Blackboards and Maps
I met with Zahr yesterday and told her that I thought blackboards, in
their utilized state after class, are interesting material for artistic
projects - the way the diagrams, scribbles, keywords, networks of arrows
and boxes contain highly structured and complex trains of thought and
traces of knowledge, which are constituted in a state of completion and
accomplishment (thus introducing the temporal dimension into the spatial
dimensions of the blackboard-frame).One sees what remains as testament or fossil (the aesthetic of the chalk
only serves to emphasize this) after a period of
intellectual engagement.Zahr went beyond that and suggested they were not merely suitable objects
for artistic endeavors but, more concretely, actual maps.It's entirely true: The sketches on the blackboards resemble
epistemological maps.But they are not only the representation of the various
points articulated, ideas established and lines of thought traced.Beyond that, they themselves are as much 'autonomous' bodies of knowledge
as the points expressed vocally, bringing ideas into existence while
representing them and others (graphically-conceptionally) at one and the
same time.The sayable (verbal lecture) and the seeable (chalk illustration) are both
simultaneously epistemic, systematic narratives that are perpetually
incomplete but become ever more holistic as both forms of enunciation
provide for each other 'clues' and complimentary composites.Having said that, the next connection one can establish is to the
frighteningly close concept of clear-riftless-language,
enunciation-creation, which this practice of speech-sketch seems to
correspond to. The 'phenomena' (I am stuck for words here) of naming and
creating an idea coincide, coalesce, fuse with each other in the
gap constituted by the ongoing interrelationships of the two systems
of thought-signification.For example, as a thought is described verbally and then enhanced
graphically, it is created anew with an extra twist. This composite
(signified plus 'extra-twist') is qualitatively distinct from the mere
signified so as to justify a novel category in its own right. It ceases to
be merely the represented and becomes the created. By the same token, a
thought deliberated graphically and then complimented verbally follows the
same mechanism of creation.The reciprocity between the two systems of thought-signification (see-
and sayable), closes the circle of processes of abduction
and in this constitutes perpetual spirals of enunciation-creation that
assemble their distinct epistemological terrain (while 'in motion'- so to
speak) and thus pose an interesting ground for intellectual and artistic
(no binary opposites) practice.So while talking about maps and cartography in relation to questions of
representation and signification, we have in fact created our own maps,
meta-maps, that become the visual remnants of ossified and accomplished
intellectual engagement on the one hand and terra-nova for creativity on
the other.