| SHEDDING LIGHT FOR THE MATTER: THE GLARE Barb Bolt Secrets are discoverable, they say, bones, mistakes, the passage of blood through the body. And is it not the case that this unveiling as it were, this great moment of truth has a luminous quality that circulates such that knowledge claims a moral category and sets itself the task of "shedding light on the matter"? (Wilson, 1997:3) We still like to shed light on the matter, such is our belief that light reveals, unveils, illuminates, makes perceptible, renders legible our relation to the world in which we live. In the heliophilia of enlightenment thinking, the relationship between light and knowledge is assumed and it is through vision that this nexus is achieved. Cathryn Vasseleu elaborates the basis of this nexus : 1. Light is the source of universal knowledge, 2. Light serves as a common end; as an objective to be universally achieved, 3. light is a dazzling, inchoate medium, which once rendered legible, forms the basis of the language of subjectivity ( Vasseleu, unpublished Ph.D thesis, 1994:176) Not surprisingly, the photological tenents of western philosophy also underpin western forms of visual representation: 1. Form is revealed though the light that falls on objects 2. Light creates a unified vision of the world 3. Light is used to render form legible In this conception: LIGHT = FORM = KNOWLEDGE = SUBJECT subtext DARK = MATTER = UNKNOWN = OTHER It is through representational practices that matter becomes transformed; matter attains a legible form. The philosophical task of unpacking the assumed relationship between light and knowledge have hinged on refiguring the facts of the matter. In Francis Bacon’s work, for example, the ‘matters of fact’ are, according to Parveen Adams, ‘nothing less than sensations that act directly on the nervous system’ (Adams 1993:53). For theorists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, Luce Irigiray, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heiddeger and Donna Haraway concern with the ‘facts of the matter’ have involved developing a new genealogy of light: a genealogy that arises in the matter. The contribution of this paper to this debate is limited and situated. It is concerned with the experience of light and how in a particular Australian context, that of Western Australia, the experience of light necessitates a reconsideration of the photological underpinnings of representational practices. Visual practice may be inconceivable without a consideration of light, but I will argue it is equally ‘inconceivable’ to practice in the 'glare' of the Australian sun. Too much light on matter sheds no light on the matter. In this paper, I suggest that the 'glare' produces a massive movement of deterritorialization which reconfigures the relationship between light and matter. Heliophilia, or the worship of the sun and the Australian light has mythical status. In a forum on regionalism and the arts in Western Australia local artist Andrew Gaynor suggested: The constant worship of sunlight and good weather so marks discussion about Perth. This constant worship is perceived as one of the problems of the way visual artists deal with Perth and Western Australia; so it would seem that everyone is permanently on holidays enjoying such warm and lovely weather. (Gaynor on Arts Today, ABC Radio July 1996) He continued: But the point was raised that it seems strange for Perth artists to produce dark and gloomy art, or dare I say thought provoking art. Couldn't it be seen as a manifestation of the frustration of these artists who are dealing with weightier issues in the face of constant warm fuzzies. (Gaynor on Arts Today, ABC Radio July 1996) Andrew Gaynor was responding to an argument that I had made about the proliferation of the 'dark' in artistic practice even in the face of the 'bleaching' out produced by the intensity of the Australian light. It struck me then (and still does now) that Australian art practice continues to operate under European notions of light and within a European aesthetic. And Vision, being the prerogative of Kings, Captains, cartographers,scientists and priests (as well as visual artists ), it is not surely just and right that the Discoverable should inhabit a space of perpetual darkness, - silent, inert, suspended in the amniotic fluid of blind possibility, waiting, waiting for the surgeon with his knife...