What is the book
about | Books Key questions | His
Aim of the book | Poststructuralism |
Structuralism | MY PRESENTATION SCRIPT | Siting My
Perspectives | How does this inform
my practice |
Paul O’Neill ‘Reading further’ from the book:
Here there elsewhere: Dialogues on location and mobility. By
David Blamey. 2002
Expanding and exploring innovative models of writing.
Who is David Blamey: RCA Tutor Visual Communication Programme School of Communication. He established the independent publishing imprint Open Editions as a vehicle for collaborations between artists, writers and academics from a variety of parallel and interconnecting fields. He is the founder and director of the critical forum programme in the School of Communication at the RCA and has written in other critical contexts, most recently forDesign and Art (2007), an anthology of writing about the historical interconnections between art and design, edited by Alex Coles and published by the Whitechapel and MIT Press.
Expanding and exploring innovative models of writing.
Who is David Blamey: RCA Tutor Visual Communication Programme School of Communication. He established the independent publishing imprint Open Editions as a vehicle for collaborations between artists, writers and academics from a variety of parallel and interconnecting fields. He is the founder and director of the critical forum programme in the School of Communication at the RCA and has written in other critical contexts, most recently forDesign and Art (2007), an anthology of writing about the historical interconnections between art and design, edited by Alex Coles and published by the Whitechapel and MIT Press.
Curatorial Studies, New York. Paul has co-curated more than fifty exhibition projects across the world. Tonight, Studio Voltaire, London, (2004). His work explores the experience, of traversing territory, of moving across things rather than patrolling boundaries. This exploration may take a number of media, appoaches and forms, from curatorial projects and art-making, to discursive events, writing or lecture presentations. Paul explores notions of exhibition-making as a form of collaborative artistic practice with multiple actors and agencies at work together.
What is the book about: I believe that Pauls text is about bringing the reader into play and interact with the text in different ways. He is subverting our pre conditioned way and experience of reading an essay. I believe he is approaching the essay as an open artworks. With an inter-subjective intention (something that can be defined in many ways, shared meanings, shared definition of a situation).
ReviewsAlexia Defert Writer and
lecturer, Goldsmiths College, London
Emily Pringle Freelance gallery
educator and artist.
In both fields, discourses on travel
often take the form of autobiography or
confession, ‘othering exercises’ that
problematise how any narrative of
displacement highlights the traveller’s
sense of self while challenging its very
foundation. Our age is indeed one of
‘increased mobility and freedom of
movement’, though this does not seem to
improve or transform our social
connectivity.…to explore the tensions
set up by the
concepts ‘mobility’ and ‘location’. The
book questions the way one constructs
one’s own sense of location - seen as a
vital symbolic platform for artistic and
cultural production - and the idea of
mobility is then progressively worked
through various notions of location. ..
he very theoretical premise of the book - how to explore, write and give form
to cultural dislocation and its side-effects - has to be undone from within.….
he volume suspends critical analysis in favour of promoting other ways of
seeing and modalities of production… In a book that
started as an exploration into visual literacy, the relationship between words and images features significantly.
Books Key questions:
Where does freedom of movement take us?
When does freedom from location become
dislocation and when does the ability to escape become an inability to belong?
His
Aim of the book: My aim as editor was to achieve an
absorbing blend of text and image that draws on the critical insights of
experts from a wide range of parallel and interconnected disciplines.
What
does this suggest to me:
‘Here there and elsewhere’ suggests
being ‘in and out of place’ (the title of our project). The word ‘Location’ in
the title of the book suggests to me an idea from page to page. Dislocation in
what ways, good or bad? There is a sense of freedom between here there
elsewhere. Is dislocation still part of
location? When you don’t want to return to something ( eg a place or artwork or
a text) its when it has nothing to offer you, nourish you, perhaps when you are
unable to look at it in an interesting way anymore? When you can no longer
relate socially, inter-subjectively, does escape still belong to belonging in
the world.
What does it mean to have a list as
part of the dialogue between the other pages in the book? What is the purpose
and how does it further dialogue?
This book explores innovative ways
models writing.
That poststructuralism is still leading
us and expanding frameworks of the meaning of ‘essay’ and the relationship
between reader and writer. Perhaps I
need to be able to move outside myself to allow dislocation to relocate and
move me forward? I need to allow openness to expand and have identity redefine
myself. How can I travel with this list?
How can I value dislocation to move to locations in the list? How does this
list link with other pages in the book?
The list of books by Paul is about making sense to of the world around us and how peoples interpretations of meaning and society relates to itself and interacts with the world. It defines many ways, shared meanings of situations.It is about intersubjectivity. The world mirroring social subsystem. Perhaps the reader as producer of the artwork? In other text by Paul he writes about dislocation in terms of when artist are being brought in to do commissions, to respond to a plae, who don’t really know about living in that place.- the work becomes displaced- when one is unable to relate to a location they become displaced.
The list of books by Paul is about making sense to of the world around us and how peoples interpretations of meaning and society relates to itself and interacts with the world. It defines many ways, shared meanings of situations.It is about intersubjectivity. The world mirroring social subsystem. Perhaps the reader as producer of the artwork? In other text by Paul he writes about dislocation in terms of when artist are being brought in to do commissions, to respond to a plae, who don’t really know about living in that place.- the work becomes displaced- when one is unable to relate to a location they become displaced.
