KYOTObook a research portfolio

with regard to the unknown we are slow and impatient— between a poster’s body-size expression (180cm x 90cm) and A5 flyer-contents, I conceive this volume as found mediations, revealed or yet to come—l’à venir in Jacques Derrida’s sense (Mal d’archive). A material expression (the poster) and a material content (the flyers): Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev’s programme from 1943, the ‘transformational half-chains’ determined by Gilbert Simondon. this volume is a non-book, or a book turned inside-out—

[email protected] KHIO—Oslo National Academy of the Arts [email protected] cover: printed on plotter at KHiO by Brynhild Seim [who also printed the vinyl poster for the WAC 08 conference in Sept. 2016] body-text printed by 07media [Jan. 2018]: www.07.no 11 pt. bau Book-title—32 pt. bau [used on the body-size poster original: 180cm x 90cm] 115g Arctic matt 4+4 colours in 100x 100x Colorit red [backboard]

ENTER The present volume is a small part of a larger research activity conducted by the editor at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO). As the physical volume its precedents are 1) interceptions[at]centre_pompidou (2011), a collaborative project with the Norwegian Academy of Music [NMH], and 2) Commons in Transit (2015) that were both archives compiled in books. These projects were based on a strict chronological delivery-regime—the archive as a legal deposit—and bound for the intention for use in future research (whether by the author himself, or others who were interested). The 2011-volume was hot-glue bound, while the 2015 was cold-glue bound, according to a method used at the National Archive, at Ian Brown’s suggestion. With the present volume, the intention has been to drive the process of book-building one step onwards: the core is bound according to the National Archive Standard. It is also a low-cost publication, as the other two, both in regard of the paper & printing costs and in regard of the amount of work put into the design. The idea being to reach for what is needed, not the ultimate. The KYOTObook has been compiled and developed with the idea of book-format that itself constitutes a maker-space—and gives an idea of a maker-space—with contents that are in-the- making. It departs from the traditional work-in-progress format in that materiality of the book communicates a validity of the maker-space; as a place to live and work. These ideas are cultivated not to undermine the validity of the finished product—finalised text, layout and production—but to claim the res publica (public matter/thing) of making; which is what we, in a number of different aspects, is what we ask of our students in the context of the art school. This is to highlight a) the experimental process, and b) the process of value-making. If one of the major statements of the art-school—as an educational and cultural establishment—is the intrinsic value of the process of exploring creative venues and developing project activities, then these must somehow (or, at some point) be made readable to a third party. Readability is here used in an extended sense; acting and receiving in a public context. Which brings us to the broader superordinate research question that guides the miscellany of experimental formats the editor seeks to develop, in the wake of activities in artistic research: whether these are pedagogic (cf, the emphasis on portfolio development in the MA theory curriculum in deign), collaborative (the majority of the projects), or solitary as in this volume. The heading of this overarching research-topic is signage for wayfinding in timescapes, it queries the possibility and utility of using a mark-up system—the HEX-signatures—that help to develop a third-party interest/readability of portfolios growing organically out of artistic research, as an artistic proposition addressed to the current relevance of portfolios (e.g., at universities). A rationale for marking up the documentary trail of artistic research is of course to incorporate it into the maker-space. But it is also to take portfolios one step further, to tweak a surplus out of a personal process (i.e., the research portfolio, as in this volume), which then becomes available for the variety of work-book formats that we find at the graduate, post-graduate and 3rd cycle level. The elements of the materials conjoined in the present volume are to be considered as ‘conversation pieces’. That is, materials that live and work in conversations. In the broader scope of the editor’s KUF these are cultivated in a series of ongoing conversations with: Ane Thon Knutsen, Tore Vagn Lid, Karen Disen, Trond Mikkelsen, Bjørn Blikstad and Ludvig Uhlbors. These are colleagues at KHiO. At AHO similar conversations have emerged with Carsten Loly and Rolf Gerstlauer. These are concerned, in different ways, with drawing. The former with drawing as a programming device—in the broadest sense—the latter with the transition from writing to drawing and back. Here our emphasis is on latent mediations, reverberation and the neuro-diverse. Due thanks go to the Board of Artistic Research for funding the production of this volume—and the journey to Kyoto—to Dragos Gheorghiu and José Pellini for accepting the core papers at WAC08 in Kyoto (and for inviting me as chair and discussant), to Mike Sperlinger to reading & reacting to the added materials, and to Jørn Mortensen and Karianne Bjellås Gilje for support.

Theodor Barth (ed.) KYOTObook prolegomenon

How is it possible for humans to And making up for the dangers There is only a thin wall Thereby bringing to attention engage in artistic research only of ending up with the claims of between this way of working— experiments as constructive to note —at some point—that a ‘department of dislocated cultivating personal goals and aspects of experience, before they have acquired skills for memories’, my interest was fed building a community of their potential value for human which they previously had no by the challenge of tracing the practice—and the workings of circulation (whether through talent, ways of knowing that steps of theory-development the contemporary Hacking- and publication or for business), earlier was beyond their which design disciplines have in Makerspaces4 . With its access harking back to Goethe’s horizon of capabilities, and a store, when looking to specialis- to high-standard laser-cutters, experimentalism7 and its newsreel of memories that they ations we teach at the Oslo CNC-mills, 3D-printers the importance for ‘natural history’, cannot have? This is my query. National Academy of the Arts. school has that infrastructure. as a broad scientific tradition. For its attention, I have opted My perception was that they That is, an infrastructure of It is presently re-surfacing with for an experimental report, were simply not receiving any machines and works-masters the work of the Swiss type- verging unto the format of an help from a design theory— that help the students to target designer Karl Gerstner (1964), artist-book, in order to be able beyond the historical accounts their objectives and develop in which he draws on Fritz to work more freely with the —its being busy achieving a skills in a climate of mutual Zwicky’s broad-scoping of question. Though without contemporary status of a assistance and exchange when morphological analysis’(1957)8 , abandoning the idea that a discourse (on par with the hacking solutions. However, from a research-method based meaningful dialogue between contemporary art-field). They KHiO is not a typical hacker- on Zwicky's experience as an ideas & evidence, should follow became hostage to the dialectic space, in that it also has a astro-physicist. Let me explain a logic of inquiry. of the colonised and coloniser. professional-vocational motif. the connection to Goethe. In my doctoral work1 there was As an anthropologist I am prone The research-portfolio can In Goethe’s tradition, form is one issue of fieldwork- to be particularly sensitive to therefore be seen as an not an “add-on” to- but surfaces methodology that I returned to, this sort of disempowerment. interface—or, a hybrid— genetically from the substance at several occasions in the And for this reason, I was also between the Maker-culture of natural phenomena. The thesis: how pattern can emerge predisposed to be critical of running the corridors & experimental design thereby from detail, how the researcher any theoretical endeavour that workshops, and the specialised links up with the substance of can gain a broader wisdom by was not derived from a practi- curricula offered at the KHiO. It what we learn, in a scope of diving into the particular, and cal, hands-on, perspective of allows the students to develop a things where learning, and edu- how the practical context of doing and making; looking to a form of legitimate peripheral cating the human senses, are travelling, here, plays a role. richer account of the journey. participation; a reflective form. tributaries of natural history. These are questions of the In my classes with the MA- That is, in Lave & Wenger’s The education of the human eye traveler and typical of the students we would work terms (1991)5 , a form of becomes part of the pheno- fieldworking anthropologist; iteratively with a format apprenticeship in connecting menon that we call “colour”. whose premise is to stay for a departing from the ethno- what they learn in their special- Human being and its ende- while—some times a prolonged graphic field-diary3 to one isations and what they learn avours are not separate from stretch of time—and then to which—in local parlance—we from becoming “streetwise” in nature, nor are its attempts to move on. Often anthropologists ended up calling a ‘research “making”. Or, if you will, the understand and shape nature. stress the immersion in a local portfolio’ (after some twists and connection between reflective Hence our forms of knowledge, culture, more than this mobility. turns); the research portfolio practice (specialised) and the is part of the natural history of Aiming to be part of the local. differs from the project log. community of practice (broad). planet Earth/Tellus. However, the condition of The horizon of the research- As I am writing these lines, Which means that that not only mobility is interesting from portfolio goes beyond collating KHiO is in the midst of strategic the marks left by human being several aspects, if seen from what is relevant in the context soul-searching on a sustainable on nature (anthropocene) but the point of view of contemp- of an ongoing project. It cultiva- direction that synergies of this also nature's marks on human orary art-practices, and more tes a mindset in which the type are likely to bring in the forms (the anthropogenic) are specifically from design. In utilitarian attitude is provision- future, and how to capitalise on specific ruts of what we broadly 2009 Nicolas Bourriaud devot- ally put on hold, in order to the current situations and move understand as intelligence. ed one of his curatorial «mono- develop process-materials with into preferred ones (H. Simon); These marks are of different graphs»—The Radicant—to an interest of their own (i.e., a with some lessons from the categories: semiotic, pragmatic what he called ‘art by journey’2 . provisional autonomy). past: the KHiO-legacies. and phenomenological. In design, the journey relates to A surplus of unused, but yet The lessons I am exploring in the reflective path of being potential, ideas are reaped from the present volume come from between projects (as a counter- ongoing specialised projects, experimental archaeology. That point to being ‘between jobs’). and cultivated up to a certain is, what we might call the The professional designer point—reaching for a potential footprint of a contemporary travels from one project to the balance between the finished Maker’s Movement in other. From the between-space and unfinished—and are made archaeology: both in terms of of multiplying projects emerges available for later review, or for how it involves communities in a material residue of what sharing with others. The two research, and in the hatching of designers relate to as process. being related endeavours. strategies of enskilment. Beyond this point, however, the MA students in graphic design Experimental archaeologists I.e. the ones that communicate professional ties that emerge & illustration, interior architec- have conducted a variety of through code (semiotics), those from theoretical discourse in ture & furniture design, fashion tests of how the dialectic that communicate through design—for a long time— & costume are placed in trans- between de-skilling and re- practice (pragmatics) and appeared to me, being a field- professional groups of 3 in a skilling can provide a back-door those that are incommunicable worker and an anthropologist, morning-session, to cultivate an to understandings of the past, but can be intercepted by the as notoriously broad and vague. ethos of co-work, exchanging using the experiential venues to intermediary of enskilment Not yielding a theoretical ideas and practices for their knowledge rather than relying (phenomenology). By wiring understanding based on a research portfolios and working on the older descriptive and these we design a programme robust empirical depth. on them the afternoon. interpretive ones alone6 . from/for our research portfolio.

1 Barth, Theodor (2010) Travelogue: Contemporary Understandings of Citizenship among European Jews, Oslo: University of Oslo. Volume of 6 books based on multi-sited fieldwork. 2 Nicolas Bourriaud visited an MA-space developed for on-site research and interventions in a well-known suburban area of Oslo (Romsås), where he and Sinziana Ravini gave a workshop-reading of Bourriaud (2009) The Radicant, London & New York: Lukas & Sternberg. 3 Cf, Clifford & Marcus (eds. 1986), Writing Culture , Berkeley & London: University of California Press. 4 Davies, Sarah R. (2017) Hackerspaces: Making the Making Movement, Polity Press. 5 Lave, Jean & Wenger, Étienne (1991) Situated Learning—Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press. 6 Cf, the presentations in the present volume of Gheorghiu, Dragos & Bouissac (2015) How do we Imagine the Past? On Metaphorical Thought , Experientiality and Imagination in Archaeology, Cambridge Scholars Publishing [in that volume Barth, Theodor “The Anthropogenic Imagination: A Synoptic View of Research Designs in the Aesthetics of Experimental Archaeology”], and Pellini, José; Zarankin, Andres & Salerno, Melisa (2015) Coming to Senses, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 7 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (2006 [1810]) Theory of Colours, Dover Publications. 8 Gerstner, Karl (2006 [1964]) Designing Programmes, Lars Müller Publications; Zwicky, Fritz (1957) Morphological Astronomy, Berlin, Göttingen & Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; and Juarrero, Alicia (1999) Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behaviour as a Complex System, MIT Press.

first element introduction

01. The broad assertions made third content-track exploring the short lecture-like speeches that 15. By focussing on the WAC08 in the prolegomenon, will here mediation between the idea and regularly accompany poster- site at the Doshisha University, I be explored in more detail. The the resistance to it(2). presentations in conferences could locate myself as a travelogue from my journey to like this. The broad issue being participant observer of the WAC 08 (22.08-04.09.2016) 06. The WAC08 conference- to attract the attention to the slow-moving, complexly was developed in situ. In this plan had included these in a conference-venue as a site—i.e. layered, extremely dedicated report it features as two series reverse chronological order to as an archaeological site. flow of archaeology: a life-form of standard elements, called the methodological procedure generated from personal and flyers. 2 flyer-series: one shown outlined above. In the sequence 11. To the non-initiated reader professional exchanges; as here, and other at the end. of conference-presentations, this might appear as a rather evidenced e.g. by diaries. the mediating element—the conceptual intervention, of the 02. The first flyer-series was poster—appeared first, then the likes one expects to come from 16. The diaries I saw—or, was developed up unto WAC 08 paper on art as inspiration, and an art-school. But these shown—were very rich, like (WAC= World Archaeological then the one on sensoriality. inflections on the site, the miniature-versions of the Congress) in Kyoto/Japan, to communitarian aspects of complexity of the conference. which I was invited to act as a 07. Working on the poster, the research and the emphasis on Typically, they would not only discussant in two sessions brief that I gave myself was to mediation, is a well-known contain hand-written notes, and called T14-J and T09-C. In T-14- find a form that could match a assemblage to this crowd. entries, but also drawings; J I was also to act as an conference of 1600, and the which despited their evident organiser, for my associate & grid-system with a taxonomy of 12. The people who attend display of artistic skill, were friend Prof. Dragos Gheorghiu. areas, topics and subtopics—as archaeological conferences of characterised as ‘diagrams’. indicated in 02—acting more as this kind, is not an homogenous 03. In addition to this, I was to a formalistic constraint, than as crowd. Between the fieldworker 17. People at the conference present 3 items: a) one paper categories emerging from the (with hands-on & close-up were not secretive about this on the sensorial approach to contributions themselves. experience from digs) to the kind of material, but at the theory-development in Professor who manages the same time it was rather clear archaeology; b) another on art 08. The brief I gave myself was entire crew, codes data and that it was material of a as inspiration to archaeologists; to try and respond to this compiles findings in articles, personal-professional kind. Not c) the poster that has been re- situation—where going into the there is a variety of actors. private, but not materials for utilised here as the sizeable detail of the conference- conference-display either. They text-element featuring organisation, would go amiss of 13. Which means that between were materials for close-range longitudinally on the cover. its morphological characterist- practice and theory in sharing, at the small-talk level. ics—by focussing on the situa- archaeology there is a range of 04. I am mentioning them in this tion, rather than on the com- intermediary positions—for 18. Yet, this kind of material order, in order to account for munication (which without any professionals an laymen—which reveals a sensorial style of their internal logic—which is a doubt was confusing & cranky). includes the possibility for more reflective practice, and a logic of inquiry(1)—rather than experimental approaches (such frictional realm where a the chronological order of 09. This is why I chose the as ‘artistic research’), as well meaningful dialogue between presentation at WAC08, or for urban grid of Kyoto as a model as professional tributaries that ideas and evidence are that matter, the above codes for the lay-out developed for tend towards anthropology. processed, until the point they indicating a huge conference the poster. With the underlying are deemed worthy of further structure, in which the subtopic idea that a poster emulating a 14. In sum, the idea of inviting elaboration, and framed within contributions were a bit lost. city-map—when displayed to an anthropologist, with some academic sets of references. the endless crowd of visitors, experience with artistic 05. The logic of inquiry I used— inside the corridors of the research, to do the job I did at 19. The sensorial style & the in the above mentioned confer- Doshisha University—would link WAC08, is less surprising from frictional realm being the given ence elements—is crudely: a) a them up with the urban site. the point of view of the topics of the sessions T09-C content-track focussed on a archaeological oecumene, than and T14-J. So, why separate core idea; b) another content- 10. This is elaborated in more from what can be somewhat these, when their integration at track focussing on the empirical detail in the presentation- stereotypically evoked as ‘the the diary- or project-log level manuscript I prepared for the resistance to this idea, c) a art-school’ point of view. are organically integrated and

KYOTObook second element introduction

aesthetically satisfying to the that is, the paradoxical 29. The last step was added flyers, during my sojourn in point of being interesting in and exploitation of the human knack because the steps i-v Kyoto, and the impact of for themselves? of coming up with forms where threatened to become self- making them in Kyoto. all the communicable aspects of contained: with the effect that I 20. What is considered is what a problem have been accounted would end up with independent 34. The first pragmatic concern makes diary-, note- and for. Of course, this is never flyer-sets, while the transfers— was to test the range of sketchbook materials—or, more possible: reality exceeds form. which always take place in real practical consequence of my collectively compounded life—would neither be shared, idea for the poster: that is, to project-logs—interesting in 25. But for this very reason nor would be up for discussion test the obstacles to the idea of themselves, is to some extent human beings who provisionally and debate. Hence the change. using the city-map as a the same as what will earns integrate form into their basic locational strategy, to have a them to be dismissed at assumptions, will come up with 30. Visually, the flyers follow a sense of the territory—not different level: that is, the a different harvest of details, set pattern: they all have a front limited to the map—to conquer notion of ‘useless detail’. facts and data, than their page [recto], where the a stand as a body in that city. colleagues who consider form a selection and composition of 21. The corollary of such a more/less valuable add-on. The images, prompts the contents 35. This was to avoid standing notion is, of course, the flyers provide a working- on the second page [verso]. on empty grounds—or, rather existence of something such as example of this difference. The text-content parses the the grounds of standard useful detail. If ‘redundancy’ topic—in a stepwise fashion— conferencing, anywhere in the makes our lives meaningful at 26. They apply to the and feeds forward a topic, world—but to develop a sense one level, it makes us blind to discussion here, since they are prompted in text [recto]. of ownership, and doing the job differences that can make a a heir to the field-diary. On the I had come to do, from an difference. As an anthropologist other hand, they are conceived 31. In this way, clearing one’s experience rooted specifically working with design, this is a according to a formal set of senses to receive new in Kyoto. I wanted to go to matter not to be taken lightly. steps, which together constitute experiences is facilitated, WAC08 from Kyoto—>in. a mesh allowing the because the exit-procedure, 22. It relates to a domain in description, analysis and that completes each flyer, is 36. It was not a moral stand, which form is not an «add-on» synthesis of any substantial already prepared to receive though perhaps ethical in the to stuff that has already been area. Like a digital 3D mesh. what is coming (while linking up sense that the idea of dealing solved; as when form is neither with the train of ideas where we with a knowledge area which is defined nor perceived as part of 27. The idea of completeness is left them on our last entry) to site-specific to the level the core-issue, and is otherwise not contrary to the idea that hatch substantial novelty. archaeology invariably tends to attributed a «decorative there are many such forms: be, should be conveyed with a function». Morphological since completeness is a formal 32. Hence, there is an entry- sense of the site(s) in which analysis challenges this. Form criterion, that is played into a and exit- procedure with each this knowledge is developed is not a diversion from reality. discussion of whether the flyer, in which the formal and shared: site-specifically! candidate form is well-formed. criteria help to hatch the novelty 23. Rather, form is strategic: it The criterion of wellformedness which we bring in, at each new 37. Here, I am not so much allows the interception of detail being the generative quality of juncture, and accordingly we concerned with where this that otherwise would not have such ‘meshes’ to pick up detail. have a source of information requirements comes from—i.e., surfaced; lost in the depth of that otherwise either would whether it is artistic, ethical or our experience; or, in formats 28. The flyers proceed by the have been lost, or would have logical—as with its connection that convey it, such as diaries. following steps [formulated as been difficult to retrieve. with morphology, and In morphological analysis, form instructions]: i) attempt; ii) try morphological analysis. That is, is an intrinsic and disposable again; iii) do something else; iv) 33. Up to this point, the I am interested in extending this function in human ways of living return [come back with a new description of the flyers is range of topics beyond their and knowing the world. perspective]; v) unlearn. These largely semiotic. But there is self-enclosed definitions. steps have been accounted for also a pragmatic aspect of 24. The two flyer-series elsewhere (in Pettersson, 2017) developing flyer-entries, which 38. These are ideas that have presented in this volume, been explored in design by Karl (3). Recently, a sixth step has has to do with the practical feature such an idea of form: been added: vi) cross over. reason for wanting to make the Gerstner (1964) in a book with

KYOTObook second element introduction

an ominous title to some, graphic novel Building Stories the subject matter does not only 52. Art-by-journey—which is felicitous to others: Designing (2012)(4). A board-game story. deal with what comics are, how Bourriaud’s (ibid.) shirt-sleeve Programmes. The book is not they work and are made (cf., definition of the ‘radicant’—is a 43. The novel comes as a kit, about designing computer- McCloud)(6), but features the modus operandi, where the programmes, but about design- with several elements— comics universe as a life-form. opus operatum, here Ware’s ing working-patterns for design. including the box that contains A «bio-hacking» experiment. novel-box, constitutes a Working patterns that work. the pieces—reminding board- temporary soil: having learned games. If you already read 48. Here the designing we break up and move on. The 39. Working for the design and Georges Perec’s Life: a User’s programme aspires to the logic makerspace is a life-form for the designer. For this Manual(5), it becomes virtually of the genome. A level of code inventing the computer. reason, the book has recently impossible not to think about it. in which the drawn elements known a revival, amongst It is the designing programme and the typography are treated 53. It is a common mistake to designers who use computers which is similar, not the stories. according to the same—or, understand Makerspaces as as a design tool. If offers an similar—sets of rules. It would prototypes of production- elegant idea on how we can 44. Chris Ware’s box contains a be wrong to say that they spaces of a future industry. The comprehend computer variety of formats—or, boards— operate in the same space, or Makerspaces question the programmes, through the in which various aspects of the operate on the same space. industrial ideas of production. demands they put on us to time & space structuring each Instead of users there are design our work-processes. story is drawn out: it cannot be 49. Rather, they operate on the makers; instead of products exactly known whether the time-aspect of spatial elements, there are projects, instead of 40. In other words, our stories are different chapters which—in the case of Ware’s services there is mutual help. understanding of how of the same life, different lives, graphic novel—features in the sequences of computer different perspectives on the physical dimensions of the 54. In Japan the Manga life- operations work, is through the same lives, or kit-features. boards, and the variety of other form studies, questions and consequences for how we formats (including strips, proposes alternatives to current structure our work-processes. 45. The kit-features relates to posters, more traditional life-forms. Here the connection In this sense CAD—computer standard elements of Ware’s «comic-book» elements etc.), to the makerspaces is clear, but assisted design—is a misnomer: drawn comic language and their interplay. also close to ideas of how computers do not assist us in displaying the graphic novel as Makerspaces are are agents in designing, they challenge us. an assemblage: i.e., the 50. The elements of the box the economic system (and elements can be yanked out of thereby come out as categories clearer about this than in other 41. Or, even, they force us to place, put in somewhere else or, rather, as categorisers; in parts of the maker-movement). reflect on our work-practice, and still work. Yet, the stories which it is the ‘operative because rather than assisting appear as unique, in a certain compound’ of our biological 55. On the one hand, this allows us, they first and foremost cultural stereotype. organism, the artefacts that us to see Makerspaces as multiply our options. Without feature the life-form. The ‘para-sites’ (Marcus). On the programming our operations, 46. The kit-features are designing programme—as a other hand, the graphic novel they can bring us all over the cultivated to an advanced level, genome of sorts—thereby is not provides us with an idea of place. Scattering our minds and subject to display and conveyed by the elements. exchange, in which economic talents, fragmenting what the discussion, in the Japanese transactions are integrated into simplest craft would connect. Manga-style comics. They are 51. It is the live interplay a set of ulterior motif, which is kinds of narrative contraptions between the formats that to parse and prompt the life- 42. The kinds of multiple- in which the contents appear to conveys the programme. By form. Life on the edge. alternative narratives—and the extend almost seamlessly—or, working with the box, and new design problems—that by small steps—to the Manga bringing its elements as a 56. One of the causes for the arise with computers become mode of production and back. constellation of time-spaces, Western fascination with Japan, evident as they are processed our bodies integrate the is that the Japanese have in computers but also made and 47. Because it comes like programme into its repertoire of hundreds of years of experience produced. This becomes pieces in a box, Ware’s graphic skills, and transport it into other with integrating this sort of life- evident f.ex. in Chris Ware’s novel comes out as a theory of productive settings. condition into their culture. this sort of relationship, where From the point of view of the

KYOTObook second element introduction

Western traveler, however, introduction to Gerstner (ibid.) 66. The extension of my pass.». S/he is centred without these fundamental conditions is transposed, in the latter’s computer-assisted operations in being the core of the action. are found in the journey itself. own words, unto the digital age the city of Kyoto featured one in that the topics he raised in form of assemblage. But the 71. It is in this precise sense that 57. Everything down to the the 1964-publication are still capacity of my assemblage- we can imagine how it is most elementary aspects of relevant today: «Perhaps more work brought me to the very possible—and methodologically ‘making do’ become singularly than ever», he adds. outposts of what I could have sound—to carry out operations complicated, have to be learned imagined upon arrival; i.e. the that have their own rationale, or afresh and is part of the 62. And he continues: «I believe fragments of locally remediated system, in order to study attraction of travelling to Japan. that they belong the the operations—yet an assemblage. something else: to make Even something as simple as prerequisites of handling the observations that are, by their developing, printing, making computer creatively.» This 67. So, assemblages interact, very nature, spontaneous. It is a and annotating flyers forced me creativity arguably lies in the and at the outer limit there are common research assumption. to take knowledge of the site. proliferation of contact-points, exchanges. Without the driven by maker-projects—such definition and activation of this 72. Meaning that it does not 58. My suite at the Ryokan as even of my humble flyer ‘contact-zone’ the interaction matter—in this particular aspect became part of a maker-space production—become ‘street- and exchanges are spurious. —whether the research is with nodes all over the city: wise’ (rather than confined). They are makeshift and defined as e.g. artistic or including the sites I surveyed, unstable. They are readily archaeological (or, for that during a short week of adapting 63. The conjoined domestica- perceived as exotic, arcane and matter, empirical). What we are to the time-zone, the printshop, tion of the computer in the often quite a bit absurd. interested in is the ‘maker- paper-cutting workshop, the maker-space, and the discovery share’, which they all have, drugstore [‘Family Mart’]—for of urban affordances in Kyoto, 68. However, the extended alongside the range & scope of scanning—my computer, my through a set of routine maker-space allowed me to this intelligence. Canon Instamatic from the 90s. transactions, allowed me to establish—in a fairly short time access the city differently than —a social contract of trust, a 73. In contrast to my 59. Exploring an unknown site joining the «ant-roads» of climate of cultural interest, and «domestic» queries in Kyoto, by carrying out a task where all tourists, and through the tours also a sense of warmth. The the range and scope of the the parameters are known, is an organised by the conference. extended maker-space, also archaeological maker- adventure similar to exploring extended my power of intelligence is enormous. It the affordances of the kit in our 64. Some of the antiques of intercepting situations, even reaches across time-gaps which graphic novel. You literally have these walkabouts are related in when socio-culturally alien. —in the scale of a human life— now idea of where it will bring the flyers. The important point are «aeons» of time. And the you, while having control of the to retain here is that the spatial 69. Picking up on situations that awareness of the maker-varies operations. It resembles the conditions in the development are not part of the situation of considerably, in the discipline. situationist method of dérive(7). and production of flyers, were one who intercepts them, is a more dispersed and differenti- candidate definition of a ‘3rd 74. That the archaeological dig 60. This is also the focal idea in ated in Japan, than what I am party interest’. The situational is a makerspace, on account of Zwicky’s morphology (1957: 12): used to in Norway or, more intelligence here does not come the variety, distribution and «what here interests us most is specifically, at KHiO. to the distanced and passive connection between different how to use the principles of the observer, but demand the kind sets of skills that are current in inexhaustibility of the 65. The contact-points involving involvement of the maker: s/he standard digs. Some—more communicable aspects of life people, money and technolog- has his/her «own reasons». methodological oriented milieus and the of the flexibility of ies were greatly multiplied, as —cultivate a more experimental scientific truth for the realiza- were the different kinds of 70. The 3rd party interest is and reflective awareness of the tion of a never ending progress technologies involved: the use transcendent, in the sense maker-intelligence. in thought and action.» of e-mail was rather sparing, conveyed by Bruno Latour 75. Some of these are faxing was widespread, and (1993: 128)(8): «We have never 61. What Richard Hollis coined calligraphy more than a relic of abandoned transcendence— discussed in the two essays I an «imaginative use of a the past. Assemblages reflect that is, the maintenance in presented at WAC08 in Kyoto. rational process» in his socio-cultural realities. presence by the mediation of a And I have also included two

KYOTObook second element introduction

examples of such experimental 80. They are written in this limitations it is possible to apply truly large dimensions, it also approaches, from the session way, in anticipation and the approach developed in situ featured as standard that was T14-J, in which I acted as both postponement of a connection, (Kyoto) for comparison. unknown to me. Outside the organiser and the remitted to the encounters that I campus, however, at the discussant: Lia Wei’s and José assumed—at the time I drafted 85. That is, in the development Ryokan, I kept bumping my Marmol’s contributions. the two essays-would take of methods to juxtapose head into the door-frame. place at a later point in time. different corpuses, with the aim Though I eventually learned. 76. We agreed to include them The essays were also intended of establishing a ‘third way’ into the report as drafts, since as a preparation for a re- between generalisation (as in 90. But the idea struck me that the idea of this volume is rather investment of an archive. natural science) and I would ask the manager’s to underscore process, and particularism (as in historical assistance to hold the poster spur the imagination of the 81. I.e., the body of manuscripts accounts), between nomothetic inside the door-frames. And it reader in this direction. Their after Walter Benjamin, as a and idiographic explanations, in proved to be a perfect match. It kind contributions to the candidate for a modern the form of models. turned out the that the poster present volume are described archaeological inquiry, with the measured 2 Japanese Ken. The in more detail, in the con- methods of artistic research. 86. Such a ‘third way’ would be equivalent of a Tatami-mat. ference manuscript (below). This ambition was based on a transcendent in a similar Which in turn is not only a unit (empirical) sense of the term, rather broad, and interdisciplin- of measurement(10). 77. My own conference drafts ary, interest for the Benjamin as 3rd party interest. A locus of can be characterised as two estate amongst a select group arbitration between possible 91. The exact correspondence experiments in ‘situated of colleagues at KHiO. alternative designs which is the of the rectangular Tatami mat reading’. Concretely: I parse idea behind Gerstner’s with 2 Ken—the square Tatami the contents of two books—one 82. My own interest in Walter ‘designing programmes’; if I measures 1 Ken—and the in each essay—that are relevant Benjamin is connected to an have understood them architectural plans of traditional to the topic of the Subsessions, ongoing artistic research on correctly. A method for these. Japanese house is not only and were both edited by the co- ‘signage for wayfinding in time- measured using the Ken unit, organisers (2015). The readings scapes.’ A material exhibit of 87. An anecdote relating an but built using the Tatami-mats are situated sene that they are some of the elements in this episode in Kyoto, will serve to as the founding ground-unit. prompted by my own query. research are seen at the bottom illuminate this topic. When But there was more than that. these introductory pages, in the developing the contents, 78. As the reader will have stamped signatures that the designing and producing the 92. The grid of the poster had noted, this order of procedure reader will have noticed. poster for the T14-J session, to two irregular elements, also has some similarities with the be displayed in the campus featuring on the city-map: these way I used my maker-project in 83. Again, there is a similarity area, I dutifully reproduced the irregularities were designed by Kyoto, to develop a situational between these and the generic size of the dimensions indicated me, as I had created an intelligence there. And it is elements in Chris Ware’s comic in an e-mail from WAC. idealised version of the city- based on the same interceptive design-kit. However, their map to grid the poster. It then logic. Yet, it certainly is not domain of application—and of 88. I only later realised that turned out that Kyoto-city was identical. In the essays I use a remediation—relates to the these were the dimensions of constructed as a Go-ban: the the panels used at the exhibit, different situationist method. form of process, rather than to board for the Go-game(11). narrative. I will return to this rather than the indicated size 79. Which is that of the point when discussing the that were prescribed for poster- 93. This is a strategy game in 3 détournement (Asger Jorn, concluding flyer-series (WAC). submissions. In effect, the phases with a) an opening 1958)(9): contrary to the poster I had brought along, was game; b) a middle game and c) montage, the juxtaposition of a) 84. The purpose, however, is to the only one at the conference an end game. These games are the queries laid out in the two raise to a systematic level, the to meticulously cover the entire very different. They are books with b) my own errands questions that are explored in board. I was surprised at this. reflected in the way the —in both of the two essays— the 2 essays at a case-level, materials in this book have been does not seek a narrative and also to attempt a 89. As I was surprised by the structured into a variety of connection between the two conclusion on the extent, and dimensions as such: 180cm x different formats. I wish you a levels of query. with which reservations and 90cm is not only a poster of good journey & a good read!

KYOTObook second element introduction

(1) Dewey, John (2007 [19.38]) countable through Logic—The Theory of Inquiry, measurement of the total Searchlinger Press. electric charge in the box.» (2) Cf, Peirce (1868) C.S. On a The first three (a-c) correspond New List of Categories; with: a) the phenomenological available: http:// level; b) the pragmatic level; c) www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/ the semiotic level (cf, library/bycsp/newlist/nl- Prolegomenon). frame.htm [Accessed (11) Perec, Georges (2003) Petit 2017.02.03] Proceedings of the traité invitant à la découverte de American Academy of Arts and Sciences 7, pp. 287-298. l’art subtil du go, Paris: Broché. & Plowright, D. (2016) Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatism and Education, Springer Briefs.

(3) Pettersson, Jan (2017, ed.) Printmaking in the Expanded Field, Oslo: KHiO.

(4) Ware, Chris (2012) Building Stories, Jonathan Cape.

(5) Perec, Georges (1996 [1978]) Life: a User’s Manual, Vintage Classics.

(6) McCloud, Scott (2001) Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, William Morrow Paperbacks, Harper Perennial.

(7) Debord, Guy ( 1958) «Théorie de la dérive» [Eng. Theory of the Derive], Internationale Situationniste #2.

(8) Latour, Bruno (1993) We have Never been Modern, Harvester & Wheatsheaf.

(9) Jorn, Asger (1959) «Détournement comme négation et prélude» [Eng. Détournement as Negation and Prelude], Internationale Situationniste #3.

(10) Zwicky, Fritz (1957) Morphological Astronomy, Springer Verlag. Op. cit.: 13 «The first approximation to the formalism of communicable truth may be made through a complex of a few dozen axioms on the existence and the properties of marks, signals or words which we use as elementary means of communication. Some of these axioms about signs or marks are as follows. a) There are marks or signals the existence or the action of which is perceptible to an individual through one of his senses. b) There are marks the meaning of which can be agreed upon by more than one individual. c) There are identifiable marks. These are countable and result in the establishment of the series of whole numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. as a means of identification and communication. Numerous actions and operations of arithmetic which have been introduced to amplify the axiom. d) in all necessary detail need not further be discussed here. e) There are non- identifiable marks such as light quanta and electrons. Their presence and action can clearly be demonstrated by their generation of secondary marks, which may be either identifiable or not. f) There are non- identifiable marks which are countable. Electrons caught in a box are marks of this type, because they may be made

KYOTObook second element T14J Lia Wei 1494 | conference-draft

“Epigraphy in the Landscape: Intersections CV with Contemporary Ink Painting & Land Lia Wei studied calligraphy, sigillography Below, the shape of a monumental sutra Art.” and landscape painting at the China carved by Seng’an in Mount Tie, framed into Abstract Academy of Art, Hangzhou, and Sichuan a vertical rectangle with a pointed top. Such Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing (2007-2010). a shape has a long history in Chinese Between the years 2009-2013, while She took part in a contemporary ink painting material culture, having been used for investigating the monk and calligrapher project – ‘Biface Graphy/Open Scroll’ with ancestral tablets, that is, wooden tablets Seng’An Daoyi (active 562-580 CE), who calligrapher Zhang Qiang (2009-2013) and in where the names of deceased members of engraved monumental sutras in the a China Ministry of Education funded the family are inscribed, and which are kept mountains of Shandong, China, our duo research project on Buddhist epigraphy in in commemorative shrines. developed a form of interactive writing and Shandong Province – ‘Great Vacuity large-scale installations contextualised in Buddha-King : Sutra Engravings and Visual Less often used for stele, its use by Seng’an heritage sites. Culture under the Northern Dynas- is all the more explicit when he inscribes the ties’ (2012-2016). Her on-going collaborative 4 characters of his own name in it: Seng = The monk’s epigraphy brought project in creative archaeology with Monk; An = Serenity; Dao=path; Yi = One. unprecedented innovations in visualisation geographer Rupert Griffiths is entitled practices, the ritual function of Chinese ‘Site_Seal_Gesture’ (2013-2016). script, and its relation to the natural landscape, but left no trace in History. Lia Wei is now conducting her PhD research on ‘Rock-cut burials along the Upper Yangzi This paper delivers cross-fertilised results of River, 2nd to 3rd century CE’ at the School of the experiment, between ancient epigraphy Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and contemporary ink painting, thereby University of London. confronting modern Archaeology with the pre-modern Chinese discipline of Metal and In 2014-2015, she lectured at the Art Theory Stone Studies, a form of Antiquarianism. department in Sichuan Fine Arts Institute on the ‘History of Sinology : The Study of East Asian Art in the West’, and at the Keywords Archaeology department at Renmin Univers- ity of China on ‘Comparing Values in Cultural Epigraphy, Intersubjectivity,Intertextuality Heritage : Landscape, Identity and Authenticity’. She is now teaching on the ‘Art and Archaeology of the Silk Road’ at SOAS. Theodor’s round-up SOAS page: https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/ staff88116.php Lia extruded a lowdown from a narrative that has been developing over the last 7 years, in Academia page: https://soas.academia.edu/ a collective working with artistic research on liawei the legacy of a gigantic epigraphic oeuvre left by the monk Seng’an Daoyi on some mountainous climbs in the Shandong province WAC Presentation of Eastern China. With techniques ranging This article stands as the conclusion of a co- from the exploration of this legacy with the full authored research and publication (Great As we will see, the characters An and Yi of size of the human body, to a variety of a Vacuity Buddha-King: Seng’an and the Visual Culture of the Northern Dynasties, in press). his name are also the basis for a text of his ‘pushing hands’ technique extended by paint- own invention, mimicking the logical brushes working on two sides of a silken This art historical research project revolved processes of Nagarjuna’s tetrad. canvas—apparently of unlimited length—as a around the monk and calligrapher Seng’An reading-technique combining haptic Daoyi (active 562-580 CE) who engraved interaction and acrostics. monumental sutras in the mountains of Shandong, north east China. The monk’s She demonstrated a strength, energy and epigraphy brought unprecedented cogency of a material technique, adaptable to innovations in religious visualisation practices, the ritual function of Chinese a variety of tasks and occasions—ranging script, and its relation to the natural from a foundation sacrifice, exhibits and landscape, but left no trace in History. industrial-size facility, to land-art applications —without a loss of specificity to the unique legacy of a marginal, and possibly idiosyncratic, branch of Buddhism after Seng’an Daoyi. The project spans the extent to which traces of a ritual practice left on the skin of the earth and the ‘oecumene’ of writing, can be absorbed by repetitive gesture and enhanced in its peregrinations across contemporary cultural encounters.

