Narrating the Catastrophe , livre ebook

Intellect Books - Jac Saorsa

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

160 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

An extraordinary collaboration between contemporary art and critical discourse, Narrating the Catastrophe guides readers through unfamiliar textual landscapes where “being” is defined as an act rather than a form. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of intersubjective narrative identity as well as the catastrophe theory of Gilles Deleuze, Jac Saorsa establishes an alternative perspective from which to interpret and engage with the world around us. A highly original—and visually appealing—take on a high-profile issue in contemporary critical debate, this book will appeal to all those interested in visual arts and philosophy.

Preface

Chapter 1: Act and Form

Introduction: first words – The journey begins – A meaningful psychosis – What is philosophy? – What is art? – The nature of the concept – The concept visualised – What is science? The pre-eminence of the rhizome over the metaphor – Root, stem and rhizome – 1st Articulation – The rhizome as a conceptual construct: map and tracing

2nd Articulation: Interpreting Process in the Flux: The Return of Professor Challenger

Chapter 2: Lost Worlds, Unfamiliar Landscapes: Conceptualising the Text

The Text and the ‘Other’ – Language – Hermeneutics – Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) – Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) – Hermeneutics and Visual Understanding Hans George Gadamer (1900–2002) – Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005)

3rd Articulation: The Dance of the Metaphor

Chapter 3: Language and the Line: The Geometrical Abstract Line of Becoming

Drawing on Conversation: Introduction – The relevance and irrelevance of language – Textual bilingualism – Interlanguage – Structure and the interpretation of the text – Depth – From looking to seeing: Alice and the architectural illusion – Narrative identity and ‘The Idiot’

Chapter 4: Drawing Out Deleuze

Documenting the Stone: The artist’s voice – Practice and process: i: a passion for the line – ii: process and its histories – iii: the phenomenographical stone – iv: the drawing act – v: time, movement, becoming, cause, effect and ‘confatalia’ – The shift: structure to figuration.

4th Articulation: Mapping the Mark

Chapter 5: The ‘Appleyness’ of the Apple: On Cézanne and the Figure

Head: Revisiting the shift: from figuration towards structure – Sensation – Love in twodimensions – Superficial anatomy – Anatomical architecture – The consequence of the heart – Autoethnography: the echoing artist’s voice

Chapter 6: Ageless Children and Amputees

Amputee: In the valley of interpretation – An artist for scientists, a scientist for artists – Reflexion, interpretation appropriation – Reflexive philosophy, narrative identity and the teleological context – Time, self, and appropriation beyond narrative – Representation, figuration and the figure: a folded text

5th Articulation: Bony Landmarks

Chapter 7: Circling the Figure

The Dyer Drawing: Circling the Figure (Author’s note) – Introduction – The Dyer drawing and the drawing act – John Deakin – Deakin and Muybridge: subject, object, form, function – Moving towards sensation – Practice: through which the child becomes the man – An autoethnographic account – The ‘Diagram’ – The ‘Catastrophe’ – Rhythm – The Body Without Organs – Exit the artist

Chapter 8: Figuring the Circle: The Final Refrain

Introduction – The hermeneutic circle – The Deleuzean ‘Refrain’ – Shadows of the Self and the eternal paradox: The autoethnographic trap – Last words – The interpretive journey of Narrating the Catastrophe

Sujets

Arts visuels

ART

General

General officer

PHILOSOPHY

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	19 septembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781841506562
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,2850€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Narrating the Catastrophe
For Alan, India and Finn - my family
Narrating the Catastrophe
An Artist s Dialogue with Deleuze and Ricoeur
Jac Saorsa

