PAPERS
Loosening Boundaries / Unevolved Brains / The Displacement of Artist Researchers / Facing the
posthuman / Feint catalogue, X-cite / Feint catalogue, The Senses have no Future / Blog
Loosening Boundaries / Unevolved Brains / The Displacement of Artist Researchers / Facing the
posthuman / Feint catalogue, X-cite / Feint catalogue, The Senses have no Future / Blog
|
Loosening Boundaries - awaiting publication Abstract A series of medical events that began with a life-threatening situation, led me to start collecting internal and external information and materials from these events. I collected recordings, materials, conversations, and medical debris – with the full support of the attending medics. This ongoing process became a means to create works, drawing on inner and outer evidence, to develop a better, more descriptive understanding of my own existence in the now. Growing up a rebellious female in a patriarchal society, I came to exist as a Liberal Human Subject. However, as the participating-observer-researcher of the project ‘Peeling the Body’ (Jones 2010), I realised that examining and applying some of the significant elements (in the notion of the posthuman), changed my position. Today, I consider myself an emerging posthuman (feminist) subject. This may further evolve, as notions of the posthuman can be a tool of empowerment and emancipation. Biography Born in Holywell, North Wales, UK, Yvonne Jones grew up with an insatiable curiosity which has led to her being a lifelong student. This curiosity and accruing qualifications (B.Ed., B.A Hons FA, MA with Dist. FA, PhD through art Practice), led her through Education, Maths and Biology studies, into the world of Art Practice, a world she experiences as Home. A place where she continues to explore her existence as a now-living-unit, along with exploring notions of the Posthuman. She currently lives in the New Forest, UK. It is inescapable in our now-existence, as a 'now-human' that we are alive until we die. One characteristic of our life is the need to breathe. |
Fig I- Still image from Breathe (Link to video https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/111796138)
A work created from assembling and manipulating x-rays taken two years apart. Our ‘human’ corporeal bodies— as distinct from other bodies such as financial, corporate bodies— like other ‘bodies’, have their own systems, networks, and organs. They are aware of our living condition, aware of being alive. We have consciousness. We are creative beings, whether through play as children, or activities as adults. We are persons with characteristic personalities. There are diverse positions regarding the existence of a soul within this body, also the exactitude of the ‘me’ within. Consciousness is an absurd element; we know of it, but do not yet know ‘it’. As Foucault stated, we have deeply inscribed existences, shaped, and moulded within family and society (Foucault, 1991). Antony Gormley talks about himself as “the experiencer, on the other side of appearance, all that is beyond (my) appearance” (Gormley 2004). I set out, initially quite accidentally, to loosen boundaries within my existence: all that I am “on the other side of (my) appearance” (Gormley 2004), and other, all that is beyond me. An opening up between me and the other. I work to these ends through my art practice. As a corporeal body needing medical procedures and interventions, I focused on the form and content of the medical events. When I was awake for procedures, I explored my sensations, my emotions, my experiences and responses. This collection of material and information, from inside and outside of myself, has formed part of my process. Eye surgery was the only choice to improve my vision. Surgery to replace my natural lenses resulted in the piece ‘Memory Three’. The title came from one of the repeated robotic messages being given out from the machine to the surgeon. One aspect of the adventure occurred while travelling to the event: I felt the connection to my natural corporeal lenses, the ones that would be destroyed and removed. I felt the need to directly relate to the lenses, to relate that I was sad that this would happen, that I was grateful for their existence and hoped that they would ‘understand’. I said goodbye to them. Something that did not occur to me was to request their remains. My sight significantly improved with the artificial implants. My vision was more direct than it had been through the heavy glasses I had previously needed. However, it was different. Previously, I had the great ability to see and find objects, a good directional sense for spotting thrown balls or finding lost keys. This diminished, as did the ability to immediately spot an article amongst others; I now needed to scan the scene a second or third time, to achieve what previously had come naturally and instantly. It felt like a slight lag between lenses seeing and my brain seeing. The connection had previously been instantaneous. I had chosen to have an artificial add-on and was not the corporeal-only unit that I once was. For me, this intervention extended my thinking regarding the possibilities for artificial add-ons. 
