WORD COUNT: 1100
https://vimeo.com/142122627
E V E N
In the global canon of written and visual artwork, the apple has come to be both an allegory for and symbol of the fragility of human nature and curiosity.
Appearing in a range of narratives from biblical temptation to Newtonian enlightenment, throughout history the apple has arguably become an embodiment, a metonym, a visual shorthand for a variety of metaphysical properties which have simultaneously enabled the fall and the rise of Man throughout the ages.
Placed in the palms of – more often than not – women, the overarching narrative unifying the two together has increasingly supported trajectories in which women and womanhood are positioned as volatile processes, inviting of danger and reckless abandon, if not detrimental to, or by default of comparison, supportive of an archaic narrative: man’s inherent virtuosity.
We see this indolent relationship between the apple and women unfurl in Eve’s lust for knowledge, in Snow White’s enviable beauty and her step mother’s cunning. We see it again, heralded as an icon of technological and scientific achievement in Newton’s conception of gravity, a theoretical breakthrough said to be prompted by the simple witness of an apple falling. Evidently, the apples in the stories we tell are not only informing to the eyes that see and read them, but the I’s that take part in its resplendence.
Further abstracting the insidious wink of apple flesh across art history is the rapid reproduction of artworks. Often denoting the imitation of an original image; this process of visually copying an antecedent has come to signify a ‘dynamic mediation’ in which society’s preoccupations and biases to validate certain narratives are exposed (Codell 2010, pp.217). In other words, imitation is not only the greatest form of flattery, but also a means to identifying the icons and ethics upheld by particular publics.
For example, the pervasive nature of apples across the Western canon of literature as an item of philosophical and literal poison arguably points to humankind’s underlying fear of our own sensual desires, and the consequences befalling those who dare to gratify these unyielding cravings. This dichotomous relationship is illustrative of the chaos resulting from associating virtues too closely with material counterparts. As the idioms go: the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but it only takes one bad one to ruin the lot. So, how do you like them apples, now?
In response to this ubiquitous narrative, EVEN attempts a simultaneous extrapolation and demolishing of these pre-established means to reading and understanding apples. Disrupting the narrative of apples as catalysts for conflict between genders, families, humankind and deities, the disembodied hand becomes an instrument for destruction of form and rebirth of meaning. Uprooted from any attempts at gendering the hand, EVEN thus reforms the very rules which have governed tales about women and apples. Instead of an embodied experience, the destruction is neither completed, nor its rebirth initiated, instead its fracturing form depends on the human hand, a sentiment reflected in the title: EVEN which denotes the verb-form (or activation of) the name Eve to mean the action of levelling an unstable ground, the adjective meaning equality or aesthetic consistency, and the adverb denoting a continuation or exaggeration, even still…
Reconfiguring the apple across four screens, EVEN’s structure hijacks and exaggerates the imitative properties of reproduced artworks to birth its own autonomous story, one which fragments and resolves its own causality. Here, apples are reproduced ad nauseam, divided in half, glitching rhythmically to form and reform, structures disintegrating on one screen only to reunite on another.
The exercise thus becomes one of destruction and re-structuring. Projected into the public sphere, to view EVEN is to review apples and the ways we relate to their aesthetic presence in art. A fluttering, a reanimation, the reformation, a re-embodiment.
Is it even there?
Are we still even?
But even yet–
M A N T R A
Post-structural theories of language have been riddled with an undercurrent of pessimism in which the gentrified soundscape of comprehensible language is essentialised by its ability or reluctance to signal meaning.
In recognition of these nihilistic underpinnings, some have suggested we analyse the intentionality of language and its utilisation in order to more holistically grasp the organic and volatile nature of words (Ellis 1991, pp.221). Only though examining the contextually dependent properties of words can we begin to recognise the pitfalls, opportunities, and merits of the mouth as an instrument truncating meaning.
Sound is employed often, by choice, by accident, by inappropriate openings of mouths. In these moments; communication is an incidental byproduct resulting from our grasping attempt to designate and clarify the ambiguous. A cough becomes an interruption. A decontextualised word becomes a Freudian slip. ‘Um’, ‘Like’, ‘Eh’, insidiously pervade our syntax, sloshing forth from the tripping-ups of an elucidated tongue. These are the non-sense limbos of the mouth organ.
And yet, these sounds, birthed by mistake and thrust into sentences as fillers, are rich in meaning-making as they reveal our neurotic impulses to impregnate the unmeaning with meaning. Suddenly the saying of ‘um’ is public speakers’ no man’s land. Go there, and risk being shot by friendly fire and enemy troops alike. But like a moth to a flame, this desire to speak only the listenable, the discernible, the socially and culturally legible, can equally ensnare us into treacherous places.
As such, recognising the un-gentrifiable soundscape of spoken words, MANTRA challenges listeners to respond to the verbal non-place of ‘um’ through a structured curation. Transforming the mouth from an outlet of incidental utterances to a deliberate producer of reconstructed, melodic soundscapes, MANTRA’s overlapping structure blurs the distinction between the pragmatic employment of language and nonsense words, and in its place creates a audio ebb and flow of chanted sound which, as the Bard noted in a Saussurian conception of sound and fury, ultimately signifies nothing.
But further yet, nothing remains the cornerstone of MANTRA’s communicative properties. Lacking a conventional linguistic meaning, by default of its repetition and the resulting auditory structure, MANTRA draws attention to our deliberate, impulsive construction of meaning through sounds; deracinating and broadening the process recognised as intelligible language from an ontological exercise to the often broached though rarely chartered soundscape of ‘um’.
Bolstered by the public exhibitive properties at SIGNAL, MANTRA thus fills the hollowings of the once incommunicative ‘um’, planting within it a sustained meditation and examination of not only language, but our impulse to understand. For if incidental sounds are the eloquent individual’s no man’s land, MANTRA focuses on those dwelling in between worlds and words; the ones lost in translation. There is a sound which calls- the universal syntax of nonsense broadcast on the public sphere, a resounding subvocal plea:
listen closely.
References:
Codell, J.F 2010, ‘’Second Hand Images’: On Art’s Surrogate Means and Media— Introduction, Visual Resources, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 214-225, viewed 30 October 2015, <http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1080/01973762.2010.499644>
Ellis, D.G 1991, ‘Post-Structuralism and Language: Non-Sense’, Communication Monographs, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 213-224, viewed 31 October 2015, <http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=9107290450&site=ehost-live&scope=site>