Reflexions Masterclass

MEASURES

Sz — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:29:12 +0000

Reflexions Masterclass Winter Session November 2012

Quantity is the object of measurement whose dimension in terms of width, length and depth is determined by the expression of a number always referred to a specific physical matter; measurement’s quality, constantly variable and relative, refers instead to the metaphysical terms of perception. The discovery and understanding of the world in the progressive experience of existence and throughout the entire human history initiates for each individual a confrontation – often contradictory – between its perception and its expressive terms.
Since the Antiquity, the human conception of Cosmos has mostly been expressed in reference to the size of the Earth and proportions of the human figure. Cronus, the son of Gaia the Earth and Uranus the Sky, holds the measures of Cosmos: with a sickle, while castrating his father Uranus attempts to devour his own son Zeus, who in turn to hold the world’s knowledge within himself devours Fanes, the first God of the visible world. Several theories suggest that all myths, long before the Greek ones, have a single common origin echoing a celestial cosmology, as if the gods and their gestures were «ciphers for celestial activity and a language for the perpetuation of complex astronomical data».
The Egyptians set the earliest units of length, area, volume, capacity, weight and time, and estimated the size of the Earth; its definition as a sphere is an achievement attributed to the Pythagorean pre-Socratic school (6th century BCE); human body’s Meridian system in its relation to the Earth derives from the Ancient Shamanic Chinese tradition; Roman architect and writer Vitruvius (80–70 BC) sets an anthropometrical measurement of Man as «a cosmography of the minor world». Fifteen centuries later, Leonardo Da Vinci charts the famous drawing of human anatomical representation according to Vitruvian proportions1. Between 1650-1700 Confucian philosophy becomes object of study for several European philosophers such as Voltaire, Spinoza and Newton, their thought converges in a massive cultural movement that overturns several of traditional ruling ideas introducing new perspectives on nature and man’s place within it, The Age of Enlightenment. Interwoven to parallel Scientific Revolution this is the time tools of measurement pave the way for their definition as apt means to “measure” therefore to understand the world. Enlightenment, the movement of Reason is followed by Counter-Enlightenment during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, characterised by a relativist, organic and anti-rationalist attitude devising the measures of human perception as opposed to that of a scientific procedure.
THE ARTIST’S ROLE HAS ALWAYS BEEN TO ARTICULATE A TRANSCRIPTION OF HUMAN RELATION TO THE WORLD, BOTH IN ITS TERMS OF PERCEPTION AND EXPRESSION, WITHIN AN ALTERNATIVE – IMAGINARY DIMENSION ACCORDING TO THE DEFINITION OF A SPECIFIC FORM AND FOR A VISUAL ARTIST, ACCORDING TO THE ARTICULATION OF A FIGURE.
Considering the figurative terms of representation of measures in Art, the first level is the mediation between inner and outer reception.
1 Marcus Vitruvius Pollio «The measurements of man are in nature distributed in this manner, that is: a palm is four fingers; a foot is four palms; a cubit is six palms; four cubits make a man; a pace is four cubits; man is 24 palms and these measurements are in his buildings”. The second paragraph reads: “if you open your legs wide enough so that your head is lowered by one-fourteenth of your height and raise your hands high enough so that your extended fingers touch the line at the top of your head, know that the centre of the extended limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle”. The text gives also these proportions: The length of spread-out arms is equal to the height of a man; from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of the height of a man; from below the chin to the top of the head is one-eighth of the height of a man; from above the chest to the top of the head is one-sixth of the height of a man; from above the chest to the hairline is one-seventh of the height of a man; the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of the height of a man; from the breasts to the top of the head is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is a quarter of the height of a man; the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of the height of a man; the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man; the root of the penis is half the height of a man; the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man; from below the foot to below the knee is a quarter of the height of a man; from below the knee to the root of the penis is a quarter of the height of a man; the distances from the below the chin to the nose and the eyebrows and the hairline are equal to the ears and to one-third of the face.»
Settling there where we begin to apprehend the world, human perception rule itself according to the subconscious memory of physical experience, a perceptual faith, tightly interwoven with external and/or internal impulses related to movement. Such deep subjective knowledge does not need to question itself to guide our movements about the world and this is why we do not walk against walls nor fall down stairs
Physical awareness and perception of external movement sets in long before and besides rational definition. The peripheral retina – as in the lowest animals – detects external minimal impulses of movement as possible dangers activating an immediate rotation that places the visual impulse at the eye centre, the fovea, where the optical nerve conduct it to the brain to recognise it; in parallel, it activates the motion system which performs essential functions for survival in a dynamic visual world. Prominent among these functions is the ability to recover and represent the trajectories of objects in a form facilitating behavioural responses to those movements.
The principal terms of our perception and its expression in arts – particularly in photography – are space and time: needless to say, a wide hiatus exists between their conventional definition and our personal experience. Queuing quarter of an hour at the bank is an eternal wait that dwindles to a wink in comparison with the same duration before a painful separation. Likewise, the same spatial measures of a room, a road, a park…, may seem equally differently long and wide depending on the moment in life we happen to come across that given distance or area. The perception of things and phenomena is immediate yet coincidentally inaccessible, instantly receding and no longer reachable unless sunken in self-awareness.
My sentience lies in the alertness to stimulation and spatial consciousness within a visual space field where, essential for you as a visual artist, is to discern the precise moment when your eye detects and captures the visual impulse recognising it as an image as it is formed in your imagination. It is the awareness of the moment when your eyes, continuously adjusting their “focus” upon things, outline the figure from its background that indefinitely “continues” beyond it and out of their focus. There is furthermore a perceptual field of time: awareness of sequence and duration appear contradictory in their immanence, you may identify them in the distinction of acoustic frequency rate. When the impulse attends an “optimal” rate, you no longer perceive the sequence but the unison of duration.
The perception and expression of temperature, energy and light are manifested in a lesser wide gap than space and time, yet this is not the case of matter consistency, weight, speed, or monetary value…
The concept of measures presents further related degrees of significance, such as taking measures in politics and norms of security measures. The latter subtly addresses the first human perceptual stimulus related to atavic “security”, which is survival.
As Nicolas Kugel’s lecture taught us about the celestial globes, one may look at the existence on Planet Earth from a set external distance, a “God’s” position, or within things from the ground where the wet grass blades on an ant’s path stand like giant trees in a jungle. We can think of the world as a wondrous theatre and a metaphor for all human interactions: some stay on the scene, other are spectators on the red velvet seats, one is the playwright, other in charge of the lights and the costumes… Each one of us has its own distance from/to the same truth, sought after, summoned, evoked, eluded in one same theatre.
Set your time-space position, when and its duration; where and its right distance: the closest, the farthest to reality whatever the truth appears to express itself in your eyes.
GF

MEASURE
Origin: Middle English (as a noun in the senses ‘moderation’, ‘instrument for measuring’, ‘unit of capacity’): from Old French mesure, from Latin mensura, from mens- ‘measured’, from the verb metiri
verb [with object]
1. a- ascertain the size, amount, or degree of (something) by using an instrument or device marked in
standard units: the amount of water collected is measured in pints (as adjective measuring) measuring
instruments
b- be of (a specified size or degree): the fabric measures 137 cm wide
c- ascertain the size and proportions of (someone) in order to make or provide clothes for them: he will be
measured for his team blazer next week
d- (measure something out) take an exact quantity of something: she helped to measure out the
ingredients
2. a- assess the importance, effect, or value of (something): it is hard to measure teaching ability
b- (measure someone/thing against) judge someone or something by comparison with (a certain
standard): she did not need to measure herself against some ideal
c- [no object] (measure up) reach the required or expected standard: I’m afraid we didn’t measure up to
the standards they set
d- (measure someone up) scrutinize someone in order to form an assessment of them: the two shook
hands and silently measured each other up
3. archaic travel over (a certain distance or area): we must measure twenty miles today.
noun
1. a- a plan or course of action taken to achieve a particular purpose: cost-cutting measures children
were evacuated as a precautionary measure
b- a legislative bill: the Senate passed the measure by a 48-30 vote
2. a- a standard unit used to express the size, amount, or degree of something: a furlong is an obsolete
measure of length tables of weights and measures
b- [mass noun] a system or scale of units expressing size, amount, or degree of something: the dimensions
were in imperial measure
c- a standard quantity or amount: heavy drinking may be five measures of spirits per day
d- a container of standard capacity used for taking fixed amounts of a substance: gifts have included silver
measures from a whisky company
e- a graduated rod or tape used for ascertaining the size of something: most schools had only metric
measures available
3. a- a certain quantity or degree of something: the states retain a large measure of independence
b- an indication of the degree, extent, or quality of something: his resignation is a measure of how angry he
is
4. a- the rhythm of a piece of poetry or a piece of music.
b- a particular metrical unit or group: measures of two or three syllables are more frequent in English
prose
c- North American a bar of music or the time of a piece of music.
d- archaic a dance, typically one that is stately: now tread we a measure!
5. (measures) [with modifier] a group of rock strata.
6. Mathematics a quantity contained in another an exact number of times; a divisor. 7. Printing the width of a full line of type or print, typically expressed in picas.
From: the Oxford dictionary online, oxforddictionaries.com

MEASURES: LITERATURE & ESSAY REFERENCES
JORGE LUIS BORGES: From Fictions: Babel’s Library; From The Aleph: The Immortal and The Aleph
Three short stories for a fantastical imaginary approach: an unforgettable experience of the imagination.
ROBERTO CALASSO: The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Novel and literary essay: a scholarly mind-blowing mythical approach: read and be swept away by this sumptuous and scholarly yet fun, riveting book.
MAURICE MERLEAU–PONTY: Eye and Mind and Visible and Invisible
Literary essay scholarly yet lyrical approach on phenomenology of perception – a deep stirring insight.
GIORGIO DE SANTILLANA, HERTA VON DECHEND: Hamlet’s Mill
Literary essay extensive highly scholarly omni-comprehensive approach through comparative mythology: a uniquely transversal reference over different myths and great source of inspiration.
VIRGINIA WOOLF: The waves
Novel: as a personal insight of world’s perception, five characters’ inner voice soliloquies whose stories interweave to one another: a unique experience in literature and a grandly lyrical reading.
PAUL KLEE: Contributions to a pictorial theory of form and Ways of Studying Nature
Essay / extracts from the painter’s conferences and notes, a precious handrail – highly inspiring
PAVEL FLORESKY: Space and Time in the Art
Essay on History of Art: a practical articulate guide analysis around the figurative articulation of space- time expression in art. Scholarly, precious reference of accessible investigation.
MASSIMO SCOLARI: The Oblique Drawing – A History of Anti-Perspective
Essay: a peculiar point of view highly scholarly and not exactly an easy read …yet a uniquely unpredictable approach about the history of representation of space.
VICTOR I. STOICHITA: The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting
Essay or art History an analysis around the figurative organisation of space expression in art. Highly scholarly, a little lesser accessible then Floresky yet a deeply inspiring cognitive approach.
THE SCHOTT’S M i s c e l l a n e o u s: a classifying/mini-encyclopaedic approach, all measures, about anything any time. Ironic, hilarious, essential!
EDWARD T. HALL: The dance of life
Essay: a theoretical approach on the different ways to perceive / express time: an interesting insight.
ALDOUS HUXLEY: The Doors of Perception
Essay: an experimental approach as lucid voyage through the experience of hallucination. A classic.
-> VISUAL REFERENCES

MEASURE OF “VALUE”
Nicolas Kugel’ lecture: transcription of theme presentation, ENSBA Paris, November 25th 2012

