Pedestal

"Tropic of Capricorn" by Henry Miller

2011-03-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

“If one isn’t crucified, if one manages to survive, go on living above and beyond the sense of desperation and futility, then another curious thing happens. One lives a super-normal life. That is to say one is unnaturally happy, unnaturally well, unnaturally indifferent. The tragic sense is gone, one with nature and against nature at the same time. If your best friend dies you don’t even bother to go to the funeral: if a man is run down in the street you just keep on walking: if war breaks out you let your friends go to the front but take no interest in the slaughter. And so on and so on. Life becomes a spectacle, and, if you happen to be an artist you record the passing show. Loneliness is abolished because all values, your own included, are destroyed. Sympathy alone flourishes, but it is not a human sympathy, a limited sympathy – it is something monstrous and evil. You care so little that you can afford to sacrifice yourself for anybody and anything. At the same time your interest, your curiosity, develops at an outrageous pace. This tool is suspect, as it is capable of attaching you to a collar button just as well to a cause. There is no fundamental, unalterable difference between things, all is flux, all is perishable. The surface of your being is constantly crumbling; within however you grow as hard as a diamond. And perhaps it is this hard magnetic core inside you which attracts others to you so easily. One thing is certain when you die, you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow: you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you.”

Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

The tropic of Capricorn is a book I started reading a couple of years ago that I consistently delve back into. With no chapters and barely any paragraphs, it is the overwhelming, depressing and terrifyingly honest stream of the constant thought of Henry Miller. Charting his early years especially as an adult he describes his disgust and filthy lust for almost everything around him, his morose marriage, his soul destroying job at a telegram office, his graphic sexual encounters with women and his ‘friendships’ with others that have become victim to a life they seem to have little control over.

The total disregard for the reader and the continuous stories of the past that lead on to other stories within themselves are both exhausting and exhilarating. Every thought, every feeling, every moment that meant anything to him is described in minute, scurrilous and beautiful detail.

I love this book, I love the honesty with which he describes his opinions and thoughts.

He talks about the fellow child they kill in a neighbourhood fight, how it was he who threw the final rock that struck the boy from which he never got up. How after, he went home to his aunt (that he wishes was his mother) and his rye bread never tasted better than it did that day, he tries to understand why this is, he makes you understand why this is.

The life he lead is harsh and the people he knew unscrupulous and scheming (including himself) and yet he was always searching for the beauty of life.

I am obsessed with the inner workings of others, the unabashed thoughts we have and why. Reading Miller makes me think of all the moments that I remember starkly and will forever, and why I remember them.

The realisations I had in those moments and how they changed me are almost haunting. Some of them are grotesque. Regularly I think about whether in their deepest, darkest and most beautiful moments others feel and react in kind. Obviously, these things don’t often come up in conversation and even the closest of friends rarely confess the true insecurities and madness of their minds.

How Miller brutally lays bare the truth about events of his early life is raucous and unrelenting.

Tropic of Capricorn has helped me to understand my own madness, as well as given me some extraordinary concepts to ponder.

Juliet Harshaw

www.julietharshaw.com

Open by Matthew Stanners

2011-01-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

Something a little different for you with this Pedestal entry. Matthew Stanners, a Manchester based projection artist will be exhibiting his installation, Open later this month please read on and pop down to see it.

Open is the product of research experimenting with notions of light and motion and the forms of projection and sculpture as a means of expressing and projecting fragments of experience from our daily lives. Open has a unique interface that allows these fragments to be relived by others and breathe life again in a new space.

The sculpture itself is the focal point of the work. Not only does it disperse light around the space, but it also reflects the space and the audience that are being immersed in the light as well. The sculpture is an active artifice of the installation, taking the action of giving light as its own, whilst all the while reflecting the audience at the centre of everything. The work illustrates a desire to share experience through a phenomenological understanding of one another using Open as an interface to communicate and so re-experience moments in a controlled and shared space.

Open deals with film in its projected form by placing more emphasis on the light that is cast than the imagery itself. By placing the sculpture at the heart of the visual experience the audience’s attention is drawn away from the visual content and towards the manner in which it interacts with the sculpture. While traditional cinema is essentially escapist, Open is both a figuratively and literally reflective experience in that the audience is necessarily at the heart of it. The experience itself is a spectacle that draws audience, sculpture and space into one uniformed entity. Whilst Open creates an aesthetically intriguing and beautiful spectacle, it also emphasis a key fact that film still has many more avenues to be explored and so therefore experienced. Click here to see a short video preview of the installation.

