Issue 25- Writing - Deconstruction

 Jacques Derrida in the 1970s asserted that there is not one single intrinsic meaning to be found in a work, but rather many, and often these can be conflicting.
Deconstruction has become a postmodern practice to break through the limitation/illusion of fixed identity or structures in favour of a more open less defined self. Deconstructing and re-constructing our artistic process is a practice that can help us break through the known, through pre-conceived ways and ideas to uncover fresh innovative possibilities. Postmodern deconstruction, a theory originated by philosopher Jacques Derrida (Difference, speech & phenomena 1967) is a line of inquiry that unveil the fleeting and illusionary nature of identity, personal & collective, created/embedded/limited by the metanarrative language of our culture.
In the last 15 years, the emergence of a global contemporary culture of “everything” seams also exacerbated the fragmenting of identity. Identity becomes a collage, a mix of reference points tying tradition and modernity originating from a diversity of cultural references.
This month we have some very interesting pieces of text-based work have to aread and see what you think we always welcome comments on our zines content…

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resident writer - Michaela hall

Picking up the pieces

Can we truly understand something by looking at it in its most perfect and full form? Is something that is whole truly representative of what it is or is there more to be found under the surface? This is a question that has fuelled centuries of creatives to look further into the potential multiple meanings and relationships that make up one single thing, an exploration of deconstruction in its contemporary form. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems, and artists Sarah Sze and Adam Pendleton explore this in their bodies of work.

American artist Sarah Sze is well known for pushing the boundaries of whichever material she works with to the extent that it often gains a whole new identity or context. A lot of artists only see their ‘finished’ piece as worthy of an audience, overlooking the importance of process and the exploration that they journeyed through to get the complete work. This process of the deconstruction of multiple materials, images, and resources is something that is essential to Sze’s work. Her works explore the relationship between different materials and sources in the creation of a new image or environment and this process is something that is highlighted in her 2018 exhibition at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, ‘Afterimage’. The installation of multiple wall-based works creates a space that is reminiscent of the artist’s studio and brings together works made in situ along with collected imagery that has been either gathered or cast aside in making the work. In this space, Sze was interested in the way that our relationships with all the individual elements that have been brought together or deconstructed/altered change when they are presented in this way. Taking apart the initial meanings of every small detail and reconfiguring them in a way that creates multiple new narratives.

American conceptual artist Adam Pendleton also explores the idea of new meanings in his work. Pendleton is an artist who uses text itself as a material, and refreshingly, he isn’t seeking to create new meanings in how the text reads. He instead explores the use of text as a purely visual medium and while some text may still be legible in his works, this is a conscious one-off decision rather than by mistake or chance. Pendleton is inspired by the Dada and the nonsensical, taking something with an existing meaning and deconstructing it as material to form something new and pure. In ‘If the function of dada’ (2017) the viewer is greeted with a black and white painting made up of different processes such as printing and spray painting in which letters appear as expressive brushstrokes rather than words. Taking something which has its own identity and confusing this to be a new visual landscape of shapes and curves with only the word IF identifiable – creates questions around why this is the only word we can see. Similarly, in ‘OK DADA OK BLACK DADA OK (WE NEED)’ (2018) the viewer is presented with another black and white mass of letters in varying depths, mediums, and configurations with only the OK, BLACK, and DADA vaguely identifiable, creating a new context for us to delve deeper into.

 ‘If the function of dada’ (2017).                           ‘OK DADA OK BLACK DADA OK (WE NEED)’ (2018) 

What both artists achieve in their works is the creation of something which is pure and new yet has multiple complex meanings. In other words, we can look at the works and probably come up with hundreds of reasons why the work has been made this way. By deconstructing things that are typically whole and understood such as an image or a sentence, the artist has created a space where the viewer is left unsure, disorientated and left to their own devices to pick up the pieces, just as the artists were doing in exploring what else there was to be seen in their creation.

