A project for the Comparative History of Ideas Colloquium at the University of Washington entitled "The Interpretation of Texts and Cultures." Taught under John Toews and Stacey Moran, Winter 2007.
The "Bless the Void" project started about ten weeks ago while listening to Congotronics with my friend Chris Gilliam. It consists of 22 illustrations made in a small sketchbook with archival and brush pens; scanned and uploaded onto the Internet. Most of the drawings were made while sitting in seminar, some while waiting for the bus, others in between classes, while working on the Urban Edibles project, visiting with friends, during a long walk, or in the middle of some personal research. The name "Bless the Void" was taken from a fake business card my friend Meghan-Shannon found on 21st Avenue Northwest in Portland, Oregon.
For my project statement, I do not want to attempt to analyze the drawings themselves. I would like to let them resonate without the frame of my interpretations, for "speaking, writing, and discoursing are not mere acts of communication; they are above all acts of compulsion" (Trinh 52). Western culture has compulsively used speech, writing, and fighting as the primary frame of interaction with the environment. There exists a hierarchy of expression; stating that our ability to write and debate proves our superiority and intelligence over others utilizing differing modes of expression. In this project, my awareness of the problematic state of language met with the oppressive reproductive cycle generated by representations forces me into a new state of thinking.
"Writing [is] a decisive mark of superiority" (Greenblatt 10). The structure of this project statement itself imposes a meaning on my visual expression and forces it into another format classically used to control other cultures and peoples, that of language. My words are part of a long line of historical conquerors of signs, as "one cannot seize without smothering, for the will to freeze (capture) brings about a frozen (emptied) object." (Trinh 61) Language seeks to box in and capture its subject, overriding any expression or meaning of the other. Replacing symbolic visual meaning with words only serves to support the hierarchy of written language over all other forms of expression.
Having my drawings and project statement placed on the Internet brings about another element of problematic being. I am at danger of turning my environment once again into a spectacle. My representations pass through multiple screens of perception and modes of reproduction. "Representations are not only products but producers, capable of decisively altering the very forces that brought them into being" (Greenblatt 6). My illustrations have an indexical connection (representing a point in my physical world) and are now disconnected from their place; boxed into a purple frame. They are reproduced and placed among other objects to create new meanings, new environments and most likely new forms of oppression. On another level, my perception of space is still contained and altered in my lines and are being reproduced through my power as seer. You are living in my perceptions; which affect and carry with you. To minimize the transfer of my own inner frame, I try to suspend inner narratives and cultural framing while I am drawing.
Trinh states that "to be naked is to be speechless" (Trinh 49-50). Unlearning, undressing, shedding are all verbs that take me outside of the constructs that lead to oppressive communication; into experiential mediums. Drawing has become an important medium for me in unlearning and discovering new forms of expression, communication, patience and connection. The materials of this Colloquium demand a immersive reflection, and I find this medium the best way for me to process ideas in a way that invites sharing and openness.
Instead of relying on speech to get what I want, action and wonder become a constant state. Focusing meditatively on a subject of a drawing (be it physical or metaphysical) enacts a sense of aporia and wonder in me; a suspension of a failure in categorization; a "paralysis, a stilling of the normal associative restlessness of the mind" (Greenblatt 20). My experiences through drawing resist the often negative forces of perception I have previously relied on--into a state void of words and containment.
The other is never to be known unless one arrives at a suspension of language, where the reign of codes yields to a state of constant non-knowledge, always understanding that in Buddha's country (Buddha being, as some have defined, a clarity or an open space), one arrives without having taken a single step; unless one realizes what in Zen is called the Mind Seal or the continuous reality of awakening, which can neither be acquired nor lost; unless one understands the necessity of a practice of language which remains, through its signifying operations, a process constantly unsettling the identity of meaning and speaking/writing subject, a process never allowing I to fare with non-I. (Trinh 76)
For Trinh, the reign of codes and meaning is at a state of undoing, a fluid space of being outside of cultural structure, an immanent space of awareness. The journey is within the perception of a person, part of a deliberate work to suspend constructs in relation to others. The continuous reality of immanence (being and becoming) is embodied in self awareness and immersion. Disidentifying with the egoic mind bleeds the distinction between self and other. The movements of the ego are mapped and dissolved, and the realities of interconnection, limitlessness and fluidity expose a hope for new possibilities and choices for living outside of oppressive cycles of communication and being.
In the transfer of communication from writing to drawing I notice that first my mind disappears and my hand becomes an extension of my body. The meaning in my body comes out through my hands and lines of my pen. I focus my attention on the energy given by my environment, taking me outside of my cultural frame from the outside in. The embodiment I experience moves me from my own realm and frame of speech into a suspended state without categories; a tactile and multimodal agency in a relationship with my physical environment. With a suspension through artistic expression I am moving away and within myself to understand and embody this force of interconnectedness.
What I have expressed here is a process of being and expression. Through this project I have gotten to know myself in a cycle of undoing and reworking; a drawing up of myself so that I might relate to the world on better terms. I can't suggest that I have found my ultimate medium or frame of expression, but a process is developing through my drawings where I can move freely between words and spaces in a positive state of immanence.
I would like to thank John Toews, Stacey Moran, Trina Raymond, Stefan Gruber, Chris Gilliam, Linda McAllister, Michael James Bunsen, Daniel Peterson, Julie Lynne Noble, Kate and Alexa Jeddeloh, Manuel Stuart, The Urban Edibles Project, Luke Fischbeck, Adrian Orange and Alex Jameson Norman for their support and inspiration in this project.