Key-references I(Theodor) picked up • co-authorship with Zhang Qiang, In a first movement ‘from text to language’, non-literati approaches to Seng’An extracted meaning from chosen • sections of the sutras, repeating this epigraphy, selection of fragmentary passages from one site to another, and mimicking the logical • haptic intersections/symbolic structure of sutras in word games of his own. crossroads, In a second movement while increasing their size and depth, he further reduced the length • the Arsenale as exhibition venue of the inscriptions into 3 to 4 characters deity vs. a range of exhibiting names and isolated sounds, simultaneously experiments more articulated with re-designing his own name following the same rules of combination and display. In a the site, third movement, Seng’An re-embodies these creations into the rock, to be understood as • Deleuze & Guattari as a parallel of Buddha bodies, in specific locations of the extended co-working and valleys, cliffs and rocky surface. • the seal of readability resulting In the first part of this presentation, examples from such experiments. of Seng’an Daoyi’s epigraphic work are given for each of thes steps: Text/stele/language – character/name/calligraphy – stroke/ carving/mountain.

third element T14J Lia Wei 1494 | conference-draft

Just like Seng’An’s Buddha Names, they construct a certain cosmology, promote a certain channel of interaction with the landscape, the privileged sense or rather, gesture, be ‘climbing, meandering, or ‘scanning’.

5,26,29,30,32,33) show ways in which Seng’an animated his script by combining it to the shapes of nature and rock, faults, protruding veins, waterfall beds, cast shadows according to the time of the day, as well as to the act of climbing, with all factors being confronted to the human body: slope, As for myself and Zhang Qiang, having gone depth of relief, smoothness or roughness of through the alternance of actual fieldwork the rocky surface, etc. and fieldwork notes, climbing and sitting, action and report, we too translated our research methodology into a configuration of gestures of our own.

Bridging text to the mountain, Seng’an builds up a chain of transformations, where, through the stele format(1), language is revisited, transcended, deconstructed and re-assembled. Going even further into the language, and taking advantage of a supplementary level of language offered by the Chinese script, Seng’an uses the format of names and the obvious anthropomorphic aspects of identification to bring calligraphy beyond the The encounter between myself and Zhang very structure of Chinese characters. Qiang (march 2008) started at the very free and open level of painting, my landscapes Lastly, having introduced humour and and his figures negotiating the space of nihilism into language, and bodily parts and pieces which would gradually grow, by gestures into characters, Seng’an manages additions of Xuan paper leaves as a «cadavre to territorialise his textual fragments and exquis» does, to occupy the whole floor of shorter names into a physical environment of our shared space in Huangjueping art his own choice and a specific material, district, Chongqing city, the previous stone. campus of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Landscape painting contains, in a Seng’an thus acts on three scales: on a recombined fashion, all calligraphic gestures, micro scale, by exploiting the texture, the landscapes a «quatre mains» were thus rhythm, shape of natural rocky conformat- an end run to a calligraphic collaboration ions, but also, on a mesoscale, by creating which terms still needed to be defined. inter-visual or deambulatory connections between inscribed locations, and on a macro scale, by re-shaping the sacred landscape of the mountainous region as a whole. On the left is a Daoist ‘true picture’ of mount Fengdu, a mountain which correspond to a location on earth (today a city on the upper course of the Yangzi River, but inhabited by spirits place names and indications are inscribed in the bowel-like meanders of the map, which taken as a whole, recalls the fleshy, dismembered calligraphy of Seng’An

Only a Daoist adept which possesses and is able to read such a map can traverse the landscape of Fengdu unharmed. On the right is a 3D reconstruction of the main cliff at Hongding valley, produced by a collaborative project between the Shandong province archaeological office and Heidel- berg University. The project maps sutra carving across China, using aerial photo- graphy, scanning and photogrammetry to record physical landscapes and carved texts. Both representations below aim at an authenticity of sorts, and are recognised as authoritative by their followers. They construct a tradition of representing the landscape, and provide the basis for further expertise and research.

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Sichuan and its abundant, diverse and Both doors lead to another cosmology, and extremely inventive rock carved heritage express their liminal position by playing which contains all variations of size, shape between the third and second dimension(3). and relief one can imagine, served as a playground for our antiquarian endeavours. We would roam through the countryside with our rubbing material, and capture the shapes of imaginary architectures, tomb doors and anthropo-morphic apparitions. The technique of rubbing consists in applying a sheet of pi paper with longer and more resisting fibers to the rocky surface of a cliff, stele or even small seal stone, to then ink the sheet, and take a life-size copy of the rubbed surface, intaglio lines becoming white, and relief parts, black. The ‘Biface Graphy’ studio gradually became more structured, with a wooden frame built Obviously, while deep intaglio is totally white between two platforms, allowing us to and high relief, black, there is a whole realm continue writing indefinitely, or as long as the of in-betweenness where the middle hundred-meter scrolls would last. The rigid grounds, low relief and smooth concavities frame did not prevent the scroll, be it the can only be expressed in shades of grey. We aimed at positioning such a half-opened door between us two as collaborators, industrial Xuan paper we started with or the Rubbing is thus extremely interpretative, hand made silk we ended up using more despite it carrying for the literati minds between two consciousnesses or worlds in themselves. The three following attempts, pervasively, to be extremely sensitive to through the centuries a ‘superstition of pressure on both sides and convey the exactitude’, as Segalen puts it(2). through the years 2008-2009, gradually shift from the free setting of painting, to the strength and darker spots of encounter as It is even more so in the rounded, organic, gradually more constraining format of the well as the depth of one-sided gestures. and architectural shapes of Sichuanese rock- scroll, to the abandonment of colours for ink cut sculpture. only, and to the decision of having a fixed position for the writers’ duo. Rubbing also pushes the antiquarian to dwell in the space he is visiting, to retrace the gestures of past carvers by inking the paper with similar rythms and amplitudes, to look after the sensitive and fragile membrane of paper, to judge of the relative humidity of air, and to react when necessary and readily detach the paper from the rocky surface. It is a true haptic exercise, where one feels like a blind contemplator, focusing on texture, depth of relief, sharpness of incisions, and where the intensity of rubbing gestures is scaled on the size and roughness of the carving underneath.

Motifs such as the half-open door, repeated as it was through millennia (below are examples from the 2nd century AD to the 13th In November 2009, we decided upon one century AD), in both Buddhist (on the left) formula, which we coined ‘ Biface Graphy’, and funerary (four examples on the right) where a scroll hung between us two, contexts, retained our attention. vertically, the brushes thus not having to compete for a same surface, each one being While the half opened door on each side of a able to freely occupy a whole side of the Buddhist stupa reveals a niche where the paper. Buddhas of the four directions can be glimpsed at, in the case of half opened doors carved at the entrance or on the back wall of Han tombs a maid stands at the threshold, a Demeter of sorts leading the soul to the underworld abode of the Queen Mother of Feeling that the scrolls always needed an the West, who reigns over the afterlife. explanation, or that they would not stand alone without the writing performance, we collaborated with a Belgian photographer

third element T14J Lia Wei 1494 | conference-draft and filmmaker, Marie-Francoise Plissart. MF Obviously, the contribution of research into had started with the roman-photo format, the artistic project is more evident, but the building up or rather deconstructing very fact that such a work can now be narratives between figures and locations presented at an archaeology conference says (See her book ‘Droit de Regard’, with a something of what such an enterprise could preface by Derrida). She also is known for contribute to archaeological research her architecture and landscape photography. methodology, fieldwork design and fieldwork When faced with our work, she immediately report, as well as research outputs. proposed to film it, and the movie, which started with just the single writing session, extended to our fieldwork in the mountains of Shandong, on the tracks of Seng’an, and in the sandstone hills of Sichuan, from one Han tomb to another. The movie took a few travels to China for MF, and long nights of mounting, but it still lies unfinished after these years. (now a 50 minutes ours called ‘La Pierre et le Pinceau’)

The collaboration with MF, pushed us to animate not only strokes, but the scrolls themselves, and the spaces around us. Along with the shooting of the movie with MF, a series of installations which we called ‘Open Scroll‘, brought our collaborative experiment into the industrial spaces of the Chengdu biennale, the urban margins of Chongqing city, the wooden framework of a Miao village house during a foundation sacrifice, a Qing dynasty Temple of Confucius transformed into a tea house after the cultural revolution, As detailed above, our artistic project acts the Venice Arsenale and Lido, the cliffs of on 3 scales Linzhou were abstract calligraphy and ● The brushes and strokes landscape painting met for the first time in the 5th century AD, or beacon towers of the ● The scroll itself – framed by the size of Great Wall… our bodies and the wooden or metal framework/ writing machine A part from opening scrolls, we built more ‘writing machines’ such as the wooden one ● The landscape --- only accessible by a first assembled in our Chongqing studio. In far-placed photographer or privileged Beijing, we structured our whole studio, a point of view black and a white building, around a single At a higher level, and in terms of temporal bridge with a metal frame and a slot in the scale, the project extends over several years, middle. where the interaction between the two calligraphers gains in depth and finesse, and where a common language is approached, rather than created, in an asymptotic fashion.

The cross-fertilisation happened both ways, Seng’An acting as a ‘new ancestor’, springing out of the black box of history, and his complex enterprise appealed to us as both being apparently the ‘workings of one mind’. Following his steps, extending on 20 years of his life in a walkable landscape, the dominant scale of this research was that of a human/// regarding the social structures of In open-air spaces, we used trees and other language, calligraphy, architecture improvised frames to hang our writing (monastery ruins?) Seng’an reintroduces a material on. human scale, the scale of an individual intention.

third element T14J Lia Wei 1494 | conference-draft

MATERIALS FOR AN ARTICLE: of the Past, confront modern Archaeology les milieux de la calligraphie Re-contextualising Calligraphy: the Literati with the pre-modern Chinese discipline of d’aujourd’hui. Habitus and its Devenirs Metal and Stone Studies, and hope to transform the literati habitus. En quête de liberté donc, de Keywords montagne et de profondeur, me voilà au centre rouge de la Chine, Literati habitus, Calligraphy, Epigraphy, 2. Literati Art Tripod: Seal Carving, Intersubjectivity, Intertextuality, Metal and Painting and Calligraphy une ville-chaudron, un noeud Stone studies. d’entrailles: Chongqing. Calligraphy has a central and structural position in the panorama of the arts / Chongqing n’a pas de mémoire, nul Table Fine arts in East Asia. In that respect, it besoin pour elle d’un regard par- can be compared with Architecture. (my dessus l’épaule, car elle est la 1. Introduction/Abstract 2 own experience going from calligraphy to Méduse. Elle conserve son coeur architecture and back to calligraphy). 2. Literati Art Tripod: Seal Carving, reptilien, son charme est Painting and Calligraphy 3 protohistorique. L’écriture est ici 3. Quest for Ancestors: Seng’an Daoyi (6th superflue, incarnée, charnelle. Un century AD) 5 Le récit doit commencer par ma rencontre avec Zhang. véritable charnier. La ville sent la 4. Correspondance MF 11 chair et la guerre à plein nez. Ou par la rencontre de deux fleuves. 5. Fieldwork/Writing --- registering/ Je suis obsédée dès mes premiers spatialising 15 Les eaux vertes du Jialing pas dans la ville par l’idée d’une 6. Biface Graphy: Building a Language rencontrent les eaux rouges du tour, ma Babel, qui survivrait le 17 Yangzi au coeur brumeux de déluge imminent. En effet, après un 7. Open Scroll: Context and the Conquest Chongqing. an, les Trois Gorges sont scellées, of Space 21 Au bord de l’eau, en mars 2008, je et mon atelier, inondé. 8. Materiality: Seal Carving and Metal and rencontre Zhang Qiang. Stone Studies 25 Je cherche à réinventer la roue, et pour un moment, je repose mes 9. Conclusion 28 Je suis alors en Chine depuis deux ans, en quête de mon double, du sceaux et pinceaux, pour me lancer double de l’architecture, dans l’apprentissage de 1. Introduction/Abstract abandonnée derrière moi en l’imprimerie. Inversion, encre, dédoublement… une seule matrice Calligraphy is often presented as holding Belgique, et j’avait décidé --- j’en together the spectrum of activities suis toujours persuadée --- que ce pour une infinité de copies… et ma designated in this paper as the ‘literati double était la calligraphie, et que la roue tourne au rythme de habitus’. clef de voûte de ma religion Chongqing, de la paire de Experiments in Modern Calligraphy have personelle serait le sceau. Et que cheminées noires du quartier reached an impasse, located somewhere mon moyen d’action dans le monde d’artistes à Huangjueping. between the deconstruction of characters serait la collaboration. Un soir, dans les bas-fonds de and abstract expressionism, stuck in a highly individual conception of the artist, and Architecture et Calligraphie. La Huangjueping, je rencontre Zhang. caught in the de-materialising/de- cathédrale et le rouleau, espace et Dans mon sac j’ai un gros sceau contextualising white box dear to temps, deux pôles où aux extrémités inachevé --- il l’est toujours Modernism. du monde, s’engouffrent les arts d’ailleurs. C’est une esquisse datant It is argued here that Calligraphy, if it is to be mineurs et majeurs dans un grand des Royaumes Combattants. Je n’ai transformed, needs to re-negociate its mouvement centripète. Respectives fait qu’entamer la surface de la relationship with painting, but also with seal mères des arts d’Orient et pierre, et j’ai eu l’idée paralysante, carving, rubbing, epigraphy etc, the latter d’Occident. Infrastructures jouissive, de creuser entre les practices having the advantage to bridge the caractères des gorges, canyons, ink line with its material or contextual omniprésentes, fabriques de counterpart. symboles, réseau de liens intimes falaises, des plaines et plateaux… qui demeureraient invisibles sur les Moreover, the embedding of literati practice entre forme et sens, approximations spirituelles de notre humanité, de copies imprimées, et dont l’unique into epistolary relationships or festive matrice conserverait le secret. Je gatherings needs to be addressed beyond notre pensée, coeur, et corps. the individual author, his studio practice and sors de mon sac ce sceau carré et the public display of artistic production. Elle seraient mes Leviathan, mon lourd, comme un magicien de son Charybde et mon Silla, et ma chute chapeau un lapin. As a response to the above identified needs, d’un côté devait être envol de two collaborative artistic projects are Et Zhang comprend. Je sens qu’il presented in this talk, both aiming at solving l’autre. Elles ont besoin l’une de l’autre, comblent leur lacunes comprend mes intentions, et il me the divorce between matter and sign, and at semble, à travers une solitude re-creating an intersubjective notion of respectives, ensemble peuvent authorship. résoudre le divorce du signe et de la interstellaire, sentir le souffle chaud d’une âme soeur, amie. The first project is entitled ‘Biface Graphy/ matière. Open Scroll’ (2009-2015). Led with Après un apprentissage très Quelques jours après, nos calligrapher Zhang Qiang, it involves the rencontres commencent, se construction of a new calligraphic language, traditionnel auprès de Rosa Lin, peintre calligraphe taiwanaise, et un succèdent à un rythme toujours plus based on interactive writing and large-scale serré, et j’apprends à connaître cet outdoor installations. The second project, led passage à la Mecque des arts du with geographer Rupert Griffiths and entitled lettrés à Hangzhou, je parcours le homme. Voilà dix ans qu’il répète le ‘Site_Seal_Gesture’ (2013-2016) creates a pays en manque de terre, de même geste, inlassable, il écrit sur dialogue between architecture and montagne, d’énergie sauvage, de des supports agités par des femmes, sigillography, through creative writing, virginité. plâtre ou papier, et sur le vêtement mapping, casting and carving. ou le corps même de ces femmes, Both experiments run in parallel with Je parviens mal à concilier ma soie ou peau. Il me fait comprendre academic research projects on Buddhist recherche de liberté dans le geste, que le pinceau est un pénis, le epigraphy and funerary art, looking into the de pacte avec la nature, de profonde pouvoir, l’autorité, et que son rôle à unwritten Past to shape the potential introversion, que j’associais depuis lui est d’incarner cela même, et de devenirs of calligraphy. Materiality and toujours à la calligraphie, avec les context feed back into ink on paper, permettre aux femmes, toutes le intertextually expanding the field of nouvelles contraintes, sociales avant femmes et n’importe laquelle d’entre calligraphy. tout, le caillou domestiqué, la elles, de participer à l’acte superficialité que je ressentis dans d’écriture. Simplement, elles ne Cross-fertilised results between contemporary artistic practice and the study pourront y participer qu’en tant que

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femmes, qu’une seule fois par Ce phénomène de retour aux tu devines que ces découvertes sont intimement femme, et elles ne pourront jamais sources se retrouve sous sa forme la liées notre tête de nourrisson au fond des falaises du Sichuan. tenir le pinceau. Elle ne pourront plus aboutie sous les qing: etudes qu’en dévier la ligne, en détruire la des pierres et métaux. Voici — structure, mais leur traces pourquoi il est a nos yeux un genre Le 4 janv. 2012 à 14:06, Lia Wei a écrit: demeurera en quelque sorte le de ‘père fondateur’ de la discipline. Chère MF ‘négatif’ de son acte d’écriture à lui. AnDaoyi se plunge donc dans Son acte ne prendra jamais en Je viens de me rendre compte que les VIè et VIIè l’inconscient collectif chinois, qu’il siècles sont ceux de notre moine ermite chinois. compte la femme sur laquelle il Je reconstruis une petite séquence parallèle réinterprète/enrichit d’elements s’exerce, car il aura toujours la tête entre le monde romain oriental et sa querelle impériaux et bouddhiques. C’est a la images, et la chine médiévale et sa calligraphie détournée, jamais il ne regardera la recherché d’un totem valable qu’il se cachée dans les montagnes: femme ou le support. Et jamais il consacre dans ses années mures. Des nestoriens arrivent jusqu’en Chine. n’écrira deux fois avec la même femme, pour éviter que toute Sans doute les années de jeunesse, Or qui sont les Nestoriens ? relation se construise. d’apprentissage, de grands projets Ce sont des hérétiques par rapport à la foi impériaux, de grotte en grotte en chrétienne orthodoxe. Je regarde cet homme seul, contact avec les religions les plus Ils prétendent que la vierge n’est pas mère de approchant la cinquantaine, et deux diverse (religions compares), sont le Dieu, mais qu’elle n’est que le réceptacle de la sentiments s’imposent à moi, colère, divinité incarnée. Autrement dit, elles mettent en chantier de ce totem final. pitié et empathie. Colère pour la doute la possibilité que cohabitent les natures froideur de ses règles, leur totale Nous, adeptes contemporains des divines et humaines du christ. adhésion au seul coté cruel, pierres et métaux, suivons ses traces Elles mettent en doute le fait que la nature divine autoritaire et systémique de comme celles d’un maitre, ou d’un peut être atteinte à travers ses incarnations ou ses manifestations matérielles. l’écriture, pour son refus total de compagnon. l’autre qu’il appelle encore Les Nestoriens en compagnie d’autres hérésies, AnDaoyi, lorsqu’il forge son lancent le grand mouvement de l’Iconoclasme. ‘collaboration’, pour sa récupération emblème, dessine une petite C’est le plus grand débat sur les arts visuels de douteuse du féminisme, pour… les machine de capture capable de tous les temps, mélangé à des guerres, des corps désarticulés et la toxicité de épidémies, des famines, des séismes, mettre le doigt sur la “religion des son oeuvre. Pitié pour cet inlassable contemporain de la religion dernière-née : chinois”. C’est au moyen de la l’Islam. exercice qui l’a réduit en machine à montagne et de l’inépuisable écrire et bête de foire à la fois. Or à ce moment-là, les paysans de l’empire resource calligraphique des byzantin, de la Grèce, des balkans, de l’Asie Empathie pour la perception qu’il a idéogrammes, qu’il cristallise un mineure, du proche-orient, de l’Égypte… adorent et que je sens commune, des totem. La tribu virtuelle de ses les images peintes au point de les réduire en contraintes de l’acte d’écriture et de poudre et d’en consommer les pigments, le fidèles, auxquels s’adresse le totem, la distribution des rôles, du besoin plâtre, la matière même ! s’élargit a la mesure de ses d’en exprimer les abus, les limites, Et cela exactement de la même manière dont ambitions: elle est comprise dans le d’en explorer les possibilités. notre moine An Dao Yi tente d’incarner son Dieu Vide, sous les ordres du Bouddha- à l’aide d’Idéogrammes revisités, les mêmes idéogrammes décomposés et recomposés en Je me sens responsable de résoudre Roi… suites talismaniques sur des petits papiers pliés, ce problème, soigner son mal et brûlés, et consommés par le fidèle. Le même L’identité reelle d’AnDaoyi, ses punir ses actes à la fois. Comme fidèle grimpera le long des idéogramme, touchera origins, sa biographie, nous la chair de la pierre comme on ausculte une peau femme calligraphe, peintre et interesse dans une certaine mesure, de dinosaure, et en aspirera une petite poussière graveuse de sceaux, comme tripode immortelle. Nous savons que les pigments de la en tant que genese de l’oeuvre-totem en construction, comme montagne peinture de paysage (cinabre, etc…) entrent dans que nous avons sous les yeux. la composition de nombreux « médicaments », en devenir, je me sens en devoir de notamment la « poudre du manger-froid » (à changer là quelque chose, “ le grand dieu est la synthèse de traduire en chinois par « les cinq pierres/ dispersion »). Les ermites qui ingéraient cette absolument. Avec cette mission en tous les totems, et par consequent, poudre sacrée composée de pierres broyées tête, et au nom de notre amitié le gardien de l’unite tribale.” ressentaient une chaleur terrible, ils leur fallait se naissante, je lui propose de laisser déshabiller et courir en tout sens pour évacuer la Dans l’époque fragmentée, de drogue. un moment de côté la calligraphie, désintégration du territoire, déclin Les icônes sont brisées, les visages effacés, trop frontale à mon sens, et lui de la loi. remplacés par des croix, des animaux, des propose que nous commencions à feuilles de vignes…. Les moines et les peintres peindre ensemble. Calligraphie, — ont les yeux percés, les mains coupées ou les doigts brûlés. peinture et sigillographie sont les Chère MF piliers sur lesquels mon tripode bien En Chine, les monastères bouddhistes sont campé supporte sa montagne nous t'accueillons sous le signe de l'invitation au pillées, détruits, les ermites se retirent loin dans voyage. la montagne et se disent « peuple-graine ». sacrée. La calligraphie seule ne peut changer, si elle ne retrouve le notre livre sur ce calligraphe medieval venu du Puis l’amour des icônes reprends, après plus Shandong, la terre des magiciens située au d’un siècle de persécutions : Les images vraies, chemin de la montagne, de la nord-est de la chine, cette 'Bretagne inversée' comme le Mandylion ou le suaire, ou la vierge matière, du corps. selon les termes de Segalen, a pris une tournure peinte par saint-Luc, étaient considérés comme particulière ces derniers jours, grace aux trésors les prototypes, modèles de l’icône. Le rapport (Beijing May 2016) des bibliothèques et musées parisiens. entre le sacré et sa représentation existait dans la matière, sous la forme des écrits et des nous pouvons a present relier son travail images, qui n’étaient que le « sixième et dernier d'épigraphie monumentale, au fin fond d'une 3. Quest for Ancestors: Seng’an Daoyi (6th degré de l’Image » (après « Le fils, image du vallée aride et pierreuse, au grands mouvements century AD) père », « la connaissance, image des actes de méssianistes et millénaristes qui habitent depuis Dieu », « l’homme, imitation de Dieu », « le AnDaoyi est l’aboutissement du toujours le coeur des chinois. monde, créé par les Ecritures », et « le futur, projection de la pensée ») totemisme collectif, soit un revival Il a realise ce travail au quatrième siècle de totémique après les vagues han- notre ere, aux temps du Déclin de la Loi, fin d'un La généalogie des images, des rapports de mythiques-impériales et cycle, qui a vu fleurir une multitude de l’image projetée à son créateur et source, est groupuscules prophétiques et apocalyptiques. réaffirmée face à la révolte iconoclaste, et les bouddhiques-mediévales- retire dans sa vallée, ermite et visionnaire, il a icônes en sortent plus fortes et définies, mais discursives. voulu revenir au sens premier des idéogrammes, aussi plus abstraites et arbitrairement liées à la un sens qui saute a nos yeux d'occidentaux. réalité que jamais. Les icônes reprennent leur En effet anDaoyi, au cours de son place face au texte, à son égal, et leur il a fait de cette vallée son propre corps, a la participation au rituel est obligatoire. acte créateur/ a la recherché de manière du 'pays intérieur' dont tu as découvert matériaux purs, revient au substrat la carte l'autre soir, au coin du feu. sa De la même manière, après la période troublée totémique proprement chinois. calligraphie est a prendre comme un chemin du des ces quelques siècles-là, le langage Retour vers la montagne, un passage vers une calligraphique se stabilise, trouve ses canons et autre/nouvelle vie. sa forme classique aboutie.

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Quel est l’enjeu ? making acts as a motivation for printing and interpretative frameworks will be evoked in this chapter, which can re-orientate the Les images doivent-elles être vénérées en leur multiplicating sacred scripture and Buddha matière, ou simplement relayer l’attention vers images. In this transitory phase, the texts are observation of sacred sites. Dieu ? thus fragmentary, symbolic, summarised. Some are more directly connected with the Comment sont structurées les images, quel est During the displacement and translation body of the observer, thereby with the body leur véritable contenu, comment sont-elles process, texts are subject to loss or of the makers and audience for the carvings. reliées les unes aux autres ? diminution, and often what ended up in China Others are function within the space of the pictorial representation. The historical Le fidèle est-il absorbée dans l’image même, ou was ‘a summary of a summary’. Moreover, context for the development of the notion of aspiré vers un ailleurs ? their rearrangement can lead to change and landscape in Chinese art, offers an example A quel moment la matière doit-elle s’effacer pour invention of new religious forms. They can of how visual arts and religious doctrine mener l’âme vers Dieu ? help syncretize buddhist thought to evolve in mutual relation. Feedback effects of spatial representation on the Religious Est-ce la composition des caractères qui indigenous religious forms, integrating local importent, ou leur support, ou le divin auquel ils movements of the 6th century will be divinities into a greater system. Orzech(7) considered. mènent ? describes this process an ‘esoterisation’ of the A quel divin mènent-ils et par quel chemin ? text, the total teaching of which could now The emotional experience of space is only be attained through initiation, or as a fundamental to landscape painting's ‘yuanjin’ La seule contemplation des caractères donne-t- notion, that cannot be rationalised into the elle accès au divin même sans qu’ils soient ‘mandalisation’ of the text, a stripping of it laws of perspective. Individual volumes lisibles ? down to its esoteric essence. Esoteric interacting with the subject and interrelated — teachings, according to Kukai, cannot easily in the five directions, never being objectified, be expressed in writing, but they can be that is the logic of the site as it is chosen and CHAPTER 2 focuses on the interactions completely captured and revealed in viewed by AnDaoyi's eye. Measuring, mapping, rubbing, photographing the site... between the text’s materiality, and its mandalas, the simple sight of which can bring semantic content. All these movements do not encompass the one to Buddhahood. Dharani and mandalas essence of the site, and are unable to To us, to the readers who only have access can be the elements of ever-changing restitute the ritual field's efficiency. To to dim traces on the cliffs, the primordial compositions, which can gain integrality and describe a Holy Site, that is our present aim. event of writing remains out of reach, and so does the hypothetical vision preceding it, as be systematised even if the transmission is Engraved calligraphy remains central in this well as the way in which this text was incomplete. evolution, as ‘an uninscribed geographical supposed to be ‘read’. Seng’An himself, by site cannot be considered as a landscape’(10). organising such a textual scenery, may have Then comes a canonic phase of Conversely, ’The inscription has no confounded miraculous vision and sacred systematic production of integral texts, seen autonomous existence, but it is textual account all at once, thus creating the as teaching materials which are thus readable complementary to the site’. Our grid of vision himself for a potential viewer. In those and didactic, and part of a liturgy (7-8th analysis shall be based on the same multifarious mountain sites, the textual century). Texts are hierarchised and writing constitutive elements that guided AnDaoyi's calligraphic choices. While studying the interplay created by Monk An between the acts regulated by control over transmission. text and its audience, remains an unsolved carvings, the researcher has to select his enigma. The author of these texts is dead, Secularisation processes are at work, too, point of view and quantify the human leaving the text at his readers’ mercy, at the reconverting religious values into aesthetic, or intervention on the site. But an infinity of mountain’s mercy. political ones. A second movement echoes our versions coexist in the experience of the site. We do not see Seng’An’s legacy in the first stage of textualisation : it is the re- Prehistoric studies, since they cannot rely on further development of Buddhism, and embodiment of the word into a divine person. written evidence, have developed a specific Calligraphic art. History remains mute about This last movement can also be seen a discipline called Paleospeleology(11), which him. The few texts he has written, the process of esoterisation (9th century): here, studies anthropic appropriation of cave or Buddha names he invented, sticked to the the metaphor of the Prajna-Paramita as open-air rock art sites. Wide open surfaces, protruding rocks offer spectacular locations rock they were originally carved on. Very few ‘Mother of all Buddhas’ becomes a goddess rubbings, no printed copies, and rare where to see or to be seen, while difficult mentions among the antiquarians resulted in which has her own iconography and cult(8). passages induce a selective effort for the a ‘zero kilometer’ diffusion of the monk’s Wenzel already suggested that the concept of wanderer. Technical information thus gives calligraphy. We would like to re-start history wisdom enjoyed the same status as some of us an insight of the dweller’s project and from the crossroads where Seng’An was the most popular salvific Buddhas, and that it arises questions of metaphorical topography, forgotten. may have been invoked orally in the same memory and transmission. Among the groups who were interested in way these Buddhas usually are. And we have the production and conservation of sūtra seen how the metaphor of the mother was texts in the 6th century, some voices already present in texts such as the Renwang Seng’An as an hybrid figure between craftsman and literati. delivered unexpected messages. The text’s Jing. Moreover, in some of the carved sūtra content and style were not yet standing for A calligrapher engages into the reproduction doctrinal distinctions, but were rather the passages, prajñā-pāramitā is linked to the of past gestures, previously recorded by the fact of individual eminent monks with their discussion of the real attributes (shixiang 實 craftsman into stone. The ancient group of followers(4). Individual statements calligraphic models are only accessible creeped in the mass of carved texts, enjoying 相) of the Buddha(9). through rubbings : imprints of stone carvings instantaneously the permanence and on inked paper. Antiquarians and literati monumentality confered by the mountains. So where do we situate Seng’An within traditionally collect these documents, often Seng’An may be one of a kind, or, as we will these dynamics ? Quite similarly, Seng’An without a direct contact with the stone. This see, one among the few who experimented separation between the art of writing, and its their own style and prose. extracted meaning from the sutras, in the form of fragmentary passages, in the form of material sources, mainly epigraphy on stone, This chapter will explore Seng’An’s own has gradually drawn a strict cultural names and isolated sounds, creating his boundary drawn between the carver and the method of transcription of Indic texts into own esoterica words. In a second movement engraved calligraphy. His choices will be calligrapher, in the Chinese conception of replaced in the wider context of long- Seng’An re-embodies these creations into ‘Fine Arts’. By looking at literati art as the established set of ritual practices around the Buddha bodies, and specific locations. cultural strategies of a group to transform act of writing. Translation theory and matter into sign, we can understand how Literacy studies will constitute our main tools A PROPHET IN HIS OWN LAND crucial it is for the literati to constantly revive for analysis. the bond between paper and stone. CHAPTER 3 is about the act of carving from the living rock. From the landscape’s scale to the raw material, with a peculiar attention 4. Correspondance MF ESOTERISATION given to gestures, circulation, and views. Why was all this made possible only by the 31 mai, chère MF : First movement : the presence of the mountains, those mountains ? How did l’archéologie : tenter de comprendre ces capsules teachings replaces the Buddha, and the texts Seng’An build the relation between his brush, catapultées en terre, en cendres que sont les themselves stand for his body, or his funerary and the metal chisel ? And how are we sépultures de tous ceux qui vécurent avant nous. monument, the stupa. Buddhist sūtras, also recording this once again, back on paper ? A qui s’adresse leur message ? si nous nous plaçons du côté des lecteurs, du côté récepteur, known as « body of the law », are not only Spatial symbolism as analytical grid, thus alors nous endossons le visage de la mort elle- teaching textbooks, but also as a relic applying concepts such s ‘sacred même. associated with the speech of the Buddha, cosmologies’ or ‘pilgrimage’ on a site, has brought a revolutionary, inclusive, integral L’au-delà et le futur se confondent dans l’effort thus object of ritual praxis (5). Shorter, view on sites of religious activity. However, du tombeau. indestructible groups of syllabs known as once the main narrative has been set, it Dans nos villes nécropoles à la transcendance dharani often form the core of a sūtra, threatens to become an all-encompassing, dure, les vivants ne sont plus qu’un hommage standing along written comments or conventional explanation to the physical aux morts. setting of religious art. Alternative indication for their manipulation(6). Merit-

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Nos tombes en dur abritent les monnaies Mais aussi, ils sont sélectionnés. Seule une petite hasard exponentiel de la nature physique à une accumulées, disques de métal, portion de miette d’os est rassemblée dans marche forcée au plus machinal des rythmes. l’urne. Ou alors les flux fous que nos druides Revenons-en à notre Age des métaux, qui par un lécanomanciens lisaient sur les rides de l’eau et Les urnes nous parviennent comme des capsules pas de géant au-dessus de la civilisation dans le flou des miroirs,… qui ont traversé le temps, qui ont survécu à classique, au-dessus des âges médiévaux, des l’espace, destinées à d’Autres, c’est-à-dire nous, temps modernes… débouche sur notre temps. Un Ces courants algorithmiques au fil desquels nous ou d’Autres, dans une ligne croissante de tumuli véritable envol. Depuis le geste qui a unit nous laissons aller. le long des crêtes, si bien que depuis tout espace l’homme au ciel, jusqu’à la massification, la Pourquoi s’intéresser à l’écriture ? elle si cruelle, habitable ils sont visibles, comme un nouvel systématisation des gestes. Depuis le meurtre qui nous a séparés de la vie par un voile horizon. passionné d’un homme par un autre à la guerre entrouvert. totale, l’holocauste. Comme si le tribut demandé Au même moment, les SHANG, en Chine, de à la vie, la part d’énergie arrachée au carbone, Pourquoi lire des traces aux intentions l’autre côté de la steppe, sur leurs chariots, avec nous menait depuis lors doucement à la mort. supposées, alors que nos gestes mûrs et pulsatils leurs chevaux, avec leurs bronzes,…eux, brûlent d’accompagner le monde dans ses inventent l’écriture. « Nous menait à la mort » en barque ou en révolutions ? chariot. en barque tirée par les oiseaux d’eau, ou Ou plutôt Soudain, l’écriture apparaît… comme en chariot tiré par les chevaux. Un coffre, un De quels personnages mystérieusement absents une évidence. caisson, une chambre, une cabane… mais en notre ligne tracera-t-elle les contours ? Ce qui était laissé au hasard, aux accidents de la mouvement. Avec quelle énergie se déplace-t- roche, demeurait en deçà du signe écrit. Ce qui elle ? Avec le corps de la « gorgone de Vix » Où sont les personnes quand leur corps est là et défunte plongée dans l’hydromel de la cuve, leur esprit ailleurs ? était laissé au rythme, comme une trace de pas ou des pointillé sur une céramique, se projetait posée sur le chariot. Avec le long processus de calcination des corps, jusqu’à ce que chaque Quels signes sauront conjurer le néant mais au-delà, comme une plainte machinale. particule utile et vivante ait rendu l’âme, exalter le vide ? Mais la question qui est posée, volontairement, solarisée. — les yeux au ciel, la question qui concerne les actes humains au résultat aléatoire, les actes qui Je pense à des véhicules lancés à toute vitesse, 22 mai appellent le projet, l’intention… pourvus de réservoirs à énergie vivante. Je pense au charbon ou au pétrole qui n’est sont du Chère MF, Cette question qui se faufile entre les craquelures carbone fossile, c’est à dire, des particules de vie de la carapace et le fouillis de créatures coulées arrachés à grand-peine à l’atmosphère du monde J’invoque ma formule-talisman : sur le bronze, cette question nécessite une par les branchies, membranes, poumons, tout Ce que j’ai à partager avec toi nous ramène à un écriture. organe de dinosaure, insecte, algue bleue… Tout vieux duel entre Arts du Lettré et Architecture, être vivant qui a vécu sur cette terre laisse une Cette écriture est une suite de gestes. Une Artistes d’Orient et d’Occident. Nous verrons que trace organique derrière lui. Les réserves de séquence dans le temps ou l’espace, avec une si les réponses divergent, les défis se carbone du monde sont cette matière vivante qui main, des traces de pas, un petit enclos, une ressemblent. est morte un jour. substance animale, une goutte de liquide, des « Ce peuple de Roues, ce peuple de yeux sans visage, des têtes sans corps… Comment lier plus intimement au travail du Fer… » (A.Artaud, Lettre aux disciple de métal cette idée de saisir la vie, ses relations, ses elle s’adresse à une entité invisible, au moyen Bouddha, in L’ombilic des Limbes) transformations ? d’une trace visible. J’ai compris entre hier et aujourd’hui Un exemple : comment fait-on de l’acier à partir Un Geste, véritablement, unit la matière au du fer ? On entoure le fer de cuir, végétaux et Qu’il existe un âge entre la préhistoire et nous : monde invisible, et ce geste choisit de s’exprimer autres matières organiques… et on brûle cela, une Zone de transit très peu pratiquée. par l’écrit aussi. afin que les particules de carbone, particules de « vie libérée », ou « vie solarisée », s’attachent au Je dis aussi, car les chaudrons sont là : complexe Cette Zone est faite de mouvement, de fer et en modifient la structure, le rendant plus résultat d’une inversion dans la terre ou la pierre transformation réversible. dur que jamais, mais aussi, attention, plus d’un volume à assembler, de motifs à préciser. cassant. Après la pierre et le bois, matériaux travaillés « à Un projet. Et sur le projet, une dédicace, froid », où nous nous limitons à enlever ou inséparable de l’objet. Mais nous avons en tête ce moteur qui tourne, ajouter, prélever ou superposer, placer en ces engrenages. Nous avons une horloge suisse Un geste d’écrire inséparable du geste de somme… C’est au tour de la céramique, qui en forme de char complexe, qui tourne autour du fabriquer. passée par le feu devient Autre, irréversible, tumulus comme la lune autour de la terre. Nous comme morte, comme de pierre. Les deux interdépendants, comme une nécessité. avons la divination et les récurrences. Nous Enfin arrive le métal, seule matière réversible, Un message au complet. avons de savant et précis calculs, et le hasard qui peut accomplir un cycle, fondre, disparaître, nourricier. Des puissances qui coexistent. changer de forme. Nous avons ces groupes d’objets métalliques Que dire de la peinture, la calligraphie, le sceau ? Avec le cycle du métal, s’engrangent tous les muets, ces gestes qui demandent à être Aucune de ces trois disciplines ne transforme cycles. reconstitués. Ces enchaînements de gestes qui littéralement la matière. lorsqu’ils ont rencontré la pensée articulée, ont Le soleil biface sur le chariot à deux roues en cessé de n’être que le prolongement de notre Le couteau sur la pierre à sceau se contente de mouvement, tiré par le cheval, à Trundholm. bras, pour devenir vecteur de matérialisation de prélever un peu de poussière lithique. Bien notre esprit. Le disque métallique de la danseuse d’Egtvedt, entendu, ces cicatrices seront enduites de pâte placé sur sa vulve entrevue au moment de la de cinabre. Nous voudrions qu’ils parlent, de notre grand culbute finale. divorce, du début de l’histoire, de nos discours Le pinceau sur le papier se contente de déposer sans fondement, de la matière face à nous, La cuve immense de Vix, remplie d’hydromel, où un peu de terre, un peu de bois calciné. Bien sûr, vivante ou morte, continue, et en nous, et du lien la défunte lévite, perchée sur un chariot aux à l’aide de l’eau et de l’air, les particules entre celles-ci, de la limite inconcevables qui roues tournoyantes, circumambulant autour des pénètrent le papier où elles demeurent nous sépare de la matière, limite qui disparaît tumulus coniques. emprisonnées. avec la mort. Limite qui disparaît avec la fin des gestes. Mais qui subsiste sous forme de petites Disque de Nebra comme une boussole vivante. Ces lignes et aplats gravés, dessinés, peints, écrits… sont-elles si différentes que celles que poches d’énergie en attente, de réserves Conjonctions de mouvements circulaires. l’on peut voir dans les grottes préhistoriques ? réversibles, dans une conscience surhumaine du n’est-ce pas là aussi juxtaposition de matières passé si lointain où la vie avait fonctionné au Dialogue avec le Ciel, après avoir parlé à la Terre froides, qui n’entrent pas en réaction l’une avec CO2, du futur où la vie devra à nouveau se passer si longtemps. l’autre ? d’oxygène, nourriture du feu et des humains.

