(un)prepare to be attacked!

[Slide 1 alt=“the author presenting via Zoom, cheval de frise and movie of a muddy run. Beastly noises provide an audio backdrop”]

AMONGST & BETWEEN

but it’s clear that he still doesn’t understand … doesn’t fully understand. The intervening years have not contributed clarity. This lack of clarity could be used as a smokescreen to hide a starting out. Or the starting out can be hidden by a confused moment or two of technical checks and chronological consultation. Or this is already, always, a middle … not a precise, geometric centre point but a between. A between that “does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away,” as Deleuze and Guattari might put it (Deleuze & Guattari 2012, 28).

The proposal for this paper had a chronology: an introduction formed by lived experiences; a middle section of brief propositions; and a conclusion of … no, a conclusion was always denied. And the introduction? Formed by historical experiences and selected by the convenient cut of a date in a calendar indicating the official start of a doctoral research. Much is blurred through this single day … criss-crosses this calendric moment. Reading the official period of doctoral research as Baradian apparatus the start date becomes a reconfiguration. (Barad 2007, 146)

Traditionally doctoral research conforms to conventions controlling approach, implementation and delivery. Conniving with these conventions are methodology, rigour, analysis, structure/logic, formality, planning … and the arch principal of ‘an original contribution to knowledge’. But what can all these terms mean, and should not they be interrogated? The term ‘research’ alone will have the neophyte researcher running around in circles.^[1]

• ^[1] “research (v.) 1590s, from re-, intensive prefix (see re-), + cercher “to seek for,” from Latin circare “go about, wander, traverse,” in Late Latin “to wander hither and thither,” from circus “circle” (see circus).” Online Etymology Dictionary, “Etymology, origin and meaning of research by etymonline,” accessed 6th July 2021.

Given the need for rigour and analysis, the speaking of the true sense that is etymology appears a useful tool in doctoral research.^[2] Seeking an absolute truth in words may offer too much power to language (at the expense of poetry) but should not “some sort of linguistic correctness” be expected in doctoral research? (Deleuze 1998, 97) Rather than delivering the truth of language, etymology provides a way of prising things open, of gauging a trajectory and gathering material to collage a way of going about things.

• ^[2] “-logia “study of, a speaking of” (see -logy) + etymon “true sense, original meaning,” neuter of etymos “true, real, actual,” related to eteos “true”.” Online Etymology Dictionary, “etymology | Search Online Etymology Dictionary,” accessed 14th July 2021, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=etymology.

[Slide 2 alt=“movie of the interior of a lighthouse, a diagram of a bomb-aimer and a currach being launched”]

practically theoretical

Prior to the 1600s, and a settling of the term, theory (from the Greek theoria) suggested an activity of ‘looking at or seeing’ (horan) ‘a view’ (thea). A spectator is implied in this reading of ‘theory’ and by further implication, a distance. Detached and at-a-remove, theory seemingly runs counter to the hands-on performing and doing of artistic practice. The spectators of theory (the theatre-goers?) must be challenged as to how they came to be detached from what they view (from the stage and its activity). Does not this viewpoint of a theorist become doubly distanced through the inherent representation of the ‘theatre’, for the play on the stage is merely a representation of an exterior world?^[3] Practice in this reading would become the distanced playing on the stage. The stark, non-communicative oppositionality of practice and theory viewed through an etymological lens is problematic. [3’56”]

• ^[3] Jean-François Lyotard utilises the etymological kinship of theory and theatre to critique the forms of knowledge which produce a closed inside and an outside that “’will have to’ be conquered.” Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy. Translated by Iain Hamilton Grant. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 1–16.

