The material representing the immaterial

<p>I do not pretend fully to have understood Davies and neither the review and critics of his approach to performance art.</p>

<p>As far as I understand him, he tries to cover all forms art and concentrate extensively also on musical performance. His whole project, that, as Arthur mentioned, is a very long term project dating back to his very first academic work of the end of the seventies (interesting, Arthur, that you come from the same higher education institution and department), was directed towards a theory or method for understand and giving meaning to contemporary art, which takes so many difficult understandable forms. Many performances don't have any tangible product you can contemplate. All is then in the process.</p>

<p>Seeing the comments above, I think it should be mentioned that Davies's holistic approach seems never (?) to be an invitation to "understand" a work by also looking deeply inside the guts of the artist, but to include in the understanding and give "meaning" to for example a photo, the visible or otherwise known intentions of the artist who through the artistic process of creation tries to direct and manipulate the viewers towards specific forms and processes of appreciation and reflections, or even actions (walking away immediately for example!). I think "explanations" by the artist just like titles cannot be used as some kind of objective valid sources of giving meaning to a work of art and detached from the work of art. They would always (?) be part of the "performance".</p>

<p>Earlier in this thread I quoted an example of such performances (the one on identifying the "centre") where there is obviously no tangible work of art. Apart from the written or spoken words the whole is in the process as well as the reactions of the viewers. Fred is right in underscoring that a performance is an activity and not an understanding. But what we discussed was the "understand" and "giving meaning" and here Davies's analysis tries to give meaning to the performance in what ever form it comes from the artist.</p>

<p>I thought actually by mentioning Davies I would be bombarded by reactions from people in especially the US and Canada that since years have read him and tried to understand him. This is philosophy, and for me very much relevant philosophical discourses for our discussions here in PN. </p>

<p> </p>

<p><strong>300 candle lights, for us all to blow !</strong></p>

<p><em>"tries to give meaning to the performance"</em></p>

<p>What if viewing is also an activity, a performance of its own?</p>

<p>When I'm at the symphony, I don't give meaning to the performance, though things I know and understand about the composer and musical history will be at play. I listen and breathe. I interact. I anticipate and resolve. I feel rhythm. (Do you ever find yourself breathing in counterpoint to the music? Sometimes I even syncopate.)</p>

<p>Listening to a musical performance and watching a theatrical one is often physical. Is there a counterpart to that in looking at a photograph? For me, yes.</p>

<p>When I listen to music, experience a performance, look at a photograph or painting, I bring myself to it . . . I participate.</p>

<p>Yes Fred obviously in our analysis of what happens we can forget about the artistic process and possible intentions and translate all what happens into very private events, but when Davies present what "art performance" is, he sees it as a much more intentional game from the point of the artist(s). Whether you are able to "escape" this intentionality depends on you and of course to which degree the artist have manege to integrate his intentions into the work of art. We can choose not to know about the "manipulation" - or not to care. </p>

<p>I'm not talking about private events and I'm not talking about analysis, nor am I forgetting about the process. I can see process in a photograph and be in touch with it. I don't have to interpret it into something. That I don't approach a photograph in order to divine the intentions of the artist doesn't mean I make that viewing a private event. What the artist expresses may belie even his own intentions. And there is likely much more of significance than just what the artist may or may not have intended. He may have expressed even what was beyond his own awareness at the time. He didn't limit himself to <em>"I want to do this."</em> He did it. And likely he did more than he intended or thought about at the time. I know I do that when I make a photograph. I look at my work later and am often surprised . . . unintended consequences . . .</p>

<p>"Many performances don't have any tangible product you can contemplate. All is then in the process."</p>

<p>Anders, this is an interesting comment, and probably some of what Davies intends (whose project is no doubt as long in its execution as some of my own comments here, although we are of different departments at Davies' present institution, mine having been one that the British refer to as a haven of the "boffin" rather than of the liberal arts student). However, I do think it is difficult to ignore the product in most performances.</p>

<p>The "activity", as Fred perhaps rightly considers the "performance", is to me very evident in some things, like jazz music, in which the artist is musician and the performance is the thing. The process. Whether this is a tangible product or not, is probably a matter as much for the listener to derive as it is the creator to manifest. The playing of a classical music composition, or even the more abstract or exploratory contemporary music, can be the same, where the conductor and musicians can "extend" the work of the composer in different ways and thus engage in the overall process.</p>

<p>The viewing of a photograph is I think normally (and necessarily) quite detached from the photographer's methodology or state of mind. As Fred and Anders point out, it is an "activity", but mainly one of the viewer. It differs in that way from, say, a jazz performance. What the photographer said is already fixed (analogous to the darkroom term) and it is for the viewer to participate in it in his own personal manner. Some visual and symbolic elements of the photograph may be ignored, while others are highlighted in his mind. In this way, and with the emotional and thoughtful input of the viewer, the "product" of the photographer is "extended."</p>

