Zac Small

213463 Fine Arts Research Seminar

Assignment 2

Student ID: 16460362 T his Curiosity and Blindness

Word Count: 3625
I could start this by telling you that the world is ‘vast, confusing and mutates… You could never know a stable identity, a singular
impossibly complex’ but, chances are that you’re already well aware of belief… because the world around you fluctuates all the time. 2
this. Try as I might to grasp some kind of rudimentary understanding of
In a world that seems increasingly confusing, ‘out of step’ with the past
things, of the worlds around me, I am forever finding that such a greed
as some would suggest3, how can one possibly hope to bring something
for knowledge is insatiable. It seems ultimately impossible to see things
forth and ‘re-knit’ it with this new context into which it has been
‘as they are’. My vision fails me constantly, my ears hear only a trace of
transported? Is it possible to bring some ‘thing’ back into synchronicity
the noise that passes me, yet in the realisation of my partial perception, I
with the present moment? Or is this pursuit itself unnecessary? It seems,
find excitement. I find mystery.
and this perhaps is not unique to the current moment, that there will
It is with this in mind, this curiosity and blindness, that I try to uncover, forever be gaps in the source material one is working with, segments of
relocate and relay some of the things I find most interesting in my knowledge that have passed forever into obscurity, subsumed by the
attempts to unfurl that which I find around me. I try to reveal, to entropic effects of time and it’s passing. It seems that to remember, or re-
conjure a new relevance to that which might otherwise go largely present, is to distort, and that any such objectivity or totality of
undiscussed, that which might hover in a state of partial-visibility. I find remembrance is ultimately unreachable. Any ‘patching’ attempts made
myself confronting a challenge that I fear I will face in perpetuity; that in trying to render something translatable may only further exaggerate
of retelling things without irreversibly altering them, without inflicting these divisions, these gaps. As Anna Parlane states “representation always
my own beliefs and desires upon their worn surfaces. I’m left asking entails distortion”4. I do wonder however, if in these blank spaces, the
myself; how do I give speech to that which lurks in silence? How do I voids in narratives, there may lie a potential for new insight. For it is in
extract a synecdoche, a fragment with which to illustrate immensely these holes in the fabric that I see contrast, in them that I see a potential
complex sequences and polyphonic narratives, without caging these for uncovering a ‘reality’ of sorts. It is in these encounters with
narratives, as one might a songbird? uncertainty that I discern a potential for music, for poetics and
imagination.
to lear n to let them speak or… give them back speech. 1
T he visibility of an object is dependent upon the contrasts of
I find myself forever hoping that in a pursuit to recapture the past as it
light and shade on its surfaces, due to the different amounts of
flashes before me, I might find a better understanding of the present
light reflected therefrom, and between the object as a whole and
moment in which I find myself. I search the endlessly complex legacies
the background against which it is silhouetted. 5
of past moments and stories, looking for objects, imagery and languages
with which I might try and ‘distill’ the narratives I find, with which to
trace a general form. Yet when I think I may be approaching the ‘limit’,
the edge of a particular story or encounter, I find unfailingly that such an
‘edge’ has a curvature. Perhaps, rather than being a border, it is more
like a horizon, a point at which my perceptive abilities fail me, a point
that recedes beyond visibility and leads to an infinite array of encounters
with other things, other knowledges and events, both new and forgotten.
There are no borders, no kingdom of heaven or pits of hell — Fig.1
instead one thing touches another thing that in turn is touching
everything else, all now interconnected. Everything constantly
The perceptional, ontological, and linguistic systems by which we
determine and articulate the worlds around us seem in a perpetual state
of change. There is an apparent fluidity that seems to be becoming only
increasingly pronounced as the frenetic nature by which the
technological, political, and cultural evolve. In this manner, the past
seems an iterative, recursive thing. The past is revealed as inherently
unstable. As the failures of industrial modernity’s ‘progressive’
endeavours become at once more pronounced and distant, a dominant
philosophical transition seems to be underway; what could once have
been figured as a ‘rationally’ lineal conception of time, an understanding
which perhaps characterised imperialist ideologies of modernity, seems
now utterly redundant in a world for which the future is an increasingly
uncertain and unpredictable place. As such, there seems at once a
yearning, a nostalgic or ‘historiographical’ turn apparent in
contemporary art, and a realisation that;
the critical models of previous eras do not, and cannot, be asked
to function as they once did… 6
What industrial byproducts such as archaeology and geology may have
initially conceived of as static and linearly chronological, now appear
increasingly discordant in a time of apparent asynchronocity with the
past7. It seems, in response to this latent realisation, that new
philosophical models are in emergence, models that are increasingly
intent on redefining time and history as non-linear and haphazard.
Indeed, discourses of the ‘contemporary’ appear to tend toward
conceptions of the ‘entropic’ as central to economic, scientific, cultural
and political models—rendering the present moment and potential
future at once increasingly uncertain (even unattainable) and dystopian.
The notion of ‘cyclical time’ figures prominently in a period in which an
increasingly distant past appears for some to be a place of greater
comfort than an indefinite future.
This turn ‘toward the cyclical’ may also spring from a growing
appreciation of interdependence throughout much of the present world;
from socio-economic models to ecological conservation, it is increasingly
apparent that nothing operates in isolation. Following this logic, all that
is perceivable must be the result of a sprawling array of aggregate forces,
making an attempt to define any ‘beginning or end’ an increasingly futile
task. Thus rendering frameworks of past eras that sought to catalogue
the world into singular chronological trajectories of progression and
regression notably outdated; fit only for a world of falsified imperialist
aspirations of progress from chaos to order and stability.
As Norbert Wiener would put it, entropy is “nature’s tendency to
degrade the organized and destroy the meaningful” 8
There has in the past few decades emerged a new trope in the field of
contemporary art, or rather, an existing trope seems to have gained
greater potency, become more pronounced. A nostalgic gaze seems to
pervade much of what is currently deemed ‘contemporary art’—what
Dieter Roelstraete labels the ‘historiographical turn’9. It seems that as the
conflicts and anxieties of the 20th century ‘came to a close’ (relatively
speaking), many artists (among others) have found themselves gazing
backward, upon the legacies of failure left in modernity’s wake. These
‘leavings’ appear concentrated in the apparently ‘haunted’ relics that live
on in our landscapes. It seems in many instances that the ‘artistic
practice’ has merged with those of archaeology and anthropology10. A
mining of the past has become an integral aspect of many artistic
practices. One could come to the conclusion that such a change has
come about not only in response to a shift from the lineal to non-linear,
but also in response to a globalised economy that appears more overtly
intent on the appropriation and transaction of information than ever
before. As Roelstraete comments on the work of Simon Starling;
Knowledge is key in (and to) much of his work, making it
appear eminently contemporary in a globalised world that likes
to think of itself as driven by a knowledge economy first and
foremost. 11
 I would argue that this shift could also be understood as a reactionary
measure; one with the intention of keeping ‘art’ relevant in a cultural
and technological landscape undergoing significant change. This
validation mechanism seems to provide ‘research-based-art’ with a
rationale for being. The artist seems more than ever a bearer of
information, a worker in an emergent ‘imaginary museum’. The
research-artist has become a ‘revealer’ and their exhibitions exposés.
This kind of intense fixation with the act (art) of uncovering the past is
peculiar in many ways. It supposes that the past is an ongoing ordeal, an
iterative space that can be re-made continually, while simultaneously
upsetting many of the previous systems by which ‘history’ is written. The
past has become, quite literally, a material component of contemporary
art, out of which the fantastic and mysterious might be spun. Co-opted
and appropriated, historical narratives slip and slide, take on new
meanings and irreversibly alter as they are translated into new cultural,
socio-political, and temporal contexts.
T he past is “constantly selected, filtered, and restructured in
ter ms set by the questions and necessities of the present” 12
Already pronounced tensions between the past and present seem only
further exaggerated by this ongoing onslaught. The historical becomes
increasingly multi-faceted, the binary translation of the past into history
increasingly confused. The past seems at once brought close and
entangled with the present, and to be sliding further into oblivion.
History appears more than ever as a highly subjective, theatrical pursuit,
prone to falsification and slippages in translation.
I could go so far as to suggest that this historiographical turn in art
(though not restricted to the worlds of art alone) may also be in part due
to a generalised feeling of anxiety toward that which is to come, a
‘disenfranchisement from the future’ as communities throughout face a
barrage of information portraying an increasingly dismal, unavoidable
future of climate decay and mass-displacement.
One can find reflections of what seems an obsession with ruin
throughout a broad diaspora of cultural products of the past few
decades. There is a welter of decidedly dystopian film and television,