But this binary can be seen differently, re-viewed. Maybe the ‘bringing-forth’ of poiēsis should be adopted to short-circuit a requirement to align to either pole. A sentiment finding resonance in Deleuze’s claim, “Science and poetry are equal forms of knowledge” perhaps (Deleuze 2006, 18). Or maybe, as Johnny Golding notes, theory is “a crucial, intimate, sensuous nexus;” a doing that should be inhabited (Golding 2021). Here the boundary between practice and theory is dissolved, giving researchers greater flexibility of approach. It perhaps only remains an issue where institutions remain too fixed on what research should be and how it should be conducted.

Moving on, an identified methodology is fundamental to doctoral research. Broadly speaking, methodologies are conventionally employed to ensure objectivity in data collection, analysis, interpretation and implication. But objectivity can be problematic for its reinforcing of anthropocentric privilege.^[4] A methodology introduced ahead of the researching can impose artificial influence upon the outcomes. For artist-researchers the emergent approach as championed by Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt acts as a useful guide and can be given further strength by Brad Haseman’s notion of ‘diving-in’ to research (Barrett & Bolt 2010, 6; Haseman 2006). Perhaps, in this way, methodology can become a research finding. The way of doing becomes marks in the body of the research and these marks can be identified upon review. It even becomes possible that methodology becomes the focus of, the way of doing, and the outcome of research.

• ^[4] For an explanation on the problem of objectivity see: Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007), 323.

Further, ‘methodology’ is revealed to hold within it Greek roots of meta + hodos + logos. A translation of which offers a speaking of (logos) the pursuit of (meta) a way (hodos). Meta also carries a suggestion of being ‘in the midst of things’ – a pleasantly surprising productive companion to ‘diving-in’ and Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizomatics in any artist-researcher’s armoury. (Deleuze & Guattari 2012, 3–28)

Rigour (or, as Robert MacFarlane once referred to it, rigour mortis (Macfarlane 2015)) seems completely misplaced in practice-led research with its qualities of numbness and stiffness, and its stench of death … maybe the ‘stretching’ at the word’s root can have some use, certainly for forming an elastic surface of thought.^[5]

• ^[5] rigor (n.) late 14c., from Old French rigor “strength, hardness” (13c., Modern French rigueur), from Latin rigorem (nominative rigor) “numbness, stiffness, hardness, firmness; roughness, rudeness,” from rigēre “be stiff,” from PIE root *reig– “stretch; be stretched; be stiff.” Online Etymology Dictionary, “Etymology, origin and meaning of rigor by etymonline,” accessed 29th July 2021.

Analysis describes a detailed and methodical examination of material but in its etymology reveals actions of breaking apart and loosening. In Ancient Greek analyein described the loosening of a ship from its mooring. From here it can be seen that ‘rigorous analysis’, etymologically at least, becomes an act of something pulling itself apart; the fixity of rigour being challenged by the loosening pull of analysis. Care is required though for it could be misleading to use rigour as a fixed spatial anchor from which analysis plays out its line; instead, the push and pull of the pairing offers a tactical repurposing of rigour and provides an energy and a dynamism that can drive research.^[6] 

• ^[6] Related to this analyein is the play of the words as they play out their lines. The play of words is both intentional and ‘wild’; word-play has been embraced but equally words continue to play out the line of their meaning, offering a slack to intension/intention/tension.

Logic: see Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense for a study of “where sense and nonsense collide.” (Deleuze 1990) [7’00”]

[Slide 3 alt=“ staff in a wartime operations room, a diagram of the pineal eye and repeated images of a woman outside of an observation hut”]

SURFACING

Seemingly shackled to a Cartesian spatio-temporal cognition of the world, the ‘difference’ of Deleuze, Lyotard, Barad, et al feels unattainable. More than a shift of perspective is required, but then … a shift of perspective would be a start, even if it does prove to be a faux pas. The tenacity and zeal of Nietzsche and Foucault equally exist at an apparent remove. One thing is for certain in this uncertainty, a direct approach is not advisable and will not be ultimately beneficial. Instead, these figures (and more) act as cairns (and sometimes will-o’-the-wisps) as surface progress is made. A third eye, a pineal eye, will be kept on these figures and their associates.

