Derrida Supplement, Derrida's Grammatology

 on Derrida's Supplement

Taken from the book Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology (1974)  published by Johns Hopkins, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Offers a way of translating Derrida's deconstruction of linguistics into artwork. Linguistic codes in text can be transfered or related to Mark making and visual semiotics.

There is no end to supplement and no end to a work of art, it all connects and supplements each other - if not now, maybe in the future.

'Writing marks the history of speach' p314 Derrida Of grammatology.
Supplement takes the place of other.  
The supplement is neither a presence nor absence - it is the spirit of something!It is the body of language, the metaphysics and spirit of language. The outcome of creative thoughts?

Something that is hidden in the represented, sound is the interplay between absence and presence. adds a presence ofother. 

The  authorial voice of the artist talking about her work adds immediacy and value to the work that is refreshing.

The idea of 'loss' is part of supplement.

Writing about a piece of artwork: When your work isn't present, how do you talk about it? is the writing an equivelence, isn't it more than just a description or comment? Can writing about a piece of artwork fill something that is missing in the actual work? Is there an emptiness or loss or hidden aspect in the art that writing can fill? what could writing reveal about the work? Could the writing about the wrk be a SHADOW PRESENCE?

In order to do a presentation on Derrida’s concept of ‘supplement’ in terms of my own work I need to answer these questions:

1.     Where it came from.

2.     What supplement means.

3.     How it can be translated from writing to artwork.

4.     Clarify the meaning of Derrida’s terms for Glyth, Frame, Layer  

in order to know what supplement is not.

In Jaques Derrida’s (1930-2004) book ‘Of Grammatology’ 1974, he critiques and opposes the philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau who condemns writing as a dangerous force that corrupts speech and states writing is a supplement to speech. Derrida argues that writing can be a corrective to or protective against the deficiencies of speech.

Derrida is interested in the represented and that which represents. What remains hidden or forgotten suppressed or excluded in a representation. He suggests the excluded is ‘other’ and that every aspect of something cannot be addressed.

What does Supplement mean?

To supplement something is to overcome something. To overcome writings failed attempt to represent that which is supposedly proper to the spoken word. The sounds, the accents, the metaphysicality (the physical trace, part of a larger system of communication, the values of the presence, of the self, the sound of the voice, the tone, the sigh, the eye contact, the body language, the touch, the sincerity of which something is spoken, which the presence is superior. A Derridian word).

In terms of art:

To use Rousseau’s concept in terms of art - The absence of an art piece needs to be overcome in order to be documented, represented, archived, remembered, evidenced, extend audience, expand critique and judgement of it and to possibly maximise profit.

This substitute or trace or replacement of the physical art piece looses value and the actual presence of the artwork is superior to the representation.  Derrida’s concept in terms of art is perhaps suggesting that the supplement/representation could be harmless, desirable and become something else in its own right.

Using Derrida’s terminology to unpick/deconstruct and suspend the meanings of ‘supplement’ in mid air to make more parts visible to know something new in my work has completely disorientated me and derailed what I thought I knew what supplement meant:.

Glyth: the pronunciation/Barthes ‘punkton’, the additional mark, (the supplement can also be the smallest emphasis).

Metaphysics: of presence

The Margin:

Shadow presence:

Frame: A subjective process.  What is included and excluded in the work. How the artist is framed by institution/experience etc. The internal and external space of the work.  the artists narrative of the world and what has framed the artist in the start – culturally ethically, historically, politically etc..

Layer: interpretations, work relating to it and the context/site it is found in, the way we view the work. It is ever expandable and never finished. Barthes connotations.

Label: gives information about the work, outside the work, the label becomes a para-site, para- meaning a site ‘alongside’ something. Barthes signs and signifiers.

Parergon: para-site, something that lives off something else and lives in its own right) it asks what is bound to the work?

The extract:

Ecriture: each text is a part of a larger collection of something (starwars trilogy?).

( in terms of my title plates at the interim show – my title plates perhaps derailed/high jacked the meaning of a label to be alongside, the title plates were not a supplement, they became the actual work – an act of ‘detournement’).

1.     What is the participatory (physicality or metaphysics) /artwork/sculpture work trying to overcome?

2.     What is the additional mark?

3.     What is excluded from the work?

4.     What is added to the work?

5.     How have I been framed institutionally/historically/?

6.     What is my narrative and experience of the work?

7.     What are my interpretations?

8.     What is the work relating to it?

9.     What am I putting along side the work ie label, title plate.

10.   Is there an emptiness in the work that writing can fill?

11.  Is there something hidden in the work?

12.  Could a piece of writing be a shadow presence of the work?

13.  Could I frame/structure the writing through supplement?
I      In what way can something be a supplement?
       At what point can something become a supplement to something else? 
     

THE POSTCARD SERIES

They are not overcoming the presence/the metapysicality of something, they are a collection of images in their own right.

Or would you disagree?

These examples I am showing you however, are the supplement to the postcards, these samples have little value, the printed quality is not achievable. 

THE GYTH- The additional mark, will be the information given on the back of the postcard, it will be additional info to expand knowledge but not replace.

THE FRAME- haven’t decided if there will be a white border around each postcard or not. The concept of the tourist postcard has been reframed and appropriated in a contemporary way and will be displayed in a gallery rather than a newsagent or souvenir shop? Yet the narrative of the postcard set is, my utopian vision of a beautiful place. The work that relates to this set of postcards is the work underground pearl has been doing.

