Methodology 13/11/2017

Portrait Installation: Fragments of Presence and Absence

 

"I was making a continuous succession of the statement of what a person was until I had not many things but one thing" (Gertrude Stein quoted in W. Steiner, 1978)(176)

 

Post-structural theory of the self demands a depiction of the inner truth of an individual as fragmentary, re-structuring from moment to moment, formed by the play of words and other means of communication within relationships.

​

I will create a series of intimate human portrait fragments, utilising sound to re-present the elusive internal individual. In response to the sound and as an anchor or signpost to meaning, will be placed film image fragments which will, as traditional portraiture has for centuries, re-present the tangible bodily presence and absence of the individual.

​

I will make many portrait fragments about one subject in different moments of time, until I have, by the mere fact of their plenitude, one thing which as a whole will be called a portrait.

 

Conceptual Framework:

The Cartesian ontological dualism which formed the Cartesian view of self, and the radically different postmodern thinking around self, truth and reality, are the lenses through which we create and also through which we observe, analyse and criticise the visual arts and music/sound. The broad conceptual framework of my practise will be to use the postmodern theories of Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard as a lens through which to view the ways in which theories of identity from the Renaissance and the 21 Century, have grounded portraiture. In particular, I will create portraits that use the traditions of portraiture that saw their first stirrings in the Renaissance, and attempt to extend and develop my practise through the lens of postmodernism. These portraits will use music/sound as their primary means to re-present the inner self of my sitters. 

While observing and reflecting on the developments and debates within Documentary Theory which focus on the search for a reality objectively separate to the filmmaker, my conceptual framework will instead be based around the long historical context of visual art making where the artist's subjective contribution is acknowledged and embraced as a player in the creation of the represented self. I aim to reach an outcome, via the context of late 20th century theories embraced by the visual arts, that allows for an openness to discover new ways of portraying, where meaning and truth can evolve, fluctuate, expand and fragment.

The postmodernist thinkers, Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard, each with their own variation, discarded the Cartesian model of self as unique and stable and recast the self as linguistically constituted. They claimed that the reflective powers the Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers considered gave human individuals free agency were constructed by the very language and culture that restricts them because words themselves have no stable meaning; without a stable centre the self itself is destabilised and decentred and in a constant state of reconstitution.

 

Foucault saw the knowing self as a function of discourse. He saw that an individual, rather than having a discoverable nature, is constantly being reconstituted as a subject and object for herself. (Foucault, 1984) Derrida, Foucault's student, developed his thinking, claiming "there is nothing outside the text", that is, while we have no choice but to use them, words and concepts including the self are open to question. However, aware that they are open to question, we should put them "under erasure" and never lose sight of the fact that their meaning is ephemeral, inadequate and unstable. (Derrida, 1976, 2007) Lacan saw the self as a moment in discourse rather than based in biology as Freud postulated, and that individuals, rather than being unique and stable, are social, general and constantly in motion; they are socially and linguistically constituted, destabilised and decentred. He saw Freud's ego as part of this illusion and therefore the self as an illusion. (Klages, 1997) Barthes sees the subject as not whole. Instead of literature (or equally, the portrait) being a plenitude of description of a whole subject, it is a void around which the artist has woven a discourse. Our reflective ability does not lead to a freedom of thought and self-definition, rather we as human individuals are largely and determinably relational, bound by language, with no freedom. Instead of there being a reality out there that the individual self can reflect and act upon, the very words we use to reflect determine that reality. In other words, our 'self', the subject, is not the centre but rather is an absence. (Barthes, 1977b, 1977c, 2000, 2004) Baudrillard's ideas, possibly the most extreme of the theorists, postulates that in our postmodern times, copies, or simulacra, are more real than reality. In fact, there is no reality, only simulacra. In the Renaissance, reality did exist and the simulacra were place markers for the real thing. However, by the Industrial era with mass production and commoditisation, the connection between the copies and the real thing were beginning to break down; the sheer number of copies made the copies more ‘real’ than the original. For human identity, he saw the same process in action; is there, in fact, an essential self to be represented or is every moment of reality, including our essential selves, merely a "model of a real without origin or reality". Simulacra now have no reality to begin with; the originals, if they still exist, no longer have any meaning or import. We live with a procession of simulacra; our real world has been rendered unreal and meaningless through the saturation of simulacra or copies. (Baudrillard, 1988a, 1988b) Warhol’s and Cindy Sherman's portraits are a prime example.

