The Flickr Civilizationanditsdiscontents Image Generatr

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Collage on paper, written fragments and images from Peter Greenaway, Josef Albers and Robin Evans. Photo montage of The Physical Self (Greenaway) and Waverley Abbey UK. Visual research as part of The Waverley Project/Obscura and Reading Room.

On the horizon, then, at the furthest edge of the possible, it is a matter of producing the space of the human species-the collective (generic) work of the species-on the model of what used to be called "art" ; indeed, it is still so called, but art no longer has any meaning at the level of an "object" isolated by and for the individual.

Henri Lefebvre, Openings and Conclusions. from On Installation and Site Specificity (introduction) Erika Suderburg

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Blueprint from pinhole camera

Meeting Place
The Yard Studios, Winchester.
Site based drawings and inquiries.

Consciousness
Body
Space
Material
Creative Vocational Research

Auguries into the maternal body. Un-fired clay and silica sand.

Constructed in-situ at the Yard, Winchester. A life-size record and memory of a human presence as a site for mutual introspection.

Inspired in part from the novel " The Children of Men " by P D James.

Artist Statement/Chapel Arts Residency

Practitioner using the creative receptiveness of material together with the inclusion of drawing to harbour transits and passages of human presence, vulnerabilities centred around the human condition. My work adopts strategies which articulate a sense of absence and anonymity within the abandonment of the work to its location. I feel drawn to this registering of passage, encounter together with its farewell. The choice of materials gathered together implies a personal geography, with both an emotional and aesthetic sense of locality and place. The performative recording by physical means which renders itself as a trace of human presence, now becomes a vacant territory open for the consideration of others.
My work continues to investigate this sense of material response with the performative trace of a human absences. The place-ment of these acts attempts to promote thresholds from which to reflect upon spatial, sociological and psychological conditions and perceptions.
Currently working in clay, low fired to produce and promote a fragile vessel. This vessel is installed to act as a dwelling presence reverberating in a resting place. from which work is drawn into the human form to register a surface of absences resulting from past gestures and solitudes.

Russell Moreton a visual artist uses simple gestures of drawn Human traces gathered and presented amongst natural materials. Exploring themes around the Human condition, vulnerability and abandonment. Materials are employed to further underpin our sense of place and time. The act and gesture of drawing adds a ephemeral mark amongst the materiality and locality of place. Currently using clay to register these themes, installing work Augury Vessel into Chapel Arts as part of their research residency programme.

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The Feeling of Things

Architectural Plan
Collage
Text Inclusions
Diagrams

Derrida for Architects

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In Defence of Sensuality : John Cowper Powys 1930.


Foreword.


The author feels that perhaps some explanation is due to the reader for the rather unusual employment of the word "Sensuality" which serves as the title of this work. The advantage given to the author by the use of this particular expression is that it enables him to proceed from rock-bottom upwards as far as he likes. A more refined title would have cut him off, in his method of developing his idea, from the physical roots of existence; for while it is easy to indicate the overtones and undertones of Sensuality it would be hard to bring a gentle, vague word, like the word "sensuousness" down to the bare, stark, stoically-stripped Life-Sensation which is the subject of this book.


J.C.P.

Dedicated to the memory of that great
and much-abused man


Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Solitude.

Susan Sontag, one of the most influential intellectuals and cultural critics of the 20th century, was known for her sharp insights into art, culture, and human experience.
Her quote on eloquence and its relationship to solitude reveals her understanding of language and its connection to the individual's inner world.
Sontag believed that the ability to speak well, to articulate thoughts clearly and compellingly, was not something innate or natural, but rather a product of isolation.
In a society dominated by communal life—whether in families, groups, or communal settings—people often resorted to simpler forms of expression.
According to Sontag, it was in solitude and separation from the crowd that a person could truly cultivate eloquence, as it was within these moments of isolation that individuals could confront their thoughts deeply and express them with clarity.
Sontag's ideas about language were shaped by her larger body of work, which frequently examined the intersections of personal identity, social constructs, and the human condition.
She explored the impact of isolation on creativity and individuality in many of her writings, such as in her groundbreaking essays on photography, film, and literature.
For Sontag, eloquence was a sign of a developed, introspective mind that was not afraid to challenge the status quo. The "painful individuality" she referred to pointed to the existential cost of being alone, but also the creative freedom it afforded.
It was through solitude that one could experience a more authentic form of self-expression, not shaped by societal expectations or norms, but born from the individual’s own inner dialogue.
Her reflections on solitude, art, and language have continued to influence generations of thinkers and artists.
Sontag's assertion that "thinking in words" is something derived from solitude offers an important insight into the nature of creativity and communication.
In an increasingly interconnected world, where groupthink and collective experiences often dominate, Sontag's ideas remind us of the power of individual thought and the transformative potential of solitude.
Her work continues to resonate today, especially for those who seek to find their voice in a world filled with noise and distraction.

where we go from here...