Fig.2
music and more, that continues to portray an increasingly bleak future.
Yet artists such as Tacita Dean, Michael Stevenson, Mike Nelson, Simon
Denny, Danh Vō and Mark Dion find eloquent testimonies in the
symbolisms of ruin and decay. Evidently, the ruin provides a “projective
screen”13 with which to contemplate “levels of time of differing duration
and differentiable origin, which are nonetheless present and effectual at
the same time.”14. Ruins of the past seem visible expressions of time and
history’s haphazard occurrence and continual re-utterance. While it may
seem pessimistic to find familiarity in the decaying signs of past eras—to
imagine the present in a state of future ruination—it seems too a poetic
means with which to interrogate present realities. Though perhaps things
will change, perhaps that the future is once again becoming a place of
hope rather than despair.
I really hope the future will happen again. 15
In my practice, I frequently find myself tumbling down rabbit holes,
becoming lost within confusing and at times contradictory narratives and
accumulations of objects and ‘things’. I almost inevitably find that the
things I find speak most eloquently of the events with which I am
invested, are unattainable. Either they lie out of my reach or remain only
as an immaterial trace; the objects themselves lost to time. I might find
photographs, drawings, writings and images and it is with these
descriptions, whether poor or in-depth that I ‘recreate’ the objects of
interest. In this sense, the notion of an ‘authentic’ retelling is from the
first instant acknowledged as an impossibility. And while I might be able
to re-create a few ‘components’ denoting a particular narrative, I could
never possibly recall the narrative in its entirety. The story, in its
articulation into a display or ‘exhibition’ becomes a shadow-play, an
evocation of that which remains ungraspable.
It is with this in mind that I believe it may be more productive, more
beneficial, to instead formulate representational models that readily
acknowledge, wilfully incorporate even, the realisation that one can only
ever gain a partial view. For it is in the realisation of one’s perceptual
limitations that there may be a capacity to gain, or begin to formulate,
new languages with which to navigate the inordinately complex nature
of things.
It seems to me, that another method with which one might attempt to
see past these limitations is to attempt to view the subject at hand by
indirect means. Such a method is frequently deployed throughout the
fields of observational and theoretical sciences; to deduce from the
observed that which may otherwise remain hidden. In other words, to
look through the blank spaces in the information at ones disposal and
discern a potential form, theory, or image that might be lurking therein. I
could go so far as to say that it is at these moments, in these encounters
with the ‘limitations of knowledge’, that ‘phantoms’ appear. Objects and
imagery seem haunted remnants of vast hidden systems.
One of the many failings of established representational traditions, I
believe, is that in seeking to render narratives, sequences, and histories
’palatable’, they are often rendered inanimate, silent shells. It seems not
an infrequent act; to hollow things out and present them as if living.
what was thought to be an observation of life was actually the
story of death. 16
Display becomes a reductive art. The past becomes a white lie.
Exhibition appear as mere fragmentary remainders; the legacies of
actions since hidden, disguised. The display becomes a closed space. So
how then might one open it up again, make it sing?
the one who seeks to appropriate such temporally layered objects
with critical intent…must be prepared to relinquish the claim to
full possession, loose the grip on the object and call it forth,
invoke it rather than seize it. 17
As Jan Verwoert suggests, one method by which appropriated objects
may be ‘given voice’, is not to impose meaning upon them, but rather to
allow them voice of their own. Just how one might logistically go about
this, however, becomes a complex issue to navigate. While there are
many who praise a minimal approach to dealing with such matter and
content, there remains, I believe, a tendency toward opacity. Either that
or a false transparency that results in a kind of ‘staleness’, a shutting
down of the possibilities of whatever subject may be in question. This is
perhaps most noticeable in the works of art that require a great deal of
prior knowledge, or reading, if one is to begin to ‘understand’.
This is where an approach that is both speculative and necessarily
indirect may be of benefit. It is my hope that if I approach things in a
manner that is accepting of, yet not defeated by, an appreciation of the
‘partial view’ (as I mentioned earlier), then I may be able to offer more
than simply a glance at how things ‘appear’. To look for methods of
articulation that might better appreciate a multiplicity, mystery and
ultimate intangibility of things. I may only speculate upon the dynamics
and complexities of the narratives I encounter as I have not experienced
them directly.
It is among the rubble of words, the limits of articulation that allegory
emerges, so Craig Owens tells me18. Though I would argue that it is not
allegory alone that emerges at the ends of language—as that which
might bridge the void between presence and absence, utterable and that
beyond words—but metaphor, poetics and rhythm, facsimile and
