‘We expect time to empower our sense of vision, but it does not. It only reveals our blind spot, our inability comprehensively to see or understand a given image.’
Michael Tarantino (1999)
The blind spot within the human eye is the point where the retina connects to the optic nerve. This point of linkage to the mind, where signals disappear into the brain, is ironically a point where an image is lost from vision. Thankfully due to the compensation of the other eye its disruption is redressed. This capacity, however, is limited when a fault occurs in the complimentary eye. The right eye can therefore hinder the ability of the left eye without so much as any direct interference. For Fergus Martin, a well known Dublin based artist, conflict is never too unmerited a term for the relationship between himself and his eyes. A subject of several different conditions including glaucoma, cataracts and severe myopia. Yet the most traumatic of afflictions has to be the detachment of his retina within his right eye in recent years. It became the starting point for my contemporaneous research around lost-knowledge. Consequently resulting in a documentary style interview process, involving the interrogation of the artist and the condition. Previous to this, my methods of research employed hinted towards scientific and archaeological analysis, making the investigative nature of the documentary video all the more seductive. It allowed me to inquire into the relationship between Fergus and his hindered method of knowledge acquisition via the same spectrum of light.
Many of the topics of conversation between myself and Fergus evolved from his interests and fascinations with my own investigations. Often questioning the questions presented to him as he attempted to locate himself within the work. From this, statements arose that formed the spine of the composition. While the very words articulated obviously assert themselves through the inclusion of sound, there are a few key elements that propel the final iteration that emerged through both my own research and from the prompts of the subject, Fergus Martin.
Nevertheless, the notion of lost and lostness is a key strand that has been prevalent throughout. However, in order for something to be lost, it must first have been discovered. There is an overt realisation of some previous form of availability. The labeling of lost-subject signaling the deficiency in control of that subject. What is not as obvious is that, often, inheritance of such as a prefix unveils the presence of inquiry. Otherwise, for if it were never sought after, it would be not be dwelled upon, and hence unrecognised(/forgotten). The addition of this prefix in front of the word knowledge is, for me, the most costly of realisations.
Knowledge is the cognitive result of perception and reasoning. Simply the rationalising of experience, or as Simon O’Sullivan declares, ‘the formation of adequate ideas which themselves arise from affects’ (2007, p44). A compromise between the internal and the external. The internal initially being the instincts and operations needed as an infant to survive, while not to be confused with a priori-knowledge which deals mainly with justification of statements independent of experience. Nonetheless, knowledge is cumulative and over time new instances of knowing develop as a result of the previous outcome assuming a place within the reasoning process. The external is quite simply the multi-sensory inputs we know as our senses. Early classical philosophies went so far as to claim knowledge as a subset of truth and belief, or more candidly “justified true belief”. However, what we perceive is not necessarily always true and what we reason, while believed, may not be appropriately justified. It was Henri Bergson who summed up best what characterised Kant’s philosophy;
‘The more you insist on the difference between the impressions made on our retina by two points of a homogenous surface, the more you thereby make room for the activity of the mind’ (2008, p95).
In fact Martin Jay remarked that ‘Plato often expressed severe reservations about the reliability of the two eyes of normal perception’ (1994, p27). Thus knowledge is best summed up in the aforementioned way. A response to outside stimuli, or more simply put, the understanding of experience. Then by such consequence, lost-knowledge can be accepted as the loss of this understanding. In Fergus Martin’s case the loss of a means to understanding inevitably results in the loss of understanding. Thereby a loss of knowledge. This is the first crucial fundamental towards appreciating the work.
The second being that societies means to combat such a fate has routinely been the archive. Traditionally a venue acting as a repository, these are ‘institutions, which, in a society, make it possible to record and preserve’ documents (Foucault, p145). However, more precisely, an archive can be seen as ‘the general system of the formation and transformation of statements’ (p146). It maintains a symbiotic relationship with knowledge and the knowledge process through its functioning as both means and method. Inasmuch as it becomes evidence of a former, it is required to impartially present this evidence to the latter. The latter being any persons or purpose subsequent to the original. Thus, the neutrality of the evidence is subjective to the audience and their own convictions. As ‘moral quality is the input of those who access them: people make sense of archives, not the other way around’ (Dan and Kiraly, 1999, p113). I felt it was necessary then to present the document as a whole without a distinct end-point. Looping the video to continue endlessly, versus a strict beginning and end affair, allows the work to be viewed at any stage without fear of hindering accessibility.
A flaw, then, in visual perception upsets this dynamic of knowledge formulation, thus upsetting the equilibrium. Internal reasoning alone cannot constitute balanced knowledge. Reaffirming Voltaire’s notion that ‘only the perception of external objects and never innate intuitions or deductions are the source of our ideas’ (Hacking, 1975, p33). With the visible landscape being lost, as a consequence the potential knowledge that would have resulted is also lost. The main reason that the loss of vision holds such a strong position in my work is primarily due to Fergus’ profession as a visual artist. Sight being the superior faculty in operation for both the maker and the spectator. Moreover, Martin Jay indicates that the eyes themselves contains markedly more nerve endings than any other of the senses in the body (1994);
‘Having some eighteen times more nerve endings than the cochlear nerve of the ear, its nearest competitor, the optic nerve with its 800,000 fibers is able to transfer an astonishing amount of information to the brain, and at a rate of assimilation far greater than that of any other sense organ’ (p6).
