Indieoma

While online the other day, Mike (Watson) asked me to contribute a text for the forthcoming Indieoma edition. Asking for a suggestion as regards topic, Mike suggested I write something about ‘objects’, and to this purpose, choose 3 objects out of my studio, with the rider that an ‘object’ can be anything therein. I liked this idea and agreed to try my hand. I wanted, as much as possible, not to think too much as regards choice – but rather to choose freely, indifferently. So saying, I went into the studio room, and chose the following: An old, paint encrusted painting knife; an empty half bottle of Courvoisier, now serving it’s recently acquired function as an incense holder; and a colour photograph of my elder brother and I taken in S. Africa, when we went with my mother, to visit my grandfather, a pretty unpleasant character, when I was 4 years old.

Conversing with Mike again in a typed online dialogue with this evening, he said, what he wanted was for me to write about the ‘object’, not myself, ‘What are the THINGS … but through your eyes.’ Immediately in my mind, a problem arises with this notion.  Write about an object, specifically objects out of the studio but without placing the Self in the picture, but through my eyes?

What is an object? Here the distinction objective/subjective seems highly problematic. I mean, one could, I guess, attempt a kind of phenomenological reduction, or apply a ‘scientific’ methodology borrowed from the hard sciences, but I do not think this would really get to the point of what an object is, as in, not just for-me, but as an object in the world. The point being, these objects are mine, and they are in my field of vision/apprehension, and they all, by default, enter into a whole host of relations with the self (me in this case), memories, life situations, etc., the list could go on exponentially. Although this is not to say in anyway that they only exist through thought. They exist in the world, factually, which is to say, even if they are mine, they will always elide me in some way, in the same way that elements of all objects elide all thought – which is again not to say that they don’t exist, (outside of thought or language), only that they are so tangled up with the world of other objects and thoughts, language, memories, etc., that the only objects I might think that would possibly be divorced from such complexities and multiplicities are platonic solids or mathematical objects or similar, and such things are really outside of me and esp. outside the knowledge of my discourse. I might add here, that years ago I studied philosophy, but I am more than a little rusty, (I am a simpler soul these days – yeah right!), and mathematics and formal logic, sadly was, and still is, my weakest point. (At the time I really did not care about this, but now, I realise, of course, that this is a lacunae).

Anyway, to continue…

It seems to me, evident, that one of the most complex objects, is the human being, a being for whom, not only is be-ing, a continuous question, but she/he is a being who is contiguously both subject and object – to her/himself and to others. But prior to choosing the objects, I was considering the whole idea of an object, an artist friend was visiting, and I told him of the proposed text and, looking at the books on the shelf, made me think about a ‘book’. I mean, here one immediately had a strange object. The ‘book’ as being a very particular object. On the one hand, of course, its physical structure, can be easily ascertained, and described, on the other hand, this physical structure is of course not the book. For instance, we might say, the book generically is in some sense, x, y, z, but we cannot say this of a particular book, certainly one that we have read. It’s object-ness, it’s facticity if you like, is then, of course, not only it’s physical, easily described properties, the x, y, z, but it is also always already, that impossible, though nonetheless real object that is also it’s meaning/s, its text and readers’ relationships, its machinic assemblage which flees and spreads out in lines of flight, rhizome-like, as D&G would say. So that while on one level, the book is there on the shelf, on another level, contiguously, it is elsewhere, or even everywhere, and at the same time, nowhere. Thus the seemingly simple object that is a book, is in fact, a strange kind of assemblage, and becomes interesting when thought of as an object (in its entirety). What is the ontological status of the book? I have no answer here, but I think it is actually a very interesting question that might be posed. 

Okay. I better crack on. I have left writing this so late, and it is now 1.30 a.m., and the deadline is tomorrow. So, this really is a free rolling text, and there will no doubt be a lot of flaws – but then, maybe flaws are not always such a bad thing. ‘To the things themselves.”

One: Painting Knife.

