Re-Membering the Body

Re-Membering the body

Towards de-disciplining knowledge









by



Rajinder Singh

Singh, ii









Abstract







Starting with questions about the gap between art and mathematics, this paper



investigates the possibilities of knowledge in places removed from the domains of



traditional paradigms. A simple system is adapted to model ideas about knowledge



as an aid to epistemic inquiries. This system is then brought into question as ideas of



the body, particularly the traumatized body as a site best suited to reevaluation of our



systems of knowledge, are considered. The idea of closed knowledge systems is



challenged. Is there a possibility of closure in the analysis of meaning at any point in



our lives? The violence experienced by a traumatized body changes it and performs



new and highly personal epistemologies that are disjointed and disrupts any



apparent regime of knowing and seeing. We need to adapt our knowledge systems



to these highly volatile knowings that are already-absent, that are always under



erasure.







The thesis concludes by looking at the possibilities of traumatizing the body through



disrupted, dislocated architectural spaces and through the operation of the formless.



By building deteriorating and damaged spaces, the viewer is forced to question his



comfortable, apparently complete worldview, abandoning for a short moment the



subjectivity and significance in built space.

Singh, iii





Contents



Acknowledgements .....................................................................………..v



Paper 1 ……………………………………………………………………………1



Bibliography………………………………………………………..…….16



Early visual record of studio practice ………………………………..……17





Paper 2 ………………………………………………………………………..…...21



Bibliography………………………………………………………..……..36



Interim visual record of studio practice ……………………………………..38







Paper 3 ……………………………………………………………………………42



Bibliography………………………………………………………..…….61



Final visual record of studio practice ……………………………………….62









.

Singh, 1









Paper 1





Towards Qualitative Inquiry – the EI system



1. Introduction



Two areas of human endeavour have interested me throughout my life – the



apparently disparate subjects of art and mathematics. Commonalities exist



between these two areas of study, sparking my excursions into philosophical



research on mathematical beauty and the intellectual aesthetic experience.



Having been spurred on by their apparent commonalities, further and



persistent study into the nature of arts and mathematics started revealing the



problems presiding in our prevalent paradigms of inquiry.







I describe the new challenges to our prevailing paradigms of inquiry in the



next section. I go on then to introduce a new approach with which to view



reality in section 3. My key quest is to shed light on how we ‘understand’. But



as I consider the eternal questions of what there is that can be known and



how we can go about knowing it, it is quite natural to find that we are jumping



between the metaphysical gaze and the epistemological insights. In fact, there



is little to separate the two as the compartments of Reality and Knowledge



blend into one.







Having described the EI system, I present a sketch of an alternative approach



to inquiry in section 4. This is a fresh look at things – a set of emergent ideas



that should be seen more as changing schemas rather than a completed



product. I have chosen to refer to this alternative system of knowing as

Singh, 2





qualitative inquiry and I hope to interrogate this new paradigm through my art.



I plan for instance (described briefly in section 5) to question the mechanism



of knowing, which I recall in my future work and how the new system develops



a viewpoint in harmony with our complex changing world.









2. Challenges to prevailing paradigms of inquiry



We live in the world of science where we experience everyday the



phenomenal successes of the empirical approach in fields as varied as



medicine, engineering and physics. But we are starting to see cracks which



the old paradigm cannot deal or explain. We need new alternatives. The



phenomenal success of science is making us drag our feet. Normal science is



no longer enough.







One flaw in the shining edifice of science today is the wrongful assumption



that the subject is tragically and forever separated from the world around him.



This kind of dualistic thinking has been around since Plato and it is still the



dominant paradigm today. The subject-object dualism seems inescapable,



ingrained in our science, our language, and our way of thinking about the



world. Most western philosophers have been content with a dualism between,



on the one hand, the subject of experience, and on the other hand the world,



the objects of experience. However, this dualism contains a trap, since it can



easily seem impossible to give any coherent account of the relation between



the two. It has distanced subject from objects in places where they are



inexorably linked.

Singh, 3









New developments in 20th century science are pointing to problems with



classical modes of thinking. Experiments in quantum theory in the last century



have challenged common-sense assumptions about the physical world



through the concepts of realism, causality locality and non-contexuality. How



do we reason in the presence of contradictions for instance in the example of



superposition principle of quantum physics? How do we deal with the paradox



in the heart of Gödel’s theorem1? How can we understand the beauty in



mathematics and the mathematics of art?







Our epistemology must begin to be informed by quantum physics. Our



thought processes remain rooted in an outmoded view that we can pose



queries directly to Nature and let Nature itself answer. With the present



paradigm, we can never hope to reconcile the arts with mathematics. We



need to relook at our present paradigms, not only to move us beyond the



dichotomized categories that function to limit us, but also to set us free from



the shackles of the positivist paradigms of last century.







3. The EI System



What is the math component in art? What is the art component in math? I



need a closed logic traversing the irregular coordinates of art and



mathematics. When it comes to closed logic, none has incited the imagination



as has the circle. Can the circle be adapted to model ideas about knowledge,



as an aid to epistemic inquiries? What are the advantages, the limitations?



1

Hirzel, Martin, 2000, On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and

related systems

Singh, 4









The circle is nothing more than an infinite set of diameters (opposite locations



on the circumference). Every point is exactly the same as every other point



and every point is connected to every other in this revolved image of a point.



This symmetry and unbroken-ness have moved imaginations throughout



history. The symmetry is in the diameter and the whole-ness is in the



circumference. There are no sides or corners or angles, no starts, no finishes,



no edges, no sharp turns, no stops. You can think of it as a never ending



collection of points or as a polygon with infinite sides, a line that continues to



curve without end with the relationship between the diameter and the



circumference expressed with the irrational number Pi – an infinite, non-



repeating decimal value.







Emerson2 for instance has a particular affinity for the circle as he peppers his



writings with circles and circular words to illustrate the notions of justice,



potential and self-transcendence. The latter is the central theme in “Circles”,



an epistemological treatise favouring the circle as the primary figure in nature.



The essay considers two modes of knowledge, the rational and the intuitive,



using the circle to illustrate these with change and changelessness,



associated with the circumference and the centre, as the centre radiates out



to the circle that changes –“ around every circle another can be drawn”.









2

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vols. 1 & 2.

Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1971 &1979. 4 vols

Singh, 5



3.1 What is the EI System?



I put the circle to work in a potential explanatory model to understanding



knowing and knowledge. The EI system is a circle that represents an eternally



connected recursive path connecting infinite diametrical opposite pairs (the E



and the I). None can be considered without the other. A judgment implies the



contrary judgment. The circle can be seen to imply conservation and its



diameter(s), symmetry. As can be shown in physical systems3, conservation



depends on an underlying symmetry and symmetry defines an overriding



conservation. Also movement around the circle can be seen as the tension



created by the circular and diametrical paths. The system is proposed as a



model to shed light on human understanding and the fluctuations in meaning



and known truths.







3.2 Two points of interest on the EI System



Take any random point on a circle and its diametrical opposite. The first, the



E-point4 could represent a point of maximum chaos, maximum entropy5



where system(s) of knowledge are in maximum flux, the pre-intellectual non-



symbolic cutting edge of reality. Pirsig6 calls this point, dynamic quality. It



represents the force of change for everything. Form and content is in flux.







3

E.Noether, “Invariante Variationsprobleme”, Nachr.D.Konig.Gesellsch.d.Wiss.Zu Gottingen,

Math-phys. ( klasse, 1918), 235; English Trnaslation M.A. Travel, Transport Theory and

Statistical Physics 1(3) 1971, 183.

4

The use of the word point is possibly a mistaken one here. The E points and I points are

fictitious points of reference that cannot be known. They exist in our imagination and are used

here to give meaning to the rest of the points on the circle.