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2011 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Persephone Coelho
Copy-editor: Macmillan
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-460-5
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter 1: Act and Form
Introduction: first words - The journey begins -A meaningful psychosis - What is philosophy? - What is art? - The nature of the concept - The concept visualised - What is science? The pre-eminence of the rhizome over the metaphor - Root, stem and rhizome - 1st Articulation - The rhizome as a conceptual construct: map and tracing
2nd Articulation: Interpreting Process in the Flux: The Return of Professor Challenger
Chapter 2: Lost Worlds, Unfamiliar Landscapes: Conceptualising the Text
The Text and the Other - Language - Hermeneutics - Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) - Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) - Hermeneutics and Visual Understanding Hans George Gadamer (1900-2002) - Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)
3rd Articulation: The Dance of the Metaphor
Chapter 3: Language and the Line: The Geometrical Abstract Line of Becoming
Drawing on Conversation : Introduction - The relevance and irrelevance of language - Textual bilingualism - Interlanguage - Structure and the interpretation of the text - Depth - From looking to seeing: Alice and the architectural illusion - Narrative identity and The Idiot
Chapter 4: Drawing Out Deleuze
Documenting the Stone : The artist s voice - Practice and process: i: a passion for the line - ii: process and its histories - iii: the phenomenographical stone - iv: the drawing act - v: time, movement, becoming, cause, effect and confatalia - The shift: structure to figuration.
4th Articulation: Mapping the Mark
Chapter 5: The Appleyness of the Apple: On C zanne and the Figure
Head : Revisiting the shift: from figuration towards structure - Sensation - Love in two- dimensions - Superficial anatomy - Anatomical architecture - The consequence of the heart - Autoethnography: the echoing artist s voice
Chapter 6: Ageless Children and Amputees
Amputee : In the valley of interpretation - An artist for scientists, a scientist for artists - Reflexion, interpretation appropriation - Reflexive philosophy, narrative identity and the teleological context - Time, self, and appropriation beyond narrative - Representation, figuration and the figure: a folded text
5th Articulation: Bony Landmarks
Chapter 7: Circling the Figure
The Dyer Drawing : Circling the Figure (Author s note) - Introduction - The Dyer drawing and the drawing act - John Deakin - Deakin and Muybridge: subject, object, form, function - Moving towards sensation - Practice: through which the child becomes the man - An autoethnographic account - The Diagram - The Catastrophe - Rhythm - The Body Without Organs - Exit the artist
Chapter 8: Figuring the Circle: The Final Refrain
Introduction - The hermeneutic circle - The Deleuzean Refrain - Shadows of the Self and the eternal paradox: The autoethnographic trap - Last words - The interpretive journey of Narrating the Catastrophe
References
List of Illustrations
Figure 1: Drawing on Conversation (detail): ink and graphite, (original) 4m 2m.
Figure 2: Documenting the Stone (1): graphite, 297mm 420mm.
Figure 3: Documenting the Stone (2): ink, 297mm 420mm.
Figure 4: Mapping the mark (1): graphite, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 5: Mapping the mark (1): graphite, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 6: Mapping the mark (2): graphite, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 7: Mapping the mark (3): graphite, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 8: Mapping the mark (4): graphite, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 9: Head: graphite, 120cm 90cm.
Figure 10: Amputee: graphite and charcoal, 297mm 420mm.
Figure 11: Life drawing: graphite 297mm 420mm.
Figure 12: Life drawing: ink on trace, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 13: Life drawing: ink on trace, 210mm 297mm.
Figure 14: Arturo (detail): chalk, charcoal, graphite and ink, (original) 2m 1.5m.
Figure 15: The Dyer Drawing: chalk, charcoal and graphite 150cm 120cm.
Preface
Who?
I n his last book, Essays Critical and Clinical , Gilles Deleuze refers to an invented foreign language that runs beneath the original English in Melville s classic, Moby Dick (or The Whale) . This language is OUTLANDISH or Deterritorialised, the language of the Whale (1998: 72, original capitals). For Deleuze, whale language demonstrates how conventional language can be pushed outside its own limits towards an eloquent silence , and it confirms further that the book an author writes is always the inverse of another book that could only be written in the soul, with silence and blood (1998: 72). As the author of the present book, I orchestrate the dialogue that is Narrating the Catastrophe , but at the same time, as the artist who has created the works that make up the visual content, I am also a fully involved participant in its exploration of a rhizomic interaction between visual art practice, autoethnographic account and academic discourse. The intertextual nature of the text therefore becomes in tra textual, through the capacity of my self-reflexive approach to reveal the complexities of the relation between content and expression. In this way, the book does indeed come as much from the soul as from the ink.
Narrating the Catastrophe constitutes a hiatus in a perpetual journey, a moment of respite in an ongoing passage through time and inclination. It is a conflation of visual art practice and philosophical discourse, a narrative of a journey through unfamiliar landscapes of becoming where Being is defined as act rather than form. I am an artist and philosopher, or at least I call myself these things at the same time as I am fascinated by the exploration of the ways in which we understand ourselves as existing in, and establishing meaningful relations with, the world around us. This is the world that is silent, tasteless and odourless, and within which we are deaf, dumb and blind until we discover meaning through our senses, and are discovered in turn by meaning. This is the world in which I have travelled four decades and more, always driven towards unfamiliar territories by an inescapable engagement with practice and an enduring philosophical concern with the relationship between the art and meaning.
Why?
In writing this book I have climbed to the edge of a high, exposed plateau, from where I can look out over the textual landscape below as it spreads wide across a vast flat plane. (The reason for my use of the term plane here instead of the more immediately appropriate plain will, I hope, become apparent as you move further into the text.) Over the plane I see other plateaus on distant horizons, the horizons that I have already made, and am yet to make for myself in my travels as an artist. Their reality on the plane demonstrates that Narrating the Catastrophe is not the end of a journey but rather a significant connection on the way, a multiplicity that acts as a primary locus of interrelation between other plateaus, other multiplicities that must always occur where art practice and philosophy meet. As I look out over the plane it occurs to me that I have written this book many times before, and in many different ways, and there are yet many more ways, always more besides, and even within.
What?
Narrating the Catastrophe is a philosophical discourse based on the exploration of elements and dimensions of figuration in visual art, as manifested in my own creative drawing practice. The discourse is written in the form of a dialogue between myself and two giants of contemporary French philosophy, Gilles Deleuze and Paul Ricoeur. As an artist, the conceptual philosophical framework that Deleuze constructed, both alone and with Felix Guattari, and most especially as it is expressed in his aesthetics, has long since influenced me. Moreover, my fascination with his work has deep roots in my appreciation of the wider context within which it is situated, that of Continental philosophy. This is of course the same context within which Ricoeur is also a major contributor.
The existence of this wider philosophical context is testimony to the perhaps quite obvious principle that nobody works in a vacuum, and as such, both Ricoeur and Deleuze have their own influences, as well as their own ideas and reservations about each other s work. Sheerin confirms how Ricoeur for example, acknowledges Deleuze s work on Nietzsche, and Deleuze, in turn, praises Ricoeur s concept of the aborted cogito (Sheerin 2009: 4). But, despite certain mutual precedents, neither directly influences the other in any acknowledged way, and indeed, their respective conceptual frameworks can quite easily be understood as demonstrating insurmountable differences. My aim in bringing them together here, however, is not so much to provide an explication of their conflicting views, much less to produce a fulsome interpretation of their works as a whole, but rather to demonstrate how their differing passions in relation to the concept of self-understanding through interpretation may, together with my own autoethnographic account, create a synthesis of ideas that extends our understanding of the nature of understanding, and even create conditions from which new und