A pretty nondescript object. It is, at a guess, seven inches long with a wooden handle, and a thin, flat, tapering blade, with a bend in the metal part leading to it, to keep one’s knuckles away from the paint. This particular one, is from a very cheap set of pallette/painting knives given me by an ex girlfriend around two years ago, and it has been well used. It is caked in layers of acrylic paint, the colours from its last use, being the most apparent – greens, dark blues, white, black. It is definitely a tool, and as such, it is, as it sits here on the table beside, quite blank in many ways – it seems to have little cultural life, little meaning outside of its factuality, outside of what it is. As an object, it really only comes into its own while in use, which is when in many ways, it disappears, ceases to be an object separate from myself, and becomes merely an extension of the hand – a means of applying paint and in the process of painting it gets even more lost to me as an object separate from me, or as thought of in any abstract fashion. It then only comes into its own, at the moment, it in a sense disappears into what Merleau-Ponty called the prethetic, or again, Heidegger, called, the readiness-to-hand. Which is to only to point out, that it doesn’t really have much meaning for me, except in its use.
Now, I have similar objects, old paint clothes, used for instance to cover painting tables, old paint jackets, and other such oddments, and studio tools, that have ended up becoming incorporated in works of ‘art’. And it is kind of strange in a way, that it is only once they have finally been taken out of their working environment, or when they build up an (un)certain patina, or when they suddenly strike me in a certain way, that they sometiimes change function, and no longer being ‘mute’, begin to speak, to become the bearers of some kind of indefinite, ludic, multiplying meanings, and re-enter the world in a (at least for me) a more interesting, fashion.

Two: An Empty, 35cl Courvoisier Bottle, now used as an incense holder.

Again, a somewhat mute object – strangely enough, even more mute, more ‘empty’ than the painting knife, probably especially due to the fact that it has now been emptied.  It was brought to the house by the artist/musician Samon Takahasi, when I let him have a small birthday party here, before returning to Paris. It is a beautiful bottle, but I find myself unable, without the words to really describe its shape. ‘The cognac of Napoleon’, it sits, empty on the desk, attractive, but it doesn’t lead me anyway. The blue metal screw top now has a small hole punched into it, out of which, the remains of an incense stick is pointing upwards at a slight angle. Of course, I could now add more descriptions, more adjectives, but really, as of now, it simply appears to me as a bottle among bottles, unworthy of more comment.

Three: A 4 × 6 inch Colour Photograph of my Elder Brother and I, taken in S. Africa when I was four years old.

Here we have an object of an altogether different status from the former two objects, and I realise I might appear to be going far off the original remit of this text, a text, not about you – but about the THING, the object. I mean, the photograph is undoubtedly a photograph of me, but then, is that in fact its most important property? Although any discussion of the said picture cannot but help be overdetermined by this factor, I suggest it is not. The photograph is in some ways as complex a thing as the book mentioned above. That is to say, what is a photograph? A seemingly dumb question! Its physical or physiological description can easily be accomplished, but this would be a completely redundant description – that is not the photograph, but rather the physical substrate that goes to make up the photograph itself, the image, which is as much a part of the object as its physical structure.

The photograph bleeds meaning, it is so utterly traversed by a multiplicity of meanings, so overladen by meanings, personal, interpersonal, cultural, political and aesthetic, that one might found a whole text from out its seemingly monadic structure. This thin piece of plastic and chemical coated card, a mere 4 × 6 inch in diameter, explodes into a whole constellation of meaning and signifying chains, lines of flight, memories, questions of time and of the self, of life and finitude, opening up and closing questions of being like a weird, static, yet frenetic bearer of infinite possibilities. This, tiny, absurd, object sitting here before me…

Bow, London, 27th January 2010.
 


Links to the other Open Ideas posts:

Philosophizing Now: Graham Harman Interviewed

ENG/ITA Caposud Magazine breaks new ground: Interview with Alfredo Giangaspero

The Return of Metaphysics: Nick Srnicek

Reflections From an Artwork Jettisoned in Space: Mike Watson

Non Frontières: Karim Dimechkie