Dealing with art market one continuously and necessarily “measures” the value of each object bought or sold. Each segment of the market is independent, each piece unique and there is no established references and to evaluate the fluctuations of any value one needs to collect all sort of information concerning a particular piece’s in its past and present meaning; as there are no rules besides personal experience it is about arbitrary evaluations. The final price of each piece is the result of continuous adjustments, in particular about antiquity where experienced specialists having often different opinions try to convince one another of their personal decision. Discussions around the value’s value are often the most exciting and accurate way to get to know a particular object.
Not simply arbitrary, depending on each époque’s look upon objects and periods that originated them, value is impermanent as well: fluctuations of fashions and temporary quality of their perception influence the rising or decadence of prices: an object’s importance is thus variable and perceptual. There is no absolute value: in a range of scale from low to high, at the two extremes, prices are very difficult determine. How to differentiate the value of a piece of 10 euro from one of 20? Even more so between the one estimated 2 millions and 4 millions… In between there are number of references, for which the “feeling” about the object’s perception and personal conviction create its value “by contrast”.
The physical measure of the object is a convention too: notwithstanding their very small dimensions diamonds, snuff boxes, as several particular jewels or watches, are linked to an idea of luxury, design and styles very attractive and mostly expensive, objects for collectors. Set by our discernment upon it and by its comparison to other variable references, value in a mere practical – “countable” – sense its accountability should set a convention, yet actually its perceptual inner aspect turns it most often to a questionable, ontological value. Money always varies, quality remains as the only value to which experts can rely on.
Of particular interest is the value of “fakes”: appearing always in response to some “demand”, characterized by extremely skilful technical know-how, often just as precious as the “originals”, fakes exist as such only by contrast if compared to some authentic reference “true” ones.
We may quote a book published in London in 1970 by the curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum about Renaissance jewellery – widely collected in the XIX century and therefore very expensive. At some point several (about 20%) sketches there represented were discovered to be reproduced “taken” from fakes – …undiscernibly identical – made by a certain Vassels. The discovery provoked great embarrassment and Renaissance jewellery market prices knocked down for decades; direct comparison with original pieces (i.e. the jewels of the Hamburg family preserved in Wien at the Schatzkammer) remained the only possible help for evaluators.
On the contrary, the attempt to rise the capabilities of artisans and forgers to artist’s level is by no mean easy: a famous restorer (and forger) who died in 1911 left his collections to the family; they were asked those pieces for a publication, but the perception of that “dirty secret” transmitted through generations ever failed to raise “such” art on the same level as its original counterpart.
The constant appreciation of Celestial Globes as durable high stability value represent a quite unique exception: that is probably due – besides their objective technical complexity – to the exhilarating factor of setting the spectator’s perception in a position wherein the limits of Cosmos are fixed and permanent at a God-like external distance…

QUELQUES RÉFLEXIONS SUR LA MESURE
Par Gabriel Bauret
Reflexions Masterclass Winter Session November 2012

Comme dans toute définition, il existe plusieurs niveaux d’approche du mot mesure : une dimension concrète, physique, et une dimension plus abstraite. Mais aussi des emplois dérivés.
1. La mesure de l’espace
La photographie apporte une aide à la mesure de l’espace ; elle rend compte des dimensions des objets dans une nature morte ou celles des architectures dans un paysage ; ainsi que des rapports entre les éléments qui figurent dans un espace donné.
À titre de comparaison, le mot donne la mesure de la pensée, permet de cerner l’idée, l’œil (et par extension la photographie) permet de prendre la mesure de l’espace.
Comprendre un objet, c’est d’abord évaluer sa dimension ; c’est-à-dire commencer par prendre ses mesures, avant même de considérer sa matière et sa fonction.
Mesurer est en ce sens une opération liminaire, préparatoire.
NB Mais l’espace peut être ouvert et se perdre dans l’infini. Il faudrait en ce sens opposer mesure et infini. La mesure est alors une opération vaine ou désespérée.
2. La distance entre le photographe et son sujet
L’image traduit la distance entre le photographe et son sujet. De même que l’on mesure la lumière, pour faire le point, le photographe mesure cette distance. La mesure est donc également dans ce cas une opération préparatoire : à l’origine de la photographie, avant de prendre une photographie, on mesurait la distance. Aujourd’hui, la machine permet de faire l’économie de cette opération.
Il n’empêche que mesurer, c’est-à-dire apprécier cette distance, c’est métaphoriquement signifier le degré de proximité, d’intimité que le photographe entretient, ou décide d’entretenir avec son sujet.
3. Le jeu, le trompe-l’œil
Il y a évidemment dans l’histoire de l’art une perversion de la mesure. Faire passer pour grand quelque chose qui est en fait très petit, ou inversement ; faire passer pour éloigné quelque chose de proche. L’appareil photographique, avec la diversité de ses procédés optiques, permet ce jeu. Mais pour tromper le spectateur de leurs images, les photographes n’ont pas seulement joué avec les optiques des appareils.
4. Mesure / démesure
Qualifier un lieu de démesuré, c’est signifier qu’il échappe à toute opération de mesure.
L’opposition mesure / démesure ne s’applique pas seulement à un espace, mais aussi à une personne, à ses qualités, son caractère.
Quelqu’un a le sens de la mesure ou en est totalement dépourvu. La mesure est alors associée à la raison, la démesure à la déraison.
La démesure, c’est l’impossibilité du raisonnement et à terme la perte du sens.
5. Mesurer l’espace, mesurer le temps
Le mot mesure figure également dans le vocabulaire musical et introduit la dimension temporelle. Celui-ci désigne précisément une unité de mesure dans une composition. La mesure se déploie selon une certaine durée dans le temps et celle-ci est fixée par le compositeur. Une mesure est construite sur un nombre invariable de temps qui définit un rythme : par exemple la valse à trois temps.

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Reflexions Masterclass 2011 The Winter References on SHADOW

Sz — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:28:14 +0000

Shadow

From The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011 – Web www.britannica.com

noun Etymology: Middle English shadwe, from Old English sceaduw-, sceadu shade Date: before 12th century
1. partial darkness or obscurity within a part of space from which rays from a source of light are cut off by an interposed opaque body
2. a reflected image
3. shelter from danger or observation
4. a– an imperfect and faint representation; b– an imitation of something : COPY
5. the dark figure cast upon a surface by a body intercepting the rays from a source of light
6. PHANTOM
7. plural: DARK
8. a shaded or darker portion of a picture
9. an attenuated form or a vestigial remnant
10. a– an inseparable companion or follower; b– one (as a spy or detective) that shadows
11. a small degree or portion : TRACE
12. a source of gloom or unhappiness
13. a– an area near an object : VICINITY; b– pervasive and dominant influence
14. a state of ignominy or obscurity
See also:
– shadowless adjective
– shadowlike adjective

verb
Date: before 12th century
transitive verb
1. archaic: SHELTER, PROTECT
2. to cast a shadow upon : CLOUD
3. obsolete: to shelter from the sun
4. obsolete: CONCEAL
5. to represent or indicate obscurely or faintly often used with forth or out
6. a– to follow especially secretly : TRAIL; b– to accompany and observe especially in a professional setting
7. archaic: SHADE

intransitive verb
1. to pass gradually or by degrees
2. to become overcast with or as if with shadows

1See also: – shadower noun adjective Date: 1906 1. of, relating to, or resembling a shadow cabinet (∼ minister of defense) 2. a– having an indistinct pattern (∼ plaid); b– having darker sections of design (∼ lace)

See also:
– shadow box,
noun, Date: 1891
a shallow enclosing case usually with a glass front in which something is set for protection and display
– shadow cabinet,
noun, Date:1906
a group of leaders of a parliamentary opposition who constitute the probable membership of the cabinet when their party is returned to power
– shadow dance,
noun, Date: circa 1909
a dance shown by throwing the shadows of dancers on a screen
– shadow mask,
noun, Date:1951
a metal plate in a colour cathode-ray tube that contains minute apertures permitting passage of electron beams to specific phosphors on the screen during a scan
– shadow play,
noun, Date: circa 1890
a drama exhibited by throwing shadows of puppets or actors on a screen called also shadow show – eye shadow, noun, Date: 1930 a cosmetic cream or powder in one of various colours that is applied to the eyelids to accent the eyes
– rain shadow,
noun, Date: 1902 a region of reduced rainfall on the lee side of high mountains

VISUAL REFERENCES: http://www.giorgiafiorio.com/gf/Shadow_visual_ref.zip

Professor Victor Stoichita on Shadow[1]

Venice, October 9th 2011

MIRROR STAGE / SHADOW STAGE

Giorgio Vasari decorated his house in Florence (1569-73 cc) with frescos presenting a puzzling iconography, described also by a famous Florentine guide[2] as the history of Apelles and the origin of painting.
The walls represent different scenes of the famous, first mythological painter, from the “cobbler challenging Apelles to the synthesis of beauty representing Diana (or Helena?)” but the most ambiguous identification is for the frontal left wall, where a painter learns to paint on the model of his own shadow tracing the borders of his own shape, turning his back to the light. Vasari plays with the real shapes and shadows (the chimney is right the central in that wall) and figurative effect. But is the represented figure really Apelles?

Vasari in his opus magnum Vite de’ Pittori[3] studies the origin of the art (of representation) and gives his personal representation of the origin of the myth, which was probably source for his fresco: “Accordingly to Pliny and Quintilian, this art was introduced in Egypt by Gyges of Lydia who draw an outline of himself cast by fire with a piece of coal, without any colouring”.
This version by Vasari is certainly based on the ancient legend narrated by Pliny as well as Quintilian about the origin of representation and painting, which lies in the tracing of a shadow, however not dealing with self-portraits…
Pliny[4] situates the origin of the art as the result of a love story between a young girl and her lover who is in due to leave; this scene was never represented through Renaissance, therefore the value of the adaptation by Vasari would be thus even greater. In this story, the woman traces on the wall the projected form of her beloved sleeping to conserve his shape and memory. According to legend, both to the Egyptian and the Greek, painting originated ille tempore from shadow. This is an important and very different mechanism of thinking in art. compared to self-portrait or to the direct observation of a body / object as in this primitive state the effect of shadow is to reduce the surface volume: it is a projection, a flat 2 dimensions, a copy of a copy. The perfect profile of the Egyptian paintings and the archaic Greek black on red figures are a product of this figurative convention[5].
Vasari adapted the story (maybe he read Pliny with a wrong interpretation? Or he took on purpose different suggestions?): the primitive scenario with two people became with one person, from the erotic to the individual, but more problematic is that issue of the self-portrait.
Another version of the beginning of painting is described by Quintilian, here also originated by projected silhouettes, but out of the Plinian love context.
With Vasari’s attempt we can understand that the shadow / image in the fresco is supposed to show an inferior, primitive stage of the representative perfection – illustrated on the opposite wall. Still many problems of this scenario lie in the virtual impossibility of imagining the creation of a self-portrait through the outlined shadow.

Here the mythical origins collide with questions arose from psychology of representation and the metaphysics of projection. Another context: first experience of relation to shadow:
Psychologist Jean Piaget[6] related the perception and conscience of shadow with children and discovered four stages, through experiments and questions:
- Around the age of 5, a child can understand that that shadow is related to an object and its opaqueness, but as the result of the participation of two roots – one internal and one external;
- aged 6-7 shadow is seen as the product of one single object, as a substance emanated from the object;
- from about 8 years old, conscience arises that shadow is produced with a light source behind and opposite the object, but still as an emanation from that object ;
- only lately shadow is perceived as something abstract, part of light (or its absence) and not of the object.
Jacques Lacan, in a study twenty years after Piaget’s, reminds us that children can recognize themselves in a mirror at eighteen months. It is Lacan’s famous “mirror stage”, by which he means a representative situation” in which the “symbolic matrix” manifests itself and where “the I is precipitated in a primordial form before becoming objectivized in the dialectic with the other”.

