Medium Of Doubt

 

Collage, an ambiguous, complex medium of doubt, to quote Werner Spies, is an aesthetic of radical juxtaposition. In his personal treatise Beyond Painting (1947), Max Ernst, with reference to both Rimbaud, and the famous 'chance encounter' from Book 6 of Les Chants de Maldoror, defined collage as an 'alchemy of the image...' . However,the photomontage style of collage finds its origins in the work of the Berlin Dada Movement who in turn were inspired by the inadvertent imagery generated by early cinema special effects and the composite images of 'trick photography'. The term photomontage was invented by the Berlin 'monteurs', Raoul Hasmann and Hanna Hoch.

From the Freudian perspective it may be that collage exemplifies one of the two 'laws' governing the behaviour of unconscious processes or phenomena (such as dreams): the law of Condensation, or Compression, as it is also called. (The second 'law' is the law of Displacement.) Freud explained Condensation as the 'inclination to create new unities out of elements that we would certainly have kept separate in waking thought...' In 'The Enormous Face' section of his novel The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), J G Ballard refers to the 'planes of intersection' operative on 'a third level, the inner world of the psyche' where, as on other levels, such 'planes' interlock at oblique angles and where one finds 'fragments of personal myths fusing with the commercial cosmologies...'

Elsewhere is the same book Ballard asserts that images are born at the intersection of such planes, when 'some kind of valid reality begins to assert itself.'

Illustration: Psychic Citadel, 2002

Open Realism

An aesthetic perspective where 'realism' is defined as a Quality of Perception, and where the word ‘open’ stands opposed to any ‘closed’ teleological worldview. For example, mono-causal creationism is a ‘closed’ explanation of ‘origins’ in conflict with the obviously non-teleological character of existence. Counter-intuitive, aleatoric, absurd and indeterminate phenomena are a consequence of non-teleological conditions, leading to the transgressive or perturbing nature of Open Realist works – works that, in an age beyond satire, will always manifest the forgotten, ironic, paraxial, chaotic spirit of the Post-surreal.
    The term open realism (realisme ouvert) is cited by Andre Breton in the text 'Limits Not Frontiers of Surrealism', given as a lecture at the Burlington Galleries in London on 16 June 1936, subsequently published in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise (48:1 Feb 1937): '...open realism or surrealism which involves the ruin of the Cartesian-Kantian edifice and seriously disturbs the sensibility.' Open Realism is a purely nihilist, materialistic, aesthetic concept and has no connection with any other uses of the phrase, such as the 'philosophy' of Bernard D'Espagnat or others.

However, the usage by Bonnie Marranca in relation to the plays of Sam Shepard is worthy of note:

'open realism exists in a dramatic field composed of events not scenes, of explosions and contradictions not causes... It is characterized by disruption not continuity, by simultaneity not succession; it values anomalies not analogies. In other words, it captures a reality that disregards realism’s supposition of the rational. It praises the differences and irregularities between things, and can accommodate the simultaneity of experiences in expanded time/space.' (American Dreams, 1981)

Illustration: Aeternae Veritates I, 2002

Believe This

I tell you (believe this) – I have explored
Fearfully with my alien mind the limits of art.
I have seen the horizon of fear which none may cross.
But no art is as cold as my heart.

Illustration Vampyr, 1970

The Atom Smasher Of Dreams

To find the ultimate element of desire a team using Attention Theory and a temperature high enough to mimic conditions when the universe was just microseconds old have found our most recent dreams follow a mathematical vortex pattern.
Quarks loop through these vortices, even though shot pacing isn’t everything – good narrative, strong acting and a fireball about four trillion kelvin at its core, are probably more important. This is just the way you dream about far-away places, old girlfriends and alien cities built by insects. Later this year researchers will separate lower energies, helping to describe the human attention-span when dreaming about the future.
Is life a mathematical trick? That is exactly what the more negatively charged entities would like us to think. They expect the separation to disappear but we have seen signs of such vortices and fields created by gluons that can twist, forming dreamlike structures in the all-pervasive vacuum of space. This is what gives mass and substance to lurid, inhuman fantasies.
Perhaps the key lies in measuring desire with greater precision, although we now think that psychic films are more gripping because they resonate with other movies, not your memories. You may try to copy the style, but the galaxies will collide anyway. Explosions can create a series of waves, transforming the magnitude of ‘pink noise’ at random intersections in the brain – a property that has never been seen before. Others have observed the vortex in music, street fashion and air turbulence. This type of dream field should cause two particles to collide off-centre, smashing gold and copper ions head-on like a slow motion car crash in the Valley of Despair, tracking the eye-movements of dreamers like jets of matter expelled from backward spinning black holes.
Mutations are locked in and several different kinds of fantasy arise, helping to explain all kinds of non-material phenomena.
Always leave space for magnetic fields to build up in your dream life.
Never look back.

Illustration: Transtemporal Parapraxis II, 2002

Medusa Cascade

Ladies and gentlemen,
The image you see here may well be an ideal work of art.
Perhaps it is a lurid and melodramatic allegory of the creative process?
You will observe how, on one level, the symbolism is obvious – an uncontrollable force overwhelms the ivory towers of pedantry and the bastions of patriarchy. It is a force from ‘beyond’ – it is the dark energy of unconscious drives, it is a monstrous incursion from the paraxial realm of Desire.

This oracular vision is presented to us by that Pythoness of Subliminal Terror, superstar choreographer of the Ballet Plastique des Noctambules, Ms Medusa Cascade – watch your step!

Illistration: Cometographia II, 2002

Displacement Effects

Vox et Praeterea Nihil – New Poetry from A C Evans

Plutarch’s description of the nightingale (‘A voice and nothing more’) is a salutary reminder of the ephemeral nature of our poetic endeavours. For what are poets – those nightingales of ‘culture’ – but a diversity of voices? Some are shrill, others are gruff, many bombastic, most mawkish, self-important or pseudo-sophisticated, a few, a very few – those crying in the wilderness – strike a chord. Yes, we are all voices and nothing more – with particular emphasis on the word ‘nothing’.
Undeterred by such thoughts, or by the hyper-intellectual theories of academic literateurs living (like several respondents to The Argotist interview and essay) in a state of denial that is really a kind of hubris or confusion or both – a number of new poems have recently slipped out from under my door. Some, thanks to the generosity of several editors, have actually found their way into print and/or online. Last April, under the Dada-style title ‘Bom chucka wah wah’, Stride published six poems from a new sequence, South of Suburbia, an excursion into tabloid impressionism. In June 2008 a group of poems together with two collages by way of illustration (‘Displacement Effects’ and ‘This Is Not The New World Order’) were included on a feature page on the new Inclement site. Aside from South of Suburbia, there are three other new sequences called The Silver Ghost, Radical Chicanery and Perfect Storm.
Various poems have appeared in the SF anthology Old Rossum’s Book of Practical Robots (2008) and Handshake 75, while magazines, Harlequin, Inclement Poetry for the Modern Soul, The Penniless Press, Pulsar and Fire also included a number of items mainly, but not exclusively, from these new sequences. Awen from Atlantean Publishing carried three translations from the French (Breton, Verlaine, Maeterlinck) while ‘Boo Galaxy’, published in Handshake, was even short-listed for the Data Dump Award 09.
Thinking about surfacing?
Illustration: Displacement Effects, 2002