Term Project

Art History 102

Instructor: Justin McGrail

April 7, `00

SILENT KNOWLEDGE

Dedicated to the human soul

50 Sticks Report

Group H

Mala Webb

Jihee Kim

Marjorie Nielson

Landon Sealey

Jennifer Bird

Monica Dickson

Monique Schaap

Melissa Goor

Prepared by Landon Sealey on April 7, `00:

This is a synthesis of Landon Sealey's contribution

as well as all of the members of the group, since

each member contributed equally.

You fell from the clear blue sky

Into the darkness below...

The Rolling Stones, "One Hit to the Body"

I'd thank God for my everything

But who would I be thanking?

His Mother gave Him everything

For the pleasure of a spanking...

Solarus, "Alpha Wave"

I'll ride the wave

Where it takes me...

I hold the pain

Release me...

Pearl Jam, "Release"

It seems to me

That you lived your life

Like a candle in the wind...

Never knowing

Who to turn to

When the rain set in...

Sir Elton John

...And...

I know not how to say

In words that do compel

The mind to listen

With something of a dead man's ear

What magic phrase was I

Given to chant in time

In language that listens and speaks

With thoughts immortal?

Wind to leaf to ground to life

My strife bowing to the earth

My death I know

My life I write upon it

I cannot make a tree

To bend at will

That Wind blew lang ago and still

What Wind bends Me?

I have howled

Not one will stir

I have whispered like the night

I heard no one listen

The Sun can be the car fading

The radio noise

The clouds parting for thoughts

Like grass what purpose moving

Yet in darkest space

What Solar Wind have we

To blow our Souls about

Still, fixed as the Stars

How we fill time with time

Though moment were our measure

And not the Eye

That by the Light

Is travelled for its Pleasure

Go, then

Stop not with Me

And wonder not what fixes Me in space

And makes Me shine

For I see not what worlds I touch

What silent noise I free

When my Eyes and Ears 'til Death do part

The clouds of infinite, if one, Eternity

***

When we are One

The Clouds won't hide the Sun

-Hawaiian folk song

Know you the way?

Know you the way?

Into the season

Know you the lost?

Worlds of reason

You are a Boat

Water in the Man

Real as afloat

Empty as you can

Know you the way?

Sense is unmade

Hold that thought

I see your point

Eat the fire

And light the

Say,

You know the way

The seasons move

Around the Earth

Life will Talk

About a Birth

In my Eye

And my Ear I hear

The drowning Metaphors of fear

Here

The Boat is in the Sky

A wonder of the Why

The dying

The living

The way floats on a lie...

I have always believed that the reason a baby cannot form "words" is because he just has too much to say. Yet, even though that figure cannot speak, make art, much less walk, he is the king of the world - as any parent knows. Like that child, I like to think that I have formed my speech (written, verbal, and non-verbal) around my response to art - from person to planet, heaven to earth - to Soul. Thus, I have come to understand in this global culture that when one speaks (whether he cries in hunger or sings with joy), he is speaking for everyone and everything. I walk through the fine arts wing of UCFV, and I cannot stop thinking that we are Avatar, we are a Planet, an Earth and Sun, we are Rock n' Roll. We are beautiful. We are infinite Beauty, and everything we say, whether we like it or not, is thank you to everyone (living and dead) that has ever lived. Human speech, like the human body, is a response of structural simplicity to the infinite chaos and beauty of cosmos, molded by thousands of millennia and every force imaginable; human speech is the blood on the walls of Lascaux. Therefore, this project is dedicated to the human body, the human soul, and all that she wants to say - what we, as a culture, will spend the rest of eternity putting into art-science (words) every time we do the laundry, read a book, send an e-mail or watch tv etc etc. If western culture has anything to teach the rest of the world, it is that consumption is sacred. The English language specifically is a performance of sacrament, western economic systems an expression of it, and I believe it valuable that our university system (our privilege) here in the Fraser Valley, structured as it is around corporate/industrial ideology is doing a great job of making sure that we may sustain social development and resource consumption throughout the future. That is, not everyone can be or wants to be an artist. We have done that before and we made religions, governments, wars, and civilization as we know it. Paradoxically, everyone in modern civilization is automatically an artist and everything we do is art. We are living in the natural polity of the human body as it responds to global communication. We are living in a Taoist Technocracy, Cosmic Water, an unconscious humanistic cosmology idealized by Confucius in ancient China. We are living the dream.

