[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 139, Issue 2

Sat Jul 2 12:29:10 AEST 2016

Thank you Christina, for your comments and questions. I do not have a link
to the visual material of the project yet, but yes, this project will
involve built theatrical set elements, largely - the loft bed with drop
down ladder and skylight that Reverend Father McAlister constructed in
Thomas McGlynn’s Pietrasanta apartment during the sculptor’s lifetime. The
loft bed was a late addition to the sculptor’s studio and thus is not
currently represented in the replica apartment.
It strikes me as necessary to recreate a version of this lofted
walkway/bed, because McAlister currently spends an hour each morning lying
in McGlynn’s original twin bed imported from Italy as a way to correct his
back. In this sense, the Reverend physically and behaviorally acts as a
conduit through a ritualistic tactic in his daily life, retracing the
deceased sculptor’s body. So, yes, the term amanuensis is accurate here.
Rather than as a person who copies manuscripts, an amanuensis in this sense
is a person who inhabits bodies through a replication of body language.
Really, we are never post-representation, because we are always finding
ways to represent ourselves culturally through the mimicry of other bodies,
and to align our bodies with ones that have come before.
I would agree with Lee in the sense that appearance and representation can
never be a seamless unit, that there are fissures in between appearance and
what is represented. That can be found in McAlister’s bits of paper,
personal photographs, appliance instruction manuals and other relics that
could never be incorporated into the sculptor McGlynn’s biography. Or
rather, the two men have formed an intermingled identity in the body of a
room, a new hybrid separate from either man.

Good evening all,
Erin

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 10:00 PM, <empyre-request at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> wrote:

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> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Barad and representation (Lee Mackinnon)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 22:12:42 +0000
> From: Lee Mackinnon <lmackinnon at aub.ac.uk>
> To: "empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au"
>         <empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Barad and representation
> Message-ID:
>         <
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>
> To develop my thinking somewhat: It is possible to say that ideas such as
> non-representational theory have come about in light of the postdigital- we
> are able to better understand the agency of technical systems; the tyranny
> of representation; the fixity of one-way narrative structures; the
> homogeneity of representation in general (I would argue) through the
> framing of the post digital. In this way, the digital offers the
> possibility for diffractive readings (after Haraway and Barad), and an
> emphasis on difference rather than a one-to-one mapping of an object with
> its representation.
>
>
> There is a lovely passage by Ian Hacking that Barad uses, whereby he
> traces representation to the Greek Democritus who thinks about a world made
> of atoms. From this point, the real is no longer equated with unqualified
> likeness. Atoms suggest a gap between representation and what is
> represented, and we enter a world of appearances. It seems we have long
> attempted to force these two aspects back into a seamless totality, but the
> digital can help to remind us that the gap between these ideas is
> incomputable- filled with irreducible difference and complexity.
> Representations are contingent, pre digital artefacts that wish to reduce
> the world to essentialism... This was the general direction of my thinking.
> I have not really formalised it yet... Of course, I am aware of the ways in
> which digital technologies can be protocological and predetermining too-
> but I am hopeful for the potential of thinking through them...Of how we can
> productively deploy them in our thinking...
>
>
> I have to sleep now (UK bedtime!) But I will write more tomorrow and am
> happy to discuss this and anything else that is contributed then.
>
>
> All best,
>
>
> Lee
>
>
>
> Lee Mackinnon
> Lecturer  - BA (Hons) Photography
>
> +44 1202 363281
> lmackinnon at aub.ac.uk
> aub.ac.uk<http://aub.ac.uk/>
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