5

When given a system whose exact description is not precisely known, the entropy is defined

as the expected amount of information needed to exactly specify the state of the system.

Entropy is a precise mathematical quantity and I am taking more than my usual liberties by

using it here, hoping that my readers will not punish me too severely for its use and they will

get a gist of what I am describing.

6

Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values. 1974.

New York: Bantam, 1984.

Singh, 6





This location is the very embodiment of potential, of multiplicity and



emergence. I discuss this further in Paper 3.







The diametrical opposite I-point represents a point of zero entropy, maximum



order where our understanding or any human activity can be written as a



strict, formal system of instructions (an algorithm or effective calculability)



partly described by the Church-Turing thesis7. Most systems do not and



cannot reach this point and the G-sentence (see Gödel’s incompleteness



theorem) makes it inherently unstable. At the I-point, we reach a deterministic



universe unfolding mechanically according to rigid and immutable laws.







Every point in between are stages of becoming or unbecoming related to



these to points. Dynamic patterns become static and vice versa.







3.3 A dialectic



The EI circle8 uses a dialectical approach. Contradictions exist in things being



continuous and discontinuous, unified and diversified, wave and particle, art



and mathematic at the same time. Dialectical reasoning overcomes formal



dualistic or monistic reductionism requiring a focus on the opposites together.



Dualistic thinking is the dominant paradigm today. Turning from this into a









7

Informally the Church–Turing thesis states that if an algorithm (a procedure that terminates)

exists then there is an equivalent Turing machine, recursively-definable function, or applicable

λ-function, for that algorithm. Today the thesis has near-universal acceptance. But in this

presentation I can only allude to this and no more as I do not mean to or believe it to be

possible to show mathematically the existence of the I-point.

8

The perfect circle, a symbol for linearity and order is associated with irrational Pi, a chaotic

number in the sense that it is indeterminable. It can be construed that the determinable and

the indeterminable work in perfect harmony on the circle. The interconnectedness of

everything is represented by the connectivity of every point on the circle to every other.

Singh, 7





new way of included-middle thinking requires the dialectical approach inherent



in a circle.









3.4 Making the EI system work



Evolution of knowledge occurs through the minutiae of a field of inquiry as



well as in the field itself as it goes around the EI system. The EI system



models the evolution of the minutiae – the evolution of personal



epistemologies. Knowledge areas and civilizations evolve thru a fractal based



systems9. Change occurs through the coming together of two agents of



change – dialectical opposition and non-symbolic awareness or pre-



intellectual awareness. Before change can occur the senses need to be



aligned with the dialectical opposite giving rise to a sudden and uncomfortable



seismic change in the system. Here quantitative change gives way to



qualitative change that drives the evolution of our understandings forward.







On the E-point end of the circle, we are closer to the pre-intellectual, a-priori



understanding. Change occurs with a contemplation of the opposite or the I-



point. This non-symbolic awareness informs our symbolic activities (as we



shall see later) and the change leads all activities of human understanding



around the EI System.







The dynamic opposition between the E-point and the I-point potentialises



points of understanding around the circle as our understanding is slowly



9

A fractal is a pattern repeated at different orders of magnitude. The same pattern can be

found at different levels of analysis and knowledge activity. See “A Dialectical Paradigm to

Research.” in Human Inquiry, P. Reason & J.Rowan, eds., John Wiley and Sons, Chichester.

Singh, 8





actualized through our symbolic activities. At each point clock-wise from the



E-point to the I-point, diametrical opposites become potentialised, actualizing



a path down from the E-point to the I-point. The artist’s understanding of his



art (initially highly chaotic and expressionistic) starts becoming more orderly,



more mechanistic until it gets to a point where it can be readily be developed



into a set of instructions.







It doesn’t stop here as any instruction sets start going slightly ‘deviant’. This



happens for many reasons. We start developing away from the algorithm of



our art. Our understanding becomes more expressionistic and it gradually



returns to where it started as a new idea and a new understanding for the



same original art idea we started off with.







Mathematicians producing mathematics, situated closer to the I-point, evolve



away from working with a pure set of dry axiom-originated instructions-



centered activities to being guided in their choices by notions of beauty and



elegance which alludes to such adjectives as seriousness, depth, generality,



unexpectedness, inevitability and economy10.







The whole process of dialectical opposition with its degrees of actualization



and potentialization is properly situated in a spiral or helix rather than a circle.



The circle is useful in showing movement from an aerial viewpoint as well as



to develop the idea of locus of existence for many of our knowledge activities.









10

G.H. Hardy, A mathematician’s Apology(London:Cambridge,1973), p.92

Singh, 9









3.5 What are the concepts on which the EI system is based on?



3.5.1 Conservation and Symmetry



The circle articulates the relationship between conservation and symmetry.



There are multiple realities depending on where you are on the circle.



Everything has its dialectical, diametrical opposite.







3.5.2 Meanings in flux



The EI system is a dynamic system in constant flux. Our knowledge is



constantly changing. Truth and meanings morph and fluctuate. Personal



epistemologies evolve at different rates and through different routes. Truth is



different for everyone. Multiplicity of meaning is the norm rather than the



exception







3.5.3 Reductionist thinking



In analyzing nature we abstract aspects of a whole and regard them as



distinct entities. This reductionist thinking has been shown to be flawed. We



must reunite separate concepts to obtain consistent, satisfactory synthesis of



knowledge. The EI system is based on circle. Because everything is an



opposite pair, the circle unifies, integrates and equalizes. It focuses on the



relationship between the totality and its parts.







3.5.4 The inquirer and the inquired



We cannot know about the real and our Reality is embedded in our



understanding. The EI system deals with the cycles and the evolution of



man’s knowledge activities and his attempt to understand his Reality.

Singh, 10





Empirical inquiry or putting inquiries direct to Nature is therefore inextricably



intertwined with the inquirer.







3.5.5 Causality



The circle describes a path that links every point to every other point. There is



always a circular path from every cause and effect. There is therefore it is not



possible to distinguish cause from effect. Cause is neither precedent nor



simultaneous to effect as everything is in mutual simultaneous shaping.







3.5.6 Excavation



In the EI system, Excavation describes the process of creating knowledge by



removing. We remove to create. Excavation is central to the concepts



extrapolated in this paper. It refers to the idea behind re-membering the body



– textuating that which is non-textual emanating from the pre-intellectual non-



symbolic cutting edge of reality which is described as the E-point in the EI



system. I pursue this further in paper 3. The created is linked to the



excavation process of the creator. The inquiry and its results are inextricably



intertwined with the value system of the inquirer.







3.5.7 Quality as a prime mover



Change comes thru dialectical tension which causes quantitative change



leading to gradual qualitative change. The change in quality can be seen as



the non-symbolic force that is the motor of the evolutionary process around



the EI system.

Singh, 11









4. A new approach – qualitative inquiry



We saw earlier the challenges faced by existing system of knowledge which



continue to this day to guide the efforts of practitioners of inquiry. As an



erstwhile practitioner of mathematics, I hold axioms as basic inviolable beliefs



that form the very foundations of mathematics. The practice of mathematics



becomes but another game of trivia if its axioms can be shown to be arbitrary.



And this is exactly what I understand from the EI system. I cannot see where



there can be a special place for Platonic Forms, or Kantian categories for



things that we take for granted and hold fundamental such as time, space and



numbers.







There are five11 essential areas where qualitative inquiry is virtually the



reverse of more prevalent methods today.







Ontological differences



We have long accepted a fragmentable reality. Reductionism is synonymous



with scientific inquiry where we converge onto a fragment of reality of interest,



making every effort to isolate it to eventually control and predict. Qualitative



inquiry based on the EI system suggests that we can hope only to achieve



some level of understanding about our reality as it is in constant flux and



infinitely connected. Each point on the circle makes sense only as part of the



circle, as part of a whole.