(Wilson,1997:3, italics mine ) The avant garde project in Australia, as elsewhere, is concerned with the sublime imperative of delving into the dark, the unknown and the unconscious, and of transforming matter into form. In this context light/dark, form/matter remain as binaries and it is the prerogative of the artist to present the unrepresentable; in short to shed light on the matter. According to this logic, light already being known and knowable, is considered frivolous, the site of “warm fuzzies” and no more. I argue that it is precisely the 'warm fuzzies' that become the site/sight for refiguring visual/philosophical practices. My position has emerged from a sustained period of participant observation; of sitting under the sun trying to make landscape paintings. I have many more freckles, suspicious sunspots, pterygiums and deeply furrowed weather beaten skin to show for it... and a few paintings. In 1987, halfway through my visual arts degree, I went to Kalgoorlie to teach. Kalgoorlie, a goldmining town about 700 kilometres east of Perth, is located in marginal desert country. Cloudless skies, low humidity, red earth, low scrubby vegetation, open mine pits and depthless mine shafts characterize the region. In winter temperatures plummet to below freezing, whilst in summer, temperatures hover around 40 degrees celcius. There is little in between. I had been making landscape painting before I went to Kalgoorlie, but in the Goldfields, there was nothing to grasp hold of, no-thing to pin down. 1. The 'glare' was so intense that no-thing at all was revealed 2. The landscape was so fractured and messy that no form emerged 3. It was impossible to use light to render form legible. The 'rules' of perspective didn't work either; 4. The horizon remained but objects didn't get smaller in the distance. 5. distant objects didn't become more greyed out and diminish in sharpness and chiascuro in the distance. In fact, because of the lack of moisture in the air, the distance often seemed more defined than the foreground, the colour appeared stronger so that the background jumped over the foreground. It struck me that in a place where blinds are constantly drawn against the light, where people cover their windows with silver foil to keep out the light and heat, where the sun's glare blinds and where sunglasses serve a functional rather than a cosmetic purpose, it was time to rethink the relationship between light and form; light and knowledge, In the 'blind' light of the glare, light can no longer be assumed to equal form and knowledge. Light itself becomes unthematized, deterritorialized. In the 'glare', as Paul Carter points out, "there is no point of access for the classifying eye" (Carter, 1996:219). The "glare" takes apart the enlightenment triangulation of light, knowledge and form. In fact light becomes implicated bodily, in the facts of the matter. My pterygiums and sunbeaten skin, my mother and father's melanomas' and the incidence of glaucoma implicate the sun in a very different set of processes. From my optic, light can no longer be postulated as the catalyst that joins objects whilst itself remaining unbent and unimplicated and in this, it is no longer useful to speak of "shedding light on the matter". (Carter, 1996:221) How then can we rethink the relationship between light and matter? Perhaps the 'fuzziness' that Andrew Gaynor spoke of can be recast in a more Harawayan way; as the diffraction of light through matter, a process that implicates both light and matter in the signifying practices. From this view, we can speak of embodied situated knowledges. Dictionary definitions of 'glare' provide two contradictory working meanings: "fierce or fixed look" and an "oppressive light; tawdry brilliance" (The Pocket Oxford Dictionary 1978:366). In the former sense, glare fixes, in the latter, it undoes fixity. The contradictory nature of the 'glare' becomes a useful device for unpacking the assumed relationship between light and knowledge and as such I propose to activate this contradiction as an adjunct to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of faciality. Like the black hole/white wall of faciality, the glare can fix and pin down. On the other hand, the dazzling glare of the Australian light offers no point of access to the classifying eye. In the intensity of the glare, the plane of organization is ruptured, creating a massive deterritorialization. In their theorization of faciality and facialization, Deleuze and Guattari postulate a correlation between the face and the landscape that is useful in my elaboration of the glare: Face and landscape manuals formed a pedagogy, a strict discipline, and were an inspiration to the arts as much as the arts were an inspiration to them. Architecture positions its ensembles - houses, towns or cities, monuments or factories - to function like faces in the landscape they transform. Painting takes up the same movement, but also reverses it, positioning a landscape as a face, treating one like the other: "treatise on the face and the landscape”. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:172) It is much harder to sit under the sun and map the ground anew than to resort to the treatise of one's training. In the glare of the sun's light, different strategies for mapping are required. I want to present a different sort of mapping, a mapping that involves the body in movement through space and time and in relation to place. In Kalgoorlie it was strategically necessary to keep one's hat on and one's head down to avoid the glare, to prevent oneself falling down a mineshaft and to avoid stepping on broken glass and other more lively ground creatures. It was also necessary in order to find paths others had trekked before. One always kept one's eyes to the ground. The gesture of hanging one's head (and this includes the political action of hanging one's head in shame), is the reverse of what Carter