It is true, and this letter was trying to tell him something, but the force of the blow, coming as it did during a moment of great ego satisfaction, seemed to affect her ability to follow rational linear narrative forms. And this is why War and Peace was very slow to read indeed.
I was working on the draft for my next Fish Plant blog posting when this arrived in my mailbox. I thought it would be interesting to digress from the usual format of showing a few images and waxing poetic on process to post this article as it addresses issues around interdisciplinary research projects like the CURRA; of which I am a participant. I have tried to embed the article on this post, if you don’t see it below, please go here.
The article articulates a dynamic discussion on how research is done. In my view, we have moved away from observing the world and given data and statistical analysis a primary role in understanding the phenomena and relationships that frame our view of the world in most, if not all, aspects of study. This is neither a positive or a negative, every tool we can assemble to try and understand our role in our socio-ecosystems should be used in unison.
But I do feel that we don’t lift our heads above our spreadsheets and deliverables long enough to actually smell and look at the roses. I like to think that this is where cultural producers and philosophers can contribute actively to accumulating and synthesizing a type of data that can bring observation back into the equation in a dynamic and original way. An aesthetic centred research practice does not necessarily exclude scientific investigation; it may well complicate things since it is not quantitative and its qualitative aspect can sometimes require a bit of work on the part of, for lack of a better word, stakeholders. These are examples of work where artists were given the latitude and freedom to explore, investigate and present findings in a manner that challenges and augments the assembling of data.
An eighties moment, a Dépêche Mode song… the state of things on the provincial highways. There is an intersection between the time people are on the roads and the time that the roads are being repaired. This cannot be avoided but stands as a veritable perfect metaphor for the infamous double bind. Damned if you do, fucked if you don’t. It is not entirely unpleasant, it is not necessary to move at the speed of light. If one let’s the light pass, it will show you things, most interesting and wondrous things.
Photography is movement at the speed of light, or as close as we can get at the with present technology. It will freeze an instant, a moment, a thought or a musing in a still, forever to be examined, space where time has been arrested for vagrancy. But at the same time, as Penny Cousineau so astutely observed, it is death. It kills time for the benefit of art and seeing. It creates a boundary between mortality and insignificance.
Insignificance.
Sounds like such a big word.
And yet it means nothing.
Location:
Too long since the last post. Images piling up losing context and foresight.
Have been thinking about ownership in the online universe. Does an asset really belong to anyone anymore and does ownership actually mean anything today? Of course the question is rhetorical, a rhetoric; it could even be sophistic. All resides in the user. Freedom is a responsibility and that is so much more important than a right, it is the social contract.
Long live the little animals that run wild in the kingdom of the wild.