Fig.2 - Still image from Memory Three (Link to video https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/111795565)
The number and types of lenses that came into play to allow a viewing of the work are numerous – the light through the projector lens, the resulting image through the viewer’s lenses, be they natural, artificial implants, spectacles (framed lenses worn on the face) or watched through a computer screen. To perform the surgical procedure, the surgeon looked through his lenses and lenses of technological addition, to make suitably visible the biological lenses which he was acting upon. From that point of replacement, anyone meeting my gaze was looking through their lenses seeing me looking at them through my addon (new internal) lenses. This series of works bring into the foreground the boundary between subject (me existing) and medical object, a corporeal body needing adjustments (me as seen by the medics). I actively worked to loosen this boundary through engagement. I am grateful to the medics for making my works possible. They agreed to video recordings, conversations, and collecting of debris. They engaged with their medical object. As the work progressed, there came an understanding and input from both sides, subject and objectifier. There also came a point of understanding, that to best enable the medic, there needed to be a point where the subject was viewed by the medic absolutely as the medical 'object', to avoid entanglement of emotion. |
Fig 3 a Fig 3 b
Fig 3 SUBJECT BODY OBJECT BODY
a) THE EXPERIENCING SUBJECT, THE ONE WHO SEES AND, FEELS b) OBSERVER, OBJECTIFIER, THE ONE WHO SEES ACTION AND ACTS UPON The work ‘X ist’ consisted of a cyst being removed from my back. To accommodate my research needs, the surgeon, who initially said no several times, kept my procedure until the end of her list of patients, sanitised a different area and allowed my videographer to attend. I appreciate her. Having explored the collected material, the work ‘X ist’ was made. It is a looped video demonstrating the subject being labelled, not only as a medical object but seen as echoing a social lifestyle, recent activities, employment status, family constitution, all towards offering a metaphor for Foucault’s Inscription (Foucault 1991). 
Fig. 4 - Still image from X-ist
(Link to video https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/111974941) The piece is shown projected at a low height from one wall of the corridor across the width of the corridor onto the far wall, visitors walk through the projected light finding the image of ‘inscription’ falling onto their own body, their own person. An inscribed human. Butler states “The body is a site where regimes of discourse and power inscribe themselves, a nodal point or nexus for relations of juridical and productive power… existentially available to become the site of its own ostensible construction.” (Butler 1999). As the medical object-body becomes more clearly visible to the subject-body as the objectified, inscribed body, a process begins to 'peel' away the 'created' body. Increasingly, in my medical procedures, I have worked to ‘see’ and ‘be seen’, to lower the natural barrier between patient and medic (subject / medical object). Focusing on connecting with the medics, I was able to loosen the boundaries between the subject / medical object positions. I wished to alter my position from being seen only as a medical object. (Within the procedures there inevitably came a point when as a patient, I had to be the medical object to enable the surgeon to perform to his / her best without the unwanted interruption of emotion, or redundant information.) This approach opened my situation, reaching outward, accepting incoming information, collecting external materials, and offered the possibility of broadening my experience. The external materials and information became part of an evolving, growing collection as they became available to me. I came to understand that I was employing Distributed Cognition in my process. This tool presents a means to combine inner and outer experiences of a situation, to explore in my work. The medics have my appreciation and gratitude for making these artworks possible. Distributed cognition is viewed by Hayles as central to the posthuman (Hayles 1999). It is my experience that when consciously employed, it can alter a position, instigate change. Distributed Cognition is information that: 1) may be distributed across members of a social group, 2) may be from coordination between internal and external (material or environment) structures, 3) may be distributed through time in such a way that the products of earlier events can transform the nature of the later events (Hutchins 2000). Such information, from across space and time, when recognised, considered, and employed is empowering; when utilised, it is freeing. Employing Distributed Cognition opens new approaches to my situation, in looking to experience my living unit from different positions, to better understand the wider ‘landscape’ of my existence. As a tool it makes possible a reaching out from a living unit, to interact with the outside more deeply, with the other, a loosening of a boundary. Distributed Cognition supports my work, which often seeks to combine internal and external. In becoming open to such information, we become less bound. The work ‘X 701085’ unfolds, whereby the subject / object morph into one. That is to say, the medical object (me / my hair) was also the subject (me / my hair) cutting my own hair; and with scientific staff guidance, destroying it, in a machine, to elicit data from it. Standing in front of the machine offered a strange perspective of simultaneously being outside and inside the procedure. There was incidental music in the background, which can be heard in the video, that gives a rhythm to the procedure, a sense of a life energy. My positioning meant that my body was reflected on the glass door of the machine, while the container with my hair (inside the machine) is clearly seen; a visual entanglement between outside and inside, a blurring of boundaries, a moving outward, from the existence and being of a corporeal unit, reaching beyond a divide. This work enhanced an inner loosening of boundaries— of the internal relationships of me to me.