suggests happened to Aboriginal people with the coming of (en)light(enment). The induction of Aboriginal people into enlightenment ways of seeing the land involved a fundamental shift in looking. The action jerked the head upwards through ninety degrees, shifting the eyes from the ground to the horizon of linear perspective. In this action, Carter argues, the the horizon came into view and seeing was divorced from the dance (Carter 1996:51). Paul Carter sees this re-orientation as a shift from methektic trace to representational image. Re/presentation suggests that an image only stands in for objects, events and concepts. Methexis, on the other hand is a "non representational principle...an act of concurrent actual production, a pattern danced on the ground" (Carter 1996:84). Thus, Carter’s interpretation, albeit a European one, is as follows: the 'dot' of the traditional Central Australian dot-and-circle painting... grows from the fact that the dots are a physical trace of the jabbing hand, as palpably imprinting the surface as the euro's foot marks the ground. They are not the representation of ideas. (Carter 1996:66) The 'dot' as John Welchman suggests, is " a trace of/on the ceremonial site; a granular magnification of the original sand support; and a daub on the surface of the body" (Welchman 1996:257). Viewed at a distance, the dot matrix creates an oscillation, a pulsation. Under very close scrutiny, each dot is still palpable, a mark in the process of becoming. Viewed methektically, the dot doesn't become a sign that stands in for something, rather it is performative. The 'dot' matrix is a deictic marker, a trace of the labour of the performance, not just of one person, but often of many. Paul Carter’s position is supported by Yamatji artist, Julie Dowling’s, observation when speaking of the Balgo women painters: as the girls were doing it they were singing a song about it (and) they were doing the actions with it...Each step means there's another step to go on and this part of the country is this part `of the picture so that as you are acting out the dot, dot, dot, dot, dot; even the action in itself is quite rhythmical, but when you bring that into connection with the heartbeat and also I'm telling a story now; this dot connects with this dot; this story is about this...the whole connection with the land comes from the process up... (interview with Julie Dowling, April 1997) This explanation suggests meaning is constituted in the performance. Meaning is not arbitrary nor is it ever deferred; rather it emerges from actions and the interplay between country, cultural knowledges and materially constituted bodies, both individual and collective. Methexis shifts the terms in the economy of representation. Images don't just stand in for or signify concepts/ideas/things, nor are images just signs that ceaselessly circulate. Knowlege production is embodied and locally situated. In Aboriginal painting practices this linking of country, knowledges and bodies is profoundly developed. In contemporary non-Aboriginal visual practices this connection is yet to be realized or actualized. Theorizing the glare and linking it to methexis provides me with the opportunity the rethink what it means to make work in the Australian context. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion of the chiasma is useful for a further elaboration of the implications of situated knowledges in rethinking (en)light(enment. In the chiasmic intertwining between the cultural and the carnal, Merleau-Ponty problematizes the enlightenment quadrangle: light = form = knowledge = subjectivity. Through the subordination of "natural light" to a carnally constituted light, Merleau-Ponty admits matter into the equation. In speaking of Merleau-Ponty's carnal light, Cathryn Vasseleu suggests that for Merleau-Ponty it is: (d)efinable neither as a concept nor object, but within the language of sensibility, any notion of the body is produced by the light or perception which dawns through it (Vasseleu 1994:164) In the context of the "glare", I want to turn up the heat on Merleau Ponty's chiasma. Whilst for Merleau Ponty the chiasma is indivisible, I would suggest it is infinitely mobile and in this mobility, coherence dissolves. In the 'glare' of the performance, in the heat of the moment 1., I would argue that the chiasma becomes molecular. In the moving sensate body, vision is tied to the beat, pulse and rhythm of the body and Rosalind Krauss suggests that this pulse has "the power to decompose and dissolve the very coherence of forms on which visuality may be thought to depend" (Krauss, 1988:51). What is critical to this discussion, is that performance is "an act of concurrent production" through which embodied knowledge is produced (Carter, 1994:84). Meanings emerge in the facts of the matter. Rather than meaning being revealed or clarified, it is through performance that social meanings are produced. This is methexis in operation. In this schema, the terms of the economy of representaton shift. Images don't just stand in for or signify concepts, ideas or things, nor are images signs that ceaselessly circulate; rather, meaning