Nous n’avons pas accès aux récits, mais nous Je nous propose de visualiser ce triangle du lettré — avons les dépôts métalliques volontaires en sous l’aspect d’une boussole. Comme si ses Chère Mf , milieu aquatique, les trésors enfouis dans l’eau, parties interdépendantes nous permettaient de les urnes, les chars entiers ensevelis. relier les éléments, pas directement entre eux, Je me penche ces jours-ci sur la copie et le faux. Les objets aussi peuvent être « tués », certains mais à des niveaux secondaires, avec la dérive Nous en avions un peu parlé, et je t’ai entendu à sortent du circuit de la refonte. Ils sont inévitable que l’histoire a entériné. plusieurs reprises m’avouer que tu t’y intéresses abandonnés à l’eau, ils sont passés au feu, ils Je rappelle les cinq éléments : métal, bois, eau, de près : voici quelques réflexions qui peuvent sont martelé, découpés, détruits. Après avoir été feu, terre. nous être utiles à ce sujet. extrait de la terre, réduits en minerai, fondus, moulés, battus, mouillés, polis… voilà qu’ils À présent, que voulons nous ? Je me souviens qu’en regardant avec toi les accomplissent comme un trajet inverse, un résultats de l’exercice de calligraphie sur verre, à « retour » qui n’est pas celui de la refonte. Seuls Déjà n’oublions pas le rouleau. Cet élément pekin, nous nous étions fait la réflexion que nos quelques fragments de ces épées, torques, mobile, discursif, qui ressemble à un bâton, à une lignes respectives se ressemblaient, ou s’étaient chaudrons, miroirs,… sont choisis pour reposer longue vue. Un élément fermé ou ouvert, vu ou rapprochées terriblement. Nous avons parlé au fond de l’eau. caché. d’une fusion dangereuse.

Les associations muettes d’objets, les corps Nous pensons que des liens peuvent être recréés. L’idée d’un exercice rapproché, en miroir, rejoint manipulés, les membres d’animaux A partir de notre triangle, mais vers ses sources, la nouvelle sur les « neurones-miroirs » : dans le soigneusement mis en scène… sont nos seuls les révélations de chaque matière, ses fusions et pur réflexe physique, le geste d’un autre interlocuteurs. distances d’avec les autres. L’écriture est un engendre chez l’observateur un stimulus élément, un pacte, un contrat, un chemin, une correspondant à l’organe concerné par ce même Si longtemps inhumés, les corps sont incinérés, danse, un ADN partagé, une transmission, un geste, en lui. « solarisés », en dernier recours. nouveau-né, un ancêtre. Je lis un « dialogue entre le peintre et son Il n’en reste que des paillettes d’os secs et légers, Depuis sa forme désagrégée, le paysage, à sa disciple », où ce dernier situe l’essentiel, au comme une réserve de céréales. forme hyperstructurée, le sceau, la calligraphie moment de copier, dans la proximité visuelle se décline comme autant d’états de conscience entre le modèle et l’imitation en cours (la tête, au Avant cela, ils sont exposés, décharnés, de l’être, du plus explicite au plus abstrus, du boucanés, décapités, tronçonnés, brûlés, pillés. mieux, ne pivote pas sur le cou, de sorte que le

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regard glisse de l’un à l’autre suivant une 5. Fieldwork/Writing --- registering/ régénération, de nouvelle naissance, de transition imperceptible, un mouvement spatialising création en somme. minimal). 1) Register directly a sensible experience. Plus cette nature est mise en exergue et Tu sais, sans l’avoir vu de tes yeux, comment Avoid expression and its bias. s’apprend la calligraphie : en imitant très exemplifiée, comme c’est le cas pour minutieusement les estampages de stèles "Directly" contains the whole fact: to les cultures extrêmes orientales, si exemplaires, dans ce même mouvement de va- connect oneself totally on the brush, to et-vient. précoce et radicales dans leurs efforts forget both the self and the brush. What is d’ « abstraction vivante », plus la the ultimate purpose of such a perfect tool De grands scandales, des certificats d’expertises, distinction est floue entre sources des acheteurs paranoïaques et surtout, des as the calligraphic brush? It was certainly faussaires de génie scandent l’histoire de l’art not conceived only as a source of primaires et secondaires. depuis la renaissance. successful aesthetic products. L’inespérée fusion, l’union de l’homme à Avant cela, tant chez les antiques, que chez nos The brush is hybrid to our flesh, along with son environnement, se trouve à portée artistes du moyen-âge, la copie est vénérée au the scent of ink, and the silken membrane. de main, mais le poids de la même titre que l’original, avec tout au plus une They form the "Treasures", like precious insistance sur la matière employée (du bronze au appendixes, or immortal organs. jurisprudence a alourdi nos pas. La marbre, par exemple), sans plus. quête fatiguée d’une Nature originelle 2) Spatialise the resulting scroll, confront it Il semble qu’en Chine cet état d’esprit se aveugle nos choix : toutes les traces prolonge jusqu’à présent. to existing fields, such as mountains, great halls, or crowds. sont bonnes à prendre alors, illisibles Ce sont les vraies reliques, en commençant par le et/car insensées. Saint Suaire, qui font les premières l’objet d’une As strokes cut, frame, structure our quête de l’authentique. Les villes-cathédrales se mineralised oriental atmosphere; we avenge La peinture de paysage représente l’un disputent très tôt des morceaux de croix, des and cut the stroke itself. We change it into des défis culturels les plus pointus et têtes ou des membres de saints. Mises bout à space, make it swell. Nostalgic of colour and bout, les fragments de la vraie croix pourraient space, we inject them into the calligraphic diffus à la fois que s’est lancé l’homme. couvrir une forêt, et on ne compte plus les saints stroke. As they do for vegetal hybrids, we cut Quels paramètres choisir ? la forme de tricéphales, aux dix mille bras. L’obsession its head and roots. Its plain trunk spins la montagne ou l’abre, la lumière ou le demeure, cependant, et il faut VOIR, à travers les reliquaires scellés, à travers les toutes premières trough many meters of scroll. vent, la personne du peintre lui-même vitrines en cristal de roche. Without its swollen head and toes, its ou son modèle ? la ligne tracée doit Ces objets ont touché le corps du saint, ils en anchorage and back-thoughts, here it is, in rendre justice à la montagne, mais elle sont l’empreinte, en transmettent la substance. suspense. ne peut l’imiter. Saisir son esprit sans Désormais seul le Vatican aura le droit de Why do we find correspondence between copier sa forme. C’est encore une consacrer les reliques, aucun objet ne pouvant our attempts on inventing something "else", relation qui unit l’homme à la être déclaré tel sans son assentiment, auquel cas and the most ancient known taoist rituals on montagne, qui se joue ici. il serait déclaré faux. Bien avant, au moment où mount Fengdu? la religion du Livre est née, ce sont les écrits des Encore une fois ici, le vocabulaire Pères du désert, témoignages de leurs We actually have no distance to tradition. complexe des « cas » enregistrés, des révélations, qui furent déclarés apocryphes. Cruelly separated from it, or totally embedded in, we don't have the necessary modes d’expression du caractère Impossible de ne pas penser à notre moine « montagne », caractère toujours épigraphe, décidé, au moment où le taoisme se distance to analyse our cultural DNA. We constitue en religion, à rendre la révélation à son would prefer not to. changeant, appartenant aux possibles origine, la montagne, source des idéogrammes qui refusent la fixité et l’inscription, la Left-over tools and structures, the Great vivants. Déjà, sa calligraphie n’est plus digne « gravure », le sort des communs d’être transposée, érigée en stèles aux quatre Outside space, sensual experience..., we coins de l’empire, estampée et copiée par des wish they could jump on, ride on mortels… milliers de mains, pendant des milliers d’années. calligraphy's unicorn back, let it breathe, enlarge its oppressive engine-like rhythm, the Ce vocabulaire constitue un précieux Impossible de ne pas penser à l’estampage, life-machine, and open the ten thousand héritage, une trousse à outils aux obsession du scalp, lente consommation du grain alternatives to the strokes succession. infimes variations… de la pierre par des calligraphes avides de modèles, de peau fraîche, de coups de ciseau A savoir si la variation appartient à encore lisibles. Enregistrer, c’est choisir. Un lieu, un l’outil ou à la montagne elle-même. Nous parlons de partage des sources, de transmission, et Françoise lorsque je la revois il y geste : la ligne n’est que l’ensemble des Au peintre qui tient ce pinceau ou aux a quelques jours, déverse sur moi son aigreur à points coïncidant entre le lieu et le conditions de l’expérience. ton/notre égard. « J’ai passé ma vie à geste. Qu’est-ce qui mérite d’être démystifier, dit-elle, je ne peux plus longtemps Biopolitique = mesure de la vie. la/vous voir inventer un Chine, fantasmer une enregistré ? contenu dans un Chine. » Sa Chine. Un rêve somme un secret bien réceptacle, véhicule matériel ? Comment rendre aux mesures ce gardé lui échappe, cela lui est insupportable : elle qu’elles ont de culturel et d’humain, et se sent dépossédée. Dans notre réseau d’images En fin de compte, c’est la pertinence de par la même occasion, rendre au elle voit l’oubli, le mensonge, la pensée la trace retenue, le sens dont elle a pu désarticulée. Françoise droite comme une stèle hasard sa puissance généreuse ? être investie, car telle morphologie, tel nous voit d’un mauvais œil déterrer les Comment décider quand arrêter apocryphes, rendre à la montagne ses tracé, telle situation l’a trouvée révélations illisibles, laisser à l’entre-deux le soin adéquate, suffisamment significative l’expérience, les éléments non d’exprimer ce qui n’est qu’une rencontre, une pour se faire réceptacle et véhicule significatifs, qui se passent relation. Terrible relation où elle se donne sans d’enregistrement ?? accepter de recevoir. d’une pensée. les ou le détail négligés par Cette histoire d’amour entre toi, la lumière de la Des qualités physiques Chine, moi et lui, Françoise et sa stèle… l’enregistreurs deviennent les « remarquables », conjuguant « graines » de la création future, Cela ressemble à une peur du vide, ou une peur formations rocheuses rares, saillantes comme les quelques rescapées d’une de l’espace soudain dégagé, lorsque les ou distinctes, un nœud dans circulation caractères rendus à eux-mêmes réécrivent la apocalypse hollywoodienne. Chine. d’air, d’eau ou d’ondes sonores à tel endroit, ou le point de rencontre entre le La paroi devenue surface, Longue et dure fascination des idéogrammes, de l’interstice devenu espace, l’oubli leur apprentissage, de leur reproduction en fil mouvement du corps humain possible, continu. Etroite conjuration du savoir, des nécessaire ou confortable : voici nos nourrissant le nouveau savoir, la raisons de tel choix de lignes pour exprimer telle premières données. création. pensée. Un instinct du tueur en série, celui qui voudrait saisir la nature,… mêlé à l’espoir d’un Cette notion de sources primaires, Notre « littérature secondaire », quant à taxidermiste. Une collection de masques elle, reprend tous les tracés, leurs effets, effrayants, pour zhang. directement liées à l’observation, l’expérimentation, et à l’origine du leurs ultérieures modifications, leur mise en Un initié pieds et poings liés. relation. Une variété de tracés réunis dans savoir, est au cœur de tout projet de cet espace, le temps d’une exhibition Mais aussi : un chasseur qui rend hommage à sa recherche. Cette notion est bien plus proie, des figures vivantes sur une paroi temporaire, expression d’un « mouvement » mouvante. Plutôt que de les confier à la grotte pertinente à nos yeux que la notion dont les membres sont unis par un réseau profonde et stable, ces lignes saisies entre la vie d’ «invention». de relations, est un palimpseste en soi, une et la mort : les inscrire au fond du cœur des « grotte ». nous sommes reconnaissant à la hommes. Oui, comme un adn. Tous les Si une société ne peut se définir que grotte qui comme un chaudron au potage caractères qui doivent être conservés et par rapport à la nature, plus cette transmis, au-delà de ce que la reproduction nous séculaire, demeure garant du « bon ou accorde comme continuité. La parade nature est lointaine, faible, interstitielle mauvais goût », du goût « orthodoxe ». et à amoureuse d’un oiseau jardinier. et incomplète, moins la société a accès la fois nous craignons cet espace, étouffant aux données primaires, source de aussitôt, c’est pourquoi le transformer, y peindre, c’est une question de survie.

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6. Biface Graphy: Building a Language everyday among the growing crowd of want- secluded surface. How would you to-be Him, whose initiatives contribute to explain such a difference? After Zhang Qiang’s own experience in de- elaborate new dispositifs/apparatuses of constructing calligraphy, ours was an control and loneliness. B: The scroll’s structure allows our experiment in constructing a language. writing process to rely on With pleasure thus we propose our own uninterrupted gesture, letting hands First Manifest version of the Book SHU. lead our minds. Discrimination towards Chongqing-Brussels the artisan is a fundamental feature of (Brussels, 22 october 2009) Chinese literati’s culture: accepting the priority of gesture is our way to Is there no female calligrapher ? denounce how literati’s art has So was the question we had to answer last Ku Yishu interview declined in maintaining its refusal of such a primary relationship. week, while we where visiting the A: Traditional Chinese calligraphy is an « calligraphy » exhibition in Brussels royal extremely personal cultural expression A: The legends tell us that when Fuxi museum of ancient art. The puzzled couple of the literati’s that is not supposed to created ideographic writing, «it rained of middle aged b´Belgian citizens had just be participated in by its spectator, but cereals and demons were relegated to had an overview of China’s most influent only to be appreciated and eventually obscurity», finally separated from masters of calligraphy, from its very origin to evaluated by the connoisseur. «Biface human kind. Writing’s mysterious its last representatives. Graphy» has overcome this rule, since power has been systematised into one’s movement determines his Daoist talismanic writing. How did you partner’s behaviour, as in a dialogue or manage to give such a mysterious taste Is there no common writing ? in an opera play. Do you feel that this to «Biface Graphy»? attitude is the basis of your In dance, theatre and opera, male and performance art? B: Hexagrams are the result of female partners cooperate in an harmonious divination based on binary rule, and way, why can’t we find such an example in B: Gatherings and common poetic ideographic writing is but the calligraphic art ? Until today, the problem of creation actually represent a major historically contingent, arbitrary choice participation of women to the act of writing part of the characteristic activities in of such oracle responses. In the as been pointed out, or them replacing the the Chinese literati’s culture. Both of divination process, we have a question, male in its dominant position. us have agreed in considering the an answer, and a third part which is literati as an anthropologic category, a played by nature’s hazardous We think that opening of the scriptural space «kind» thus submitted to reciprocity. processes. means a face-to-face between men and Mutual influence is a ground principle women, and therefore do we set such a in anthropology, it represents the A: Your strategy, apart from destroying dispositive : postmodern alternative to causal the characters structure through processual modification, includes We stand on a same surface, our eyes fixed relations and allows an intersubjective experience such as «Biface Graphy». attempts in gathering various domains on the same sheet of paper, simultaneously such as ink painting, installation and we write, express ourselves, at the same conceptual art. It looks like you are not time we mutually care for the other’s line, we simply trying to produce beautiful follow it and write together. A: As calligraphers, how would you calligraphic strokes, but rather to describe the difference between your renew the domain we use to call experiment and traditional calligraphy’s «calligraphy»? ordered process? Chinese What is Biface Shufa ? calligraphers made up a mental image B: Our hope is not only to bring some On 11 september 2009 at home in of the graph to come and its position in fresh blood into the art of Chinese Chongqing, looking at some exercises of the pictorial space before the act of calligraphy. We also hope that our recto-verso writing in archaic logograms, we writing,, but it looks like you two rely calligraphic attempts would enrich were seduced by their complex structure and only on hazard while writing, is it? other artistic disciplines and help them ink variation. Conjunction in space awaited revisit neglected branches of art B: Design has declared the death of history. for meeting in time. art, and sociology’s destructive side We thus hung a paper scroll and let it run in- effects have turned the whole creative A: You seem to have a peculiar between us, immediately trying to write on it chain into a response to the admiration for the epigraphic work of in a strictly simultaneous way. consumer’s need. Chinese ideograms, monk An Daoyi. Does this calligrapher as the main tool of the literati, who is from the medieval times has any The fragile layer of paper as a white veil also the representative of the whole influence on your work? conveys light, warmth, and the other’s bureaucratic machine, are an early breath. product of a chain of interdependence. B: In Monk An’s view, the mountain is While digging deep into our not a mere geographical feature. He Only the heavy black ink of the other, neat as ideographic heritage, we hope to recall literally involves it into a dialogue, mine on the soft surface, is allowed to pass a state of things that relied on gesture letting its curves and texture nourish through, only the brushes hair, to touch. rather than on effects. his calligraphy. Furthermore, he assimilates himself to the stone peak, The pen follows its own mechanism, until the A: According to the say «Calligraphy becoming the mountain itself, so that other’s stroke appears : attraction, and Painting are originally one», could his writing gets an otherworldly taste. unexpected reaction, sudden distance, an «Biface Graphy» be considered as The existence of such a character in infinite scale of variation and possible abstract ink painting rather as an China’s art history is a proof that combinations is left half-opened to us. alternative to ideographic writing? idealistic attempts have always existed along the mainstream tradition. The result of this relation on paper is B: In its materialist acception, abstract essentially out of control. ink painting has turned the «Literati’s A: «Biface Graphy» has been awarded Directing our attention on the meeting Four Treasures» into mere tools, during the Sixth Laguna Art Prize for brushes, rather than on the appearing subject to formal experimentation. its installation in the Arsenale, and is strokes, lead us to a more fluent rhythm, out «Biface Graphy» is an attempt in participating an open air exhibition on of preconceived patterns. recovering the ritual gesture that lies Venice’s Lido in september 2012, on beneath the «Treasures». the occasion of the International Film Further discoveries and accidents await Festival. How does a European jury or along the coming experiments. A: «Biface Graphy»’s writing process public understand your work? and «Open Scroll» sessions regularly happen to exit the literati’s studio B: «Biface Graphy» hopes to refresh enclosed universe and invade open air Chinese tradition, but it may also help What does Biface Graphy brings to landscapes or man-made architecture. the occidental public to review some Calligraphy SHUFA ? How does the outside space influences mental shortcuts due to so-called The prevalent process brings calligraphy art your work? «orientalist» thought. Instead of feeding on linguistic discriminating to and end, or a new beginning. Here the B: We accurately chose every location. Method FA who led the brush for thousand obstacles, it offers a way to Each of these should in our view, be a understand Chinese calligraphy with years, is no more a closed corpus of self-standing example of totality, techniques and attitudes. ingredients that are accessible to any should it be an attempt to grasp the cultural background. Biface SHUFA is not re-designing otherworld, such as in necropoles and ideograms, it is not looking for an abstract Daoist ritual fields, or be an invisible rendering of calligraphy’s beauty. It escapes projection, such as in the immemorial 7. Open Scroll: Context and the from linguistic fixed structures but still tradition of landscape painting. Conquest of Space expresses a relation between two distinct A: Your making use of hundred meters ensembles. of soft silken scrolls and the way you It also can, with pleasure, take a distance display them in open air is far from ONE from heroic creators of limited expressive traditional calligraphy’s bi-dimensional We have set our last installation works tools. Selfish empires of meaning sprout in two fields that may be viewed as

third element T14J Lia Wei 1494 | conference-draft ruins. The first of them happened in pater familias himself. Completion of stand corresponds to an interstitial Bishan city's Temple of Culture, now the house by the highest beam, which empty stripe that runs all around the part of Chongqing agglomeration is to receive the future roof main temple's roof, letting the inside enlarged periphery, while the latest weight, is the occasion to consecrate breathe and the outside wind blow in, was located in Xijiang, the biggest the house and assure its protection. An a characteristic of those south-western Miao village in Guizhou province expert shall be invited then to write the wet and warm climates. Symmetrically Qiandongnan region. propitiatory formula on a long stripe of placed on each extremity of the highest cloth, which is to be hung on the main beam, which bears a central Taiji These two sites both preserved beam. diagram, two circular openings stand integral traditional architectures for the moon and sun. through their reconversion into public Bishan Temple was dedicated to spaces (teahouse, theatre and local culture and the ideogram, its pillars calligraphers associations have and beams still bore hooks and frames replaced the previous ritual and were monumental calligraphic titles SEVEN formalised activities of the temple) or and emblems carved on wooden touristic attractions (an entry fee is panels once hung. During our early fieldwork in Han cliff required at the Miao village). necropolis of the former Ba Shu kingdom, we always found ourselves Catching an ephemeral occasion, we facing the wall carvings, until we fell participated in these mutating FIVE on that incredible central pillar. We situations. We thus aimed at inscribing our act in immediately sensed it as a concrete a deeper way into these sites, or the model of han times spatial world: a other way around: these preexisting free-standing pyramidal trunk supporting a symmetrical, curved TWO situations were to shape our intervention, which was to appear beam, then expanding in the four In Bishan county small city center, more as a juxtaposed 'commentary'.to directions. stands this Qing dynasty Temple of what is evolving there indifferently It could easily be connected to a Culture (literally Temple of Wen: anyway. processional feature often represented civilisation, script, ideogram), a Confucian institution centred on annual Our academic research, which on han funerary carvings: 建⿎, a free- sacrifices to the master and his departed from han cliff tombs funerary standing pillar supporting a double- disciples effigies. After cults and rites space and medieval buddhist sided drum on its middle, and a four- being washed off by Chinese cultural monumental epigraphy is recently sided flag on its top, the whole revolution, the empty monumental centring more and more on structure mounted on a a tiger or some wooden structure has been preserved considering the construction of Daoist other animal. A pair of drummers stand by the local culture bureau: it is open ritual field as a starting point. Its open- aside, letting us uncertain if to be everyday as a teahouse to the daily air spatial model involves the use of regarded as two separate, rigorously poker playing commoner, and hosts flags and silken scrolls bearing symmetrical entities, or as the local Sichuan theatre troupes every ideographic, pictorial or talismanic projection in space of a single week-end. Their impoverished content, which unfolding and folding drummer. performance, without make-up or again mark the ceremony's process from beginning to end. The Daoist From this mobile structure, a ritual peculiar dress, is sang by actors in tool, to our funerary abstract central blue mao suit sitting behind a table set ritual thus generates its own ephemeral space-time continuum. pillar, we felt the association shift to on a naked podium. concrete pillar and beam structures of The same occurs in funerary sites, traditional houses and temples. which are also aimed at constructing THREE an abstract, parallel or metaphoric otherworld. Recurrent pair of holes in Xijiang, the 'thousand families Miao our ten to thirty meters long corridors EIGHT village' is a model ethnic minority suggested the hanging of successive village. More than a thousand wooden Closer to our own performance of layers of cloth, probably bearing double-sided writing process, the familial residence nest in a concave diagrams or mythical designs, leading valley, densely fitted in between the neutral point where our two brushes to the tomb most inner wall and its meet, is also the point form where one river on the bottom and the mountain half-opened false door. summit on top. The whole organic calligraphic stroke will expand in mass forms a spectacular view for the These parallels were indeed exciting to space. Only by hanging it through tourist, which has lead the local us, since the impulse of opening our spatial frames like those we have authorities to enclose the complex, and calligraphic experiments in open-air chosen to exhibit in, can our work be build a few open squares with newly was at first a more concrete reflexion read at it was meant to be, in the way assembled features of the local about questions of scale and context. it was written. totemic religion. Our aim, through this writing process, Chiguzang (literally: eat the drum and through its unfolding in such concealed/interior) is each Miao SIX situations, is to open an abstract lineage most important religious feast. alternative for the calligraphic act. Actually, framing our act in Xijiang and The totemic animal of the lineage is First, through a chain of immediate celebrated on his venue, on every Bishan traditional wooden architecture, was for us a way to response to a still-to-be-formulated twelve years zodiacal cycle. Every sign, to abandon one's responsibility in family is expected to sacrifice one ox materialise our understanding of these structures. The other way around: the writing, this almost contractual threat per capita, which means a few set on any signifying act. thousand victims for a whole village. interventions could become our The habit has been restored in the conceptualising tools, they could help Then, through a ephemeral version of eighties, after the cultural revolution us grasp the important quality of our own temple, to conceive a years, while oxes have been replaced Chinese traditional wooden simulacre for the literati's powerful rite by pigs. assemblage. and attitude to the written medium. Not to rest on walls, which offer only Finally, through the display of an one face and surface. Free-standing, abstract colophon where a readable FOUR autonomous frame. Generously tracing one was expected, to deceive the emptiness, offering pure space to the commoners belief in efficacious Facing these traditional spaces and senses, expanding in the four consecrated formulas. 'ruins of rituals', we fell encouraged in participating in them. On the other directions. Transparence, as the 间 Escaping our responsibilities in such hand, we wanted to limit our ideogram says: light filtering through situations is our attempt on awakening participations to an abstract behaviour. an half-opened door. Permeating deeper shapes of the calligraphic act, The inhabitant themselves, the local environment, harmonised by a well- which existed or could have existed authorities, the passing-by tourist... chosen orientation. before its complete hardening into Their role was concrete and Xijiang pine wood structures literally fixed rules, or elsewhere. permanently having a transformative grow on the mountain slope, enclosed action the sites. in light material it looked as We felt as the places had some monumental outdoor furniture, NINE preexisting connection with consciously facing three main summits calligraphy, we looked for it, as a across the valley. If our intervention was ignored enough precedent to our act. by the poker players to be allowed to Bishan temple leans on a small hill mingle in their own lively movement, The unfinished wooden structure where fragments of micro-local spirits hesitating hands choosing, hopefully which we chose in Xijiang was to host from the surrounding countryside have smashing unreadable cards on the a family soon, and the carpenter who been reassembled in a contrasting square bamboo tables, to sit among accepted our intervention was the pantheon. The platform on which they

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the crowded diviners’ club playing with The ‘increased physicality’ introduced by this destiny all day long. practice in the literati’s somatic attitude, allowed a firmer grasp on material, acting as Actually, such expanding of the a mental refuge encompassing all senses, calligraphic stroke hopes to involve including hearing the ‘sound of carving’ (18). also what has been left on its own, in a Referring to Shen Fu’s understanding of raw state, or other chains of brushwork as muscular, kinetic device, interactions that share our basic binary Billeter highlights the direct contact with the calligraphy, or simple movement that stone as the ‘best way to reach that primary we like better because of their intact realm where the act is still only a force, and spontaneity. At the risk of concentrated, almost static nucleus of contributing ourselves in immortalising energy’(19). The seals reduced size and those soft realities. maniability would make them occupy an (Paris 10th of April 2011) unprecedented place in the literati’s set of treasured objects, ‘permitting a more constant and intimate contact between person and object’(20) than any other Site_Seal_Gesture: WWII Bunkers on UK 8. Materiality: Seal Carving and Metal and coast and 2nd century AD burial caves in SW Stone Studies valuable, large and fragile other object. Bodily metaphors in a Chinese context, China A calligrapher engages into the reproduction rather than drawing on anatomy, see physical Recent collaboration with Rupert Griffiths on of past gestures, previously recorded by the organs as energetic functions. It is thus not potential bridges between Architecture and craftsman into stone. The ancient the corporeal volume of the seal, but rather Seal Carving. calligraphic models are only accessible its energetic configuration, direction and through rubbings : imprints of stone carvings effect that embodies the written sign. The Tunneling between sites/// intertextual on inked paper. Antiquarians and literati ‘relation between inner store and outer landscape traditionally collect these documents, often manifestation’(21), is here crucial, be it the without a direct contact with the stone. This relation between the stone’s mass and its separation between the art of writing, and its carved surface, or between the matrix and its 9. Conclusion material sources, mainly epigraphy on stone, printed result. has gradually drawn a strict cultural Once re-integrated into the literati habitus, it boundary drawn between the carver and the Seals to capture carving gestures can become/devenir. Future springs out calligrapher, in the Chinese conception of The privileged relation between calligraphy possible pasts, like when looking for ‘Fine Arts’. By looking at literati art as the and epigraphy was partly restored through etymological possibilities in designing seal. cultural strategies of a group to transform the spread of the discipline of seal carving. matter into sign, we can understand how Deeper and archaising traditions contain the Conscious of the risk to divorce totally from seeds of change. crucial it is for the literati to constantly revive matter, the literati had chosen to miniaturise the bond between paper and stone. ancient traces into this little known tradition Cross-fertilised results of such experiment, To explain the sentence ‘Its Excellence of stone-working. Sigillography pushed them between ancient epigraphy and to look for the raw material directly in the contemporary ink painting, thereby Surpasses Wang Xizhi And Wei Dan’ (精跨羲 few renowned quarries of high quality confronting modern Archaeology with the 诞) written in praise of Seng’An in the ‘Stone pyrophillite soft stone, from Balin, Inner pre-modern Chinese discipline of Metal and Mongolia, to Shoushan, Fujian province. The Stone Studies, a form of Antiquarianism. Eulogy’ (⽯頌) on Mount Tie, Ledderose has carving of stone seals lead them to recently pointed out the story of Wei Dan as reconstruct the chain that brings a seal from ______an archetypal case of heavy physical work a mountain, to the literati’s studio. It also required from a calligrapher. After writing a revealed a precious tool to echo the gestures (1) Wong, Chinese Steles few monumental characters required for a of ancient epigraphers. (2) Cite Segalen building’s name tablet at a breathtaking nd rd height, in an uncomfortable working position, Miniaturisation is associated with mastery, (3) Cite Hay about the ontology of 2 -3 the calligrapher is said to have been comforting knowledge and the feeling of dimension. « owning » the world, as opposed to the traumatised by the task(12). According to Ledderose, this precedent influenced the gigantic, which offers a feel of awe leading (4) Tsiang 1996:253. to open perception(22). Chinese literati such later Wang Xianzhi’s refusal to accomplish (5) See Sharf 1999 :75-99. physical work of such dimensions, and as Zheng Wie (1693-1765) or Shen Fu Seng’An’s praise of surpassing Wei Dan and (1763-1808) compare seal engraving to the (6) See Copp 2008 :493-508. Wang Xizhi may have something to do with principles of garden design (23): ’ This space of one square inch naturally comprises hills (7) Orzech 1996:304. this(13). All artistic disciplines, such as and dales’ (24). Echoing Ledderose’s attempt painting in its beginnings, or seal carving, (8) Kinnard (unpublished) cited in Tsiang 1996 :256. had to overcome its connection with in relating landscape painting to three- craftwork in order to become a fully dimensional landscape art in material (9) Wenzel ?? recognised activity for the literati class. Most culture(25), seals can be perceived as a kind (10) Escande 2005:240. scholars wouldn’t carve their own seals, not of ‘monumental art’ or ‘architecture’, because of the way they associate the raw material’s willing to engage in this skilled, time- (11) Rouzaud1997:259. consuming exercise, hard to attribute to an constraints, to compositional requirements (26). The synthetic aspects of seals can be (12) Ledderose 2013 :55. ‘overflow of literary activity’(14). In his ‘Writing traced back to their first apparition. Early with Cinnabar’ chapter, Jiang Kui warns the (13) Ledderose 2013:51. aspiring epigrapher or seal carving by saying seals belonged to the category of jade and that ‘writing this way requires much energy bronze, and they were somehow a powrful (14) Cahill 1964:77-102. synthesising tool, a kind of synaesthetic and is very exhausting’(15). Hard material supposes a kind of skill to be associated with visual expression. Song scholar Liu Cheng-fu (15) Jiang Kui, « Sequel To The « Treatise On (1062-1119) explicitly attests this analogy, by Calligraphy » (Xu Shu Pu) Translated By Chang And Frankel craftwork. Seal carving tools belong to the 1995 :29. category of metal chisels. The later use of ‘…looking at characters from the past as soft stone holds a pivotal role in seal looking at Tsung and ting (bronze (16) Chu And Watts 1987:11 carving’s shift from craft to art : time and vessels)’ (27). The synthetic role of bronze effort-consuming casting and jade polishing vessels as a power object was later played (17) Deng Sanmu 1979 :413 techniques accessible to a few skilled by the ‘Maps and Documents’ (tu shu 圖書) (18) Bai 2003 :52. craftsmen are replaced by the free use of the (28), which further evolved into ‘Calligraphy ‘metal brush’ by any trained calligrapher. In (19) Billeter 1990 :287. his study on the Literati environment, Watt and Painting’ shu hua 書畫). The three (20) Bai 2003 : 51. stresses how ‘The necessary condition for versions of a powerful combinations of the birth of this new art form, or rather the image and text share the imperial concern (21) Hay 1983 : 89. transformation of an ancient craft into a about harmonisation and unification and medium of literati expression, was the use of corresponds to the voluntary blurring of (22) A Seminal Work By Susan Stewart On Miniature Was calligraphy, charts, maps and figures in Brought To Our Attention By Nixi Cura : See Stewart 1993. soft stones for seal carving’(16). Yuan literati Wang Mian (1287-1359) was the first literati Taoist paraphernalia, a fact which clarifies (23) Kuo 1992:48. to use soft stone to carve his own seals, the self-explaining evidence of ‘common overcoming the challenge of animating or origin of painting and writing’. A comparable (24) Van Gulik 1958:422. synaesthetic role was played in Western conveying life to stone. Seal stone is (25) See Ledderose 1983 :165-186. extracted out of renowned quarries : its civilisation by architecture. And Seng’An’s softness and fine grain, comparable to skin monumental, sculptural carvings of sacred (26) Billeter 1990:288. or paper, is able to confer to the carved lines texts should find its position among their a fluidity comparable to brushwork, or what precedents, and successors. (27) Mok 1999:178. has been defined as an ‘unconsciously (28) Clunas 1997:81. running dancing knife’ ( ⾏⽽不知，谓之舞 ⼑ )(17).

