PHOTOGRAPHIC CUTOFF
us with a much more proximal interaction with the world, that would wrap us in its inner structure or configuration. To act within that grasp would leave no possibility to experience place as an outside viewer. It that case, whole body would happen to be embedded and no depiction would be possible without its lines, shadows, graphisms and spasmodic pulses getting splashed into personal biomechanisms. Plus, how could we conceive the possibility of an overview or of a topographic regard along the non existence of a single point of view? To assume our own visual enantiomorphism would be to assume the contrariety which is present in the consolidation of two different positions into one and to assume reality as multifaceted. Then, it is settled, in my regard, (maybe as a side conclusion) that it is not purely about the critique of being put outside the frame, or of being deceived by a non-existent profundity, as a feature of the perspective construction and part of the discussions of being in front of a realistic painting in the artistic set up. But, therein lies a turning point in the discussion of being deceived by an art work: the deceptive instrument becomes here assumed in the visual system itself (the object of interest and of critique is not an image but the body that looks). It also puts in evidence that the gaze of the subject that looks is an environmental gaze. It is sunk in the ambience of everyday experiences and practices in where the perceptive process is a result of prior inputs, gazes, performances and operations of any of us (that also configure different potentialities), as a process that is not solely set by objects that are put in our way, but in a relation which invokes a response.17 “Eyes are enantiomorphs. Writing the reflection is supposed to match the physical reality, yet somehow the enantiomorphs don't quite fit together. The right hand is always at variance with the 18 left.”...”You are caught in your own enantiomorph”
Enantiomorphs19 are double. In this case they also mean “seeing double”. As a reversal from each other they come close to a mirroring. One mirrors each other’s structure and they both somehow mirror reality itself. If, as Smithson puts, those eyes, as organs, are not the perfect mirror from each other, inasmuch as they “don't quite fit each other” perhaps they also do not mirror, in the same way, the real physicality of the world itself: perhaps those two images do not fit together. Later, in relation to the non-correspondence of the visual in relation to reality, Smithson points out that, if you take the sight phenomena as an object by itself, in a way that you realize the camera 17 “If all of our perception and awareness is a response to the forces of nature, a response to the movement of energies in our environment, then the ability to respond becomes responsibility. Our perception of our bodies is dependent upon forces in the environment. More than this, our conception of our bodies and of ourselves is a response to the movement of energy in our environment, most particularly social energy generated in our relationships with other people...” We have an obligation not only to respond, but also to respond in a way that opens up rather than closes off the possibility of response by others.” (Weiss, 2008:144) 18 Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan, 1968. IN: The Writings of Robert Smithson, 1979: 102 19 Online Merrian Webster Dictionary: from Greek enantios ‘opposite’ + -morph.Greek enantios ‘opposite‘ (from enanti facing, from en in + anti against) + -morph morph. First Known Use: 1885
15