ARTDICK

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“Newman’s paintings look easy to copy, and maybe they really are. But they are far from easy to conceive, and their quality and meaning lies almost exactly in their conception… The onlooker who says his child could paint a Newman may be right, but Newman would have to be there to tell the child exactly what to do. The exact choices of color, medium, size, proportion – including the size and shape of the support – are what alone determines the quality of the result, and these choices depend solely on inspiration or conception.” (Clement Greenberg, After Abstract Expressionism, 1962)

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“Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people’s plates.” (Francis Bacon)

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“A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these ‘readymades’ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste in fact a complete anaesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the ‘readymade.’ That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which, in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called ‘readymade aided.’ At another time, wanted to expose the basic anatomy between art and ‘readymades,’ I imagined a reciprocal readymade: use a Rembrandt as an ironing board! I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the productions of ‘readymades’ to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my ‘readymades’ against such a contamination. Another aspect of the ‘readymade’ is its lack of uniqueness. The replica of the ‘readymade’ delivering the same message. In fact nearly every one of the ‘readymades’ existing today is not original in the conventional sense.” (Marcel Duchamp)

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“First. Those whose relation to their objects is a mere community in some quality, and these representations may be termed Likenesses. Second. Those whose relation to their objects consists in a correspondence in fact, and these may be termed Indices or Signs. Third. Those the ground of whose relation to their objects is an imputed character, which are the same as general signs, and these may be termed Symbols.” (C.S. Peirce, On A New Set of Categories)

“C.S. Peirce, whose great importance for the classification of images and signs we have already noted, distinguished between two sorts of images which he called ‘Firstness’ and ‘Secondness’… Peirce does not conceal the fact that firstness is difficult to define, because it is felt, rather than conceived: it concerns what is new in experience, what is fresh, fleeting and nevertheless eternal… Secondness was wherever there were two by themselves: what is what it is in relation to a second. Everything which only exists by being opposed, by and in a duel, therefore belongs to secondness: exertion-resistance, action-reaction, excitation-response, situation-behaviour, individual-milieu… It is the category of the Real, of the actual, of the existing, of the individuated… After having distinguished between affection and action, which he calls Firstness and Secondness, Peirce adds a third kind of image: the ‘mental’ or Thirdness. The point of thirdness was a term that referred to a second term through the intermediary of another term or terms. This third instance appeared in signification, law or relation. This may seem to be already included in action, but this is not so. An action, that is to say a duel or a pair of forces, obeys laws which make it possible, but it is never its law which makes it act.” (Gilles Deleuze, The Movement Image)

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“An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk’s sake.” (Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook)

Many thanks to Alex Greenhough. Instructions for a rearrangement: Take any objects in a social space and rearrange them, in order to alter the perception of that space for subsequent viewers. A marker of human existence. A trace of consciousness. This rearrangement was constructed on Adams Terrace in 2006.

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“1998… we were walking along together and moved some stones on a path at Victoria University. I never did finish writing my notes towards a definition…” (Alexander Greenhough, 2010)

Instructions for a rearrangement: Take any objects in a social space and rearrange them, in order to alter the perception of that space for subsequent viewers. A marker of human existence. A trace of consciousness. I think this “rearrangement” took place somewhere near ‘The Mill’ on Victoria Street in Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks to Tao Wells for being there to capture it.

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Made after talking with Tao Wells about Paul Sheerbart; “The surface of the Earth would change greatly if brick architecture were everywhere displaced by glass architecture. It would be as though the Earth clad itself in jewelery of brilliants and enamel. The splendor is absolutely unimaginable. And we should then have more exquisite things than the gardens of the Arabian Nights. Then we should have a paradise on Earth and would not need to gaze longingly at the paradise in the sky.” (Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture)

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Part 3 of an ongoing series of video poems made from found footage, inspired by the principles of haiku poetry, the readymade and cut-up aesthetics.

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Part 6 of an ongoing series of video poems made from found footage, inspired by the principles of haiku poetry, the readymade and cut-up aesthetics.

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Part 7 of an ongoing series of video poems made from found footage, inspired by the principles of haiku poetry, the readymade and cut-up aesthetics.

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