Zander Fisker / Reflexive Practice

Reflexive Practice

Author: Maja Zander Fisker, The Royal Danish Academy

Supervisor: Henrik Oxvig, Ass. Professor, Head of PhD-program, IBBL, The Royal Danish Academy

Research stage: Initial doctoral stage

Category: Artefact

“Movement is a translation in space.”
Gilles Deleuze 1

The presented work is part of the experimental component of an ongoing PhD project on trans-mediality. It engages in a discussion on the relation between modes of articulation in aesthetic practices and our social imaginary, between how we conceive of and construct spatio-temporal situations, and how these practices impact on our understanding of the places we live in.

The contention is, that place is a specific outcome of relations between space and time. If we understand space as a dimension of simultaneity and relational multiplicity, and time as a dimension of duration and continuous becoming, we can define a concept of place as a dynamic relationship of changeable and variable time-space organizations 2. What differentiates one place from another is the combination of the specific, albeit volatile, conditions that coexist exactly here. The contextual situation is not defined by its delimitation, but by its permeability and openness to other disparate cohesions. A place consists not only of many different procedural speeds, but of different temporalities, of what Merleau-Ponty calls Depth, a simultaneous presence of past, present, and future 3. This simultaneity is perceptible but at the same time a challenge to the imagination. In order to comprehend the sensed, we must mobilize an imaginary to match this complexity, to form a basis for understanding the situational contexts, for understanding not only what constitutes a place, but how it is permeated by different forces.

The artist and filmmaker, John Akomfrah, considers the multiscreen montage as a means to bring different ontologies into a relationship. He states: “the manipulation of temporality can be ordered to serve something else too, which is the coexistence of different renditions of time itself.” 4. To let situations of different time and space unfold simultaneously, he claims, is an orchestration of time as a kind of coexistence.

Accordingly, the present experimental work operates with similar conditions. The experiments consist of a montage of selected photographic series and footage of a specific site and casting models, with the working title Simultaneity – Scapes & Elements. The thematic focus is the simultaneous constituent aspects of a place, encompassing how the medial articulation has an impact on perception and creation of place. The photographic series of the site conveys a selection of contextual situations, not depicting a landscape as a whole, but rather local situations articulating specific procedural conditions of a place. The photographic series of casting models work in three phases: 1st phase – positive forms, etchings in polystyrene, 2nd phase – negative forms, plaster casting molds, and 3rd phase – positive forms, glass castings.

Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Photographic series, on site and glass casting model phases I, II & III. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

Figure 1: Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Photographic series, on site and glass casting model phases I, II & III. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

The experimental work investigates how to transpose contextual situations between media, emphasizing procedural similarities rather than visual resemblance. The transpositions are not focused on topographical form or scale, but on situational processes that are physically decisive constituents of the given context.

The act of photography here functions as a catalyst that mediates between the models' various iteration phases and thereby their immediate hierarchy. The physical models are continually destroyed in the casting process, whereas the photographic series enables a fixation and exposition of the variety of spatio-temporal articulations within the singular stages. As photographic montage, the series alters former temporal interrelations or spatial categories, as it operates non-hierarchical space-time articulations in sequences of paired still and moving images. The montage forms its own sequential temporality through the proximity and simultaneity of coexisting differences. These juxtapositions serve to question and challenge their respective conventions and connotations. And yet, as Akomfrah claims, it is rather associations than contrapuntal properties that affect the change in reading, and thereby meaning creation in the material, and cause an emergence of new situations through the responsive encounter with a spectator.

Working with photography includes reflections on the relations between still and moving images. The still-image works as an incision in the world. The fixated recording establishes a composition, a singular event, and is yet a fragment of a cohesion. The movement-image, the recording in or of movement, ads a duration. The moment is, according to Deleuze, an immobile section in movement and movement a mobile section in duration, a whole. Thus, movement also means transformation of this whole.

Furthermore, photography alters the sense of materiality in the models, as the material qualities become ambiguous and appears with new spatial consequences. The close-up is generally defined by the way it frames, and in this case specifically by its ability to record and fixate possible interference in the photograph. In the movement-image, the close-up permits the recording of micro-movements, which appear as small vibrations, mirroring or distortions, and reflect Deleuze’s definition of affect-images 5.

The creation of meaning in the trans-medial process takes place in parallel within two different registers. One consists of the iterative variations of the material within the individual medium. The other consists of the juxtaposition of the variations of the material, reiterated in the medial transpositions. The interference in and between these registers causes an additional diversity in the formation of meaning, as it is not limited to conditions in a single statement, but in this variety of medial articulations.

Thus, derived from iterations, the material does not convey mere information, it contains a more: a conglomerate of material specificities, which may deal with the same problem, but continually nuances its possible meaning 6. This ambiguity in the material is not in itself coded and therefore appears as an open, sensuous enunciation that in the encounter with the recipient evokes an affect. In the process, the affect becomes a co-creative premise for the creator's imagination. The articulations are not static statements, but rather temporary, non-static temporal situations. Imagination, here, is inseparable from the material production and therefore linked to the different media and the transpositions. The trans-medial process thus impact on thought and perception, in the exchange between affect and imagination, as the transpositions incessantly institute these recurring encounters with the material in new forms of aesthetic manifestation.

Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Excerpts from photographic montage. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

Figure 2: Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Excerpts from photographic montage. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Excerpts from photographic montage. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

Figure 3: Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Excerpts from photographic montage. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Excerpts from photographic montage. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

Figure 4: Excerpts of the experimental component. SIMULTANEITY – Scapes & Elements. Excerpts from photographic montage. Photos: Maja Zander Fisker, 2020.

These manifestations work not only as vehicle for the creator’s creative process, but as interpersonal expressions that act into the communicative field of creation and encourage exchange, to be incorporated and tested in collective space 7. The aesthetic creation produces models for the imagination and influences our social imaginary, as an inherent appeal to the Other, an appeal that transcends the delimitation of the individual, according to Arendt 8. And by virtue of the relational gesture of appeal, the possibility arises of transcending our frame of understanding towards new meaning-creation.

  1. Deleuze, Gilles (2020): Cinema I, The Movement-Image, translation by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, London: Blomsbury Academic.
  2. Massey,Doreen (2005): For Space, London: Sage.
  3. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1984): “Eye and Mind” Art And its Significance. An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory. David Ross, Stephen [Ed.], Albany: State University of New Youk Press.
  4. Løgstrup, Johanne (2020): The Contemporary Condition Co-existence of Times – A Conversation with John Akomfrah, Berlin: Sternberg Press.
  5. Deleuze, Gilles (2020): Cinema I, The Movement-Image, translation by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, London: Blomsbury Academic.
  6. Deleuze, Gilles (2006): “What is the Creative Act?” In Two Regimes of Madness, Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, Ed. David Lapoujade, translation by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  7. Butler, Judith (2020): The Force of Nonviolence – An Ethico-Political Bind, London: Verso.
  8. Arendt, Hannah (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago.