e73975 2024, Art+History+Theory+Cultures, Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art), Discipline of Art

Essay by Jade Cargill  for Contextualising Practice 

The topic of this essay and my art is imagination. Within a world that prescribes narratives and frameworks to understand ourselves that lack depth, openness and personal connection, how can we create art that breaks free from habitual and structured modes of existence? In this essay, I will examine how the modern condition establishes reductive ways of engaging with objects and materials that hinder the creative potential within an artwork and offer alternative processes that allow me to access latent potential within myself and objects to maximise imaginative potential. Through reference to the collaborative works of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, as well as the French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, I am going to explore how the alteration and recontextualisation of an object disrupt the structural modes of interpretation that dictate the understanding of an object so that my knowledge of the object is permeable to new connections. Following this, I will explore how the interaction between part-objects and their respective contexts elicits a heterogeneous interpretation of a work that shifts and changes rather than stagnates. Finally, I will explore the utility of creative intuition in allowing me to access more potential pathways within a work that draws upon all modes of knowledge but minimises the analytical frameworks we use to navigate the everyday. Each part of this process coalesces into a creative act where creative intention and my awareness of the possible creative routes are more open and fluid, enabling me to reach more imaginative and personal connections with my art.   

The theoretical frameworks I am situating my work are considered works of postmodern philosophy. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari, in their books Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), examine capitalism’s effect on the world, and specifically how modes of knowledge imposed on the individual limit the potential of them to harness the potential of themselves and their creations. They offer alternative modes of existence that allow the individual to break from systematic and oppressive frameworks so that we can grapple with the latent potential hidden within us and the world around us.   

In their book, Anti-Oedipus (1972), Deleuze and Guattari introduce their notion of ‘desiring-machines’ (1972:9), which describes the nature of reality before the implementation of capitalism. They express how different forces interact constantly within the world, and within these interactions, a will to produce something emerges. Ideas, objects, living things, potentials, and parts are all constantly shifting, breaking, forming, unstratified and constantly forming and deforming new productions of life. They argue that capitalism imposes restrictive structures on the individual that channel their desires to produce capital, which hinders the variety of outcomes. The unique nature of capitalism is its ability to control the flow of desire through its manipulation of narratives by breaking down any social coding and restratifying it to maximise consumption and profit at the expense of creative potential. I will examine the interpretive structures we use to understand objects (and consequently artworks) that stem from capitalism that hinder our inventive capacity of objects in art.    

An example of a mode of interpretation that capitalism has forced us to swallow is the interpretive frameworks we use to understand objects (and consequently artworks) that hinder our ability to harness the innovative capacity within an object. In his book Simulacra and Simulations (1988), Baudrillard expresses how the proliferation of media has removed representations from their connection to reality, and flattened our understandings of them. This process leads to an eclipse of meaning, we no longer look to reality to understand it but to how its portrayed, which he calls ‘simulacra’ (1988). He states that at this moment, representations become self-referential and we begin to refer to the idea of the thing, rather than what the occurrence it is symbolising . These symbols, Carrier has noted, ‘refer to abstract categories of sort of people, rather than to specific individuals and their relationships’ (2004:70). The understanding of a symbol is thus is removed of any space for contradiction and personal connection as the understanding of it is predetermined, programmed to be communicated as efficiently as possible. This removal of connection to reality triggers a shift to gaining significance in relation to other simulacra, which he calls ‘Hyperreality” (1998). in Baudrillard’s book The Conspiracy of Art (2005), he expresses that this shift in axiology leads to discursive engagements that derive meaning from retroactive referencing, continually using old aesthetic canons to attain importance. The expansion of media references has framed the way we engage with symbols and objects in art, eradicating the space for personal connection in favour of maximising transparent communication and aesthetic referencing.  

Deleuze and Guattari propose a mode of existence to combat the suppression of the flow of desire, which I see as offering potential within the creative realm to catalyse artistic possibilities. They introduce their idea of the ‘schizophrenic process’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1972:84), which involves the deterritorialisation of established structures in favour of embracing fluidity and multiplicity between all strata of understanding. Through the schizophrenic process, fixed identities and interpretive frameworks are ruptured, resembling what they articulate as the process of schizophrenia – resistant to stagnation, unbound by the structures of time and space. This deterritorialisation of experience gives way, they argue, to “revolutionary investments of desire capable of exploding the fundamental structures of capitalist society’ (see Stivale for analysis 1980:46). By engaging in processes of deterritorialisation during the creative process, nonlinear associations connect and constantly shift, so that dynamic interpretations of objects and representations emerge, breaking away from reductive understanding of objects.  