The purpose of vision, perception and the apparatus that governs them occupying a lead role in the understanding of the work.
This fault in visual perception also resurrecting itself with relation to the visual articulation of the work. Mimicking reality, the motion picture seeks to reconceive it. Considering only the fundamental workings of the medium, one is presented with a representative, or archival, version of Fergus. In fact ‘this relationship between past event and its document … is not simply the act of citing a preexisting object or event’ but a means of replacing it altogether (Enwzor, 2008, p23). By virtue of the camera and the archive, the document omits the wider field of vision. The camera angle is fixed and the image is framed. This functions from what Foucault determines as a process that enables statements to survive. In tandem to that, knowledge of context and the surrounding is lost. In earlier drafts and to further this point even the observable background information was set out of focus in order to construct a more approachable avenue for investigation. Thereby keeping Fergus the centre of attention. Obviously all that which is not within a frame is inherently lost but this requires greater faith to surrender it for questioning. However, when dealing with more recognisable forms, the viewer can be trusted more with this situation. With that in mind, a portion can be enlarged, with little fear of misinterpretation while being reflexive upon the act of archiving, by using a detail of his face. Expanding a section of the image to fill the frame also results in the exposure of the grains or pixels. With regards photography;
‘A perfect lens in perfect focus would render a point on an object as a point on an image. Since perfection is unattainable, a point is rendered as a small circular area of light, called the circle of confusion’ (Baines, 1974, p62).
The bits of information are on display, and ever so evident, betraying the illusion of the medium. Informing the onlooker that not all data was captured and presented. Ultimately this is not an aesthetic choice, while the visibility of a grain might appeal to those nostalgic towards historic technologies. In truth, any visual appeal it adds is welcome but only as a secondary consequence to that of the action of exposing the elemental components.
Be that as it may, the image in extant still operates at a familiar pace as our own present existence. Pier Paolo Pasolini epigrammatically explains it as such:
‘Reality seen and heard as it happens is always in the present tense. The long take, the schematic and primordial element of cinema, is thus in the present tense. Cinema therefore reproduces the present. Live television is a paradigmatic reproduction of something happening in the present’. (1980, p3)
Due to this method of operation, and in order not to ‘accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass’, time is fragmented into chapters or statements (Foucault). Knowledge is undoubtedly lost from the edit. The simple intervention of the montage by the joining together of several, temporally-separate clips problematises the absence of the intermediate stage. The invisible being just as inherent as the visible. It was necessary to employ a terse command with the use of this technique in order to emphasize the jump from one clip to another. While as aforementioned, the lack of noticeable boundaries with regards the beginning and end are purposely indiscernible, the jump separating each clip is not. Again drawing attention to the functioning of the archive as a historical account. Pasolini comparably suggested that ‘as soon as montage intervenes … the present becomes the past’ (1980, p5). To expand, a succession of different moments cannot physically constitute a continuous and linear timeline.
As evident in the installation, the viewer’s periphery is consumed entirely by the screen. It occupies one’s panorama. From interviews with Fergus, the notion of panorama featured regularly. Something which has been a feature within his art for quite some time, predating the onslaught of his blindness. His painting Untitled (1999) being a noteworthy example. The statements as such then carry with them not only a visual depiction but also an aural component. The audio statements are present with the intent to articulate the principles being dealt with. Reiterating Enwzor’s point relating to a document as a replacement to the original, the spoken word is now the video archives’ vocalisation and reinforcement of itself. A self referential eidos.
However, while ‘Modernism still remains nostalgic for something lost … Postmodernism, in contrast, is willing to live with the pain of unrepresentability’ (Jay, 1994, p583). Martin Jay comfortably echoing that ‘postmodernism must therefore be understood as “the transformation of reality into images”’ (1994, p544). Just as the transformation of reality into a record(ing) is the fulcrum of an archive. Therefore, it would be fair to suggest that any form of visual document or graphic, and hence any artistic equivalent, is simultaneously the epitome of the archive and of the postmodern. The archive then is very well contextualised within the realms of contemporary art. Conforming to that which Hal Foster diclared that ‘archival artists seek to make historical information, often lost or displaced, physically present’ (2004, p3). Transformation towards an alternate form, while losing knowledge in the process is a tool which I have carefully chosen and utilised.
As the title then suggests, this is the diffusion of visual knowledge. Citing the original Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1826 – 1848) in its assembly as they were responsible for similar archive related activities with regards photography. In contrast to that, society is not only used in the sense of social aggregate but also as a play on Foucault’s mention of the institution. The knowledge formed is a working consequence of the archive. Selecting from the greater mass of testimony. Reasoning with perception, since;
Perception + Reasoning = Knowledge
The diffusion is thus either the dissemination or disintegration of this knowledge, yet similarly advertising the product of the circle of confusion. To diffuse is to spread out, and in a photographic sense it also leads to a reduction in the clarity of detail. Therefore archive is a contradiction and loss is ubiquitous.
Bibliography
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