The Wall Beside the Work: The Place of the Charged Image in Transitional Artistic Practices (Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, 17)

"This book is about the way artists generate an endless chain of substitute objects for something they can never quite find. It explores the work involved in art with a focus upon finding, gathering, and assembling charged and auratic objects on the wall beside the work. The author employs the term Das Gegenwerk or the work towards the work. This concept avoids definitive closure and expands the notion of drafting and related practices to include qualitative research methods. The multi-mode transitional practices of Das Gegenwerk are devoid of any demand for a preconceived goal but instead hinge upon the provisional and indeterminate. As such, it is a far cry from the binary logic of the computer and the design cycle but is of interest to an audience engaged with both. Das Gegenwerk hinges on our capacity to respond to the outside rather than the inwardness often attributed to creative agency. A fundamental belief of the book is that by investigating and adapting the practices of expert practitioners, we can gain an understanding of high-level creativity. It is neither a recipe nor a linear or cyclic approach. Rather, artistic creation is an interweave of transitional multi-mode practices where the overriding emphasis is on the handling or habituation of transitional materials in physical place. The author addresses the urgent need to provide a balance between the promise of new technology and our capacity to both respond to and work with what the world bestows."--Back cover Foreword Acknowledgements Photographs Introduction References Contents 1 The Charged Image in Multi-mode Transitional Practices 1.1 The Arachnian Web of the Meta and Mediate Modes 1.1.1 Erlebnis and Erfahrung References 2 The Work of the Wall: Walls, Windows, Doors and Floors 2.1 Walls in Transition 2.2 Inside the Cave 2.3 All ‘Wheres’ 2.4 The Wall as Membrane 2.5 Closure and Das Gegenwerk 2.6 ‘A View from Somewhere’ 2.7 The Uncanny Interior 2.8 The, Heimliche, and the Unheimliche 2.9 The Door 2.10 The ‘Event’ (Ereignis) 2.11 An Index of Agency 2.12 The Uncanny and Anxiety References 3 The Charged Image 3.1 What Is an Image? 3.2 The ‘Affective Arrangement’ of Images 3.3 Putting Forward a Possibility 3.4 Touch 3.5 The Charged Image as Memorial Persistence 3.6 The Charged Image as ‘Saturated Phenomena’ 3.7 The Transmutation of Immediacy 3.8 A Peircian Perspective on the Charged Image: The Immediate and Dynamic Object 3.9 Involuntary Memory and the Charged Image 3.10 Barthes’ Punctum and the Charged Image 3.11 Aura and the Charged Image 3.12 Drawing from Painting 3.13 Seeing and Drawing References 4 The Object Relations Theories of Winnicott and Lacan 4.1 The Transitional Object and Potential Space 4.2 The Lost Object or ‘Object A’ 4.3 ‘The Unmappable Self’ 4.4 The Uncanny and Anxiety 4.5 Tyche (Τύχη) 4.6 Architectures of the Unforeseen 4.7 The Death of Actaeon References 5 Aby Warburg’s Atlas Mnemosyne and the Trans-Individual 5.1 ‘Disconnected Dynomograms’ 5.2 The Body as a Place of Passage 5.3 Matter and Memory 5.4 Between the Old and the New 5.5 Archives, Atlases and the WBW 5.6 The ‘Atlas Mneomsyne’ as ‘Anatopic Object’ 5.7 The Atlas and Anxiety 5.8 Holding Open a Channel Between the Conscious and the Unconscious 5.9 Survivals and Residues 5.10 Potentiality and Non-actualisation 5.11 Stimmung References 6 The Studio: ‘The Whatness of Where’ 6.1 The Workshop 6.2 Finger Painting 6.3 A Day in the Studio: Where There Is No ‘I’ and Nothing Is Secure 6.4 The Table 6.5 ‘The Psychosis of the Studio’ 6.6 The Fourfold 6.7 Starter Mechanisms 6.8 Lost Without Trace References 7 ‘Propositions of the