Good question, Barry. First, I did make this particular "Lincoln"
haptic while (actually, "OBAMA - Day 12" on the blog ) while I
listened to this couple parade out these curious public events
& spectacles
that followed Lincoln's assassination. They were like third rate
academics who had put together this vaudevillian act that included
photographs of heads of folks who had been scalped,shot, or
'arrowed' because they had cheered Booth's 'bravery.' This
was all good fodder for making the haptic as my pens picked
up on their combined energetic fondness - if not glee -
for recalling this aspect of a national crisis.
From a critical aspect - in as much as I can be my own critic -
the haptic, first in terms of picking up on that kind of energy
so that the marks (at best) become manifestations of our
current collective 'crise' and excitement over a black President
whose history seems so inner-twined with Lincoln and the potential
for another tragic loss. There is a visceral sense of that
prospect in the air (the fact of that C-Span programming
for example, let alone all the other current obsessing with
Lincoln). The haptics are a way of using abstraction to touch
gather and visually concretize these moments in time. Though
some read figures into the word, I see them more as a 'visual
score' to be read as a kind of music.
(I know there is a problematic history about making these kind of
connections between visual art and a collective, politcal
circumstance. Motherwell's "Elegy for the Spanish ..." may
or may not have any connection to the Spanish Civil War.
It might just be a compelling painting that resonates with
different viewers for different reasons)
Hope this - without painting me into a corner - helps out.
Stephen,
I believe I can visualize your process of composition while witnessing a poet
read, but I'm
not quite sure whether the "Lincoln haptic" on your blog was realized
while watching two
unnamed authors on C-Span TV. Or afterwards.
How do you envision the process of critical understanding of each haptic? I
feel
comfortable with my interpretation of Anthony McCall's films in light of
the shared aesthetic
of structural film, but your works exist outside that context.
Barry
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