I don't need the light

I'll find my way

From wrong

What's real

The dream...I see..

Pearl Jam, Yield

Justin has challenged us to create a sculpture which reflects and considers the architectural and natural environment both in space and composition. Bruce has challenged us to consider the ground, the canvas: conceptually, the context for our form. Through considering both challenges, I have personally come to the conclusion that civilized structures/systems as much as nature is composed ultimately of sound or, visually, blackness and its mirror reflection, whiteness - logic and being, consciousness and art, sound and knowledge, ground and form, earth and sun, cognition and colour, abstract and concrete, metaphorical and literal - hieroglyph or temporal organism - Woman/Snake, omniscient Skin. Primitive cultures have always known this; they just didn't know that they knew (laugh), or they did and they didn't want the women to know, they had yet to codify, as we have, sacred androgyne or gender and sexual equality. Anyway, without getting too much farther into someplace I won't be able to escape from, pretty much every cosmology incorporates these (what we would call) structural elements ie technologies for oral/cultural permanence.

...

For there is one Rose that I have found

Though it stands in fields

Ne'er touched or seen

By any man or woman

That is a Tower built upon the bones

Of every soul who has ever lived

And its life is the promise and the poem

Which is the Genesis of all faith

It sucks and soothes

The blood of damned souls

And breathes for them

The air of mystery divine

Called by each name

The silence of the grave

The name we give

Is story, myth, or even word of God

By they who sacrifice so much

Upon the slimy scales

Living day to day

And year to year

In psychedelic sweat

Though ecstasy of life and death

Be the only value of knowledge and sound

For what is in a Name

But so much more

For we that hold it in our hearts

A never ending shower

To be locked as much

Inside the human heart

For God is love

Kept one from one apart

Lest we should have

More than the womb or tomb a lot

Dare not ask if there be more than ecstasy to life

Or more than mortality to knowledge

Any more than ask

If love be real

For we, to be, are ever learning how to love.

From "The Unfinished Poem" Feb `00

In terms of Quantum Physics, there is as much a symmetry to energy (or the mysterious/subconscious)/consciousness as there is to matter/consciousness. I equate the subconscious with the unconscious because subconscious connotes personal/cultural/imaginative propriety to that which is beyond one's voluntary control and unconscious denotes collective propriety to that which is beyond one's control and, thereby, each reflects the other in the human body as much as human person since our civilization is founded upon (among other things) the inalienable right to own that which we cannot always see - freedom in body, soul, and imagination (Gnostic Freedom). This makes sense, considering that the human body, in all its intricacy, is as much beyond are waking awareness as the global culture upon which and on which we live. That is, we live upon, on and through the body the wave, composed as it is of energy, matter, and time (light, earth, and Water(literal, metaphorical, and mythical(H2O)) of the Snake, the Limbic, the regulatory Creatrix of cognition and mental, emotional, physical health - isomorphic to all regulatory systems from art to earth to knowledge to civilization to body(see Todd Siler, Breaking the Mind Barrier, the ArtScience of Neurocosmology or just listen to the Doors). We are a Body. We are the gods. And whether we like it or not (laugh), we make the myths. That we have created myths limiting enough to maintain progression and malleable enough to allow for free creative response (universities that allow creativity as an expression of knowledge and nations which have intellectual (or soul) freedom written into its Charter of Rights) without losing their governing/ordering power is a paradox which reflects beautifully, like a play or a pool of water, the creative and intellectual divinity of humanity. Perched as we are, at the "edge of history" (William Irwin Thompson), we are much like the first man who looked at his reflection in the water, our shadow, which is the sky. We are the heart of sky.

"There is one spectacle grander than the sea,

that is the sky;

there is one spectacle grander than the sky,

that is the interior of the soul."