This installation will be accessible to the public during the BlankExpression exhibition between the 27th of January and the 14th of February. If your interested in seeing please check the link and head down to BlankSpace.

If you have any further questions regarding this project, Matthew can be contacted on:

m.d.stanners@gmail.com

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

2011-01-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

“Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nevertheless remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he loses. It follows that the longest and the shortest lives are brought to the same state. The present moment is equal for all; so what is passing is equal also; the loss therefore turns out to be the merest fragment of time. No one can lose either the past or the future- how can anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14

I struggle to walk and eat at the same time and yet Marcus Aurelius was not only a Roman Emperor but a remarkable philosopher as well. I came across Meditations some years ago now and it is yet to find its way into my bookshelf, instead it is kept in my beside drawer, the traditional place for your holy book of choice.

Consisting of twelve notebooks it written to keep the powerful Emperor’s feet on the ground (if only Nero had had the impetus to write down his thoughts and feelings), it provides a fascinating insight into a mind ruling The Roman Empire whilst thinking through the complexities of the human condition.

The Notebooks reveal a man of great humility and read more like the wise words of a Grandparent than a tomb of jargon heavy metaphysics. With a strong Epicurean influence it stresses the importance of attaining a happy, tranquil life through a freedom from fear.

In the commodified world of modern capitalism we can become disorientated by the proliferation of meaninglessness, ‘an air-conditioned nightmare, anodyne and unadventurous, a world devoid of real sensuality’[1]. Meditations reawakens the senses, its very existence demonstrating how much can be achieved and its content is a supersonic catalyst for thought.

This collection of notebooks has had an enduring effect on my understanding and experience of our dauntingly finite world; I would like to take this opportunity to put Meditations on a pedestal.

C.Godet Thomas

www.charliegodetthomas.com

[1] Andy Merrifield, ‘Aesthete of Subversion’ in Guy Debord (London 2005), p. 95

Study for Painting (1946) by Francis Bacon

2010-11-17T03:31:00.000-08:00

Ambling slowly around the Museum of Modern Art, I was awestruck by the scale of the imposing image which hung before me upon the wall. Study for Painting (1946) has all the hallmarks of a Bacon painting: the geometric framework within the composition, the strong, meaty flesh tones and the enigmatic representation of its subject. At the time I was studying towards my foundation diploma, creating or attempting to create paintings with a similar psychological edge. This painting hit home particularly due to the scale and the tangible movement of pigment upon canvas. The obscure figure concealing his identity within the shadows of his umbrella, standing afore the hanging carcasses that detail the mutilation that became so succinct with Bacon's later works.

This painting typifies what Bacon does, a truly suggestive figurative painting that has a psychological murkiness that is so eloquently grounded and pinned into place by his trademark geometric interior. The resounding quality for me is the physicality of the work, the humanistic record of Bacon's struggle in the creation of the work. This is perfectly matched with the meaty palette that'd possibly be more akin to the inside of an abattoir.

The truly inspirational element of Bacon's practise to an individual at such a formative stage of their creative pursuits is the fact that he had received no formal training to paint whatsoever and the fact that one could use their creative instincts to produce works that retain the raw elements of their execution.

Scott William Causier

swcausier.blogspot.com

Welcome

2010-11-09T02:49:00.000-08:00

If you were to die tomorrow, what cultural bequeath would you leave to the generations that outlast you?

We at Pedestal aim to create an innovative online learning tool that aims to transcend the temporarality that is so rife in the blogosphere. We aim to create a diverse range of range of real content from real individuals.

Your submission may be anything; be it a book, a film, a piece of music, a piece of art, et cetera. Please outline how and why your submission is so inspirational to you and why it could potentially be so inspiring to those that may learn from your entry.

We aim to inspire and take others along a path of learning that they may not normally tread. We also see this as a space for self-promotion of your creative skills and talents.

All submissions to be sent to: pedestalsubmissions(at)hotmail.co.uk

Also if you know of anyone who you feel may be interested in contributing please spread the word.