Given this restriction, to turn the direction of (doctoral) research from one of depth to one of extent seems a productive way to proceed (although all these ‘pro’ words trouble with their suggestion of forward movement … sometimes danger lurks ahead and avoiding action is required). From amidst this research landscape of doing a depth is flayed: an understanding, a form(ing) of knowledge is stretched outwards into a surface (of writing).

This surface is delicate. It is pushed, nudged, and re-aligned by a flow of influences beyond the purity of doctoral research: country walks, family commitments, the ‘clock time’ of academia, petty institutional politics, the incessant barking of a neighbour’s dog, weekly seminars, the architecture and interior decoration of institutions, library opening hours, the departure of a supervisor or two … the surface maps these patterns of influence. These patterns are legible at micro (sentence) scale and across the broader surface. The repetitious flexions that cause moments of intensity, placidity, and/or vulnerability – the spiky undergrowth of progress – can be exciting, offering an adrenaline kick to propel the writing (as verb) and provide a rich and fascinating, if not classically beautiful, form to the writing (noun).

As part of the surface patterns are also mapped by the body (anxiety, stress, muscular aches and stiffness (maybe this is the academic rigour?!)), pain, anger and disillusionment follow and cloud the surface. Pain, anger and disillusionment augment the surface. But here more care is needed to to navigate between vengeful catharsis and parrhēsic truth.^[7] [9’22”]

• ^[7] For a full introduction to the concept of parrhēsia see: Foucault, Michel. 2011. The Courage of Truth Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[Slide 4 alt=“a vast listening device, a surveyor and theodolite on a large tree stump and vehicle tracks through grass”]

PROPOSITIONS

Contrary to accepted logic the thesis of this research lacked a focus, lacked a locus of power. [RECORDED VOICE STOPS HERE] Recalling de Certeau, a need to employ tactics (“the art of the weak”) arose. (de Certeau 1988, 37) Out in the exposed and shifting landscape of research (surface of words), a range of tactics can be employed to permit gathering of (and attending to) ideas and thoughts. Guerrilla tactics: provoking, bringing into the open, challenging, ambushing, and skirmishing. The risk of being the target of similar retaliatory activities must equally be considered. Furthermore, the landscape of research is full of dead ends and false turns (or holzwege as Heidegger might put it). Paths of knowledge and knowing for those who know or paths to become lost in for those who do not; a frustratingly fruitful form of entanglement in a landscape of decoy and distraction.

Here, set forth, exposed to view, is a brief set of propositions.^[8] The propositions are analogies materially entangle contexts and activities whilst blurring the emotions and senses that become absorbed and influence growth of knowledge. The propositions all have violent or confrontational connotations; an indication perhaps of the researcher’s relationship with academia or individual institution. How these propositions peeled themselves away from their original applications to be attached alternatively is uncertain. A transversal gaze was likely involved, as was playfulness.

• ^[8] mid-14c., proposicioun, “a riddle” (a sense now obsolete); late 14c., in rhetoric, “a setting forth as a topic for discussion or discourse,” from Old French proposicion “proposal, submission, (philosophical) proposition” (12c.), from Latin propositionem (nominative propositio) “a setting forth, statement, a presentation, representation; fundamental assumption,” noun of action from past-participle stem of proponere “put forth, set forth, lay out, display, expose to view.” Online Etymology Dictionary, “Etymology, origin and meaning of search by etymonline,” accessed 21st July 2021.

[Slide 5 alt=“an engraving of a stalking horse”]

stalking horse: The scene: under a cloudy sky, an area of low-lying land in flood. Pollarded trees and wildfowl punctuate an expanse of water whilst a foreground is dominated by a figure with a gun crouching behind the artifice of a fake cow. This cow is a horse, a stalking horse. The stalking horse conceals any sense of threat and apparently appears unremarkable in the landscape. An initial proposal and associated research questions were this cow-horse. They were a body of knowledge, a body of writing of sufficient conviction to be used to hide behind and buy time while the research landscape was surveyed/constructed and subsequent moves plotted. 