11

Y. S. Lincoln , E.G. Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry, Sage Publication, 1985.

Singh, 12





Axiological difference



Every part of an inquiry is value-bound. We have long known this. We cannot



separate the inquirer from its subject in every aspect of the inquiry including



the choice of inquiry and its evaluation.







Epistemological difference



This, in my opinion, is the core of the issue with classical systems of inquiry.



We accept a discrete dualism. With qualitative inquiry, the subject and the



object are inseparable.







The individual and the general



We have become used to generalizations, tainting everything with the same



tar brush, without heed to time and context, taking away the emphasis on the



individual. In qualitative inquiry, we are concerned with the individual - always



context-bound.







Causality



Can every action be explained as the result of a cause? In qualitative inquiry,



this linkage is broken and cause and effect is indistinguishable.







Abiding by the “axioms” of qualitative inquiry, research should be carried out,



as far as possible, in the natural setting of the subject, encountering the



variety of realities related to the subject through discussions and



understanding. Emphasis should be given to intuitive and felt experiences



preferring qualitative methods over quantitative ones and inductive over

Singh, 13





deductive analysis. Observations and understanding should be allowed to



suggest a guiding theory and the design of the research itself. Finally, a



preference should be given to the case study and the individual rather than



sweeping generalizations.







5. Future work - Excavation, Symbolic activity and the EI circle



As I struggle to understand the new paradigm by which I am to embark upon



my research, I continue to question the paradigm itself. By problematising



present systems of inquiry and proposing a ‘better’ solution, I am setting



myself up to developing an orthodoxy that will itself be replaced as newer and



‘better’ paradigms surface. I therefore consider the EI system and the



resulting axioms of qualitative inquiry no more than work in progress. To



continue my work, I plan to interrogate the EI system through my art.







To a certain extent my original search for some kind of paradigm to make



sense of art and mathematics finds its answer in the model of qualitative



inquiry presented by the EI system. Art and mathematics are infinitely



connected even though they are at near polar-ends to each other. Art begins



as pure experience while mathematics primarily resides on the other more



static end of the system. But neither remains for long in any one position and



continue to change and morph. This occurs not only in the understanding of



every person but in the general fields themselves.







But there remain some unanswered questions. Can I treat art, as conducted



and created by its practitioners and Art, as a field of endeavour, in the same

Singh, 14





way? What is the connection and how does it sit with my present model of



understanding? Is art history cyclical? Is Art changing from highly crafted to



looser expressionistic and pluralistic forms to return back to being static? Is



the post-modernistic symptom part of this cycle or a prolonged hiccup?







I have embarked on this program of research because my own art has



become static and predictable. I am pushing for change and I know that I will



return to this point again in the future. I believe that this is only natural. We



assimilate experience, make sense of it, and move on the next experience.



We want the next change to challenge and not immediately become static.



But what is the driver here? What motivates me to change my art today? Is



the dialectical explanation enough to explain my motivations?







Is Cy Twomboly’s and Jean Tingueley’s work closer to the E-point than say



the recent art of Keith Tyson? Many art installations today are necessarily



highly organized and regulated works of art. Where do I place these works on



the EI system? And what is their opposite pair like on the circle?







These questions challenge the simplistic nature of the EI system. Can our



complex existence be answered by a simplistic model of explanation? How do



I begin to find out?







A possible entry point might be begin to look at Excavation .To better my



understanding of a possible model for knowledge systems and approaches to

Singh, 15





inquiry, I plan to work at a metaphorical Dig site, excavating, to make sense of



the new.







My other avenue to further elucidate the mechanics of the EI System is to look



at symbolic activity. With symbolic activity I refer to activities revolving around



the use of a system of significant symbols. I believe understanding symbolic



activity is crucial to understanding the workings of the EI System.

Singh, 16





Bibliography



1. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”.



Vols. 1 & 2. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1971 &1979.







2. G.H. Hardy. “A mathematician’s Apology”. London:Cambridge,1973.







3. Pirsig, Robert M. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry



into values”. New York: Bantam, 1984.







4. Y. S. Lincoln , E.G. Guba. “Naturalistic Inquiry”. Sage Publication, 1985.

Singh, 17





Early visual record of studio practice



‘The Perforated Book’ exhibition

Singh, 18









‘Bulldozers in the brain’ exhibition

Singh, 19









‘Bulldozers in the brain’ exhibition

Singh, 20

Singh, 21









Paper 2







The Altered Book



1. Introduction



In my last paper, I described the EI System to postulate a paradigm of inquiry



that breaks away from the positivist paradigms of last century. In developing



these ideas, I emphasized the emergent and evolving nature of the system and I



question whether a simplistic model such as the EI system doesn’t land us back



in the mire we started with.







In this essay I continue to explore what we can know and how we go about



knowing through ideas such as Excavation and symbolic activity. I start by talking



about the notion of the altered book as synonymous with the EI System. Drawing



on principally on postmodernist frameworks, I develop the ideas around the



altered book as an inquiry into dominant and non-dominant modes of knowing.







My practice today is intimately interwoven with books. I either alter them



physically or use the altered book form as a metaphor in my work. The altered



book is an important point of engagement with my studio practice. It is situated



beyond a punctuation mark, connecting, compounding, presaging,



foreshadowing a future in my research that will remain irretrievably linked to it.

Singh, 22





Against this background, the aim of this paper is to relook at the EI system



through the concepts of Excavation and symbolic activity, particularly through the



device of the altered book. I develop the idea around the altered book in two



separate ways, first by looking at the decollaged book in section 2, and



secondly, as the book as body, in section 3, through the lens of poststructuralist



ideas. Here I am forced to relook at the relationship between idealized book and



body with their material incarnations with respect to context.







In section 4, I return to the EI system to re-evaluate its relevance and the



problems stemming from an aspiration for universals before concluding briefly in



section 5.







2. The altered book



In the EI system, Excavation describes the process of creating knowledge by



removing. This important EI System concept hinges on the idea that what we know



is related irretrievably to what is and isn’t removed in the excavation for the new.



Similarly, the choice of the ‘dig-site’ is intimately related to the identity and location of



the creator on the EI circle.







My other avenue to further elucidate the EI System is to look at symbolic activity. It is



impossible to interact with and know the world without the mediation of some kind of



language rooted in a particular culture. In fact my interest in symbolic activity is in its



general sense as a kind of meta text which is alluded to by recent philosophical



schools of thought such as post-structuralism with its radical claims about the

Singh, 23



textuality of human experience. Derrida’s claim that “there is nothing outside of the



text” can be interpreted to mean everything is text because everything experienced



by human beings must be decoded and interpreted. Derrida’s use of the word text is



an expanded one.1 We are all inscribed as part of a general text or a meta text.







The process of Excavation in the EI System in many ways resembles the practice of



decollage, a fine-art practice with postmodern epistemologies. In some sense then, I



need to explore the altered book as I apply the potentialities of decollage to a latent



repository of text e.g. the book.form.







2.1 The book



I have chosen to work with the book form ( as opposed to multiple material



incarnations of the same)2 as it interests me as a repository of culture, memory, and



narrative, as a singular object binding together a multiplicity of meanings and



standing for a certain authority, which I at once embrace and challenge.









1

"I found it necessary, to recast the concept of text by generalizing it almost without

limit…..That's why there is nothing 'beyond the text. ' That's why South Africa, and apartheid are,

like you and me, part of this general text, which is not to say that it can be read the way one reads

a book. That's why the text is always a field of forces." Jacques Derrida, "But, beyond... (Open

Letter to Anne McClintock and Rob Nixon),"Critical Inquiry 13 ( 1986) : 167-8.

