things

+ 'Things that Disappear if you Stop Looking at Them' v. 'Things that Disappear if Brought Into Full View', as well as 'Things that are Almost Things - but Not Quite'. I like the 'not quite'. It seems to relate intimately to 'things [that have to] pretend to be something else' as well as the experience of describing something that's not easily described or hasn't quite come fully into view. Cornelia Parker approached the status and categories of objects in relation to 'looking like' or 'being like' … 'but not quite'. Giving a home or an identity - even if a precarious and intermittent one - to those objects, situated on the border between being and not being. Still, even if applying a carefully fuzzied concept, a 'pretend' non-concept or the concept that values the 'not quite' as well as the 'quite', will it not still carry evidence to an underlying concept? A concept wanting to not be, but still somewhat and always being as sharp-edged as the diagrams that are surreptitiously or obviously trying to take over the world in determining what we see and how we see it. I don't pretend to know the philosophy (obviously!) but wonder how it can at all be possible to develop a concept that even if very fuzzy will no longer be still just a concept? It seems to me that in trying to do this and in order to see the chair for what it is as well as for what it might become -- we need to completely forget the concept and idea of 'chairness' and start again?

Backtracking, to a sharped edged and stright forward idea and in an attempt to begin using this blog as Research Tool and Journal, I'm leaving a small note regarding the Hypnagogic State and the Unusual Sleep Experience Scale as one potentially transferrable method for meassuring the 'Unusual Experience of Objects or Objectness'.

diagrams

david has sent us a diagram of how to manufacture authenticity. i'm really interested in how diagrams might be an expression of concepts, and how they secretly might be taking over the world and structuring the way we look, deciding what we can and cannot see.
Last night in philosophy class (before the dreadful ignominy of being thrown off the bus at Elephant and Castle), we were talking about Plato and Descartes and how the concept - a transcendental object without fuzzy edges - dominates our thinking still. how can you recognise a chair without having an idea of 'chairness', je disais a Marianne? how do we find a home for our lost objects - do we invent new concepts? is it enough if our new concepts are kooky and blurry round the edges? i remember an artwork - can't remember the artist now - who made a whole category of objects called 'Things that Fall Down'. I like the idea of Things that Lean, Things that Pretend to be Something they're Not, Things that get Stranger the Longer you Look at Them.

...unblocking the blogger's block

I've been in front of this screen a few times by now ... seems, I have been stuck as a dog in a bell jar: thinking too specifically about what a blog is, what it's purpose is, how it is to function as a research tool or even as a conversation between two ... how do you begin to make public an uncritical and silly note or an idea that within a few hours will have proved itself to be the most horrid idea you ever had?? Still, some thinking is good, some thinking is not good at all, and since part purpose of this blogging exercise is to answer the above through practice ... here goes, from the top in no apparent order and without censorship:

Do we want to give a home to the lost objects? If, the objects notable for their absence are notable in terms of how they inform an interpretation of the collections that exclude them ... then, in finding them a new home we would create another collection notable for its -- or, by its -- absences|absentee's(?).
Interestingly ... and while skating over so many issues (empire, status, class +) that it makes my head spin, at a first glance it also seems that nothing gets left out in the collections we have been invited to explore (well, skating freestyle indeed). I'm still very curious as to how things enter a collection (in the back of a mini ) and how .. if that entry is later regretted .. are they de-entered (dropped into a skip when no-one is looking?).

So many things to think about and even more to do! and now that I am officially blog-de-blocked, I will sign-off and try to enter a hypnagogic state for a moment to see if suitable ideas|solutions|simply interesting to-do lists automatically and effortlessly emerge.

m

starting a conversation about doncaster

Don't mention the double-headed sheep! Let's talk instead about how collections are made, who chooses, what gets left out. Most importantly - WHAT GETS LEFT OUT and how we find those lost and undescribed objects and give them a new home.

m