The issues of mirror, shadow and self-identification are strongly related and can find an answer in two complementary solutions of the representation status: one from the physical circumstances of the projection – and the identification of the I (the ego, the eye, …)– , the other status from the “shadow stage” – that involves mainly the identification of the other.
Mirror stage and Shadow stage becomes therefore opposite.
In light of this we can understand why Narcissus fell in love with his specular, but not with his shadow; and why in Pliny’s the object of the young woman love is the shadow of the other (the beloved), as they are two different modalities of interaction between image and representation.
Reading Narcissus myth in Ovidio’s Metamorphosis[7] “What he sees, he knows not, but he burns for it”, the young man in enamoured with the form of his image, what he sees is not there but a shadow of a reflected form[8].
Later representations stressed the evanescent nature of mirrored and specular images: i.e. in Antonio Tempesta’s, 1500 cc, we do not see Narcissus’ reflection, we can imagine it, but we partially see the shadow he casts; this shadow is broken and becomes a reflection. Narcissus is not aware that it is himself and a margin of doubt lingers.
What if this shadow were in fact “another”? Drama of identification rises, through charm and seek[9]. A thin barrier of water separates them. “I a him. What shall I do?” Sight and embrace are in contrast and no contact happens. In the tragedy, when the hero understands that the image is not something else, the highest tragic point is achieved.

The interpretation of Narcissus finds also modern forms, as we can see for example in a famous advertisement by Chanel for the Egoist perfume. We can see a young man fighting against his shadow to get the perfume that this shadow possesses. Only the bottle is truly duplicated as fetishism object. The ballet of identification is settled on rivalry – not on love: the sophisticated illusion of the struggle against the other, the conquest and also seduction, creates a strong relationship with Adonis, settled through this modern figure who is jealous of his own image.
In this idea of confrontation to the other to get the object of desire and possession, the mirror becomes the shadow – the “other”.

In the history of Western representation, Plato’s philosophy dealt first blow against the shadow stage. it was the mirror rather than the projection of interposed bodies that was to become the vehicle of the mimesis: the mirror stage is a deviation/mutation of the shadow stage.
In Leon Battista Alberti’s De Pictura we read “the invention of painting comes from Narcissus, who was turned into a flower. The shadow drawing of early painters used to believe in, by painting around shadow made by sun (see Quintilian) is simply a process of addition”.
From this interpretation comes a new conception of the pictorial image as the product of an erotic act (it is the case with Pliny) involving the same and not the other. In Alberti, the embracing of the mirror contrasts radically with the outlining of the shadow: from the Renaissance on, image (painting) was thought as the product of love of the same.
The image formed by Vasari of the “origin of art” maybe integrates best the “shadow stage” and the “mirror stage”.

[1] Professor Victor I. Stoichita, President of History of Art Faculty of Fribourg University, wrote among the other works A Short History of the Shadow, London, Reaktion Books, 1997.
This report is a concise and reduced version of his lecture at Università di Lugano, October 9th 2011.
[2] The Sala delle Arti is described by Bocchi and Cinelli, 1677.
[3] editions 1550, 1568
[4] in his Natural History
[5] Compare Pompeian advanced figuration, that Pliny certainly knew.
[6] psychologist of 1920s
[7] See also Caravaggio’s wonderful representation, 1599.
[8] Word game between umbra / reflected image, imaginis umbra / nil.
[9] “I am charmed, and I see; but what I see and what charms me I cannot find”.

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Shadow

Sz — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:01:46 +0000

Professor Victor Stoichita on Shadow[1]

Venice, October 9th 2011

MIRROR STAGE / SHADOW STAGE

VISUAL REFERENCES: http://www.giorgiafiorio.com/gf/Shadow_visual_ref.zip

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Reflexions Masterclass 2011 The Summer Letter and SILENCE

Sz — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:48:46 +0000

Languages of words, alphabets, ideograms, pictograms, inaudible even in their written silent form, inhabit a vertical tower of Babel. The horizontal language of images masters the transversal matter of silence, photography the syntax of light. To translate the idea of silence in visual terms, I invite you, as usual, to consider how the theme articulates into its actual components: time, space and meaning. Accordingly, if we think of SILENCE as an ACT or SILENCE as a FACT we tend to attribute to the idea two very different orders of meaning and may easily find an answer to the crucial question: is silence (perceived as) a presence or an absence.
From a formal point of view, silence as an act is about the notion of “when”. Time, as sound, is perceived as a flow: in this sense the act of silence, is a break in a continuum – before, now, after – a moment of interruption, the duration and pace of which (a fraction of time or a long time) are a variable yet precise quantum of our perception. Think of the signs of punctuation – how they determine the sense and the rhythm of spoken or written language. Think how crucial the pauses in the music are, the blank between verses in poetry. In the “passive” stream of time the “activeness” of silence conjures a condition of immanence: an immediate presence in a time “present”. A solitary or multiple presence: as repetition, as sequence, as alternation, the inner pace of silence – its brevity or extenuation – you are in the position to determine it –precisely – by setting your camera’s shutter speed.
To such qualities of silence belong: muteness, abstention or renunciation from speech; prohibition to speak, no answer; no information; secret; omission, classification, refusal to mention etc. On another level these meanings also belong to the infinite expressions and codes of our – silent – body language, the “hidden dimension” and the laws of proximity. Conscious or not, more or less subtly and depending from which part of the world we come and we are, the codes of bodily expression assume and suggest innumerable different possible interpretations^{^[1]}. In our daily world some of those gestural codes also carry other conventional, more generally understood meanings and invoke an array of images: the index finger perpendicular to the lips; one hand passing as a blade across the throat; slowly closing both eyes; the head shaking or turning right-left-right-left, or moving up and down etc. Likewise we could think of a great number of signs, visual instruction and univocal verbal expressions, whereas silence is an active deed of opposition, often perceived, performed, imposed or imparted as radical or even violent.

With its own string of images too – or rather “visions” – Silence as a fact, is about the notion of “where”: a space – that is – “in” an actual “place”. Places and dimensions from which the presence of time has withdrawn, belonging to the present (only and if at all) as an absence. Places silently speaking, evoking or anticipating some possible other time in the past or in the future. Timeless places inhabited by space only, in all its possible different dimensions and scales. Places conveying a sense of stillness and emptiness… Remote lands, inaccessible distant shores, abandoned places summoning the idea of desolation, the evident traces of mystery, places marked by sign or symbols… To explore, to measure those volumes – or even to get lost in them – these irreplaceable vessels are the setting of depth of field in your camera.

One more notion of silence remaining unspoken is the mental image: the limitless boundaries of imagination. The combination of time and space are here constantly and randomly subverted as it is perception of silence as presence or absence, not responding to the same rules of function, of “where or when”. The enchantment of dreams; unconscious, subconscious, unfathomable inner perception; the sidereal e distances of the universe; death.

I would have imagined needing very few words to talk about silence… It has not been so.

To conclude with an anecdote, one day many years ago, I learnt that during the academic examinations for classical music conductors, the master and the pupil face each other with nothing more than musical score in front of their eyes. The pupil is expected to perform and to summon in his gestures the entire spectrum of an orchestra, the entire architecture of music – in the absolute absence of sound… My mind reeled and I imagined making a film about the image of sound. I named it Figure, drew seventy-two of one hundred and sixty sketches of the storyboard, then I never did the film. Silence summons many untold stories.

LITERARY AND CINEMATOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

PROSE
Jorges Louis Borges – from The Aleph, The Immortal
Virginia Woolf – Flush
Virginia Woolf – The Waves
James Joyce – extract from Ulysses the monologue of Mrs Bloom
A.S. Byatt – Possession
Vercors – Le Silence de la Mer
Leonardo Sciascia – L’uomo solo. L’affaire Moro
Leonardo Sciascia – The Council of Egypt
Grazia Deledda – Ashes
Italo Calvino – Palomar
Dino Buzzati – The Tartar Steppe
Cicero – Orationes in Catilinam, Oratio I (es.: “cum tacent, clamant”)
Aldo Penna – The imperfect silence

POETRY
Dante Alighieri – Paradise I v. 55/56 […] Transumanar significar per verba non si poria
Rianer Maria Rilke – Stundenbuch
Gottfried Benn – Stille
Tjutcev – Silentium

ESSAYS AND SPECULATIVE
Edward T. Hall – The Silent Language
Edward T. Hall – The Hidden dimension
Abbé Dinouart – L’art de se taire
André Malraux – The Voices of Silence

CINEMA
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul, gergo bom) – Kim Ki-Duk
The Return – Andrej Zvyagintsev
Voice of Silence – Giorgio Prosperi & Jean Cocteau
And Now For Something Completely Different – Monty Python
Sleeper – Woody Allen
Roundhay Garden Scene – Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (1888, first silent film)
The silence of the lambs – Jonathan Demme
A tree of life – Terrence Malick
2001: A Space Odyssey- Stanley Kubrick
Rififi – Jules Dassin
A woman under influence – John Cassavetes
Read my Lips (Sur mes lèvres) – Jacques Audiard

VISUAL REFERENCES
http://www.giorgiafiorio.com/gf/silence-visual-references.zip

—

Dewi Lewis on Silence

Rome, May 15^th 2011

The more I think about Silence, the more difficult I find it to define what is a complex and multi-faceted subject. I would like to present to you some of the book projects I’ve been involved in, with a range of photographers working in areas where silence might be a factor. In this way I will offer some possible ideas around the intrinsic meaning of this word and raise further visual questions for your approach to the theme.

When starting to write an essay or a talk I often turn to Google, logging-in the keyword to see what comes out in terms of information or images. Among the first that you find on the website is the gesture of the finger to the lips, from numerous older examples such as a plaster sculpture by Auguste Préault (mid XIX). It is an obvious symbol used in everyday life and a great number of images on the web repeat this gesture[2]… On the other hand, you can find very different sorts of images, concerning, for example, the silence hanging over a site of tragedy and suffering[3]. These say absolutely nothing about silence except through the caption. So what actually is Silence? What forms does it take?

- Silence as choice: situations in which people remove themselves from the world of sound.

- Silence as imposition: situations when people are forcedly removed – into a prison, into solitary confinement, without the ability to communicate.

- Silence as oppression – dictatorship – where one of the strong elements is to keep control of free speech in the field of normal media communication.

In all these situations the common element of communication comes through – as an absence.

But on the other hand, there is also:

- Silence as release, when individuals get a feeling of deep satisfaction from being in a quiet environment.

- Silence as place: grandiose landscapes with a sense of peace and quiet.

- As a mood: the atmosphere in a place or a situation. It is not necessarily tangible but is something that you can feel and experience.

- Silence as fear: as children, when we are afraid of facing a situation we tend not to speak, for example when in a group of strangers.

Silence can also be implied via graphics. The same word “silence” can be written large across a page, or small in a corner. Each has a different dramatic effect: the amount of weight that you put on something can totally change how it is interpreted.

There is a dilemma attached to the term. Is Silence an absence – or a presence. Is it about something missing or something being present? Visually, this is an interesting concept to consider.

Music sums up my view of how silence works within visual culture, because there it actually means the space, the pauses, the breaks between things that allow you to understand everything else that is working around it: spaces and pauses within notes are useful for understanding the single parts and the whole composition[4]. Looking a little further, John Cage’s 4’33’’ of Silence, composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), instructs the performer not to play that particular instrument: there are three movements 30- 83-100 seconds and the main, key notion is almost the space between the notes; the idea that the audience should be listening to the background, the (sound of the) environment which exists as a permanent feature of our life.

It is difficult to talk about silence, as there is never true, total silence. It is something impossible to imagine. Therefore, we have to reinterpret it, as the undercurrent of something within a situation, something dealing with silence.

There are numbers of possibilities and I will present some quotations and interesting references from some books I have published that look at notions of silence:

1. Iain Brownlie Roy, Beyond The Imaginary Gates: a project in the north-east of Greenland, a very quiet and isolated environment. The author shows a landscape that may be very silent, but the important elements that he tries to put across are not actually the silence but the grandeur of nature and the stillness that gives an impression of silence and, at the least, of an atmosphere or a mood.