2

“When the (beautiful) object is a book, what exists and what no longer exists ? The book is not

to be confused with the sensory multiplicity of its existing copies. The object book thus presents

itself as such, in its intrinsic structure, as independent of its copies”, Jacques Derrida. Parergon in

The Truth in Painting translated by Geoff Bennington and Ian McCleod (University of Chicago

Press 1987), pp 49.

Singh, 24





In Of Grammatology3 , Derrida asserts a fundamental difference between the



book and text. On the one hand is the idea of the book that implies a genius



creating a piece of singular meaning. On the other hand is the text whose



meaning is in constant relation with other texts. The authority of the book



exercises a totalizing logic. But text is mutable. Text cannot be anchored to



authorial intent or context. The meaning of text proliferates endlessly. But while



this meaning is slippery a variety of ideological forces actively constrain this



process.4







To undermine authorial intent, peel away the hidden representations of



guaranteed certainty. Allow for the slippages in meaning that were suppressed



revealing the under layers of meaning that were hidden. Let it take its actual



form(-lessness). 5 The ‘borders’ of the book become unfixed and the mind must



be ready to move, to go beyond borders and to imagine alternative destinations.







Richard Rorty’s definition of Derrida’s deconstruction is that, "the term



'deconstruction' refers in the first instance to the way in which the 'accidental'



3

“The idea of the book is the idea of a totality, finite, or infinite, of the signifier, this totality of the

signifier cannot be a totality, unless a totality constituted by the signified preexists it, supervises

its inscriptions and its signs, and is independent of it in its ideality. The idea of the book, which

always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense of writing. It is the encyclopedic

protection of theology and of logocentrism against the disruption of writing, against its aphoristic

energy, and ... against difference in general. If I distinguish the text from the book, I shall say that

the destruction of the book, as it is now under way in all domains, denudes the surface of the

text.”Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology. Gayatri Chanavorty Spivak, Trans. (Baltimore: The

Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1997) 18.

4

See Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (Ithaca,

1982)

5

"..language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to

show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and

licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by an activity of semantic 'freeplay'..",

Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108

Singh, 25





features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly 'essential'



message" 6 Certain elements which are in the text are the potential ‘gateways’ to



destabilizing the ‘essential’ message of the text. These ‘gateways’ open up a



path to other possibilities or interpretations – to multiple vocabularies/meanings.



I see this to have immediate and relevant connections with the transborder



practice of decollage.







2.2 Decollage



Decollage is the opposite of collage where it is created by removing fragments of



the original text or image. The practice is not limited to the act of removing



although its essence lies in removing to create. Removing the staples that hold a



magazine can be argued as an act of decollage. So could the act of pushing the



physical properties of the book by piercing, goring and excavating it, as if it is an



archaeological dig, brimful of potential.







By removing and displacing the contents of the book, text and image are brought



into new alignments, new juxtapositions, demanding a multiplicity of new



readings. This calls attention to the irreducible heterogeneity of the ‘postmodern



condition’.7 But the book itself remains as the unifying field, resisting pure



difference. The authority of the altered book is at once strengthened and



challenged, bringing about new epistemic conditons, promising a new sense of



truth and experience.



6

Rorty 1995- The word accidental is used here in the sense of incidental.

7

Brockelman, T. P., The frame and the mirror: On collage and the postmodern. Evanston, IL:

(NorthwesternUniversity Press, 2001), pp 10 - 11

Singh, 26









Brian Dettmer, an American artist who creates new works of art by altering books



to manipulate meaning and uncover new significances explains:







“Everything I expose had meaning and continues to have meaning even if the



original context is hidden. The meaning of the elements shift and may point out



the randomness of our experiences or they may suggest new connections.



…sometime they are random or universal and the viewer creates a meaning of



their own and that is part of the work also.”8







As with collage, decollage places value in multiple distinctive understandings



incorporating nondominant modes of knowing and knowledge systems.9 This



understanding of decollage is key to they way I see an altered book. The altered



book, with its juxtapositions, overlappings, and shifting margins and centers is a



site of undecidability and indeterminacy. But it is also a site where solidarity



becomes a fundamental principle against the loss of all and any meaning. The



context of the book is emphasized when it is sabotaged. The book form lends



context to the text.









8

Part of an interview with Brian Dettmer by TRACT Magazine at Kinz +Tillou Fine Art Gallery,

15th May 2009

9

See feminist philosopher Harding,S., Science is “good to think with”: Thinking science, thinking

society. Social Text 46/47, 14(1/2),15-26, 1996.

Singh, 27





2.3 Text and context



When is the altered book no longer a book? When does the multiplicity of new



readings reduce to pure difference – to utter incoherence? Once the book looses



its unifying field there is no longer a context within which we can make meaning.



German artist Anselm Kieffer, who uses books as signs of signification in his art



once said:







“If one detaches oneself from the premise that the human being is the centre of



the world, of the cosmos, then meaninglessness ensues.....Yet by countering that



meaninglessness with something, by placing something alongside it, I naturally



create meaning. But it is a meaningless meaning, an illusory meaning”.10







Poststructuralist suspicion of all assumptions does not call for the construction of



an alternative. Everything is equally suspect. Poststructuralists do not agree that



a singular, coherent idea of the book exists. The idea of marginalization is a



shifting one. Without it, there is no momentum to move away from current



readings and no basis to want to.11







Here it must be noted that the relationship between text and context is highly



debated amongst philosophers and sociologists. One of the most vocal critics of







10

A. Hecht and A. Memeczek, Bei Anselm Kiefer im Atelier, art(January 1990) pp45

11

"If there are no values and beliefs not bound up with power," the concept of power itself

"threatens to expand to a vanishing point.... to stretch these terms to the point where they

become coextensive with everything is simply to empty them of force.” Terry Eagleton, Ideology:

An Introduction (London, 1991), 7-8.

Singh, 28





the Derridean move is Jurgen Habermas12. From a Habermasean point of view,



not all texts are created equal and that Derridean strong textuality fails to



“differentiate phenomena and practices that occur within modern society”13.



There are important differences between many types of text that constitute



context. Context, in other words, might still hold an important place in meaning-



making.









3. The book as body, the body as a book



In our language, we often speak of the contained ‘body’ of text ( with ‘head’ings



and ‘foot’notes and a ‘corpus’). We say ‘written in blood’ or ‘tears’ – bodily fluids



leaving the body and entering the book. The modern printed book can be



described as being bound along its spine; its index points readers in the right



direction, like an index finger; the appendix is both an organ and a text, each



supplemental in its own way. Just as a soul comes in a body, so does text in



some physical form. This physical form is the material conditions of the book



which seeks to emphasize the book as object, and it is the book, in its physicality,



or the book as body, that asserts itself, that commands attention.









12

For a Habermasean critique of Derrida, see Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration:Post-

Sructuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory (London, 1987)

13

Ritzer, George, Sociological Theory, From Modern to Postmodern Social Theory(and beyond)

Pg. 567-568, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, New York, New York, 2008

Singh, 29





References to the book as a body and the body as a book are everywhere.14 In



Michael Camille’s “The Book as Flesh and Fetish’15, the very act of reading is a



libidinal experience. The corporeal, the corpus, the corpo – what is the



relationship between the body and text? John Cage’s controversial piece, 4’33’’



for instance illustrates this relationship by making explicit the role of the



audience, in all their corporeality, in receiving a text and creating meaning every



time the piece is performed.







A book, as in the example above, is not an inert thing that exists in advance of



interaction - it is produced new by the activity of each reading. Post-structuralism



emphasizes this performative concept of interpretation - entities and actions have



co-dependent relations, rather than existing as discrete entities. There are as



many versions of the book as there are bodies reading it. The book is at once



one and many, a single compact object with a series of pages. Each page offers



unique entrances and exits to other stories or arguments. Each page is a door.