Victor Hugo, "Fantine", Le Miserables

Following is a recognition and summary of individual contributions to this project:

Jennifer Bird was the first to point out in the beginning that this project would "evolve" on its own, and I found this a great way to let everybody's ideas be heard with equal resonance to the finished project. Having spoken with her, I sympathize with her sense that art is a participatory process whether in a group or not. That is, art is ritual, by and for everyone. In this way alone, she brought artistic experience to this project that took a lot of pressure off the rest of the group as far as producing an exact image of the "idea" - what every academic student does and rarely without the artistic recognition of the literal imitation/synthesis of knowledge. In part, I learned from Jennifer and the other fine arts students that in academic art, what is most relevant is what is not said and in fine art, what is most relevant is what is said. Considering the contradictions inherent in such a statement, one must conclude that the only way to discriminate relevance is through aesthetic appeal or intuition. Thanks to Jennifer, this project very much became an intuitive work, since, paradoxically, our individual ideas would be molded by the process of building this concrete "structure". As we became confined to our limitations in material, expertise and time, intuition and innovation as well as Jennifer's confidence in the creative spirit played a pivotal role in making this a fun project. Consequently, I had to tell Jennifer that the fine arts wings makes more sense to me(laugh).

Along with her creative confidence, Jennifer also contributed the unifying idea for the project, a barrel vault or extended archway. I found that this idea unified most if not all of the elements that the other group members wanted us to consider in the sculpture. It was a creative and intellectual outlet (ideally) since it was a feasible and substantial structure through which each member would be able to create a unique perspective on the surrounding environment (originally, we planned to make openings or windows to direct the observers perception of the "outside" world, like being "inside the machine/camera"). This is an interesting idea, even if we didn't follow through with it as planned, considering that in the art history course, we have rarely considered the views created from the inside of buildings looking out. (Understandable, though, considering how much material we are going through). This mirrors the fact that in an academic course, we are considering mainly the logic or language of art and not how the logic or form resonates with the ground or observer. We consider the audience, but of course, a university classroom cannot replicate the experience of the original observer or any observer (without wars, social unrest, revolutions etc) and Justin has made note of this fact often. However, the relevance of art has obviously not been lost on any of us and the classroom, as exemplified by this project, has communicated our right and ability to respond creatively to the world around. As I write this, I am still reflecting on the modernist art shown in class (spec. Rothko's, "Four Darks in Red"), a piece that literally did not exist for many of us academic students until Justin described it to us. This is a piece dedicated to its ground, its audience outside of all cultural conceits. Modern art seems to me a language looking for someone to speak it, ground or space looking for form, art looking at art; it is the art of stop and look and listen, colours and sounds looking for their creator. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Justin was able to describe it well in fairly academic terms while, at the same time, creating the piece - making it relevant. I find a resonance between modern art and the ancient Greece in the form of the Pantheon, of letting the ground or space define the structure, to ground the canvas and audience in the divinity of observation, of culture and art. Not to brown nose(laugh), but such is a testament to both the instructor's ability as well as the ability of the English language (through education of life, universe, or university) to resonate with the ground logic of human history, the "love space" of human being as it is always relevant. It is the generation of this sort of collective silent knowing or reflective consciousness that has occurred throughout the last 100 years or so of human evolution (stop, look, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down...) that was welcomed by every member of our group: that art, like knowledge, belongs to everyone. Jennifer, a fine arts student, reflected to the group the ethos of university - that one can be aware and sympathetic to the world around and respond in a positive, relevant and creative fashion. This idea would be echoed by every member, as each was concerned with respecting the environment and discriminating between natural and synthetic materials, not a hard task because we actually used the environment, trees, as our main building material.

Mala Webb brought academic discipline and experience to the group as well a sincere respect of the supremacy of the "natural"- that we could reflect the modernity of the university architecture without relying on synthetic materials. In this way, the archway design was well suited to Mala's goals and ideas which prove that (tongue in cheek) rigorous university education is no barrier to creative sense. Looking at Mala's written contribution, it is clear that her education has cultivated a long-standing respect and appreciating for art and nature (or perhaps visa versa) that was also exuded by her calm and decisive manner not to mention her level of commitment (On one occasion, she helped us build this thing for three hours in the sun while she was fighting a bad cold). Mala, being a mother, reminded me of the demands placed upon each member of the group in terms of personal life, work, and school and, thereby, the challenge of making the time as well as the cooperation with other group member's schedules in order to do so. In keeping with her broad intellectual and artistic contribution, Mala contributed the vines used to cover or mask the structure in nature, reminiscent, for me, of the fertility mask of the Grecian Dionysus, the eternal symbol (or myth-archetype) that the human body or nature's human ask can, if properly cared for and nurtured in every way, be an indomitable tool for personal intellectual and creative freedom - means of life and care that we often take for granted in our modern world. I believe Mala's written response speaks amply for itself and for the entire group. One wishes to assume that her indomitable spirit, like art and knowledge, belongs to us all.

