WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
Image from here
I was road tripping the other day going from somewhere to somewhere outside of KL and looking at the strange and depressing generic housing estates that crop up by the side of the highway. A billboard of some apparently blissful new development read: ‘Planter’s Haven, So Close, It’s Far Away’.
As time passed in the car I pondered the genius of such profound use of language and marketing strategies, it’s so close, it’s far away (wow) and then I suddenly noticed a huge cement factory all metallic and tubular. And being of the poetic persuasion I immediately processed this image (photographic references streamed through my brain at break neck speeds) and converted it into a metaphor.
I was framing what I saw into a picture, and then coming up with an alternative, worthy symbolic meaning for it. Instead of a cement factory it was a metallic intestinal shrine to modernity, to blind progress, to theatre, to the Fall of Man. But in reality it was just a cement factory.
Not beautiful, not romantically ugly, just a seemingly practical product for profit. It’s a site where cement gets made, jobs get lost, people eat lunch, smoke cigarettes, hate their bosses and all that normal real life stuff. Maybe its because I have been doing too much research on photography and Barthes’s observation of how photography turns subject (ie living persons) into object (a thing to be observed aesthetically and to project our own imaginings onto) is guiding the way I look at everything now, which is starting to feel like a curse.
And so through its distinctly shaped ugliness, the Cement Factory (I have to capitalise it now, like a title) became cinematically compelling and Modernist to me. I had Artified it. So I asked myself the question: Why in Art, does everything have to be a metaphor for something else?
Why do we seek alternative, more worthy validation for images? Is this something that makes Art + life more meaningful, enjoyable or something that blinds us to banality of the real. Should an image of cow, just be an image of a cow? And not an image to symbolise the cow head drama, and political/religious tensions of the country? Should Art make everything beautiful or meaningful in some way, including the everyday things outside the gallery? And if we do this, aren’t we all a little self indulgent or as a friend commented to me a few weeks ago a bit ‘tra la la’?
What am I going on about?
Well, what I am trying to interrogate is the battle between image and concept, and subsequently how writing functions as a conduit for this. We always go on about conceptual practice being marginalised, which is a shame because we think its smart and meaningful and lament the stagnation of contemporary painting in Malaysia which feels a little too dependent on the visual/decorative elements and not enough emphasis on concept, experimentation or multiple meaning. I know that there should be a happy middle ground but sometimes, I feel myself wildly oscillating between the two: just absorbing what I see in Art without thinking too much or reimagining what I see in Art and subsequently the visual world (conceptual or not) as stimuli for more intellectual, romantic understandings about life. Hmmm I suspect a long bout of mental travel sickness on this one….
Whattdayathink?
(EM)
~
Image taken from Outback Photo
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yesterday i saw a man walking across the street… i think its a metaphor for a wilting flower
Dear Eva,
Because we need stories.
Even the simplest metaphor tells a story and we need stories just as we need food and air. How else do we learn how to understand things, how to conduct ourselves, how to find strength, and how to feel what others are feeling? That is the value of stories, and metaphors are the building blocks.
When we plug into the various associations attached to an image, we are plugging into a social consciousness. In other words, seeing things as others see them. I think that is less to do with the question of meaning than with an act of reaching out and connecting with others, and even empathy. How can I separate the beauty of Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ”*, for the colours in it are meant to look seductive, from its religious insensitivity?
Also, if an image is compelling enough on an intuitive level, I believe that there must be something else to it, even if it is ‘just’ the image of a cement factory. There is no need for more meaning or validation, as you put it. Perhaps meaning will come later.
—
On another note, since you brought it up, my comment on the KL art scene is as follows:
I think there is too much (obvious) meaning in KL art for my taste, in the sense that there’re a lot of didactic works, & I’m not just talking about the political-driven art. As you said, I’d like to see more thoughtful experimentation, be it in paintings, performances, videos, etc.