is produced as an embodied situated event. Imaging produces reality. At one level, the proposition that methexis creates real effects, could be seen to come close to Baudrillard's notion of simulacrum. Simulacra produce reality. The difference, however is quite critical. For Baudrillard, the subject has no agency to resist the effects of the production of reality by signs. In the hyper-reality of mimicry, the similar produces the similar. The mimesis of methexis, however, is productive. In methexis, the interplay between country, bodies and language produces a veritable production. Mimicry is no longer the reproduction of the same; mimesis is no longer a copy and representation no longer sheds light on the matter. Michael Taussig, in quoting Walter Benjamin, has suggested that, "mimesis is the art of becoming something else, of becoming other" (Taussig 1994:36). My argument so far is this: that instead of shedding light on the matter, the sun's 'glare' works to pulverize the sign and allows for a veritable production which transforms rather than reproduces the same. In this I am arguing for a different conception of the sign function, a conception whereby: 1. signs don't just represent their object (classical) 2. signs doesn't just stand in for or signify concepts (Saussurian semiology) 3. signs don't just ceaselessly circulate, sign giving way to sign (Derridean differance) nor 4. in the hyppereal of simulacra does the similar produce the similar. Rather, in this conception, performance produces signification and signification in turn has real effects. It is in the chiasma between country, cultural knowledges and materially constituted bodies, that poeisis makes anew. Sign production is a methektic production involving the interplay of bodies and language. It is the becoming sign of the matter. In conclusion then, I would argue that to think methektically is to think quite differently about the potential of visual practices. It involves thinking with the body, through matter. In the heat and the glare of the Australian light, I have suggested a very specific critique can be launched against enlightenment vision. In this view, visual art practice is not concerned with shedding light on the matter, but is a becoming sign of the matter. I believe that such an position implicates artistic practices in an ethical and ecological matrix and contributes to a different conception of visual practice and visual aesthetics. I am arguing for a shift from visual aesthetics (form) to visual ethics (matter) and in doing so, I believe it does matter how I practice. 1. Working in the heat of the moment relates to the notion of working hot. The term 'working hot' is derived from Mary Fallon's novel Working Hot. . Carolyn Chisholm, in her analysis of Working Hot , argues that Mary Fallon's writing produces a lingual performativity, whereby language mimes the motions of the body. Chisholm suggests that by "imitating excessively the 'pantomime of carnal acts between bodies, language (can) exceed its own structures in a radical verbal performativity" (Chisholm 1995:20). In other words, there is the potential for utterances to perform, rather than stand in for the object. If working hot creates the potential for utterances to perform rather than represent their object, then I would argue that working hot has affinities with Paul Carter's elaboration of the notion of methexis References: Adams, P. (1993) ‘The violence of paint’ in A Benjamin (ed.) The Body, journal of philosophy and the visual arts Academy Group Ltd London: pp 53-59 ABC Radio, Arts Today, July 1996 Bolt, B. Interview with Jamatji artist Julie Dowling, April 1997 Carter, P. (1996) The Lie of the land , faber and faber, London, Boston Chisholm, C. (1995) ‘The “cunning lingua” of desire: bodies-language and perverse performativity’ in E Grosz and E Probyn (eds) Sexy bodies: the strange carnalities of feminism, Routledge London, pp 19-41 Deleuze, G. (1989) ‘Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation’ in G Politi (ed.) Flash Art: Two Decades of History, xxi years Milan: pp 100-104 Deleuze G and Guattari, F (1987) A Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, The University of Minnesoat Press, Minneapolis. Ihde, D. (1979) Technics and Praxis, D. Reidel Publishing Co, Dordrecht, Holland. Krauss, R. (1988) 'The im/pulse to see' in H. Foster Vision and visuality, Bay Press, Seattle, pp 51-58 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968) The visible and the invisible , Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Taussig, M. (1994) Mimesis and alterity: a particular hsitory of the senses, Routledge, New York, London. Vasseleu, C. Textures of Light: Vision and Embodiment in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau Ponty, Unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Sydney, 1994 Wilson, J.(1996-7) Geographies of Haunted Places, PICA, Perth This project was assisted by Museums Australia’s Professional Development Program for Visual Art and Crafts and the Australia Coucil, the Federal Government’s Arts Funding and Advisory body.
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