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P.M. for «Peregrinations of the Image» readiness for the core operation, which is to way, but also the fact the door-post and the 1—Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where shed light on the questions raised concerning legend become included into the working- none. That at least. A place. Where none. For Benjamin’s Arcades Project. materials, not only because they too are subject to artistic choices/decisions but also the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. become the vehicle of these. They feed No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. forward. Jointly. Still. 4— I reflected on the size of the area allocated to the poster at WAC08, by making All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever it exactly in that size, to explore the concept failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail of affordances: that is to parse the human 8— And, as you can see, the dotted tapes better. scale of use. It turned out that it fitted indicate that the stamped sheets are made perfectly into the door-frame to my room at into envelopes that fit the flyers. So, I made Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho(1) the Ryokan, which is standard for all the 5 envelopes with a full set og 5 flyers in rooms. each. As you can see, the signatures are now applied to the flyers, and used to annotate Since the contents that introduce the poster 2— Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project them with some key-words. invite the reader to take into consideration (study of urban transformation of Paris in the relation between the poster, his/her body These experiments show how a relatively 1830-1870 which he was working on from and its location in space, this experiment did idiosyncratic travelogue-format as the flyer, 1927-1940): not only convey a satisfactory sense of is transformed into a personal item that can precision, to something clearly contingent, be circulated in a larger group: e.g., a but also to consider the door-post as such. ‘research common’ of the type evoked as —A research index made up of copied ‘distributed observational networks’ earlier. samples of books consulted at the Librairie That is the door-post as a threshold in which The stamps are the foot-prints of/path for the Nationale [a fieldwork approach to books] the body, the materials and the site meet, common. and in some sense collapse. The precision —A scholarly index [sic] of piecemeal and that experiments yield in the sensorial So, by creating a container for the multi-facetted ideas for the magnum opus on registre of understanding, what the concise- travelogue-flyers—featuring as content—I Paris changing. ness of words never can render. The bottom have decided that the flyers could a certain —A system of signatures used to annotate of the poster is curling a bit up, but it fits. range of circulation beyond my keep—it is and process the corpus of his writing [cross- like the door-post at the Ryokan: it is not only indexes the researcher and the scholar]. for me, but for a somewhat wider range of 5—Noblesse oblige. I extended the idea of people, even during my stay. using the Kyoto-map as a support-structure An archaeological material? a) the magnum for the poster, by creating a travelogue of my opus was never completed, b) an element of journey to and inside of Kyoto. During the 5 9— I therefore adjoined them to the poster— core importance to his work disappeared days of this second experiment, I used a which is part of the poster-exhibit at the with him when he ended his life in Portbou. discovery procedure that follows a standards Ryoshin-Kan facility at the Doshisha set of steps. These steps are: University, as a sequel to or extension of the The materials of the Arcades Project were triangulation between body, site and material 1) attempt; 2) try again; 3) do something edited and published fairly late, but neither experiment with the poster. the German Suhrkamp edition in 1991, nor else; 4) return with a new perspective; 5) the English language Harvard/Belknap Press unlearn. Five standard steps of artistic Since we are gathered here in the context of edition in 1999 included the signatures. research carried out—one at a time—each work—presenting work and working together consecutive day—from Tuesday to Saturday, for a tad—I will distribute a copy of these to The question is whether it is the ‘same making the flyer entries to the travelogue the participants, so that we have one each. Benjamin’ that comes out of the edited after nightfall. And my reasons for doing so is specific: it is versions that went to print, and the to model this session—hypothetically—as a The experiment included finding a print-shop manuscript version in which we find special kind of work-place. Benjamin as a ‘librarian’, a ‘graphic designer’ in Kyoto, which I did: Kinko’s On Demand and a ‘stage director’. Solutions on the Kamasuma—on the road that continues downtown, past the gardens 10— Books like these are often preceded by If the «hands-on» Benjamin is someone else of the Imperial Palace. They offered a variety situations we are in at this session. It is a than Benjamin’s «philosophy» as constructed of paper-qualities and produced two-sided by his text-based exegetes, leaving out the colour A5 prints on the spot. collection of essays in experimental Benjamin’s sensorial practice might be a archaeology that was published at text-book examples of epistemic violence. Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing Last year. So, what is the relation between content and 6— The next experiment was to test som container in this case? nitril-rubber stamps I brought with me from 3— I have two sub-questions: Norway—that I have developed for annota- tion—and try them out on a calligraphy paper —Can we foresee a theory-development that 11— This is the list of essays and authors that I bought at a Washi paper-shop here in is experimentally driven, rather than contained by the anthology, and as you can Kyoto. I was unfamiliar with the paper’s irrevocably conceived as an interpretive see I wrote the preface. So, I had the properties, both being difficult to fold and quest? pleasure of digging into very different life- being extremely ink-absorbent. —Could this approach to theory- worlds of research in which trained development be congenial with theory- The sheet to the left shows the individual archaeologists were discussing matters development in groups, rather than stamps—or, signatures—of the set, while the relative to the topic. conceived in the auteur tradition? right sheet is for the legend, which changes with context—the task and occasion—of use. In my paper for this session, I have not only rewritten a synoptic-reading of each Here I use the legend as a way of modelling contribution, but I have also stamped them. the way the flyers can be organised. The In short: if the direction research is taking in This is rather detailed work, and there is not experimental point is to engage thinking with archaeology—the comments I got during the enough time to give each of the articles the local materials. poster-presentation-slot, here in Kyoto, attention they deserve in this place (showing certainly indicate this—is to work with Essentially, the relation between the legend- the room). distributed observational networks on the sheet and the flyers is as between the poster past, as Diane Gifford-Gonzales said in her and the door-post. On the legend you see But I will nonetheless share an observation address in the plenary on Monday this week, not only that the flyers are indicated with with you that I had while writing the preface to the anthology: I certainly felt that I was or to work with archaeology in the extended each their number, but that reference is working with a group, but they were not field (in which museums are also included), made to the materials constituted jointly by working with me—it was a one-sided then we must ask—how do we work with the flyers and the stamped sheet, and the relationship—I was working with a group, but theory-development? choices/decisions related to both. not in a group. I will use this presentation to conduct an experiment, which is to line up a series of experiments and use it as a support-structure 7—There is not only the idea of match—or, fit (Celine Condorelli), in developing a —that makes the two pairs relate in a similar

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12—The idea that I was working from—and which I am presently pursuing in my paper for the present session—is that restricted circle of people who make contributions to a book like this, and the more extended group of people that are part the research context, have something important in common. Today—and, I think also, in the past—they can be characterised as contact-zones. That is, where differences, and clashes, are met with existing repertoires and experiments, and result in the production of cultural materials and a range of decisions/choices & assessments relative to these. The group in the image is extrapolated from anthropologist Lévi-Strauss reference to the Klein’s groups (from Felix Klein, the mathematician) defined as: 1) a term; 2) the opposite and 3) their inversions. This is a logical definition. Instead of taking them back to math, as Lévi-Strauss, I ask: why not art? Bringing logic from mind to matter has some very immediate impacts, because there are specific choices linked to a material in becoming that eschews math (which aspires to be immaterial). The difference is particularly evident in the contrastive relation between imagination and image. In the HEX-model presented here imagination can be exercised abstractly like in math, for instance, but when the elements in the big hexagon occasionally collapse around the imagination-hexagon, then an image is formed: an image of the type that contains its own reality, and surfaces in the maturity of time.

13— As with Benjamin, this happens occasionally in some work—while in other parts to the work, not necessarily the least significant ones, it never happened; which incidentally happened to the Arcades Project as a corpus. On the flyer devoted to cultural stereotypes/ imagination about Japan—featuring Zen- temples & gardens and the Manga museum —I have left the image pending: here imagination has the function as a placeholder for the matured image, that rises from contradiction, repertoires and experiments in time. So, what has this experimental query brought us with regard to the initial questions raised regarding Walter Benjamin’s work? Well, to Benjamin, the notes he takes as a researchers and the ones he files as a scholar, are interspersed but still distinct. It’s like fieldwork and deskwork. After this exercise, I feel that they open the boundary-space—between his particular line of fieldwork and deskwork—between his research notes and and scholarly musings, and that at this crossroads they operate as a mix between traffic lights and an abacus, essentially a mimetic contraption that can create mediations in the materials that were unimagined by Benjamin himself (though, I think, with his blessing).

(1) Beckett, Samuel (2009) Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still: WITH Ill Seen Ill Said AND Worstward Ho AND Stirrings Still, Faber & Faber.

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By now it must be crystal-clear that I am myself no archaeologist. I am brought in to assist two sessions at WAC08 on account of a previous collaboration with Prof. Gheorghiu, where I wrote a preface to his and Paul Bouissac’s book How do We Imagine the Past? from 2015. There I was bent on doing what anthropologists do beyond fieldwork: comparing. Comparison is a way of study in anthropology which is an attempt to remain true to empirical findings, while developing a broader understanding. It aspires to constitute a ‘third way’ between the universalism and particularism, between generalisation and the literary unique. Anthropologists are narrators more than authors, in the sense the Walter Benjamin put into that term. That is, a way of conveying story in which the sharing of advice is the core driver, both in fieldwork and in professional relations between anthropologists; in the aspect that has to do with the developing skill. Telling and comparing therefore are at the basis of the discipline. Telling and comparing texts, as I did in Prof. Gheorghiu’s volume, of course, is a secondary order comparison—in which I am not located, positioned nor situated as a fieldworker, but one concerned with developing understandings at a theoretical level. These can develop in conversations with abstract theories, but is itself not abstract, since it seeks to devote itself to the analysis of specific materials presented by Transformation of creative writing exercise into group-work in a Master-class in different authors, and share an organic and 3D comprehension of these. design at KHiO [Oslo National Academy of the Arts] My mentor Prof. Fredrik Barth [no relation] recommended that while doing fieldwork and while doing deskwork one should compare as «Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A actively as possible in the analysis of each separate case: comparison place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. is specific. The compound understanding does not claim a broader No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still. validity than a model in architecture/design. The function of theory in All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try anthropology is proportional to the case: theoretical abstraction has a again. Fail again. Fail better.» clearly formulated purpose, and its extent is not greater than required.

Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (2) So, it is fundamentally devoted to the development, sustaining, nourishment and refinement of skill. This brings me to the opportunity I see in gathering with archaeologists, whom—from the enskilment perspective—are cousins of anthropologists, more than, I’d say, sociologists with whom anthropologists frequently are confused. Peregrinations of the Image(1) Speaking the the skills base, a different picture emerges of the broader Abstact—The decolonization of the senses arguably is a premise for class of academic crafts wo-/men to which archaeologists and anthropologists both belong. their realignment to other human realities, where the items—or things— exist within the relationships of a phenomenon, and do not exist as pre- And it is in an active dialogue with Dr. Peter Bjerregaard—the established identities. If our queries into the past will take this into University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History—that a renewed account, we should take interest in artistic methods where means can perspective on how experimental exhibition practices, engaging both be cultivated without a predetermined end, as a fund of provisional archaeologists and anthropologists, can prompt a museum, which understandings needed to understand the past. The way archaeologists within an older set of practices had become obsolete, in ways that work to structure their world, the imprint of their sensory memories and involve audiences actively. The museum is in the process of their social and moral standards are topics relevant to further the restructuring its permanent exhibition, programming temporary discipline. exhibitions and working out a Red Zone. The paper will serve to pitch the session by using Dragos Gheorghiu & The Red Zone is an experimental space which, in time, is expected to Paul Bouissac’s book How do we Imagine the Past? On Metaphorical innovate the ways the permanent and temporary exhibitions articulate Thought, Experientiality and Imagination in Archaeology (2015). The as a whole. Which means that the museum organises around a core session’s discussant will use this book to explore a particular class of which is substantially defined and concerned with experiment. I think imagery generated by experimental approaches to archaeological that the idea of the Red Zone is transportable, and that the work I did in fieldwork and the variety of combinations with digital tools, to compare Profs. Gheorghiu and Bouissac’s book as well as in my role as a it with recent developments in the art-field. The paper will attempt to mediator/discussant (let’s say convenor, for brevity) the possibility to narrow down the discussions to those phase-transitions where images facilitate a Red Zone in Kyoto. that are non-instrumental, and produced without initial communicative This makes sense from the point of view of Prof. Gheorghiu—who intent, tie up with broader scientific goals. proposed and organised this session—as his engagement with the use of artistic methods in archaeology is precisely experimental. Since I am an anthropologist working at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Keywords: artistic methods, provisional understandings, decolonisation. educating designers in research-based theory development, there is a rather obvious confluence between our substantial concerns. However, empirical methods of experimentation in arts & humanities begs for Preamble—On Experiments in Arts & Humanities clarification. The way to the final draft of this paper—to the point it is presented here What do we mean by experiment—a term mostly used for empirical in Kyoto—has known some twists and turns. In an earlier version, that research in natural- & technical sciences? And what do we think that was circulated to Profs. Gheorghiu and Pellini, an attempt was made to the epitet ‘artistic’ adds to the notion of experiment? Finally, how new is merge the topics of artistic methods in archaeology (T14J) and this query if we look back in history? In my view, these are important sensorial archaeology (T09C). The background for this attempt was to issues to illuminate through the presentations and discussions in this see if it was possible to design a context that would make it easier to session. Starting with an outline of the last question: no this is not stick to the point—in this sense the design—of each session. new… a notion of experiment in the tradition of arts and humanities was founded by Goethe. Since I was asked to act as a moderator/discussant for the two sessions, this appeared to be a sound way of proceeding. However, The didactic mid-section of his Theory of Colours (2006 [1810])(3) is since then, it became clear that T14J and T09C would be separate experimental in a sense that inspired the Bauhaus milieu in the 1920s, sessions, and after I had been working with a volume published by Prof. continues to have a foundational importance in the arts&crafts, and has Pellini, it became obvious to me that it would be more difficult, than a direct relevance for us here, in this session. His experimental concept what I had thought initially, to develop a common framework: with the was very simple, yet resolutely different from Newton’s conception of exception of the Profs., the contributors to the topics were really experiment in natural science. Goethe’s experiment is defined in the different groups. service of human experience, it’s function is to educate the human senses in prompting memories. As an anthropologist, I realise that I should have asked: if the groups are different, what brought them together in the first place? And then to As pertaining to one of Prof. Gheorghiu’s chief concerns, Goethe’s realise how important conferencing events like WAC are, in creating method was immersive: it was founded in empirical experience—of opportunities for publications and the kind of group-processes these phenomena related to colour—which then only was produced entail (if sometimes reduced to an editorial process). This grouping— experimentally. Though produced in laboratory settings, the function of sometimes re-grouping—around a shared topic, in the agora of the experiment was not to generate new phenomena, but to appropriate archeologists, is the context I relate to as I take on the task of my phenomena originating in live experience. It was mimetic in the non- present role. trivial sense of creating connective affordances for new experiences: a haptic readiness.

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We recognise the interest of this topic way into our own time: e.g. observations feeds forward unto our inquiries in the field. Then we are Johani Pallasmaa’s thesis in his book The Eyes of the Skin (2005)(4) already in the loop of educating our senses. Nothing mysterious about where the haptic sense is considered to be the mother of all senses, this, but maybe awkward. and the other senses, concomitantly, are specialised from the haptic sense. In this determination, Goethe’s experiment—because it has to be We know that Christopher Langton(6)—in his early experiments with operated, and in this sense performed—assimilates the experience ALife [Artificial Life]—produced the learning-loop experimentally: he through specialised senses—vision, hearing, smell, taste—to the haptic video-taped a live record of fish in an aquarium and fed the video- base: the syntaesthetic linker. record back unto the screen with the fish. The result was an organic and 3D rendering in which the screen appeared as a “new Goethe’s haptic base [the experiment] becomes vision-centric because aquarium” [not just a live record of an aquarium]. So, it would appear his interest is colour. His study yields a special case of synaesthesia as that when keeping a field-record shifts to replay experiences, then the perception of colour, when produced experimentally, is fed with the something similar happens. Replication. haptic connection to new colour experiences. But, obviously, there is no reason why this notion of experiment—with its haptic appropriation The weak link in how records—or, more, generally techniques of of sense-experience—should be reserved to vision alone. The real monitoring aiming for objectivity—are conceived: that is, as passive and challenge lies in how Goethe’s experimental approach is empirical, rather static material that accumulates to exist outside of human rather than interpretive. agency. Whereas, in reality, the recording routine becomes an associate to the inquiry, as it shifts from the function of reproducing It is at this point that my interest in experimental archeologists becomes experiences to replicate them. That is, from actual experience a virtual specific, because they are specialised in working at the other end of the experience starts developing experimentally, as a parallel and ongoing alliance between human beings and artefacts, than anthropologists process in the inquiry. normally would do. For anthropologists the human life-form is the point of entry to understand the human alliances with artefacts (Miller, 2009) By the time we are within reach of a break-through in our fieldwork— and to make new discovery—the record has lost everything that makes (5); for archaeologists it is the opposite: the starting point is with artefacts as human associates. This is potentially a refreshing it into a passive and serial drill, and partakes generatively of trailing, approach. sometimes stalking, a discovery. Perhaps it is less interesting to discuss why dynamics like these, that enter into the life-cycle of research The working-assumption appears to be that we know that the tools, projects, are awkward to some scientific minds (though not by others), materials, objects and edifices—being handled and crafted by humans and rather focus on factors that canalise research as a generative —are human associates in a sense that has to be determined process. empirically. In the eyes of an anthropologist, therefore, the experimental archaeologist is a professional working with a kind of It is at this point that artistic choices become interesting—paradoxically ‘empirical semiotics’. It is this aspect—the hands-on experience-based —because they come up with systematic approaches that derive experimentation—that makes certain archaeologists interesting for a interceptions at the image level, and, at that level, work according to a design-anthropologist. logic of transmission (rather than a logic of self-reflection, which is often imposed by the context of discourse in which artistic practices are I know that archaeologists are looking to anthropologists for theory constrained). That is, they often work at the “other-end” of imagery these days. But I can assure you that this interest is reciprocal. It is not (supra), rather than engaging into reflective processes that point back only on account of my connection to the design-field that makes this to themselves. interest real. It is of interest to any anthropologist working with contemporary studies where understanding a variety of media—an I am aware that I am taking a risk by making this proposition, since it is mediation—is the context of live-studies of contemporary social forms. against the mainstream conception of what artists do. But in my work Especially in urban studies, but also in the wake of the techno-cultural with artists—that is, not only with designers but also with arts & crafts revolution of digitalisation. people—it has become increasingly obvious to me that their work is oriented by a different impetus than the self-reflective frame which So, the idea I want to probe—and challenge—is that archaeologists are often is imposed on them by theorists. This explains why, to keep it necessarily people that study old things. Of course, the study of pre- relatively simple, I am focussing on artistic choices that can be historic life-forms is a training ground for acquiring a certain set of assimilated into log-keeping. skills, that concern me here, just as materials pertaining to non- recorded history, but the form of archaeological knowledge relating to It is on this basis that I have been working on a system of signatures— its potential fruitfulness to anthropologist lies, arguably, elsewhere. And according to a concept I have introduced in my poster T14J13P—aiming it is to this contemporary relevance I want to devote some effort here. at charting a track-record of imagery, following the steps from imagination to image, as something distinct from the track-record of The idea that human senses become educated through material experience: that is, a track record of what, in different stages, is being practice, that what we observe in traces of human life-forms is fed forward to experience as the set of usually hidden backdoors to the somehow the aggregate of this material practice, and we add the idea decisions we make on where, and in which direction, we chose to human senses can be educated experimentally—to take a different pursue our inquiries. direction than the current social context (Goethe)—and thereby tune into the production of the material residues under observation, then it is This is to launch an agenda for experimenting with marking and trailing possible to ‘decolonise’ our senses, and develop an imagery connecting in timescapes, as a realm which is not really uncharted, but where to such materials. researchers often develop personal systems that are rarely discussed, and put on the table, because they appear to be idiosyncratic. When talking about imagery, I am concerned with a class of images that However, if understood as artistic methods the become subject to the we do not recognise as our own, and that are the subject matter of kinds of professional commons found in the studio-crits we have at art- discovery. And it is the production of images as the result of our senses school, where conversation led narratives develop on the backdrop of a feeding back to our senses—through the haptic base of the experiment kind of professional listening. —that images are intercepted: sensing ourselves sensing—educating the senses—and the readiness to intercept images are related. That is, When Prof. Gheorghiu talks about the use of artistic methods in images of the other, not our own images: sensing someone else research—or, where I come from, we talk of artistic research—it will sensing. appear, to a number of people, as a contradiction in terms. Such attitudes may have a number of articulated and legitimate reasons. But Here the idea of the image lies in the presence of something that has one explanation is the existence of a cultural schema according to already been sensed by someone else. If we accept that this is the which there is “a good and a bad end of the stick” (which, in English, nature of the image—seeing something that has been by someone else after all, is a standard expression). But this schema does not apply —then the “mystery” of mimesis lies in this nature of the image. It is not universally. something we add to the image, but is intrinsically part of it. If brought down to its haptic base it is the nature of the image that it is not a It is therefore a strike of fortune that this conference is taking place in private phenomenon but one emerging that the brink of self-and-other. Kyoto, Japan. Here it appears to make little sense talking of a good or a bad end: what counts is whether the stick is well balanced. If art and Then the question is: what is the tool-kit and practical repertoire that science are two ends of the stick, this may give us a better lead than if brings us to this threshold of a specific and knowing relationship? I we venture that the one must be claimed against the other. It means would say that Prof. Gheorghiu’s tools and repertoire is exceptionally that—with its two ends—the stick can be balanced according to a vast. My reason for focussing on the research-log—or, field-record—is variety of very different designs explored through practice (that, that I am assuming that it is the least common denominator shared by moreover, it is fruitful to compare). all archaeologists and anthropologist, that it is easy to overlook because it is a standard practice, but also because this is my field of The martial arts in Japan demonstrate how different designs these specialisation. designs can be, at the level of the stick. Moreover, designs tend generally to bring together non-same elements in forms of balance that Even when defined completely by routine—and strict rules—I argue that are appreciated or abandoned. The stick provides us with a good the research record used to log findings with regular entries, has an working-metaphor, because it invites a straightforward distinction experimental value in appropriating that we are experiencing through between this end and the other end—between the same and the other— the senses under field-conditions. It is true to experience in producing and how they are brought together in complex and adaptive ways. faithfully our impressions but it is clearly separated from our immersion into daily work and experiences, on account of the techniques, materials and skills involved in keeping a log. What is acquired is taken Of Mimesis—The Legacy from Walter Benjamin into possession. I will attempt an argument than an archaeological approach to the As time goes by, this daily exercise also becomes immersive. And, like contemporary can be determined as kind of ‘empirical semiotics’. This Prof. Gheorgiu’s richer palett of experimentation, it defines a secondary follows from the preceding, in that experiments regularly lead to level of immersion. That is, the process of keeping a daily record, at discovery. And discovery—in the arts and humanities—can e.g. be some point, shifts to become a form of replay in which we intercept certain kinds of systems: or, rather, feature systemic features that observations that passed unnoticed unto that point. This class of

fifth element T14-J ThB | conference draft cannot be assumed but must be discovered. Here mimesis determines What I am suggesting in this paper is that the threshold—though it is a class of procedures that we use to obtain either corroborative or object-like—is not an object. As we pass the threshold we are corrective experiences. unconscious, and as we cross it we become conscious about the world, its events, and our priorities in it of which we were previously unaware. The anthropogenic venture of building profiles of human life-forms from Our world is expanded in way where the properties of the world as we their remains, will draw on mimesis in one way or the other. But if we knew it are kept, by the means of a special entity: what we, up to this accept that they have in common a joint attention to what is going on at point, have called the threshold, but also could be the Lacanian objet both ends of the stick, to use the imagery concluding the previous petit a. section, it suffices to grow wiser on how different choices— the decisions we make—can bring us in very different directions. Then we The origin of this idea goes back to Felix Klein’s transformational can at least grow wiser on the variety thus obtained. They may be geometry(8), which was later picked up by the anthropologist Claude windows into a complex system. Lévi-Strauss—the pontiff of French structuralism in anthropology—in his magnum opus Mythologiques (1964-71) in which we can follow how Elsewhere (T09C), I have responded to a discussion in mediaeval he starts out with a small corpus of Amerindian Myths—based on archaeology (Born, 2016) in which a point is made of the distinction ethnography written by others—and gradually expanding the analysis between media and cultural techniques. I argue that reversibility— from the Amazonas, via South America, and ultimately encompass the playback—may serve to define media, in counter-distinction to cultural Northern American native groups. techniques, so that concept of media does not have to be tied to modern/post-industrial electronic products. That the simple act of His work is very systematic (too systematic according to a number of reading is a form of playback, as is copying; also the Antique rhetoric critics): at the core of set of myths there would be a Klein’s group—a feats of reciting backwards. principal myth, its opposite and their inversions—and then there would be a reference myth—a point by point reverse myth of the principal Rewinding time as connected to remembering—rather than rituals of myth—that would allow the analysis to proceed beyond the original inversion—is typical to the birth of media, I argue. It is the kind of group of myth, and so on (till the entire continent was covered). His exercise we may engage in, all be it ritually, as we fill in our diaries, argument is that when different people retold each other’s myths they notebooks, logs, sketchbooks and the like. We are looking back. And would tell them in their own way. when we are finished we are looking forward again. But in a different way. It is at this moment, where the modus operandi of a specific log- That is, they would be at odds, breaks and negation with their entry transits into opus operandi of a task completed, that we are at neighbours. Not in the sense of contradiction—«contredire s’écrit aussi liberty to proceed. conte-redire»—but in the sense that retelling the story of the other would inevitably yield another story. Which brings us back to the notion That is, we are at liberty to proceed with our work. But frequently with of mimesis in Benjamin. In Lévi-Strauss’ anthropology the ambition of the blue-print of the exercise we just completed that prompts us to see charting, or mapping, the progress of understandings conquered by new possibilities, other lines of inquiry. It is this sort of transitive logic— analysis, was accompanied with a system of marks, which were derived that a modus operandi worked up at one level, when it shifts into an from mathematics. opus operatum as the task is completed, hatches a novel modus operandi—that is my analytical proposal for what Walter Benjamin’s He sums up the insights won—at different stages—by the use of notion of mimesis, which proliferates in his work, can be about if mathematical formulae. But why math? Why not art? There is a long conceived concisely as a method. pedigree of discussions of this question that followed in the wake of Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology in France. Lévy-Strauss The important thing is that the mimetic trope—the point where it turns, described the Amerindian societies that mostly captured his interest, as or tips, from modus operandi 1 to modus operandi 2—cannot be a Mediaeval society that had not known its Rome. After his short and predicted while the entry is being worked out (i.e., modus operandi 1). deleterious experience with fieldwork in Tristes Tropiques, he focussed It has to be completed before its virtual backdrop appears, in the form his attention on the remote. of modus operandi 2. Moreover, just as the threshold we cross when the work is completes pitches the virtual discharge of a novel sensory In certain sense, he had the mind of an archaeologist. An archaeologist prompt, the transition from fieldwork—or, the dig—to deskwork concerned with recent history. Not unlike Michel Foucault in the features a similar transition(7). domain of history. The latter’s archaeological interest was in the archive. But not the archive in a material sense, but rather as an object Working with writing, images, sound—or, any kind of record—brings to of philosophical inquiry. Neither were scholars of a sort we would mind a number of things that we did not feel, nor more broadly sense, qualify as having “dirt under their nails”. Benjamin had dirt under his when the happened in front, or around, us. That is, our senses were not nails, as do some of his more recent epigones: e.g., Giorgio Agamben open do them while on the job—in medias res—and revealed to us only and Georges Didi-Huberman. in playback. So there are thresholds we cross—linked to the completion of task, and entering a different mode of work—where our “eyes are That is, they are people who work with archival detail, object opened”, is one commonly says. There is a kind of mediation taking collections and art-works: not unlike anthropologists who insist that you place at this threshold. have to do fieldwork—walk the arduous path to write the ethnography— and then develop theoretical understandings. Which is why, in my own Moreover, it goes both ways: a) as we work in medias res and move work, I have returned to the question: why not art? Why not work with unto working ex medias res; b) as we work ex medias res and move the notions of the Klein’s group—as briefly exposed above—in a way unto working in medias res. As you may have noted, this terminology— that one gets dirt under ones nails. Which is why I have started to work which in our current vernacular would be alternating between working with signatures. in the field and out of the field [or, oscillating between fieldwork and deskwork]—does not help us move beyond polar constructs, such as More precisely, an experimental set of signatures that a) preserve the the good and the bad end of the stick. Instead of considering that we property of the Klein’s group; b) articulates the difference between the are not moving in nor out. verbal definition and the iconographic definition that I propose; c) establish a material practice that establishes a contact zone around the Perhaps a better model would be to consider that we are moving previously defined threshold. It is there all the time—as we switch our alternately on two sides of a Möbius-band, and at the said threshold we modes of knowing—so there is no use in pretending it is not there. I simply switch sides. A plainer way of talking about this problem is to propose a layered approach based on what Mary Louise Pratt called consider that we are combining assets in ways that human beings the ‘contact zone’ (2005: 519)(9): always have done. That is, if human beings develop a knack of becoming absorbed in core operations, they always have support- «I use this term to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, structures that they use in order to guide such core operations. And clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly they can switch. asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today. That is, what features as 1) the ‘core operation’ and 2) ‘support Eventually I will use the term to reconsider the models of community structure’ can switch.That we use a GPS console as a support structure that many of us rely on in teaching and theorizing and that are under while steering a wheel [which is a core-operation of driving]. But we challenge today.» can then work with the settings of the GPS, using our experience in driving as a support structure. As we move back and forth we develop a Of course, I am making this reference to Pratt’s explication because it model-understanding feeding and being fed by experience. And in older is of conceptual value to the current state of things, but also because parlance, the difference between core and support, would be tool and we—as researchers and scholars—live and work in that zone, whether instrument. the idea we have developed of human societies at present or in the past, as their contemporaries. In the oecumene of archaeologists and Notions as ‘core operation’ and ‘support structure’ are children of the anthropologists, our working space is one of ‘contentious user-centred world, and our current concern with usability. Instrument multivocality’ (Shryock, 1987: 221)(10). If accepted it has some and tool are notions that presuppose learning by ‘show and tell’ (rather interesting consequences. than ‘plug-and-play’ as in our day). The relation between instrument and tool was often not reversible, and could be strongly hierarchised. One relating to the status of the image—understood as a multi-sensory For instance, the difference between media and cultural techniques gestalt—as a glimpse of the passing threshold, in the flash of the may be defined along these lines. Reversibility, per se, is not a new moment; what Walter Benjamin understands with his notion of thing. ‘dialectical image’. This is the sort of image that flares up as knowledge is embodied and passes unto the body proper, as its silent repertoire of But its proliferation, to the extent to ubiquity, is something new. skills (or, “skills-bank”). A momentary calibration between our patterns Computers are both conceptually and functionally reversible devices, of perception and our patterns of behaviour. The dialectical image is and the mobile devices expanding this property in space and time to not a theory, but a model. become a part of our culture. This is tricky terrain, and the pitfalls are many. But the reward, I expect, is considerable. Because, both It is not identical to the imagination working in us as we do fieldwork, presently and in the past, we have lost sight of the threshold—where we deskwork and alternate between the two. We know that our imagination switch and learn—as such. What it is, and what we can learn if is our own—as persons who are members of a culture—while the understanding it properly. dialectical image is contained by and pointing to its own reality. It is the

fifth element T14-J ThB | conference draft passing image of the other, or the threshold. It articulates at the brink of Taking off into abstractions that summon the solitary genius may well reversible time, and irreversible time, and defines the training-ground of be one of the tropes in the colonising of the senses. Working in groups availability and mobilisation, similar to professional listening in music. —with conversation as a vehicle of theorising that will host the materials at hand in a satisfactory way—does not have to relinquish the One variant of this conscious readiness—which is sensory, muscular quests and queries of theories, but it will do so by other means, and and bodily—is what I call the art-school phenomenology, which is sure with awareness of the impact of mediations: that is, the designs the to have its equivalents in all forms of learning where apprenticeship still emerge from the domestication of specific joint uses of tools and exists (which, incidentally, is also in the realm of academic research instruments. [not to mention medical science, and of course art & design]). A peer group trained in these ways will have a sense of where a certain work is at, in this particular aspect. It may have indisputable merits yet fail at this point. the HEX-compound: A way of turning failure into merit is to make this visible to oneself, and Basic legend of signatures choose an approach that a certain work that has not reached the [as a support-structure the HEX- maturity of the image—and decantation into the pool of skills—is not wasted. It can hatch in time. It is for this reason, and because the image compound can have several con- enters in odd ways that hinges on the subject matter and the personality of the researcher & scholar, that I have chosen the title of the paper: text specific legends] the peregrinations of the image. It will not turn up the same way twice. Which is why I have chosen to conduct my inquiry on an anthology of essays in experimental archaeology. It is the same procedure that I IMAGE have used in my paper submitted to José Pellini’s session, on sensorial archaeology (T09C). Here, I will concentrate on the book edited by Profs. Gheorghiu and Bouissac (2015) referred to in the beginning of this paper: How do We Imagine the Past?—On Metaphorical Thought, Experientiality and Imagination in Archaeology. I prefer to proceed in this fashion, in order to build a bridge between my own domain of expertise, and what is currently going on in archaeology, in the experimental camp. I define myself as being in a imagination learning process—learning from people and their work, in this part of the field—while making the contributions to its development, with the baggage I bring with me from artistic research at my own institution: opposite term Oslo National Academy of the Arts. So, the studio-crit is my training [field-] materials ground. This is an institution devoted, not to art criticism, but engaging an interaction that can hatch new repertoires. It is non-directive. Yet, inhabiting the work, finding a hatch and sharing it with the maker, can reach the critical threshold where a new repertoire is hatched(11). In art- school, this is not a solitary venture. But a process which Chris Thompson has adequately coined as ‘theoria’—referring to ancient inversion 2 Greek etymologies—and the ‘theoros’, the one who undertakes the inversion 1 journey (Thompson, 2011, Kindle)(12): “The early Greek theoria was not a private matter, an individual intellectual or professional path leading away from home and tradition. It was, instead, a circular journey, beginning and ending in a rootedness and commitment to one's native place, family and community, and supported by them every step of the way. Theory, the journey to new and more comprehensive insight, and practice, the living of daily life, were not divorced. Theorizing did not lead only outward and forward, in the linear style of modern thought, but back to the hearth and the polis.” From this point on, I see the development of theory as something text- based in our time, as somewhat problematic. Conversation (Marcus, 2005)(13) has the potential of a vehicle for theory development, in disciplines as our own, because it is also open to materiality (whether it choices/decisions is defined as objects, practices and also text). Such a theoretical practice, as I imagine it, has the potential of developing peer-to-peer relationships in areas where people are largely used to work on their own. It can change our work. In relation to this, the system of signatures I have developed to extrapolate Lévi-Strauss’ usage of Klein’s groups into the artistic field, is intended as a support-structure for the development of conversation into a vehicle of theory-development. That is, to facilitate a ‘As if studio-crit’—«How do we Imagine the Past?» development within the form of conversation which is devised for “One can see the pattern. Where Rabinow endeavours to move onward entirely practical means, and does not require a further inquiry into to explore the new, Marcus, asks for bridges and connections and formal logic per se (though it, of course, does not forbid id). It is wonders how Rabinow’s project can be integrated into anthropology. intended to give access to the ‘threshold’ as a material. On this level the two meet, challenging and following each other, Agamben (2008)(14)—referring to the work of Enzo Melandri on analogy, thereby gradually exploring—and inventing a common space. The or analogical thinking—defines the signature as a special class of sign, conversations gradually come to consider the virtues and possibilities that operates as a sign within the sign; and that, outside of this context, of the design studio, in which possible aims, concepts, and methods for is silent. Like a lute, it has to be picked up and played. In other words, the anthropology of the contemporary are developed, tested, doubted, in the terms outlined above, it does not lend itself to core operations: it improved, and left in their unfinished state for others to take on. Hence is an instrument and not a tool. Which means that it is more like a the title of our project: Designs for and Anthropology of the musical instrument, than e.g. a navigation device. It is, in some aspects, Contemporary.” completely passive. (Tobias Reese in Rabinow, Marcus, Faubion & Reese, 2008, Kindle)(16) It features the presence or possibility of consciousness in a material form, relating to a specific world of signification. Which, in the sections below, are the contents, field, materials of specific archaeological In the dummy below, the articles in the anthology (supra) have been queries. The use of the signatures will not judge between presence and tagged with what can be seen as their dominants signature. It is not possibility. Since the characteristics of the presence of something like intended divide the anthology into tidy sectors, but to indicate that each consciousness, is never moves completely beyond the possibility. It’s article—in which all the signatures are implemented—still are pitched function is to facilitate to conduct and inquiry in groups. by a dominant one. The chart below does not contain all the papers, for reasons that will be indicated below. The ones that have been included Which is why I have compared the signatures with ‘a signages for way- have been selected because they lend themselves to a possibility study finding in timescapes’. Because it does not take off in speculations on a of this kind. mathematical lingo, in the area of arts and humanities, it does not colonise the senses: though it adds materials, and a special kind of The purpose of the exercise not being to come up with the ultimate material to the senses. It transposes the work of mimesis as a solitary sign-language, but to provide an experimental basis for further query, into the realm of a common: the oecumene of research, where experimentation in this direction. The direction being the type of group- presenting in groups—as we do here—is a preferred method, but not work that does not focus on singular contributions—though these necessarily working in groups(15). provide specific materials to the discussions—but focuses on emergent properties of system (or, the systemic features that can emerge when

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work of different purpose and origin come together, and point out Imagination— conjointly in some direction). The Salinas bowl features the same elements, but they are not combined in the same way, and hence does not produce the optical illusion. The dating of the bowls suggest that the Pecos bowl is somewhat older than the Salinas bowl. The author uses the context to shed light on the aspects in which the two are identical (the making) and different (the composition). She sees the Salinas bowl as an act of remembrance.

Contact— A remake of the Pecos bowl from 2010 constitutes the contact-point from where the author picks up on three dimensions involved in the making of an artefact: the physical characteristics and measurements involving in the making, the general cultural information pertaining to motifs and material culture, the idiosyncrasies of the maker.

Access— It appears that in the contact with the colonising powers, the war-ridden Pecos pueblo had a more articulated history of resistance, than the Salinas community which evolved to become an important settlement of the Catholic Church. She discusses the possibility that the making of the Salinas bowl was an act of remembrance that led up to a rebellion in the native population in 1680.

Experiment— The article is a theoretical experiment in the sense that it draws up a problem of space-time involved in making, where at the interstice between the chaîne opératoire, Bourdieu’s habitus and narrative knowledge the artefact becomes and exists and a space-time without an inside nor an outside, like a Möbius strip coiling endlessly on itself. Exchanges at this level are more transpersonal than interpersonal. In the anthology How do we Imagine the Past? (supra)(17) the article Repertoire— written by Roberta Robin Dods is that one that most obviously relates She ponders on the differences between the intricate to the topic of the reality of the image—she analyses a case of optical knowledges of manufacturing processes—like illusion in ceramics—and its relation to an analytical work that involves ceramics—and the understandings of time and space the senses. Similarly, in his contribution to the anthology, Robin with which they co-exist. The author relates an Skeates highlights how the senses—in his case, smell—can involve episode from her parallel career as an anthropologist: imagination in ways guiding his search to ask questions that help define an informant asked from how far away she had come; the analytical task. she used an orange as a ‘globe’ to show the distance, but it was the simile of a 400 days walk that came Again, Valentina Copat brings the readers’ attention to how contact through. with skills is key to the perceptual acuity needed to make details in Decision— archaeological finds perceptible, that will escape coming generations Two kinds of «dépaysement» come out quite clearly on account of the lack of emphasis on such training in the current in Roberta Robin Dods’ article. She uses the cross- educational systems. As for Paul Bouissac, he points how incomplete pressure between these perspectives to come up with command of data often is supplemented with ideologically motivated a the idea of an inter-subjective space that constitutes narratives, and proposes instead a culture of data-sharing in simulation a worthy subject of inquiry. It brings intelligibility to a experiments. manufactured life-world where not only making proceeds by bricolage, but determines how it Then Jacqui Wood surveys how experimental crafting/making—ranging communicates as a document. from basketry, needle-making, weaving, lighting working materials such Field— as bone, flint, grass, lime-baste, wattle, daube, soft rush and pith—can Her discussion of the two bowls from New Mexico help the research cut clear of blinkered approaches and partial/biased rounds up the broader experiential backdrop, from outlooks into past societies. Dragos Gheorghiu, on the other hand, uses which she develops her article, in an analysis of a GoPro video camera during experimental manufacturing processes, traditions that are carried and transmitted by women. to develop an understanding of ancient skills through augmented reality. The focus that emerges at the level of the field of inquiry also is reflected in the way she approaches it. The kinds of emerging repertoires demonstrated by this approach come Her article is piecemeal in its bricolage, yet holistic in to the point of the kinds of decisions archaeologists face, discussed in the way her materials and her approach are Timothy Darvill’s article. The unilateral emphasis on data-collecting homologous. lead to a blind overproduction of data, while a more wholesome harvest can be achieved by methods of rehabitation and occupation. Finally, Andrea Vianello’s article relates to the core problematic of the archaeological field, as such: the importance of handling to the focality 2. Robin Skeates: «Imagining the Sensuous Cultures of Prehistoric of objects. Malta»

George Nash’s and Xurxo Ayan Vila’s articles have not been included Imagination— This article focusses on sensuality—more specifically here, because the conceptual and practical frameworks proposed in on smell—and articulates a critique of a scholarly them are enfolded into the explanation of the logic and use of the HEX- tradition of analysis that privileges sight. It is the signate in the next section. The function, moreover, of this mock-up connection to mortuary rites, ritual passages from signage is to constitute a preparation for the processing of the articles mortuary caves and pungent burial sites that involve that are submitted to the session on the future archaeology of the smell most directly. However, the imagination of smell senses at WAC-8, in Kyoto. In this synopsis the articles are arranged as based on evidence from findings is a powerful bridge indicated above. to ideas about the past based on these findings.

