material universe opened up…And of course this knowledge was used to develop a weapon of such devastating consequence as to literally cleave history into a ‘before’ and ‘after’.

Technically, it certainly marked a ‘profound achievment’, but ethically ? The term ‘genius’ used to refer to an inner voice of conscience, similar to Plato’s ‘Daemon’, and then, around the period of the enlightenment, shifted to mean ‘One possesed of superior mental abilities’.

But superior mental abilities without the conscience and imagination to guide them is monstrosity. Look at the recent article in Vanity Fair, where Richard Perle (no doubt partly in an attempt to distance himself from the scapegoat which GW is swiftly becoming) goes on about how he “underestimated the depravity” into which Iraq would sink owing to the invasion and occupation. In essense he’s saying his support for the invasion was brought about by his lack of imagination regarding the consequences. He didn’t understand the chaos which can become unlocked in the human heart, and that war is a serious business. Why it almost made me sick the first time I saw the image of Bush cavalierly blustering into a megaphone atop that pile of rubble. You could see so clearly that he was not a serious person, not a person who understood consequences. Not a person who understood what the spilling of blood meant.

Which isn’t to say there is never a cause, or justification, or perhaps imperative to use force, to ‘make war’. But that when a nation enters into such a course, it must be done seriously and gravely, for upon such a course, all forces of chaos and darkness in humanity will rise up and be known.

And of course, as regards WW II…Was it neccesary ? Keynes warned of the consequences of the scapegoating, punitive measures laid on Germany at Versailles, and how the vengeful, economic colonization it amounted to, would lead straight to the darkness which would follow, a few brief decades after their enstatement.

This is actually something which I’m trying to dimly convey in my abstact Connectogon pieces. A sense of the vast scale, sweep, complexity, and interconnectedness of things in the human condition. A sense of the unseeable, yet paradoxically predictable nature of events in history. Looking to the future, we can see many possible strands, many future outcomes. But if the actions we are taking now, are ones which help to enforce a system of injustice, poverty, and degradation, there will be consequences to bear.

Teraflock Anomaly of Unresolvable Coordinates. Mixed Media Relief.

This is the ‘Nth dimensional cluster’, reconfigured and further collapsed. I like that this was originally a 60″x70″ panel of canvas, which has been compressed and condensed to it’s current size, around 36″ wide by 48″ high. I want this to be part of a series of works in a similar vein and methodology, which work together as a wall scale mural, probably between about 20′ to 60′ across, as time and interest allows.

Recursive Meta Blossom (36″x72″ pixels on screen) Detail

Hamlet Rex 48″x48″ Acrylic on Board

I made this just after the start of the Iraqi Occupation. 2003. I was still working at this company, Teligence, that had all these, uh, dating services. Gay, straight, long term, swingers, etc etc.I’d screen the calls for anything that was illegal. People would spill out their deepest desires, longings, loneliness.

I was also coming to terms with how badly I’d mistreated my ex-girlfriend, and somewho conflating all my feelings about the invasion with my own feelings of self loathing about how I had been to her, how I was in the world. All my indecision.

I made this after reading and thinking about Naomi Klein’s essay  Baghdad Year Zero in Harpers. The idea leaving  the reconstuction (both material and psychic )  of a country reeling from ten years of sanctions, rule by tyrant, and military invasion to ‘market forces’; We’ve seen such things before sadly. What will the ‘ general consequences ‘ of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ fifteen years from now ? The piece is a bit heavy handed I think, but these are heavy handed times…

The thing is, it’s really impossible to get the gist of what this is through a screen. We’re depicting inverted nth dimensional topologies, which is hard enough to do, let alone photograph.

This will be glued together this week, note the exposed canvas edges, I like those, I like the idea of a canvas whose conceptual or representatonal attempts have imploded it, but whose ragged edges still flailingly map onto 3 dimensional time/space.

Something else I like about my place, on the hour, you can hear and feel (it shakes the house) the shunting of trains together, through the night.

This is an example of more of the size and scale of what I’m interested in:

Teraflock Aggregate 120″ x 50 ” mixed media

detail

Again, a naive depiction of information objects and models in flux, communication, and transition.

So, I don’t think they’re crazy good, but they’re alright. I’d like more in this style but larger, as a larger frame of reference is more condusive to a sense of collapsing, imploding and decentred space. THe ‘nice’ thing is the detail, which it’s pretty hard to see at this detail. Oh, Number 8 is already taken.

Frequent Causality 1 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 2 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 3 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 4 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 5 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 6 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 7 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 8 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas

Frequent Causality 9 24″x24″ mixed media on canvas