Jihee Kim. I cannot begin to describe the grace and confidence that this woman exudes. However, I can say that she has shown me that human respect is an art and a language all its own. Perhaps, the last word to this whole project. Although I dare not presume to know Jihee well, I found she brought a depth of culture to my experience of this sculpture that reminds of the great privilege of university and western civilization - that it at once attracts and draws from such a rich variety of different personal and cultural backgrounds. That is, the UCFV architecture is one of respect for the environment, which mirrors respect for diversity and international study (again, we have seen in art history how much our western or even global knowledge systems draw from diverse cultures and periods). It is through this language of respect and diversity that Canada is famous for that one learns not take our freedoms for granted without relying on morbitity - that one might honour the past (as university and culture does)in artistic and cultural ancestry through structured systems of preservation and communication and preserve creative freedom of expression. With her ability to enter the group somewhat late (due to schedule conflicts) and still make a highly significant contribution the overall look of the work through both hard work and numerous creative insights, Jihee added still even more with the natural pride she shared in this group project.

If Canada can get over its internal/cultural differences it might yet unify the cultural contributions of its indigenous population into a nation that we all share. [Aside: Along with the Judaic ethnicity, our native history would put modern western culture to shame were they not a history and an ethnicity that we all somehow share in what is known as the Medicine Wheel, what St. John might have called the Logos and what we know as great art and literature.] This moves me into Monique Schaap's contribution to this "Silent Knowledge" site specific sculpture.

Monique was the driving force behind the group's ability to organize itself as well as our ability to realize our creative goals. Aiding in specific site selection (which proved to be pivotal to the overall look), planning, sketching and focussing our creative intent through industry and innovation (necessary since one cannot plan all that much without specific technical expertise or much more time), it was Monique's idea to create secondary forms and unite them into a narrative. While the space around the pond and the natural materials (and our mercy to them) drew in the form, the narrative and secondary forms is intended to (and for us, does) draw the space into the form at the same time in unites the space for the viewer, proof, in part, that how one tells the story really does effect the ground (observer and environment/ human and ecology). This is relevant to this project and to the university campus because so much of the dissemenation of "knowledge" is about telling stories, as it always has been. Therefore, who tells the story and how it is told effects the ground, both the use of resources(human, material, and spacial (vistas, open spaces, closed spaces, aesthetics etc) and the resources themselves. Therefore, this project engages the viewer in the process of government as it is related to the imaginative yarn as well as the create use of ground or canvas. Since this was not our intention at the beginning of the project, this is very much a naive and humbling discovery since many of us tend to hold the conceit, in part, that we are completely apolitical or non-partisan. That is, the act of placing a structure on a ground and canvas and giving it a story (relevence) follows both the ordering principle of nature and man. The secondary forms (the boat, the toem figure across the pond as well as the Canadian geese added by Jennifer) draw the viewer gaze through the archway and across the pond and forces them to consider one than one farm at once within shifting alterations of depth. That is, it grounds the viewer who (hopefully) is drawn to fill in the spaces of an apparent narrative created by, at the very least, the shored boat - a distortion in reality since there's no apparent reason for it to be there. Again, though, the space or ground allows us to draw the viewers gaze across a wide canvas of multiple depth perspectives, much as was aimed to be accomplished by Cezanne landscape. Such an experience may (ideally) generate an archetypal experience - one in which the root structure of consciousness (story) is invoked. Of course, reading a book can do the same thing. However, our advantage is that both the physical senses and the lingustic/unconscious senses are stimulated. One may, depending on disposition, experience, then, the myth-like nature of civilization or the myths which are the foundations for our culture not the least of which is the Newtonian worldview of a purely objective reality. Personally, I draw from this experience that if communication is technology then most of what we communicate as a culture and as individuals is technology or ground. That is, we have a syntax because nature has a syntax, the earth is consciousness - a Taoist principle.

