AND space
Hello, hello!
Is it spring? This season I remain interstitially stuck. I am uncertain, questioning, worried AND the garden is budding, evening light is amazing, and I get to wear my thick yellow raincoat all of which brings a lot of joy.
I think I first became aware of being between things when I was studying weaving. Eleanor Hannan, my design instructor introduced me to Nulla dies sine linea (no day without line for those of us who don’t speak Latin) which really provided a scaffold for structuring my studio practice. It suggests that you just have to show up. Just make the freaking line and leave the rest. Sounds easy right?
In the Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron suggests holding on to this showing up part AND letting the usefulness, or beauty of that work be up to the universe/god/spirit. Again, not as easy at it sounds. This is not a new idea.
Negative capability is a phrase first used by Romantic poet John Keats in 1817 to explain the capacity of the greatest writers (particularly Shakespeare) to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability to perceive and recognize truths beyond the reach of consecutive reasoning.
or what Ranier Maria Rilke calls living IN the question:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
from Letters to a Young Poet
Did you see that? Pursue a vision of artistic beauty AND be led into intellectual confusion and uncertainty AND love the questions. Also who doesn’t want to perceive and recognize truths beyond the reach of consecutive reasoning? What even is that? I suggest anything by Carlo Rovelli for those kinds of questions…
But back to the AND space…that space where two things touch. How interesting it is to put disconnected things next to each other, overlapping each other in communication. What happens in that kind of AND space?
In last season’s newsletter I wrote about Lorraine O’Grady who worked within this space, a place where everything happens at once. Here’s another example of how this might work outside the studio. When I sat down to write this newsletter I was feeling a bit sad AND it’s cherry blossom season where I live. AND space is a place where opposing things can exist, sadness, and the fleeting magic of those fragrant little pink bundles.
Some people might describe awareness of AND space as being in the moment or sitting with things as they are in a sort of Eckhart Tolle Power of Now kind of way. Or this is the way if you are a Mandalorian follower…
We might think of it as the Japanese philosophy ichigo ichie - a moment that will never be again. This particular combination of sensations and circumstances is unique, fleeting and complex.
Living with questions in AND space and showing up to work are themes that linger for me. Anyone else? A symptom of INTJness or being a 4w5 perhaps? Cancer/Leo cusp baby maybe? There’s so much to dig into here and I find it to be a bit of a salve to know I am not alone in having these questions. So here is my little studio update and playlist that grapple with some of these things. They will bring you more questions than answers in case you find yourself in this AND space with me as well.
Jason Logan, ink test, 2022 from Colour Newsletter
The Colour of Ink Jason Logan seems to be firmly planted in the AND space. This is a beautiful and thoughtfully made film. Currently doing the film festival circuit.
Too Much and Not in the Mood Durga Chew Bose channels so much of my liminal thinking space and I am here for it.
Renee Gladman’s Limits of Legibility exploring language and the things we can’t say in painting.
Ana Brones Creative Fuel on Brian Eno and Yoko Ono and Fluxus artists. Some of my favourite questioners.
Snufmumriko quiet Swedish ambient sounds for thresholds.
Music for Wobbling, Music vs. Gravity circular, weightless improvisations in sound.
Everything Everywhere All at Once Another questioning film that I can really relate to.
The art show that no one saw.
Does it exist if we don’t share it?
In this studio leaving I was working with a sequence of actions and accompanying instructions for one hundred cyanotypes made from the same negative - an image of lycra back lit and scrunched. I was translating the image in multiple ways: cloth into photograph, photograph into cyanotype, cyanotypes into components of a larger piece. I was curious about how we communicate simple ideas and how those ideas are altered through their reception and adjacencies.This sequence is part of a larger ongoing project of questions pulling from linguistics and institutional systems. This work is about creating a translanguage made up of my own different language systems and invites slowness,heavy work and haptic memory.
translanguaging
[ trans-lang-gwi-jing, tranz- ]
noun
Linguistics. the integrated use of all the languages an individual speaks in a single linguistic system, often involving the mixing of grammatical, morphological, or lexical features from more than one language or dialect.
After making the cyanotypes I was able to consider ways of installing them at Malaspina printmakers. In an early morning on a day the gallery was closed I continued to think about language systems and the gaps in understanding.
This work is exciting to me both in it’s structure and the openness for messing around with different materials and processes. I’m currently working in other material sequences and creating space for uncertainty. It’s not a comfortable feeling by any means but it feels correct for now.
I am grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for funding to do this work.
Thanks for getting this far! It was a bit longer than planned. I hope you find a way to engage with the questions in your world.
Until soon,
Amanda