Bruce Cockburn - Civilization And Its Discontents
youtu.be/SVwhYCpKGKQ?si=vgVUvR7-p3kRQXRG

Artist’s Book: white and coloured pages, card covers with cyanotype of Winchester Cathedral.

A hand bound book comprising of five signatures each with four folios. This book contains a collection of postcards made from contact prints and photograms from Tidbury Ring using the cyanotype process. Other pages contain some cyanotype paintings/abstracts around the theme of dwelling and hut. Silver gelatin images of St Catherine’s Hill are present as are some experimental pinhole photography.

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Stonehenge Visitors Centre
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Pinhole Photography, Winchester Discovery Centre and Library.

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Analogue : On Zoe Leonard and Tacita Dean. Margaret Iversen 2012
murrayguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Iversen-Critical...

"The imprint of light on emulsion"
"The alchemy of circumstance and chemistry"

Tacita Dean : Filmworks, Kodak Analogue, page 96/97

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pictify.com/user/russellmoreton The Politics of Architecture : Theorizing through speculative spatial practices.

"He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear - evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yeilding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. Above his arm- and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow - was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below. And this bed was placed in a case of greenish-coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention. In the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus, for the most part quite strange appliances, though a maximum and minimum thermometer was recognizable."

H. G. Wells : The Sleeper Awakes. 1899/1910

Spatiality : The Spatial Turn, Robert T. Tally Jr. 2013

Immediate Architectural Interventions, Durations and Effects : Apparatuses, Things and People in the Making of the City and the World. Alberto Altes Arlandis, Oren Lieberman. 2013

Preface (1921) ” The great city of this story is no more than a nightmare of Capitalism triumphant, a nightmare that was dreamt a quarter of a century ago. It is a fantastic possibility no longer possible. Much evil may be in store for mankind, but to this immense, grim organization of servitude, our race will never come” H.G. Wells. EastonGlebe, Dunmow,1921.

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Photographic Abjections/10 Days in The Laundry, Winchester UK. 2009

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Architecture in Abjection.
Bodies, Spaces and their relations.
Zuzana Kovar. 2018

Space folds : Containing "Spatialities around historicality and sociality"

All that is solid melts into air"

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
(Poetic observation concerning the constant revolutionizing of social conditions)

Perceptions now gathering at the end of the millennium. Spatiality, Robert T. Tally Jr. 2013

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TheThinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture.

Juhani Pallasmaa

Sarmad Magazine : Book Two, p23.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

Very brief (and rough) documentation of “The Rapture” - optokinetic video and sound installation by art project Disinformation, exhibited at Cable Depot, Woolwich, 7 June to 31 July 2022. NB: headphones essential.

The video depicts (in order) the “The Allegorical Portrait of Roger Bacon” (photomontage by Joe Banks, 1997), “The Rapture” video artwork (refer to the “full text”, link below), and the information resources available to visitors during the exhibition. The information table included print-outs of the full exhibition text (see links) plus Disinformation print materials; images of Batō Kannon - the Buddhist deity, and (male) manifestation of (or attendant to) the (female) “Goddess of mercy and compassion” Kannon; plus illustrations from the “Mirâj Namêh” (“Night Journey”) of the Persian poet Mir Haydar, illustrated by Mâlik Bakshî, in Uyghur script. The “Mirâj Namêh” depicts the Prophet, with burning halo, riding Buraq, the mythical horse, meeting the angel Azrael and (look carefully, on the left) a polycelaphic or multi-headed angel, clearly influenced by Buddhist and Hindu concepts. The style of particularly the clouds in these drawings is also influenced by Chinese art.

“The Rapture” (and accompanying materials) explore the notion of syncretic and universal aspects of transcendent thoughts, when individuals confront profound and/or terrifying life experiences and/or contemplate mortality. The installation alludes to forms of experience shared by individuals from wildly diverse religious backgrounds, and indeed from none - united in the experience of what Sigmund Freud (quoting the art historian Romain Rolland) referred to as “oceanic” feelings.

While the figure featured in “The Rapture” video is pre-recorded, the burning halo that surrounds that figure is produced live. The halo is however (owing to difficulty filming low light levels) much more clearly visible in the following demonstration video –

The Rapture - www.flickr.com/disinfo/52202431425/

Full exhibition text – cable-depot.com/disinformation/

Special thanks to Iavor Lubomirov, Paul Carey-Kent, Melissa Evans and Lara Cory.

Nothingness, Nostalgia and the Absence of Reason.
The Aesthetics of Decay, Dylan Trigg,

The Custodians, Richard Cowper 1976.
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Humanity : An Emotional History
Stuart Walton. 2004

Fear
Anger
Disgust
Sadness
Jealousy
Contempt
Shame
Embarrassment
Surprise
Happiness