THE LAYERS, interpretations of the postcards could be: that they are seen as a reminder that it exists/existed. Could be a guide to raise awareness of what is on Deal beach.

And what is on the periphery of Deal, on the edge, the beach as a margin. the boats and diskoda are on the edge of tourism, the end of the fishing industry. Ecriture…

It could be read as a ‘double reading’ a Derridian term for an original artistic interpretation.

There is a generic coherence with the images on the postcards, these images belong together, they are specific to the genre of the work on the beach. They are interdependent with the work on the beach and between Loren and myself collaborating ( in some cases) like the interdependence within a text – where each line links to the other.

Perhaps the postcard set could be seen more of an appendix subsidiary matter-  like at the end of land, or a list of activities in Deal. It could also be seen as a DifferAnce – where the meaning of postcards and the actual physical work exist along side where each piece maintains its own identity. 

I find it easier to comprehend that all possibilities of supplements can also be the ‘originary’ condition of an artwork ie intrinsic to the work, the metaphysics of the original, a notion of closure of a piece of work rather than the completion of it.

Like Derrida suggests all language both spoken or written could be described as ‘writing’.

Or these postcards could be a collection of something else I am not aware of yet, they could be a deferral of something I cannot afford to do at the moment, they could bring together other elements of the project, their meanings could spread out into something not yet realised.   NO RESOLUTION

The Dual role of writing and the artwork enables the interior to come out and manifest. Language lies under the surface of this text.  The supplementary aspects can be in the listening and the participation.

The relationship between supplement and archive is one fills the other.Archive is synonymous with trace and the document.  Temporary work needs to be rescued from its death ( by not existing any more) Writing for something that has no voice? It can be a kind of restoration, adding and taking away to allow a new life for the work in a different medium.

Postcard collection (postcard tableau). Is the artwork, the concept, the medium, not the supplement in this case to the actual cine-boat for example, it exists in its own right as a postcard. The postcard piece as one work can be a set of postcards,

At what point could the postcard become a supplement? if the postcard was not a piece of artwork in its own right, and functioned as a literal postcard individually for sale for £1, then maybe then, will it become a supplement, a commercial supplement.

Postcard collector. Dream journeys to the idyllic image on a postcard, a treasure – a form of practical memory, a primal study. Correspondence, greetings, memento, illustrated memory,  a psychogrographic map, a disrupts reality of a place.form of diary. Staged utopic.

CINE-BOAT

The presence of the Cineboat at the final show will be superior to an image of it.  The image will be a deferral of the actual object.

The political meaning and message/ signifier suggests there is a lack in the fishing industry. The fishing industry is lacking, while the global capitalism aspect of fishing is full and vibrant.

the boat could be seen as a supplement.

There is no discussion about the surrounding of the cinema screen, its set and location, the physicality of where we watch the film. This is absent in books about film and cinema.

The Boat could be seen as a Derridian ‘layer’. In grammerologcal terms, I could call it the “glyth’ of the cine-boat -where the boat becomes an additional mark or symbol a diacritical mark positioned within the work to pronounce a deeper meaning to the work, adding/extending another layer to the experience and interpretation of the film. This glyth, frame, supplement could also be the site for the watching, the viewing.

Derrida suggests that Supplement supports the authenticity of the work through writing, I am suggesting that the boat supports the authenticity of the film like a frame does to a painting, but it is also the physicality and experience with which the text is written on and where it is read. The boat doesn’t just frame the film, it frames the viewer too.

What is the boat doing? Is it adding value? Will the work exist without it? Is it providing a framework, a platform, does the boat affirm something? Would the film still get shown? The boat only adds value when/while and after the film has been shown.

Detournment: to highjack, to derail, to deconstruct.

Destruction: the clearing away of something that’s no longer useful

(a Heidegger’s notion).

Deconstruction: conjures something in the midst of collapse, an object in mid air, suspended, not destroyed but falling apart, all parts visible.  The act of taking something apart in order to understand something a new.

Deconstrucuir: relation between speech and writing. Both dependent on the system of language. (nonsense literature destabilises this system). Phone verse graphite.

Speech – supreme, live, best, presence, transparency, authenticity, uniqueness.

Written – bum rap, a mark of absence, open to forgery, duplication, interpretation, and to read.

Ecriture: each text is a part of a larger collection of something (starwars trilogy?).

Difference: to differ, to defer, to postpone, delay, temporal experience of waiting for something.

Parergon: para-site, something that lives off something else and lives in its own right) it asks what is bound to the work? A frame.

Supplement: 

 

Something exceeding limits, Extensive, Expanded knowledge, the trace, the trail, The hinge to add something to, to compensate for something, a guide, a supplementary gesture, an adding or replacing, a sequel or prequel (a pilot or a test), something added to a work that transforms it’s process, it can disrupt a works natural order and throw it into chaos, it can add value, provide additional information, it can replace something that is absent, re-present, overcome, mark an emptiness or a shortage a lack, it can be an add on or a BOGOF an archive a monument a memorial. It can enrich, it can be an obituary, it can be added, be a substitute, be superfluous, make up a deficiency, corrupt, restore, alienate, something can be lost without another, it can be a remedy, satisfy a desire or protect against something.  Deferral and mediation.  beyond the limits of normal - the normal is not all there is.