A Future Work

Charlotte Moth

From: Peter Lewis
To: Charlotte Moth
Subject: RE: a futue work - adjusted

Dear Falke and Charlotte

thanks for both the contributions. Although I have kept Falke's in its original form we have infiltrated Charlotte's with a ghost voice, that brings the 'I' in the writing of a future project into superimposition with a 'you' as a receptor and an exchange of subject positions. I felt that this was important as a necessary adjustment to re-align the piece with the curatorial concept of the issue. a 'mis-en-abime' in the whirlpool that is Multitude and a kind of 'authorless ' or decentred 'disobedience'. I am checking this with you [ In other words I have acted on your behalf as 'viral' agent, in line with some of the other texts as well where I have moved the centre of the writing to the uncertainty of its edges or limits etc.. These texts [yours being one of them] are the locus to the project 'invisibles'- certain nodal points throughout that chain its structure , as an organic and evolving form of writing. I have therefore kept much of the core of your text and its drift into a future imaginary, but placed it into an uncanny as if there are more than one voice in the 'I' which is also clandestine...I am sending the piece which will be credited to you with an adjustment : Charlotte Moth / Peter Lewis

From: Charlotte Moth
To: Peter Lewis
Subject: RE: a futue work - adjusted

Dear Pete,

Thankyou very much for the text, really has given me alot to think about. After having read your adjusted version I had the thought it would be really important for me if it could be shown in its two versions for Seconds, to reveal the orginal in a sense explores and tests the possible perimeters a text work might be developed towards and go beyond, in this sense it is for me an exciting and speculative proposition in relation to thoughts of disobedience.

Charlotte

From: Peter Lewis
To: Charlotte Moth
Subject: RE: a futue work - adjusted

Hi Charlotte

I see your problem here, in the 'voice' being yours, here it is made intentionally unclear, ambiguous. It is also your risk [commendable] to include the original as it has problems vis a vis the thematic in general, in scope. It reads as unintentionally imprecise about intention and knowledge of the deabtes involved, assumes an unquestioned authority over one's individual practice. That's my view of course equally invalid from your position [both being fixed] here a kind of reverse proposal is being offered to the reader- to take part, make sense him/herself of the voices' impasse. If we were to include it as a dialogue in the Platonic sense [ see 'Meno' by Plato] as an instruction where the adjustment is in part a teaching / learning process- albeit in assymetry to Meno's disobedience to Socrates in the Plato dialogue [ an instruction to Meno on the impossibility of teaching excellence] it may satisfy both criteria, yours and mine.

Original

This text has been made to accompany a work that has not yet been realised at the time of writing. At this moment it is an imaginary proposition where the preconditions for a work are established and set through being written down. I also consider the fact that this work might never be realised, the actual physical encounter of a work such as the one this might become depends on the need for a form of 'finishing off' the space of an exhibition provides, here materialisation of an idea always transforms the idea from how it is initially conceived revealing various states in which an idea lives through.

I will start by thinking how this future work might exist, its constitutive elements. I have the idea of a photographic slide show that is a short digital film, a development from previous works. I would like to think of the visual encounter of a projected image. What qualities, materiality this might bring to a visual experience, of a way to experience an image?

Maybe there will be a number of slide shows, five perhaps, this might change but I'll go with it for the moment, they will roughly have duration of seven minutes each. The images within the slide shows originate from my Photographic Travelogue. Here five different sites photographed are concentrated upon.

The idea of site is important - it is a conditional situation, an area where something is built, where something has taken place, it is also a form of position.

Here the site where a work is experienced should not be over-looked, I know nothing of the site where this work is installed at the moment. This work could turn into something very different to what is aimed at here.

Within each slide show one site is revealed slowly through many moving photographs, here the inside and outside of a building is shown. A past experience seeks somehow to become part of the present. It is not enough to call the images documentation, as they are actually part of discovery. They reveal reactions, observations, and a passage through a place seen through my eyes and framed through the camera, a mediating force. Here a form of sculptural engagement is similar but maybe working in reverse, as the viewer has to in an attempt to engage with the images, gain a sense of place revealed through volumes and scale of spaces, masses, surfaces, boundaries, the threshold of a doorway, the light and darkness present in a room or garden, the limitations of walls and windows. The viewers individual experiences are draw upon. This inversion is maybe like what someone once said to me the inside of a sculpture could look like. Here they wanted to imagine something beyond a surface.

The image that you are probably now seeing should be considered as something transformed, it has changed state - turning from the imprint of a negative into a form of projected digital image made from light and air that is seen through a form of mediating physical apparatus, this being projector and DVD player.

