JAMES WYNESS
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form and new rurality

11/7/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture
I continue with my photographic practice and research alongside the usual fretting over the live performance of electroacoustic music. I thought here that I'd tie together these two practices by referring to an excellent interview I read the other day. Tim Carpenter is a photographer, a writer, and a co-founder of the photography book publishing imprint TIS Books. In this era of fast and dirty results in photography, and to an extent experimental music, his work might not be to everyone's taste because it eschews single image impact, focusing instead on the series, which requires a slow appreciation, a deep understanding of form and a respect for the history of the medium, three approaches which, as I've said, are not much in evidence these days. But his work and ideas have much to say to someone (like me) still learning the craft of photography and also to someone like me who spends most of his life managing the emergence of form in musical composition.

​The article can be read here.

​I'm simply going to take extracts from the article which mirror very well (and articulate far more effectively than I could) my own notions around artistic practice, formal considerations and even beauty, yes that. Finally he talks of 'new rurality' which, although reductive, wraps up very nicely most of what I'd consider myself to be doing as photographer from day to day in and around the Scottish Borders.


As I’ll explain more, my primary goal is to use a camera not as a recorder of thought, but as the instrument of thought.

I do think photography is the medium of the walker.

When one seeks to illustrate ideas, there’s rarely (never? maybe) any friction from the real world; nothing is transformed and nothing refuses to be transformed.

So, no, I’m not simply taking photographs; I’m calibrating the inside against the outside. And every once in a while, through constant shooting, I come upon a way of calibrating – a form – that seems true to both self and not-self.

..form IS the underlying pulse. We are form-making creatures; it’s the way we manage the chaos outside and are able to live moment by moment. We abstract from both inside and outside to create something in the middle, which is meaning. We are in a constant state of poesis – “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before.” This constant meaning-making could also be called “thinking.” Form-making IS thinking, the epistemological act. It’s also the calibration I was speaking of before. The problem is that the gap is unbridgeable and our desire for formal coherence is unquenchable. The longing for completion will never be satisfied.

When a person makes a thing that expresses the process of form-making, we have an aesthetic object. My belief is that the primary objective of a work of art is to communicate the ineffable from one idiosyncratic self to another. That which is effable – politics, economics, science &etc – can be adequately communicated outside of art. Which is to say that subject matter can be adequately communicated outside of art. So for me, the aesthetic object is to be judged a success or failure based on its formal ability to evoke cogency. Coherence. Beauty even.

The successful poem or song or picture is a fleeting connection between self and world. And it helped me immensely to calm that external flux in at least one way, by looking at the same streets and buildings and fields throughout the days and seasons and over the course of years. I really noticed when small things changed: a tree cut down, a house painted. But I also was made to focus more on the internal flux: what made 
me
 different on one day versus the next, or the next year.
1 Comment
Thomas hawson link
17/8/2021 16:34:59

I have a poam for ya, what i wrote:

Old Tree to Sarah


Born from dark beginnings
A forgotten meal
Discretion forester deer
Chance inevitable
Clipity clop

Brushed-up hope
Duty of care
Ancient rites
Keeping in-line
You meet the saw
Here and there

Became sarah
How who
The unborn heir
Or the one that got away
By some ancient rite
Did the forester give you her

Community
Friend foe
Pride strength
Slender growth
Tall strange majesty

Humility among greats
Of other noble origins
Give and take
Here for the duration
Rooted deeply

On the edge
Thrive
See both sides
Friend or foe

Sick fellow
Tall heavy
Not the strength of you
Gives in falls
Remains standing together

A heavy burden
Continued pressure
Remain strong
But scarred

Forgotten disheveled
Now gnarley
The soil
Your only remaining and greatest friend
Resilience
Not unnoticed

Finally a new pair of hands
Old heavy noble friends
Die away
New friend makes straight again
But no you are old and pulling
So hard at the ground
To give you up

A new friend
Spirits rekindled
Life anew awaits you
Your vessel broaching
How did you find me
And my daughter so clearly

Powers transferring
Kind heart
Word
Hands and saw
You are released
From your long-lived still strong whole vessel of life
Last breath leaves you

You awake
As kindly as you can
With so much wisdom
Only time can give
But with renewed life
Vigour new innocence
You wake me enthusiastically
For directions in your new life

The attention is overwhelming
You are so excited
My daughter shares your new future
New friends and foe together
Not wanting to offend you
My daughter reminds you
“Its alright Sarah we’ll plunge your guts out”
To make you into something new

Friend or foe to you
The deer have met my daughter
Kind endearing hands too
Was that a good idea
To warm her hands in the gralloch
That February morning
Studying the deers prostate and bladder
And wondering what was wrong with grandads

Sentiment for life
Run deep in the young
Your new friend loves
You and your kind
Your pool will not be forgotten
Its waters shared and drunk by all again
Replenishing life of others

But Sarah you are hear now
To explore and share your dreams
With others
We love you










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  • Home
  • about
  • news
  • projects
    • music >
      • ubanu tarasa
      • fouter and swick
      • music for film
      • discography
    • sound art >
      • words on resilience
    • photography >
      • prints for sale
      • Evidence
      • Rural Hours
      • collage
      • photozines >
        • the fundamentals of architecture
        • crusts
    • moving image >
      • The Landowner
      • Conversations with a Forest
    • Archive
  • Blog
  • Contact