Richard Ansett: Facuity

Showing posts with label Facuity. Show all posts

Monday, 7 December 2015

Out of Place

There is an inevitable existential loneliness associated with adoption, a detachment from one's very genetic foundations can have a profound effect on our sense of place in the world. With the acceptance of this, comes a realisation that the other side of the coin of the great gift of love and rescue by our adopted parents, is the trauma of loss and abandonment.

Stephanie (below) is adopted, I felt she had a great need to make sense of her world. When I shared that I was adopted too, I seemed to her like a successful survivor of the transition from one universe to another. I brought her outside and placed her in the mud. She did not feel she belonged here and it was not where she wanted to be.

Stephanie standing in the mud © Richard Ansett

Sunday, 29 June 2014

Walking The Line

Richard Long’s use of photography appears to be a contradiction of the ephemeral processes in his land creations. The photographic records extend the life span of the works indefinitely, arguably undermining the power of their limited existence. It’s like seeing a Dragonfly in life as opposed to viewing a photograph of one; there is a tangible existential connection to being in the presence of something that will only survive for a day. Damian Hurst’s slowly rotting ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in Someone Living’ and ‘A Thousand Years’ are works that are less easily able to exist outside of their immediate reality and any photography of these artworks lack the fine art component; they are purely curatorial, like portraits of celebrities or holiday snaps of famous monuments. But Long’s images are more; they are an extension of his argument and especially ‘A Line Made by Walking, 1967’ elevates an otherwise potentially invisible and private action to a vital part of the artistic and intellectual debate. The fine art photograph is exactly that, the aggrandisement of something previously unconsidered or otherwise passed over; the ordinary made extra-ordinary and visa versa.

The straight line in Long’s work is a path of least resistance between two points; a dogmatic pursuit of a goal both physically and emotionally unwavering but further and more pertinently to my work, it is an interruption of the established or natural order. The camera records the “traces of the primal and ephemeral gestures in time and space” rendering them permanent; there is no past or future just record of present. It is the visibility of action that is important and not a two dimensional representation of reality. Yes!

The problem with photography as the primary instrument of artistic communication is this re-framing of the parameters through which it is viewed. Lee Friedlander is essential to any dialectic of the nature of aesthetics. The ‘line’ in his works transports us beyond the immediate two dimensions; it is a fracture in conventional understanding and an empathy with a facuitous state of mind (an awareness of that which is beyond awareness).

My primary interest across my whole practice is similarly dialectic, and this new work taken during the record of transformation of a subject, is a continuation and evolution of these ideas. It is an interruption of an original narrative and a further record of my unique personal and incongruent relationship to reality. It is a fracture in the ongoing struggle to define identity. An artistic practice is a personal argument with supporting material; it’s a thin line between success and failure.

Image_7077 © Richard Ansett 2014

Detail from Image_7070 © Richard Ansett

A Line Made by Walking, 1967. Richard Long

George Washington Bridge, New Jersey, 1973. Lee Friedlander

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Every Little Helps

Image_0214, Sage Charles, Poet, Performance Artist © Richard Ansett 2014

Detail from Image_0233 © Richard Ansett 2014

"All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity." - F. Nietzche

Saturday, 24 August 2013

Facuity (edited 22.05.2022)

Facuity is a word I felt I needed to invent to aid the examination of my objectivity in my relationship to the world with a camera, in the moment. It acknowledges the awareness of the complexity that makes up the 'facticity' of an object or event. It is an awareness of that which is beyond awareness.

Origins;

Facticity –that which resists explanation and interpretation. Facticity is something that already informs and has been taken up in existence, even if it is unnoticed or left unattended. As such; facticity is not something we come across and directly behold. In moods, for example, facticity has an enigmatic appearance, which involves both turning toward and away from it. - Martin Heidegger

 Acuity –the state of being aware, sensitive to. Keeness of perception - Merriam-Webster

The very nature of facuity is consciousness of the multiple frames of reference that make up an understanding of factual reality. It is the present realization of forces within and beyond awareness.

The content within the frame can be explored but it is its relationship to the external forces and an understanding of the presence of literal, philosophical, emotional and most importantly unknown elements that is the ‘immediate’s’ facuity. The facticity of an object is the context of its existence regardless of any awareness of it; the facuity is the ‘awareness’. For example: if we are imprisoned with a frame of reference, we are incongruent and unable to objectify the meaning of any event. A continual awareness and exploration of their incongruence is the objectivist observer's facuity and essential in any ambivalent relationship to reality truth.

An object or event can be viewed through a factical frame of reference (e.g. up and horizontal plain). http://archive.org/details/frames_of_reference. Awareness of an alternative frame of reference may entirely alter the meaning of the same action; this challenges the notion of any concept of a shared universality of human existence. The reality of an action is altered by merely an acknowledgement of its facticity. Recognition of our lack of consciousness of all the frames of reference opens an event up to multiple interpretations at the same moment.

Emotions are not entirely relative to a conscious frame of reference in the same way that actions or objects are. An emotional experience may seem to be shared in a tangible way through a societal frame of reference but any individual response might be and I would argue, is, entirely unique. I would posit that that whilst manipulated, emotion exists outside of the forces that manipulate it but is inevitably infected, the unique emotional experience is merely triggered by it. To make sense and manage this form of 'emotional relativity' we have withdrawn into universes from where our emotions seem more manageable, comprehensible and ‘valuable’.

But what appears as ‘normal’ may in fact be an equivalent observation from within the same frame of reference; for example, one observing oneself. An alternative observation from an external position may appear different (although still entirely arbitrary).

This may seem obvious but perhaps only by constantly exploring in real time the complexity of the individual universe through an acceptance that understanding is relative (and therefore impossible) can empathy be realised. Those of us who are born into a universe that immediately makes no sense will struggle until we have made peace with that realisation. Constantly challenging the foundations of our existence inherently as part of daily lives is only exhausting

I have included this very important image from my series 'Bathers, Ukraine, 2011' shot during my residency with the IZOLYATSIA Foundation and mentored by the great Boris Mikhailov, since acquired by Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), 2013. There is an image of her looking to camera that remains unpublished.