A proposition

A page a day is a proposition - it is like Robert Mapplethorpe photographing a flower everyday the white paper is a proposition every morning it asks a question of us it makes focus. I think that this piece of work is taking form.  When I said that "Landscape is just everything which is outside our bodies it made sense that our personal interaction with our own external worlds make perfect sense for the piece of work. So it's fine to use the work as a way to introduce ourselves to people and groups around Parson Cross - as long as we accept the fact that we are authors of the work and we have a commitment to the integrity of the piece. In many ways it reminds me of the chest of draws project - the press becomes the "Holding form" here is the quote from Richard Steadmans-Jones writing.

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Witkin (1974: 170) argues that the creative process has three ‘phases’: the ‘setting of the sensate problem’, the ‘making of a holding form’, and ‘movement [...] to a resolution’.  The ‘sensate problem’ is a provocation that arises from an experience of conflict or contrast.  Although our attention was initially directed towards the work’s concrete content – the diverse materiality of writing – we came belatedly to see the ‘real’ subject as the tensions, even conflicts, between our own ways of seeing and doing.  These included contrasts between academic communication and arts practice, among academic disciplines, and – significantly – between researcher and research informant.  Thus, the work was in a meaningful sense ‘about us’.  The term ‘holding form’ names the context that focuses the working through of the sensate problem.   To quote Witkin (1974: 181):

The effectiveness of a holding form depends upon its complete simplicity. [...] The sensate problem itself consists of the structure of sensate disturbance which I have described in terms of ‘contrasts’, ‘discords’, ‘identities’, etc. [...] The individual produces a form that captures these structural characteristics in their barest essentials.  It is the essential gestalt of the disturbance that is held in the holding form.

When we discuss things we often use the same words but they probably mean different things.  Wittgenstein says that problems are not only described by words but created by them.  For example the problematic of Cartesian mind body duality it created by the fact we describe ourselves as "I" if we had no word for "I" then the problem would not exist.  If all the worker bees started to describe themselves as individual "I" then they would not get much done- the queen bee has a yellow mark on her back so the bee keeper can spot her easily but I don't think she is an "I" as Descartes would say. "I Bee therefore I Bee." that is perhaps a bit to clever clever but not as clever as the bees from the allotments.  The bee keeper told me they could smell if a flower contained pollen from 3 feet away so refused to use smoke - excepting a few stings to relieve the hive of stress.



I've been talking a lot about "Loose Metaphors" the space between the signifier and the signified jumping from the real to the simulacra. Jean Baudrillard writes about in this in The Precession of Simulacra.
are artists like the bee keepers who have to be prepared to get stung to make the world more visible- do we choose not to use smoke as we feel people are to sensitive to the horrors of the world to make them look straight on? are we experts in the art of looking sideways?

I started this post off thinking I would talk about what a proposition was but I've got sidetracked by philosophy and bees and really want to cleverly pull the three things together. Bees are infectious Bill Woodrow Bee Keeper show has really stayed with me I suppose that a propostion is more than a starting point and to an extent we can say it's authored.  A proposition is a question and a potential.  This post started off as a empty box but the lines of thought and action which brought me to the point of typing are a proposition. I am happy to think that a proposition can be art and I think I'm happy with the fact that our work tries to author them.  I can also cope with the fact that some may not become enacted in the world but they can still be good propositions - perhaps they would not be as good as proposals. Like the hundreds of unrealised applications to funding bodies - the proposals gather dust - the propositions evolve get reworked eat their way into the fabric of life and practice.

The Ruskin Press has developed from a proposal for a piece of work into 70 white sheets of paper, 70 propositions.  When we hand these over to people we are making a proposition they share the same creative problems as us "What will I do? will it be shit? do I want to do this." we are sharing the space but also sharing the worry -the putting yourself of the line.  A white sheet of paper, the skin of a drum, the shutter release on a camera are all propositions - the blank canvas of an inscription enactment-the question is do we need the distraction of smoke and mirrors to let us see sideways behind the veil.