[Slide 6 alt=“a humorous depiction of a Trojan Horse, a multi-trumpeted and wheeled military listening device and lichen on a rock”]

Trojan horse: Or. Perhaps fuelled by a degree of imposter syndrome (and a sense of being an outsider for the duration of the doctoral research), the original application for doctoral study did not necessarily dictate the way that the study would proceed. The application was a Trojan Horse enabling access to the fortified realm of academia. Once inside this realm the research could be reimagined through its doing. 

[Slide 7 alt=“a soldier disguised with shrubbery, a telescopic view of a peregrine on a cathedral spire and a heap of cut reeds”]

camouflage: Ostensibly similar in means and result to the preceding horseplay the adoption of camouflage differs in its close attention to the colours and patterns of the surroundings. It is a covert mode rather than one of hiding in plain sight. The architecture and décor of an institution is absorbed, the modes of presentation incorporated … PowerPoint presentations projecting a sense of belonging. N.B. the deceit of these propositions could run counter to the openness, the truth speaking, of parrhēsia followed elsewhere.

[Slide 8 alt=“drawn section of a military undermining operation from the London Illustrated News”]

footnotes: A footnote is an ancillary piece of textual information inserted at the foot of a printed page. The footnote operates with two components: i) an indicator number or mark set within the text body cross-referencing with, ii) a corresponding number or mark in the footnote section followed by the ancillary information. The footnote could be a reference for a quotation or similar; it could be additional, non-crucial, text content; or it may alert the reader to ways in which a theme can be expanded upon. 

The footnote section (generally with a ruled dividing line) appears as a chamber excavated beneath the main text body. The notion of undermining the text takes on possibilities; the situation, the text body, becomes precarious. The undermining could be accelerated through insertion of ‘explosive’ content into the chamber. Here undermining is not an action of digging down (in pursuit of depth), but is a digging across, a transversal digging, a slight form of digging.^[9]

• ^[9] Unfortunately, the image of auxiliary notes acting as an undermining chamber of (self-) destruction becomes lost when footnotes become endnotes.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

(Heaney 1990, 3–4) [13’56”]

[Slide 9 alt=“movie footage running along a narrow country path and an image of gorse in flower”]

WORDS TORN AWAY … WORDS TORN, A WAY?

A breaking, a tearing, a cutting surface of words emerges. The lie of the land (language) became re-formed. A map that constantly formed itself and pulled, tore and cut itself apart; a mapping of interferences … the patterns of the mapped surface fractally becoming the map’s (mapped) territory. Fractal, fractured, diffracted all have a breaking at their etymological core.^[10] This exertive violence found a fit with the aleatory cutting of cut-up and with Baradian diffractive cutting together-apart.^[11]

• ^[10] i.e. fracture (n.) from Latin fractura “a breach, break, cleft,” from fractus, past participle of frangere “to break”.
• ^[11] For an overview of cut-up see William S. Burroughs, “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin,” UBUWEB, accessed 10th November 2021, https://www.ubu.com/papers/burroughs_gysin.html and Karen Barad, 2014 “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart,” Parallax 20, no.3 (2014), 168–187.

An uncomfortable body of writing / writing body emerged from the research (writing) as it became apparent that writing was the practice in this practice-led doctoral research. Behold the confusion! An unexpected confusion; an ambush … perhaps brought about by a simple misunderstanding of the possibility of reading ‘writing’ in both a nominal and a verbal form. Not a new problem, not a new phenomenon for as long ago as 1994 the sociologist Laurel Richardson observed:

Although we usually think about writing as a mode of ‘telling’ about the social world, writing is not just a mopping up activity at the end of a research project. Writing is also a way of ‘knowing’ – a method of discovery and analysis.