<p>Perhaps what the photograph can best do as an activity and source for inspiration and interpretation is much like the role of our institutions of higher learning, "to encourage thinking that challenges the orthodoxies, and not to succumb to them." Perhaps the photographer who is intent on creating images that hopefully incite the viewer to think is concerned by the paradigms or orthodoxies of how images are viewed by his public? Maybe this last thought is not relevant to our discussion, and perhaps conditioned by the fact that I am listening at this time to a two hour local radio panel and forum on the role of institutions of higher learning in society.</p>

<p>Fred, I just read your last thread and agree with your thoughts. It is maybe similar to the "extending" that I think viewers do in evaluating a photograph and independent of a knowledge of the thoughts or aims of the photographer. </p>

<p><em>"What the photographer said is already fixed"</em></p>

<p>What I am "saying" in my photographs is not fixed, even when the print is dry and hanging on the wall.</p>

<p>Arthur, the thing is I think photographers make pictures independently (to at least some degree, and sometimes more than others) of their own intentions.</p>

<p><em>"it is for the viewer to participate in it in his own personal manner"</em></p>

<p>I see it more as a dance . . . sometimes slow and intimate, sometimes a tango, sometimes like the kind where you don't even touch, and sometimes like just briefly catching a glint in the eye of someone on the other side of the floor. </p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"What the photographer said is already fixed"</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is almost a tautological statement because the photographers "speaks" by his photos. Whatever the photographer does afterwards is not relevant anymore unless it is communicated to the viewer and then part of the artistic process.<br>

No, what Davies seems to get at is that photography as "performance art", starts with the conceiving by the artist of the intentions of not only the photo but also making it being viewed and thereby the reactions of the viewer. What ever the viewer does, he/she will to a certain degree always be trapped in the process, all depending on whether the artist has succeeded his "performance" or not. Giving "meaning" to a photo would then be to understand the artistic process of making the photo and the intended reactions of the viewer.</p>

<p>One can of course decide as individual not to be bothered by anything else than one's own private reaction to the photo, but as far as I see it, it does not prevent others from seeing the process in a more holistic way, true to understanding photography as a "performance". There is no one correct way of appreciating photography or analyzing it.<br>

Nobody around have read, and believe to have understood, Davies?</p>

<p>The photograph does not live in a vacuum, therefore is not fixed. It takes shape according to context and changes over time. The photograph performs as much as the photographer did.</p>

<p>That one does not necessarily project intentions onto the photographer does not mean one is having only a private reaction. There are many sorts of relationship other than projection.</p>

<p>Fred, it is all a question of whether you accept to discuss the "performance" or you insist on concentrating on the photo and whatever it is used for after it has been made. Davies tries, as far as I understand him to make a construct of the process that he calls a "performance" that goes upstream to the intentions of the photographer and downstream to the perceptions and reactions of the viewer. To understand a photo is then to understand the process that gives it it's meaning. I find that interesting as approach and I think it is relevant for understanding the work of many modern photographers. </p>

<p>Since I'm not usually accompanying the photographer on his shoot or in the darkroom, I guess I will continue concentrating on the photo . . . and any sense of a performance I have will come to me as I look at the photo.</p>

<p>It's been my experience that many viewers spend a lot of time trying to divine the intentions of the photographer and unfortunately seem to miss a lot of what's right in front of them. It's not unlike time spent wondering if that was "actually" what things looked like at the time the photo was taken or not.</p>

<p>The intentions of the photographer may not have all been concentrating on what wound up being <em>expressed</em> by the photograph. There are a lot of unintentional matters that go into the making of a photograph. A photograph is not a representation or direct expression of intention. I see it all as a much looser kind of relationship . . . much messier. Intentions are only one element, and are usually only guessed at, more often than not wrongly. As I said, I see a lot more even in my own photos than my intentions.</p>

<p>One of the greatest things about a stage performance is the role <em>accident</em> can play. Inspiration. Cause and effect of audience (in the case of a photograph, cause and effect of subject being photographed). Lots of stuff besides intention.</p>

<p>A photo may be much more a revelation than a catalogue of intentions.</p>

<p><em>"What the photographer said is already fixed"</em></p>

<p>Inefficiently communicated, perhaps, but what was intended by that statement was that the photographer has terminated his photograph, although quite obviously that the work can illicit or induce reactions from the viewer (whether intended by the photographer or not) beyond that. The photograph was born of the photographer, but then lives its own, and to a large degree independent (of the photographer), life. That is what was also inferred earlier by the word "extended" activity or experience, or extended performance if you will. The viewer engages. Accidents also occur. How many times has one of your images created something entirely different from what you had perceived and imagined? It has happened to me on a few occasions, where I have been made aware of the reactions of a viewer.</p>

<p>Those viewer reactions have once or twice been in the nature of non-material thoughts (ideas, feelings). I don't take any particular credit for it, but there may have been something in the image that conveyed the immaterial, or it may have been other collaborating influences experienced by the viewer at that time.</p>

<p>Arthur I appreciate as you what a photo can provoke of reflections, reaction and initiatives without any awareness of the intentions of the photographer. This does not mean that the intentions are not important and not effectually having an impact on what, say Fred, Arthur or I, do with the photo afterwards.<br>

