Poetics

Poetics 1: Shi(bido) and the Artistic Gesture Part 1


The purpose of the poetic potion of my blog is to bring all three texts into conversation with each other. More specifically, I am to locate concepts and terms that circulate within the three texts.  After I have engaged the three texts into an active working dialogue, I will then rely on this dialogue to construct a working visual model that captures the essence and nature of electracy. For this first post, which will be broken into two parts, I want suggest that a correlation or semblance exist between the Chinese notion of shi and Lacan’s notion of libido.  By bringing these two concepts into conversation with each other as they represent two different aspects of the CATTt generator, I am assuming that they are compatible. In a previous posting called: Shi finding it within from Jullien’s The Propensity of Things, Jullien states that “shi [ in as much as it is a concrete deployment or set-up] consists in organizing circumstances in such a way as to derive profit from them”(32). Shi is the potential born of disposition. With this description, shi is the natural energy or potential energy born out of unpredictable circumstance. Shi suggests that we do not have the power to predict or envision a causal relationship between events; however, we can manipulate the present event to get a desirable outcome. It is in this process of manipulation, or seizing the opportunity that “libido” correlates with shi.  As discussed previously in my blog post, libido is synonymous to the drive—the impetus behind our actions. In a previous post titled: Symbols, Typography, and Objects of Shiin Lacan's Gaze, I rely on Lacan’s definition of Lidio to discuss his motivations behind his own visual aesthetic topology. Lacan relies on his topological graphics to help sustain and even drive his concepts forward. In this way, libido functions as a means for communication and understanding.  In part two of this post, I will discuss the relationship between shi, libido and the art of making.    



Poetics 2: Shi(bido) and the Artistic Gesture Part 2

In the second half this post, I want to draw attention to the artistic gesture. Relying on photographic and cinematic art, I will use specific sections of the The Cinematic to discuss how shi and libido translates to the artistic gesture. To begin, I will return to Jullien’s The Propensity of Things, which tells us that the Chinese saw shi in multiple manifestations within their culture. One manifestation was through calligraphy, a comprised language and art form much like Lacan’s topology. Shi wasn’t realized through the finished calligrap[hied] character but through the process of generating the character. Shi only manifested itself through the careful positioning of the artist and his/her gentle yet determined stroke of the brush. Shi, within calligraphy, was first the initial potential contemplation then the physical manifestation of the drive to produce. Much like the patience, which is constituted within the calligrapher’s brush, the photographer and cinematography must be extremely patient and wait for the perfect moment to push the shutter or the perfect place to cut and reconstruct a scene. If the window of opportunity is missed, a new narrative may potentially arise and the one the artist intended forgotten. As referenced in the post titled: Fetish, Photography, Film, and theShi(bido), I draw attention to the fetish nature of photography and film’s ability to play with fetish. It is through the fetishizing of an object that allows the drive to be realized. When we desperately cling to an object or image with unexplainable loyalty “the image stimulates a sort of drive towards understanding, acceptance, and connection, the photo can become fetish as it occupies the space for which the spectator can never have access to and what he/she is afraid of losing.” As a result, the fetish is realized and the drive made apparent. 


To recap, shi is both the potential to strike (seize the moment) and the gentle strike (the stroke of the brush)
Libido is the drive and it is manifested in Lacan’s use of typology because he desires to communicated visually and verbally to his audience
Artistic gesture, shi(bido), the stoke of the brush, the shutter button of a camera, the pause button on interface when one is editing a film, the Fetish.
This small example of the artistic gesture is perhaps the best representation of the dual nature of shi as potential energy, knowing the moment when to click the shutter, and kinetic energy pressing the shutter. 


Poetics 3: Gaze into the Real: The Unexplained Gap


My next complete post will focus on the theory aspect of the CATTt beginning with Lacan’s gaze. In The four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, the gaze represents the acknowledgment of the “other” and “subject” into one unified being. With this transference, a term that I refer to with great detail in my posts titled: Instruction1: I am The Analyst and The Analyst is Me: What is My Unconscious Desire?  and Instruction 2: The Distorted Subject Reflecting the Perfect Object, the unconscious is made apparent with the subject’s recognition of himself in contrast to and as the other. As a result, a jab to the conscious occurs and the subject tries to make sense of himself/herself in the face of the other, which potentially causes a gap in recognition, the realization that they are synonymous. Lacan’s theory of the gaze, in reference to the CATTt generator is realized though both analogy and contrast.  