2. Paul Hart, Truncated: here there are images of a forest which is silent, still and quiet. However, looking at this, you realise that his real fascination is with the individual characters of the trees, so that he draws out an individual portrait from a silent and quiet environment.

3. Christophe Agou, In the Face of Silence: farmers’ life and environment in France – a very harsh, isolated world of comparative silence. This silent environment could represent either a choice or an imposition or both: people are forced to live in a certain way, but at the same time it is also a choice…

4 The Brothers is a work by Norwegian photographer Elin Hoyland. She represents the life of two elderly old brothers living in a small, isolated village in Norway. They are in a quiet environment completely apart from people and they only have themselves for company. One of them went from the village to a bigger city for a job interview when he was younger. It was the only time he went away and the worst night of his life: silence and stillness are for them a refuge and a deliberate choice.

5. Nick Danziger[5]: in his project about Bosnia and missing lives, he shows the search for DNA evidence to re-link with people who went missing during the Yugoslavian wars, so that families could have some sort of closure about the loss of their loved ones. It was about the concept of preserving the evidence of those deaths and murders. In the end many families are able bury their relatives properly in community mass burials.

6. John Darwell, Legacy, Photographs from Chernobyl 1999[6]. The silence of the place combined with our knowledge of its meaning has a terrifying effect (probably, if we did not know the place or the facts, the work would not operate on the same level…). In one of the “dead” cities portrayed, the sense is a silence of emptiness – and this comes from the information we already have about it.

7. After The Wall[7]: – a work by Eric Lusito – who travelled through the Soviet Union’s military camps, established in fifteen different States from east to west, unearthing endless amounts of archive material, related to that soviet period. Many of these bases are located not far from inhabited villages, but the local population, frightened by the memory of the Soviet presence that was once there, did not go near them… There is the sense of a presence of the silence of things left behind with the awareness of what happened.

8. Dan Dubowitz, Wastelands: focuses on empty industrial buildings (hospitals, sanatoria, prisons) and again there is the sense of presence which he feels in these silent, abandoned buildings.

9. Burke + Norfolk, Photographs from the war in Afghanistan[8] (recently shown at the Tate Modern in London). Burke was the first photographer in Afghanistan and photographed the British Army presence in the country. Over a century later Norfolk made a comparative project, approaching the subject in a non-photojournalistic way. We usually think of war areas as being full of danger, and suffering… we think of them in terms of photojournalistic subjects; but Norfolk’s approach is different, he tries to understand Burke’s approach, to get a sense of the events he lived. There is a sense of silence and quietness in the way that Norfolk photographs, but also of the gap in time, over one hundred years, that is being bridged, creating communication across a long period of time and space.

Silence it is a very complex theme and there are obvious areas of silence. There are many conventional signs that can also be easily understood as controlling mechanisms. But there still remains the central dilemma of silence as an absence or a presence, something that raises the possibility of interesting and diverse ways to approach it in photography.

—

Boris Biancheri on Silence

Rome, May 15th 2011

In numbers of experiences in my life, silence was present and sometimes the main element. Both a rejection and affirmation, silence is an absence as well as a presence sketching out uncountable and all sorts of constructions. Often interpreted in a strictly negative sense – coupled with fear, distress, abandonment… – However, or at least in my personal experience, also exists opposite positive silences and for many bizarre reasons sometimes. I will hereafter evoke a few of them. The first one goes back to my childhood, my family is Italian but my mother came from Baltics so we spoke German too, the main language at that time and the one of my nanny. We could speak therefore many languages yet sometimes, we were simply not allowed to speak. For example, nanny had to go for a full day shopping and as I really enjoyed being in her company, I accepted to follow her but I was not allowed to utter a word – if ever I had urgency, I could write. That remained with me for a long time, I still consider that if you have something very important to say, it is better to write it.

During my working experience I travelled continuously and held several different offices in the diplomatic services. In particular, in the early sixties, Europe was all in ferment and turmoil, people were trying to build something and many projects raised every day; people moved and offices changed. Several responsibilities had to be held and not always clear. When I was in my mid thirties and at the core of my career, I went to office n° 9 of the Economic Affairs in Rome, it had no exact competence but dealt with all the things other offices did not. My colleagues and I often handled completely obscure matters… Once I was substituting the Boss office during a meeting in Geneva about European launcher development organisation; I so asked for advice to the General Director. He gave me a very general and useful instruction which assisted him frequently along his career: “At the beginning, when everyone speaks loud and careless, no one will listen to you so it is useless to speak; and when it comes to something serious, if you are obliged to say something try to say what was previously said with different words – for example the French delegate’s opinion – or simply standing up against the Dutch delegate”. During the meeting everything turned fine, but at the moment when I was asked for my opinion, no alphabetical order^{^[9]} was followed, not knowing how to behave I simply kept silent: it could not mean abstention as I had no instruction for that neither. I asserted therefore that my silence could not be interpreted in any way. Once back I wrote a note to explain my behaviour and to my utter surprise a telephone call of compliment came from the German Embassy! My silence – such “intelligent and effective position” – became a standpoint.

Certainly in diplomacy, when you try to find the standing between different positions, silence is often crucial. If words may help illuminating, in most cases, in my experience, peace has been reached through silence.

Considering our present system of mass communication – both from my direct experience working in the media^{^[10]} for a long time and as a consumer an alarming noise is surrounding us; continuously stepping above the sense of things, altering the value of the news themselves, we ought to be suspicious or at least distrustful, we should learn to recognize and distinguish the noise from the news. I particularly started to appreciate silence precisely from my fifteen years of experience in communication media. Mass communication system is in fact so fragile that Democracy is endangered today. Things can appear important simply by their repetition often regardless respecting any true values… Not mentioning the political involvements. Local elections particularly symbolize that: the media are responsible for inventing the issues but not always for clarifying them nor evaluating the consequences… In every country during political elections, even small questions would influence immense decisions; there is a clash between the functioning of the system and media – that are too strong, so that inevitably they could project uncertainty and doubt. More silence in the medias would be particularly precious and positive…

I will finally tell you the story of a boy^{^[11]}: a very brilliant and intelligent one, with excellent memory, almost a genius, but who does not like the use of words. When his Master becomes a politician then raised as Prime Minister, he follows him as assistant and for many years they work together until the day the Prime Minister is assassinated. His assistant is then projected into the main light and becoming himself the Prime Minister is asked one day to deliver an official commemorative speech at the Parliament: that would be the first time he speaks, a postponed but forced situation for him to express directly his ideas. He works long and hard on his speech and when comes the moment to begin speaking in front of thousands of people… everyone – him at first – discovers that he has no voice: he has lost it, in the things he has to say are the very important he has always thought about but in that vey moment he simply can’t utter a single word. It is a sad end perhaps, yet helping to project the value of silence and of thoughts as superior compare to words.

Silence for me is the opposite of words, noise and image. Silence in the visual contemporary evolution had in the second half of XX century, an immense growth and significance in several arts. Certainly in music: in particular after the introduction of the 5 semitones to first 7 tunes rule and growing dominance a great confusion came into music… In this wonderful metamorphosis things became difficult to understand and silence was a reaction to that, i.e. John Cages’s 4’33’’ of Silence – of nothing, becomes the construction of something.

Likewise in the visual arts: when there is too much chaos and abundance of whatever (tunes, words, images, concepts, religions) silence is needed. The XX century has several major figures who – more or less at the same time – conceived Silence as a mean of expression: Rothko, Manzoni, Castellani, Burri, Fontana. And in theatre as well, thanks to Samuel Beckett. Whether you play with colours, sounds, words, or politics,… silence is one of the most extraordinary rich themes one could embark upon it is a reflexion and a stimulus for creation…

[1] Edward T. Hall, American anthropologist who has extensively investigated the relations of behaviour and analysed the cross cultural boundaries in different civilisations: The Hidden Dimension; The Silent Language.
[2] About 30-40% of the images found use this gesture!
[3] Twin Towers Memorial Service, September 11^th 2006.
[4] “[Silence] is the space between the notes that makes the music.” – Noah Benshea.
[5] “Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.” – Charles De Gaulle
[6] “Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.” – Bob Dylan
[7] “Oppression can only survive through silence.” – Carmen de Monteflores
[8] “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
[9] France-Italy-Netherlands according to the General Director’s instructions.
[10] Boris Biancheri has long-time held the Chair of ANSA, the Italian National Press Agency and of the Italian Newspaper and Publishers Society.
[11] Summary and quotations from In Praise of Silence, Boris Biancheri, Feltrinelli Editore 2011.

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Silence

Sz — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:35:16 +0000

I would have imagined needing very few words to talk about silence… It has not been so.

LITERARY AND CINEMATOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

POETRY
Dante Alighieri – Paradise I v. 55/56 […] Transumanar significar per verba non si poria
Rianer Maria Rilke – Stundenbuch
Gottfried Benn – Stille
Tjutcev – Silentium

ESSAYS AND SPECULATIVE
Edward T. Hall – The Silent Language
Edward T. Hall – The Hidden dimension
Abbé Dinouart – L’art de se taire
André Malraux – The Voices of Silence

VISUAL REFERENCES
http://www.giorgiafiorio.com/gf/silence-visual-references.zip

—

Dewi Lewis on Silence

Rome, May 15^th 2011

- Silence as choice: situations in which people remove themselves from the world of sound.

- Silence as imposition: situations when people are forcedly removed – into a prison, into solitary confinement, without the ability to communicate.

- Silence as oppression – dictatorship – where one of the strong elements is to keep control of free speech in the field of normal media communication.

In all these situations the common element of communication comes through – as an absence.

But on the other hand, there is also:

- Silence as release, when individuals get a feeling of deep satisfaction from being in a quiet environment.

- Silence as place: grandiose landscapes with a sense of peace and quiet.

- As a mood: the atmosphere in a place or a situation. It is not necessarily tangible but is something that you can feel and experience.

- Silence as fear: as children, when we are afraid of facing a situation we tend not to speak, for example when in a group of strangers.

There is a dilemma attached to the term. Is Silence an absence – or a presence. Is it about something missing or something being present? Visually, this is an interesting concept to consider.

There are numbers of possibilities and I will present some quotations and interesting references from some books I have published that look at notions of silence:

8. Dan Dubowitz, Wastelands: focuses on empty industrial buildings (hospitals, sanatoria, prisons) and again there is the sense of presence which he feels in these silent, abandoned buildings.

—

Boris Biancheri on Silence

Rome, May 15th 2011

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Reflexions Masterclass 2011 The Spring Letter and NO

Sz — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:01:31 +0000

NO alternative, aversion, ban, contrary, deconstruction, denial, doubt, end, negation, prohibition, protest, refusal

The positive dimension simply is; NO does not exist if not as opposition, alternative, refusal, and negation. Such apparent original weakness is literally overturned in the act of establishing itself. Besides expressing denial, NO is also an act of rebirth embodying a dynamic force that is in opposition to the static passivity of the positive condition. It is projection, creation and renewal as opposed to receptiveness, acceptance, conservation and decadence. Addressing our theme I would like to start at the point to which Martin led us at the end of his presentation, from this “positive” quality of negation: NO as a powerful act of beginning. Speculating now on how we might approach and translate this idea visually, the first thing to consider is that Art in general and photography in particular establish themselves as alternative realities, not corresponding to the original reality. In photography (photos- graphos – Φοτοσ γραфοσ writing of light) that happens in the arbitrary transcription of light, the experience of which refers to only one of the five senses – the view – and therefore focuses on only one dimension of tangible reality. Moreover, in the unfathomable vastness of space, in the ambiguity of the perception of distances and scales and within the simultaneous flow of the manifestations of time and the impossibility of determining its value or any constant entity, photography establishes a measure, which redefines perception through a single and unique mental image. It determines when, where, what, how, and the combination of these elements, otherwise in principle infinite. Photography therefore has active and accurate awareness of the ubiquitous, continuous and multiple experiences of existences and presences. In a way, it is a step beyond the dimension of representation that you explored last time: IDENTITY, which implied a condition of simultaneity, superimposition and similarity in the contemplation of several aspects of the same reality. NO necessarily implies an uncompromising alternative. Photography, in expressing a different conception of the world, in the mere representation of an act of denial would state an assertion: a double negative equals a positive, not to be not, means to be. In the representation of the negative form of NO its sense elapses if we refer back to the reality from which it comes. NO becomes an original creation only by completely detaching itself from any positive origin. The challenge lies in the paradox that, in the representation, the back of the front does not express “backness”: frontal placement of the flipside expresses its essence. The difficulty is of course how to express negation as an inexplicable and unquestionable proof of reality. A postulate, the existence of which has no reference to any verifiable reality, not even as irrational evidence (i.e. the axiom) but as empiric unavoidable fact. On another level, consider the scale and the impact of what is going on in the world that surrounds us…, how never before, its perception and experience has been so widely dispersed and how absolutely impossible it is to give it a sense in global terms and how never before has it been so urgent for individual realities to define themselves. Last, I wish to remind you that the secret impulse of creativity (yours too) lies in desire and desire is predicated on absence: try to be alone without food and sleep (not to mention alcohol, cigarettes or any other addictive substance) for 24 hrs, without any communication or connection or any sort of pleasure or satisfaction and you will experience how ravenously visionary you become! Whatever direction you embark on – abstract or actual – once you have understood this principle, anything can work and be used as a shape to contain and express the form of your subject matter. Spring is today – a good time to be reborn. Dare to risk and see what eyes cannot see.

