I am doing a talk on Juicy Salif next Wednesday… That reminds me I must bookmark this, which comes from a very interesting blog on Art and Design. No, not as a subject area, but as two ways of thinking and seeing that talk to each other. Pretty groundbreaking conception, no?

Talk info:
Juicy Salif as a cultish totem. The Discipline of Creativity: Exploring the Paradox, Session: ‘Ars longa’: establishing value, Institute for Capitalising on Creativity, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, 2 May 2007.

What would I do without my peer groups? A very interesting discussion on that foto here, here and here. In Spanish though, and with bad language, as it should be…

Funny, that. I just came back from my RF2 (PhD confirmation) presentation in Sheffield. It was very satisfactory, if only because some things were so surprising.I had all my psychoanalytic theory well tied together, even though the task of explaining Lacan’s Discourse of the Analyst in 3.5 minutes was not as easy as it may sound. The first set of questions following my presentation were very fair and valid. I expected them however. Marx, consumer culture, the roles of the seducer and seducee (active-passive). All was as expected apart from the fact that there were no questions about Lacan. There may have been two explanations for this: I may have been speaking pure Lacanese or everything may have made very good sense… But, as I was thinking this, the whole discussion changed. I must tell you that, in order to remind myself to talk about methodologies, I put a picture in my presentation. A picture where I am doing something, a picture I considered documentation more that output or outcome. After a fair amount of questions and discussion around this picture, the conclusion is –more or less– this: if I am capable of deciphering what goes on in that picture (what REALLY is going on), I may have cracked my PhD. I am puzzled. So near yet so far. I now have a mystery to resolve, a la Freud or Sherlock Holmes. I have evidence, I just have to decipher it. How do I do this? Well, my supervisors were, yet again, inspiring. “Relax” they told me, “yield, let things happen”. Have you hear of a tutor telling a student to relax? Yet, I know it is precisely what I need! To stop the rules, the stop the reading lists, the things well done, and to begin to create a methodology to trip myself up. Exciting, uh?

I am not sure what goes on in that picture. I am not even sure yet why it is so important but, suddenly, I can’t get it out of my head. I have to learn to read photos, now. For the last 2 years, I have only been reading Lacan. But Lacan, although an erudite, doesn’t quite know about my specific topic, does he? The photo knows. You may be asking, what the hell is that photo? Well, you have seen it in passing. Here it is again. Anyone up for having a go at deciphering?

Sometimes, at periodic intervals, my job takes the task of delicately reminding me why I am doing this out of all possible career options. I am currently working with a student whose work is intense and exciting, both at an intellectual and practical level. I have a lot of respect for most of my students work as I think they are a really intelligent, engaged group. With her, however, it goes beyond that, as I think she is on to something potentially important in her project. Today, she showed me this:

Tabitha Moses Hairpurse, Metal clasp and human hair, 2004

I haven’t felt like this about a piece of work (or my job) for a long while…

More information on this artist here and here

Shoes are one of those things I can’t resist. The inside signature, the hidden red on the heel throw shivers down my spine. What… who would I be if I wore these?

With many thanks to the Manolo, ever inspiring.

Hannah Hoch

Kiki Smith

I am still surprised to find that this subject of feminine seduction has been so unconscious within my research. But the evidence is there! With the two new images above, let’s recap where we are at:

Pilar Albarracin, Iranzu Antona, Naia del Castillo, Vicky Civera, Sylvie Fleury, Hannah Hoch, Mary Kelly, Sharon Kivland, Cathy de Monchaux, Nazareth Pacheco, Pipilotti Rist, Kiki Smith, Hannah Wilke, Francesca Woodman…

Now, like Malcolm Gladwell’s friend Howard Moscowitz did, I need to find which of three seduction categories they fit in: plain-like, spicy-like, or extra-chunky-like.

Douglas Gordon, 100 Blind Stars: Mirror Blind Greta, 2002. Photograph by Robert McKeever. Courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery.

Just like people queued to see the empty space of the Mona Lisa when the painting was stolen in 1911, each time I see Gordon’s Greta, I can stop looking at it. To me, this image is incomprehensible and that quality captures my gaze. Te riddle seduces. I also tend to stare at the eyes of blind people, as if looking for something, wondering how the act of seeing takes place. Yes, I know all the stuff about light and the organ of sight, but that does not account for how I see. That’s part of the riddle; a riddle that gets more complicated if we admit that perception is reality.

The eyes of Greta, the eyes that feel see me but I can’t see remind me of the eyes of Dr Sh‚Äî, my analyst. Also the stare of the artwork, that which stays with me and watches me when I am not in the gallery. How can something you see see you? And what does it do to you when you feel you are being seen? That is part of the pont of analysis; so is the case when the gallery space. You know? Freud was analyzed by the Acropolis; or, as he put the object caused a disturbance of memory in him.

Ah, the scopic drive and its relationship to desire! So much to say, so little time. Must get back to my PhD confirmation report…

I have uploaded images of work-in-progress created as part of my PhD project. Engaging in practice has been productive, even if difficult. The practice of analysis and of art are beginning to converge in a weird sense and I am hoping that writing my confirmation report will bring that very point into some clear focus. At the moment it is just a list of shared characteristics and references. A hypothesis. Bijoux #4 (engage and commit) is probably the one that best reflects this connection: it is awkward; wearing it hurts. I agree with S‚Äî. The practice is a little illustrative of what I read, see, like… Yet, it is a first step, like laying on the couch. Where forces are pulling in different directions ‚Äîtheory here; art there; psychoanalysis, up; epistemology, down; my own practice this other way‚Äî, this attempt to crete is a step towards a kind of negitiation. What I now need to do is to create seduction, not to seduce (which may be impossible, as seduction is always in flux, never still)

Liz Carine’s Shimmery Emerald Evening Peeptoe Pumps
From fashiontribes

Juicy Phallus by Caroline Noordijk in collaboration with Kyla Elliott.

This made me smile after a hard day’s work. Finally, someone has put Starck (and the masculinity he represents) back in its place. With thanks to Alastair, who can always make a perceptive comment or two…