The question of how to get here is interwoven with the question of how to not go there. The second drawing series defines a specific there to test episodes of hereness against. From a studio drawing board, 360 degrees of space is mapped at eye level, producing a series of conjoint onepoint perspectives which stand-in as an ‘objective’ projection of space: there. Once mapped, the space is re-drawn through the pre-established techniques of here. Again the body thrashes, its relationship to space subjective, its pre-reflective existence disregarding the lines of the there. It proves difficult for the self to remain here. As the drawings progress, triggers are identified which toss the self into the indiscrete there. Doorways, windows, light, noises and colleagues all take their turn to exert external influence on the self. In the drawings, each of these trigger points becomes a slice—a cut, viscerally disrupting the drawing. These disruptions elicit an interweaving of the here and there mappings.
Mapping perspectival ‘objective’ space: the threre of the studio
The pages fold through one another, fighting for opportunity to reveal themselves, reflecting the earlier processes of drawing here. To design, then, is to repeatedly slip back and forth across this threshold between here and there. The pre-reflective and post-reflective states inform each other, pressuring the mind to shift to accommodate different spatial possibilities. Interwoven and interdependent, understanding here and there as competing pre-reflective and post-reflective states suggests a kind of bodily tool, in which our experiences of place are continually re-shaped by our understanding of our bodies within them. Here is not a static location. It is constructed through subjective inhabitation. Considering this, we can begin to draw out space and locate here with more physicality and more meaning. We might even begin to impress the here into existing spaces—to construct a series of bodily situations conducive to a more public hereness. Here is a defining, intersecting moment of space and self.
Collages 1 & 2: Replications and erasures of the body as understood as discrete objects in space