Evidently, the world does not fall into such neatly divided sectors as Contact— The author’s broad reflections on sensuality in above chart might suggest. It is displayed in this fashion here in order archaeology follow the narrative trail of his fieldworks to familiarise the reader with how that signage works visually. For the on archaeological sites in Malta. He invites the reader same reason the explanation of the signatures—pertaining to their on an imaginary walkabout, which summons the full visual logic—has been placed after the cases, in order to allow the array of human senses that do not add detail to a readers to familiarise themselves with the practice of signage as growing database of facts, but adds to their synthesis sensory containers involved in the analysis of contents, and a notion of situations and life-ways of yore, that demonstrate their virtues in stalking & making paths. prompt analyses of how much of it is in reach of our * senses. Access— 1. Roberta Robin Dods: «Seeking the Mind of the Maker» When he stops to discuss particular sites and their items, it is in order to ponder over research methodologies, and the sensory attitudes that link up Image— The article is a comparative study of ceramics with findings and theories that limit the scope of similar form and motifs from New Mexico: the Pecos archaeology. He discusses Geertz’s (1973**) notion of bowl (16th century) and Salinas bowl (17th century). thick description as a point of access from where The Pecos bowl is unique in that the motif of a bird sensory resources used by people at a given time and painted along the rim, is extended by the motif of a place connect to the significance they had for those human-like silhouette when the angle is changed, people. propulsed by the rotation of the motif along the rim, as though extending from the making of the pottery.

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Experiment— The experimental focus in the article is on creative Decision— She trains herself in the use of transdisciplinary writing and how it provides the occasion not only to perspectives and sensory imagination, but limits span and cross the bounds of literary conventions, but herself to the ones that will hone her analysis and also to «incorporate the senses in imaginative hands-on understanding of the archaeological scenarios intended to stimulate new thoughts and findings. And her approach to how remote and questions about what life felt like in the past.» Which proximal relations may have functioned in the past, is is essentially to shift writing from a meta-linguistic consistent with how theories and observation processing function, to join the action of realigning interlock in her own analysis. They are in both cases the senses. productive.

Repertoire— His wider outlook on experimentation features a Field— The idea that not only utensils are produced and potential of research activities in the future; and at crafted—but also ways of living and societies— present the outline of a methodological repertoire, in indeed brings a different horizon to how social which he foresees «the reconstructions of the design, situations and techniques related to cooking, would production and use of these stone tools might shed have produced social life forms in real time, in the light on their original makers' and users' sensory, and sense of generating an outlook on other groups within especially tactile, engagements with the materiality of the range of experience. Her case for theorising in the such artefacts.» He outlines an agenda. field as an analytical driver in fieldwork services to demonstrate this. Decision— The inventory of the senses is a detailed analysis of the sensory profile of a particular culture, is the focus Imagination The productive relationship between knowledge and of inquiry in Robin Skeates pitch for an archaeology — understanding, transforms imagination into a vehicle of the senses. He argues that the foundation for this of hypothesis (in a context where both the present research direction already exist in what use and query on senses in the past serve to augment archaeologists are studying anyhow, on account of the analytical power). It removes imagination from their empirical concern with detailed description of the realm of empty speculation to feed the parallel food remains, and other residues of human life-forms. development of enskilment and perceptiveness in what remains an empirical discipline. Field— Though his field on present day Malta is based on research on remains from the past, Robin Skeates is Image— In her article the detailed knowledge of finding fuelled singularly interested in the living, and the tracery of by the sense experiences that are contiguous to them, human life-forms of yore, as a living knowledge in the transforms the analysis of cooking-situations and - present of sensory life-worlds in the past. He argues sites, into ethnoscapes, with the value of a plausible for a deep immersion in the realities of the material social currency at the time of their making, and in the evidence which is gathered studied and imagined. A context of our current understanding: the value of the meaningful dialogue between ideas and evidence. mark which is produced without communicative nor instrumental intention, but authenticates exchange. Image— In his sensory inventory of the mortuary complex of al Saflieni [from the 5th-4th millennia b.c.e.] in ! Malta, the cross-pressure between the inventory of findings and the process of exploration yields a locus 4. Paul Bouissac: «The Grounding of Archaeological Representation: for an image that is dislodged from its place From Imagination to Simulation» archaeological discourse—without an inside nor an outside—and acquires a mode of literary existence, Access— The way we imagine the past is not only hostage to that marks the narrative as much as it is related by the form of knowledge we have as breaking members narrative. of the contemporary society, but also the quantity of available data in technologies of storage way beyond the narrative format. With the databases that currently exist the problem of the sample for 3. Valtentina Copat: «The Sensorial Experience of Food Preparation narratives that still convey our knowledge is a core and Consumption in the Late Bronze Age Site of Oratino – La Rocca issue: especially with regard to inherited stereotypes. (Campobasso-Southern Italy)» Experiment— The use of narrative as part of the fieldworking Contact— Here the query into the experience of cooking spurs archaeologist’s tool-bag reframes imagination as an analysis of shape, dimensions and location of simulation experiments. It is in this sense that ceramic vessels. The detailed analysis that drives her computer-simulation can aspire to become the new query constitutes the main contact point to the digs narrative. Simulations allow us to imagine the and finds in the late Bronze Age. She evidences a counter-intuitive; and replace the painstaking efforts level and variety of detail that brings the reader of the human brain to manage the current surfeit of beyond common sense. While her query into data and overcome stereotypes and ideological experiential dimensions of the past also shows how prejudiced narratives. they would compare. Repertoire— Currently simulation is used to forecast future Access— The context in which we live influences our daily developments: «Simulation software, though, is imagination and in consequence the way we observe mostly used to anticipate the future. These programs the past: we are losing «…from generation to enable the experimenters to visualise the long-term generation, the skills and experience that were effects of variables which are virtually introduced into available until a few decades ago, from manual a system. Ecologists thus can predict climate abilities, knowledge of plant and animal cycles, evolution.» But the power of simulation to transcend perception of territory, to the capacity of orientation the limits of imagination also applies to the past. in space and time.» It affects how we collect data, Decision— how much and whether. To forestall a stock of knowledge based on sketchy contextual outlines and representations based on Experiment— Her experiment lies significantly in how an unsupported assumptions, archaeologists should anthropological query will add to the analysis of bend their efforts: «The first step should be the findings and spur research that is needed in our merging of data coming from the collections of knowledge of ancient societies. It interlinks the prehistoric artefacts and the recording of rock arts analysis of situations related to cooking—related to which have been a constant preoccupation of senses—and the ways in which group differences may prehistorians since the inception of this branch of have been experienced and told. Whether the archaeology.» contacts between the groups were indirect or direct. Field— In some sense the author prefers the terra nulla/- Repertoire— Though her analysis demonstrates a considerable incognita approach to the field and a tabula raza of repertoire in her knowledge in the above mentioned assumptions of what we will find. In other words, areas (manual abilities, plant and animal cycles, brings the scientific values of the laboratory perception of territory, spatio-temporal orientation), experiment —and their confinement in controlled her point is that the limits of our current repertoire is conditions—unto the study of open and complex also defines our limits not only in analysing the past, dynamics with a command of an unlimited store of but even in perceiving and recording data relevant to facts, at the human scale, to come up with simulation forms of knowledge beyond our scope. beyond human imagination.

Contact— In the scope of this article our contact with the past and future is better prompted by the counter-intuitive scenarios that come out of computer simulation, than with a piecemeal command of facts and cultural and ideological assumptions (e.g., on how homo sapiens, or creatures anatomically closer to modern humans, overtook the Neanderthals in a history of evolution where the latter are divested of humanity).

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Imagination— 6. Dragos Gheorghiu: «Immersive Approaches to Built Contexts. In this scope, human imagination—fed by counter- Constructing Archaeological Images and Imaginary» intuive scenarios—is prompted to make a certain number of priorities with regard to data-base management and directing further archaeological Repertoire— The discussion of repertoires is brought to a new level research. In the author’s perspective one might say in the anthology with Prof. Gheorghiu’s attempt to that the role of the experiment is ubiquitous, and that involved digitised 3D to the immersion in traditional the outlook of human experience shifts to data-base contexts. Here the notion of repertoire departs from management and field-operations carried out with the focus on research methodologies, and first precision. practice learning, to focus on how the layered structures of archaeological finds in V dastra " Image— Our imagery generated by such arrangements our (Southern Romania) can be matched by layering scientific culture does not have to be credible in order museum displays. to be valid. The resilience of the image and the rigour of the procedures that generate it creates a validity Decision— The author proceeds to weave computer-based for an image that exists in its own time. The time of technologies into the fabric of real-time experience, simulation. The article brings the reader squarely into whether involved in acquiring new knowledge or the dilemmas of human belief: believing too much, understanding archaeology as a process. The analysis believing too little and the logic of contingencies. of materials, technologies and skills are driven by an inquiry into the knowing body. Imagining the past and conceiving the knowing in a contemporary perspective are therefore joined in the framework of this article. 5. Jacqui Wood: «A Holistic Approach to Experimental Archaeology» Field— The archaeological site here becomes subject to the Experiment— In her article, the author relates an iterary of variety of staging used in a museum. The difference experimental making that closer to the contemporary between emic and etic perspectives—i.e. «native» and approach of the designer than the craftsperson of «foreign»—are no longer confined in the finery of yore, in the sense that the rich variety of making anthropological discussions, but to a demonstration processes in which she engages are carried out with that makes it available for the discussion of a broader the joint ambition of learning the skills and exploring audience than one limited to specialists (and closer to the process. Her experiments are characterised by the etic/emic meaning in linguistics). her facility at acquiring skills, but also by first practice Experiment— The topics of computer-supported 3D simulation and learning. immersion are broad and, to some extent, Repertoire— The fund of learning-outcomes reaped from the autonomous fields of inquiry. The author’s objective is experimental making is significantly concerned with to combine them in experiment: «This is the reason contingencies both in the context and in the process why I have searched for alternative methods of of making. Together with her repertoire of ancient representation and immersion, which would allow the skills grows a repertoire of «finding out», which in her user to develop his/her own image of the subject perspective, is a repertoire just as important to experienced.» The experimental immersion in a understand ancient cultures as the set of skills, foreign body. techniques and materials recorded as «data». Access— The experiment grew out of a concern with studying Decision— Her inquiry in the article focusses on the first hand technologies together with their cultural context (i.e. experience of navigating between what is enough to both the emic and the etic): «The approach to make skills, techniques and materials come together imagining the layers of occupation of the site started and what is sufficient for the purposes at hand. In with experimentation with regard to the materiality of other words to use skills, techniques and materials to each layer, i.e. of their characteristic technologies.» explore the realm of human contingencies The wish to establish a cross-emic/etic cogency in constrained by these. A query into human cognition, this regard, is also the point of access. beyond the short-lived and brutish stereotypes of the Contact— The point being that between the emic-practice and past. the etic-context there is not an abysmal gap: «Another reason for selecting V dastra was our goal of working Field— A field-observation: «Whilst as far as I know there is " no evidence in the archaeology for such a practice I with the young villagers whose imaginary had not yet am sure that someone might have thought of the same been totally altered by the cliches of the modem idea in prehistory when they saw how well it did the epoch.» What is absent from our practice is often job with a minimum amount of effort. If one does not present in our context, and vice versa. This is the try all manner of research such as this one is not analytical reason to distinguish between access and going to discover the plethora of activities that might contact. have been practiced throughout prehistory.» Imagination «A result of this augmented reality (Azuma 1997; — Access— Using anomaly as her point of access to where Azuma et al. 2001), or mixed reality process practices of making take a different direction than one (Papagiannakis et al. 2005; Costanza et al. 2009; which is confined to single techniques, she notes: «If Benford and Giannachi 2011: 165 ft) which combined one is blinkered in one discipline such as textiles or the phenomenological experience of the body with the ceramics one sees a settlement situation through a dematerialised experience of the space in Virtual very narrow window. Recycling is not a new concept Reality into a new type of embodiment.» Indeed, it and so many broken and discarded artefacts would cultivates the imagination of being inside a foreign have been utilised into new tools and products.» body.

Contact— Contingencies of making run across time: «Most Image— Hence the imagery: «I used an HD Hero 1080 head students acquiring spinning skills find that they can mounted video camera, to record the images exactly easily spin an even yam at their own personal as seen by the actor-experimentalist, and to erase the thickness, some very fine yarn and some much actor-narrator duality, thus offering only the emic thicker. Whereas a skilled spinner can spin any yarn vision of the performer […] the observer sees and thickness to order, the average spinner tends to spin moves through the body of a different person, always at the same thickness. I suggest that therefore generating a situated cognition as well as an there were four distinct spinners making the yarn for embodiment in a body other than that of the the hood.» receptor.»

Imagination— The most detailed case in her article, which is rich in examples of making, is the manufacture of a chevron striped hood from the Orkney islands, weaved from 7. Timothy Darvill: «Observation, Analogy, Experimentation, and different thicknesses of yarn. Her analytical focus on Rehabitation during Archaeological Excavations» the detail making process, fuel an imagination of people as makers: «It is a popular misconception I Decision— This article directs the reader’s attention to some feel to assume that prehistoric people were so very examples of decisions made in an archaeological dig different to ourselves.» —e.g. in Billtown Quarry Site, in the Isle of Man—to supplement the stratigraphic sequence of recording Image— The connectivity of anomalies and the contact zone of the spatial disposition, with other forms rehabitation human contingencies define a realm between random of ancient grounds: the rationale being that time of processes and cultural beliefs, summoning an image the excavation is disproportionally more lengthy than of dynamics and energies, where indexicality and the social time of life spent: now and in the past. mimetics combine and narrow down the options to those that our found useful. This image featuring an human œcumene of making—poiesis—is one which is clearly recognisable/pervasive at art schools.

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Field— It adds to a field under conditions where: «Events that Repertoire— In the broader scope: «The chaîne operatoire used to took place within a matter of minutes, hours or days produce an artefact, or the physical and mental can sometimes take weeks and months to investigate process of acquiring an object are as important as the and here we have to be careful not to invest aspects original ideas from which the object took shape or the of the past with an importance inflated by the efforts reasons for its consumption. The material culture is needed to comprehend them in the present.» What physically present, and as such has mediated through rehabitation adds to the site is a context of social human senses that have not changed significantly in contingency, rather than adding new research the last few millennia.» practices. Experiment— Description: «No interpretation or generalisation can Repertoire— The idea of rehabitation on excavation sites is not be satisfactory if the data gathering process has been based on a interpretation of the past, but rather poor. […] By describing the gesturing and thinking stimulate such interpretations. This way of that accompany the handling of artefacts, it may be proceeding forestalls ready interpretive agendas, that possible to improve the description of artefacts and are prompted by theoretical discourse: «At the same ultimately their interpretation. This method is best time there are signs of a regress into increasingly applied with artefacts that have been cleaned, are abstract theory where the model provides the ready to be stored or are on display.» interpretation long before any real data are introduced.» Access— The context of use and making: «The most pressing concern when studying pottery, and material culture Experiment— In this setting, the experiment can involve the senses in archaeology in general, is categorising artefacts. analytically: «Brought together these strands of Placing an artefact within a category is often thinking provide an active approach to rehabitation considered the same as explaining it. […] Although where actual and authentic materials can be used to categorisation provides an important way to partially recreate space and place within an actual understand artefacts, it is not the best way of archaeological site as a means of stimulating presenting artefacts which are not mass-produced by interpretation and reducing the range of possibilities machines.» to a selection of probabilities.» His concern is for accountability. Contact— «I have handled many ancient pots and other artefacts during my career, approaching them in Access— Hence the insight: «Critical here is the idea that different ways: as a curiosity, a mystery, an ancient excavation is not simply the mechanistic uncovering, version of a similar modem artefact, or as a ritualistic recording and sampling of archaeological deposits object, i.e. a category of artefacts on its own that but a creative process (Carver 1989; 2009: 375). cannot be rationalised in meaningful or "scientific" Excavation, recording, and sampling require the terms. For instance, miniature vessels, if they were interpretation of deposits and remains as the process not toys, then they may be easily categorised as non- unfolds, and it begins at the edge of a trowel, knife, functional.» spade, shovel, pick-axe, or JCB bucket.» Imagination— «a glittering crown could be imagined on the head of Contact— What appears with a singular clarity from this article a person seated on a throne […] Was it the focal is that there are not data ‘out there’ ready to be point, or just a piece of the kit? Was the person collected, but that data (pace Augustin, in Todorov, wearing it wise and just or a scary dictator? Could an 1977*) are crafted in one way or the other, in more/ individual get close to such a person, enough to see less accountable ways. The author contributes with a their face, or would the crown and similar perspective where a proposal for accountable crafting paraphernalia be seen from a distance, almost is explored in broad daylight; keeping in awe the merging their attributes to those of the figure wearing difference between data and information. it?»

Imagination— Hence the imagination, in this case, is located in the Image— The image, in this work, is the ‘intra-subjective’ decisions that are made to temporary occupy the space-time linking the human body and the artefact: grounds of an archaeological dig with current «The method presented here assumes that a human contingencies (be it to drive poles in the ground body, bonded together with an original artefact, forms where there are holes, or to organise a party where a single entity that does not change significantly over the grounds appear the mesh of social closeness and time and is not tied to a specific body. Thus, the in night conditions). The point being that there is no entity can be reproduced diachronically, and it offers assumption prior to the decision of what this should the possibility to reconstruct the past.» lead to.

Image— The image is emergent: «The light from the first burning fire in the slight hollow was fully contained by the low earthwork with almost no spillage into the surrounding landscape. Anyone standing outside the * henge saw a bright disc of light in a sea of darkness, an effect that would certainly have been enhanced if the whole internal surface had been skimmed in light- «Mémoires d’outre-tombe» blue clay.» The workings of a monument. It is said about Chateaubriand (1768-1848) that he at first hadn’t thought he would write his memoirs. But then, one day, walking in the Montboissier park he heard the song of a thrush, which reminded him 8. Andrea Vianello: «Reliving the Past through Senses and of his childhood ant prompted him to go back working on this task. Imagination while Researching Material Culture» Following the same vein, I thought my flyers—a favourite format for a long time—had lived their time, and were about to wane into the flow of Field— In the broader field «…modern humans can learn time-tide. But then I came to Kyoto, and discovered their relation to the something about the ancient use of artefacts by signatures in the HEX-model. acting themselves as instruments of research by This relationship is more concise than the one loosely applied on the recording their use of ancient artefacts. The chapters in Gheorghiu and Bouissac that I have parsed above. And the experience resulting from such tests and practices signatures are indeed intended and adapted for work on the ground, have relevance in the present, but they also and not on finished academic papers. Moreover, they are also intended reproduce the past with adequate precision. By at bringing the question on the table—what designs can we think of handling objects, or replicas where handling an signage for way-finding in timescapes, that would contribute to indicate original would be inappropriate, archaeologists have the footsteps and paths of larger communities than the ones doing and a chance to experience the materiality of the object…» owning the research [if we think that theory-development from Decision— Sensory archaeology is a specialised approach that empirical materials can be developed through conversation]? needs to connect to the core of the field, the author Levi-Strauss’ canonical phrase that stones, plants and animals are good states: «Many theoretical approaches in archaeology to think—which translated from French ‘bonnes à penser’ also could are borrowed from social sciences and they are also be apt to think, potential thinkers, or the servants of thinking— legitimate methods in archaeological research, could be translated to signatures: which ones are good in the sense that provided that the resulting discussions remain we can vouch for them. Here the connection and distinction between informed of the boundaries of data-driven narrative natural and cultural history comes to a point of clarity: good signage ends and expanded narratives.» would have to involve art in some way, while the mode of connection should be the way we can connect to stones, plants and animals. I have no opinion whatsoever as to whether I have achieved this. This is at level of signage/signatures as containers. At the level of content, the difference between imagination and images is similar to the difference between the works of man and the works of nature, and this is also where Benjamin moves at the brink of natural history (cf, Buck- Morss, 1991)(18). But in his perspective, the natural historian is not only

fifth element T14-J ThB | conference draft given to the analysis of the works of nature, but also the remains, residues and ruins of human pasts. In this sense, his concept of natural history bypasses that of Goethe, owing to his particular take on and contribution to dialectical materialism. The dialectical image is at the brink, or threshold, to the other. Not the other as in you are someone else than me—and vice-versa—but the other as the third. When we are here at WAC we may be so absorbed by professional dialogues, and various drifts of thought, that we gradually grow forgetful of the people who are not here (past or present), even though this is basic to a number of our practices and included into our policies and strategic goals. The openness to the third is rare—not in the sense that it is infrequent but that it is valuable, and that something we stop at. But we could benefit from reminders. The signatures I have introduced in this paper, and tested out experimentally during the days in Kyoto, is a candidate to such reminders. Not only in live fora like WAC, but also in regard of other similar attempts with an historical precedent, like the signatures used by Benjamin in his researcher-scholar cross index. The experiments in Kyoto has sensitised me, or tune me into, their importance not only as a mysterious ways of annotating his own work, but as an instrument of thinking in itself. It is necessary, in incomplete works like the Arcades Project, to include it into an integral edition of his works. ______

(1) Methodologically, this paper is written in preparation for my acting as convenor and discussant at the ‘future archaeology of the T14J session at WAC-8 in Kyoto. In the aftermath of the WAC-8 session, the learning outcomes reaped from the conference will result in a review and rewriting of this paper. This version of the paper therefore should be read as a proposal that will be iterated in a new copy after WAC-8. The explanation of this approach will emerge in due process from the following.

(2) Beckett, Samuel (2009) Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still: WITH Ill Seen Ill Said AND Worstward Ho AND Stirrings Still, Faber & Faber.

(3) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (2006 [1810]) Theory of Colours, Dover Publications.

(4) Pallasmaa, Johani (2005) The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, John Wiley & Sons.

(5) Miller, Daniel (2009) The Comfort of Things, Polity Press.

(6) Waldrop, Mitchell (1992) Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, Viking

(7) Bergson, Henri (2012 [1908]) Le souvenir du présent et la fausse reconnaissance, Paris: PUF.

(8) Klein, Felix (1974) Le programme d’Erlangen, Paris: Gauthiers- Villars.

(9) Pratt, Mary Louise (2005) «Arts of the Contact Zone» in Bartholomae, David & Petrosky, Anthony (eds.), Ways of Reading – An Anthology for Writers, Boston & New York: New York/St. Martin’s, pp. 517-530.

(10) Shryock, Andrew (1987) Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan, Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies, University of California Press.

(11) Rogoff, Irit (2003) From Criticism to Critique to Criticality, in transform.eipcp.net, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/rogoff1/en/ base_edit

(12) Thompson, Chris (2011) Felt—Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama, University of Minnesota Press

(13) Marcus, George & Mascarhenas, Fernando (2005) Occasiõ—The Marquis and the Anthropologist, Alta Mira Press.

(14) Enzo Melandri in Giorgio Agamben (2008) Signatura rerum, Paris: Vrin. Cf, also Agamben, Giorgio «Archeologia di un’archeologia» in Melandri, Enzo (2004) La linea e il circolo—Studio logico- philosophico sull’analogia, Macerata: Quodlibet.

(15) Bion, Wilfred (1998) Experiences in Groups, Routledge.

(16) Rabinow, Paul; Marcus, George; Faubion, James & Reese, Tobias (2008) Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Duke University Press.

(17) Gheorghiu, Dragos & Bouissac, Paul (2015) How do we Imagine the Past? On Metaphorical Thought, Experientiality and Imagination in Archaeology, Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing.

(18) Buck-Morss, Susan (1991) The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, the MIT-press.

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other samples that hopefully will turn out to include a larger number, in the context of the conversations that I have in mind before WAC-08. This take on ‘conversation’ follows extends from what I provisionally will call “the phenomenology of the art school”(3). The phenomenology in question is linked to a norm of emptying the mind in search of a ‘ground zero’ of perception”—a radical state of availability & mobilisation—at which formal qualities of an art-work are allowed to affect a specialised audience as directly as possible, without entry-assumptions of received notions on genre and style, historical precedents and discursive categories. This starting-point will then prompt a critique, in view of hatching new repertoires or previously unseen potential. In anthropological terms this ‘art-school’ phenomenology features a case of what anthropologist Fredrik Barth(4) called a ‘tradition of knowledge’ (F, Barth, 2002)(5). In these terms, the said phenomenology does not result from a methodological reduction—as the working assumption of a philosophical project (E. Husserl)—but as a skill for which there is a tradition in art-schools. It is a skill developed through practice and through the participation in “crits” which some years back was proposed as an approach for teaching ethnography by George Marcus (2010)(6). Using “studio-crits” to develop another set of skills: those of fieldwork. Hence the possibility of a bridge between two domains of enskilment: 1) the enskilment in the availability and mobilisation at the “ground zero” of perception [art-school phenomenology]; 2) the enskilment in fieldwork as an art or a craft. Attempts at theorising from these foundations of professional practice are e.g. found in 1) architectural theories that link up the legacy outlined above, with phenomenological theory in philosophy (examples of this are found in Johani Pallasmaa(7) —whose present relevance in art-schools is undeniable; and Christian Norberg Schulz(8)); 2) in Richard Sennett’s much quoted essay on The Craftsman (2009)(9). If a special prominence is given here to Walter Benjamin’s French version of an essay on the narrator and -narrative (1933(10)), it is on account of its contribution to the academic precedents in Richard Sennett’s approach(11). That is, if seen as extensions of an art-school phenomenology—that can be compared to the education in listening, which is part of the professional education among musicians—that not only departs from a skills-based phenomenological practice, but also enacts it in how it develops an insight into the workings of a narrative in text, extending from experience as a practice-based skill: phenomenology ϕ. Of course, this point of departure in narrative—rather than discourse— has but a limited relevance in a broader inquiry on sensoriality in archaeology. So, it is introduced with the expectation that it will have a comparative relevance as an empirical case. According to a notion of comparison, facilitated and hosted by conversation, which in turn afford an approach to theory-development in which empirical materials are not set aside, and neglected, but accommodated in such ways that theoretical insights are never left to abstraction, but take place in proximity of its materials (and as a host in the two inflections of the term). This is the background for my having chosen to pitch this essay with a counterpoint. On the first page, the system of signatures that Benjamin used an ‘ordering system’(12) (Schmidt & Wagner, 2004(13)), developed The coloured palette of signatures used by Benjamin for organising his for the combined purpose to navigate in the archive—as a material materials in visual cross-references: particularly in the manuscript version of artefact in its own right—and to classify the findings in his historical the Arcades Project (1991) [Germ. Das Passasgenwerk], which is an study of capitalism: in the Arcades Project, the materials for the study unfinished book/archive. It is language of signatures as embodied ordering the urban transformation of Paris from 1830 to the 1870s, a stretch of system. It is regularly removed from the printed editions of the Arcades 40 years when Paris developed to become the Capital of Modernism. Benjamin was working on this from 1927 to his death in 1940. 13 years. Project. Beneath: «Die Mühsal der Flucht» [Eng. the hardships of the escape]. Though the signatures appear in many of his manuscripts—particularly the manuscripts of the Arcades Project (cf, f.n.8)—they have subtracted from the major integral publications of the Arcades Project(14). The published versions are accordingly printed matter in black-and-white. However, we must step gingerly, as according to the prevailing practices in the field of book-printing—which is now under change, on account of technological developments—they were not added. So, from the point of view of Benjamin’s manuscript practice The Decolonisation of the Senses they have been subtracted, whereas from the point of view of the book printers they were not added. Preliminary Considerations on a Modern Legacy At the time they were printed in their first editions, an archive in the bound format of a book, the colours would have been expensive to the Preliminaries point of reducing the public availability and -circulation considerably. However, if considered as germane to workings of the Arcades Project I have been invited into this forum [TJ 09-C] as a social anthropologist. —as an abacus of sorts, a technological invention that transforms an All of my research are queries into the contemporary. It might be part archival compilation into the body of a collection [that starts living when of current the expectations in archaeology that social anthropologists put to use]—then there is simply a potentially important aspect of the are valid conversation-partners that can probe the applicability of work put into the Arcades Project by Benjamin, that was later been left anthropological perspectives on the findings in archaeological digs; out: the one that involves the senses and hinges on artistic practice. thus, conceived as fieldwork-sites. A tantalising possibility. However, I will here proceed in the opposite way. By deriving an approach from That is, a contraption (Marcus) made of shapes and colours that current discussions in sensorial archaeology on a modern “archive dig”, provides the compounded archival material with a body, the I will seek to probe and query the fruitfulness of this approach to my accordingly constitutes the Arcades Project as a ‘body of knowledge’; colleagues in archaeology. transforming a compiled research material into a corpus. If seen as an artistic choice, the alternatives of adding or removing the system of There are two working-assumptions that I bring into the bargain by thus signatures from the volume, to some degree corresponds with the proceeding: a) that the contemporary need not be a time-frame of what addition or subtraction of a body (in the sense that the Arcades Project is near in time (Agamben, 2006)(1); b) that conversation is a constitutes a corpus of a) findings and b) knowledge; which evidently contemporary vehicle and container of theory-development (cf, Marcus not the same). It is a case in point of colonisation: a sensory subtraction 2005)(2). And that, correspondingly, the present text is conceived as a for the purposes of print. ‘conversation piece’, in the sense of being authored with the purpose of Here a case could be made for the hegemony of print—in the sense of bringing it up in conversation, as a material sample, in a collection of text—in an increasingly visual culture throughout the 20th century. But

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THE FIRST AGITATOR to the THE YOUNG COMRADE young comrade: unseen: And he said; In the interests of If you are caught you will be Communism shot; and since you will be In agreement with the progress recognized, our work will have of the proletarian masses been betrayed. Therefore we Of all lands must be the ones to shoot you Consenting to the and cast you into the lime-pit, revolutionising of the world. so that the lime will burn away all traces of you. And yet we THE THREE AGITATORS: ask you: Do you know any way Then we shot him and out? Cast him down into the lime-pit And when the lime had THE YOUNG COMRADE: No. swallowed him up We turned back to our work. THE THREE AGITATORS: And we ask you: Do you agree with THE CONTROL CHORUS: us? And you work was successful You have propagated Pause The teachings of the Classics The ABC of Communism. THE YOUNG COMRADE: Yes. Berthold Brecht (2001 THE THREE AGITATORS: We [1929/1930: 33-34]) “The also ask you: What shall we do Measures Taken”, with S. with your body? Dudow and Eisler [music], in The Measures Taken and Other THE YOUNG COMRADE: You Lerhstücke, Arcade Publishing. must cast me into the lime-pit, THE THREE AGITATORS: No.” he said. * THE THREE AGITATORS: We asked: Do you want to do it Berthold Brecht (2001 alone? [1929/1930]: 10] “The Measures Taken”, with S. Dudow and THE YOUNG COMRADE: Help Eisler [music], in The Measures me. Taken and Other Lerhstücke, Arcade Publishing. THE THREE AGITATORS: Rest your head on our arm…

… Close your eyes.

Excerpt from Konvolut J on Baudelaire in Walter Benjamin’s the Arcades Project (Germ. edition [ed. Rolf Tiedemann 1991, Surhkamp]). Printed matter: black & white. the detail of how a certain range of artistic choices extend the phenomenology !, which will be our focus here (while ones linked to phenomenology ! are likely to me of greater interest for this community artistic methods in research will be subject to a separate treatment in of readers, than indulging in overarching generalisations. The point an essay for TJ14). Which entails a query into added in and subtracting being that the scope of artistic choices largely exceed the ranks of in the realm of mediations when they are understood as something else professional artists and designers; with the number of consequences than a decorum. that yet follow from artistic choices. We must attempt to clearly distinguish between 1) making artistic decisions and 2) being trained at them(15). Overview At this juncture a certain caution with regard to visual sensing is well This provides a background for developing a platform for advised: as the outline above serves to demonstrate that many of the conversations, by using a book-survey as an exampler to feature observations that can be made in regard of a) the role of sensing in different positions on the matter sensorial archaeology, grown out of an research, and b) the development of theoretical understandings, are experience-base linked to empirical inquiries, rather than featuring a already made here on account of vision. If one wishes to make a case of range of abstract positions. The volume selected for this purpose is the the cultural hegemony of vision—for which there are strong arguments still recent anthology of essays (2015) edited by our host—Prof. José —one must nevertheless avoid the conflation between writing and e.g. Pellini—and his associates, Andrés Zarankin and Melisa A. Salerno, colour [alongside drawing, charting and the development & use of entitled Coming to Senses: Topics in Sensory Archaeology. The signatures]. And we may avoid some confusion by turning to the image, emphasis in this first section (infra) will be on the de/colonisation of the at this point. senses. Since the image—e.g. in linguistics and semiotics—is not limited to the In order to hone a discussion relating to mediation—since a range of visual sense, nor to visual images. And when the concept of image, in the above essays involve the use of current media that are themselves these fields, ranges from ‘acoustic image’ to the semiotic qualia that subject to archaeological inquiries—I will go into some depth of Erik determine internal states in human being, the ‘image’ serves to Born’s essay (2016), that seeks to compare and discuss mediaeval and determine how a whole range of cultural codes—in social life-forms we early modern mediality, in the article “Media Archaeology, Cultural know, in space and time, from around the world—“graze” off our Techniques and the Middle Ages: An Approach to the Study of Media neurological senses in highly selective terms, to determine what we talk before the Media”. Here the aim is to focus on ‘artistic choices’ about as ‘sensing’ (in terms that beg to be clarified). Fortunately, there extending from phenomenology , to a) define and b) approach a is not semiotic enclosure that succeed in keeping human sensing ! captive. particular dilemma between choices that solve problems and such that yield conclusions. Even if there are aspects of sensing which is determined by human imagination—both at the individual and the cultural level—the image In the third part—“Benjamin’s Grave” refers to Taussig’s book (2006)(18) includes basic uncoded contents that are locked to materiality. When with the same title—I will attempt to define and approach a “wicked problem”: choices, present or past, that neither lead a to a conclusion the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev (1943)(16) spanned the boundaries of linguistics—extending into semiotics—he considered the outer nor brings a solution to a problem, but in which all the focus i on a situation where the addition or removal of sensory mediations boundaries to give unto perspectives beyond linguistics (Eco, 1975)(17), which requires knowledge that would have to combine physics on the constitutes the entire dilemma(19). Where making oneself available and mobilised for the perceptual ground zero— phenomenology — one hand, and social anthropology on the other hand. The question that ! I want to ask is whether this combination might be found in constitutes the (artistic) choice. That is, placing oneself in a monadic archaeology. spot of neither-nor where the image will make specific claims before the general irresolution(20). Evidently, to be brief, this combination features in knowledge of e.g. carbon-dating in combination with cultural organisation in human life- forms of yore. But, as I have attempted to argue above, Hjelmslev’s list could advantageously be increased to include aspects of artistic enskilment—the ones linked to experience, extending from

