Ex_ist 2 [re_configure/trans_late]

All Photo-Manipulations: February 2025

Reconfigured Appropriated Texts [Translated]:

This sense of adventure certainly doesn't come from events. A new plan will have to be presented to move the project forward. I've proven that it's more about how moments flow into each other. A fire destroyed the surrounding area (I think that's what has happened). Suddenly, it feels as if time is passing, that each moment leads to another, this one to another, and so on; that each moment is destroying itself and there's no point in stopping it, etc. It will deteriorate, be vandalised, and then we attribute this property to the events happening to us at the moment. Leaving things as they are clearly doesn't work. What's formal extends to substance. It's unusable, consisting of thin brick pillars topped with a dilapidated wooden-clad building. For three months of the year, there are no clear signs of progress or imminent construction. In fact, this famous era is much talked about, but barely seen. I think if nothing is done immediately, the situation will get worse.

All Original Images: Old Basford, Nottingham, February 2025

If I remember correctly, this is called the irremediability of time. At this point, it seems impossible to save anything - the feeling of adventure would just be the irremediability of time. I have to face it; every day - a complete waste of time. But why don't we always have it? Is it because time isn't always irremediable? (I would prefer if nothing happened.) There are times when you feel like you can do whatever you want, move forward or backward, it doesn't matter. And then, at other times, it feels like the network has become strained, and you can't accept that when people come here by tram. That’s the first thing to do in those cases. It’s not a failure because you can't start over (no tangible progress has been made). The applicant appealed the decision, but the Inspector upheld it. They hadn't noticed much activity on the site, except for the presence of a man who appeared to be moving rubble and debris.

I'm afraid of cities. But we mustn't abandon them. Someone has to live somewhere. Previous comments have spoken of 'nationalities' in an unfinished housing development on a citywide and national scale. If you go too far, you reach the Vegetation Belt (the greenery stretches for miles toward the cities). It's waiting, but the first thing you see is the dirty desert. When the city dies, vegetation will invade it. It will climb the stones, grab them, dig them out, tear them apart with its long black claws and accelerate its growth. It will fill the holes and plant its green paws everywhere. We must live in cities while they are alive. One should never enter alone into such a mass of hair waiting at their door. It's dangerous for the residents (neither safe nor proper).

Permission has not been implemented. You should be allowed to lift and puncture the old cross-filters, as the approved project isn't considered financially viable in the city. If you know how to do it, choose times when the animals are digesting or sleeping in their burrows (while conveniently ignoring the old, long-abandoned local eyesores hidden behind piles of organic detritus). It's a shame, you rarely find anything there but minerals - the least frightening existents of all.

Ex_ist 1 [Sartreian Spring]

 

All Images: South Leicester, March 2024

“…I started laughing because I suddenly thought of the wonderful springtimes described in books, full of cracking, bursting gigantic blossomings. There were fools who talked  to you about willpower and the struggle for life Hadn’t they ever looked at an animal or a tree? That plane with its scaling bark, that half-rotten oak - they would’ve wanted me to take them for vigorous youthful forces thrusting towards the sky. And that root? I would probably have had to see it as a greedy claw, tearing the earth, snatching its food from it.

‘Impossible to see things that way. Weaknesses, frailties, yes. The trees were floating. Thrusting towards the sky? Collapsing rather: at any moment I expected to see the trunks shrivel like weary pricks, curl up and fall to the ground in a soft, black, crumpled heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help it; that was the point. So they performed all their little functions, quietly, unenthusiastically, the sap rose slowly and reluctantly in the canals, and the roots penetrated slowly into the earth. But at every moment they seemed on the verge of dropping everything and obliterating themselves. Tired and old, they went on existing, unwillingly and ungraciously, simply because they were too weak to die, because death could come to them only from the outside: melodies alone can proudly carry their own death within them like an internal necessity,; only they don’t exist. Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. I leaned back ands I closed my eyes. But pictures, promptly informed, sprang forward and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a repletion which man can never abandon.” [1.]