Wall’ 49 Rue Hippolyte-Maindron 7.1 A Variably Extendable Space 7.2 The Life of the Wall 7.3 The Dispensable Surface of Inscription 7.4 The ‘Graffito’ Propositions of the Wall 7.4.1 Femme Debout References 8 On the Floor in Front of the Work 8.1 A Compost of Images 8.2 The Order of Images 8.3 Shadows, Rails, and Cages 8.4 ‘Dubuffet’s Table 8.5 The Voices of Dust 8.6 Reaching Down and Reaching Out 8.7 Floors, Tables, Walls and Panels 8.8 Looking Down and Around 8.9 The Site of Abjection 8.10 The Ready-To-Hand 8.11 Chance and Accident 8.12 What More is There to the Image 8.13 The Evaporation of Intention References 9 Working on the Linen Wall 9.1 ‘The Pulsing of Presence and Absence’ 9.2 Doing, Undoing and Redoing 9.3 ‘The Ghosts of Erased Images’ 9.4 ‘With the Quarry in Sight’ 9.5 ‘A Gesture Suspended’ References 10 The Wall of the Gates 10.1 Modeling and Re-Modeling 10.2 The Wall of the Gates 10.3 Breaking the Mold 10.4 The Artist as Bricoleur 10.5 An Endless Process 10.6 Literature and Other Sources 10.7 Rodin and Charcot 10.8 ‘The Last Days of Mankind’ References 11 Washing the Wall 11.1 ‘Triumphs and Laments’ 11.2 Drawing on the Ready-To-Hand 11.2.1 Fortuna 11.3 Drawing as Misprision 11.4 Familiarity and Estrangement 11.5 A Theatre of Memory 11.6 The Roman Tear Vase References 12 The ‘Teachings of the Wall’: R.B. Kitaj’s Painting and Drawing Studios 12.1 The Roads Made by Walking 12.2 Reading 12.3 Repetition of Reproductions 12.4 The ‘Placelessness’ of the Reproduction 12.5 The Drawing Studio 12.6 The Teachings of the Walls 12.7 An Archeology of Interlacing Images 12.8 Clues 12.9 ‘The Potential Sphere’ References 13 The Wall of the Gaze: Drawing the Charged Image of the Other 13.1 Drawing Blind 13.2 Drawing ‘the Enigma of the Mad’ 13.3 Drawing as a Double Act 13.4 The Opening of the Absolute 13.5 Masks and Marks References 14 The Mark on the Wall 14.1 The Empty Signifier 14.2 ‘The Absolute Mark’ 14.3 Intentional and Unintentional Marks 14.4 Signs and Not Signs 14.5 The Mark on the Wall 14.6 Distant Blots 14.7 The Mark as ‘Qualisign’ 14.8 The Mark as Firstness 14.9 The ‘Towards This’ of the Mark References 15 Settling In and Setting Up: An Interview with the Artist Evguenia Jokhova 15.1 Interview 16 The Walls and Webs of Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Body House’ 16.1 The ‘Body House’ 16.2 The Spider Mother 16.3 Clothes 16.4 Chairs 16.5 Scavenging, Collecting, Hoarding 16.6 Secretions 16.7 Bifurcations 16.8 Doing, Undoing and Redoing 16.9 ‘The Spinners’ 16.10 Absorption References 17 Not Just Another Brick in the Wall: The Charged Image and the WBW in the Context of Secondary and Tertiary Education 17.1 The Place of Art Classroom A13 17.2 ‘The Half Thing’ of Atmosphere 17.3 Promoting the Provisional 17.4 Semiotic Apprenticeship 17.5 The Territory of the Seen and the Unforeseen 17.6 Anxiety and Entwurf 17.7 Drawing in Dialogue: The Dispensable Surface of Inscription 17.8 ‘Show Me What You Mean’ 17.9 The Trigger of Creativity 17.10 Habit Change 17.11 Developing a Relationship to the Unknown and the Unforeseen 17.12 Transitional Practices, Touch and the Context of Education 17.13 Establishing a Balance 17.14 The Teacher Should also Have a Board References 18 ‘The Board Behind My Desk’: The Wall-Beside-the-Work in Architectural Practice 18.1 The Architects Board 18.2 The ‘Board’ as a ‘Conscription Device’ 18.3 The Notebook and the Board 18.4 From Notebook to Board and Back Again References 19 The Wall-Beside-the-Work: The Allegorical and the Digital 19.1 Manipulation and Convergence 19.2 The WBW as Collage and Assemblage 19.3 The Wall-Beside-the-Work as Ruin 19.4 Digitalization, Alienation and Ruin References Conclusion Limitations of the Research Future Research Directions References Bibliography