Reflexions Masterclass 2011
The Spring Letter

Dear All,
WE WELCOME – Ying, Saana, Yusuf, Ikuru, Pietro and Sean, our new 1st year students! No, this is not a mistake – this time, “The Letter “ comes last deliberately. As usual, I’ll go back over some crucial points we raised during our last exciting meeting at Fondazione di Venezia. This time, both Martin Bethenod’s and Joan Fontcuberta’s contributions and your impressive work contributed substantially, towards moving our discourse a few degrees further in unexplored directions.

1. Content awareness, perspective on your work – editing and form of final presentation
2. Fiction and truth – the production of your images and related subjects and recycled elements
3. … Again, sources and influences and one new issue

1. You don’t choose your subject, the subject chooses you – it is compelling and unavoidable. You can only follow and try to understand where your work is leading you. There is a point at which an artist moves beyond the simple critical approach to his/her work. It is not about good or bad, but essentially about what and how: the continuous questioning and constant evolution of your editing[1]. Print your work, even in a very small format: look at it constantly and hold it, as much as possible, in your hands. It is the only way to develop a sense of perspective and to move awareness to a deeper level, establishing a uniquely intimate relationship between content and the only possible final form. Form and content, as is often said, are inherent and correspond to each other inseparably. In order not to transform itself into mere aesthetic, form should translate content seamlessly. In photography, what you want to say must inevitably translate how you see it. To take good photographs, even excellent ones, is the minimum, but it is by no means enough. It does not any more represent the ultimate goal, but rather the principle of the artistic process. The public “presentation” and its final form are crucial. We formally ask 2nd year students (and welcome 1st year ones too!) to try to engage on a much deeper level of awareness and to a greater extent in the strategic planning – vision – of their work. In the words of Joan: “be Artists, not wanna-bes and think BIG!” Lastly: identify your title (even if it’s not final) it is a crucial act that forces you to understand your work.

2. Besides your own photographs, today more and different elements can be encompassed and appropriated to enhance the sense of your work. The use of existing real material – such as somebody else’s photographs, newspaper cuttings, maps, hand written testimonies etc. – that you could recycle to widen the extent of your insight is a widely used procedure. It works wonderfully if it has its own inner logic and is not just a collection of messy pieces pasted over an empty subject. And there are other possible, interesting directions you could explore, such as: their creation / construction if not (or even if they are) necessarily fake and un-original elements, such as the use of elements extracted from other contexts – drawings, snapshots, unrelated texts… – or, the viewer’s reaction and relation to your work to be, deliberately used as symbols or ambiguously questioning the final sense of one’s work. Economy in the use of elements and means should also be considered: one could need very little to construct sense on a large scale. Likewise, if you believe that you need a skyscraper’s façade or the vault of a dome – that is, precisely what you need and you must fight to get. Do not be intimidated.

3. Opening your eyes to sources and influences – past, present and lateral ones – beyond what has already been said [2], is a fundamental contribution to all the above. As well as literature, paintings, sculpture, theatre and so on, do not neglect considering (which does not necessarily mean make use of) the multiple contemporary forms of global communication – ”the news”. …Reaching us everywhere, a constant flow in a continuous state of becoming, in real time till only few months ago, and now – astonishingly – preceding, anticipating and therefore influencing events even before they happen…! This process eclipses forever the original sense of reportage and photojournalism. It does not mean they cannot exist any longer, but that they must configure [here: cut ‘re’] themselves differently: choose between them/one or the other . The degree of priority and accurate truth of the events accumulating one upon the other, constantly transforming under our eyes, the very perception of the world we live in, in the contemporary dramatization of information, is radically, precipitously changing. Because of this, the way of evoking and transmitting them will inevitably be different.

I wish you some wonderfully creative months and Good Luck!
Giorgia

- REFERENCES / PHILOSOPHY
G. W. FRIEDRICH HEGEL, The doctrine of being Chapter I: The Quality – from The Science of Logic
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus spoke Zarathustra
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, Being and Nothingness
MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Being and Time and The Origin of the work of Art
JACQUES DERRIDA, Writing and difference
SØREN KIERKEGAARD, Enten / Eller (Either / Or)

NO – References
- REFERENCES / LITERATURE
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, Nausea
JAMES JOYCE, Finnegan’s wakes
GEORGE ORWELL, 1984
JORGE LOUIS BORGES, The Immortal and The Aleph, extracts from The Aleph
ALBERT CAMUS, The Apostat from The Exile and the Reign
JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS, Against the Grain (fr: A rebours)
EVGENY ZEMYATIN, We
LEV TOLSTOY, Resurrection
HERMAN HESSE, Siddhartha
FRANCISCO AYALA, San Juan de Dios
MIGUEL CERVANTES, Don Quixote de la Mancha
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Saint John’s Temptation
COLIN WILSON, The Outsider

- REFERENCES / SPECULATIVE AND MYTHOLOGICAL
The Apocalypse Of John / The Book of Revelations
The Book of Job
Phaeton Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book II
The Odyssey Omer II Book
Kali- Yuga
Armageddon

- VISUAL REFERENCES
>download .zip

——-
[1] Proceed by making three groups: selection A – definitely IN; selection X – definitely OUT; selection B – MAYBE. Selections may change several times, accompanying your work in its evolution, slowly revealing to you a broader general understanding of your project. Remember there is your main general editing and there are many specific ones; depending on whom you are addressing, each will have its own specific form of presentation. (i.e. The Winter Letter and IDENTITY)
[2] Feed your imagination with literature: reading fills the eyes with images and plunges you into a constant subconscious (visionary) process of pre-visualization. Feed your capacity to recognise perfect form and composition by looking at the paintings of great masters. Don’t look before shooting images at what you are going to photograph, it pollutes your visual virginity and inhibits creativity. Today you can no longer avoid being unaware of what has been done in the language of photography and how it is definitively changing… (i.e. The Winter Letter and IDENTITY)

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No

Sz — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:03:25 +0000

GF on NO
March 2011

NO
alternative, aversion, ban, contrary, deconstruction, denial, doubt, end, negation, prohibition, protest, refusal

The positive dimension simply is; NO does not exist if not as opposition, alternative, refusal, and negation. Such apparent original weakness is literally overturned in the act of establishing itself. Besides expressing denial, NO is also an act of rebirth embodying a dynamic force that is in opposition to the static passivity of the positive condition. It is projection, creation and renewal as opposed to receptiveness, acceptance, conservation and decadence. Addressing our theme I would like to start at the point to which Martin led us at the end of his presentation, from this “positive” quality of negation: NO as a powerful act of beginning. Speculating now on how we might approach and translate this idea visually, the first thing to consider is that Art in general and photography in particular establish themselves as alternative realities, not corresponding to the original reality. In photography (photos-graphos – Φοτοσ γραфοσ writing of light) that happens in the arbitrary transcription of light, the experience of which refers to only one of the five senses – the view – and therefore focuses on only one dimension of tangible reality. Moreover, in the unfathomable vastness of space, in the ambiguity of the perception of distances and scales and within the simultaneous flow of the manifestations of time and the impossibility of determining its value or any constant entity, photography establishes a measure, which redefines perception through a single and unique mental image. It determines when, where, what, how, and the combination of these elements, otherwise in principle infinite. Photography therefore has active and accurate awareness of the ubiquitous, continuous and multiple experiences of existences and presences. In a way, it is a step beyond the dimension of representation that you explored last time: IDENTITY, which implied a condition of simultaneity, superimposition and similarity in the contemplation of several aspects of the same reality. NO necessarily implies an uncompromising alternative. Photography, in expressing a different conception of the world, in the mere representation of an act of denial would state an assertion: a double negative equals a positive, not to be not, means to be. In the representation of the negative form of NO its sense elapses if we refer back to the reality from which it comes. NO becomes an original creation only by completely detaching itself from any positive origin. The challenge lies in the paradox that, in the representation, the back of the front does not express “backness”: frontal placement of the flipside expresses its essence. The difficulty is of course how to express negation as an inexplicable and unquestionable proof of reality. A postulate, the existence of which has no reference to any verifiable reality, not even as irrational evidence (i.e. the axiom) but as empiric unavoidable fact. On another level, consider the scale and the impact of what is going on in the world that surrounds us…, how never before, its perception and experience has been so widely dispersed and how absolutely impossible it is to give it a sense in global terms and how never before has it been so urgent for individual realities to define themselves. Last, I wish to remind you that the secret impulse of creativity (yours too) lies in desire and desire is predicated on absence: try to be alone without food and sleep (not to mention alcohol, cigarettes or any other addictive substance) for 24 hrs, without any communication or connection or any sort of pleasure or satisfaction and you will experience how ravenously visionary you become! Whatever direction you embark on – abstract or actual – once you have understood this principle, anything can work and be used as a shape to contain and express the form of your subject matter. Spring is today – a good time to be reborn. Dare to risk and see what eyes cannot see.

From Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011 – Web www.britannica.com

NO
variant of noh
See also: ALTERNATIVE, AVERSION, BAN, CONTRARY, DECONSTRUCTION, DENIAL, DOUBT, END, NEGATION, PROHIBITION, PROTEST, REFUSAL

adverb Etymology: Middle English, from Old English nā, from ne not + ā always; akin to Old Norse & Old High German ne not, Latin ne-, Greek nē- — more at AYE Date: before 12th century
1. a: chiefly Scottish: NOT b: used as a function word to express the negative of an alternative choice or possibility “shall we go out to dinner or ∼”
2. in no respect or degree used in comparisons “you’re ∼ better than the rest of us”
3. not so used to express negation, dissent, denial, or refusal “∼, I’m not going”
4. used with a following adjective to imply a meaning expressed by the opposite positive statement “in ∼ uncertain terms”
5. used as a function word to emphasize a following negative or to introduce a more emphatic, explicit, or comprehensive statement “it’s big, ∼, it’s gigantic”
6. used as an interjection to express surprise, doubt, or incredulity
7. used in combination with a verb to form a compound adjective “no-bake pie”
8. in negation “shook his head ∼”

adjective, Date: 12th century
1. a: not any “∼ parking”, “∼ disputing the decision” b: hardly any: very little “finished in ∼ time”
2. not a: quite other than a “he’s ∼ expert”
3. used in combination with a noun to form a compound adjective “a no-nonsense realist”
- Function: noun (plural noes or nos, Date:1588)
1. an act or instance of refusing or denying by the use of the word no DENIAL “received a firm ∼ in reply”
2. a: a negative vote or decision b: plural: persons voting in the negative symbol nobelium

abbreviation
1. north; northern
2. Latin numero, abl. of numerous number
Compounds:
no–account adjective
no contest noun NOLO CONTENDERE
no–fault adjective
no–go adjective
no–good adjective / noun
no–hit adjective / transitive verb
no–hoper noun
no–man’s–land noun
no–name adjective / noun
no–no noun (plural no–no’s or no–nos)
no–nonsense adjective
no one pronoun NOBODY
no way adverb
at no abbreviation

See also:
- Refusal noun and AVERSION – PROTEST
- Contrary, noun and NEGATION- DENIAL
- Prohibition noun and BAN
- Deconstruction noun
- Doubt noun and DISTRUST- UNCERTAINTY – DOUBTLESS
- End noun and DEATH – EXCEEDINGLY
- Alternative; Whether conjunction, Date: before 12th century used as a function word usually with correlative or or with or whether to indicate
1. until the early 19th century a direct question involving alternatives
2. an indirect question involving stated or implied alternatives “decide ∼ he should agree or raise objections”, “wondered ∼ to stay”
3. alternative conditions or possibilities “see me no more, ∼ he be dead or no — Shakespeare”, “seated him next to her ∼ by accident or design” — whether or no or whether or not in any case “they’ve only been married a very few weeks, whether or no — Thomas Hardy”

Some more comparisons:
Noh Function: noun (plural Noh also No)
Etymology: Japanese nō, literally, talent, Date: 1871 classic Japanese dance-drama having a heroic theme, a chorus, and highly stylized action, costuming, and scenery

No, Lake
lake S central Sudan where Bahr el Jebel & Bahr el Ghazal join to form the White Nile area 40 square miles (104 square kilometers).

- REFERENCES / SPECULATIVE AND MYTHOLOGICAL
The Apocalypse Of John / The Book of Revelations
The Book of Job
Phaeton Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book II
The Odyssey Omer II Book
Kali- Yuga
Armageddon

- VISUAL REFERENCES
>download .zip

Martin Bethenod on NO
Venice, 30th January 2011

NO is the title of a work by Charles Ray in 1992: a colour photograph 96.5 X 76.2 cm– representing a self-portrait, the arms crossed. But what you see is not what you think. This image is not a self- portrait, not even a photograph, but the photographic image of a wax statue of the artist. What it says is “No faithful representation, no truth, no communication is possible”. With this work, Ray focuses on the negative side of the artwork, its entropic dimension. The artist intentionally refuses the world and presents himself as an “idiot”, in the sense of Dostoevsky, or of the French philosopher Clément Rosset.

NO is one of the most formidable subject, because it is the absolute word of radicalism and, thus, the starting point of all researches, discoveries and avant-gardes. We are not talking about artworks as an efficient way to say “No” to the world’s evils (war, poverty, dictatorship, censorship,…) –but about an absolute refusal, an act of rebellion, destruction and negation: we are talking about Art saying “No” to EVERYTHING. And, on the other side, we are talking about art that says “No to itself”; No, to its own material reality.

Both cases state the very heart of the Avant-garde’s idea of history as an epic. As there are stories of No there also are heroes of No: artists, writers, poets, dancers, musicians and Historians of NO. Among them, I would like to mention Jean-Yves Jouannais and his book Artists without works; Mathieu Copeland, who curated the void – Le vide – retrospective in Centre Pompidou in Paris and in Zurich; and Greil Marcus, American historian of culture and especially rock ‘n roll, with his epic story of “No” entitled Lipstick Traces, published in 1989, that hugely influenced posterity. Among the heroes of nihilism – No to everything – we ought not to forget Marcus’ “conversation of negation”, that starts in 1916 in Zurich in Cabaret Voltaire: the time and space of the Dada manifesto, with Hugo Ball, Tzara and Richard Huelsenbeck screaming poems without words. A second step would be the Situationist International movement and its protagonist Guy Debord, author of The Show Societyé [1]. Thus we arrive at the burning decade of the Seventies and major events such as the Mai – 68’s student riots in France and all over around Europe. Finally, Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK in 1976 and the actual end of the band that split after the famous San Francisco concert in 1978. Rock’n Roll is therefore meant as a weapon against itself – the punk absolute nihilist attitude of “no fun, no feeling, no future” and finally the direct consequence of self-destruction – or the other possibility of being recuperated by the market; and both of them never fail to happen. All of the above seem to be an absolute and hopeless failure and at the same time, all these experiences of radical nihilism could be considered as related to each other in a sort of secret history of art and civilization, with the same urgency and atmosphere. A “Dark side”, that is part of any cultural identity.

Another, perhaps more intrinsic aspect of the artist’s negation is dematerialisation – Art saying No to Art itself –, whose numerous heroes in literature (Bartelby by Herman Melville and his famous sentence “I would prefer not to”, 1853) and in music (John Cage, 4’33 of silence, 1952) reach their apex with the conceptual artists: as in the history of Jouannais, there are artists, writers, musicians who chose not to realize their works and not to produce them. “Conceptual art is to be considered as a strike, or a social movement occupying factories”: an absolute refusal of any material and commercial dimension of the artwork. Following in its wake we can read a large part of the history of the Avant-garde in the 20th century as a quest for immateriality.

Yves Klein, in 1962, invented a protocol for the acquisition of his zones of immaterial pictorial intensity: it was completely immaterial, because the buyer only got a receipt; and he took it to a further stage of dematerialisation, because the buyer had to burn this certificate in the presence of a witness[2]. Lawrence Weiner states that a piece of art may or may not be actually built, and that both propositions are perfect equivalents. Ian Wilson doesn’t produce any artwork, but only has conversations with collectors or curators, of which there remain only a slim typewritten sentence saying – “There was a discussion with Mr So and so…” –signed by the artist. Of course, this pose expresses a fundamental imperfection: there ALWAYS remains some material trace (an object, a photograph, a certificate,…) that might be preserved, collected or sold, generating therefore a confusion between a work and its documentation. Just as if it were impossible to avoid this “reification of logos”: art becomes a kind of struggle and a inevitable coincidence. The logical next step beyond this one up to the present time is Tino Seghal: first a dancer and a choreographer and then an artist of performing artworks, he presents live pieces in art spaces (Museums, temporary exhibitions) performed by real actors. There is no caption or label in the exhibition room (the actors happen to say the title of the work while performing it), it leaves no trace. Furthermore, these works are only transmitted orally: the first performers/artists teach the choreography to the next ones, and so on; there is no written description: it represents a world that cannot be documented or recorded, filmed or photographed…

The attempt at immateriality – a pure instant work deprived of all materiality leading to “no reproducibility” –is a complex and somehow hopeless cause. Nevertheless, what is at stake is the very aura of the artwork’s legacy, which is, according to Walter Benjamin based on technical reproducibility. The irreplaceable, non-reproducible quality of the original is a quest / re-conquest of its value that brings back the lost aura to the artwork. Intangibility redefines uniqueness that brings back the auratic dimension. NO is the beginning of this redefinition.

[1] La société du spectacle
[2] A famous photograph represents Dino Buzzati burning his certificate on the river Seine bank whilst Yves Klein throws gold in the water.

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Identity

Sz — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:47:39 +0000

If we consider raw matter to be the tangible reality – we cannot assert that we are simply made of the ensemble of amino-acid, saturated fats, nitrogen and hydrated principles constituting the transitory substance inside the perimeter of our person. If reality – existing only for what we (each differently) perceive – is difficult to be determined, identity – often a convention – representing a partial aspect of reality is a far more ambiguous concept to define. Nonetheless reality of photographs is something (else) that we determine and may partly control. Identity – a character – is about perception: in photography reality is essentially the point of view upon it. In this sense it embodies the primeval essence of photography: the perception of phenomena’s multiple aspects and the expression of appearance. Beyond human identity, the degrees of the external “image” individuals project of themselves –the history of which have been so articulately presented by Benoit – there are several more approaches to be considered. We mentioned the identity theory: the figure of a curve line is one reality embodying and expressing a dual identity: convex on one side, concave on the other. Another example is the one about the multiple perception of substance’s essence: water for instance, being both transparent and reflective solid and liquid; light, the most mysterious, at the same time visible and intangible; the perception or sizes: we all remember having entered a room we perceived immeasurably vast, and finding it narrow and smaller one day not being any longer children, low and small on its horizon. The character, the aspect, the identity of things – brighter, darker; newer, older; smoother, rougher; bigger, smaller; near, far; transparent, reflecting; moving, motionless, dry, wet… – “is” only in relation to the conditions determining its perception. “Sky is not blue: sky is sky and blue is blue – nothing exists, everything is^{^[1]}”. I said previously that the identity is often a convention particularly and abstractly when we recognise it as collective. The political figures, flags of nations, the beliefs of religions, the belonging to human, ethnic or social groups, the slogans and mottoes of ideologies…, are conventions we call (identify) collective identity.

From Encyclopædia Britannica 2010 (www.britannica.com)
Identity
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iden·ti·ties
Etymology: Middle French identité, from Late Latin identitat-, identitas, probably from Latin identidem repeatedly, contraction of idem et idem, literally, same and same
Date: 1570
1) a- sameness of essential or generic character in different instances
b- sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : oneness
2) a- the distinguishing character or personality of an individual : individuality
b- the relation established by psychological identification
3) the condition of being the same with something described or asserted “establish the ∼ of stolen goods”
4) an equation that is satisfied for all values of the symbols
5) identity element: Function: noun, Date:1902
an element (as 0 in the set of all integers under addition or 1 in the set of positive integers under multiplication) that leaves any element of the set to which it belongs unchanged when combined with it by a specified operation
- identity card, Function: noun, Date: 1900
a card bearing identifying data (as age or organizational membership) about the individual whose name appears thereon called also identification card identity card
- identity crisis, Function: noun, Date: 1954
1) personal psychosocial conflict especially in adolescence that involves confusion about one’s social role and often a sense of loss of continuity to one’s personality
2) a state of confusion in an institution or organization regarding its nature or direction
- identity matrix, Function: noun, Date: circa 1929
a square matrix that has numeral 1′s along the principal diagonal and 0′s elsewhere
- identity politics, Function: noun, plural but singular or plural in construction, Date:1988
Cf. particularism, Function: noun, Date:1824
2) a political theory that each political group has a right to promote its own interests and especially independence without regard to the interests of larger groups
- identity theft, Function: noun, Date: 1991
the illegal use of someone else’s personal information (as a Social Security number) in order to obtain money or credit
- additive identity, Function: noun, Date: 1953
an identity element (as 0 in the group of whole numbers under the operation of addition) that in a given mathematical system leaves unchanged any element to which it is added
- dissociative identity disorder, Function: noun, Date: 1993
Cf. multiple personality disorder, Function: noun, Date: 1901
a disorder that is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct and complex identities or personality states each of which becomes dominant and controls behaviour from time to time to the exclusion of the others and results from disruption in the integrated functions of consciousness, memory, and identity called also multiple personality dissociative identity disorder
- multiplicative identity, Function: noun, Date:1958
an identity element (as 1 in the group of rational numbers without 0) that in a given mathematical system leaves unchanged any element by which it is multiplied
- self–identity, Function: noun, Date: 1835
1) sameness of a thing with itself
2) individuality “self-understanding is the necessary condition of a sense of ∼ — J. C. Murray”
Function: noun, Date: 1614
1. a- total character peculiar to and distinguishing an individual from others; b- personality
2. archaic: the quality or state of being indivisible
3. separate or distinct existence
4. individual, person.