Other
possible examples:
Stomp performance doesn’t need to be on
stage anymore. Art doesn’t need to be in a gallery anymore. Story books can be performed, curatorial
practice can be art. An essay can be a photo.
Could the markings of cats hormones when they rub on trees and the urine from dogs in the steets be considered as letters/essays to each other, (passing data to one another) ?
Could the markings of cats hormones when they rub on trees and the urine from dogs in the steets be considered as letters/essays to each other, (passing data to one another) ?
some other artists work in Here
There Elsewhere:
Dialogues On Location and Mobility:
Dialogues On Location and Mobility:
Barry Curtis
& Claire Pajaczkowska
Tim Brennan
Jane Rendell
Layla Curtis http://www.laylacurtis.com/work index drawing! www.antipodes.uk.com
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& Claire Pajaczkowska
Tim Brennan
Jane Rendell
Layla Curtis http://www.laylacurtis.com/work index drawing! www.antipodes.uk.com
Poststructuralism : the construction of
knowledge. Structural approaches, fixed forms of language, instability of text.
If life is given stability through language, then how stable is life now
through this book?
Pauls list is playfully critiquing this
stability, perhaps ultimately that there is nothing ‘beyond the text’ it is an
attempt to deconstruct preconceptions of what ‘essay’ means? He is listing his
research to write an essay in the order of a bibliography. this book is also reflects
on Identity as a fixed sense of self, critiquing identity in a multiple and
fluid way, through a veriety of texts. The
perhaps suggests that knowledge is not simply ‘out there’ to be collected, but
situated within particular contexts (situation knowledge), by reading the list,
we do not gain the knowledge, we have to somehow develop a relationship with
it, situate ourselves within it to experience it, perhaps?
Structuralism relies on the collection
of data that might be used to prove the existence of social structures. This
list does this, but not in the preconceived idea of what an essay is.
MY PRESENTATION SCRIPT:
MY PRESENTATION SCRIPT:
Kati intro Dr Paul
O’Neill : 2 minutes
Dr Paul O’Neill is an artist, co-curator and lecturer based
in Bristol and New York.
That he calls himself a Co-Curator is perhaps
his way of referencing not only his dependence on all the authors of the texts
in his listing but also the visual artists that he works with.
He explores notions of exhibition-making as a form of
collaborative artistic practice with multiple actors and agencies working
together.
His practice moves freely between media, curatorial projects,
writing, lecturing, discursive events and making art.
Kati : 5 minutes,
Paul O’Neil text in the context of Postproduction and poststructuralism.
Introduction
Through the format of a bibliography, he explores the
experience of travelling across and through the territory of curating seminal
pieces, classic poetry and the boundaries of theory on identity, exile,
dislocation, adventure, culture, art movements and more.
When I travel across and through his territory it is a
cognitive journey.
When reading and turning the pages of the book, my eyes
thoughts and fingers journey across his listings.
Feelings of dislocation from where an essay begins and ends,
I initially feel alienated by not understanding what the essay is about.
Alternatively…
This list could just
literally be the bibliography of this whole book, as it is Placed at the back of this book where a bibliography
traditionally belongs.
Siting My
Perspectives
As I venture to locate myself in the book through the
context of poststructualism and postproduction I begin to navigate the listed
historical and ideological narratives to create my own story that it could be
referencing.
Postproduction offers
O’Neill another way to use the classic method of writing a bibliography to
function as an artwork or something other than just a bibliography.
The reader acts as a producer of the
artwork, who is invited fill in the gaps.
O’Neil becomes the mediator and leaves
the reader to become an active user and interpreter, to examine and judge.
He not only expands the format of an essay, he is also
commenting on how all these books he lists are continuously being re used,
re-interpreted, remixed, and transformed into new material.
A
poststructuralist perspective: The shaping of this
story is gathered by the meanings from other texts in this list, the way they
relate to each other.
The texts listed also have a
relationship with the other essays in the book.
Is he posing an alternative way of
understanding the meaning of ‘essay’. Is he obscuring more than what he
reveals?
Is it a bookscape?
Are
the listed texts like particles and traces of an essay he has left out.?
Is he working with the absence of an essay as an opportunity
to challenge perceptions of an essay?
Like John Cage who challenges that
silence is an important part of sound.
The bibliography is essential to what
constitutes an essay.
He is subverting my pre conditioned classic realist way of
reading and experiencing an essay.
I see this piece as an open artwork, as a reformatted
provenance of an artwork where its origin, its guide to authenticity and record
of ownership is shared with multiple actors and agencies working together.
It is the evidence of how he explores notions of
collaborative artistic practice.
How does this inform
my practice?
I need to be comfortable with the dislocation the MA
presents me with, to relocate somewhere new cognitively, to be able to move
forward, I need to allow openness and expand my identity to redefine myself.
The percussion group ‘Stomp’ perform without the need for a
stage, they use ordinary objects to create a theatre performance. I exhibit
work without the a gallery, O’Neill writes an essay without the need to make a
sentence.
The dialogue I have with Location and mobility, in relation
to my project ‘in and out of place’…
“What was traditionally in place,
is now out of place, but what is now out of place is becoming the new place. I am working with the absence of a gallery
space in Deal, so I am looking at the Beach as an alternative space and a new
place to present my artistic identity. Perhaps packaging and labelling will be
my new territory and format for writing an essay”.