“Did I dream it up, that huge presence? It was there, installed on the park, tumbled into the trees, all soft, gumming everything up, all thick, a jelly. And I was inside with the whole of the park? I was frightened, but above all I was furious, I thought it was so stupid, so out of place, I hated that ignoble jelly. A there was so much of it, so much! It went up as high as the sky, it flowed away everywhere, it filled everything with gelatinous subsidence and I could see it going deeper and deeper, far beyond the limits of the park and the houses and Bouville, I was no longer at Bouville or anywhere, I was floating. I was not surprised. I knew perfectly well that it was the World, the World in all its nakedness which was suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with fury at that huge absurd being. You couldn’t even wonder where it all came from, or how it was that a world should exist rather than nothing. It didn’t make sense, the world was present everywhere, in front, behind. There had been nothing before it. Nothing. There had been no moment at which it might not have existed. It was that which irritated me: naturally there was no reason for it to exist, that flowing larva. But it was not possible for it not to exist. That was unthinkable: In order to imagine nothingness, you had to be there already, right in the world, with your eyes wide open and alive; nothingness was just an idea in my head, an existing idea floating in that immensity: this nothingness hadn’t come before existence, it was an existence like any other and one which had appeared after a great many others. I shouted: ‘What filth! What filth!’ And I shook myself to get rid of that sticky dirt, but it held fast and there was so much of it, tons and tons of existence, indefinitely: I was suffocating at the bottom of that huge boredom. Then, all of a sudden, the park emptied as if through a big hole, the world disappeared in the same way it had come, or else I woke up - in any case I could not see it any more; there remained some yellow earth around me, out of which dead branches stuck up into the air.” [2.]

“Dusk is falling, the first lights are going on in the town. Good Lord, how natural the town looks in spite of all its geometric patterns, how crushed by the evening it seems. It’s so …obvious from here; is it possible that I should be the only one to see it? Is there nowhere another Cassandra on top of a hill, looking down at a town engulfed in the depths of Nature? But what does it matter to me? What could I possibly tell her?

“My body turns very gently towards the east, wobbles slightly and starts walking.” [3.]

[1, 2, 3]:  Excerpts From: Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Nausea’ (Trans. Robert Baldick), London/NYC, Penguin, 1963 (1938).

Stratified Spaces in Spring Sunshine

 

All Images: South Leicester, March 2025

“The kind of difference that defines every place is not on the order of a juxta-position but other takes the form of imbricated strata. The elements spread out on the same surface can be enumerated; they are available for analysis; they form a manageable surface. Every urban ‘renovation’ nonetheless prefers a tabula rasa on which to write in cement the composition created in the laboratory on the basis of discrete ‘needs’ to which functional responses are to be made. The system also produces need, the primary ‘substance’ of this composition, by isolating it. This unit is as neat and clean (propre) as digits are. Moreover, the lack of satisfaction that defines each need calls for and justifies in advance the construction that combines it with other needs. This is the logic of production: ever since the eighteenth century, it has engendered its own discursive and practical space, on the basis of points of concentration - the office, the factory, the city. It rejects the relevance of places it does not create.

“However, beneath the fabricating and universal writing of technology, opaque and stubborn places remain. The revolutions of history, economic mutations, demographic mixtures lie in layers within it, and remain there, hidden in customs, rites, and spatial practices. The legible discourses that formerly articulated them have disappeared, or left only fragments in language. This place, on its surface, seems to be a collage. In reality, in its depth it is ubiquitous. A piling-up of heterogeneous places. Each one, like a deteriorating page of a book, refers to a different mode of territorial unity, of socioeconomic distribution, of political conflicts and identifying symbolism" [1.].

[1.]:  Michel de Certeau, ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’, (Trans. Steven F. Randall), Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1984 

P.I.N.K.+ [Re_Configure]

 

All Images: West Leicester, March 2025

[Reconfigured Appropriated Texts]:

For people who believe that the world should be run by straight white men, these are heady times. But it is not a judicious practice. All these colours are very uncertain with respect to their standing, and researchers of colour psychology have found that this effect only occurs during the initial exposure. The native earths or prepared ochres properly managed will answer equally the same ends. Bright or pale pink makes me feel flirty, astute and like I can accomplish what I need to. Flowers, romantic gestures, and kindness may be preferred by some who feel that the four-letter acronym is a simpler way to represent a wide range of identities. English pink is only a lighter and coarser kind - It dilutes well with water.