Again being aware that I repeat myself, the approach of Davies is not to reject that other equally important processes of contemplation which might happen, the art of work of a photographer can be seen and analyzed as he does, as the total process of the performance including intentions, execution of a photo and viewing of the photo.<br>

Fred I have read your contributions so many times that I expected that would write what you just wrote above. I believe that you in the writings of Davies could find something, building on analytical philosophy that nurture so many of the threads, which invites you and others to look beyond your normal way of seeing things - beyond the box, if I dare.</p>

<p>Thanks for the advice, Anders.</p>

<p>Your are welcome, Fred</p>

<p>It's interesting (to me) to see some photographers so insistant upon verbal analysis of nonverbal phenomena. Key words: verbal, analysis.</p>

<p>People in decisionmaking situations (which might include photographers..."decisive moment," clouds "just right" etc) sometimes remember the old line, "analysis is paralysis." That would seem to apply to "instinctive" approaches (which I deny exist, but that's another topic).</p>

<p>Verbal is fun for part of the brain, but that part doesn't happen to relate directly to optical or auditory experience. It may arguably relate indirectly, which is the mechanical rabbit our most philosophical brethren seem to chase. Why don't they talk about their personal experience more directly? Is personal expression that embarassing? Rather than citing a philosopher nobody (arguably) reads, how do YOU respond to images? Is that a philosophical question? </p>

<p>I think the concept of "philosophy" is less relevant to photography than psychology/neurology/anthropology, in most instances...unless we return to an important 19th century usage: "natural philosopher"...which refers to people who study the world around them, share their findings...people like Darwin.</p>

<p>Seems to me that most here think of philosophy/photography in "art" terms. I wonder why that is? What about those who think of it as a tool for stopping motion or studying fish behavior or a vehicle for playing with chemicals or digital information? Can't that be as "philosophic" as putative art criticism? </p>

<p>Matt Lauer is one of the few here who seems to think of photography in philosophically unpretentious terms. Just about anybody can see what he intends with his admirable images (those I'm familiar with, anyway). What puzzles me is the philosophizing we do about "captures" of segments of somebody else's architecture, puddle ducks, or oddities on the street. That kind of photography is worthy in itself, isn't it? Why does it so often acquire fancy "philosophical" justification?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>

<p>"Is personal expression that embarrassing? Rather than citing a philosopher nobody (arguably) reads, how do YOU respond to images? Is that a philosophical question?"</p>

<p>John, I think it is safe to assume most of us agree with that, which of course is one reason why this particular OP sought the insights of fellow photographers. Do YOU think that material things (subjects photographed, THE photograph itself, etc.) can transcend the material constraints and convey something more profound that engages our mind? </p>

<p>Of course, your question can easily be turned around to ask you what YOU think (rather than say, Taleb, or some other philosopher or chroniquer). Whether it ia philosophical question or not, what do you think in regard to the OP? Can ideas by conveyed by a photograph?</p>

<p>".....some photographers so insistent on verbal analysis of nonverbal phenomena". </p>

<p>Much of the enigma, mystery, and unknowns in life are of nonverbal phenomena, but as creatures having at least the power to communicate through language and on the basis of our own experience, we tend to use verbal means to discuss that amongst ourselves. 317 posts could not have been made without verbal expression. A photo can say many different things to as many different people, and the ability and manner to differentiate and appreciate the different perceptions cannot be done only nonverbally. We must communicate our feelings or ideas verbally.</p>

<p>John, your comments I find very appropriate. You have a good habit of stirring the pot at the right moment. It may take some time before I can respond more fully to what you are saying, and maybe not, but I am sure that others will probably do so earlier and better. </p>

<p>At one point in my ungracious existence I could claim to be a philosopher of sorts, as my appendicised qualification possessed the term 'of philosophy', although that expression had been termed centuries ago when philosophy uniformly embraced the natural and physical sciences in addition to the arts. After having to put up with endless deferential salutations using an academic title while doing a minor stint in a northern US university and city, when a simpler form of address was much preferred by me (and more appropriate to my knowledge and experience), I was most glad to shed that "clothing" and start working in a very egalitarian French Canadian city and work community where Madame, Monsieur or Mister was applied to everyone, a social and business democratic leveller. The things that made my very talented technician curious were the same as those that interested others like me and I had no right to think that having some sort of qualification put me on more solid or knowledgeable ground than himself. </p>

<p>There is perhaps a negative reaction that philosophy serves no valuable purpose in discussing photography and that the "truth" is there without it. That may be, but whether we call it philosophy or not is unimportant. I believe that what is important is something embodied by our curiosity to probe deeper on questions related to the condition, desires and environment of man, and our reactions to that, and some of that can be conveyed by photography, just as some can be conveyed by verbal expression of ideas. That is not just one or the other to my mind, and not limited to only certain accredited persons in philosophy, but to all of us who may be curious, exploratory and looking for a new horizon or ideas to compare with existing ones. </p>

 

</p>