Now to introduce another component within the work that is perhaps simultaneously being experienced whilst you are reading this text. This is the sound that accompanies the images. This comes from a metronome, recorded at differing speeds. Here the sound is edited into the slide shows, creating a roughly choreographed effect, attempting in someway to activate the images on the screen. The sound is awkward; a little disjointed and at moments uncomfortable as it tries to find a steady form of rhythm that is not really satisfied. The other option is that the images are only in sync with the beat of the metronome, but still maybe I should insist that it could be better to have the image and the beat that sometimes are not quite fitting so that an awareness between the images and a change in tempo are felt where the viewer is reconditioned to the pace of experiencing an image, made to adjust, to slow down or speed up, here also bringing in rhythm, a sense of the kinetic.

Through watching the images flash by and becoming used to the sound, familiarity builds, you recognise and remember images, they have been shown before, the sound has been heard before, repetition functions, is an abstract quality.

What does the work look like? How is it installed? Having thought about the five projections I have to say I have changed my mind, what can be said with five projections that cannot be said with two? In this sense two are stronger as there are two sites to concentrate on. Each site becomes one of a pair, providing a point of contrast and comparison. I would like the projections not to be in a completely black space, they could be next to one another and they could also be split within the space, they do not have to be too large either, although you should really be able to see the image clearly, get a sense of a form of intangibility that projection reveals, but I like the idea that they can adjust to the conditions of the exhibition space, its architecture in someway, maybe here a conversation with the curator has taken place, where a number of specific needs within the space have been addressed, other works considered, maybe these projections can provide a form of balancing, act as a discursive link or contrast between qualities of other works present?

To consider the actual space that you are presently standing within reading this text cannot be over looked. A number of scenarios flash past in my mind. You are in a number of spaces viewing this work in differing conditions. You - the viewer always remain in an institutional context to start with, maybe you have taken this text home with you as it has become part of a number of handouts gathered from the activity of going to see shows, encountering works and wishing to have a different more relaxed time to re-look at all the information that goes in accompanying art works.

I would like this leaflet/publication to be something that is given out at a number of possible moments - occasions, when visiting the exhibition that this work has become part of. To start with a stack somewhere at the entrance is necessary, but you might have missed this. There is also another stack randomly placed within the exhibition that you happen to come across, you might not be interested to pick it up yet. This is fine, as there is also a pile near to one of the projections. The idea for this text is that it should not just be stuck to the wall or read out loud as a voice recording, as it is read with your own voice and time, this can be silently within yourself - your head, or maybe out loud to a friend, but I hope that as you walk around the exhibition you might be reading it, or looking at fragments, looking for the work that it describes, or attempted to describe through the discoveries made within its own activity of becoming, here the situation of the exhibition is a point, a site where an event has the possibility to take place, has already occurred.

Adjusted and Edited

[by Peter Lewis]

This text is written to accompany a work not yet in existence at the time of writing. At this moment in time it 'exists' only as an imaginary proposition wherein the preconditions for a work are established and set down as written. In considering the possibility that this work may never be realised, any actual physical encounter of a work to be, is dependent on the need for a kind of 'finishing off' in one's mind that, for instance, questions the organisation or invention of space, that an exhibition may infer as a provider for objects or actions, or both. Here materialisation of an idea may [or not] transform the idea from how, what was initially conceived, the process might reveal various potential states, [pre-] existences, better than any full manifestation, by which an idea [about process] lives through a 'work' in retrospection.

To start by thinking how this future work might exist, one could consider constitutive elements. One might have the idea of a photographic slide show; a short digital film, or something less clichéd, a development from previous works, nonetheless. I would like to think of the visual encounter of a 'projected' image that may develop less literally from these imaginary projections. What material qualities might this imagining bring to a visual experience, of a way to experience a projected image into/of the future?

Maybe there will be a number of slide shows, five or six perhaps, this might change... but I'll go with it for the moment, they will roughly have a set duration of seven minutes each. The images within the slide shows could originate from my 'Photographic Travelogue'. Here five different sites could be presented from a bank of photographed material, archived for future presentations.

The idea of a site is important - conditional, situated, a place where something is [to be] built, or again, where something has already been, a palimpsest, taken place, partially erased, a ruin, a sign. But a site, 'the site', which also suggests another way of anticipating the formal contours of a new position, suggesting a new identity, and sense of locality, of history.

'Conditional', 'situational', 'locus-point', whatever, the site is where a work is experienced, locally, [globally] and can no longer be over-looked - I know nothing [yet] of the site where this 'work' is to be installed at the moment of writing. This work could easily, therefore, if we follow this line of argument, turn away from my expectation absolutely, into something very different, from the certainty of what is aimed for by personal accounting, into some other undesirable tour de force, as a pre-eminence of 'object[s] in a space' or as something regained, the 'over-looked' in fact.