Not everyone agrees about what term or variation to use. Legal opposition is building, and there are already signs that business is hiding its diversity programmes in paintings where the holding of the colour is not of great consequence. One of the key features of current rightwing populism is a desire to escape complicated social realities. Politicians would rather admit they’d sexually harassed an intern than gone skiing (you can, of course, do both – and many do). This doesn’t mean that terminology won’t continue to evolve and shift, particularly as people work to achieve greater representation and acceptance (at one time in history, the English word ‘pink’ referred to a yellow colour).

Making new tints out of primary and secondary colours is also more affordable than buying specific shades of pinks whenever needed, especially now that the political climate has fixed on a carbonate. It gives a candy pink colour more or less sustained depending on the binder and the dosage. I think people used to think this stuff was bad and corrosive and potentially politically dangerous - it can be dosed at 20% of the weight of lime merely to enhance public perceptions. While the goal of this initialism is to raise visibility and boost inclusivity, the experiment is being unceremoniously abandoned. When used in prisons, inmates often become even more agitated once they become accustomed to the colour.

In politics, commerce and education, a huge, potentially lasting counterrevolution seems to be under way. The community has been referred to by many words over the years, including many that were intended to be hurtful. Even so, when we review the literature, what the reactionaries want is less clear and coherent than it first seems. Light shades of pink require white pigment to be added to a significantly reddish base. If someone tells you they want to restore a society utterly dominated by straight white men (which is almost certainly impossible), boil them in a gallon of water and then strain off the tincture through flannel. Many advocates argue that the addition of the ‘plus’ is important and should not be overlooked.

Completed Untitled Studies ['Deleuzian Cartography'] 2

 

Untitled Study ['Deleuzian Cartography'], Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Paper,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here is a somewhat delayed round-up of the paper-based studies from my 'Deleuzian Cartography' work. Everything here was produced during the latter months of 2024, alongside the slightly more substantial/resolved panels which emerged from these explorations. The first and last images here represent studies at the larger 300 mm x 300 mm size, and could, I imagine be presented as exhibit-able work, should the opportunity arise. In the event, the intensity of work and degree of resolution they represent falls only slightly short of the small 'finished' panels which have resulted from all this to date.  

This & Following Five Images: Untitled Sketchbook Studies ['Deleuzian Cartography'],
Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Paper, 180 mm x 180 mm, 2024

The remaining images show sketchbook-based studies, which were thus somewhat more spontaneous and rapid in their execution. This fairly organic methodology is a key feature of this phase of work, with motifs, themes cartographic locators and solipsistic references all bobbing to the surface of an ongoing process of exploration. The hope is that anything that emerges might draw on previous discoveries or feed into as yet unmade images with equal facility. 

The key motivation behind all of the work is, I guess, the search for a form of intuitive, deconstructed/reconfigured cartography, in which the established geometries of the street plan are perpetually short-circuited through space and time by more fluid currents of potential meaning or narrative. As can be seen, this has expanded to encompass references to electrical/electronic circuitry, diagrammatic labyrinths and specific literary/philosophical  references, alongside the streets, buildings and allusions to digital/analogue mapping with which I began. Simultaneity and a sense of zooming-in/out feel like they're pretty key too, and I can't help noticing that the inclusion of specific textual elements has once more become a thing.

As regards media and technique, there's nothing especially new to report. Everything has evolved via my long customary mixed-media/collage-based methodology. It allows me to hang onto a degree of chance and spontaneity and is a well-proven way to act as an editor/manipulator of found material (and spaces). I can only hope there's been some refinement of technique or increase in sophistication/nuance over the years I've been working like this.

The whole 'Deleuzian Cartography' idea still feels very live, although I've currently taken a short pause for thought, largely to consider possible ways to retain the key features and spirit of this kind of imagery at a larger scale. I feel like there are relatively practical issues of enlargement  implied here, but also an imperative to explore the idea of extensiveness and the transgression of set boundaries too. In relation to that, it's impossible to ignore the fact that Jorge Luis Borges once wrote an account of a physical map produced at 1:1 scale, which grew to encompass every topographic detail of the entire empire it eventually covered [1.]. Time for some more practical experimentation, I think...