Fig 9 - ILS3-Internal Landscape 3, paint, debris on canvas
(https://www.yvonne-jones.net/2018-3-element-mind-knowing-body.html) This happened several times, leaving the expression of the two heavy areas remaining on the work. With this work still wet and sitting on my studio desk, I visited the breast cancer centre to have a tiny benign area removed, during the visit the radiologist spotted a second, previously unnoticed area, a biopsy was taken, the result was positive, resulting in the two areas being removed on that same day. As I walked into the studio late that evening, I knew the ‘annoying’ canvas with the insistent black centre, was an external expression of my cancer. My body already knew my condition and expressed it through my physical art process. In the work, while sidestepping an understanding in my conscious mind, I acknowledged the desire to repeatedly adjust the black areas and consciously chose to stay with the process. This work forms an integral part of Internal Landscapes, a permanent installation in the research Centre for Cancer Immunology (CCI), University of Southampton, UK. An installation consisting of a group of works where I attempted to pick up data from within my corporeal being and express it in my practice. During these works I developed the process of Built-Canvases, adding canvases to canvases, building pieces which I felt at one with, where the pieces resonated with each other, and with me. Up until this point, the works were bodily: holding a close relationship with the events of flesh, blood, but increasingly with unspoken thoughts and experiences. 
Fig. 10 - Internal Landscapes Installation
Https://www.yvonne-jones.net/2018-cci-project-1-installation-info-internal-landscapes-evolved.html The installation expresses a journey through the experience of my cancer. This work is dedicated to all cancer patients, their families, and the dedicated staff at CCI. As I seek to consider the now, and to explore ideas of a future posthuman existence, or non-existence, the journey continues, through my art practice. Working to listen to the internal data from the pathways of emotions and unconscious ideas, of the now-me, who I consider to be an emerging posthuman (feminist) subject. Accepting internal and external data becoming known to me, through my practice into my realm of consciousness. 
Fig 11 - Free standing
With the loosening of historic boundaries comes the possibility of seeing what and where we are, to enable us to consider where we want to be. 
Fig 12 - X nihilo, created out of nothing
If evolution has shown one thing, it is how life changes, adapts, and evolves; we continuously move forward or cease to be. 
Fig 13 - X itt – release
We live, we die - - will this always be the case? When we die in this now world, does anything of ‘the me’ continue to exist, consciousness moving off into the universe? Do all our experiences, ideas, knowledge, die with us, or are we part of a much greater existence? Thinking of our imagined posthuman futures, will we be super humans, with well-honed senses, developed abilities, and beautiful features? Or could we become unbounded, divorced from our physical bodies? BIBLIOGRAPHY BUTLER, J. (1999) Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions; (Pub in The Journal of Philosophy, 86 Nov 89, 601 - 607). FOUCAULT, M. (1991) IN RABINOW, P. (Ed.) The Foucault Reader. London, Penguin Group. P 83 GORMLEY, A. (2004) Re-imagining the Body. IN KENNARD, G. (Ed.) The Winchester Festival of Art and the Mind; How art affects the human brain, Winchester 5 - 7th March 2004. HAYLES, N. K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. HUTCHINS, E. (2000) Distributed Cognition [online] pub University of California. Available from http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/Anthro179a/DistributedCognition.pdf [Accessed 23 Feb2023]. JONES, Y. (2010) Peeling the Body. http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/165501/ MORAVEC, H. (1987) Dualism through Reductionism (1987) |
Loosening Boundaries / Our Unevolved Brain / The Displacement of Artist Researchers / Facing the Posthuman / X-cite, Feint / The Senses have no Future