(Richardson 1994, 32)

Offering an art-specific lens, the term ‘art writing’ emerged around the mid-2000s. An apparently simple (if fluid) form it attracted criticism from the start.^[12] For many it was purely a convenient but temporary marker for what was happening with writing in a fine art context. In 2008 Maria Fusco wrote:

• ^[12] For example, Brian Dillon suggested art writing as “a form that shuttles among criticism, literary experiment and art as such.” Brian Dillon, “Style & Substance: On teaching criticism and ‘art writing’,” Frieze (2013); while John Douglas Millar was troubled by the apparent fancy-free editorial policy of art writing journals where seemingly anything goes and the editorials are rich with, “the most sludgy, grey quasi-academic language imaginable.” Millar, John Douglas. 2011. “Art/Writing.” Art Monthly 349 (September 2011).

All of a sudden (!) it seems that Art Writing is boggling the brain of the contemporary art world. An interesting occurrence, when we take into consideration just how long artists, critics and yes, even theorists, have been furiously scribbling away (doubtless many at desks of their own precarious design).

(Fusco 2008)

Yes! artists had long been writing, had long been using writing in different ways (as criticism, as explanatory text, to develop ideas, as medium, etc.). Forms of writing that somehow evaded the confines of Literature (maybe due to performative natures or stretching of literary rules) would be embraced by the art world.^[13] By 2009 art writing was becoming somewhat formalised in academia and in 2011 Maria Fusco, Yve Lomax, Michael Newman and Adrian Rifkin published 11 Statements Around Art Writing as part of the syllabus for the MFA Art Writing course at Goldsmiths, London (Fusco 2011).

• ^[13] For the former see for example the Futurists, The Dadaists, Robert Smithson, Cy Twombly, Susan Hiller and Tacita Dean. For examples of the latter see for example Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Clarice Lispector. There are also accepted literary texts that have been embraced totemically by artists of all kinds … Brion Gysin’s Let the Mice In and W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn to offer just two examples.

(‘Art writing’ was being increasingly claimed by a creative art criticism which, as Emma Bolland points out in a 2018 essay, shifts art writing from writing as art towards writing about or alongside art (Bolland 2018).)

[Slide 10 alt= “photograph of an archaeological dig at Maiden Castle, Dorset, England”]

Although ‘art writing’ offers a mode to point at and adhere a practice to it remained problematic for it seemed to insist on a divide between ‘art’ and ‘writing’ – the space in the term is troubling. As Kate Love states, the binary configuration that is known as ‘art writing’ does most of the work in maintaining the rigid dualism that it might actually wish to deconstruct. (Love 2009)

The discussion folds back towards the binary (un)coupling of ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ where, art = practice and writing = theory. Maybe a Baradian move can be made and a hyphen or virgule replaces the space in ‘art writing’ to become ‘art-writing’ or ‘art/writing’ wherein a cutting together-apart reveals “an iterative (re)configuring of patterns of differentiating-entangling” (Barad 2014). Enabling difference but not imposing absolute separation.

Alternatively. Love’s solution was to propose her research as “writing as a practice in the context of Fine Art” – an act of “queering the difference [between practice and theory], so that the text mutates, in real time, between a so-called conventional academic sounding voice and a practice voice and back again and vice versa.”^[14]

• ^[14] Kate Love, “An Exploration of Affect as a Methodology for Examining Experience and Writing as a Practice in the Context of Fine Art.” An overall approach and sections of my writing owe an enormous debt to the spirit and thrust of Kate Love’s research. Kate Love died too young in January 2020, her expanded doctoral thesis, An Affect of an Experience and how I learnt to write about it in the context of fine art, is due to be published by Intellect Books in May 2022. See https://www.intellectbooks.com/an-affect-of-an-experience for more information.