Untitled Study ['Deleuzian Cartography'], Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Paper,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

[1.]: Jorge Luis Borges, 'On Exactitude in Science', From: ‘The Aleph’, London/NYC, Penguin, 1998

R.I.P. David Lynch

David Lynch. Image: Adam Bordow/BW

It's hard to know what to say when someone of David Lynch's cultural stature passes away. Anything even half intelligent one might say about the facts of his career as a director, painter, musician (and transcendental meditation advocate, amongst other things) has already been covered by the time one can even begun to process the information. Others have almost as quickly filled countless megabytes and column-inches with reflections on the possible 'meanings' within the work, and wider significance within the cultural landscape. In the time it took me to get here, I've even read one semi-poetic discussion of the life-long (and life-shortening - as it transpired) smoking habit which almost seemed to define him as much as the work for some.

On reflection, perhaps the whole smoke thing is as good a signifier as any for an artist whose work was so saturated in the ineffable, and so resistant to being pinned down. It also speaks to his approach to life as an endlessly unfolding creative process. Lynch himself spoke of the 'Art Life', describing with relish how each creative gesture would blur seamlessly with his endless chains of coffee and cigarettes - each becoming the next in real time. Ultimately though, that's in danger of becoming yet more romanticised 'myth of the artist' stuff really. It feels like the only meaningful response at this stage is a more personal one, accompanied by some of the man's own unmediated words.

Image: Studio Canal/Les Films Alain Sarde/Asymmetrical Productions/

Babbo Inc/The Picture Factory/Bridgeman

When all else is said and done, Lynch's films and TV work (and let's face it - this is what will be remembered longest) have moved and stimulated me more than pretty much anything else achieved in those media. In my view, no one else has managed to blur the boundaries between moving images and dreams quite like Lynch. The logic at work within them is dream logic. This is why, just like the dreams we experience immediately prior to waking, they seem more vivid, more affecting, more divorced from convention, and more engaging of thought and feeling as sides of the same coin than any other cultural artefact I've encountered. It's why they resist traditional analysis so pleasingly. It's why even Lynch himself didn't always know what might happen - even as a mood or association emerged in real time on set. It's why, for those of us who relish questions and possible interpretations, far more than answers and definitive statements, Lynch is the go-to, par excellence. And I really don't care if he is the kind of film director 'someone like me' would like. I just do.

'Eraserhead', 'Twin Peaks', 'Lost Highway', 'Mulholland Drive' - these are works I can return to repeatedly, and never quite get to the end of. Certain scenes and images will remain indelibly stamped on my memory in perpetuity (I've mentioned more than a few on here before). The concluding credits may be rolling, but my response is slightly different each time, and I'm already anticipating the next time I can fail to '(ex/mans)plain it all away. Each work seems to mean so much, but I really don't want to know exactly what. In the process of not knowing, I may have been horrified, haunted, baffled, or felt like I'm falling in love. I may have gasped, laughed out loud or chuckled inwardly, confronted my own deepest fears, or just gazed longingly at the sheer formal elegance of Lynch's craft. I may have loved and despised humanity in equal measure. I may have gasped at the sheer audacity of it all (on a spectrum from the gleefully cheesy to the truly profound), and even, most surprisingly - meditated without irony on the existence/nature of good and evil). I'm not sure what else I could ask from an art experience, and I thank him for it.

Anyway, enough of me. Lynch really should get the final/not final words...

"If you get an idea that’s thrilling to you, put your attention on it and these other fish will swim into it. It’s like a bait. They’ll hook on to it and you’ll get more ideas. And you just pull them in."

"I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense."

"Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don’t just find humor in unhappiness – I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel."

"In a way failure is a beautiful thing, because when the dust settles there’s nowhere to go but up, and it’s a freedom. You can’t lose more, but you can gain."

"A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there. The language of film, cinema, is the language it was put into, and the English language – it’s not going to translate. It’s going to lose."

"Certain things are just so beautiful to me, and I don’t know why. Certain things make so much sense, and it’s hard to explain."

All quotes: David Lynch.

Individual sources can be found in: Adrian Horton, 'A life in quotes: David Lynch', London, The Guardian, 17.01.25