introduction

Prologue : About art Shall we try to define art before we start? Shall we argue about whether what the ancient Egyptians made was art or whether the bison paintings in the Spanish caves or the Australian Aboriginal cave paintings are art? Or shall we say that art began with Leonardo or Vermeer or Picasso? Or finished with Duchamp or Warhol or Koons? I like what Duchamp said in 1959 that we should not try to define art, that we can see the effects of art but not art itself and that artworks exists as art for only a short amount of time perhaps twenty years... (in Furlong, W. (ed) Audio Arts: Discourse and Practice in Contemporary Art Academy Group London p20) I like Joseph Cornell's idea of unfoldment (apologies for my bad translation from the Dutch which is the language in which I found the reference to Cornell's idea of unfoldment and at the time of writing I have not yet been able to locate the text in English (from which it was no doubt translated into Dutch in the first place). I like to connect the concept of art and art making with this idea of unfoldment. Here is a peculiarly human activity which is about making or facilitating this moment of unfoldment, and if the artist had not been there to facilitate it, it would have remained hard and hidden it in its tight fold. Seen in these terms art is not a grand or heroic activity, rather a simple humble one, and whether it is celebratory or revelatory, whether it involves a stick and sand or paintbrush or a computer or a camera it can be included. Similarly the writer the musician and the actor may be engaged in this unfolding, and no subject matter is too trivial. (i) About the exegesis Exegesis explanation or interpretation of a text or passage cf exegetic = adj expository, interpretative (www.dictionary.com) Thesis essay or dissertation on some particular subject; subject set a student on which to write prior to granting him a degree; the exercise itself; in logic an affirmation (www.dictionary.com) In the first place let me frame what follows by defining what this exegesis will consist of. The exegesis is not a thesis in the way that a doctorate in a discipline like art history has a thesis where it represents the entire results of five years or its part time equivalent) of work. A doctorate in the visual art results in a body of work and an exegesis, where the exegesis functions as a contextualization - in literary terms 'gloss' or to put it crudely as in the dictionary definition an 'explanation' - of this body of work. In the same way as I did with the concept of art, I would like to connect the concept of the exegesis with unfoldment. Such an interpretation of exegesis indicates that something is revealed - in this case about the artist's intent ideas history and method, that the audience would not otherwise be privy to. I would never have dreamt of giving a detailed explanation of my work and the strategies I employ to facilitate these unfoldments. In many ways this would be a kind of closure and an important part of the meaning of the work relies on to what extent the audience is able to work it out for themselves. The exegesis can and should to a significant extent also address the historical background to the work since this is a continuation of what went before. Even if what is being presented is a completely separate body of work (which is not true in my case) it must have some relationship with work done in the past, both by this artist and those who went before him, and this needs to be explored. (ii) About the structure of the exegesis In essence I want the structure of my exegesis to echo or mirror the structure of the art production process, which will be a catalogue of the practising of knowledge or in this case i would rather call it doubt and so the exegesis is the explanation - in a more formal way of that which has been - or is being - learnt . Or to put it in a better way, both are the result of the enquiry - an index of the asking of the question(s) - the enquiry which results from engaging with the doubt. And this is what I will call the research. In my view a postgraduate research degree in the visual arts should comprise three activities which, in order that the regular academics can relate to it we loosely term research, but which actually comprises three different but interrelated activities which inform each other, and they are: One : research proper : we have defined a question or area of interest at the outset and in response we are read texts (and in this field this also includes looking at art works seeing films listening to music etc) finding chasing up references conferring with our supervisors and peers etc etc Two : we make art works and exhibit them - this informs and is informed by our research - it is in fact a symbiotic relationship Three : the exegesis in which we write en exposition or explanation which is also a record of our activities our reading and our work and with any luck we will find out something and do something which no one knew before and/or which no one has done before and we explain it - in my view the latter two at least at phd level are of equal importance and the research proper should inform both equally In the regulations for the doctorate at this university the proportions or the relationship between the body of work and the exegesis - the weight' of each component - is perhaps rather crudely expressed numerically, which relates to the number of words which should be contained in the exegesis. The minimum weight of the exegesis must be 20% (with the body of work representing 80%) of the work for the doctorate - a traditional thesis being generally 100.000 words this means the exegesis would be around 20.000 words. It will be interesting over the years to see what proportions candidates choose. In my own case, in what may be seen with the benefit of partial hindsight, as a misplaced heroic gesture - chose a 50/50 model. Having had at the time of writing, two years to think about the way that the exegesis relates to the body of work, I am now of the view that this is essentially problematic - not because I am worried about writing 50.000 words, but because an explanation cannot possibly be of equal weight as the thing it is explaining and a 50/50 model overemphasizes the importance of the explanation. I have discussed this problem with my supervisor Professor David Green who suggest that it would not be difficult to gain approval to vary the weight of the exegesis to 40% and this is what I am now proposing. (iii) About the catalogue I have been interested in the idea of the catalogue for many years. What fascinates me is that a catalogue acts like a map but of things. When I was a child I was a serious stamp collector and I collected only stamps from The Netherlands. I think the reason for this was that in the catalogue of Dutch stamps were all the stamps that could be collected. It