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A Synoptic Replay—Positions in Sensorial Archaeology way Hr. Bruch dealt with a group of natives, demonstrates the workings a certain colonial regimen in the categorisation of people. London, February 2, 1861 Categories run deeper than grouping people into locals and colonisers. Dear George, Haber shows how the decisions he makes to accomplish and conclude his research mission—collecting and retrieving natural history objects— Mary and I are worried about you. Maybe you have stayed too constitute powerful mediations through which locals are defined long in the forest, and it is time for you to come back. I will prepare epistemologically (they inherit their ancestors’ [cultural] patrimony and everything for your return. I beg you to stop this madness. Your position their social [cultural] difference), while the colonisers are defined at the university will be secured. What you need is to get married and ontologically: in other words, they inherit their ancestors’ (economic) have kids. Mary knows the Mayor’s daughter. She is single and cooks like patrimony, which in turn determines their social being. He charts a class of mediations that facilitate Carlos Bruch’s conclusions. an angel. She loves our stories. Come back and we can arrange everything for you.” He then contrasts what he qualifies as ‘epistemic violence’ with an alternative approach, in which local practices and research activities (“Letters from a Past Present” in Coming to Senses, 2015: 5). develop alongside; and the local practices cleave to the research activities, in such a way that they collude (i.e., in unstable compounds Coming to Senses arguably ends where the TJ09 session starts, and in further query). Local ideas and customs thereby became involved in puts me—commenting the anthology— José Alberione Dos Reis shoes, a process of preparing an archaeological dig, scoped by Haber to but in reverse order walking backwards: starting with Alejandro Haber’s recognise local land-rights and include the regimen of customs that essay “Making Sense out of the Senses: Thingness, Writing, and would come with such an act as digging a hole in the ground, to query Time”—since it hits the three key-words posted together with this the past in the presence of spiritual mediators (antiguos) to that past. session (Sensorial Archaeology, Senses, Decolonising), and ending up with Andrés Zarankin’s piece “Archaeology of a Tear: Delusions in a One may ask: what would be achieved if the two instances of mediation Tent in a Stormy Day in Antarctica.” When reading through the book, I —to which Carlos Bruch’s story, as related by Haber, and Haber’s own found that a reading against the sequence to yield a preparation for story, stand as tokens—are two different types of mediation. That is, on TJ-09C. the one hand the mediations that facilitate concluding (what should be selected for and discarded from a collection of natural history The prologue to the volume—“Letters from a Past Present”—could objects?), on the other hand the mediations that facilitate problem- have been placed either in the middle, at the end or in the beginning of solving (i.e., how to conduct a dig in such a way that a richer cultural the book. Since it posits, in its narrative function of pre-history to the material is generated as a ground-work for a dig, conducted much like anthology, the basic terms of a problem the provides the dimensions of anthropological field-research)? As we shall see, this is a recurring comparison, in the sense of an invitation to compare as actively as dilemma/gap. possible in analysing the articles separately(21). Indeed, a historical correspondence between a certain George, travelling with his Hence the question: what kind of mediation facilitates queries in which expedition in the Amazon, with his Alphonso back in London, features being-in-relation constitutes crux of the matter, that would combine George’s Bildungsjourney into his senses, local bonding and the two with the type of mediation that facilitates a conclusion (that may be friends drifting apart . required to discuss the in-relation with a group of people—e.g., research peers—who did not partake of the relation)? In other words: The elements that are adjoined to George’s ways of knowing—that also what are the designs for a sensorial archaeology that will afford not will transform them in the 4-year period (1959-1863), while he sustained only the inclusion of the senses in our ways of knowing, but actually his correspondence with Alphonso—are precisely the ones that demanding it? Lourdes Conde Feitosa and Pedro Paulo Funari’s essay Alphonso zealously thinks should be removed from a scientific inquiry, on “Feeling the Roman Skin: Unsettled, Conformed and Plural Bodies” and from which a researcher like George should abstain (both for serves to hone this question. reasons of intellectually integrity, morality and sanitation). In the anthropological colloquial lingo could hold that George “went bush”. This chapter pays tribute to how carefully the introductory exchange But what is that? There are similar tendencies reflected in Walter between George and Alphonso was selected to prompt the reader on Benjamin’s correspondence(22)… the lateral drift in his intellectual the comparative dimension that finds different inflections in each of the friendships. articles and makes them readable, almost as chapters in a book. As the authors follow the trail of documents on how skin was experienced by In writing this essay, it is timely to make this point: drifting off to the humans of different classes and stations in Ancient Roman life— arts—in intellectual Europe—has some points in common with “going spanning the topics of bodies and skin, feminine beauty, the aesthetics bush” while doing fieldwork abroad. It can have very similar of the male universe, and the realm of human feelings—the dividing line connotations of corruption of character, moral disaster and intellectual between the ruling class, their servants and slaves too is determined. impurity(23). For this reason, the correspondence between George and Alphonso features the gradual process, a movement of internal change, The women of high virtue and standing would celebrate the whiteness in a friendship. Which is almost archetypical for a change, of a certain of their skin—being sheltered by domestic lives and relieved of sunny type, in a relationship based on friendship. Which is why it provides the outdoors activities—distinguishing them from working-class women, anthology with a ‘wandering viewpoint’ in terms laid out by Wolfgang who would be tanned and lustful. Distinguished males, however, would Iser (1974: 116)(24): be tanned through athletic activities—a hygienic regimen also preparing them for the battle-field—and poets as Ovid would at that time “Every articulate reading moment entails a switch of celebrated the merits and attraction of skars on a male body (from perspective, and this constitutes an inseparable combination of wounds received in battle). Eloquence and skars could make up for a differentiated perspectives, foreshortened memories, present lack of male beauty in both his young and especially old age. modifications, and future expectations. Thus, in the time-flow of the reading process, past and future continually converge in the present In the present discussion, it is interesting to note how bringing gender moment, and the synthesising operations of the wandering viewpoint into the bargain can greatly facilitate the demonstration of how the enable the text to pass through the reader’s mind as an ever-expanding categorisation of people—beyond belonging to different groups and network of connections. This also adds the dimension of space to that having different identities, defining their modes and ways of being— of time, for the accumulation of views and combinations gives us the works, in some sense, in the terms laid out by e.g. Bourdieu (1979, cf, illusion of depth and breadth, so that we have the impression that we f.n. 23) as the compound defined both by the sexual division of labour are actually present in a real world.” and the division of sexual labour. In the sense that the mediations that enhance being-in-relation (the poetics of love and attraction) and the This is not what is contained in the prologue—the correspondence—but mediations that facilitate the mingling of the “right” sort of people, rather illustrates its intertextual impact on the anthology, or, if you will, conjoin. what the “Letters of a Past Present” does to the readability to the rest of the anthology. It helps to prompt a synoptic reading. Starting with But at what level? In the article “Sensing the Past: The Sensorial Alejandro Haber’s piece (ibid). It is of particular importance to my Experience in Experiential Archaeology by Augmenting the Perception present purposes since it deals with some rather tricky issues of of Materiality” Dragos Gheorghiu provides the reader with materials mediation. that are particularly rich in mediations: both the ones facilitating problem-solving, and the ones prompting conclusions. In addition, He draws the reader’s attention to the etymological roots of the concept however, he adjoins a third class of mediation linked to ritual practice, of vestigium, which denotes at once the foot—an extremity of human instantiated by evoking a core practice in Polish post-dramatic theatre body—and the footprint—at the extremity of human movement. director Jerzy Grotowsky, who determined elementary techniques that The choice of this particular term cannot fail to be of relevance to a would conjure a ritual trope whether on/off stage (Slowiak & Cuesta inquisitive human endeavour such as archaeology, since it relates what 2007:106): we are used to think og, in a general fashion, as vestiges, or remains, The soundscape includes singing, chanting, roars, purrs, and a from the past. Beyond grounding the term in the body and its material path, he relates the concept to human tasks—such as the vestigator, the myriad of inarticulate sounds uttered by the actors, as well as the ‘spy’ and the investigator that follows in his/her trails—emphasising that rhythmic clomping of the wooden shoes, a melancholy violin, and the what is mediated to us as a spatiotemporal rupture (op.cit.: 168) “… harsh metallic clang of hammers and nails. Each sound, spoken or seems to tell us that there is immediacy between what presents itself to otherwise, was precisely coordinated with the physical action(25). us mediated by a rupture in time-space and the investigation.” To a certain degree, this third mediation-type could be seen as That is, an assumed unity beyond the time and place of a human agent specifically the compound of the afore-mentioned. However, there are and the investigating profiler following in its trail. Haber’s article starts aspects—related to ritual, ritual and role-enactment—that have nothing with a rather curious story about a entomologist named Carlos Bruch— to do with relation-building and problem-solving in the social world, nor whose standards and approach as a researcher would have earned the with concluding matters that allows a certain category of people to lift approval of the London-based Alphonso some years earlier (supra)— themselves above the former (in research, trade, politics etc.), but who in 1897 was out collecting natural history objects for the Universal rather is locked to the imagery produced by the kind of staged Exposition in Paris. He walks up the trail of this journey which, in the

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behaviour, which Gheorghiu uses in the part of his vocation as an (once their transformation is completed, after months in the ice and the archaeologist devoted to art-practices. Evoking Leach’s definition of the cold austral seas). ritual (1964: xiv): The appearance they gradually achieved, through their hardships, was ‘Ritual’ is a term which anthropology uses in diverse senses. My the footprint of their own work in enduring the hardships on a hunting own view is that while we only run into paradox if we try to apply this vessel; they put themselves—or, were put in—in a situation where the term to some distinct class of behaviours, we can very usefully think of body also became a kind of material to work on, or on which work left its irreversible imprint. It involved them epistemologically and ‘ritual’ as an aspect of all behaviour, namely the communicative aspect. ontologically. The article describes this in great detail, allowing the Gheorghiu relates how a ritual—in this definition—is a third kind of reader to follow the process step-by-step where the transformation of mediation that facilitates immersion; which is a state of augmented these workers at sea—the once ‘green hands’ and now ‘sealers’—as a receptivity to the built context, material qualities, light, atmospheres process underlying the shifts of fortune and the makeshift weather in and sound that affords a corporeal readiness for involvement in a the Antarctic. sensorium—a phenomenological warp (ϕ)—in which the senses are How surprising is it not that the next article—in this reading sequence— placed in a mode of availability and mobilisation, in range which is then turns to the topic of psychic connection with the past is the topic outside the habitual. The experiential dimension is active at both levels of Michael A. Cremo’s article “J.T. Robinson’s Use of a Psychic for that I have previously discussed in terms of mediation: a crafts Archaeological Research at Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa”? In his mediation (problem-solving and relational) and an interceptive introduction he quotes Haber in the following citation (2012: 55): “‘The mediation (concluding and selective). definition of material remains explodes other-than-material remains from the past.’ He believes nonmaterial remains should be included in From what I have seen of his earlier work, he insists on the autonomy of archaeology”. And it becomes his point of departure for a query on the the image—in the complex way that involves all the senses (as outlined association of an archaeologist with the Theosophic Movement. above)—in the sense that the image claims its own reality, and has no message, nor function, beyond what it reveals in itself. In this sense the This strand of Robinson’s life-project—if not in all of his career as an image is transcendent, while it is immanent in the sense that humans archaeologist—was with him to the end of his life. But in Cremo’s are ready to comprehend images (as such). The enactment conveyed article, it is his association with the psychic Geoffrey Hodson, in the in the anthology of course spurs the imagination of the participants who period when Robinson, as a young man, was working with Robert are vested in Roman garbs, performing demanding crafts in a Broom. His venture with the psychic is in line with the kinetic-haptic reconstructed settlement, as it spurs the imagination of the readers. mode of accessing knowledge—underscored both by Bezerra and Salerno in their articles—on account of the psychometric techniques However, it clearly appears that Gheorghiu in his emphasis on the that were used in sessions where Hodson was tested on the floor of the involvement in a sensorium, in this project and others—and the kinds of Sterkfontein Caves, placing items handed to him by Robinson, on his projects that he attracts in his publications—imputes a special brow to look into their worlds. significance to the importance of the image-as-such in expanded ways of knowing—including the arts—that we cannot do without. The In contrast with the molt of the green hands—who groped their way in question of whether this third class of mediation can be mobilised to the darkness of becoming sealers—Hodson’s psychic experiences were communicate this project, to a larger audience, tends to challenge the all light, colour and detailed in contextual cues that could have not format of the book (at least the academic book-standard). And has connection with his own experience, his body and his life. Psychometry brought him to experiment with video, web and mixed realities as part is based on the idea that all things have an emanation and that it is of his domain of research. possible for gifted psychics to read them. Cremo does not make a case for the validity of such techniques himself, but follows the trail of this So, when we come to Marcia Bezerra’s article “Touching the Past: The association—in ways of knowing—in Robertson’s life as an Senses of Things for Local Communities in Amazonia” this is—in my archaeologist and theosophists (an association that also interested reading—a turning point; because it manages, through the mediations Gurdjieff(29)). of tactility, to distinguish between immersion (through which senses are enhanced) and possession (through which appropriation becomes This article is probably the book’s difficult one to comprehend, save by sealed). Though people currently living the Amazonia may collect adopting a sense of the fragment as a shard of a monad, that the remnants of the past that they find in the ground, their interest in the psychic connects to the constellation from which it is torn—whether objects may be descriptive in such terms that touch brings together the shed or ripped by the work of time—though mimesis. But then as an two afore-mentioned mediations in a single gesture (op.cit.: 110): instance of a broader way of knowing proper to humans, and not something requiring special psychic talents or the belief in parapsychic The description of the piece is accompanied by the fingers of theories underlying psychometry. Walter Benjamin, for instance, was Dona Darlete, who scrutinises the ceramic in order to recognise its recognised by his friends—e.g., Adorno—for having special talents as a shape, following its reentrance. In this way, she tries to understand a graphologist (deriving personal profiles from samples of hand-writing). sherd which is naturalised by sight, turning it into something strange, The connection made by Benjamin between Schriftsbild (writing-as- ‘detached’ by touch. The act repeats itself on many occasions. image) and Denkbild (thought-image)—cf, Buck-Morss (1989)(30)— might arguably similar to the archaeological sample and intercepted She concludes by underscoring how appropriation should be seen in images used in Robertson’s tests with Hodson. “The immediacy of the relation with the way people engage with the things they have collected. vestige, the complicity between discontinuous time-spaces, the bodily That is, as perceptual forms. To which we may add a brief, but concise, commitment of investigation that displaces it where the footprints lead discussion of Tim Ingold’s critical address to works in sensorial it…” in Haber’s terms (“Making Sense out of the Senses”) places the anthropology, in which she draws the reader’s attention to the active vestigator’s past in the investigator’s future, as s/he follows his and exploratory engagement of the whole person “…entangled in a footprints. This futurity of the past is also its virtual load, in Bergson’s technic-symbolic network”, of which the tactile exploration, related terms(31). above, is a case in point. Hence the relevance of restoring the virtual worlds of sense “to the practicalities of our sensing of the world (Ingold In terms of the comparative dimension emerging in the step by step 2011: 317)”. rewind of Coming to Senses Hodson’s psychometric readings appears at the opposite end of the scale from the ‘green hands’/sealers, since The point of lingering over these instances where something is shed neither feet nor footprints are relevant, but the images he intercepts (p. while the contact remains—what Bezerra felicitously determines as 71): “On being questioned closely while not actually carrying out an detached by touch—evokes a moment of shedding, that becomes investigation, the clairvoyant explained that, having achieved the particularly poignant in Melisa Salerno’s article “Sealers Were not Born correct state for making the observations, it was as though he was but Made: Sensory-Motor Habits, Subjectivities, and Nineteenth- looking through a tube in his head and observing an animated scene in Century Voyages to the South Shetland Islands”. Since we here are full color at the other end of the tube.” Hence, what is at stake is presented with an instance of radical human change—in Bourdieu’s whether such an image is assumed to have a documentary value, or it sense (ibid.), a change of habitus—comparable to a molt (the change enters into the inquiry as an image (with its own reality). of skin found in certain animals). This article connects to Haber’s in a particular way. It brings us to consider the insecure ontological status of certain elements—such as footprints—that are not connected by necessity to Arguably, it connects what in phenomenological parlance is called our walk, but adjoined to it. Like coloration added to an object, it can embodiment—cf, somatic modes of attention (Csordas, 1993)(26)—with also be not added. The same goes with sound, with taste and of course a “life-philosophy” in the flesh (cf, Lakoff & Johnson, 1999)(27), in the also with smell. Every query has its other. It can abandon the other, and sense that phenomena that appear to the knowing subject as endowed linger in the same. The effect of abandonment—or, subtraction—will with corporeity (such as footprints in their relation to the body that not be felt, or recognised immediately, since the other, in the sense that made them would form a corpus [thus ‘embodied’] without being a I am pursuing here, isn’t entirely external. Nor is it entirely internal. It is body in the carnal sense), and the body proper (with skin, hair [and other. The articles in the anthology display the modalities of ‘same | teeth] in Sloterdijk’s sense(28)). When human beings engage in a process where they consciously and voluntarily change into another other’ (‘O | ϕ’). body, then these aspects combine. What I am suggesting with this somewhat arcane notation, is the In Salerno’s article relates the physical transformation of sailors who possibility of adopting a position—featuring the phenomenology ϕ— embark on hunting expeditions in the Antarctic—devoted to sealing and which is adopted voluntarily (a bit like the ‘green hands’ opting, at some whaling—as ‘green hands’: the hardships they go through to become time in the past, to become sealers) offering resistance to the realm of hardened sealers and whalers is beyond imagination; a willed the same, from which it may be discarded at any time (though never transformation going to the essence of who and how they are as quite as efficiently as imagined since it is not opposed but a potential humans. The sealers and whalers embody what the ‘green hands’ aspire associate). Not much is gained by labelling it as liminal—or, in limine to. While the habitus they acquire by their training, in this male world of (on the threshold)—since the alternative to this suspended/virtual state, yore, makes them immediately perceived as such by anyone on land then, will not appear. Which is a key to how I read José Pellini’s article.

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In a lopsided fashion “Remembering through the Senses: The Funerary challenges any written record reduced to descriptions of the lay-out of Practices in Ancient Egypt” bring us to the heart of the matter—in the a camp, equipment, clothes and other resources. He asks (p. 15): “… present essay—which is the narrative. The piece is experimental in the what is the purpose of producing descriptive, formal information which sense that it brings a narrative on ritual journey of a man and his son, does not provide a real understanding of the essence of a people?” and unto the threshold to the realm of the dead. Their visit to funeral feasts then: and to some graves of renown sets the stage for a father’s instructions to his son concerning his own funeral site, and matters concerning Suddenly, as part of a bizarre delusion (something common in death. The story, related in dialogue, initiates an experiment through Antarctica) Binford materialises in my tent to remind me of the which Pellini explores the relation between memories and the senses. limitations of the archaeological record (Binford 1983) (…). He talks to The dialogue is used as a vehicle to convey a range of metaphysical me about archaeological layers, and why it is impossible and absurd to concepts emerging from the study of Egyptian language which in/ worry about what people felt in the past. I thank him for his words, but I around tombs is linked to matters concerning death. This dialogue, tell him that I have already sold my soul to Hodder! He vanishes in the air however, is written in the present tense and with the personal pronouns with a threatening look. that are involved in any conversation—I and you. First and second person. In the story, we are not in a virtual realm belonging to a distant What does it mean to be part of a story that one is telling, versus past reverberating into a remote future, but we are located in a story removing oneself from it. It appears that the option of including—rather with an actual conversation between a father and a son. The story does than removing—the person who is telling the story into the elements not only relate metaphysical knowledge but also practical knowledge that make up the story, not only will bring to the fore the human from Ancient Egypt. limitations, linked to human nature, that will shape the further course of knowing (instead of hiding them and scoping their knowledge projects Though the story is not in the present, we are invited to read the story beyond measure), but also the enormous potential of story-tellers in a contemporary mode. The narrative is then extended by an episode thereby bound to narrate themselves in moving from abstract self- from the present, in which a connection is created by the intermedium reflection to the experience of being a transmitter in experience-based of an Egyptian barbecue, in which more is at stake than the well-known communities. connection between smell and memory (cf, Sperber, 1975)(32)—i.e., the prompting of specific memories by certain smells—but a process in the This reading of the anthology—Coming to Senses—is a against the slow-time of preparing and entering the realm of cooking and eating, in grain in the sense that it has fostered a different learning outcome: which a rich variety of sensory inputs become stringed to smell. As the while the original reading, which occurred in the designed sequence, following passage may serve to demonstrate (p. 47): was topical when matched to the introductory exchange between George and Alphonso; reading in reverse order highlighted the When Hassan tried to light the fire, he was immediately dimension of the anthology featuring the narrative (as a practice more reprimanded by Ahmed, who had asked him to calm down. Ahmed was than a topic). It also serves to probe the anthology as a corpus—a trying to teach his brother all of the barbecue ritual, which for him is a perceptual category of embodiment (Csordas [Merleau Ponty])—with slow and rhythmic performance, where everything happens in time. What that particular property of being revertible. Which is tangential to the Ahmed sought was to awaken our senses to every step of the barbecue’s irreversible and existential. preparation. From the texture and the smell of the wood, through the If matched to the painstaking and slow work of excavation (Darvill, heat and the glare of the embers, up to the smell of meat and burning fat. 2015)(34)—which is yet a major fieldwork practice amongst professional I began to understand that the barbecue was not just about eating, but archaeologists—the narrative appears on the backdrop of a crafts dimension of the profession, which is readable to the professional feeling every moment and every instant. audience (only exceptionally to non-professionals). In Paul Rabinow’s This is the ground zero of availability and readiness determined here as terms (2007)(35) the essays appearing in the anthology comes out as pausing in the day-to-day progress of hard work and accountability: ‘phenomenology ϕ’. But here it steps out of the virtual realm and into whether in the slower time of the field, or the hustle and bustle of the actual. The passage serves to demonstrate that—unlike in the contemporary academic institutions, they defy the linearity of time. But philosophical reception of ‘phenomenology’—it is not a mental what of the compound? construct but an awareness summoned by concrete acts in a situation where materiality, body and site are brought into a single constellation, through the acquisition of implicit influence from (p. 49) dispositions, skills, and costumes etc. The barbecue serves to exemplify the Mediaeval Archaeology & Media Archaeology transformation of something trivial as a meal, into something more As a medium, however, the icon in Cusa’s experiment does not function magical as an aura. in the sense of Marshall McLuhan’s famous understanding of media as Julie Dunne’s piece “When the Cows Come Home: A Consideration of ‘extensions of man,’ but as an exempt of the divine, which serves to the Sensorial Engagement between Pastoralists and Their Cattle” generate the category of the human according to Friedrich Kittler’s relates a world extremely rich of connections of this type, which dictum that ‘media determine our situation’ (“Grammophone, Film, thereby are not locked to the exceptional, but bring to awareness those human life-ways in which everyday matters can become a source of Typewriter xxxix”). Ultimately, the sacredness of the omnivoyant icon marvel. Especially, as the species-interdependence engages more than does not lie in any concept of an icon, iconoclasm, or iconology; it must food and protection, but when the cows become a subject of be produced through a particular artistic technique and a specific contemplation, as for instance of Nilotic populations for whom (p. 27) viewing practice. “cattle are primarily a feast for the eyes, and only secondarily a feast for the the stomach.” Born, Erik (2016, p. 109)(36) The perception and interaction with cattle amongst pastoralists are In this short section, I will attend a question relating specifically to informed not only by vision, however, but through the haptic, aural, mediality and time, in Mediaeval setting in which the narrative genre olfactory and visual senses, in a relationship where the animal is an appeared on the backdrop of an artisanal society. The background for actor. The species-interdependence is shaped by differences in sensory the discussion is an article of Erik Born (2016) “Media Archaeology, acuity, as e.g. cattle have a better hearing the humans. From a Cultural Techniques and the Middle Ages: An Approach to the Study of neurological perspective the senses within a species are not up to the Media before the Media.” His objective is to span productive points of same speed, and sensory-motor connections are differentiated in terms contact, contention and possible exchange between between mediaeval of readiness potential (Libet,1985(33)) and reaction time. Which means and early modern mediality in the framework of an ongoing debate in that there is a complex terrain of sensory acuity and dissynchrony new German media theory; with Wolfgang Ernst, in particular. The within and across species. pitch (op.cit.:107) Out of this wealth comes a sense of presence—which once more is not “Of the many unusual ways of viewing an image, one of the most constructed as a philosophical abstraction—in which not only other remarkable comes down to us from the threshold of modernity. Asked humans, amongst pastoralists, but also the cattle is part of a life-world, in 1453 to explain the opaque subject of mystical theology in more in ways much similar to how it might have been, or is even likely to have accessible terms, Nicholas of Cusa provided the following instructions been, in the past. In contrast, the short piece by Andrés Zarankin, that in the preface to his treatise On the Vision of God (De visione Dei): concludes this synoptic rewind of Coming to Senses, is telling a very mount a particular kind of religious icon on the wall and have three different story—since it tells the story of an apparition—but relates to monks observe it from the front and the sides; next, have them walk the same basic processes of how human cognition can have intimations around it in a semicircle while keeping their eyes fixed on the eyes in that can be linked/removed from its sensory associates. the icon; and, finally, have them discuss their experience of this experiment. The eyes in the icon should seem to follow the viewers In “Archaeology of a Tear: Delusions in a Tent in a Stormy Day in around the room. Although each monk may perceive the icon’s frontal Antarctica” conveys a story on the exertions archaeologists sometimes gaze to be directed at him alone, the monastic community can must endure. He distinguishes between stories as projections, in which extrapolate fro this individual experience to an understanding of the archaeologists attempt to project themselves into the context that mystical theology. Just as the icon’s gaze is addressed to each viewer they are studying; and transversal stories in which archaeologists are simultaneously at every position in the room, so too, Cusa explains, attempting to get themselves involved in the stories they are telling. To does the benevolent all-seeing gaze of the divine accompany all readers who are not from the field it appears that archeologists can creatures everywhere and at all time […]” work quite hard to produce the kind of immersion, which in some cases they deem necessary in order to understand the past. Part of the explanation of this procedure can have been a problem of illiteracy. However, Michel de Certeau understands the procedure as The case of the sealers in the Antarctica they belonged to a subaltern an invention whereby an experience—that each monk got out of the group that were silenced in official historical accounts, and the experiment—prepares the him to be introduced to the discursive space documents of their life-conditions and work are sometimes scarce. In a of the treatise that follows. Born argues that this experience hinges on a transversal story in which he is confined in a tent—during a night with pictorial artefact, and that the reality of the image piercing-the-object is stormy weather in the Antarctic—he relates how the experience a condition for the panoptic of the all-present eye to occur. Clearly, if

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considered as a moment of an image being used as a media—thus a vehicle of certain mediations—MacLuhan’s definition of media as extension of the human body are challenged. Embodiment, then, is not an extension of the human body(37). It is rather the other way around—the divine body made flesh—that featured the Christian spiritual mind-set of the Benedictine order at that time. If McLuhan's definition indeed determine modern media, then this alternate mind-set creates an obstacle to discuss this particular example in the framework of modern media. Therefore, Born attempts to use a different template, and ventures—tentatively—to articulate the example as a case of cultural techniques (Germ. Kulturtechniken). With this cautionary measure, he aims at fleshing out a new frontier of research in the study of cultural techniques beyond images, words and numbers. And with this precaution he argues that there is a reasonable chances that a fruitful exchange may emerge between media- and cultural studies. He then proceeds to survey the variety of reasons for media- theorists showing reluctance against using the concept of ‘media’ to elaborate on Mediaeval cultural techniques. And the background of this cautionary critique is avoid inflating the concept of media. Stefan Rieger states that the body “Nichts ist kein Medium” (the body is not a medium). And Ernst proposes to reserve (op.cit.: 110) “…the concept of media strictly for the study of electronic technology,” and otherwise use cultural techniques. However, Born argues that this distinction may foster a false sense of clarity—by opposing, or contrasting, these two concepts—since he deems that concepts of media and cultural techniques are each of them problematic. For one the Mediaeval world is replete with notions of transmissions, or mediations, between the heavenly and worldly realm. Just as data denoted intentional signs (Todorov, 1984)(38) information, writes Born, is determined the imparting for form to matter. While in the electronic age (Shannon) data denote what is transferred through a channel, while information determines the noise on “the line”. Born concludes that both the notion of media and of cultural techniques have been insufficiently theorised, it is not enough to sharpen the contours of the disciplines. And Born particularly emphasises the need to consider the slow change in the domain of media (p. 114): “…new media do not simply replace old media in a singular historical moment: the transition from one medium to another is always a more gradual and complex process, a mixture of tradition and innovation, more evolution than revolution.” The real concern is for respecting the alterity and allowing for historical difference, and avoiding anthropological universals. The term ‘anthropological’ here is used in the philosophical sense. And the comparative methodology in social anthropology may offer a third— yet, not considered—alternative: that is, pace F. Barth (2010, f.n. 17), comparing as actively as possible in the analysis of separate cases; which is likely to hone the detail of empirical differences, rather than blurring them, while letting the dimensions of comparison emerge from empirical analysis (as subject of discovery). In the the previous section, for instance, we have discussed mediation before discussing media. And in this discussion the image clearly emerges as a candidate media. The image here does not extend the human body (pace Born’s critique of MacLuhan) but rather reveals itself at the threshold between ‘embodiment’ (Merleau Ponty) and the carnal mentation of ‘the flesh’ (Lakoff & Johnson). At the brink of learning—with the flash of an insight— a new repertoire is hatched, decants into a pool of ‘tacit knowledge’(39). The narrative holds the power of innervation: the innervation of repertoires from this pool. The phenomenology ϕ is a readiness—availability and mobilisation—to immerse oneself with the experience-based expectation that samples of a repertoire to be triggered, or a new one to be hatched. A readiness for the world as it is; to take the dip or make the leap. How to locate phenomenology ϕ? Who can acquire it? Is it accessible at any time and any place? Or, is it locked to triangulations between site, body and matter? If not freely transportable—i.e., transmissible from one site to another—is it malleable and adaptable? Or, subject to emergent connections? Can it be taught, or can it only be related in narrative? Can it be learned, or must if be discovered? Is it reversible? All these questions are somehow related to time: phenomenology ϕ is located at the brink of time… between reversible time and irreversible time.

Immanuel Wallerstein (1991)(40) differentiates between changes in time —i.e. whether historical and cyclical (both being reversible)—and changes of time: that latter applies to phase transitions in which bifurcations and the amplification of fluctuations, precede the configuration of a new pattern that precisely does not evolve from a preceding one. And if reversibility is a distinguishing feature of ‘media’(41)—evidenced by the possibility of playing them backwards— then the boundary areas where they graze off irreversible time, where phenomenology ϕ hatches and evolves, may be more difficult to spot as our media proliferate.

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“Benjamin’s Grave” THE YOUNG COMRADE: We can’t go on. There is disorder here and Another question is—inspired by the work discussed here in this essay want: too little bread and too much fighting. Many of us are courageous —where we would end up if we studied this legacy in a triangle were but not many of us can read. There are few machines and few of us body, materiality and site constitute the basic constellation: reading the Arcades Project in the triangle between Benjamin’s work with understand them. Our locomotives have broken down. Have you brought librarianship, graphic designs and theatre. The almost flowery multi- locomotives with you? coloured sheets of his manuscripts, his involvement with books as a collector, and his direct involvement in stage work with Brecht, gives a In the essay called Le narrateur because it was written in French, very different picture of his work, than the thin air of his printed black Walter Benjamin analyses story as a form of communication, in which and white of his published essays. Which might be enough to warrant a the narrator, the narrative and the narration are all part of the story. sensorial approach. The story-teller takes a keen interest in practical life, the story-teller will therefore give advice—receive advice—s/he will relate how s/he got to And the concept of ‘signature’—as outlined by Agamben (2008)(47) in the story and also how s/he got to the place where story now is told. As reference to Enzo Melandri’s definition—affords this alternative usage: s/he narrates herself this is a vehicle—it warms the audience in their the signature is defined as a sign within the sign, which is a loose end seats: the community of human experience is that each one’s unless it is activated (like an unplayed musical instrument or, actually, a experience is unique. Narration, therefore, is collective, communicative lute [sic]). It is a sensorial category. The task of making this part of an and transitive. inquiry could have been an anthropological endeavour, if Benjamin was alive—and the apparatus needed to do so I have attempted to outline in The story, in Benjamin’s conception, is a counter-point to myth. It this essay—but the circumstances of his death are as unresolved as the flourishes in the artisanal society and is seated in cultures where death legacy that he left behind, and may summon an archaeological is not private moment. It therefore belongs the Mediaeval society in approach enhanced by the sensorial approach, outlined in this essay. which there were few homes in which someone had not recently died. He left Paris in 1940 after the Nazi occupation of Paris. The societies in which narrative goes in desuetude—says Benjamin, with the advent of the modern novel (Cervantes) and the newsreel of Benjamin wrote a letter in which he informed a friend of the decision to information (the gazette)—are also the societies in which the streets end his life. He gives no explanation. It ended in Portbou—a town at the are cleaned(42), people are hospitalised and death is gradually removed frontier between France and Spain—after a journey over the Pyrenees, from public view. Advice is displaced and survives in correspondence. where he lugged a voluminous black back with documents, that he explained to his guide were more important than his own life. Though In the novel, the matters of life and death are conveyed to the realm of he was in poor health, and had a heart condition, he carried the bag individual readability. And in writing the novel the author is confined to across the mountains. When he arrived in Portbou he died of an isolation. Information—here understood as the newsreel of the press— overdose of Morphine. No one retrieved the bag. His remains derives its purchase from being credible; and accordingly Benjamin is eventually were transferred to a mass-grave. He disappeared. The bag early to detect the tendency of the journalist to feed the audience not disappeared. only with the news but also with the experience (usually his/her own experience masquerading as a psychological series that provides a key These are the facts. To many people who have visited Portbou—like to the news). The ranks of the narrators among writers are growing Hannah Arendt, Gerschom Scholem, Michael Taussig and myself—the thin, but are rich, he argues, among peasants and sailors. triangle of the materials, the body and the site feature in the site of Portbou, the materials in the bag, and Benjamin’s body conveyed to the Nevertheless, if peasants and sailors have been the masters of story, earth, in a graveyard where he was registered as a Catholic (under the Benjamin claims that highest education in narrative belongs to the name of Benjamin Walter). Michael Taussig is the one to have inquired crafts. This would seem to include a range of authors. But in the light of into Benjamin’s suicide, which—if one sticks to the facts—rather comes the present essay, the ranks of crafts-people also would appear to out as a disappearing-act. Though well-versed in Benjamin’s writings, include both archaeologists and anthropologists. In art-schools it would Taussig does not engage in an exegesis of his philosophy. include the arts & crafts milieus and the designers. For non-obvious reasons, despite his association with Brecht, Benjamin does not His delving into the circumstances of departed Benjamin, is a point of mention theatre. Yet, the trope of stopping up, giving advice and exit. From Europe and from philosophy, at least in a modernist sense listening to the audience, is a clearly recognisable theatrical trope that of the term. So, after he devotes a chapter on going into the details of goes way back. Benjamin’s last days and resting place, Taussig takes his reader’s to South America. More precisely, to a part of the Amazonia located in the Tore Vagn Lid’s introduction to Brecht’s play The Measures Taken and presently Columbian territory, where he studies the history of the Fatzer fragment (2012)(43) significantly overlaps with the terms Le agricultural practices starting out with a collective of former black Narrateur—without any intention of accounting for Benjamin’s world of slaves. From where he moves unto a narrative on the effects of the sun, ideas, but developing his approach (as a theatre director) to Brecht’s followed by some experimental writing, on magic, excess and the epic theatre. Of course, it is well known from Benjamin’s language of flowers… correspondence—and other sources—that Adorno was weary of Brecht’s influence on Benjamin. And some of his scepticism is owed to his distrust in theatre to conduct inquiries on the terrain of philosophy: such as major issues that Adorno raises in Negative Dialectics (1981)(44). ______

The entanglement between Adorno and Benjamin in the project of (1) Agamben, Giorgio (2009) “What is the Contemporary?” in What is ‘negative dialectics’ has been duly analysed and discussed (Buck- an Apparatus and Other Essays, transl. Michael Hart, Stanford Morss, 1979)(45). Which may be why Benjamin avoids the topic of theatre in his essay Le Narrateur. Yet, in Brecht’s piece Measures University Press. Taken it is quite clear that Brecht is not only is concerned with dialectical materialism, but with the main point in negative dialectics: (2) Marcus, George & Mascarhenas, Fernando (2005) Occasiõ—The i.e., between the Hegelian thesis and antithesis there is no synthesis. In Marquis and the Anthropologist, Alta Mira Press. the play, the thesis is related by a) the introductory epigraph to the present essay, while the antithesis is related by b) the epigraph to this (3) The author is a Professor of Theory & Writing at the Oslo National final section. Academy of the Arts [KHiO].

As the reader will notice the observations and demands of the young (4) Prof. Fredrik Barth is not a relation of the author’s, though the have comrade is passed over by the three agitators (b), and it is nowhere collaborated on a translation of Fredrik Barth’s essays. Fredrik Barth present in (a) the legal process conducted by the control chorus, at the also acted as the thesis director of the author’s doctoral work. request of the three agitators. Yet, the twists and turns of the events in the play take place in the tension between these two elements (a&b); in (5) Barth, Fredrik (2002) “An Anthropology of Knowledge” in Current the general irresolution the multiple mediations between the conflictual Anthropology, Chicago University Press. terms proliferate. A similar pattern can be observed between Benjamin’s assertions on the researcher and the scholar, that remain (6) Rabinow, Paul; Marcus, George; Faubion, James and Reese, Tobias unresolved in his opus magnum, the Arcades project (Benjamin, 1996: (2010) Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Duke 456)(46): University Press. The card index marks the conquest of three-dimensional writing, and so presents and astonishing counterpoint to the three-dimensionality of (7) Pallasmaa, Johani (2008) The Thinking Hand, Wiley script in its original form as rune or know notation. [And today the book (2012) The Eyes of the Skin—Architecture and the is already, as the present mode of scholarly production demonstrates, an Senses, Wiley outdated mediation between two different filing systems. For everything (2011) The Embodied Image—Imagination and that matters is to be found in the card box of the researcher who wrote it, Imagery in Architecture, Wiley. and the scholar studying it, assimilates it into his own card index.] (8) Norberg Schultz, Christian (2001) Genius Loci: Toward a Hence, Benjamin’s system of signatures—displayed in the frontispiece to this essay and outlined in the introductory discussion—may Phenomenology of Architecture, Rizzoli International Publishers. constitute an instance of mediations between contradictions that will not be resolved in a unified synthesis. Philosophically speaking, it does (9) Sennett, Richard (2009) The Craftsman, London: Penguin. not exist: on the one hand, because the Arcades Project was never completed, on the other hand in the form that it would have had to be (10) Reference to the author’s own manuscript copy of element WBA achieved if completed. No matter how sharp the philosophical exegeses Ms-0096-0140v in the Walter Benjamin Archive in the Berlin, which was of the legacy after Benjamin, it is not likely to determine issues that might later checked against the French edition in Walter Benjamin (1991) Écrits français, NRF, Paris: Gallimard. The discussions can (and will) have simply emerged because Benjamin had moved beyond philosophy.

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refer directly to the manuscript, thanks to the Walter Benjamin Archvie (30) Buck-Morss, Susan (1989) The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Benjamin and the Arcades Project; the MIT Press.

(11) Richard Sennett was never formally a student of Hannah Arendt, but (31) Bergson, Henri (2012 [1908]) Le souvenir du présent et la fausse fell under her influence, as he states in a number of interviews. reconnaissance, Paris: PUF. (12) http://benjamin-passagen.de (32) Sperber, Dan (1975) Rethinking Symbolism, Cambridge University (13) Schmidt, Kjeld & Wagner, Ina (2004) “Ordering Systems: Press. Coordinative Practices and Artefacts in Architectural Design and (33) Libet, Benjamin (1985) “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Planning”, in CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), Vol. 13, Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action” in The Behavioural and Issue 5.-6, December, pp. 349-408. Brain Sciences, 8, 529-526.