References

FICTION, LITERARY, SPECULATIVE
FERNANDO PESSOA – inevitable! – and his multiple heteronyms, possessing distinct biographies, appearances and writing styles; some of the most famous are:
- Bernardo Soares – Poet and prose writer, author of the fantastic Book of Disquiet
- Ricardo Reis – Poet and prose writer – author of Odes
- Álvaro de Campos – Poet and prose writer Collected Poems Vol. 2, 1928–1935
- Alberto Caeiro – Poet and master of other Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms
…And about 80 more among heteronyms and different characters
VIRGINIA WOOLF Orlando
JORGE LUIS BORGES The Other – extract from The Book of Sand
FEODOR DOSTOEVSKIJ The Double
VLADIMIR NABOKOV The real life of Sebastian Knight
LUIGI PIRANDELLO The Fictions: The late Mattia Pascal; One, no one and one hundred thousand
MILAN KUNDERA Identity
ALDOUS HUXLEY The Doors of Perception
PHILIP ROTH The Human Stain
A.S. BYATT Possession
MARCEL PROUST La Recherche du Temps perdu
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
THOMAS MANN Doctor Faustus
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Faust
ALBER CAMUS The Foreigner
UMBERTO ECO Il Cimitero di Praga

CINEMA :
DAVID LYNCH Elephant Man
STANLEY KUBRICK Clockwork Orange
JOHN WOO Face/Off
SPIKE JONZE Being John Malkovic
PETER HOWITT Sliding doors
Christopher Nolan Memento
DOUG LIMAN The Bourne Identity
D.J. CARUSO Taking Lives
DAVID FINCHER The Game

VISUAL REFERENCES

download .zip (24MB)

Benoît Rivero on IDENTITY
Paris, 7th November 2010
The theme of Identity is one of the four pillars in the history of photography: – identity, memory, time, truth – and photography’s major question ever since. According to the Socratic injunction “Know yourself” (Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, gnôthi seautón), the name is the first knowledge. Identity, in its past acceptations – was – the name: it evokes and essentially means, the name that parents transmits to offspring’s, to the posterity, and the descent. With the XIXth century – from 1839 precisely, the proclaimed date of the invention of photography –, identity is no longer simply a name – it becomes an image too. The individual states “I am myself, I identify with a name and – for the first time – I have a face. The mirror is until this moment the only way to develop one’s own awareness; but mirrors are in those days still very rare objects… A Scandinavian tale tell us – …One day an old fisherman wandering on the shore finds a strange object in the sand: a mirror, the old man has never seen one, he turns it into his hands and looks at it wandering what that could be – then seeing the image staring at him, exclaims – oh, that’s father! He takes home the object and jealously hides it into a box. From time to time in the evenings very cautiously and secretly he looks at it. Such strange behaviour slowly arouses his old wife’s suspicions. One night the man is already sound asleep, she seeks everywhere and discovers the hidden object. She carefully holds it in her hands and silently look at it, exclaiming on a sudden: – A woman, I knew it! Fortunately she is very old -. The French expression for looking at oneself is “se mirer”, literally, mirror oneself. Somehow photography is the end of the mirror: it allow us not only to see ourselves, but to hold the image intact and look at it for ever. Images that we can keep with us and carry them anywhere. What an exorbitant discovery for humanity! And that becomes today a global and diffused media. Thank to photography we (think we) may know ourselves, that means knowing our own image, furthermore, on account of such precious new connection established between the name and the face, we learn something – of ourselves and other’s identities. Yet such new meaning of identity becomes a way to control and govern people, as a new form of knowledge upon them and a way to enter into their lives… A miracle and a tool in the words of Bertillon[2] and Lombroso[3]. Identity in photography does not only means self-portrait, but also and more generally portrait. In the beginning people don’t make their own self-portraits, but posed – dressed up and polished – portraits stating the identity and projecting the appearance. Photography uniquely allows us to actually see ourselves: looking in the glass the eyes move continuously and we cannot see our glance, besides, sides and sizes are in a mirror always altered. On the other hand in the identity photographs (for instance) the image is condensed, and the eyes can perceive it immediately without wandering around. Nowadays seem to we owe several different identities: introducing a radical change in the perception of ourselves the most crucial is the one issuing from the digital world, the virtual identity, the avatar. The alter is an actual “figure” of ourselves somehow existing in the web’s sixth continent.

It is a fact that today a vats number of people around the world possess at least two identities: the one on the identity card and another in the network …and we assume that would mean to have two lives and have the possibility of being someone else in another universe.

Along a similar path we may evoke the contemporary trend of physical – face and body –transformation from make up to aesthetic surgery through biotechnological metamorphosis, and in contemporary art the body itself becomes the artwork.

In this sense we are today at an historical turning point: the two above mentioned phenomenon – virtual identity and physical metamorphosis – would probably at some point meet and join… It is an immense field of research as yet still widely unexplored and a new completely untold dimension. For all of these reasons we shouldn’t override the question identity arises today, both artistically and photographically. Dealing with this subject is a visual capital challenge that would require a deep insight to the problematic. Remind that human being is and has been constantly in seek for identity: there is an irreducible identity that makes us unique – it is a scientific and proved truth – but even that might one day be lost in the course of subverting all rules and laws of genetic, reproduction and way of appearing… Who may say perhaps some day we will find out infinite, multiple and reproducible identities.

BR November 2010

[1] J.L. Borges – The prism and the mirror – collected essays
[2] Alphonse Bertillon 1853/1914, who developed in Paris prison’s laboratories the first biometric scientific identification method.
[3] Cesare Lombroso 1835/1909: Italian anthropologist, whose studies on criminality were influenced by physiognomic.

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Reflexions Masterclass 2010 The Winter Letter and IDENTITY

Sz — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:17:26 +0000

Dear All,

summing up Paris meeting: the precious intervention of Benoît and Klavdij’s blazing crunch, you find here some of the crucial points we raised and few consideration on the theme of IDENTITY.

Amateurs or Artists
Learning to edit and understanding one’s own work direction
Approaching your subjects and/or any assignment
Sources and influences

1. Amateurs are contented practising their passions, they make it a point not to trouble themselves with complications of which they could not care a row of pins. Artists, urged by the relentless desire to surpass themselves, bending toward an horizon unreachable by definition, are on the contrary compelled to a self-inflicted struggle up a very steep path. There is no reason to embark on such hardship unless inherent to one’s own nature. Many of those who enter RM are generally into such course, we accompany them and help them to believe their efforts are precious. If for any of you this isn’t absolutely clear and you are not ready to confront some healthy pressure, perhaps you should consider to free your place to someone else.

2. We may together discuss specific possible approaches to your subjects and suggest some ways to proceed, but editing and understanding in which direction your work is going is not something to be done in fifteen minutes, nor in one hour: it ought to be your own in-constant-evolution job. This means you can submit us yours doubts and tentative edits. We could try some progress together but then you shall have to move foreword on your own. It also means you should permanently live with your – printed – selection of photographs and allow and spend time, a lot of time, to grow and evolve with it. You will realize which are the images that don’t make sense, discover those that stand out and those you still miss. Proceed by making three groups: selection A – sure IN; selection X – sure OUT; selection B – MAY BE. Selections may change several times accompanying your work throughout its evolution slowly revealing you a broader general understanding of your project. Remember there is your main editing and many specific ones according to whom you address them, each would have its own specific presentation form.

3. Creative work proceeds according its own will, pace and direction: learn to recognise such will above anything and follow it even when exorbitantly complex. It is an easier thing to do than one may think as it coincide, with what most attracts you. Creative impulse never issues from a mental process, the rational part – how to do it – comes after: once you know what you want. “Vision”, memory of the imagination, in words hard to explain, is a sort of image you form in your head of something unseen. Once more pre-visualization determine the first step toward the conscience of vision: it is an elemental necessary process many of you already possess and you all need to learn how to control. Any form of creativity offspring from desire and there is no desire without object. You need to identify the object and rationalize how to get to it in real terms. As there are no better ways to progress than taking photographs, the assignments we give you are precious occasions to do that. If your are a photographer (not just a camera/telephone-owner making images) you should be eager not to miss these opportunities. The difficulty is to plunge into such deep concentration allowing your vision to materialize, when that happens, take the risk to go all the way at any price. Protect yourself, protect your time and concentration from dispersion… Beware that connections (in any form) make us move sideways, not foreword, not in depth. Remember, again and again, photography is time, is space and is physical; photography is your will to imagine and your will to see; is desire and emotion, thought and rigour and one of the grandest adventures you may ever experience!

4. Feed your imagination with literature: reading fills the eyes with images and plunges you into a constant subconscious (visionary) process of pre-visualization. Feed your capacity to recognise perfect form and composition by looking at great master’s paintings. Don’t look before shooting images of what you are going to photograph, it pollutes your visual virginity and inhibit creativity. Today you could no longer effort being unaware of what has been done in the language of photography and how is today definitively changing…

IDENTITY

If we consider raw matter to be the tangible reality – we cannot assert that we are simply made of the ensemble of amino-acid, saturated fats, nitrogen and hydrated principles constituting the transitory substance inside the perimeter of our person. If reality – existing only for what we (each differently) perceive – is difficult to be determined, identity – often a convention – representing a partial aspect of reality is a far more ambiguous concept to define. Nonetheless reality of photographs is something (else) that we determine and may partly control. Identity – a character – is about perception: in photography reality is essentially the point of view upon it. In this sense it embodies the primeval essence of photography: the perception of phenomena’s multiple aspects and the expression of appearance. Beyond human identity, the degrees of the external “image” individuals project of themselves – the history of which have been so articulately presented by Benoît – there are several more approaches to be considered. We mentioned the identity theory: the figure of a curve line is one reality embodying and expressing a dual identity: convex on one side, concave on the other. Another example is the one about the multiple perceptions of substance’s essence: water for instance, being both transparent and reflective, solid and liquid; light, the most mysterious, at the same time visible and intangible; the perception of sizes: we all remember having entered a room we perceived immeasurably vast, and finding it narrow and smaller one day not being any longer children, low and small on its horizon. The character, the aspect, the identity of things – brighter, darker; newer, older; smoother, rougher; bigger, smaller; near, far; transparent, reflecting; moving, motionless, dry, wet… – “is” only in relation to the conditions determining its perception. “Sky is not blue: sky is sky and blue is blue – nothing exists, everything is[1]”. I said previously that the identity is often a convention particularly and abstractly when we recognise it as collective. The political figures, flags of nations, the beliefs of religions, the belonging to human, ethnic or social groups, the slogans and mottoes of ideologies…, are conventions we call (identify) collective identity.

[1] J.L. Borges – The prism and the mirror – collected essays

References

Fiction, literary, speculative:
Fernando Pessoa – inevitable! – and his multiple heteronyms, possessing distinct biographies, appearances and writing styles; some of the most famous are:
- Bernardo Soares – Poet and prose writer, author of the fantastic Book of Disquiet
- Ricardo Reis – Poet and prose writer – author of Odes
- Álvaro de Campos – Poet and prose writer Collected Poems Vol. 2, 1928–1935
- Alberto Caeiro – Poet and master of other Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms
…And about 80 more among heteronyms and different characters.