detailed every stamp that had been issued since 1852 - and it had a picture of each stamp. Collectors would congregate at the weekly postage stamp market which I frequented with their marked catalogues in which they had a record of their collection and the condition of each stamp. Thus, it feels to me like it is almost as if when something is in a catalogue it is contained and it also acts as proof that it really exists, even though you may not have it there. When I was constructing the original proposal for the PhD. I was rereading Jose Luis Borges story The Aleph written in 1945 . The aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and in the story the Aleph is a small sphere where "all places are - seen from every angle, each standing clear without any confusion or blending..." I was struck by Borges' commentary where he describes the problem of the setting down of a limited catalogue of endless things. (....) The themes which are being 'catalogued' through these works, and in the exegesis, developed out of a process which began when I started thinking about whether a sublime is possible in computer based art mediums . This question was originally posed at the Australian Film Commission's Breaking the Binary Code Conference in Sydney in 1997. In answering in the affirmative in her paper State of the Art delivered at the conference, Stephanie Britton editor of the Australian art journal Artlink mentioned my name in a list which included Peter Callas amongst others. In my application to the university to be admitted as a doctoral candidate and in my subsequent research proposal, this was the central question which I would seek to answer and Britton's recognition of the sublime in my work was the spark which caused me to think about this question and how it relates to my work and my ideas about my work. This resulted in a paper entitled A Lo-Res Sublime which I presented at the Decode digital arts conference in and the MA(VPA) Residential School at the University in 1998, and which evolved into my research proposal. (In the exegesis A Lo-Res Sublime will be adapted into the chapter on imperfection) On reflecting on the research proposal after having it approved by the Board of Graduate Studies however I began to suspect that it was the wrong question for the purposes of my doctorate since I had already answered it - without realizing that the question was being asked. Whilst writing the research proposal had afforded me the opportunity to investigate the historical context of the sublime it would now be preferable to move on and to pose the question which is now more "how does a sublime..." rather than "is it possible for a sublime..." I would thus now like to explore how this idea of unfoldment, which I propose as a kind of golden thread which runs through creative activities both historically and in a contemporary context, can give rise to the sublime, and as part of this I am identifying a number of themes which inform my art practice and which are directly relevant to this concept of the sublime. (iv) The context(s) Again it is instructive to look at how a doctorate in a more conventional area would function differently to a doctorate in visual arts. For example a scientist researching the action of particular microscopic life forms in a part of a sheep's intestine may draw upon certain basic skills or techniques learnt as an undergraduate, but it would not be relevant to discuss it in a doctoral thesis. In my own case my current work, and the work which I am proposing to produce in the coming three years, is very much a continuation of the concerns which began to form in my undergraduate work (1987-1990) and which developed further in the subsequent years, particularly solidifying during the work for my postgraduate degree in 1994/5. Whilst the work which will be presented as 60% of my doctorate will be an entirely new body of work, it is not separate from what has come before it and it is difficult to see how it can be appreciated or understood without seeing it in the context of my work over the previous decade. In my approach to the exegesis and to the themes I am exploring in the works which I am presenting for my doctorate I am also interested in an idea from Jacques Derrida (who has also written extensively on the sublime) différance which I interpret as : the meaning of something (be that a word or idea or image or text) is indicated by its relationship with other ideas or texts or rather the difference between it and other ideas or texts. I will thus propose to cover the following in the exegesis (not in order) : - a brief history and explanation of my work to date - the general historical context of my practice - a specific discussion of my current concerns, being the twelve themes which I am proposing give rise to the contemporary equivalent of the sublime) - the current and forthcoming works being presented as part of the doctorate, their relationship to each other and to these themes. (v) The chapters The exegesis will take the form of 12 chapters, one for each of the items in the catalogue of endless things and the associated artwork/s and/or project/s) with an introduction, a conclusion and several appendices (artists bibliography texts glossary communications methodology). Whilst each chapter deals with one specific theme and one particular work or projects many of the themes are closely interrelated and most of the works and projects are related to a number of these themes. These connections are indicated in the index and many of the works remain in a fluid state. Whilst some have been completed, others while they have been worked on since the beginning of the phd are still a considerable way from completion. The catalogue also includes some on-going projects and there are a number of works which are no more than the beginning of an idea for which some preparatory work has been done. What I have done in the current version of the catalogue is to attempt to create a kind of framework for both my own benefit (to inform my research and practical work) and for the benefit of my supervisors. However both the themes and the proposed works are in a very fluid state and it is in the nature of work in the visual arts that discoveries are made and incorporated into the work as it progresses and there will no doubt be many changes over the next three years and neither are the catalogue items are toally fixed. I envisage that the research, the making of the works and the writing of the individual chapters will lead to new ideas and discoveries which will inform each other. At the time of writing (january 2000) the most pressing writing projects are : this Introduction, the chapter on desire and i.j.oog, and the methodology appendix. The artworks I am planning to concentrate on over the next year are : ana, epitaph v3, i.j.oog (collected works) and the minus eleven error harmonia suite.