(14) Signatures not printed in Rolf Tiedemann’s edition in German (34) Darvill, Timothy (2015) “Observation, Analogy, Experimentation and published by Suhrkamp in 1983, and from the English translation Rehabilitation during Archaeological Excavations” in Gheorghiu, Dragos published by Harvard University, The Belknap Press, in 1999. & Bouissac, Paul (eds.) How do we Imagine the Past? On Metaphorical Thought, Experientiality and Imagination in Archaeology, Manchester: (15) L’orange, Mette (2016) “Who is Afraid of Red and Blue?—Teaching Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Colour in Art and Design Today”, Paper for AIC Santiago. Proceedings (forthcoming). (35) Rabinow, Paul (2007) Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary, Princeton University Press. (16) Hjelmslev, Louis (1953 [1943]) Prolegomena to a Theory of

Language, Baltimore: Indiana University Publications in Anthropology (36) Born, Erik (2016) “Media Archaeology, Cultural Techniques and the and Linguistics. Middle Ages: An Approach to the Study of Media before the Media” in Seminar 52: 2, pp.107-133. (17) Eco, Umbero (1975) Trattato di semiotica generale, Milano: Bompiani. (37) Rather, it vehicles a notion of the Divine body as the following introductory lines from Robert Grosseteste’s treatise De Luce from (18) Taussig, Michael (2006) Walter Benjamin’s Grave, University of some two hundred years before may serve to illustrate: “The first Chicago Press. corporeal form which some call corporeity is in my opinion light. For light of its very nature diffuses itself in every direction in such a way (19) Cf, Frisvold Hanssen(2015) makes a distinction between seeing with that a point of light will produce instantaneously a sphere of light of any vs. through the machine (GoPro video in the movie Leviathan [2012]) size whatsoever, unless some opaque object stands in the way. Now with the point of showing how seeing from a distance, yet becoming the extension of matter in three dimensions is a necessary concomitant immersed in what is being seen (Taussig 2009:99), become linked by of corporeity, and this despite the fact that both corporeity and matter the intermedium of colour which is entangled between what is are in themselves simple substances lacking all dimensions. But a form recorded, the technical process of the recording, and the replay before that is in itself simple and without dimension could not introduce and within the human spectator. dimension in every direction into matter, which is likewise simple and without dimension, except by multiplying itself and diffusing itself Frisvold Hanssen, Eirik (2015) “His Eyes Are Like the rays of instantaneously in every direction and this extending matter in its own Dawn”; Color Vision and Embodiment in Leviathan, in Visual diffusion. For the form cannot desert matter, because it is inseparable Anthropology Review, Vol. 31: 1, Spring, pp. 20-26. from it, and matter itself cannot be deprived of form—But I have proposed that it is light which possesses of its very nature the function (20) Cf, Pallassmaa (2011) The Embodied Image—Imagination and of multiplying itself and diffusing itself instantaneously in all directions. Imagery in Architecture, Wiley Publishers. Whatever performs this operation is either light or some other agent that acts in virtue of its participation in light to which this operation Barth, Theodor (2015) «The Anthropogenic Imagination: A Synoptic belongs essentially. Corporeity, therefore, is either light itself or the View of Research Designs in the Aesthetics of Experimental agent which performs the aforementioned operation and introduces Archaeology» in Gheorghiu, Dragos & Bouissac, Paul (Eds.) How to we dimensions into matter in virtue of its participation in light, and acts Imagine the Past? On Metaphorical Thought, Experientiality and through the power of this same light. But the first form cannot introduce Imagination in Archaeology, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. dimensions into matter through the power of a subsequent form. Therefore light is not a form subsequent to corporeity, but it is (21) Barth, Fredrik (2010) “Comparative Methodologies in the Analysis of corporeity itself.” Anthropological Data” in Bowen, John & Petersen, Roger (eds.) Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture, Cambridge University Grosseteste, Robert (1942 [1225]) On Light [De Luce]—Or, The Press. Beginning of Forms, Mediaeval Texts in Translation, Marquette University Press. (22) Benjamin, Walter (1994) The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910-1940, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, University of Chicago Press. (38) Todorov, Tvetan (1984) Theories of the Symbol, Cornell University Press. (23) Siding with the senses and the body—siding with life as it is—is also siding with the unfortunate: the poor, the sick and the war-struck. (39) Cf, Boehme, Gernot (1993) “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Which is why sensorial and embodied approaches to knowing, readily Concept of a New Aesthetics” in Thesis Eleven, Sage Publications, pp. will be perceived as plagued by those who are glad to keep their 113-126. distances. We see the contour of an analysis in which Mary Douglas’ perspective in Purity and Danger (where the point of departure is ritual (40) Wallerstein, Immanuel (1991) Unthinking Social Science: The Limits in “primitive society”) are combined with Bourdieu’s Distinction (where of Nineteenth-century Paradigms, Temple University Press. the point of departure are symbolic currencies in the analysis of the (41) Here the reader will remember that the mnemotechniques used by variety of capital that structures human life in group-, age- and gender- the rhetoricians in antiquity allowed feats such as reciting Virgil’s relations). Aeneid backwards; adding a layer to the Virgil’s epos, in which Aeneas’ Bourdieu, Pierre (1979) La Distinction: critique sociale du own view moves forward and backwards through time; Squire, Michel jugement de goût, Paris: Minuit. (2014: 394) “The Ordo of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Order” Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture Elsner, Jás and Meyer, Michel (eds.), Douglas, Mary (1984) Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Cambridge University Press, pp. 353-417. So the phenomenon of Concepts of Purity and Taboo, London: Routledge. reversibility is not new. In this sense, writing is in the present essay understood as a media. Media need not have been multiple and ubiquitous in order to exist. What seems to be characteristic of our era (24) Iser, W. 1974. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic is the multiplication and proliferation of media. Wherever there is a Response, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. record that can in some way be replayed there is also a rewind (whether available to everyone or controlled, as here, by specialists). (25) Grotowsky quote cited from Dragos Gheorghiu’s essay in the Coming to Senses anthology (2015). (42) Laporte, Dominique (2003) L’histoire de la merde, Christian Bourgeois Éditeur. (26) Csordas, Thomas (1993) “Somatic modes of Attention” in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 2, May, pp.135-136. (43) Vagn Lid, Tore (2012) “Innledning” in Avgjørelsen [N. Measures Taken] | Fatzer, Oslo: Spartacus. (27) Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic (44) Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1981) Negative Dialectics, Books. Continuum.

(28) Sloterdijk, Peter (2000) Critique de la raison cynique, Paris: Broché (45) Buck-Morss, Susan (1979) The Origin of Negative Dialectics: [(1988) Critique of Cynical Reason, University of Minnesota Press. Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute, Free Press. (29) Gurdjieff, George I. (1985 [1963]) Meetings with Remarkable Men, Penguin.

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(46) Benjamin, Walter (1996) Selected Writings, Volume I: 1913-1926, Bullock, Marcus & Jennings, Michael W. (eds.), Cambridge, MA; Belknap Press of Harvard.

(47) Agamben, Giorgio (2008) Signatura rerum—Sur la méthode [Eng. Signatura Rerum—On Method], Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques, Paris: Vrin.

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P.M. for «Decolonisation of the Senses— Making whole, in this sense, was core to universal. Rebuilding this capacity e.g. here Preliminary Considerations on a Modern Walter Benjamin’s project. Lending his in Japan is hard work. Legacy» senses to the debris and fragments of progress, with an idea of redemption where Then I am talking about my own work to 1—I have been presenting two papers here in reconstitute this ability that I need as a whole would be the work of a human mind Kyoto. They are both devoted to the topic of convenor/commentator in this place. Which devoted to the imagination of what cannot be ‘decolonisation of the senses’. The first is a tribute to the fact that it is somehow built restored. His idea of redeeming the past paper is devoted to the aspects of the topic into society, it does not exist in a bubble, and goes two ways. Through the process of related to artistic research, and the what I have called art school phenomenology being made whole, the debris and fragments apparatus of experimentation (Foucault) as a —or phenomenology Φ—is something that support structure for theory-development. of the power, would release their utopian power of futurity. I guess this is a flowery we not only are likely to find outside of art- I define a core-operation—in counter- way of bringing up some of the things that school, but across the world, and certainly distinction to a support structure—as the we are here to discuss. here in Japan, but it will be caught, live and sink-or-swim issue of knowledge ventures evolve in a different socio-material mesh. that we choose embark on. And the There is a part of Benjamin’s work that relationship between the support structure presents a promising framework to and the core operation is similar to the understand a core of art-school practices, 6— I think that Benjamin formulates this relationship between instrument and tool. akin to professional listening in music, and difference between a cheap universalist— the kinds of alignment of the senses and most certainly colonial and hegemonic— Today a state-of-the art example would be gestures, based on years of professional understanding of history, and the particular the relationship between GPS console in a practice, that one finds in professional take on historical materialism that he car (a navigation instrument) that acts as a archaeologists. developed in his work, as he states in his support structure for the wheel (as a tool) manifesto-like statements in the concept of and the actual driving being the the core history: operation. 4— Where I come from—teaching theory of writing at an art-school—involving writing in “XVII artistic practice is one of the chief challenges “Historicism rightly culminates in universal 2— So, on my paper I am attempting to that I have to meet. I am not teaching artists history. It may be that materialist home in on the core operation that this to become artists to become academics, historiography differs in method more clearly support structure is intended for. Moving though in some cases they may become, or from universal history than from any other from the apparatus of research, as it were, to are, intellectuals. Therefore relating to what kind. Universal history has no theoretical more discursive matters related to Sensorial is going on at the edge of writing, where it armature. Its procedure is additive: it archaeology as a theory for the future. Let us borders unto live and ongoing experience, musters a mass of data to fill the start with the contemporary. makes it a passenger as much as a vessel. homogeneous, empty time. Materialist The contemporary, in Giorgio Agamben’s Sometimes like a stowaway. historiography, on the other hand, is based notion, is not tied to the present and near What I mean by this is that both our senses on a constructive principle. Thinking involves past, but constitutes a lopsided participation and written practices know latency phases, not only the movement of thoughts, but their in the past, present or future. A bit like where what is learning through the senses— arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly Augustine’s idea of the presence of things i.e., aesthetically in the sense of Aristotle— comes to a stop in a constellation saturated present, the presence of things past and the sometimes is ahead of what we are figuring with tensions, it gives that constellation a presence of things future. out in writing; by days, weeks, months and shock, by which thinking is crystallised as a monad. In this structure he recognises the The contemporary therefore is the uneasy even years. This is perhaps a litte less trivial than the opposite process, where the travails signs of a messianic arrest of happening, or co-existence with any time-zone, including (to put it differently) a revolutionary chance the present. Certainly the past, in regard of of acquire knowledge through written media, turns up in our sensory understanding with a in the fight for the oppressed past. He takes Agamben’s philological queries in antique similar kind of postponement, cognisance of it in order to blast a specific texts from Greece, Rome and the Talmudic life out of the era, a specific work out of the lore. But also the future. A difference, however, is that the senses lifework. As a result of this method, the don’t readily anticipate that the lifework is both preserved and sublated in understandings they convey eventually will the work, the era in the lifework, and the 3— In Walter Benjamin’s work, moreover, emerge in writing, and our written entire course of history in the era. The one might say that one of the major tropes is intelligence doesn’t readily see it coming nourishing fruit of what is historically the futurity of the past, it gathered the two either. In other words, we are in for understood contains time in its interior as a axes of his thought—Marxism and surprises. A possible explanation is that that precious but tasteless seed.” Messianism—in an unstable compound from world of sensory learning, processing and which the dialectical image—and its transmission—once it caught adrift—is In Benjamin’s language the cracking skin of peregrinations—is hatched and constitutes relatively more autonomous than writing, the ripe peach is invariably transformed into the trope of sensorial mediation. In 1921 which is always, and fundamentally, a the furling cape of a king. But essentially, Benjamin acquired Angelus Novus, a print by dependent. Yet, dialectically, it behaves as if what he writes about here is what Agamben Paul Klee from 1921, on account of which he it were the master. belabours as the ‘contemporary’. wrote the following lines in 1940, in Theses on the Philosophy of History: 5—In the art-school setting, however, there 7— The rind-area of language unto the realm “A Klee painting named Angelus Novus is almost a signed contract that this of our sensorial intelligence manages to shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly hegemony of writing should not have a right parse the scope of phenomenology Φ in contemplating. His eyes are staring, his of existence there. Instead, there is a culture terms that manages to cut clear of the deeply mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is of immersing oneself in work, and then taking ingrained ideas we have of a universal how one pictures the angel of history. His a step back learn everything anew—tuning in human mind—at least residually cast in face is turned toward the past. Where we on the work as though one was experiencing philosophical terms—to which we would perceive a chain of events, he sees one it for the first time. Among artists and invariably confess, if we only had the honesty designers this is a working habit, but also a single catastrophe which keeps piling of embracing common sense. I think that all faculty prompted at professional community wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of us have hear this tune, and we also tend to of his feet. The angel would like to stay, events such as art-crits. speak each our dialects of this lingo of universal reason. awaken the dead, and make whole what has It is something that you have to learn at art- been smashed. But a storm is blowing from school, no matter what you are teaching, I argue that we can abandon this idea that Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with otherwise nobody will listen to you. Teaching we are the same human mind, only living at such violence that the angel can no longer theory I have to start here. Move into the different historical times, with different close them. The storm irresistibly propels “ground zero” of perception, where the resources, technologies and languages. This him into the future to which his back is availability and mobilisation to the work done is the historicism which Benjamin attacks in turned, while the pile of debris before him someone else, is the point of entry to all the the passage I read from the concept of grows skyward. This storm is what we call following discussions that might concern it. It history. All our practice indicates that reach- progress.” resembles professional listening in music. It ing the place of the other—the other human must be practiced to improve, and is not —is an extremely arduous task, if left to the

eighth element T09C ThB 0354 mind. With the senses it is another matter, understandings he shares in exhibitions, and Before I in the paper return to Benjamin, and the senses operate in their own time. ventures transmitting to his work. He’s however, I have put in a detour: discussing a working with a kind of feedforward. If we critical essay by Erik Born on media in It takes the time it takes—quick or slow—this accept this a artist-proposition to a sensorial Mediaeval Archaeology. I am using his is part of the phenomenology Φ which is not style of knowing, then what we are looking discussion as a opportunity to reassess what an idea of mental contents but rather a for is not a successful core-operation alone, distinguishes media from cultural techniques, practice of emptiness that occasionally may but balanced diet that includes the support and venture a definition of media related to ready us to intercept such contents. These structure. reversibility. There I suggest that what are ideas that we find in authors like Johani distinguishes media from cultural techniques, Pallasmaa and Richard Sennett, for instance, is their reversibility. So media are as old as but their writing, perhaps on account of its 10—We desperately need to keeping our reading—and memorising—backwards. being concise, has its priggish and narrow comprehension of what unfolds and enfolds aspects precisely with regard to the senses at the boundary between of the senses and which they intend to defend. language—between writing and sensory 13—It is with this sensory-practical repertoire analogues—and to make it our frontier. I that I propose as an alternative framework to think that the complexity at this frontier inquire into Walter Benjamin’s copious 8—I propose that it might on account of which deserves the name ‘sensoriality’. This production—in an ongoing project involving precision that we may embark on the is my understanding of José Pellini’s the archives of the Akademie der Künste in varieties of journeys—or, Bildungs-journeys initiative to front the archaeology of the Berlin—by considering his work in the light — in educating our senses and developing a senses, And in my paper I am attempting to of his triple vocations as a librarian, a repertoire of skills, that are to the point when give substance to this by carrying out a graphologist with an appetite for graphic we develop understandings, where the synoptic reading of a book he has edited. form, and a theatre director (as a persona development of theory takes place on the developed from his association with Berthold My readings are not extremely detailed, but backdrop of empirical inquiries. That, is to Brecht), rather than submitting his archive to too long to be accounted for in the fairly go through the labours and struggles needed a philosophical exegesis of the literary theory short time we have for presentations. All the to make ourselves available and mobilised to style, as an act of decolonising the senses: in essays in the book deal with senses in empirical inquiry at hand, that motivates us this case the sensoriality of a thinker that archaeology, in one way or the other, as researchers and feeds our passion of may have moved beyond philosophy, and to knowledge in a community of peers. whether it is the senses of the archaeologist do a case-study of the epistemic violence of as a vehicle of research, studies of the his peers. In the unstable—but still quite safe— sensoriality in past life-forms, or it relates to environment of the art-school, seating the politics of excluding the testimonies of oneself in what I have called phenomenology the senses, in the wake of a colonialism Φ, is a matter of going everyday to work, based on the idea of the universality of once you have been there fore while. But Western reason. getting to this point of readiness in various context outside of such school-settings, we are challenged to realign our senses, and 11—What I do, experimentally, in the paper is invent ways of tuning in, educate our senses to read the book backwards, emulating and skills, to make ourselves ready, William Kentridge’s bag of tricks—so to available, mobilised and empty. speak—because, in my experience, this way of working my way through a book, as a This is where I find Benjamin’s take on professional reader, very often gives me dialectical materialism interesting, because it valuable information of how the book is is not like we are given to this openness by made. That is, how the book comes out as an an open attitude and a state of mind, but compound from the point of view of the getting there is sometimes hard work, at editors and their team of “book-builders”. other times easier, but always and invariably requires that we put in the effort. The And working through Coming to Senses in construct that allows this lies in the this way, I was not disappointed. When I education of the senses, the enskilment of read the book the first time—in order to go our bodies and their wiring these in a into each of the papers—I read it in the sensorial readiness to receive and react to edited sequence, but when working to probe the site, till we eventually reach a holt. the intentions with the volume—going from the content to the container, as it were—it made sense in a completely different way. If 9—This idea of stillness linked to our project it was edited that way, it would stand in the of knowing things is both a resource and a way of the papers, which deserve to be read threat. A threat because the stillness of individually. Which is the core operation. phenomenology Φ may well contain the But in the second round of reading, using the seeds of notions of a universal mind—which method of reverse play made me assess the Benjamin links to historicism—but if it is aspects of the book’s support structure, understood in a dynamic way, it may help us which after all is the purpose of editing a progressing whether it is in the field or at our volume. We need to relate to both registres, desks. Here I am thinking of keeping notes, if not as professional book-readers, in other diaries and logg-books as a kind of playback, ventures of knowing. And is a dialectic which (at least among anthropologists) is a process, where striking a balance where we daily ritual. can reach the availability and mobilisation— Among artists stepping back and looking at the readiness of phenomenology Φ—is the work in progress—with sense of detachment proof of the pudding. and receptivity—is often aided by the use of 12—In what I have proposed here as a way of taking pictures of the work. Sometimes thinking in sensoriality—rather than thinking videos—as William Kentridge does in about sensoriality—brings us back to documenting drawings as the evolve— Benjamin’s notion of the dialectical image. eventually yielding animation videos. He Here the image is a sensory compound at the even goes one step further and runs the brink between the same and other, which is videos backwards and incorporates this sort not tied to any particular sense, but rather to of material in his video-works. It calibrates unique wired combination that comes about his senses to the nature of what he is doing. through tensions, conflict and their There is not doubt that Kentridge’s core crystallisation through experimentation and operation lies in drawing. Yet, in his work, it the mobilisation of our sensory-practical is the support structures he develops and the repertoires. core-operation jointly that yield the

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«Archaeology as aesthetic: Visual in the present for our work, in a world where the present; but also to study the immaterial understanding of the creativity in the archaeology is placed among so many world visions of the past, as well as to archaeological practice.» stereotypes (Carvajal et al. 2011; Tejerizo decode the thinking processes of the past 2011; Mármol 2014). people which now we call as practical, artistic, etc. We need to add to the scientific The image we project as archaeologists to Theodor’s round-up thinking, mainly descriptive, the flexibility of our colleagues as well as to society contains art-thinking, based on what has not be José is parsing facticity—a mixed regime of a great part of the aesthetic born with the confirmed, to carry out research of these fact and fiction—in archaeology, by stereotypes, and it is interesting to study how different worlds. By the way, the New proposing to compare it with the field of we empower the aesthetics against which we Humanities are working on this topic, artistic production, thereby establishing are fighting. It is a condition also in the way proposing multidisciplinary approach some dimensions of comparison homing in we approach the past, on account of the including artists to promote useful release to alternately on installation- and performance- aesthetically given set the ideas and the scientific knowledge, in a world where aspects (with examples from e.g. fine art and practices we call scientific. With my work on every scientific paper is read by an average film). In the presentation, placing archaeo- this line, I found that the visual serves to of 10 people1 . logy in a framework of conversation with build archetypes about how we must be to contemporary art was proposed as a support be considered as archaeologists, and of course it affect how we are perceived, the structure for a core operation: the training of Art & Archaeology younger generations of archaeologists to importance give to our work, and the image develop fieldwork skills in situ. we perceive of ourselves and that affects to how we do archaeology in all the faces. For Since some time, there have been attempts these reasons, we must take care of the to blur the frontier between art and His proposal combined the potential laying in archaeology, showing the permeability a «dialect» of community-involvement, by image we project beyond the descriptive, cinema, or iconic analysis, which have been between both fields. It is a new-born term in drawing on modern art as a cultural the context of the post-processualists discourse, with the concept of archaeological the basis in the analysis of the image of archaeology. approach, as the addition of the senses preservation by the intermedium of mock- (Hamilakis 2014 et al.), the peripatetic up/-dummy digs (e.g., using present-day It is common to observe figures as Indiana (Weebmor 2005; Witmore 2006), the aural urban construction sites—layered by recent Jones, sources of other ‘echo’ images as the (Witmore 2004), etc, at the time to access traces of urban living—to educate the one of the summer volunteer or those of to the memory of the materiality of the past, sensory-motor skills needed to tune in on super-archeologist (González 2013). The trying to point out the difficulty of the layers in a dig; or, another example, breaking image of the archaeologist on fieldwork is inscription processes based on the text and an industrially produced modern vessel in heir of the ideas of ‘discovering’, ‘ancient’, or the observable (descriptive) to recover and order to work with the shards; and, again, ‘exotic’, which make come together a lot of document all the things occurred in contact unearthing entire dinner-tables fictionally professionals who don't have any common with materiality and the qualities of swallowed up at the time of the meal). professional or deontological union. The materiality itself (Hamilakis 2014; Hamilakis problem is that the image of how is an & Anagnostopoulos 2009; Hamilakis, archaeologist and what he/she does affect Pluciennik, & Tarlow 2001; Hamilakis, Introduction directly the ways we research the past, how Anagnostopoulos & Ifantidis 2009; we see it, and what kind of projects we do. In Tilley,Hamilton, & Bender 2000; Edgeworth Since some time we have seen the apparition a science that aims to a discuss objectivity 2003, 2010; Castañeda et al. 2008; Van of new terms to define the appearance of (supported by unlimited techniques) this is at Dyke 2006; etc). artistic practices and ways to think in least a problem in praxis and in general archaeology using the artistic propositions. discourse. The figure of the archaeologist Archaeology has taken a creative sense Although it seems to not to be something has been based on the media and cinema, as through these contacts. Art and archaeology new, the awareness about this is a big step Indiana Jones based on Hiram Birgham and and other brands reaffirm the wider influence that has been taken in other fields of science the archaeologists of the early XX century. of archaeology in the reconstruction of past and now in archaeology. It will allow us to We find different images related to the societies through its material remains, to all understand better what we do when think in places archaeology acts. The past is shown the things that cannot be inscribed as archaeological terms. In this paper, I will as a non-place where all is possible, where normal. The study of the materiality of the point out my experience doing this kind of we put all our contemporary worries (Molina living societies guide us to a kind of activism artistic propositions in the archaeological 2008; Comendador 2013), and which is based on questioning the immovable practice, mixing it with public archaeology neglected to a space of evenemental history, convictions which implies the division of past and education in the creation of fake of facts. In this sense, in the visual, the and present (Millán Pascual 2015: 56-58). archaeological sites to carry out excavations archaeologist works with what doesn't exist, The political and social character of the inside courses of archaeology. reaching the point to trespass the frontier of archaeological practices must move to the construction of past knowledge which is The term «creative archaeologies» in the represented and reality by representing with tricks what is fake, as the image of the produced and reproduced (Edgeworth 2010: Europe, «art & archaeology» in other 65). regions, has been used in recent times shooting of ‘Indiana Jones and the Raiders of ironically to delimit the exercises that want to the Lost Ark’ in which we can see the In my experience I tried to delimit the term blur the frontiers between art and shadow of the Ark representing with two because the epistemology of archaeology is archaeology. Artists and archaeologists have wooden-sticks and a piece of carton (figure creative, since all the practices we engage in coincided a long time in the treatment that 1). Like this pic, the image of archaeology are solutions to problems given (the gave rise to concepts and topics profoundly hides the heterogeneity of several ‘creativity’ as a efficient way to solve related to the heritage from the past as well perspectives, ones against others, on the problems). Nevertheless, the term makes as to the present, before reaching the point practice. reference to a kind of archaeological thinking of convergence in methods, techniques and which goes beyond the traditional, ways to understand reality. understanding of the artistic as a heterodox and flexible approach. The heterogeneity of Archaeology is a source of inspiration for approach is combined with archaeological artists, and although we as archaeologists theory, due to its present a reflection about have used the artistic techniques in our archaeological concepts as time, experience, visual work, we have failed in the space, or memory, adding other concepts at dissemination of our reflections on the past the edge of the scientific and the artistic. to the larger society, something which art This allows to embrace elements to inspire has achieved from its practices and the research as well as in social modes (as discourses. This is an interesting point to street art does, re-defining the space with start removing the permeable frontier new meanings and experiences, creating between art and science, created in the opportunities space to local communities; attempt to avoid any trace of subjectivity. which gives us new ways to interpret Now things have changed, also with the prehistoric art). apparition of New Humanities and the use of artistic methods by the scientists adding The relation between art and archaeology immaterial levels to descriptive, analytical serves a richer discourse, to unsettle research. Figure 1. ‘Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark’ concepts, open new ways to present making of (1985). information, etc. Rather than confront the Nevertheless, in archaeology we are current- artistic with the scientific, they complement ly a step behind, in which subjectivity and The image we have of ourselves allows us to each other. While science present a kind of immateriality today are dangerous issues. unravel what determines our discourse and knowledge «propositional» of facts and the methodological steps we use. To this, it «truth», the artistic provide a «non- is necessary a bridge between the strictly propositional» knowledge, practical, what Beyond Representation scientific and the heterogeneous doesn't have to be confirmed. Prescription perspectives to understand things, mainly over description (Víctor Fernández, on I started to research about this topic developed in artistic practices. This bridge conference 2012). analysing the image of archaeology, a also connects two worlds: the past and the transversal topic in the archaeological present. The apparition of the artistic to do science due to its applications to know how archaeology is on the line to understand we study the past as well as to take position archaeology as a tool to solve the conflicts of

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Archaeological Imagination (Van Dyke 2006; Witmore 2004, 2006), movement of Land Art, inspired in the spatial practices (Hamilakis, megalithic works as the ‘Cadillac Ranch’ Following this, part of my work is to think Anagnostopoulos, & Ifantidis 2009; piece (1974) by Ant-Farm. about what defines archaeology as a Hamilakis, Pluciennik, & Tarlow 2001), etc, practice. For me, the main element in this in the context of archaeological sites; as well perspective is the use of the archaeological as in ‘internal’ spaces as laboratories and imagination (Shanks 2012; Ruiz Zapatero museums. 2014: 53, 67), a form of visual thinking which starts with the material remains of a past In archaeology there are some archaeo- action. As some author pointed out, like logists who have done artistic works. For Stephanie Moser (1998 for example), example, we can highlight ‘Le dejeuner sous archaeology is a visual discipline, which have l’herbe’ (1983) by the French artist Daniel the capacity to imagine visually, to Spoerri. The piece consist in the realization Figure 5. Han dynasty urn (1995). The re-signification reconstruct from imagination the past events of a banquet, with tables, chairs and of the archaeological artifact. in the present. In fact, visual artefacts are the tableware, to be earthed after eating. Years basis of our research processes. later, with the help of the French From art itself, we see a flirt with the archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoulé, the archaeological as inspiration for artists; That is, the visual has been used at the remains of this artwork were unearthing related to the passing of time, memory, beginning of science, when art and science constructing through archaeological action; prehistoric art (Picasso, for example), and were mixed with each other. Actually art another artwork derived from the work done the archaeological aesthetic as key to reflect, served to do science, as Leonardo Da Vinci’s three decades before. as we can see in the MoMA collection in NY, artworks shows (figure 2), and the frontiers or in those by artists like Mark Dion. between these disciplines doesn't exist as A different case of collaborative work nowadays. We could say that the scientific between artists and archeologists useful to Among this examples, I work with two have turned into art with the time. research—the archaeological through artistic concrete ‘artistic’ practices. One of these is action—can be seen in the art & archaeology Street Art (figure 7), due to its possibilities In archaeology this has not changed in Forum in Kyoto, Japan, where artists are to intervene in a space historical and socially essence, from an explicit point of view as we invited to the work-spaces of the built. The artistic piece change the meaning can see it in the archaeological drawings and archaeologists, to allow new interpretations of the space creating new ones, re-defining reconstructions (figure 2), which one day and ways to see the archaeological practice it, which contains reflections about the will be considered artistic works; as well as as well as to experiment with the material present worries, and represent the in a theoretical, conceptual point of view, culture (through reproductions) in museums revitalisation of space creating a new which I want to exemplify with the work of and archaeo-artistic events. ‘memory layer’ especially interesting in time Joseph Kosuth ‘One and three Chairs’ (figure to reflect about archaeological sites. In 3), that is an exercise of imagination that we All they explored the concept of Street Art, public space is used to create a do all the time in archaeology, at the time to archaeological art and archaeology as art. new space, a kind of modern site, which reduce the materiality to a text and visual This work is mine (figure 4), from an represents the preoccupations of the people artefacts. audiovisual record document of the and where the artistic work itself serves to excavation of a sherd of pottery. This is at give tools to change. the same time a document to control better the work on the site, and also an artistic The other practice I use is the proposition. photojournalism. By analysing some pictures of the photojournalist Santiago Palacios In my case, I have used the materials of the about the Syrian refugees in Lesbos archaeological record to experiment along (Greece) (figure 6), its evident we need to these lines. Using photography to dissect use our ‘archaeological imagination’ to several video-records from the process of decode and reconstruct the facts showed in the digging out a sherd of pottery on the site the pictures. This way of thinking about the Tapada das Guaritas (Castelo de Vide, visual artefact forces us to reflect from a Portugal), I stablished an artificial richer perspective, specially important in a chronology which make us to think about the world where heritage is used politically as an archaeological process, in this case the identity element in recent conflicts in Syria excavation, as well as to provoke a change in and Irak. the tempo in which the excavation is carried out. Moreover, I added to this the participation of the human, personal, in the contact with the materiality that ‘comes to light’ the first time in this registered moment.

Figure 4. Video-record of the excavation of a sherd of pottery in Tapada das Guaritas (Portugal) (2014). From art to archaeology, I used the work of the Chinese artist Ai WeiWei. He uses elements of the Chinese heritage to create Figure 6. Materiality of refugees (S. Palacios). his pieces, creating artworks in collaboration with local populations (‘Sunflower seeds’ Figure 2. Science/Art. 2010) as well by destroying real archaeological artefacts as neolithic urns from the Han period (‘Han dynasty urn’ (1995) (figure 5); ‘Han Dynasty urn with Coca-cola logo’ (1994)). What this artist wants to point out is the concept of heritage and its role in present situations; it has explored the memory and the utilisation of the past, in the present against injustice. Indeed, the latest work of WeiWei in Berlin (2016) exemplify the engagement with the problem of the Syrian refugees, treating it with reflections about the past through Figure 7. Street Art in Lesbos (Banksy). material culture. Other artists whose use the material culture and archaeological concepts for their Creating Archaeological Sites: A artworks could be Arman and his ‘packed’ Creative Process rubbish trying to capture a moment of human With this background, I have applied all of Figure 3. Archaeological thinking conceptualized history; Simon Fujiwara, who uses the this in the creation of simulated sites in the archaeological discourse in his works Archaeo-drome2 , a school of archaeology ‘Phallusies’ (2010) and ‘Frozen’s’ (2010). located in Murcia 2 (Spain) (figure 8). There Daniel Guzmán is another who reflect about Walkabout we recreate a fake archaeological site, taking the presence of the archaeological in into account the local remains, to carry out We also could find some interesting daily life through his piece ‘La dificultad de an excavation in a course of archaeology practices in this line. Theatre and cruzar un campo de tierra cualquiera’ (‘The with the local communities (Mármol, Muñoz, archaeology (Shanks & Pearson 2001), video difficulty to cross any earth field’ (2012)). & Marín 2015). This didactical experience of Last but not least, we could mentioned the

ninth element T14J José Marmol 1322 | conference draft archaeology has been understood as creative The second piece is «The brick- archaeology. stone» (figure 10). This is a stone we used to break the bricks to construct the walls of the What makes this didactical space suitable, to structures of the site. By documenting this experiment with art and archaeology, are the process, the first time, and then recording several sceneries it represents in the archaeologically the stone after the breaking, creation of the site, and the whole creative is a way to reflect about archaeological processes behind it, the excavation and the aesthetics, which can be applied to any teaching that follows. Since there are some material reality. A series of photographs processes as to the conceptualisation of using archaeological record complement this archaeological practice, to teach it, the artwork are online. process of creation of complex spaces and the performative acting represented by the The third artwork is a kind of performance, excavation and recreation, after the fact, of a performed in the structures once had been ‘past people’ movements, this activity is a terminated (figure 11). These performative good example of mixture between art and acts put on relevance the apparition of new archaeology and represents very well the use meanings (practical, symbolic) upon a space of the imaginative thinking. Also, documenta- where before there was nothing. The work is tion in this context was based on photo- based on the use of this spaces to represent ethnographical records, archaeological the past people’s movements and attitudes, classic records, and other kinds of artefacts and, in the present, to try to think in Michel with two purposes like ethnographic and Foucault’s ‘heterotopy’. Finally, this archaeological at the same time (on the line, performance serves to mix the several see Moreno 2013; Hamilakis & Ifantidis 2016; structures (floors, walls, materials), done by Mármol 2016). several people using their imagination and experiences, setting unitarian meanings from The process of creating the site involved the former heterogeneity. several processes and personal evolution, through the several acts we did; as collecting the materials, the destruction of ceramics, building the structures, earthing, and finally the excavation. Also, with this activity we promoted the multivocality and multi- temporality of the spaces, taking into account the history of spaces built at present along with the last 50 years, during the life of the students’ parents whose past lives they would excavate on the site. The construction of the site in a marginal space of the town was very interesting from the point of view of the creation of relationships between the students, several local communities and the creation of new spaces of opportunity. Also we can create personal relationships respecting the cultural diversity, the immigration and the protection of heritage spaces. Beyond this, we could have an artistic understanding of the space. For example we can cross where before there was nothing, through the imagined ‘door’ of the house between two walls which divide a ‘garden’ and the interior of the house with several rooms as a ‘kitchen’, ‘bedroom’, an ‘aisle’, etc.

Figure 10. ‘The brick-stone’ (Mármol) (2016).

Figure 8. ‘False dig’ in the Archaeo-drome.

Ontology of Artworks Among the artworks produced in the first phase of the process, I point out three pieces. The first was called ‘Three ages’ (figure 9). It consist in the record, photograph and video, of the process of destruction of the pottery to be earthed in the site. This shows a reflection on the archaeological processes of destruction and collection as well as several ways to act in the construction of material culture in the present. The point is to see materiality in perfect conditions and the processes, involving human experiences and techniques from imagination and intuition, to destroy and earthing the materials. Figure 11. Performance in new spaces (Mármol) (2016).

Figure 9. ‘Three ages’ (Mármol) (2016).

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In the second, final, step of the process, References the course itself, I did several artworks, mainly visual through photographic Castañeda, Q. E., Matthews, C. N. (2008) artefacts. Ethnographic archaeologies: reflections on stakeholders and archaeological practices. We can point out the photographs AltaMira Press. representing the «performance» of the excavation, where the corporeal Carvajal, A.; Hernando, C.; De los Reyes, M. movements, the situation of the (2011). «El síndrome de Indiana Jones. La imagen social del arqueólogo». En Estrat volunteers (ones digging and others in Crític. Vol. 5(3). Pp. 38-49. the cabinet out of the trench), etc, are a kind of archaeological acting. In this Comendador, B. (2013). «Consumo y mass sense, I used the photo-ethnography to media, la imagen especular del Pasado en la record all this movements and cultura popular». En Almansa, J. (Ed.) dissonances on the practice, that in a Arqueología Pública en España. AHIA: wider sense represent a landscape of the colección Arqueología Pública. JAS site and the students (figure 12). Arqueología, Madrid. Pp. 115-135. Edgeworth, M. (2010). «On the boundary: Other kinds of visual artefacts were the new perspectives from ethnography of photographs of the excavation, which are archaeology». En Garrow, D. y Yarrow, T. archaeological and ethnographical (Ed.) Archaeology and Anthropology. Oxford records, showing more beyond the Books. Pp. 53-69.-(2003). Acts of discovery: represented. These pieces served to get An ethnography of archaeological practice closer to the local community, through (Vol. 1131). British Archaeological Reports. website and physical exhibitions, in a González Álvarez, D. (2013). «Las social point of view (figure 13). ‘excavaciones de verano’. Forjando superarqueólogos fácilmente precarizables». Figure 14. ‘The hand’. (Mármol) (2016). En ArkeoGazte: Revista de Arqueología. Vol. 3. Pp. 201-219. Hamilakis, Y. (2014). Archaeology and the Conclusions senses: human experience, memory, and To conclude, I want to point out the value of affect. Cambridge University Press. the visual artefacts and senses to reflect and to record what happens on the site at an Hamilakis, Y.; Ifantidis, F. (2016) Camera immaterial level. The ways of thinking Kalaureia: An Archaeological Photo- emerging from art are important to decode Ethnography, Archaeopress. the processes of understanding the materiality of the present, and it represents Hamilakis, Y.; Anagnostopoulos, A. (2009). an epistemological approach developed in «What is archaeological ethnography?». several fields as photo-ethnography, always Public archaeology, Vol. 8 (2-3). Pp. 65-87. under theoretical frameworks in archaeology Hamilakis, Y., Anagnostopoulos, A., y integrating the descriptive and technical Ifantidis, F. (2009). «Postcards from the apparatus with the non-inscribable edge of time: archaeology, photography, information and the representations of reality archaeological ethnography (a photo- art provides. Understanding the archaeo- essay)». Public Archaeology, Vol. 8 (2-3). logical practice as an artistic action ruled by Pp. 283-309. the artistic thinking can allow us to reinter- pret past peoples’ creativity, based on the Hamilakis, Y., Pluciennik, M., y Tarlow, S. processes of survival, removing the classical (2001). «Academic performances, artistic frameworks of interpretation in question. presentations». Assemblage, Vol. 6. Archaeological practice, as an aesthetic Mármol Martínez, J.A. (2014). La proyección practice, can be conceptualised in visual de la imagen actual de la Arqueología y su artefacts that unify a heterogeneity of several practices considered as ‘archaeological’ importancia en divulgación con audiovisuales: which define what is an archaeologist. There observación y experimentación. Tesis fin de is an archaeological creativity in all the máster, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Figure 12. The performance of the excavation. The processes of archaeology, as doing art with -(2016). «Proyecto Arqueológico Monte landscape of the practice. (Mármol 2016). the archaeological, with the creation of a Miravete: Foto-etnografía arqueológica #1. modern site, with the drawings, photos, etc, Un estudio visual y sensorial del trabajo de in the past as well as in the present. This campo de la campaña de prospección gives us several keys to understand the limits arqueológica de 2016». Unpublished, Online. of our approach to the past and the sense of our interpretations to an abstract aspect of Mármol Martínez, J.A.; Muñoz Viñegla, M.; the past, in the artistic as well as in a wider Marín López, M. (2015). «De la excavación range of human actions. simulada al simulacro de excavación: la doble experiencia de alumnos y arqueólogos Last but not least, what this allows is to en un ejemplo de didáctica de la develop the divergent thinking against a kind Arqueología». Jornadas de Jóvenes en of convergent, monolithic thinking which Investigación en Arqueología (JIA). Lisbon limits our ways to access the knowledge, 2015. avoiding to establish artificial frontiers between archaeology and the contemporary Molina Gómez, J.A. (2008). «A través del world. This is important when performing espejo: preocupaciones contemporáneas por communitarian actions with the communities la paz mundial en el cine histórico sobre la through archaeological activity, as art does. Antigüedad». En Actas del Congreso Figure 13. Archaeological/Ethnographical records. To put light on the heterogeneous (Mármol 2016). archaeological record analogue to the Internacional «Imagines». La Antigüedad en heterogeneity in present times (for example las Artes escénicas y visuales. Rioja Last but not least, visual artefacts with an University. Logroño. Pp. 189-198. artistic intention were done too. the presence of one community in the past Photography, video, painting and sculpture and nowadays in the same place) it is Moser, S. (1998). Ancestral images: the done by the collaboration hand to hand, with important to work on the re-signification of iconography of human origins. Cornell the sites and archaeological work spaces. the students, to create this works concerning University Press. archaeological concepts as memory, Here archaeology has to use the propositions experience or time reinterpreted after the of its own nature, that is so related with art Shanks, M. (2012). The Archaeological excavation by the students (figure 14). This is and street art. Imagination. Left Coast Press, Walnut an art born in the archaeological context and Nevertheless, we should work on the Creek. in the processes of recovering material development of the epistemological, culture from the site, specially the theoretical framework of the creative Moreno Gómez, W. (2013) «Fotoetnografía archaeological documentation of simulated archaeologies / art & archaeology, if finally educativa: una ruta para comprender la materiality to reflect about issues along the we decided to continue with this way, mainly cultura corporal escolarizada.» Revista line of archaeological theory. to research about the ontology of these Iberoamericana de educación. Vol. 62. Pp. practices in the present and its useful 119-141. applications of the study of the past.