synecdoche too. It is with these instruments that I search for new
languages with which to bridge the complex divisions between substance
and shadow. To speak not a singular voice, but to converse with the
phantoms that persist, hovering above artefacts and stories.
Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees. 19
The projects I have undertaken have covered a broad range of topics;
from cold-war technological advancement and the downing of flight
MH17 in 2014, the disappearance of the Moa and the life of a
Wellington based Jeweller, to investigations of the manner in which our
eyes map the visible world and the methods by which we measure and
manipulate air. Most recently I have been exploring a tale of a failed
utopian architectural development intended for Manila, funded by
American interests and designed by NZ-based architect Ian Athfield.
Always, it seems, these projects stem from points of personal or familial
connection, and inevitably sprawl into wide-reaching multi-faceted
sequences. I find myself ‘chasing algorithms’ if you like. It seems that
many things are laid out in paths ready to be stumbled upon—references
upon references, links upon links. The material that results from these
explorations often resembles what might be termed a kind of ‘reverse’
viewing. Objects may at first appear as extraneous fragments.
T he fragments of things alone can illustrate a bigger picture, you
need very little to express a bigger view. 20
I can only hope to give an impression of vastness, to suggest that what
lies on ‘display’ is worthy of further investigation. I don’t wish to present
things as if a ‘set of facts’, or an accumulation of evidence. Rather I
wish to present them as speculations, invitations into stories. As if these
installations were poorly formed documentaries, scenes in uncertain
sequence, half-finished films the scripts of which have been misplaced.
The realisation that the objects on display are not truly ‘authentic’ in
that they are re-creations of things that may no longer exist, could in of
itself be conceived as some kind of lossy shorthand21. Regardless of the
quality and exacting nature of the recreation, the resultant objects will
never be identical; there will always be an increment of loss in their
translation. For some they may resemble other things entirely.
Yet I wonder, might it be that this ‘loss’ is what could ‘open things up’?
Might a degree of material change allow voices, phantoms to
‘reemerge’?
Could this slippage, this openness to new meanings, allow such ‘artefacts’
and imagery to “serve as found arks of lost moments in which the here-
and-now of the work functions as a possible portal between an
unfinished past and a reopened future.”22? I endeavour to allow a
‘breathing space’ between material and meaning, to seek a rhythm in the
representation of things that allows room for mystery, intrigue, and
diversity of interpretation. To present things in a manner that allows for
a highly complex ‘life’ of things to continue.
This pursuit toward an appreciation of multiplicity, does, however seem
in conflict with any attempt to convey a particular narrative, so how then
might I marry material, meaning, and mystery? Here I arrive at what
could be termed a ‘lyrical pragmatism’. Drawing off of various threads
which I have already touched upon, what I mean by lyrical pragmatism
is; to pragmatically discern which fragments of a tale may best convey a
particular train of inquiry or sequence, and then, in creating a ‘display’
of said fragments, to employ a certain lyricism. To bring a rhythmic
quality to an installation (or whatever form a project may take), that may
aid in preventing singular or ‘objective’ readings of the fragments
contained therein. The objects may appear, rather than museological
exhibits, as lost things found in situ, a segment of song left echoing in a
space recently re-opened.
It is, as I have iterated, evident that ‘fiction’ plays a significant role in the
field of historical research and relay. To embellish a story, however
subtlety, is a form of fiction, as is the white lie, the crafty omittance of
information. And this happens regularly, throughout many areas of
inquiry. While this can present significant and troubling issues,
distortions in the ‘material of the past’, it can equally be employed to aid
in the application and interpretation of things when placed in ‘new
contexts’. As Simon O’Sullivan states;
art’s mythopoetic function, understood here as its capacity to
produce other narratives and image-worlds out of the “what-
is.” 23
It is with this ‘mythopoetic function’ that art might have a potential to
make the past ‘present’ and alive again. There is always a degree of
fictionalising involved in bringing things into concert with one another in
newfound environments, and this fiction may indeed be a ‘giver of life’.
None of the scenes that take place in the installations I create are in any
way ‘recreations’, rather they are fabricated out of material sourced from
particular ‘historical’ sequences. It is in the placement, the considered
arrangement, that I hope to make apparent the multiple ways in which
the shards at hand may intersect and inform one another, may form a
portion of a far vaster whole. They may function as words in a line of
prose, which if uttered with sufficient rhythm, may excite connections
beyond those initially signified.
signs do speak as multiple echoes of historic meaning begin to
reverberate in their hollow body… what was deemed dead speech
has indeed manifest effects on the lives of the living. 24