Thinking on this action of mutation brings a realisation … the research intention was to become an expert in nothing. Attempts were made to lose the agency of the author. The thesis, explained as a collaboration between a variety of places/people/things, would be freed to become the expert; an expert in itself. Words could eat themselves. Within the etymology of expert resides a trace of risk. Attempting to lose authorial agency had a risky appeal well-fitted to the Foucauldian parrhēsia that had remained raggedly attached to the research surface despite actions of deception and concealment (albeit in plain sight).^[15]

• ^[15] expert (adj.), late 14c., “having had experience; skillful,” from Old French expert, espert “experienced, practiced, skilled” and directly from Latin expertus (contracted from *experitus), “tried, proved, known by experience,” past participle of experiri “to try, test,” from ex “out of” (see ex-) + peritus “experienced, tested,” from PIE *per-yo-, suffixed form of root *per- (3) “to try, risk.” Online Etymology Dictionary, “Etymology, origin and meaning of expert by etymonline,” accessed 9th August 2021.

So, the inferred lack of understanding is perhaps misleading or disingenuous. It should be noted that understanding suggests a standing among and between. An among and between that is impossible to move outside of? The gathering of knowledge permits the amongst, growing out from a point amidst, and begins to build a surface … a surface of knowledge, a surface of words … an uncertain surface. A pleated surface of ‘wrong’ turns, a landscape … a langscape of shaping words and word shapes.^[16] Like a Landovian hypertext this surface is forever “open-ended, expandable, and incomplete.” (Landow 2006, 113) [18’31”] It is clear that he still doesn’t understand, 

• ^[16] Tim Ingold suggests that the English suffix ‘-scape’ has become etymologically muddled with the verb skopein, ‘to look’, “‘scape’, quite to the contrary, comes from Old English sceppan or skyppan, meaning ‘to shape’.” Tim Ingold, Being Alive (London: Routledge, 2011), 126.

References

Barad, Karen. 2014. “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart.” Parallax 20, no.3: 168–187.

Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Barrett, Estelle & Bolt, Barbara, eds. 2010. Practice as Research: Approaches To Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I.B. Tauris.

Bolland, Emma. 2018. “Or In The Way We Write In A Dream. Do You See?” Corridor 8. Accessed 9th August 2021. https://corridor8.co.uk/article/way-write-dream-see/

Burroughs, William S. “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin.” UBUWEB. Accessed 10th November 2021. https://www.ubu.com/papers/burroughs_gysin.html

de Certeau, Michel. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Foucault. London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1998. Essays Critical and Clinical. Translated by Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. London: Verso.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester. New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 2012. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. London: Continuum.

Dillon, Brian. 2013 “Style & Substance: On teaching criticism and ‘art writing’.” frieze. https://frieze.com/article/style-substance.

Foucault, Michel. 2011. The Courage of Truth. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fusco, Maria. 2008. “Report: Contemporary Art Writing and it’s environs MAP #15 (Autumn 2008) | MAP Magazine.” MAP Magazine. Accessed 14th June 2017. https://mapmagazine.co.uk/report-contemporary-art-writi.

Fusco, Maria. 2011. “11 Statements Around Art Writing / Writing / Maria Fusco.” Accessed 12^th November 2021. http://mariafusco.net/writing/11-statements-around-art-writing.

Golding, Johnny. Doing Theory. Accessed 29th July 2021. https://www.academia.edu/731888/Doing_Theory.

Haseman, Brad. 2006. “A Manifesto for Performative Research.” Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy 118, no. 1 (2006): 98–106.

Heaney, Seamus. 1990. “Digging,” in New Selected Poems, 1966–1978. London: Faber & Faber.

Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive. London: Routledge.

Landow, George P. 2006. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Love, Kate. 2009. “An Exploration of Affect as a Methodology for Examining Experience and Writing as a Practice in the Context of Fine Art.” PhD diss. Central Saint Martins.

Macfarlane, Robert. 2015. Landmarks. London: Hamish Hamilton.

Millar, John Douglas. 2011. “Art/Writing.” Art Monthly (349).

Richardson, Laurel. 1994. “Writing: a Method of Inquiry”. In Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks: Sage.