Some open, some do not. The book is like a body without organs16, open to



everything.





14

The integration of body and text in Peter Greenways film “The Pillow Book” as well as the

photography of Shirin Neshat and Zhang Huan produce or cultivate a metaphor of the body as a

book, the book as a body.

15

Camille, Michael, 1997. ‘The Book as Flesh and Fetish in Richard de Bury’s Philobiblon.’ In

Frese & O’Keefe 1997: 34-77

16

“In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories;

but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. Comparative rates of

flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of

acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds constitutes an assemblage. A

book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a multiplicity—but we don't

know yet what the multiple entails when it is no longer attributed, that is, after it has been

elevated to the status of the substantive. On side of a machinic assemblage faces the strata,

which doubtless make it a kind of organism, or signifying totality, or determination attributable to a

subject; it also has a side facing a body without organs, which is continually dismantling the

Singh, 30









The self like the book, which was once located firmly within a human person



defined by the physical skin, has been replaced with multiple personalities. The



poststructuralists have dismantled the Cartesian subject. In its place they have



suggested a continuous discursive identity across multiple positions. The self –



the ‘I’ is no longer separate, singular and coherent. The self it seems is never



exhausted of meaning.









3.1 The altered body



And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have



beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father… John 1:14-18







Through the event of incarnation, of God taking on human flesh, Christians seek



to erase the self so that Christ may be inscribed upon the body. Here the body as



text presents an opportunity for identity making as the body becomes another



Christ (alter Christus). The body is ascribed with text and text becomes flesh. In



this same way, for centuries, the self has been likened successfully to the written



word in its various material forms. 17





organism, causing asignifying particles or pure intensities or circulate, and attributing to itself

subjects what it leaves with nothing more than a name as the trace of an intensity... Literature is

an assemblage. It has nothing to do with ideology. There is no ideology and never has been”,

Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. R. Hurley,

M. Seem And H.R. Lane ( Miineapolis: Univerosity of Minnesota Press, 1983) pp 9.

17

"As the written word has taken various material forms over the centuries, so the self or psyche

has been successively likened to the ancient scroll or the writing tablet, the medieval manuscript

codex, and the modern printed book", Jager, P. ,The Book of the Heart. Chicago, (The U of

Chicago P, 2000).

Singh, 31









French Jesuit and scholar, Michel de Certeau argues, "printing represents this



articulation of the text on the body through writing." In fact, according to de



Certeau the very tools of writing are connected to the tools of surgery:







“The flesh that has been cut out or added to, putrefied or put back together tells



the story of the high deeds of all these tools, these incorruptible heroes...



Instruments are thus distinguished by the action they perform: cutting, tearing



out, extracting, removing, etc., or else inserting, installing, attaching, covering up,



assembling, sewing together, articulating, etc. -- without mentioning those



substituted for missing or deteriorated organs, such as heart valves and



regulators, prosthetic joints, pins implanted in the femur, artificial irises, substitute



ear bones . .”18







These tools remove or add to the body, carrying out these activities by reference



to a text. There is never anything bodily that is not written, cultured and identified



by the tools of a symbolic code. We bear its signature on and through our bodies.



The intextuation of the body corresponds to its incarnation. The abandonment of



flesh makes the body a privileged site, a fragment of language. Armed with



instrument for mortifying the flesh, for altering the body, even by abandonment of



fleshy pleasures, even at the price of life, we are given a passion, a belief even



immortality. Our altered bodies serve the law, the word, the text.







18

Michel De Certeau, Graham Ward,The Certeau Reader, (Wiley-Blackwell,2000) pp 170

Singh, 32





3.2 The traumatized body



The altered book in my art practice is a traumatized book. The trauma to the



book alters the book permanently and even though elements of the book



continue to have meaning, the trauma disrupts the original context. It is



permanently disfigured, deformed, maimed, mutilated, broken, or even diseased.



We have talked about the altered body as a book. What if the body is less than a



full body? What if the book is less than a book?







We know that poststructuralist reading of the material body has released it from



Cartesian dualism to give it play as site where unanticipated meanings might



come to bear. Poststructuralists celebrate the trangressive and deviant body.







Perhaps there is a new way of looking at the ‘almost book’ or ‘almost body’.



There are multiple ways in which social difference text marks the disabled body.



The disabled person clearly prefer certain constructions of the normative truth to



others however much the full-bodied poststructuralist suspects all conceptions of



the social code. Even so disability theorists have turned to poststructuralist



readings to reconceptualise social theory of disability. Poststructuralist theory



presents the possibility of alternative emancipatory subjectivities for the disabled



body.19









19

Wilson,J., Lewiecki-Wilson,C., Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in language and culture, SIU

Press, 2001

Singh, 33





Returning to Habermas in Philosophical discourse of Modernity, “Language



games, only work because they presuppose idealizations that transcend any



particular language game”.20The idealized form of the book and body cannot be



separated from their material incarnations. In the material bodies, the rhetorical



and poetic functions do not always predominate. The contextualist enterprise



cannot be ignored.









4. The Meta-Narrative is dead?



The EI System prioritizes a conserved, symmetrical system of knowledge built



around the two opposites points of Expression and Instruction. Movement and



meanings in flux is an important outcome of this system. Its simplicity makes it an



attractive proposition but it can be argued here that this very quality is its



weakness.







I discussed in section 2, the altered book and the potential of building new



epistemic conditions through its altered state. We showed how this can be



clarified by poststructuralist ideas, the very same ideas that are important in the



consideration of the EI System. The generalized version of the EI System fails to



capture the nuances of the reading in section 2. For instance, the epistemic



considerations of postmodern art such as decollage requires a more refined,



more nuanced model then the present EI System. And how would it predict the



inequality in texts? How can I indicate the rhetorical quotient of text on the EI

20

Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 199

Singh, 34





Circle. But here lies the crux of the matter. A more nuanced EI System will



become less representative. It will begin to become an explanation for a subset



of conditions rather than a general narrative it now is.







The very ideas that it purports to model destabilizes the authority of a meta-



narrative such as the EI System. The system itself must morph and the aspiration



to conquer all narratives must be dropped. The idea that a single overarching



principle governs the complete story of knowledge is not absurd, but devoid of



meaning, value or truth.







But postmodernists have warned us even of this. Perhaps the death-toll of the



meta-narrative is a meta-narrative itself. What is ironic is that we are surrounded



by meta-narratives more now then ever before. Postmodernism itself is in



danger of being crushed by the glory of meta-narratives.







Perhaps pragmatist philosophers have an answer. As I have discussed in



section 2 and 3, post structuralism provides an important tool for us to think



about knowing and knowledge, but a good tool is one that plays an instrumental



role as a means to an end while by itself not representing substantive good.

Singh, 35









5. Conclusion



The book in its altered and altering form serves as a metaphor for the deauthored



book, the intexuated body, new epistemic conditions, knowledge subsystems and



so much more. But perhaps, the altered book has altered beyond its ‘bookness’.



What is it a metaphor for now?

Singh, 36





Bibliography



Brockelman, T. P. “The frame and the mirror: On collage and the postmodern”.



Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 2001







Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia”.



Trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota



Press, 1983







Jacques Derrida. “Of Grammatology”. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.



Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.







Jurgen Habermas, “The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve



Lectures”. Trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.







Michel De Certeau. “The Certeau Reader”. Ed. Graham Ward. Oxford:



Blackwell,2000.







Peter Dews. “Logics of Disintegration:Post-Sructuralist Thought and the Claims



of Critical Theory”. London: Verso, 1987.