Eight fence posts stand in a line each is damaged and chipped. There is dust on the ground around the.
 Figure 1: Cargill J (2024) Venn Diagram [Wood, metal finials, Sand, found net, button, string], Royal Melbourne Institute Technology, Melbourne. 
Through deconstructing and altering objects, my understanding of an object is freed from its contextual boundaries, enabling access to more imaginative pathways to create a work. In reference to my previous remarks on Baudrillard, the identity of objects within a work is situated within a contextual web of associations informed by culture that I draw information from to understand the object. Our habitual ways of understanding an object produce restrictions on how the object could be understood, closing off potential pathways that may be latently hidden within the object, waiting to be catalysed. However, as the Philosopher Elizabeth Grosz has argued ‘matter must already contain the immaterial, the capacities to make sense or to have meaning’ (Grosz 2012:973), and through dismantling and reframing an object, new meaning can emerge. When I begin making, I alter or deconstruct an object so that its identity is ruptured.  This process generates the possibility of connecting the object to other associative pathways that generate new ways to continue the work. I call these alienated objects ‘nodes of potential’. In the process of creating my work Venn Diagram, I interlocked two fence posts through each other and carved them, which resulted in the identity of the original fence posts being partially lost. It resembled whittled sticks or spears from pre-history, which led me down an associative pathway to spear-fishing, which opened up the continuation of the work to potential anywhere from the ocean to hunting methods. Zepke calls this moment a ‘disjunctive conjunction’ (Zepke 2005:219), where the breakdown of the object’s identity provides connections to new possibilities, in which this ‘defamiliarization’, as Kaplan notes, ‘enables imagination’ (1987:188). We can liken the production of an understanding of objects to a desiring machine, which arises from the synthesis of an object and ourselves perceiving the object. Deleuze (1972:42) expresses that within desiring machines, both the formation and the ‘breaks in the process are productive’. Through the deterritorialisation of the object into an object of potential, where its preconceived interpretive frameworks are removed, different flows and potentialities arise in my (and the audience’s) understanding of the object, thus eliciting more imaginative ways of engaging with it.  

A damaged pinboard lays on the ground with colour pins in it.
Figure 2: Cargill J (2023) Ground Constellation [Corkboard, pins, styrofoam, PVC, wood], Royal Melbourne institute of Technology, Melbourne.
The combination of multiple objects of potential connecting and interacting renders both forms without distinct identities.  This flow between different ways of understanding the object creates discursive nonsensical pathways of connection. The removal of contextual structures of an object reveals what Grosz as articulated as an “infinite richness and permeability with other objects” (Grosz 2003:82). When I physically unite objects of potential, their unique identities intertwine, which simultaneously displaces the object further from its original identity, but also triggers new associations in relation to each other. In the creation of Ground Constellation, the fusion of each component brought to life so many implications each of which fostered usual ways of understanding the materials used within it. In the work the drawing board is placed on a different plane to which it is usually understood, which in relation to the Styrofoam nest, registers as a sort of ground and map simultaneously, rendering the pins (in the Styrofoam) to be understood as something between ants and soldiers. The Styrofoam form is not recognisable; it sits between a sort of hive and an underground system, yet it is placed above ground. The pipe in the work elicits a sense of connection between the floor and the ceiling, inviting me to think about what it connects to and where it goes. Deleuze and Guattari introduce their notion of ‘the rhizome’ (1980:7), a mode of thinking that differs from traditional knowledge models. The rhizome is a decoded flow of connective nodes of information where there is no hierarchy of information – an interconnected system without a beginning or an end. It promotes perpetual becoming and shifting, which escapes the stratification of Capitalist categorisation. The assemblage of the objects of potential within my work permeates within each other, creating pathways of association and understanding that change when different components are seen in relation to each other, continuing a shift of understanding that generates imaginative potentials.  