As you read Monique's narrative, then, imagine that you were there that day the founders of this land we call UCFV landed upon its shore amidst the egrarian native inhabitants. Once you set down these words (and history is as deceptively easy as this), you founded the first University, a totem-like guardian for artistic freedom and the ability for someone to look at the government you formed as say, "great art, man" even as the more religious members of your community celebrate the intrinsic anarchy of the human soul, the space and the ground which defines the form and around which civilization, like ourselves, must conform - freedom. Monique has contributed a spontaneous cultural artifact.

If the fictional founding members discovered this site, like us, then Marjorie Nielson made it our home (or showed us what makes it our home). Marjorie was very interested in emphasizing the water surrounding our site as it related to both mutability and stability. This, she wanted to accomplish with a lighthouse structure. Although the lighthouse was not built, her idea was not lost. Rather, it generated a clear sense of why we were doing this whole thing, to celebrate where we have come from and the beauty of where we are, the university system serving much like a light (or lighthouse) as it acts as a nexus of and for individual freedom and sensibility. Marjorie contributed the rocks, which were thus used to add a welcoming feature, their natural stability and permanence adding a calming feature and their arrangement mimicking that of Bernini's Piazza for St. Peter's. Rocks, like ourselves, are molded by the mutable forces of life and nature but as they draw together into some meaningful order they become a staging or home base from which to map the geography of those forces in nature, mind, and body - the university system. Place is good, but home is the combination and synergy of all those elements and people that allows us the leisure to explore space and ground, our selves and each other, history and historiography - how to tell a good story. I invite you to read Marjorie's written material for it is simple and profound, like all great art. Like myself, Marjorie appears inspired, in part, by the figure of the diamond. As it was described by Justin in class (the diamond shapes added to the architecture surrounding the stairways), the diamond becomes a symbol that the mundane movement of everyday life is, within the context of the university or the universe, an act of epic myth, of a cyclic upward spiral in human consciousness. Within such a context, or upon such a ground as the upward ascent of the human soul, the university can be seen as hallmark of not only intellectual and artistic but also religious/spiritual freedom. The world is our home, and by believing such equally, we may equally respond and sympathize with all places, peoples and times. The earth, then, like the human soul is a sort of diamond; it somehow senses just beyond itself, its own divinity but whatever its ultimate nature, it must share that with all other creatures in order to be whole. If Monique gave us the universality of knowdedge, art, history, and story, then Marjorie lends a sense of the universality of the desire to share our selves and what we know, and perhaps the universe's desire for the same, to be at home.

Monica Dickson, the written material encloses has put this all better than I could. As I look out the window of the D building in which I write this (relaxed from reading her material) I see a rabbit scamper across the open grass area behind the archway and am awed by our capacity to remember the land and ourselves. Monica reminds me that, with all our diversity, we are all saying the same thing - thank you for life. Not feeling like getting too wordy (laugh), I'll say that Monica, with all her contributions of materials( and the knowledge of them), common sense, and ingenuity and leant a heavy dose of perspective to this project. As Monica writes, "This wetland area is off by itself and though it seems unassuming, it really commands power in its presence. It is there, and it has been there in some shape or form long before our presence as a university campus existed."

I believe I speak for everyone in our group when I say

Thank you, Justin and Bruce, for this opportunity.

And thank you, Fraser Valley.

Melissa Goor, at time of writing, was not able to make it to any of the group meetings due to a hectic work schedule as well as a lack of communication from the group to her (probably due to the fact that we were all in the same class and she was not). Although we will attempt to add her creative input to the project over this weekend it is my opinion that, as a member of our group, she should automatically share in the finished project, since it is, in essence, for and by everyone and since by the very nature of the title of this project, everyone contributes equally and since, well, work is more important than art (you gotta eat). In keeping with the spirit of the university and this project, what everyone does is relevant to art and knowledge, is ground. I, myself, would sooner get a failing grade than see Melissa get a reduced one based solely on a sorry set of circumstances and our own failure to communicate. Besides, I happen to know she likes Robert Frost, the romantic frontiersman of the cosmic ground, and specifically his poem entitled "Birches"; that and a glance at our masterwork is "done" in my books. Need I say any more?