Within each slideshow a place is revealed slowly through many viewpoints in projected light, here [e.g.] both the inside and outside of a building is shown in sequence. A past experience seeks [in a forward motion] through the projector's steady mechanism, to insinuate its part in the make-up of the present.

It is not sufficient to just name the images. Documentation and naming [labeling] is only part of a process of discovering, advancing the delimiting of sequences. The pictures uncover reactions, observations, and a personal passage in time, recollected, albeit a stereotypical response, a thing seen/ known by all, familiar. Moving through a place seen through my eyes, [as your eyes], and framed through the obscurity of the camera, as the mediating force between the 'me' and the 'you'.

Sculpture, working in reverse from the photograph, is the generic viewer, [i.e. 'me' and 'you'] engaged in an attempt to possess, to gain a sense of place, to be revealed as both guessing by a rough logic, through volume and scale of indeterminate space, who we are: masses, surfaces, boundaries, the thresholds of a doorways, the light and darkness present in certain [photographed] rooms and gardens, their limitations of views, walls and windows etcetera. Lead back to 'us'. My cognition is drawn upon these perceptions, frozen in time, on celluloid, to imagine the witness, the universal, beyond the measure of surface.

The image that you are probably now seeing should be considered as something transformed, it has changed in state - turning from the imprint of a negative into ambient projected light, a sublime, digital-image, sensed as light all the same.

To introduce another within the work simultaneous to reading this text is also to elicit a [mute] sound in the original voice. As an accompaniment to the images, a metronome, recorded at differing speeds stands in as the other; a roughly thought out choreography, attempting to crudely jolt the images on the screen into something hidden, awkward; a disjointed, unsteady form of rhythm that is not really satisfied nor rewarded by patient listening, but causing anxiety, discomfort.

In another space, the images are synchronised to the sliding tempos of the metronome between its beats, insisting on the hidden image so that an awareness between the perceived images and any change in tempo is adjusted by the fading of an after image. Hypnosis, the missed beat, familiarity lost, these incitations are the over-looked places to be remembered, they have been shown to us before, the sound is heard, before, we have been here, before. And so on.

However, what does the 'work' sound like, what does it look like, or what does it resemble? How is it to be installed, this invisible work? Is it like anything before? Having thought about the projections, what can be said [really] with five projections that cannot be said with two? In this sense two may be stronger, as there are just two sites to concentrate, not five. Which site is which? If two, each site becomes one of a pair, the crossing point between. Yet they present themselves in a double bind. Mutually excluded from each other, yet bound by 'familiarity'. Yes I have been here many times, but I have not been, 'here', before.

I would like the projections to run in a half-light, not completely black space, I fear it [black box installation] has already become another cliché. Better, parasitical, half-lit, next to one another, yet also 'split' within / out of the 'space'. Nothing left to ingest of the world, clearly, into a 'space', as all art galleries unintentionally, or unambiguously, embrace 'the end of the world' as a source, the suicide of the avant-garde and the white cube; but I like the idea that they [these elements of installed work] can adjust a personal recollection as condition of a potential exhibition, its architecture of memory and of future mapping of the 'sensible' with or without 'me'. I am flirting with an idea of collaboration, maybe here indeed between the words, is a conversation with the Curator herself, which is unbeknown to me, happening to me, and uncannily has already taken place, where a number of specific needs within the space and the written text I have offered about it, have been insidiously addressed, even to the point of taking a risk of re-writing it, that other works must have been considered after all without my knowledge. Maybe these 'projections' [my imagination] can provide a form of balancing, between a curator and an artist, between working in the world as it presents itself without witness, so as to act as a discursive link within it, part of it, or in contradiction, as an impasse to it, between qualities and quantities of other works, whether present or absent? A dead zone.

To consider the place [the dead zone, the void space of possibility] that you are presently standing, reading this text, cannot be overlooked in the slightest. That's your space. But it's mine too. There is no public and private right of way. A number of scenarios flash past in your/ my mind. You, who in my mind, are in any number of spaces viewing this work [reading this, in mine] are yourselves 'conditions' of me and me of you. You - the viewer - always will remain in an institutional context to start with from my viewpoint, and maybe, since you have taken this text home with you [or reading online] or in a handout, wishing to have a more 'relaxed' time to read [the 'text'] that goes in accompanying the disease of art exhibitions, publications, and their explanatory trade-offs: Gallerists, CVs, Brands, Sponsors, the whole impressive mind game.

The idea for this text is that it should not just be stuck to the wall or read out loud, or as a voice-recording, it is read with your / my own voice - here is the situation of the exhibition - it remains a mute point, non-site, parasitical to its host, virus released, where an event which has not to take place, or has already occurred by some interference, is also not sanctioned by its own inner voices.