Ritzer, George. “Sociological Theory, From Modern to Postmodern Social



Theory(and beyond)”. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, New York, New York,



2008

Singh, 37





Wilson,J., Lewiecki-Wilson,C. (Eds.). “Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in language



and culture”. Carbondale,IL: SIU Press, 2001

Singh, 38





Interim visual record of studio practice



“Object “ exhibition

Singh, 39







“Object “ exhibition

Singh, 40







“The traumatised body” exhibition

Singh, 41

Singh, 42





Paper 3





Re-Membering1 the body



1. Introduction



In considering the EI system in paper 2, I concluded that the simplistic nature



of the system precludes it from capturing the nuances resident in the



fragmented body, the decollage and the inequality in texts. In short, it was



obvious how any notions of universality are impinged upon by systems of



knowledge with multiple distinctive understandings incorporating uncharted



modes of knowing. In this essay, I take a closer look at these fractured



systems to better understand my original paradigm and to measure their



resonance with my work in sculptural interventions relating to architecture,



space and materials.







In my last paper, I explored and articulated the traumatized body, a body that



has experienced some form of violence. My discussions on the altered book



centered on the symbolic economy of the body. As such, the altered book



acts as a symbolic substitute for the body – a disrupted, traumatized body.



This is the prevalent body, irreducible, anatomized and fragmented. I contend



that this is a site best suited to reevaluation of our systems of knowledge. The



traumatized body disallows the solace of closure in the analysis of meaning, it



makes it possible to cut into the body of knowledge to study its anatomy



where unanticipated meaning might come to bear, and its wounds uncover



the very interval to which established rules of boundaries never quite apply.





1

Re-Membering the body refers to the textuating of that which is not textual -building bridges

across the boundaries of a disrupted body to understand it through analytical methods.

Singh, 43









An important argument for the above is the historical shift2 in the move from



the materialism of economic practices to the economy of the bodies. The body



is the site for negotiation which can be ordered by external forces, cultural



mores and everyday knowledges. The material culture of the body has come



to occupy an important place to understand the mutually constitutive



entanglements between the body and material world -in short its materiality.







My interest lies in this particular – the dialogue between the viewer’s body and



material space especially with a disturbed, disrupted space. Material is added



and subtracted from an architectural space to contrive signs of trauma .I am



concerned with how this challenges the viewer’s perception of space, material



and objects. There is always something immediately disturbing about this



disrupted spaces and I argue that this is addressed as much to the viewer’s



body as it is to the eye, putting bodily relation of things out of joint. The trace



of a disrupted space deliberately upsets the equilibrium, traumatizing the



viewer’s body and opening a potential for new possibilities and visions. We



comprehend space through its symbolic economics of the body.







Much of the disrupted space manifests itself in confined chaos. Entropy



condenses the distances between binary oppositions such as form and



content thus contesting the production of meaning. This marks the expulsion









2

I am referring here to Foucault’s The Order of Things: An Archaeology f Human Science

where the economies of the body is summed up as modernity’s biopolitics ( pp 106) or to the

many papers published theorizing on the body and body politics since Marx’s 1844 Economic

and Philosophical Manuscripts.

Singh, 44





of what Krauss terms the “ visual logic of the viewer’s body.”3 I argue that this



is again is responsible for dislocating the viewer, fragmenting the body which



negotiates the slippages between categories.







The way in which an architectural space is disrupted invokes the shaking and



disturbing in the textuality bound to the specific conditions of space and place.



The environment is problematised through which the disruption comes



between sign and space precipitating slippages between the processes and



exchange that constitute our experience of the space. This dislocation is an



interesting one that perhaps is aligned to Foucault concept of Heterotopia- a



space of otherness which has layers of meaning or relationships to other



places. It refers to an otherness, transubstantiated into being thru some



slumbering interior equivalents of a flawed outer world. Heterotopias 4and



equivalent ideas however will not be considered in this paper.







The traumatized body disrupts the economics of the body, de-disciplining



knowledge. I need then to argue for a way of enacting imaginatively as well as



critically this fragmented artifact – the traumatized body. Here, as was made



clear in paper2, it must be argued that we cannot talk about the possibility of a



generic and universalized traumatized body and its response. The nature of



the trauma is highly personal and violence itself is in nature, formless, an



after-effect of chance; a response to an external change that represents an



assault not only on body orientation, but on orientation of perception. The



violence inflicted on the traumatized body decenters and becomes the canker



3

See Bois and Kraiss, A User’s Guide to Entropy, October, Vol. 78, pp 38-88 (pp41)

4

Foucault, M., Of other spaces, Diacritics, Spring, 1986, pp. 22 – 27.

Singh, 45





that develops boundaries to new knowledge. A conserved, symmetrical,



closed general system then is interestingly highly inadequate to explain what



can only be described as dislocated and unknown.







In section 2, I consider the economy of bodies, their uses and exchanges to



set the stage to discuss traumatized bodies, In section 3, I consider the nature



of the traumatized body particularly from the viewpoint of the trace of the



formless, its materiality and nature of violence and trauma. Architectural



spaces and the appearance of building materials are the two poles between



which I develop my sculptural interventions. I discuss their relevance to the



body in section 4. In Section 5, I consult the subject of my work which



constitutes my studio practice before concluding briefly in section 6.







2. The economies of the body



“The proper study of Mankind is Man.”5



The image of the human body has peppered both thought and literature for



thousands of years. In the last 100 years, it has enjoyed something of a



renaissance due to the body becoming an object of fashion and visible largely



through the writing of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Michel Foucault.







Marx6 suggested 150 years ago that to make full use of our corporeal



energies, capabilities and skills, fundamental changes in our political economy



needs to take place. Marx made a case for a world with work that would give



importance to both bodily and mental powers. He was concerned about the

5

The first verse paragraph of the second book of ‘An Essay on Man’, a poem published by

Alexander Pope in 1734.

6

See especially: Fromm, E.Marx s Concept of Man. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961.

Singh, 46





objective commodity-body and never ceased to think about the potential of



human embodiment. Continuing from this, Marcuse and Foucault focus our



attention on the human body as a crucial site for powerful political investment.







What kind of body is necessary for the political economy of today? What kind



of bodies do external economic forces produce, inform, reward, punish,



control, use and destroy? This question forefronts corporeal schemas but is



no longer enough. Today we ask what kind of society the body needs and



wants instead, refocusing on a body that is not defined by the historical



conditions of the society it inhabits.







Historical materialisms are reinventing the genealogy of the body in the



context of everyday life and experience. And changing materialist content,



extending Marx’s ideas on the nature and potential of human embodiment, is



turning toward the materiality of language with emphasis on the material



culture of the body. The economies of the body, in short, continue to occupy



an important place in theorizing and critiquing our world today providing a



critical social theory which is centered on and grounded in, the human body.7









7

Michael Levin, D., The Body Politic: Political Economy and the Human Body, Human

Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1985), pp. 235-278

Singh, 47





3. Traumatized8 body



3.1 The Body Without Organs (BwO)



What is important about the body and how can it inform? What happens to a



body that becomes disordered and un-transactable? The body that matters



here is not only the traditionally studied, namely a site of negotiation, which



can be ordered by external forces, but also the body that has suffered



violence and has becomes interrupted and irreducible. So why are we



concerned with this wounded body, the disabled body, the dismembered



body?







How many CSI9 TV episodes have you watched this week? Concern with



trauma has become chief amongst our cultural preoccupations and the idea of



the last two decades as ‘wound culture’ has gained wide currency. We are



more likely to see the ‘the real’ as a ‘thing of trauma’. The truth of



contemporary culture is increasingly considered to reside in the traumatic



object. 10 The traumatized body is today writing its history and it will not be



silenced.







A traumatic event causes the collapse of normal, linear understanding and



provokes a disintegration of narrative. Maurice Blanchot once stated that the



traumatic event







8

In common parlance, the word “trauma” is associated with something which disrupts one’s

life so severely that it is impossible to recover from its devastating effects. It must be noted

here that trauma can be used interchangeably with the word disrupt and does not have the

same connotations of severity as does its original meaning.