Three damaged fence posts stand upright, surrounded by dust. A shattered darts board is propped up in the middle of them.
Figure 3: Cargill J (2024) Swallowing the mirror [dart board, fence pickets, MDF, wood, sand, bed finial, Q-Tip’s], Royal Melbourne institute of Technology, Melbourne.
While creating a work, suspending creative intention and engaging in intuitive improvisation, allows me to synthesise internal and external information to create material conclusions previously unattainable. Deleuze (Deleuze’ in Colombat, 1991:20) states that intuition contrary to popular belief, is “Rigorous and Inexact’. After calculating and strategising and making decisions with personal logics to choose materials or engage in a certain process with them, hiatuses of deliberation in favour of intuitively engaging with materials allows new things to emerge. Within moments of improvisation, I am more open to possibilities and the apprehension of things from both my conscious and unconscious knowledge, which allows new possibilities to brew and manifest within the work. This can happen at any time in my process. While creating Swallowing the Mirror, I chose fence posts as an object to begin work on, which was chosen after lots of research into the domestic – both personal and cultural. I had been looking at my lack of comfort in the home, what contributes to making my space in the home unsafe, and further examining the invasion of media in the home. My intuitive sense was to interlock the fence posts, which resembled a spear, and then to burn them, carve them, and apply violent processes that involved their dismemberment. In reflection of the finished iteration, how it interacted with the net resembling a pillow evoked ideas of the external invading the internal, the fence invading the bedroom. Removing intention resulted in a material conclusion that enveloped things I had previously looked at. It was an exploration of all I was looking at simultaneously and more. Architect and artist Theresa Hardman (2021) expresses how states of intuition are extremely open states of existence, existing in a state between consciousness and subconsciousness, ‘giving rise to an ‘expanded’ state of consciousness, because it involves a deepening and a broadening of awareness.’ (Hardman 2021:2). In a Deleuzian sense, personal logics and learnt frameworks of understanding objects can hinder the flow of desire that waits to be catalysed in the non-conscious parts of ourselves when making. In a sense, intuition is a process of deterritorialisation as it is, as Spuybroek articulates, ‘a knowledge that never solidifies’ (2016:163), drawing upon all forms of knowledge without the constraints of structured frameworks we engage within the everyday.     

Geniusas  has argued that ‘the power of imagination lies in its capacity to empower the subject with a profound sense of freedom, which is strong enough to break the limit of what is actual and what is real’ (2015:225). Our habitual ways of understanding our experiences informed by the capitalist regime of symbols have hindered the rich and intense flow of life within us and our desire to express ourselves. However, not all hope is lost. In the production of my art, breaking the contextual boundaries in which I understand an object and arranging them together creates a mode of understanding the work that fluctuates, constantly breaking and making new connections. With the help of creative intuition, the possible routes to take within a work are made accessible, where imaginative ways of altering objects and creating narratives emerge that were previously hidden by the reductive structures I usually use to navigate the everyday.   

 

References:  

Baudrillard J (1981) Simulacra and Simulation, Semiotext(e), France.   

Baudrillard J (1999) The Conspiracy of Art, Semiotext(e), France.  

Carrier J (2004) ‘The Rituals of Christmas Giving’, in Buchli V Material Culture: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, 3 edn, Routledge, London.    

Deleuze G and Guattari F (1977) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.   

Deleuze G and Guattari F (1980) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.   

Grosz E (2002) ‘Deleuze, Theory, And Space’, Log , Fall, 1:81, accessed 20 May 2024, JSTOR database.   

Colombat A (1991) ‘A Thousand Trails to Work with Deleuze’, SubStance, 20(3): 20, doi: 10.2307/3685176.    

Geniusas S (2015) ‘Between Phenomenology and Hermeneutics: Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination’, Human Studies, 38(2):225, doi:10.1007/s10746-9339-8  

Hardman T (2011) ‘Understanding Creative Intuition’, Journal of Creativity 31:2 ,doi:10.1016/j.yoc.2021.100006.   

Kaplan C (1987) ‘Deterritorializations: The Rewriting of Home and Exile in Western Feminist Discourse’, Cultural Critique, 6:188, 10.2307/3685179.    

Spuybroek L (2012) The Sympathy of Things, Bloomsbury Publishing, London.    

Stivale C (1980) ‘Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari: Schizoanalysis & Literary Discourse’, SubStance, 9(4):46, doi:10.2307/3684040.   

Yusoff K, Grosz E, Clark N, Saldanha A, Nash C and Clark N (2012) ‘Geopower: a panel on Elizabeth Grosz’s Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(6):973, doi:10.1068/d3006pan.    

Zepke S (2005) Art as Abstract Machine, Routledge, London.  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

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