Virginia Woolf Orlando
Jorge Luis Borges The Other – extract from The Book of Sand
Feodor Dostoevskij The Double
Vladimir Nabokov The real life of Sebastian Knight
Luigi Pirandello the fictions: The late Mattia Pascal; One, no one and one hundred thousand
MILAN KUNDERA Identity
Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception
PHILIP ROTH The Human Stain
A.S. BYATT Possession
MARCEL PROUST La Recherche du Temps perdu
Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Thomas Mann Doctor Faustus
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Faust
ALBER CAMUS The Foreigner
UMBERTO ECO The Cemetery of Prague

CINEMA:
DAVID LYNCH Elephant Man
STANLEY KUBRICK Clockwork Orange
JOHN WOO Face/Off
SPIKE JONZE Being John Malkovich
PETER HOWITT Sliding doors
Christopher Nolan Memento
DOUG LIMAN The Bourne Identity
D.J. CARUSO Taking Lives
DAVID FINCHER The Game

VISUAL REFERENCES:
download .zip (23MB)

> download pdf
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Utopia

Sz — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:22:17 +0000

A Saturday morning about eight-nine years ago I was struck by the front page of the FT Week-end, boasting a nine-column title – We’ve got UTOPIA and it sucks! – next to it, standing tall over the full page was an illustration of an obese youth wearing a hooded jumper, loose pants, sneakers with no laces and a back-to-front cap. The boy looked disconcerted at the gigantic sandwich before his eyes, towering stuffed with piled with TV, computers, cell-phones, cars, motorcycles, sunglasses, cowboy-boots, erotic dolls, aqua-scooters, headphones, Hi-Fi sets, etc. The aggressiveness of the image, such boldness of language, was shockingly in the columns of finance paper major in the consumer’s culture (its irresistible magazine – oh so decadently – called How to spend it…).
We live in the age of the double, the reproduction, the clone, framed in a trap, anxious when we can’t compulsively replicate copies of passwords, codes – innumerable – bank-online accesses and electronic ID, social security numbers and insurances, not to mention the entrance door and the garage ramp, computer username, the detestable pins of cell-phone and credit card and all “customer codes” for any purchase contemporary world imposes encircling our lives. As if…, losing a password, one would be erased from a portion of one’s own existence in this world… Weren’t the gate’s keys and the original version of life already frail and complex enough? This low-cost world, free-for-you-to-scroll (provided you have the necessary pins), this cell-like secured aseptic “areas” we live in, x-ray scanned when entering a museum, video-recorded as soon we cross the door of our drugstore, and the most unaware constantly geo-localized strolling over the footpath, where we are told, nobody (is supposed to) be lonely, get sick, to be poor, age or die, is Utopia. Oὺ τόπος – (Greek), in a non place. A word – “imaginary” – referred to a visionary condition of reform and idealized existence in “some place” – topos – inexistent under seemingly perfect conditions. A place therefore to be imagined and to be created. Its inexistence and impossibility to exist tend to turn to failure its idealistic attempts to be – Dystopia. The example I provided is the nearest, the biggest, the subtlest one, but there are several other eloquent examples of utopias all around us: zoos, amusement parks, dams, circuses, natural history museums, correctional institutions, enclaves, refugee camps, cities… Utopias therefore – all referred to visible concepts of space/s. The idea of utopia may also be approached from more abstract, metaphorical points of view. To venture a perilous parallel, I dare say in paradox we could compare the image of Utopia of which the substance in space, to the image of Eternity, of which the substance is Time. The latter one enjoys on the contrary a better general good perception…, perhaps on accounts of its un-verifiability. A Time whereas nothing becomes, transform nor change, where everything stays motionlessly, ever since and for ever same and equal to itself.

We leave you a dictionary toolbox of meanings and the precious reference guide for you to discover, invent, or reveal your vision of UTOPIA.

From The New Shorter Oxford 1993
Utopia
noun , Also U- [mod.L = no-place (f. Gk ou not + topos place), title of a book by Sir Thomas More (1277-1535).]
1) a- An imaginary or hypothetical place or state of things considered to be perfect; a condition of ideal (esp. social) perfection; b- An imaginary distant region or country. Now rare and obs.
2) An impossibly ideal scheme, esp. for social improvement.
G. B. Shaw: In the imagination…England is a Utopia in which everything and everybody is “free”.
L. Starke: A first tiny, faltering step on the road to our Green utopia.
Utopiast: n. (rare)= UTOPIAN n.
Utopian
a. & n., Also U- [mod.L Utopianus, f.as prec.: see –AN]
adj.
1) Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a Utopia; advocating or constituting an ideally perfect state; impossibly ideal, visionary, idealistic.
2) (obs.) Having no known location, existing nowhere. rare
Courier-Mail: (Brisbane): If God’s laws were followed, we would have an Utopian world.
C. Brayfield: Your theory is jus a Utopian daydream.
n.
1) A Native or inhabitant of a Utopia.
2) A conceiver or advocate of Utopian schemes; an idealistic social reformer, a visionary.
Utopianism: n. (obs.) a- a Utopian idea or condition; b- Utopian thought, beliefs, or aims;
Utopianist n. = Utopist n. = UTOPIAN n.
Utopianize v. a- v.t. make Utopian, form a Utopia out of; b- v.i. conceive Utopian schemes;
utopic a. (rare) = utopical a. (rare) = UTOPIAN a.
Utopism n. = UTOPIANISM (b).

FICTION, LITERARY, SPECULATIVE AND POLITICAL APPROACHES
Italo Calvino, The Invisible Cities
Jorge Louis Borges, The Immortal (collection The Aleph); Babel’s Library and The Lottery of Babylonia (collection Fictions ) ; Utopia of a Tired Man (collection The Book of Sand)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Jack London, The Iron Heel
Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland
Marco Polo, Il Milione
Samuel Butler, Erewon
Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn, The Gulag Achipelago

PHILOSOPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL APPROACHES
Sir Thomas More, De optimo reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia (1516)
Tommaso Campanella, La Città del Sole (1602)
Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627)
Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias

CINEMA
A Trip to the Moon, George Méliès (1902)
Metropolis, Fritz Lang (1927)
Lost Horizon, Frank Capra (1937)
Brigadoon, Vincente Minnelli (1954)
Fahrenheit 451, François Truffaut (1966)
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Mel Stuart (1971)
The Blue Lagoon, Randal Kleiser (1980)
Brazil, Terry Gilliam (1985)
The Mosquito, Coast Peter Weir (1986)
Pleasantville, Gary Ross (1998)
The Truman Show, Peter Weir (1998
Matrix, Larry & Handy Wachowski (1999)
The Beach, Danny Boyle (2000)
The Village, M. Night Shyamalan (2004).

UTOPIA
Some reflexions of theoretical order By Gabriel Bauret

- The Greek etymology evokes a place (topos) but the prefix “u” denies the existence of such place. We must therefore locate the concept at the opposite of topographical inventory reference generally associated to documentary photography’s tradition. Utopias are invented places, product of the imagination. There’s no utopia without an intellectual or artistic activity (the work of writers, architects, artists, cinematographers etc.)
- It is about an imaginary, virtual place – a gap – if compared to the real world.
- Yet Utopia cannot uniquely be summed up as an invented world or a dream: in most it is in facts the carrier of an ideal, of a different order, altogether of another system ruling the presences inhabiting the place.
- So utopia is « better » is « more »! A world where women and men would be free, equal and peaceful, cultivated, in-love thus inhabiting a perfect world…
A world where all Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ articles would be all scrupulously applied. Since Plato’s Republic, the politician, the ecologist, the economist are all engaged to produce some utopia, thinking of better worlds beyond possible. To create utopias is also a way to make thought and research progress
In a work entitled « Sade, Fourier, Loyola », Roland Barthes regroups three writers that, within three different fields, have produced utopias and to describe each of them had invented some specific language.
- Utopia may also be characterized by an individualistic attitude : a denial of society : Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Human is good, it is society to corrupt him/her) Jean-Paul Sartre (Hell, is « the others ). Paradoxes: By definition tightly inherent to the light of real world, may photography produce utopias? Photography can exist necessarily because of some “presence” In front of the camera, nonetheless certain photographers took distance from this vision of the real world to set up other worlds, according to an ideal, where harmony and happiness reign together with the overcoming of the self. Hence photography may as well detach (crop and fix) some elements of the real world and create its own ideal world.

Transcription of the Lecture on UTOPIA
By Jean-Luc Monterosso

The word is a neologism by the English writer Thomas More during the Tudor dynasty in the 16th century. Formed by two Greek words: one means place the other is a negation, the final significance is one of an inexistent“ ideal” – place of happiness. Such place is one that could, or could not, be in real world. Utopia is the representation of an ideal dimension simultaneously encompassing a positive and a negative sense. There are two possibilities: it might already exists, we can try find it, or, it couldn’t possibly exist. In its first significance the word is characterized as imaginary political ideal – see Plato’s evocation of and ideal Republic. Another examples, the philosopher Charles Fourier or (even) Karl Marx. You may identify more examples of Utopias in modern and contemporary architecture. In Marseille for instance la Cité Radieuse of Le Corbusier: he tries to alter the social relation between the people inside the very structures of buildings and “ideally” create better conditions in the relation of people with themselves. For Oscar Niemeyer the target in the conception of Brasilia realization’s project, is an ideal of an inexistent city in Brazil. Paradoxically he thought about Photography, which for many means “to capture reality” when instead Utopia isn’t reality. Nonetheless you as photographers may conceive and create photographic Utopias… Interesting examples are 19th century Julia Margaret Cameron’s portraits, idyllic portraits of old women and men…, also exemplary is the’30s and ’50s portraiture tradition of Hollywood stars, where photographers literally create in every sense the “image” of the star to such an extent that even the film-maker reproduce that same light to embellish and valorize them. The fabrication of the idealistic perfect image of cinema actors and actresses, thence (and today photoshop similar alteration and corrections) are other utopias.
During the ‘80s a current of photographers begins to invent imaginary settings in photography- making: from this group I would like to present here the work of three of them: Bernard Faucon; Joan Fontcuberta and the contemporary artist, Alain Bublex. Bernard Faucon create pure imaginary constructions, fictions of a world about childhood. A world that does not exist of course and that BF creates in its every aspects: the dressings, the colors, the general atmosphere etc. He tries to conceive a dreaming world of childhood, that we could compare to the one of Marcel Proust in his magnification of memory. For instance like children’s imagination constantly invents its own world, BF too evokes some other world. A persistently recurring element is the use of fire, of which he controls the visual effect although there’s no actual burning. Collaterally in his color palette he applies a particular process, somewhat like in painting with pastels. Such process generates a sort of visual distance similar to the one of memory. He invents and actually makes the room’s spaces itself: a space made of ice cubes, made with gold, spaces like in the children’s’ dreams. His work – eminently different – is not to be compared to the one of Larry Clark’s strongly hard-core photographs of teenagers (see Ken Park censured film).
The second artist I wish to introduce is photographer Joan Fontcuberta and his utopian invention of worlds and stories. An example of one of his bodies of work, echoing the one of beginning of the XXth century Karl Blossfeldt, encompasses an Herbarium with flowers and plants including a vast array of collateral imaginary scientific descriptions and corollaries of drawings and notes in the utmost imaginable precision, all perfectly “fake”. At a careful glance one realizes that those aren’t exactly the images of real flowers and are instead composed by several improbable other materials achieving the most unimaginable degree of credibility – all this is meant uniquely to consolidate the illusion of a scientifically proved (!) reality of an herbarium that doesn’t exist. Other example: JF tells the story of a scientist who discovers some unknown species of animals, these too are imaginary, inexistent animals, the fact of course contemplates the entire account of the great (imaginary ) historical discovery. Another key FC plays is the one of “Landscapes”. Once again it is the transfiguration of if it, that would allow the possibility of some impossible landscape. As a photographer and as an artist, JF give shape to his ideas materializing them into the form of photography. One last example about JF is whereas he himself embodies the imaginary “real story” of a Russian cosmonaut (Sputnik: Odyssey of the Soyuz II).
Presenting the last of those three artists one more example is the imaginary city of Glooscap by Alain Bublex. His city is supposed to be somewhere in Canada, therefore it “exists” photographs of the town, photographs of the town’s Mayor, then of course there are city’s plans, the old map, the new map, even the possible travel connection between Paris and Glooscap, and eventually one may consider to buy a flat in Glooscap… Utopias in general are models proposing an alteration of reality or models to understand the reality. As photographers you have two possible approaches: the reality of an utopia or the utopia of a reality… Urban planners during the city’s conception create utopias, in fact urbanism – as such – does “not exist”, it is an action imagining the creation of some ideal world. You may imagine to invent the world of your dream, or may construct another reality with the Utopia. The amazing thing is, that is precisely Utopia in this sense Novartis Campus is a peculiar example of utopian city within the city.

JLM

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