9

CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation and it is popular genre of TV programming that

dominate the airwaves today with its proliferating army of mutilated corpses.

10

Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real, MIT Press, pp 152-166, 1996

Singh, 48





de-scribes11 - that is ordinary narrative abilities fail us and our schematic



understandings of the world are destabilised. Trauma explodes existing



structures of meaning leaving the body fragmented and dissociated. To



experience trauma is to experience a world that is ultimately



incomprehensible.







It can be argued that the schizophrenic model, most prominently explored by



Deleuze and Guattari lends a framework to the traumatized body and gives it



a voice particularly in reference to the postmodern psyche. Deleuze and



Guattari in their book, Anti-Oedipus,12 suggest schizophrenia as a central part



of a subversive postmodern politics with radical potential that resists all forms



of totalitarian meaning by making the unconscious into the real. The ability to



“escape coding, scramble the code and flee in all direction...” allows the



schizophrenic to escape the power-laden despotic webs of signifiers. The



schizo, as does the traumatized body, becomes a site of de-disciplining



knowledge where apparent regimes of knowing are disrupted. The



traumatized body is not unhealthy; it has entered an unrepresentable state



where it transgresses the limits of linearity where identification and ego



becomes impossible altogether.







Here it must be added that it is not actually proposed that one has to strive to



become traumatized to know, but we can learn from the body’s ability to break



away from unitary meanings and despotic signifiers. The traumatized body is





11

Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Tr. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of

Nebraska, 1995.

12

Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis,

University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Singh, 49





skilled at effecting “de-translations” but, as was discussed in paper 2, an



inevitable new synthesis of translations – less partial, less symptomatic –



could bring about a possible recovery of the traumatized. This retranslation



might not always be a superior knowledge to that of de-translations of the



traumatized body, but it allows for action and recovery to be traumatized



again at another time.







The traumatized body is denied subjectivity since identification and ego are



impossible. Its fragmented body destroys meaning of the experienced thing.



Experience is identified only with the “elemental” and the “primordial”, in the



irrational, unstable senses that harbors the potential of affecting bodily



experience. Everything points to one thing. The traumatized body with the



movements of de-translations and re-translations, from one meaning to



another, always becoming, always already emergent between a multiplicity of



meanings without achieving closure or proclaiming a binding, points to



Deleuze’s Body without Organs (BwO).







The traumatized body can be thought of as the BwO. For Deleuze and



Guattari, every “actual” body has a set of traits, habits, movements, affects.



But every “actual” body also has a “virtual” dimension, a vast reservoir of



potential traits, connections, affects, movements, etc. This is the BwO. The



BwO denies the subjective and the implied meaning of the experience of



things, yet cannot exist without affect, an affect that is in a continuous process



of becoming. But in order to have affect and be affective, it must still exist



within the system it subverts.

Singh, 50









So how is the traumatized body affected in a continous process of becoming?



The notion of affects is explained in Spinoza’s words as “affections of the



body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or



restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.”13 Within



affection there is affect and affect is pure sensation and connected to the idea



of movement. The body, to Spinoza, is determined by degrees of motion and



rest and can be thought of as a collection of force fields, or vectors which



affect a space through its changing movement within it. The body gains



significance through performance, through its actions and not before -



individuals exist only as an outcome of becomings linked to the space of



possibilities.







The concept of the BwO ultimately is useful in considering an alternative way



of experiencing, free from subjectivity and significance through ideas of



multiplicity and emergence. This provides the groundwork for an experience



that is identified with affect and movement. In some ways, the BwO provides



the potential for a new understanding of phenomenology14.







How does the traumatized body deal with space? What kind of space is in a



BwO? How are the traditional notions of space imposed by this virtual



dimension? These are some of the questions that provide the key to



discussing my built and choreographed spaces and interventions in section 5.







13

Benedict de Spinoza. The Ethics. III. D3

14

De Vega, E.P., Experiencing Build Space: Affect and Movement, EPDV architecture

studios, taken from www.epdvstudio.com

Singh, 51





3.2 The trace of the formless



Another concept of concern in this paper that is related to the ideas of



multiplicity and emergence is idea of trace. The outer world touching an



impressionable surface is a trace – an indexical sign of an object. But the



trace goes beyond the opticality of the index, imperceptible like memories, not



an attribute of objects or entirely in the human subject, awakening an echo in



our bodies where it transmutes into an interior language of the body.







Consider Turner prize winning artist, Rachel Whiteread, whose work



particularly House (1993), disrupts material space through solidification and



demonstrates the extraordinary play between the body and it’s surrounding



through the operation of the trace. House puts bodily relation to things out of



joint and frustrates our internalized spatial practices. Perception here is not



entirely ocular. It is first and foremost, corporeal.







My research today is concerned largely with the formless and how it disrupts



the body. I construct built spaces that attempt to decompose the coherence of



form on which the materiality of the space is dependent, thus problematising



the environment through which the disruption comes between sign and space



precipitating slippages between the processes and exchange that constitute



our experience of the space.







In Bois and Krauss’ project of the formless, the trace of the formless is



inserted into the history of modernism in order to disrupt the unity and stability



of visual space, eschewing the binary logic of form and content. The trace of

Singh, 52





the formless can be understood by looking at the operation of trace introduced



in Derrida’s deconstruction. Derrida’s trace destabilizes the notions of



absence and presence highlighting a lack of order and balance in structures.



In this respect it is echoes the operation of the formless, which is concerned



with neither meaning nor form but only with the operation of the trace.







To produce meaning, we build potentials through form and content. If the



division between these binaries is eradicated, chaos results and potentials



disappear along with meaning. The formless disrupts the body as there is a



lack of stable structures and meaning-making order. I am interested in



exploring this mysterious operation of the formless in built or ‘unbuilt’ spaces.







4. The economies of space



Having discussed the body and an alternative way of experiencing, I am



interested in how the body affects and is affected by space. My installations



are necessarily site specific in nature. The site in site-specific art is firstly an



actual location, a real place, defined by a unique combination of physical



elements. It could be a built space, architecturally enclosed, or a landscape. I



am interested in the build environment in this paper, particularly the build



spaces of an art gallery or the white cube.







How is space experienced? Phenomenological architects emphasize the



importance of the here-and now experience through the bodily presence of



each viewing subject. Then there is the dimension of assigned meaning to



built space and the accompanying univocality of the phenomenological model.

Singh, 53





The site in site specific art is described not only in physical and spatial terms



but also through its cultural framework, defined, in the case of the built space



of the white cube, by the institution of art. The benign architecture of the



modern gallery/museum carries an ideological function, its features coded



mechanisms that disassociate the space from the external world to further the



institution’s idealist imperative.







A built space can be thought of as a formation of geometry and material,



experienced through bodily sensations. Is it possible to experience a built



space through the body without the baggage of assigned meaning? Is it



possible to walk into a gallery and enjoy art beyond the subjective and beyond



the meaningful?







I am interested in the corporeal and unreflective, instinctive senses. My



research is concerned with a built space that affects and is affected, in a



continuous loop of exchange. The body, in exploring sensuous space, is



drawn into the space itself. It becomes part of an interactive space, enhancing



the subject-object experience and circumnavigating the subjective and



significance of the space. Affect and movement contributes to a new



understanding of the site -one that is reliant on concepts of multiplicity and



emergence.

Singh, 54





5. Choreographed spaces and interventions



“For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our



expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most



secret affective movements, help to shape our perception of things.”15







My research is based on sculptural interventions situated somewhere



between the architectural space and the materials used to shape it. I am



interested in built spaces that are perched in between form and formlessness,



either leaking away or resolutely building some potential for site-specific



system of knowings.