Examples of artworks that I’ve enjoyed in recent years are Vincent Leong’s How To Be Bruce video and Hamidi Abdul Hadi’s abstract paintings that display an intelligent way of pushing paint around a canvas. My own abstract paintings are happily devoid of ‘issues’ but that is not to say they lack content. These works that I’m drawn to may not deal in metaphors directly, but similarly plug into a shared sense of play, joy, analytical thought, etc. There’s nothing self indulgent about that, imho.
* http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/features/saltz/saltz4-23-08-41.jpg
Hi Lydia,
Thanks for your comment. Working in the Arts, I am not saying that we don’t need stories, or should not enjoy things or be proud to be sentimental about it. Merely I am questioning what gets filtered and put out into the world and also how I seem to have now been programmed to look at almost everything outside of Art metaphorically whenever I have the head space to focus on looking. Its a strange psychosis I think. So the post is less about Art objects and more about objects/people/things outside this context. About how we look, or rather how I look.
And then when art uses these everyday things as subject it nobilises, destabilies, transforms them in some way based on the artist intent. And sometimes this intent can be lacking in depth in terms of being too obvious and therefore exploitative use of easily recognisable image/signs just to be clever.
I agree that we bring to our gaze/vision our previous experiences, social context etc, and random things can catalyse powerful memories from the recesses or our own lives. But I think in an Art sense we should always be a little more aware of how we transform things.
Okay. I thought the crux of your piece was “Why in Art, does everything have to be a metaphor for something else?” and read it as a comment on (a) the overload of signifiers in Art; and (b) the lack of opportunity to just look at a work of art without having the experience interrupted by forced narratives & associations.
In response to your 2nd comment – “sometimes this intent can be lacking in depth in terms of being too obvious and therefore exploitative use of easily recognisable image/signs just to be clever” – I agree that it is deeply unsatisfying whenever an artist uses visual shorthand as an end in itself.
Well its about the gaze, in particular mine which is an Arty one, when considering the everday, and also if we can say this, Art’s or Artist’s gaze on the everyday, and how Art’s gaze has totally changed the way I look at things.
Streams of consciousness! I should clarify that these pieces are often full of tangents! Thanks for helping me think it through more :)
I iz interrogate also. Here linkz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cU56SWXHFw
James Geary, metaphorically speaking
Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make, Geary says.
1st half of this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFA8n7goio&feature=related
Tom Wujec on 3 ways the brain creates meaning
Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better
Steven Pinker’s stuff too.
Theory 1: People seek to exercise their mental prowess by figuring out metaphors and seeing things that aren’t there.
Theory 2: We don’t like reality stark-naked. It’s like seeing photos of extreme poverty and war horrors. But if you paint it, aha, that’s a different thing.
If the people working in the Cement Factory could see their workplace the way you did, Eva, perhaps they’d feel differently about their circumstances. Maybe they’ll stop and think awhile about the bigger picture that got lost somewhere in the drudgery of boss-hating, chain-smoking, job-losing etc. Isn’t that the least an artist could hope for? To share with someone else how you see the world.
Hey guys,
What Nicole said is interesting and true, if what Eva saw or managed to feel from seeing the factory could be informed to the workers in the factory and subsequently see how they would react to Eva’s interpretation of the image (the factory), it would be an interesting experiment. Maybe, people are not meant to see how they live their lives and in a way the bubble of their existence with metaphors and if it not burst, I think, generally people would lead confortable lives till they perish. I find Malaysia artists do use a lot of metaphors in their work, an example, an image of a muscular cow realistically painted on a piece of stretched canvas (out of acrylic) would be interpreted as a beast of burden, a noble animal that bring food to the table, but when u look at the crux of it, its just paint being pushed around, layered paint with some skill put into to make it appear like a cow, I don’t blame them to see it that way, we as human beings would find it difficult to merely see it as arranged paint on a canvas. We might not need metaphors to understand the world, but it might just be the easiest method to.
Haffendi
Nicole, the workers would never see it the way Eva did. try working in a factory. Ironically, it is arguably they who are seeing the bigger picture as they undergo their boss hating, chain smoking kinda life.
Another way to think of this issue in a more structured manner is to contrast computer vision with human vision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision
The difficulty in googling the right image, or the way captcha password forms used to filter robotic spammers seem so stupid and annoying to us is a reminder of how far away machines are from becoming sentient and intelligent beings.