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Shanks, M., y Pearson, M. (2001). Theatre/ archaeology: Reflections on a hybrid genre. London: Routledge. Ruiz Zapatero, G. (2014). «Fotografía y Arqueología: ventanas al pasado con cristales traslúcidos». VV. AA. Jose Latova. Cuarenta años de Fotografía arqueológica española. Pp. 50-71. Tejerizo, C. (2011). «Archaeology and Cinema: distortions of a science and a profession». El Futuro del Pasado. Vol. 2. Pp. 389-406. Tilley, C., Hamilton, S., & Bender, B. (2000). «Art and the Re-Presentation of the Past». Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6 (1). Pp. 35-62. Van Dyke, R. M. (2006) «Seeing the past: Visual media in Archaeology». American Anthropologist, Vol. 108(2). Pp: 370-375. Weebmor, T. (2005). «Teotihuacán, Mexico. Mediating Monumentality: An Experiment.» Online on: http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/ teotihuacan. Witmore, C. L. (2006). «Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time Symmetrical Approaches to the Mediation of the Material World». Journal of material culture, Vol. 11 (3). Pp. 267-292. -(2004). «Four archaeological engagements with place mediating bodily experience through peripatetic video». Visual anthropology review, Vol. 20 (2). Pp. 57-72.

1 http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you (24/07/2016).

2 www.arqueodromo.blogspot.com (25/07/2016).

ninth element

KYOTObook —conclusion

01. The journey does not stop thinking of this text alone, but nor comprehending (in the 15. Today this is a logistic here. But having reached a import—in stealth—a number of second person) but intercepting question, rather than a subject place where some undeniable other texts, like a Trojan horse. a ‘third person’-objective (being to be located in public insights have been won, but yet at once of and for the third institutions—such as schools— with an uncertain future—how 06. Which again is similar to person): both in terms of being and political parties; and is to proceed from there? You how we both can intercept amendable to third party inextricably bound up in our have arrived at a certain depth. unconscious images from a interest and of mediation. plattforms of transaction and But you are at the bottom of a mental space (well)—as mediation, which in our era are well. Will there a spring to bring revealed by handwriting—at the 11. So, conversation may hence characteristically combined. up unto the surface? same time as we can relate to be seen as the training ground They are no longer separate. the gestural aspects of that for basic ‘civic values’; in a 02. The well digs unto its own same hand-writing: its force, theoretical framework in which 16. The ‘third party’ point of depths, the spring emerges personality and ductility in the the pronominal categories of view on interests—in which from a sources beyond that written medium (spring). person—i.e., grammatical various kinds of exchange are depth. The image—what was categories—are understood in combined with communication explored in the Kyoto essays as 07. In Walter Benjamin’s ideas each one their framework: in the real world—also conveys the ‘real image’—contains these on graphology (1999)(1) these phenomenological, pragmatic and indicates the pathways of principles: the point and the approaches were contrasted as and semiotic combined. third-party interest, since the counterpoint conjoined. But so new and old: the new linked to effort at understanding and the does, perhaps more surprising- the territories opened by 12. The first person (I) is then acts of mediation have become ly, our conversations. psychoanalysis, the old the our phenomenological tense. combined, if not con/-fused. ones prompted by an interest in The second person (you) is our 03. What is a conversation? Or, personality, which he conceived pragmatic tense. And the third 17. So, even if we lack the to be more precise, what do we as ‘right wing’ (for example, person (s/he) is our semiotic category of a ‘third person do as we converse? All too Ludwig Klages). tense. It brings us into some elsewhere’—in most languages often, we confuse and conflate important ontological —we have to develop sense of conversations with dialogue. 08. But are oppositions like clarification, since it is in the this category of personhood, But think about it! How often is these credible to us today? definition of the real third and ways of accounting for our it not that what we call conver- Opposing the new to the old, person to be absent. exchange in regard of that sation is the juxtaposition of the ideology of the left to the category of personhood (i.e., a more than one dialogue? We ideology of the right, the 13. Absent in the sense of being real person somewhere). This have another dialogue in mind! collective to the individual, our removed from the current is the challenge. unconscious drives to the exchange (in a remote place), 04. While we are engaged in personally articulate (etc.) is or present, but in a marginal 18. F. Barth (1966:15) attempted dialogue with someone else, we likely to obscure the instances capacity. The semiotic third is to define this challenge: are parsing another—parallel— where these correspond. hence a [virtual] ‘placeholder’ «Human behaviour is dialogue in our minds, without for the real—or, actual—third. 'explained' if we show (a) the revealing this to our peer. And 09. That is, they correspond in On the back this ontology, the utility of its consequences in our peer is, more often than the sense that they communic- semiotic third becomes terms of values held by the not, doing exactly the same ate, in that moment when we invested with an epistemic load. actor, and (b) the awareness on thing. Our conversations are enabled to take the position the part of the actor of the contain our current dialogue, of the third: neither in the first 14. This epistemic load is connection between an act and nor second person, but an variable both in scope and in and the dialogues it contains. its specific results»(2). inflection of the person in the depth. Today, this is the 05. The actual dialogue is a third tense. The conversation substance of political life 19. But today this effort at container for more than one becomes a training ground for (rather than the left- and right- comprehending a human third virtual dialogue. This is a likely certain important civic virtues. party dividing lines of yore). party, in terms of its behaviour and robust definition of And the new dividing lines goes (a-b) is effectively connected to conversation. It is the corollary 10. One being the ability to take between political interests that the third party as one involved of inter-textuality: while you are a stand which is neither are vested in blurring/clearing in what we then conceive as reading these lines, you are not interested (in the first person), the pathways of ‘civic values’. transactions in knowledge. That

tenth element KYOTObook —conclusion is, all transactions, are present- beyond art: that is, art as the 29. Beyond understanding wealth of experience that ly also transactions in knowled- subject matter of art history. thirdness—in the embodied currently is shaping the ge; with entailments on status. This could explain why the mind of the creaturely—as institutional theatre-stages. attempts to place design within ‘being the other to oneself’, 20. We can no longer treat the 34. This trend has been pointed the framework of art-history, which Bourdieu (1979)(4) third—3rd party interest—as has been strenuous and a battle confines to the charismatic, the out and reflected in both the foreign to our transactions. And lost in advance. substance of the creaturely is to works of Georges Lavaudant in it is this foreignness which the embody a contraption of the France (2003)—at e.g. the process to and from Kyoto, 25. Simply because design—in kind we find in ‘theatre’. What Odéon Theatre in Paris—and relates to in this report-essay. the above definition— we might call a third nature. Tore Vagn Lid (in Germany and The third party is not the person determines that aspect of Norway) whose re-functioning we are talking with, but artistic practice relating to 30. That is, a contraption of the theatre-space transform nevertheless emerges from the ‘natural history’, rather than to allowing for life itself to be it into a contraption for a non- interferences in conversation. art history. That is, an account invented (Artaud, 1972)(5), given discursive political critique(6). of history relative to nature, to developments and 21. This is the semiotics of the rather than relative to culture. expressions that find place on 35. These tendencies converge third party. When it is hinged to An historical account as seen stage. The point being that our with what we seeing in the fine the pragmatics of the third from a third party. Nature. notion of the stage—in theatre arts scene, where camp-sites party (a) [supra] and the and at large—is going through a devoted to political protest have phenomenology of the third 26. This is an account that will massive up-cycling these days. been conceived as ‘embassies’ party (b) [idem], then we are follow in the wake of the The stage is being invented. of marginalised life-forms; the talking of the inner workings of anthropocene; and where the criticality of which does not something as apparently perspective on human ideas & 31. The traditional theatre only related to their presence in ephemeral as intention. That is, works relates to these as ruts: translates—in local terms—what public space, but also to the an aspect of design. that is, courses of events linked is otherwise achieved by hatching of new repertoires. to complex processes in which travelling, or embarking on a 22. The journey inward to a the factors interact—including journey. These generations of 36. Concomitantly, a number of core—or, the depth of the well human thought and agency—to the theatre were contraptions curated exhibition spaces—like —is similar to that of drawing: transcend the human level. working on condition that they recently at documenta 14, in the kind of intelligent filtration were confined spaces. It can no Athens—feature camp-sites as process that occurs when an 27. How do we relate to the longer be held to be true. hosting-arenas for events of a idea ventures the test of reality. ideas & works of human beings Today theatres are ubiquitous. complex nature, operating as The first flyer series relates to beyond the level of individual cross-roads for quite diverse this phase. The second flyer- contributions—or, behaviour 32. Our smart-phones are affiliations and affinities brought series, here, relates to the they engage in, as members of theatres held in the palm of our together in commons of making enfolding of intention. a culture—to see them at a level hands. The problem is that we and performance. where they are expressions of a are developing uses of these, as 23. These are two aspects of species, that is affected by though they were not theatres. 37. The space created under design, in the sense of the them as one amongst a great Which means that we are Joar Nango’s lead, in Athens, Italian Renaissance definition: variety of species. developing theatrical practices reflects this tendency and is Vasari (1511-1574) notion of without awareness—and even also clearly manifested in the ‘disegno’ (Italian)—which 28. Thirdness here transmutes denial—of what they are. title of the work: European determines at once drawing from being a category Reality becomes play. Everything. These tendencies in and purpose—as the animating branching to semiotics (if the performance world—whet- principle of all creative absent from grammar), and 33. These disseminated spaces her in theatre or in fine arts— processes(3). Which clarifies a foreign/marginal locations, to have had an interesting parallel manifest emergent norms & certain number of things. become an embodied state of in theatre proper, where the forms in public space(7). mind: the elopements of the performances of free theatre 24. Design, in this notion, is creaturely (Stewart 2010, f.n. 8) groups have been staged on a 38. Joar Nango’s project has somehow—and somewhat moving beyond the body as a varieties of sites—from indust- appropriated the notion of ‘third paradoxically—within and social and psychological entity. rial to natural—accumulating a space’ according to a logic that

tenth element KYOTObook —conclusion is similar to the tiers état in the 43. The garden is also a place designed in relations of co-work semiotic-phenomenological French revolution (1789), and in which there could be in office landscapes with program to sequence it. There Sauvy’s/Fanon’s concept of the pigeons. Greenhouses and flexible furniture situations(12). is no scope of consequence, tiers monde—the third world(8) dovecotes are congenial, even without a sense of a road that —where other claims than those though there is no necessary 48. That is, in professional underlies and informs it. Every of the power that be and the relation between them; gardens milieus that we included third- consequence has a sequence. dominating class are expressed. and green-houses afford dove- space designs in their cotes—and vice-versa—and repertoires; with the working 53. Evidently, the idea of a 39. The ‘third space’, however, their relation is therefore hypothesis that the ways that program which is formulated is not an estate in a static sense connective and robust. such work-place facilities are here belongs primarily to the of space: in Joar Nango’s take taken into possession, have realm of human agency and it is fundamentally a nomadic 44. In the prelude to Vagn Lid’s consequences—in terms of understanding, and secondarily space, which has two main play, the house of Machiavelli— values held by the actors—for to computers. But what is also characteristics: a) in relation to the Albergaccio—is a house of the awareness of the task. evident is that it may have taken static space it is an encamp- pigeons. They come and leave computers to reveal the aspect ment; b) it is site-specific in constantly, against all odds. On 49. For the awareness of the of human behaviour that relation to place. The two are the sills outside the windows of consequences of the task to be involves computing. inter-dependent. the National Theatre in Oslo specific, there are certain also, in spite of being armed aspects of the work-place 54. Computing does not use the 40. As a requirement for a site- with bird-spikes, some pigeons facility that are determined as same part of our cognitive specific requirement on the did hatch and dwell. they are built, and defined as apparatus as sense-making and current grounds, the encamp- they clarify what is the occasion narrative. Neither is it locked to ment makes certain aspects of 45. The point being that the for the task at hand. Such work- mathematical symbols and dwelling—of inhabiting the logic of combining i) the processes are concerned figures. But rather the dimen- world(9)—active. It is neither encampment (the garden) and explicitly with intentionality. sion of figuring out our environ- implicitly authentic nor explicitly the site (the theatre) is the ment—and acting in it— that constructed, but results from same that connects ii) the dove 50. The crux of the matter is involves us emotionally. It the work and art of local and to its hatching-place. In the that what we here understand belongs to our primal nature. temporary settlement. language of ‘functional pro- with intentionality is not gramming’ is called a monad exhausted by the mind-set of 55. The ‘ground zero’ of 41. In Tore Vagn Lid’s Machia- pragmatism—or, pragmatic consequence is reflected when (10). It joins i) the components velli, for instance, the theatre is and ii) links in a live & robust philosophy—but are in part Pico della Mirandola writes that transformed into a green-house: way. semiotic in definition, in part [ET](14) occurs twice in the first at the centre of the space there phenomenological. The result is sentence of the Torah—«in the is a miniature model of the 46. So, while the elements of a kind of pragmatism that is at beginning God created [ET] theatre-building made of plexi- the monad [a) and b) in #39]— once augmented and enhanced. heaven and [ET] earth»—and glass, which is filled with water. they each constitute a) an states that «I believe that […] It is an aquarium and a water- 51. Augmented by the kinds of the natural order preceded that encampment and b) they are semiotic contraptions defined reservoir for the garden: the site-specific in their taking of the heaven and the earth.»(15) fish-stool feeds the plants. above as monads. Enhanced by place—they feature a singular the passive elements of all 56. It is a Renaissance idea: 42. Save an oblique reference and underlying unity as they are human sense-experience, that both Niccolò Machiavelli and to the lush Tuscan landscape, joined and connect in a way resist our notions of ‘being’ and Pico della Mirandola were the connection between the that reaches the core of the thereby make claims on place Florentine noblemen who lived garden and Machiavelli’s Il matter, and also beyond it. and positional value in our field and worked under the aegis of Principe—the Prince, his realm 47. This sort of joinery is called of perception(13). Wired to Lorenzo of Medici. Niccolò was and their governing principle— mimesis, and is of a kind that semeíon and phenomenon. born in 1469, Pico in 1463. 6 is accidental. It is a connective years apart. They lived at a time we find thickly theorised in 52. Which means that for each device between the actors and Walter Benjamin’s work(11). It is when Hebrew and Latin realms the audience: planting and series of consequences that were mapped unto each also representative of how the reveal the practical scope of naming twigs in the garden. other(16). relationship between tasks and our understandings, there is a occasions are currently being

tenth element KYOTObook —conclusion

57. This particular blend the human perspective, makes faculties in humans singularly 71. We need to invent the between a ‘computational the dove succeed in its ways: it complicate: to a degree we human life-form. The idea that (Hebrew-Latin) humanism’ at can carry messages. would gladly leave such trivia to we can continue to disseminate the face of ‘dystopia’, we also machines. The transposition of technologies that people– find in two German contempo- 62. It is at this level that Nango’s and Vagn Lid’s leaders, owners and users—do raries—Agrippa von Nettesheim designing programmes finds its projects, unto these written §§, not comprehend, with large and Albrecht Dürer—but also in playground, and where humans would serve to illustrate this. scale consequences that we the more recent (late modern) determine the matter that it cannot, or do not, manage, works of both Walter Benjamin turns into a subject of its natural 67. However, we can become seems to be at a point of near intellect, which is emotive better at it by developing a and Giorgio Agamben(17). collapse, or self-dismantling. rather than speculative. That is, symbolic-linguistic practice in 58. Whether these observations a kind of agent intellect the region of human intelligence 72. The large mouthful of global are considered too broad or— (Aristotle) that move agencies that verges unto drawing and challenges that have followed in on the contrary—overly reliant before they become actions(19). coloration. This is what I have the wake of «progress», on circumstantial detail, been attempting here; both in appears to be way beyond depends on how we understand 63. So, in terms of their formulating linguistic sentences anything that we can handle. mimetic joinery (a sequel to functions and values—at the in close relation to visual And it would therefore appear monadic programming). A level of animal natures— manufacture, and otherwise. that we would have to bridle nomadic understanding of monads are split at their core, our ambitions on the one hand, mimesis, will contrast with e.g. but are shaped into singular 68. The stamped signs that you and expound and expand them a static conception of it. pathways through the mimesis are sure to have spotted as a on the other hand. of the agent intellect, which is kind of progress-indicator on 59. Joar Nango’s idea of also a thing of nature, that joins the flyer-series in the intro- 73. We must be able retrace nomadism as a site-specific and programmes them. This is duction of this volume, as well our steps and follow our own approach, that hinges on the the essence of nomadism. as here in the conclusion, progress, in a global adventure specific work of encampment, features this boundary-unto- of which are very much a part. will assert that the procedural 64. In its joinery it will combine drawing-and-coloration, that We are deeply implicated by it, aspects of this work, and its different elements of animal makes analogical and not accidentally involved in a encounter with the pitiful state nature, and proceeds to move allegorical thinking available. reality that «reboot». We must of the world, will have mission through the realms of creation, unlimit our responsibility, to that will—in the post-historic moved by any form of 69. That is, as an active asset determine what it is, and cease era—take a documentary form. philosophically argued meta- pertaining to what might be to invent managerial detours. physics. Its basic principle understood as ‘operational 60. However, the nomadic extends from the depth of semiotics’ and a passive 74. That is, we must cease to concept of inhabitation may be perception and can be compre- impetus in what might be use managerial detours to walk derived from the example of hended as interception. understood as ‘contemplative around our problems & Vagn Lid’s doves, if we only phenomenology’, placing our challenges, and remit them; take one step beyond it: that is, 65. The monad is grounded in aptitude to build up actions, in develop a viable critique of the from animal nature to the analogical thinking—even in its the «mean», where they can be current pragmatism that drives intellect as a thing of nature. analytic definition (e.n. 9)—and augmented and enhanced. stubbornly and indifferently on The basic behaviour of the dove mimesis in allegory. So, at their its self-defined freeways, past being to fly between the places roots, programming and 70. This is where beefing up the its borderlands unto semiotics they are 1) born and 2) fed. computing are based on ana- impoverished realm of human and phenomenology. logy and allegory, and the inter- experience (Benjamin) can be 61. The one (the hatching ception between the ‘nest’ and currently envisaged—for 75. With the help of figures place) is passively imprinted the ‘feed’ is prompted by colour instance, through the mediation posing as facts, but with no real into the dove(18), while the other and parsed by drawing. of avatars—but constitutes first math. And with the help of rules is linked to the activities that and foremost an interesting that are always on the way to will make it live. In going and 66. This is basically about strategic realm for developing implementation (therefore they coming between these two solving kinds of problems which new designs for how we think can be corrective, limiting or distinct raison d’être is what, in the symbolic and linguistic and act in the world. prohibitive). Much of what goes

tenth element KYOTObook —conclusion as management today are the a 3 month trekking, its slow-time transmission, and as a special form of labour, clearly avoidance/reluctance following a traditional route enhanced by the train of guests. which adds to the work on behaviours. from Stryn—or, Greidung—in ideas and the work of the Western Norway, to Oslo. The 85. Both of these—the one journey, and adds the work of 76. We can query them at the historical droves could count linked to the semiotics of mediation itself. It does not verge of semiotics and 3-400 animals, while on this transmission, the other to the proceed by rote transmission. phenomenology: what are they journey there will be 1 (tops 3) phenomenology of the unique producing and who are they cow/s. A «cowboy» route. inertia in the small crowds that 90. Rather it seeks to establish seducing? They must be made will take the relieve from one a relation between the values of accountable for where they 81. Anyone can access the another, along the path—are as a performance—making as a steer, and also what their drove through GPS and join the unpredictable as the pragmatic form of encampment (monadic foundations are. And how the party for as long as they wish. concerns and turns of the drove analogy)—and documentation; store of pragmatic intelligence The historical background, the and journey. rounding up the specific results is impoverished in their wake. project and the instructions for (mimetic allegory). And a access are disseminated at an 86. The utility of the consequ- readiness in the act of media- 77. Clearly, we cannot exhaust url—garenturmedkua.no. Some ences in terms of values held by tion for the transition to new this issue. But we can can be of the people joining the drove the Steinar Laumann lies in sites as specific affordances. weary of projects where an are invited to give a talk-as- acquiring experiences in facing attempt is made to combine they-walk: a conversation. the consequences: this is their 91. The nomadic ides of performative goals and utility. While the awareness on movement comprises two tasks documentary objectives in a 82. The conversations are re- the part of Laumann on of the both relating to assemblages: a) single process—and a singular corded and broadcasted to the connection between the act and the assemblage of the encamp- idea of progress—which web-page; no images just its specific results emerges ment; b) the assemblage of bridges the realm of personal- sound. The sound is recorded from the slow-radio broadcast. breaking up, and moving on. and historical experience. with the help of small micro- Both relate to the agent phones attached to the cow 87. If the explanation of human intellect’s work of joinery. But 78. Because this is really the with a halter, in such a way that behaviour is made up of these in two very different modes. As core of the issue, isn’t it? The it will go unnoticed by the cow, two conditions, it means that exemplified in this volume. status of our historical but will record the sound of its the project Fjord Cow (2017) experience in relation to the movements and breath. somehow will be self- 92. The introduction and developments in our natural explanatory (and not require conclusion is concerned with habitat, and our future as a 83. Hence the walk-and-talks outside assistance to be these different phases—or, species. There is no job- will come through to whoever explained). Which means that it modes—in travelling. We may mobility—within or between listens to the broadcast, from is a tributary to a category of be growing out of fixed jobs—that will change this. We the «cow’s perspective», as it mediation of a special kind. identities, unto to more complex will always leave a trail. were. The project aims at a and dynamic forms of symbiosis between slow-radio 88. It goes beyond the belonging. Or, at least, this is 79. Steinar Laumann’s project and the summer season (which exchange of some quick views an option on the contemporary Fjord Cow (2017)(20) is is quite slow in Norway). The on the idea, and a sample of scene for whoever works on it. exploring the kind of combined cow moves slowly, and the walk standard indicators as to its performative and documentary takes about 90 days pluss… success in meeting the 93. If people are dividuals, in immersion. Steinar Laumann is challenges of the road. The Marilyn Strathern’s termino- an artist who is also a 84. The full implications of what mediation itself becomes part logy(21), they will look for unity mountain- & glacier-guide, who the journey & its apparatus of the compound of the idea beyond the confines of has also guided three groups entails, is the line of pragmatic and the challenges met on the personhood. They will pursue it equipped with skis and consequence for the sake of journey: the work of walking. through the kinds of work that toboggans across Greenland. which trekkers embark on such leave readable trails in their And the fjord-cow. journeys. The time of journey— 89. So, is is with the present wake—in real or parallel time. in real time—will be augmented report: it is written in the form Perhaps this is what Joar 80. The fjord-cow project of an essay, because it wants to by its virtual extension, owing to Nango calls indiginuity(22). combines a web-page access to convey the sense of the journey

tenth element KYOTObook —conclusion

______

(1) Benjamin, Walter (1999) (10) Monads are a way to build (19) Aristotle (1987) De Anima/ «Graphology—Old and New» in computer programs by joining On the Soul, Penguin Classics. Selected Writings 1927-1930, simple components in robust Vol. 2, Part 1, The Belknapp ways:… (20) http://garenturmedkua.no/ wordpress/nb/ Press of the Harvard University • An endofunctor, T : X Press. → X (a type constructor (21) Strathern, Marilyn (2004) (2) Barth, Fredrik (1966 [1965]) of kind *→* with a The Archaeology of Personhood: «Anthropological models and Functor instance X) An Anthropological Approach, social reality», the second • A natural Routledge. Royal Society Nuffield lecture. transformation, μ : T × T In Proceedings of the Royal (22) Joar Nango: http:// Society of London. Series B, → T, where × means www.documenta14.de/en/ Biological Science 165 (998): ‘functor artists/1405/joar-nango 20-34. Lecture delivered composition’ (also October 26th , 1965. known as join) • A natural (3) Vasari, Giorgio (2008) The transformation, η : I → Lives of Artists, Oxford World T, where I is the identity Classics. endofunctor on X (also known as return) (4) Bourdieu, Pierre (1979) La distinction: Critique social du (11) Stewart, Elisabeth & Buck- jugement de goût (The Morss, Susan (on monads and mimesis), Giorgio Agamben on Distinction: Social Critique of Analogy. the Judgment of Taste), Paris: Minuit. (12) Lanier, Jaron (2011) You are not a Gadget, Kindle version, (5) Who am I? Where do I come from? Penguin. I am Antonin Artaud (13) Merleau-Ponty, Maurice and if I say it (1985) L’œil et l’esprit (The Eye as I know how to say it and the Spirit), Folio. immediately (14) ET: Hebrew pronunciation of you will see my present body the letters aleph and tav (first fly into pieces and the last letters of the and under ten thousand alphabet); they have no intrinsic notorious aspects meaning, but are found seasoned all over the Torah a new body (Old Testament); if the Torah is will be assembled the supreme container, in which you will never again accounting for the creation of be able the world,, the ETs denote to forget me. everything that is in it (…the world): i.e., the historical contents. Postscript to a poem on the (15) Cf, Waite, A. E. (2016) The Theatre of Cruelty, in Artaud– Kabbalistic Conclusions of Pico Artaud Anthology (trsl. Jack della Mirandola, Kindle edition. Hirschman, San Francisco: City Lights, 1972). See also: della Mirandola, Pico (1996) Oration on the Dignity of (6) Lavaudant, Georges (2006), «L’édifice et l’abri: notes sur Man, Kindle edition, Regnery l’espace théâtral» (Eng. The Publishing. Edifice and the Shed: Notes on And: Idel, Moshe (2011) the Theatrical Space) in Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510—A Berthoz & Recht (éd.) Les Survey, Yale University Press. espaces de l’homme, Colloque (16) Cf, Lucchese, Filippo del; annuel Collège de France, Frosini, Fabio & Morfino, Odile Jacob. Vittorio (2015: 262-264) The —Fyrsten/The Prince (May, Radical Machiavelli: Politics, 2017); Philosophy and Language, Brill. Direction: Tore Vagn Lid; Scenography: Kyrre Bjørkås; (17) A sample: Actors: Hanne Skilel Reitan, —Dürer, Albrecht (2008) Ingjerd Ekeberg, Anders Memoirs of Journeys to Venice Mordal; Musicians: Marita Kjetland and the Low Countries, Kindle Rabben (Keyboards); Tomas version, Echo Library. Nilsson (Percussion) —von Nettesheim, Agrippa (1993) Three Books on Occult (7) Fischer, Michael (2003) Philosophy: A Complete Edition, Emergent Forms of Life and the Kindle version, Llewellyn Anthropological Voice, Duke Publications. University Press. —Benjamin, Walter (2009) On

(8) Fanon, Franz & Sartre, Jean- the Concept of History, Classic Paul (2001) The Wretched of Books America. the Earth, Penguin Modern —Agamben, Giorgio (1995) Classics, Penguin. Homo Sacer: Tome 1, Le pouvoir souverain et la vie nue (Eng. (9) Cf, Heidegger, Martin (1971) Homo Sacer: Volum 1, The «Building Dwelling Thinking» in Sovereign Power and Bare Poetry, Language, Thought New Life), L’ordre philosophique, York: Harper Colophon Books. Broché.

And: (18) Lorenz, Konrad (1982) The Ettinger, Bracha (2015) Foundations of Ethology: The «Carriance, Copoesis and the Principal Ideas and Discoveries Subreal» in SALTWATER CATALOGUE, 14th Istanbul in Animal Behaviour, A Biennale 2015: Istanbul. Touchstone Book.

tenth element KYOTObook —postludium

In an introduction to his self- very different clusters of Of course, there are a number transgression but one of published catalogue of compact professional associates, and of other people who share this fulfilment. Symptomatically, the galaxies, Zwicky (1971) evoked will even stand as ideologically interest. But the point here is to language most appropriate to his colleagues as ‘scatterbrains, opposed to one another, when select 3 people, who may not evoke this is eschatological. sycophants, and plain thieves… brought to compare on the have gladly dined together, and (who) doctor their observation- scale of critique. yet can be fruitfully compared. The language of death, al data to hide their short- This is, of course, an unusual judgement and final destiny. comings… (and publish) useless For this reason, natural history claim in the age of social Not lending itself appropriately trash in the bulging astronomic- will readily be considered as media. But is concerned, in to the mundane concerns of art, al journals’» (sic). politically suspect. Running this aspects, precisely with this. knowledge, science and risk, we cannot today afford to research at large. However, an Today, Zwicky is acknowledged leave any stones unturned. But What characterises our alternative might be found by as one of the forerunners in then we have to know what we selected 3 is a talent, curiosity focussing on ontological theories in astrophysics on compare. We compare forms of and intellect for interests in mediations, that are constitutive ‘dark matter’ (which is dark on knowledge inasmuch as people and territories beyond of what we understand as form. account of being indicated but combine understandings with their academic precincts and unseen by what can be motility and enskilment. their followers. In other words, That is, rather than looking for observed through telescopes). they share the knack of picking object-like qualities when His diatribes with his It is basically what Bourriaud up the trail of 3rd party interest. looking into the nature of form; contemporaries and his asserted in The Radicant An interest and a talent not as though form resided in discoveries raise a basic issue. (2009, cf, the prolegomenon). necessarily shared by others. certain object-properties, Zwicky’s morphological analysis looking for certain instrumental Thus, the topic of this can claim a place amongst the For instance, there is precious connections of what we may postludium to the KYOTObook: ruts of natural history, because little left of Zwicky’s idea of understand as operational what are the chances of it is a practice-based theory of ‘incommunicable truth’ in his semiotics: the spanning intermediary positions— dynamic systems, based on self-determined epigone Tom ontological mediations. perceiving them, developing intermediary forms, can be Ritchey groundwork for the them and holding them—in such identified and managed. Swedish Morphological The simple option is looking to realms of knowledge inquiry Society, where morphological the triangle between text, image where there are no syntheses, But it is not very clearly analysis is pretty much reduced and paper—or, writing, drawing and where we have to be expressed. However, this idea to a strategic decision-making and making—to reconfigure our content with mediations1 ? is clearly expressed in Fredrik protocol6 . It became formalistic. notion of knowing. However, Barth’s idea of applying the artistic research brings us a Clearly, without affirmative geological concept of The problem is precisely not second, more demanding leap, action, findings in these «murky ‘disordered systems’ to social whether the follower is true to a to define a different triangle: waters» run the risk og not phenomena2 , in a way that master—as for instance, Fredrik adjoining phronesis to ontology being recognised. Not from the certainly is similar to Zwicky’s Barth’s school of ethnography and epistemology. lack of talent, moral integrity attempts at applying his in Bergen/Norway—but that and bad habits—as Zwicky concept from astrophysics3 . there are aspects of human It is here that the challenge of indicates—but rather from the knowledge that cannot be adding a third form of lack of certain basic Again, the diversification of followed. In these cases, knowledge—to gay and sad understandings, intellectual Fredrik Barth’s conversations faithfulness and following are science—in the arts and motility and practical creativity with select individuals, who clearly not the same thing. humanities, comes to stand a & formal elegance. were living and thinking at the test. That beyond writing, outskirts of the societies he The bond is created and grows drawing and making, another Instead of celebrating their co- studied as an ethnographer, are through the unique combination triangle defines in which existence in certain privileged extending fieldwork unto realms of inventiveness and moving on ontology and epistemology no periods as the Renaissance, it on the verge of professional —making and moving—where longer are contrastive pairs. is probably more timely to point exchange (rather than the whoever is beyond the bounds out the possibly catastrophic ethnographic study of culture)4 . of the current, of work and That is, no longer are defined in implications of their scattering one’s fellows, is the prime the terms of structural in our time (while celebrating But it never surfaces in these motivator; their interest in the linguistics, as binary the signs in some milieus, that terms. However, this idea is contemporary is the seal and oppositions. But instead are in the point being received and clearly expressed in George signature of their vocation. their foundations are bound to a understood as constellations). Marcus’ idea of para-sites (as a third, which is phronesis: way of re-functioning fieldwork Our current plight is such that practical experience. Which Though the ruts of ‘natural and the norms & forms of this unmistakable sign of brings us back to Fritz Zwicky, history’ are relatively easy to ethnography). Nevertheless, in excellence, is that the lack of it Fredrik Barth & George identify—with its inception, in the successive efforts of may well lead to the unmaking Marcus, in terms of what they modern times, with Goethe—its conceptualising intermediary of these traditions of have been prepared to do. representatives in modern times positions the three are linked5 . knowledge. If so, it would not are as different, as Benjamin be the first time that great ideas The 3 have always had a and Bateson. And we are not Not ideologically, in the terms are threatened, brought to their parallel design—which, as a talking about differences of of critique & political discourse, demise by their followers. So, method, we could name ‘para- degree and variations on a but in the way they connect what is there for us to «get»? design'—which is to step out of certain basic understandings the comfort-zone, and into the scale, but about really different 9 paradigms of human thought. with intellectual motility and In Nietzsche, the moment of contact-zone , where deskilling skill. The 3 are all trained Gay Science (1991 [1882])7 is is the premise for reskilling: the So, it is clear that these forms researchers—it is a meta-skill— when knowledge passes unto equivalent of the phenomeno- of knowledge—with their they use their specialisations to song. It has a counterpart in logical reduction in phronesis different store of artistic knock on other doors; their Benjamin’s work on the Origin (cf, phenomenology φ). affordances and clusters of understandings include form. of the German Tragic Drama academic ownership—can (1998 [1928])8 . Here, the This ground-zero of practical make claims on the tributaries So, the present attempt is not moment of ‘sad science’ is experience—the design of of natural history, only when the one of rapprochement. They when knowledge passes unto deskilling and reskilling—brings knowledge form appears as stand in very different places: redemption. Transmuted. the practitioner to the brink of such if combined with motility both in terms of interest, capabilities, knowledges and and enskilment. experience-base and political In both cases—with the tune memories they cannot have, but positioning. But then, why and the image—the moment of yet emerge in the permutable And that outside of this compare them at all? Well, it transcendence is when constellations of new ontologi- association these knowledges— may be argued that the three of knowledge transmutes into es, their epistemes and phase- as cultural constructs—cleave them are interested in variation, something else; crosses over its shifts of practical investments. to very different routes, muster complexity and change. own bounds. Not in an act of This is defines para-design.

1 Buck-Morss, Susan (1979) The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodore W. Adorno,Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurter School, Free Press.

2 Barth, Fredrik (1992) «Toward a Greater Naturalism in the Analysis of SocialOrganisation» in Kuper, Adam (ed.) Conceptualising Society, Routledge.

3 Cf, the prolegomenon in this book.

4 Cf, Barth, Fredrik (1988) The Last Wali of Swat, Columbia University Press.

5 Marcus, George (2005) Ocasião—The Marquis and the Anthropologist, a Collaboration, Alta Mira Press.

6 Ritchey, Tom (1998 [2013]) «General Morphological Analysis—A General Method for Non-Quantified Modelling», Swedish Morphological Society.

7 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1991 [1882]) The Gay Science [with a prelude in rhymes and and appendix of songs], Random House.

8 Benjamin, Walter (1998 [1928]) The Origin of the German Tragic Drama, Verso Books.

9 Pratt, Mary Louise (1999) «Arts of the Contact-Zone» in Bartholomae, David & Petrosky, Anthony (eds.) Ways of Reading, Bedford/St. Martins.

eleventh element

EXIT The question of what happens between the act of storing something and the initiative to retrieve it, is more complicated than the file-and-folder system on a computer would seem to suggest (i.e., the user-interface provided by most computers). If it, in Freudian parlance, is comparable to peekaboo (Germ. Fort-Da), it summons the big problem of object-constancy. The idea of work-in-progress would appear to tap into this dynamic—closing/saving and opening/ working on a file—at difference stages, or aspects of process. A similar argument goes for editing one/several files: what is added and/or removed, will go through phases when nonsame elements are conjoined, though they might separate/adapted further down the path. This clearly the case in the KYOTObook. The relations between the topics are cogent enough to be bound together in a book, as a sequel to the kind of travelling-companionship that emerges at a conference, and is further enhance by the sessions we got to work together: the sessions were, in this specific sense, understandable as workshops. Binding them in a book is one step forward. The shock of the new that comes with the f/act (Germ. Tatsach) of binding—the contactmetaphors that come about through the existence of the volume—is the topic of each of the two article-drafts written by the the editor (they analyse two books and the connectiveness of their contents), but also ensues from having included the materials from Lia Wei and José Marmol. Contact-metaphors of this sort are contingent both on the journey and on the book: that is, on the conjunction of the material content (the journey) and the material expression (the book), to employ the layers of Hjelmslev’s semiotics that he assigned to physicists, on the one hand, and (social) anthropologists, on the other hand. Their conjunction lends itself to artistic research. It is interesting, from this point of view, that the term ‘reverberation’ (Norw. ‘forplantning’) has both human and physical determinations in both English and French. What Bourdieu coined—in an early version of his outline of a theory of practice—as what communicates from body to body, before words and concepts, seems to cover both: it is physical and it is embodied. To the more refined dialecticians this notion of ‘materialism’ often is denounced as too gross. They might have a point if we limit our scope to the notions of materials—and their exegesis—in authors like Walter Benjamin. But if we widen the scope to their material practice (such is found in archives and indexes) the strictly dialectical notion of materialism seems to be too narrow. A wealth of insights deriving from such index & archive materials can be derived if we sustain a semiotic, pragmatic and phenomenological approach alongside dialectical materialism (in the sense of critical theory [Benjamin, Adorno…]). It appears that a number of valuable and practical insights can be reaped from this approach in Benjamins involvement in theatre (Brecht). In the semiotic registre the relation between content and expression is coded, in the pragmatic registre it is much less so, and in the phenomenological registre connections between content and expression is loose to the point that they may travel & work freely and follow independent itineraries. Their coming together, however, is not random. Rather, it is contingent. This defines the realm in which we act on meanings (altering them, or creating new ones). This track defines what Adorno and Benjamin thematise as ‘mediation’: the backdrop that develops as negative dialectics (Adorno) fails to achieve/claim a synthesis. Hence a question is posed as to what can be achieved in directing convergence at this level, or through other forms of design. How do artists generate a surplus? How do we move from stacking this surplus, possibility of overflow of contents trickling unto more humble containers? What is the importance of neuro- diverse in connecting to depth? Do we connect the deep by making it more known, or less known? What is readability—and hence the interest—of these matters to a third party? With certain contents we are brought to parse their expression—their containers—we are brought to enfold this expression and traverse realms of hitherto unrelated contents. These are specifically human capabilities, but they are sometimes weakly stated (in theory and practice). They beg for further inquiries into the monadic, the mimetic and their yield of knowledge.

Theodor Barth