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Writer - Peter Devonald

Instagram account

https://www.instagram.com/peterdevonald/

Website

http://www.scriptfirst.com/

Bio

Peter Devonald won the Heart of the Heatons best poetry award 2021. Published in twenty anthologies/ literary magazines/ newspapers. Recently published in Bolton Breakdown: reawakening, Heaton Post, Cheadle Post, and Didsbury Post. Previously published in Rubicon, Guardian Weekend, ISEA, Ellipses, First Verse, Understanding, Krax, and many more. Second Eastern Rainbow. 2022: Third and published in Tales of the Underbanks.

Multi-award-winning screenwriter. 140 film festivals, 70 placements/ awards. Top-rated shows on Nickelodeon (Those Scurvy Rascals) and MTV (.357). Formerly chair of Reel Islington and senior judge/ mentor Peter Ustinov Awards (iemmys).

STATEMENT
​We have become overwhelmed by technology. If this had happened over hundreds of years it would be entirely different, but to experience this change in such dramatic terms requires a moment to pause, consider, and, as Derrida put it, "multiply the cautionary indicators and put aside all the traditional philosophical concepts". Facebook launched in February 2004: how to assimilate such a massive lifestyle alteration and still give meaning to our lives?

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By Stephen Nicholas -

Bio - I guess I can’t go down the self-deprecating road of ‘quiet northern bloke’ all my life! It took me a while to feel comfortable doing my own thing; not so much fighting to be different more searching for things to embrace and love. Finding like-minded souls along the way. Archivist by day I morph into a recreational writer, blogger, and occasional collage creator where my failure of art GCSE shines through.

I can often be found wandering aimlessly around and pointing my camera at things. Music is my main passion, the funkier and freakier the better, with the film not far behind. David Lynch rules on that front. Keen baker with a killer fruit cake recipe. Hopeless rhythm wise though prone to dance. Lapsed catholic. Taken from his site - https://cavedweller71.wordpress.com/

The Dwelling

I’m not sure how I came across the cottage or how I felt about it at first. Most of my work, both in terms of written pieces and visual media, is concerned with landscape, both body, and environment. And the things that bear down on them. The stresses and strains of everyday life. The cottage is dilapidated. Unloved? After years of neglect, it is still recognisable and yet no longer defined. The kitchen is no longer where breakfast is prepared for the school-bound child. It has become little more than component parts. Damp cookbook, cooker, and blown-in window frame are all covered in dust. All leaned on by time. The cottage has become a tomb.

When I went back over Easter I had a million thoughts rushing through my head. What happened to the family who was here before? Was it a slow decline or did they leave in a hurry? Is this what finality looks like in terms of different materials? How do we define living, breathing places? But also, why do I see the beauty and not sadness? Why, there among the broken utensils and rubble, do I feel more alive than at my home? Perhaps it’s this sense of imperfection. The angular and skeletal forms. Maybe it’s the sense of knowing things cannot last forever. This realisation that my body will wither and become nothing. Without getting too metaphysical; I am a million cells, I will become dust and memory. I am but a flicker.

I wonder how often we deconstruct our lives? See ourselves as past, present and future. Youth and then milestones. That first kiss. That first heartbreak. Or as different attributes all competing for dominance. Perhaps we do that on a daily basis? Realise that we can only be true at certain times or with certain people. Realise we must live a lie. Or do we act on impulse? Do we ever see ourselves purely as different fluids?: blood, semen, milk, tears. Things that sustain. Things that we let out. Things that come from love or hate. Bits of us that we struggle to replenish. Truth be told I feel there is the real us and the act of being us. The masks we hide behind. Ways of coping that stop us from descending into darkness.

I definitely have a more fanciful idea of the cottage because of where it is. It is of Bronte gothic and not inner-city deprivation. Although it is shell it hasn’t been daubed by teenage tag. It isn’t at a place you would avoid for fear of harm. Perhaps it still has stories in it? Perhaps the next time I go I will feel different? I will only see it in terms of waste and not magic. I will see it as a portent and not a catalyst. I will remain silent and not absorb and then create. Perhaps everything comes from what my life reflects on to it? I can certainly see the parallels between its decay and my brother’s illness. How life smothered him. How he then disappeared. Wonder about the things he left behind. Nothing much or maybe tangible things that have become charmed.

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