 

For portraits then, the overriding view of all these thinkers leads to the speculation that subject, identity and representation are interlinked with no clear boundaries because there is no solid self to be represented; the interplay between viewer, artist and sitter or within the psyche of the artist, viewer and sitter, all exist within the self being represented, and the question (with no one answer) becomes: Who is the one giving this sitter an identity - is it any one at all?

 

Other theorists that are of interest for my research are those that postulate a dramaturgical model for self. In this view, one's social identity is more fundamental that personal identity. That is, the ways one thinks of oneself in relation to groups is more fundamental in defining self than individual characteristics.  Irving Goffman in his book Presentation of Self in Everyday Life develops the idea that every self is both a performer and a character in a drama, where the individual becomes a performing team (with those who support his presentation of self) and the observers of this performance become the audience. Actions which appear to be done on objects become dramatic gestures addressed to an audience. (Goffman, 1959)

I will look to the Renaissance artists Durer, in particular his self portraits, Holbien and others; the contemporary artists Cindy Sherman and Warhol and others; the moment music and sound of Morton Feldman, Stockhausen, Musique Concrete and its modern counterparts in sound design and radio phonics, to inform my portrait fragments. I will create and analyse the portraits fragments within the context of post structural theorists Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, with Cartesian views of the self as background.

​

Method:

 

Self Portrait:

I will construct myself through portraits of the other, thereby creating a self-portrait with postmodern theory of the self as its framework.

 

If the self itself is in question, can there be such a thing as a self-portrait?

The self is elusive; the self is recreated in every moment; the self is defined by how the other sees it; the self is defined by social relationships and mediated through language, the self is never defined except as forever shifting moments of perception.

 

If the self itself is elusive, what is there to capture?

This will be the challenge created by the postmodern lens - to embrace the fragments of self and to bring them into dialogue with each other. Rather than concluding that the late 20th Century deconstruction of a stable self means there can be no such thing as a self-portrait, we could instead draw the conclusion that the self-portrait is not at all dead, but rather it is the generic form of all portraiture; all portraits capture the self and the other, simultaneously. Hence, each person I know will have their presence and absence captured via many fragments and moments and in this way, the question will be posed; who is the subject of a portrait - the artist or the sitter?

 

I will start with sound; that long neglected sense, the intangible, uncanny sonorous event that can't be touched; almost like a ghost we capture a glimpse of it out of the corner of our ear, search for it, but unless the source is present and obvious, we could be fooled into thinking it an hallucination, faded into old air, no remnant left. What more perfect place to attempt to re-present the elusive internal individual.

​

To the sound I will add vision; digital film and other subtexts which will, as traditional portraiture has for centuries, re-present the tangible bodily presence and absence of the individual.

My portraits will be fragments; fragments of the energy of presence, and the energy of absence;

 

Fragments of Presence and Absence.

​

I will play with portrait traditions; from mimetic portrayal utilising perspective, sound/music utilising hierarchical tonal structures and other closed textural additions informed by works from the Renaissance; to contemporary, fragments of sound vision and text within open, chaotic relationships. I will attempt to capture a plethora of moments of sound with subtexts of vision, narrative and style referencing portrait traditions

​

I will evaluate: The creation of these portrait fragments will entail questions, not necessarily prior to creation, but certainly the questions will come with the ongoing reflection on outcomes, critique and assessment. I will constantly reflect via analysis and criticism and modify so as best to achieve the outcome of extending the traditions of portraiture. This will be documented in the exegesis.