Fig.3
 Bibliography:
1. Verwoert, Jan. “Apropos Appropriation: Why Stealing images today
feels different.” Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and
Methods, Vol. 1, No.2, Summer 2007, http://
www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/verwoert.html
2. Lynch, Sean. Vancouver Days. Charles H. Scott Gallery and
Publication Studio Vancouver, 2016, pp. 2
3. Huyssen, Andreas. “Nostalgia for Ruins.” Grey Room, no.23, Spring
2006, pp. 11
4. Parlane, Anna. “The Tip of the Iceberg: Michael Stevenson’s A Life
of Crudity, Vulgarity, and Blindness, 2012, and perceptual occlusion
in contemporary culture.” EMAJ, Issue 10, March 2018,
www.emajartjournal.com, pp. 18
5. Taylor Brush, Mary “Mittie.” M.T. Brush: Aircraft, US Patent Filing
1,293,688, Feb 11 1919.
6. Smith, Terry. “Questionnaire on the 'Contemporary'.” October, Issue
130, Fall 2009, pp.3
(Paraphrasing Griffin, Tim. “A New Novel,” Artforum, 46, no. 10
(Summer 2008), p. 61.)
7. See; Huyssen, Andreas. “Nostalgia for Ruins.” Grey Room, no.23,
Spring 2006, pp. 6-21 and Stavrinaki, Maria. “All the Time in the
World.” Artfoum International, Vol. 56, No. 7, March 2018
8. Teixeira Pinto, Ana. “Death Wall: Extinction, Entropy, Singularity.”
e-flux journal, no. 67, Nov 2015, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/
67/60682/death-wall-extinction-entropy-singularity/, pp. 6
9. Roelstraete, Diete. “After the Historiographical Turn: Current
Findings.” e-flux journal, no.6, May 2009
10. O’Sullivan, Simon. “Fictioning Five Heads.” Five heads (Tavan Tolgoi)
- Art, Anthropology and Mongol futurism. Hermione Spriggs, Sternberg
Press, 2018, pp. 140-148
11. Roelstraete, Diete. “The Metamorphologist.” Simon Starling, Phaidon,
2012, pp.81
12. Edensor, Tim. “The Ghost of Industrial Ruins: Ordering and
Disordering Memory in Excessive Space.” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 23, 2005, pp. 829-849
13. Huyssen, Andreas. “Nostalgia for Ruins.” Grey Room, no.23, Spring
2006, pp. 11
14. Barndt, Kerstin. “Memory Traces of an Abandoned Set of
Futures.” Ruins of Modernity, Ed. Julia Hell and Andreas
Schönle, Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 270-293
15. Aranda, Julieta et al. “Ever. Ever. Ever.” e-flux, July 2006, http://
www.e-flux.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/
Hans_Ulrich_Obrist_Interview.pdf ?b8c429
16. Dion, Mark and Miwon Kwon. “Miwon Kown in conversation with
Mark Dion.” Mark Dion, Phaidon press, 1997, pp.22
17. Verwoert, Jan. “Apropos Appropriation: Why Stealing images today
feels different.” Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and
Methods, Vol. 1, No.2, Summer 2007, http://
www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/verwoert.html
18. Owens, Craig. “The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Images:
Postmodernism.” October, Vol. 12, Spring 1980, pp. 70