My installations are site specific and interventionist in nature. I build spaces



that have been conceived of, and materialized through dynamic organizational



models that deal with the ideas of impermanence and movement. I am



especially interested in locus of potentials within the environment. These



locus or contours of potentialities map the areas in material space that affect



the body. My art is in the generation of new kinds of territories from the



exploration of spatial and structural and materials concepts, that affects and is



affected by the body. I am concerned with developing sensitivity towards a



sensuous environment that affects and is affected by the body.







To choreograph such an environment, it is important to consider what a body



can do. Affecting the body is about dynamic relations and interactions. It is not



about proportions or any kind of reductivist relationship with another body or



15

Maurice Merleau Ponty. The Primacy of Perception, p.5 (J.M. Edie (ed.), Evanston:

Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964)

Singh, 55





bodies. In building potential spaces that affect a body, the space itself is



affected. An intersection of architecture, material and movement needs to be



explored in one continuous experience. The movement of the body affects



space and the changes in space in turn affect the body. Such considerations



are difficult to plan for and are largely a matter of trial and error. My



installations are built with close considerations of the space, small detail at a



time. Every space is experienced differently. In the construction of my build



spaces, the senses and the mind need to work together.







A distinctive characteristic of my work is its engagement with the trace of the



formless. As a commitment to change, growth, experimentation and revision



and a dynamic process, I construct built spaces that are not quite built, that



are traumatized in some way, that deny closure and engage with the concepts



of multiplicity and emergence. The formless further opens up a possibility for a



space to be transformed through the interaction with the viewers. A pile of



powder in an installation moves imperceptibly and gradually changes a space.



Debris falling off a wall is affected by movement, fusing the body with the



space, the subject becoming part of the object.

Singh, 56









Figure 1 – A psychospatial map of built area for the artist’s ‘Door’ installation







Through a juxtaposition of affects and will to action, emanating from a



traumatized and choreographed space, I engage the sensuous body. I



traumatize the body into momentarily denying the subjective and the implied



meaning and one that exists only through affect and movement which is in a



process of becoming. In short, I seek to make a BwO, a body traumatized that



it, if only for a schizophrenic moment, transgresses the limits of totalizing



meaning and becomes the very embodiment of potential, of multiplicity and



emergence. This at least is the principles with which I make my work – to



build a purely sensuous experience, appealing to the irrational and leaving the



rational unscathed.







What spaces are there in a BwO? These spaces are clearly not static. They



are always becoming. But BwO cannot completely rid itself of all subjectivity

Singh, 57





and meaning. An art gallery for instance is built with the intention of being a



space for interpretation, for the perceiving rather than the sensing. This has



an obvious stronghold on the viewer and single totalizing meaning prevails.



How long can the schizophrenic moment last? My installations are challenged



by these notions and engagement of the sensuous body is reserved to hidden



fleeting moments.







To emphasize the senses and the trauma to the body, to build potentialities of



jarring blows to the senses, I work within the confines of the institutional



codes. The strategy maximizes impact and delivers a bigger and longer punch



to blindside phenomenological subjectivity and assigned meaning. Within the



confines of a gallery, I build spaces that are de-authored. Every effort is made



to reduce their potentiality to become an artifact. It is understood that it is only



a matter of time before the viewer recedes and views the built space in a



disinterested way, as an art object, forever separated. In many ways, the built



space is a successful installation for a fraction of a second. Beyond that it



ceases to be interesting. In short, the shelf life of my art is the time it takes for



the viewer to switch out of his/her momentary trauma.







To further affect the senses, my spatial interventions demand a religious



adherence to the ‘building’ of my spaces rather than the use of optical



illusions via photographs and/or trompe l’oeil. I build my installations to



assemble a purely sensuous space which continually engages the body at



different levels, enhancing the process of weaving the body into the space



while the space is woven into the body. Material becomes an integral part of

Singh, 58





the installation. The quality of being material, its materiality, plays an



unassailable role in my sensuous spaces. The operation of this trace of the



material in my seemingly content less and formless disrupted spaces shapes



the scale and form of bodily response.







But how can sensuous spaces be constructed using rational methods? Is



there a potential of building a comprehensive formalized descriptive system



for environmental properties that can capture a major share of biologically and



psychologically relevant properties for the analysed environment?16 How can



this be possible for a dynamic system based on multiplicity and emergence?







In my installations, I work with potentials. I am interested in how I can build or



erode these potentials. I chart these potentials for a specific space using



psycho-spatial maps. Psychogeography emerged in the 1950s to promote a



way to objectively describe the relationship between the urban environment



and the psychic life of the individual. I have adopted some of its methods as a



guide to the assembling of built spaces. See figure one. It is essentially a



reductivist exercise as it breaks down a space to consider the experiences of



each individual section within an installation. The maps help to chart the



‘pull’and ‘push’ factors of a sectioned built space and promote a more intricate



and nuanced consideration of bodily affectations. This approach provided by



phenomenology concentrates on the introspective experience of the artist and



is thus flawed as it cannot escape subjectivity and significance.







16

Wiener J.M., Franz G., Rossmanith N., Reichelt A., Mallot H.A., Bülthoff H.H., "Isovist

analysis captures properties of space relevant for locomotion and experience" Perception

36(7) 1066-1083 (2007)

Singh, 59









Figure 2 Installation titled ‘The Walls’







My built spaces work by disturbing the viewer’s sense of their body’s physical



integrity and spatial differentiation from the material object. The deterioration



and damage inherent in my work disrupts the body because the body



considers it a problem with itself rather than the work. The body tries to



realign but fails causing immediate disturbance and unease. In a recent



installation entitled ‘The Walls’, I place two concrete wall, one heavily



damaged, close to each other in the middle of a gallery allowing just-enough,



just-about-possible-to-squeeze-through space to the other end. The walls and



the rubble around it subvert the gallery space by obstructing and dividing it in



a way that is not expected.

Singh, 60





We can never rid ourselves of subjectivity and significance in built space.



However we can look beyond these notions and attempt to define a new kind



of experiencing, one that is more inclusive and less fixed; one that



incorporates the pre-subjective body of affection. My built spaces engage this



experience by ‘un-building’ the built by working closely with the disrupted form



and the formless.









7. Conclusion



My work remains a critique of the despotic tyrannies of knowledge. I have



chosen to elucidate this through interventions with space, by momentarily



building bodies of infinite potentialities, movement and meaning.







The violence experienced by a traumatized body changes it and performs



new and highly personal epistemologies, revealed only thru experience, that



are disjointed and disrupts any apparent regime of knowing and seeing. We



need to adapt our knowledge systems to these highly volatile knowings that



are already-absent, that are always under erasure. If used mainly as a



reference or a tool to describe new and emergent systems of knowledge, the



dialectical tensions and movements of the EI system described in paper 1



provides an apt framework for giving voice to trauma, the unspeakable and



the general complications of understanding and reference that are central to



our postmodern psyche.

Singh, 61





Bibliography



Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and



Schizophrenia”. Trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane. Minneapolis:



University of Minnesota Press, 1983







Blanchot, Maurice. “The Writing of the Disaster”. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln:



University of Nebraska, 1995.







.Foster, Hal. “The Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the



Century”. MIT Press, 1996







Maurice Merleau Ponty. “The Primacy of Perception”. J.M. Edie (ed.),



Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964)







Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss. “Formless: A User’s Guide”. MIT Press,



2000.

Singh, 62





Final Visual Record of Studio Practice



“Fragment” exhibition

Singh, 63





“Mirror” exhibition

Singh, 64





“Skirt” exhibition

Singh, 65







“Stuck” exhibition

Singh, 66





“Mired” exhibition

Singh, 67





“Directed” exhibition

Singh, 68







“Illusion” exhibition