Last week, I sat a 6 hour course on 'In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust'. I didn't know that he was informed by Bergsons philosophy on phenomenology of time. I was really trying to get another angle into Gille Deleuze, as he was informed by Bergson. Time for Bergson has nothing to do with measured time like the clock, the calendar, etc. Time for Bergson is linked inextricably to memory. Life is duration sometimes fast sometimes slow and memory is an unreliable testament to it. So what is duration?
From Wikipedia:
Duration is a theory of time and consciousness posited by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson sought to improve upon inadequacies he perceived in the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, due, he believed, to Spencer's lack of comprehension of mechanics, which led Bergson to the conclusion that time eluded mathematics and science.
Bergson became aware that the moment one attempted to measure a moment, it would be gone: one measures an immobile, complete line, whereas time is mobile and incomplete. For the individual, time may speed up or slow down, whereas, for science, it would remain the same.
Hence Bergson decided to explore the inner life of man, which is a kind of duration, neither a unity nor a quantitative multiplicity. Duration is ineffable and can only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture. It can only be grasped through a simple intuition of the imagination.
Bergson first introduced his notion of duration in his essay Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.
So I too like to think that life is not made up of quantifiable measures or even a unity. I like to think that duration is also ineffable and is shown through an intuition of the imagination.
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Working collaboratively on Nedko Solakov's 'A Life in Black and White'.
Up down and across
I was asked if I wanted to be in a conceptual project at the Biennale of Sydney. The action took place at the AGNSW. The duration piece would last as long as the biennale. The working title 'A life in Black and White by Nedko Solakov.
http://nedkosolakov.net/content/a_life_black__white/index_eng.html
The idea was to paint the walls of the gallery continually everyday of the week 9 to 5 as workers do. I'm writing on reflection but I think the action went for 6 weeks with rotating shifts. I worked all day one day a week over the biennale.
On one side of the gallery an artist/worker would paint the walls black and on the other side of the vast space the other artist/worker would paint over the previously painted black wall white, and so it would go around and around. The piece had a class factor that I liked very much and a philosophical value that I was attracted too in that of dualism. Were we art painters or craft painters?
The director hated it, so I was told by the exhibition staff in that it was a waste of resources and messed up the major entrance space that it occupied. Cans of used and full cans of paint orderly placed in the gallery piled high up the walls with meters of drop sheets spread out like abstract expressionist references being walked over.
Visitors were absolutely baffled about the absurd pointlessness of what I/we was doing. I felt it to be one of the most profound experiences of my life- as a synthesis of art and life and an irreverent/serious take on meaning of art and the institution. Thanks Nedko.
I was asked if I wanted to be in a conceptual project at the Biennale of Sydney. The action took place at the AGNSW. The duration piece would last as long as the biennale. The working title 'A life in Black and White by Nedko Solakov.
http://nedkosolakov.net/content/a_life_black__white/index_eng.html
The idea was to paint the walls of the gallery continually everyday of the week 9 to 5 as workers do. I'm writing on reflection but I think the action went for 6 weeks with rotating shifts. I worked all day one day a week over the biennale.
On one side of the gallery an artist/worker would paint the walls black and on the other side of the vast space the other artist/worker would paint over the previously painted black wall white, and so it would go around and around. The piece had a class factor that I liked very much and a philosophical value that I was attracted too in that of dualism. Were we art painters or craft painters?
The director hated it, so I was told by the exhibition staff in that it was a waste of resources and messed up the major entrance space that it occupied. Cans of used and full cans of paint orderly placed in the gallery piled high up the walls with meters of drop sheets spread out like abstract expressionist references being walked over.
Visitors were absolutely baffled about the absurd pointlessness of what I/we was doing. I felt it to be one of the most profound experiences of my life- as a synthesis of art and life and an irreverent/serious take on meaning of art and the institution. Thanks Nedko.
A Life in Black and White- The Painter or the Painter?
At the Art Gallery of NSW working on the conceptual project: A Life in Black and White by Nedko Solakov.
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