I took what we discussed in class about repetition and drew the exact same thing four times. Even though I lined up the drawings they still managed to come out different. I noticed that each time I traced the mirror mask I was able to spot more detail. The more I drew of the same section I wanted to make it as accurate as possible. I slowed down and looked at the detail and take the time to know the image. This is a similar thought process to knowing another individual. What we see the first time may look different from the second or third time because now you have gotten to experience them as their true being rather than their physical image. Each time you see the same person their face probably appears to look different each time because you either have a positive or negative reaction to them.
interesting, to think about "facial recognition" in this context.
ReplyDeletethat the self cannot be captured.
maybe doesn't exist, in the first place. is an idea, only.
I think these fragmentary drawings (including those you showed a week or two ago) are neat, and link with some of the ideas you've encountered and thought about, from earlier reading (including in Edkins's book).
treat these drawings with respect. scan carefully. how can they be used, with language, either as posters or in sequence (book)... even animation...
exciting, these drawings. original work.
ReplyDeletelike maps.
archipelagos (of "identity").
the self as a sea of islands, always shifting.
never still, never quite graspable.
p.s., your title reminds me of "interesting and dull shapes,"
ReplyDeletehere
also the broken pieces, here
(of brittle paper, fragments inside a photocopier...
archipelagos, islands, rather than connected landscape.
ReplyDeletecomposition of parts.
composure, the composed face.
we have this expression, she showed "composure." what does that mean?
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am also reminded of this passage, in a recent New Yorker article about the philosopher Nietzsche —
Behind Nietzsche’s array of extreme positions is a much less alarming belief: that the only healthy state for humanity is one in which rival perspectives vie with one another, with none gaining the upper hand.... ¶ henever I feel bewildered by endless interpretive skirmishes over the philosophical Antichrist, I return to Alexander Nehamas’s “Nietzsche: Life as Literature,” which appeared in 1985 and retains a commanding place on the near-infinite Nietzsche bookshelf. Nehamas, a Greek-American thinker steeped in classical studies, essentially made a virtue of Bertrand Russell’s dismissal of Nietzsche. The contradictions in Nietzsche’s writings cohere, Nehamas writes, if we look at him as a literary figure who worked within a philosophical context, and who crafted a persona that functions as a literary character of novelistic complexity.…
here, although I don't think you need to dig into that now... the idea is about a fragmentary personality, of parts at war with each other...
(somewhere I have the Nehamas book, that is very good)
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the main thing here is, that word "compose" : composition, but also composure, a sense of composure... (which is a performance of calmness, confidence, where all the parts are in the right place)
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I think you should pause, and see the beauty and richness in these things you've made... not rush off to an elsewhere, but give them their due (maybe scan, project... create an atlas or map of these islands, give them names...)
etc etc