One could also connect metaphors to the way camouflages work in nature. Butterfly wings can have patterns which resemble the eyes of larger animals. Hermit crabs sneak into shells to blend into the environment. The Lyre Bird can imitate almost any sound it hears and use it to confuse predators or attract mates. In all cases, X tries to pass itself as Y. The big difference with humans is surely the level of consciousness, complexity, and control that comes with our usage of metaphors.
Given the level of difficulty A.I and nature have in creating layered or symbolic meanings, we really should be a bit more appreciative of our ability instead of seeing it as self-indulgence, or ‘tra-la-la’.
Most of us can process metaphors and make simple ones everyday, but often we fall back on cliches. Few are able to weave metaphors into epic poems or the algorithmic program for google. These ultra deep tra-la-la-la-la-la….lers should be celebrated and honored while the rest of us can spend more time to decode their genius and transmit them onto others.
Mmm..but then again, there were also the Op-Artists and Hard Edge Painters who were really interested in removing the meaning making processes in the viewer. Since we are such fierce meaning making machines (like / don’t like) the ability to stun us into silence is a most admirable feat as well.
For the viewer, either way is open I guess. It probably depends on what they need in their life at a moment in time, as well as which form of information they can process best (conceptual / sensual). But for the genius artist, they will somehow manage to make ‘Art’ which are both remarkably intelligent and breathtakingly beautiful.
52452354 and 425963781,
Are u the same form of sentient life force in our univers? You two seem to share a similarly recognisable speech pattern even though your numerical identification tags are different >@*_^@<
Consciouness 52452354,
“One could also connect metaphors to the way camouflages work in nature. Butterfly wings can have patterns which resemble the eyes of larger animals. Hermit crabs sneak into shells to blend into the environment. The Lyre Bird can imitate almost any sound it hears and use it to confuse predators or attract mates. In all cases, X tries to pass itself as Y. The big difference with humans is surely the level of consciousness, complexity, and control that comes with our usage of metaphors.”
That would either be evolutionary mimicry, wont that be?
Does animal know metaphors? Can we ever know if they do? Just because some of them might display sociological or proto-linguistic traits/behavior/mimicry is not enough to suggest they have a literary intelligence and poetic sensibility, yet.
Until then, metaphoric trait is still pretty much a human construction.
Sigh. Once again, a discussion has descended to the most inane level.
What’s the point in asking if the workers would benefit from thinking of the cement factory as a shrine to modernity?
What’s the point in pondering evolutionary mimicry, when we are talking about the Gaze, not sight?
These tangents are not valuable.
Um the great thing about the internet is that there’s space and time for discussions to go super tangent…it’s a net mah.
If there’s a vote/like/hide/flag mechanism, it will shape comment outcomes.
In my case, I’m pushing a biological and scientific basis to answer the title of the essay: is everything a metaphor?
Anyway, the writer said she wrote this on a whim (stream of consciousness)…why so serious?
@Jones..eh heh it iz the same organic entity.
@DAKM? Um “The big difference with humans is surely the LEVEL of consciousness, complexity, and control that comes with our usage of metaphors” covers my ass ^_^ Anyways, you’ve heard of apes using sign language and this involves some level of symbolic thinking too lor.
“What’s the point in asking if the workers would benefit from thinking of the cement factory as a shrine to modernity?”
Because it is important to find out whether or not aesthetic is an innate capacity to cultivate and develop within all human or is it only a special intelligence/talent made available only to a selected few people? This changes the equation of what is the transformative value and role of art, doesn’t it?
It is interesting that people in this conversation are suggesting that because someone is working class, the person does not have the ability to experience/understand art, and that because someone works in the arts, the person actually understands what he or she is looking at or experiencing.
Photography is open to many different ways of interpretation, but I think that very often in the arts, the value of photography is diminished, because it seems that much of it is placed in a conceptual context where people need the explanation, need to see the words, the concept, and do not actually see the photo. I say this as an artist who works in photography, and not photo-based art.