 

 

Timeline

 

In essence, I will be creating many fragments that I will draw together to make a whole.

To date, I have created Last Portrait of Moshlo, Portrait of Ange and three Self Portraits. I'm working on the 4th Self Portrait at the moment.

These portraits will be reflections on life and death; presence and absence.

 

These portraits are my first experiments, informed by the Renaissance portraits of Durer and Vermeer and Holbein, and the modern portraits of Picasso and Matisse. The intention will be to create many portrait fragments that will be re-edited or displayed in such a way as to form a larger portrait of myself made up of many subjects.

The resources and methods available for display will be important in determining the final form of the portrait. I'm in the process of discussing the resources available at UTS with the Data Arena, AVS and private providers. The choices will be limited by availability and cost but I'm well on the way to finding a solution. I expect there will be 2 or 3 exhibitions in the final two years of my degree.

​

2017

 

• July - Performance of Strangers on a Train - a collaboration with Andy Rantzen (poet), and two musicians - Romano (piano) and Rudi Crivici (electric viola, loops) and myself (electric flute, loops, vocals). Strangers on a Train is a series of short portrait vignettes to which the musicians will create music and sound live.

 

• September to October - Europe visit - portrait museums in Florence, Paris and London particularly looking at Renaissance and contemporary (late 20th and 21st Century) portraits. Filming images to use in future portraits, particularly backgrounds from Renaissance portraits only available in Europe.

 

• - 1st Stage Presentation

 

• - Research resources for displaying the final creative work and a possible interim exhibition toward the end of 2018. It's essential to do this before launching in to full time content production so I'm working with the correct display options and formats from the beginning. This will influence the way the future work is filmed, recorded and edited. I'm looking at the possibility of

 

                        1. Data Arena for a surround of large scale portraits with directional sound

                        2. Bon Marche studio as a possible exhibition space

                        3. Researching different display possibilities -           

• Large LED screens that would be display in portrait rather than the normal broadcast wide-screen landscape and possibly up to 2 metres high. Are they available for hire or would they need to be custom made and whether the cost would be prohibitive OR

• Using the Data Arena and the Data Arena Virtual Machine for creating the content OR

• Projecting the images onto walls and surfaces in a large space with high quality projectors.

                        4. Researching video formats best suited to various types of display

                        5. Sound, thankfully, has a simpler technology and will require surround sound with a mix of direction and wide spread speakers.

           

2018

 

• January to November - Continuing creative work on Fragments of Presence and Absence, incorporating more subjects. These portrait fragments will be ongoing, using different combinations of sound, vision and other subtexts. Creation, reflection on outcomes, critique and assessment.

 

• - Extension of Strangers on a Train will be shown and presented with vision at Peoples Republic of Camperdown. The largely improvised sound track will be recorded and added to the completed video.

 

• November - The Literature Review and chapter outlines will be completed based on the emerging findings and the critical evaluations that follow during the process of creation and reading.

 

• November - Stage 2 Presentation of advanced progress

 

• November - Exhibition of Fragments ... completed to date, at an available venue at UTS, largely to test the effectiveness of display options - see below

 

2019

 

• January to November - This year will be spent combining the self-contained portraits completed in 2018, into a larger whole within the contextual framework. New work will be undertaken to fill the gaps in the work as a whole.

 

Throughout the creation of the whole Fragments of Presence and Absence I will be reflecting, evaluating and completing the chapters as have already been outlined.

 

Display Options:

The portraits will either be combined via display ie. shown as an installation within a large space or combined via editing into a larger single work. The most likely outcome will be a large installation.

 

I envisage a large space containing either LCD screens 2 x 1 metres portrait or large projections. Each portrait will be accompanied by both a directional speaker for intimate listening and speakers that project selected portions of the soundtrack into the room as a whole so the audience can experience the layered and overlaid sound/vision scape as well as move in to each portrait to hear that portrait alone.

 

• - Exhibition of completed installation of portraits.

 

• - Stage 3 confirmation of readiness to submit