Category Archives: Liminality

Ragpickers and liminality

Following on from my interest in Mark Bradford I have started to read around the liminal figure of the ragpicker.

WASTE MATTER – THE DEBRIS OF INDUSTRIAL RUINS AND THE DISORDERING OF THE MATERIAL WORLD

Chapt 1 Rubbish- Histories, Values, aesthetics

Ragpickers and Leftover Performances

‘But how does the ragpicker make the historical leftover perform? The ragpicker is a liminal figure, literally living at the fringes of society: in Paris, they resided in shanty towns on the edge of town as part of the community of zoniers (‘zone’-dwellers or those living in the transition space between the city and countryside)’

performative leftovers

‘The ragpicker, first, stands for the undoing of established historiography and the institutions that support it. Aleida Assmann has pointed out that the rubbish dump and the archive, while seemingly each other’s opposite, are inextricably connected. The limit between  the archive and the rubbish dump marks the limit between what is and is not deemed of cultural value, and for that reason, archive and rubbish heap ‘can be read as emblems and symptoms of cultural memory and forgetting’ (Assmann 2006: 384, my translation). Refuse is what the archive refuses. For Assmann an archive of rubbish would make ‘the invisible as such, namely the basic structures of the cultural production of value and non-value, visible’ .’

the ragpicker’s diligent archiving of waste is not only a symbol for challenging existing master narratives in cultural memory, but also for the undoing of the conditions of possibility that enabled these master narratives. As Philip Rosen wrote: ‘the only way to recover the elements excluded from conventional historiography is to reject its form and terms’ (Rosen 2001: 15).

The Archivist of Urban Waste- Zoe Leonard, Photographer as Rag-Picker

Aleatory encounters- a rumination on trash and new materialist ontologies

The Madrid Ragpicker Pio Baroja

 

Inside:Outside- Materialising the Social

21 July 2012 at 10.30–17.40 at Tate Modern – videos on line.

The ritual encounter with an artwork – be it in a museum, gallery, private or public space – has evolved dramatically over the last century: from the contemplation of an object, to immersive installation, performance or participation.

Nicholas Bourriaud’s term ‘relational aesthetics’ referred specifically to work that took social relations as its basic medium. This kind of work usually took place within the walls of the designated art space, and operated in relation to the behavioural rules of that particular mindset (even if working against them). What, then, does it mean when an artist’s work intervenes in the social and political relationships that exist in the real world of everyday life? How can this be brought into the museum, how can it be displayed and how does it relate to the social rituals engendered by the architecture and rules of the specialist space.

Inside/Outside: Materialising the Social will examine the ways in which these codes and boundaries have been tested in the work of a number of different artists in the past decades, and how they have been theorised by key thinkers and writers.

Participants include Leo Asemota, Jelili Atiku, Claire Bishop, Katy Fitzpatrick, Abigail Hunt, Shannon Jackson, Suzanne Lacy, Lin Chi-Wei, Liu Ding, Mark Miller, Kieren Reed, Alex Schady, Susan Sheddan, Emma Smith and Dorothea von Hantelmann.

 

Inside:Outside- Materialising the Social programme

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-1-0

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-2

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-3

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-4

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-5

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-6

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-8

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/insideoutside-materialising-social-part-9

 

Liminal, 2012. Abigail Hunt, Kieren Reed, Katy Fitzpatrick and Susan Sheddan in conversation

Reed, KP; Hunt, A; Sheddan, S; Fitzpatrick, K; (2012) Liminal, 2012. Abigail Hunt, Kieren Reed, Katy Fitzpatrick and Susan Sheddan in conversation. Presented at: Inside/outside: materialising the social, Tate Modern.

AbstractThe ritual encounter with an artwork – be it in a museum, gallery, private or public space – has evolved dramatically over the last century: from the contemplation of an object, to immersive installation, performance or participation. Nicholas Bourriaud’s term ‘relational aesthetics’ referred specifically to work that took social relations as its basic medium. This kind of work usually took place within the walls of the designated art space, and operated in relation to the behavioural rules of that particular mindset (even if working against them). What, then, does it mean when an artist’s work intervenes in the social and political relationships that exist in the real world of everyday life? How can this be brought into the museum, how can it be displayed and how does it relate to the social rituals engendered by the architecture and rules of the specialist space. Inside/Outside: Materialising the Social will examine the ways in which these codes and boundaries have been tested in the work of a number of different artists in the past decades, and how they have been theorised by key thinkers and writers. Participants include Leo Asemota, Jelili Atiku, Claire Bishop, Katy Fitzpatrick, Abigail Hunt, Shannon Jackson, Suzanne Lacy, Lin Chi-Wei, Liu Ding, Mark Miller, Kieren Reed, Alex Schady, Susan Sheddan, Emma Smith and Dorothea von Hantelmann.

The liminal studio

Portland notes

The liminal studio – a kind of mobile studio that can be setup anywhere. In transitional places

The Deadhouse –  liminal studio in Portland

Improvisation in materials and place.

A Portland project.

Need to develop (technically)

Portable lighting – for LED torches, also flash lights

Portable motion control – for camera and models

also battery power unit (mains)

RGB floodlights for outdoor lighting

 

Negative and positive – liminality

The negative image has been of interest for some time- for example  I have tried digitally blending abstract positive and negative video clips with a variety of blend modes.  Recently I stepped back and tried something simpler – combining positive and negative projections of slides with the aim of creating a grey image..

I was interested in the way in which bodies or objects shadowing the projections could then create positive or negative images of their own, but what turned out to be as intriguing was the effect of cancellation – which is imperfect.   This kind of faint grey image seeping through seems like a liminal image.  An image on the threshold of visibility.

Screen/image as threshold – lessons from the photogram

The photograms made using the digital setup replaced the photographic paper with a styrene sheet.  Previously the styrene sheet had been used as a material for rear projection.

While the digital photograms looked similar to conventional photograms I was struck by the relationship to projection.  In rear projection the image is focused on the screen, or there is a shadow play or equivalent (refractive elements etc).  The photogram is therefore a limit case with objects placed in close proximity or in contact with the screen.

In making these photograms – they are very interactive because the image is displayed on a computer in realtime – you become  aware of the passage of light in 3D.  The screen is a kind of cross section through this light field, which is complex and carries a material trace. You play around with this material.

In rear projection the emphasis is on the focused image on the screen and the defocused space in front of it is an aberration or a means to an end.  The logic of the photogram would see this defocused area as just as important, because the photogram is already unfocused.

Another way of putting it would be to see the image existing in 3D in front of the screen with a focused image coinciding with the screen  when  conventionally focused.  Another way of reading a defocused image would be to see it as part of the 3D space, as something in transition towards or away from focus.

So the screen is a kind of threshold in which the 3d light passes into a 2D space. The screen is also architecturally a threshold as well.

Front or rear projection is not just a means to an end.  The space of projection is important and can be played with.  The photogram or unfocused image is in a kind of liminal state.  The screen is a form of threshold.