19. Weschler, Lawrence and Robert Irwin. Seeing is Forgetting the Fig. 1. Taylor Brush, Mary “Mittie.” M.T. Brush: Aircraft, US Patent Filing
Name of the Thing One Sees, University of California Press, 1982 1,293,688, Feb 11 1919. (illustration detail)

20. “Danh Vo in Conversation with Hendrik Folkerts, 10/3/18 -
SAIC's Visiting Artists Program Lecture.” Youtube, School of
the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Nov 27 2018, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBjM7gKblWU
21. Sperlinger, Mike. “Dead Precedents.” Bad Visual Systems, Ed.
Ruth Buchanan, Judith Hopf and Marianne Wex, Spree Druck,
Feb 2017
Fig. 2. Authors own work, June 2020, Digital photograph (documenting
installation)
Fig. 3. Authors own work, June 2020, Digital image (Template for
reconstruction of banner hung at Habitat United Nations
Conference on Human Settlements, Jericho, Vancouver,
May 1976)

22. Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October, Vol. 110, Autumn
2004, pp.15
23. O’Sullivan, Simon. “Fictioning Five Heads.” Five heads (Tavan Tolgoi)
- Art, Anthropology and Mongol futurism. Hermione Spriggs, Sternberg
Press, 2018, pp. 143

24. Verwoert, Jan. “Apropos Appropriation: Why Stealing images today

feels different.” Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and
Methods, Vol. 1, No.2, Summer 2007, http://
www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/verwoert.html