In The Cinematic, the gap manifests itself within the frame, or literally the border of an image or a dividing line between images. Uriel Orlow  states that the gap is the most powerful aspect of the montage, beside its organization and juxtaposition of image. The gap or interval between (the meaning, or time of) one image and another is not just the founding principle of narrative cinema but it is also the means to produce a qualitative leap or change, that is to insert a kind of revolutionary energy in film.—182.  I think Orlow’s, definition of the gap is best manifested in the article, Why I go to the movies Alone. In this narrative sequence, the protagonist desperately tries to make sense of his surroundings and himself in a space that is forever transforming and shifting with time. The gap, as stated, allows the juxtaposition to appear, this juxtaposition is realized through the attraction and repulsive nature of the subject-object relationship. This brings me to the correlating point in the CATTt, the contrast.

 Jullien’s text explores the binary opposing structure of the yin-yang dynamic. Moving beyond the literal border that juxtaposes the dark space (yin) and the white space (yang), I want to explore the gap in its metaphorical manifestation. In my post titled: The Propensity of Things. I call upon Jullien’s words to describe this complex yet compounding relationship that only the gap makes apparent to viewers and participants in this paradigm:  “On the level of Chinese philosophy, the incidence of duality that every turn serves to structure the way history develops corresponds to the very principle of all reality, namely the correlation of the yin and yang”(213). The nature of one (yin) is to “congeal” and concentrate itself”, while that of the other (yang) is to “rise up” and “disperse itself”. Whatever one condenses, the other ineluctably dissipates, and the two then tend equally [with the same shi] to become dispersed” (232). What this complex symbol in Chinese metaphysics allows us to understand conceptually and what photography and more precisely montage brings into frame is the combating relationship that takes place between the subject and other within the gaze. Even though they are continuously in conflict it is the gap, border that allows them to exist harmoniously within the unconscious. 


Poetics 4: Montage and The Unconscious


I now precede to the last post I have to offer before I move into the instructional part of my poetics, which will explain the experiment I will implement based upon the guidance and direction provided by the CATTt.  I wish to turn my attention to The Cinematic or the analogy portion of our heuristics. Like the previous two texts, I am going to pick one particular term in this text and show how it is manifested across Jullien’s text and Lacan’s.  Montage, the sequential arrangement of diverse images to show a narrative sequence with play on space and duration, is where I would like to give attention to in Company’s text. Montage, is perhaps the one singular term that is properly mention across all texts. To begin with Company’s own collected anthology on photography and cinematography, the article Photography as Cinema: LaJetee and the Redemptive Powers of Image” discusses montage in the context of Chris Marker’s film Lajetee.  Considering Orlow’s own thoughts concerning the cinematic technique, the montage allows for what would otherwise be fragmented images out of context to become fluid and congruent; however, the independence of each image is not forgotten. While the montage helps still photography enter into the discourse of the cinematic, its true structure and form—and individual image—is impossible to forget. The montage allows for the still shot to exist contextual through the movement of film.  The montage is conveniently and appropriately realized through both Jullien’s notion of tendency and Lacan’s unconscious. 

Referring back to a post I wrote concerning the contrasting notion of tendency and causal history, I return to this quote: “Western thought projects order from the outside, it most values the causal explanation. Because Chinese thought considers order to be internal to process, it emphasizes above all the interpretation based on tendencies (the antecedent and the consequence are successive stages in the same process, A and A', and each phase spontaneously changes into the next one”—212. Tendency, or drive—referencing Lacan is about possibilities or circumstances leading up to an event that will transpire. We can’t call this process one of cause and effect because different variables and circumstances can yield the potentially same results. When the Chinese states that order is internal to process, the assumption is that events will unfold in an appropriate order as they are supposed to without the control of human influence. The montage, like the Chinese historical process, has a similar nature. It to, despite its chaotic means of construction and process, has a destination—and that destination ultimately leads to cohesiveness.

 Like montage and tendency, the unconscious has a similar composition and means of unfolding. Turning to my post, The Problem of Art and the Subject:  Distortion, Punctum, and Montage, I refer to Lacan’s discussion of montage. Lacan states, anything resembling a drive is a montage. I have already correlated the drive to tendency and the space of the unconscious is where the drive manifests itself. The unconscious is the shelter for the drive. What can be glean from Lacan’s statement and what is potentially at stake in this proclamation is that the unconscious is in its entirety composed of fragments tending towards a narrative whole. It desires is to come to conscious recognition so that these moments of fragments, displaced memories, and uncanny experiences can be aligned to something that our conscious being has experienced and decared normal. Like the tendency, the unconscious is consumed with arriving at order though an internal process, and like the montage, it builds internally, with individual fragmented images, to arrive to an external manifestation. The montage is not realized in its individual image but the arraignment of individual images that form a congruent logical whole.



Poetics 5: Instruction


With the CATTt in mind, I too looked for terms and concepts that made multiple appearances throughout my blog posts.  There are three particular concepts and their manifestation that I wish to keep in mind as I make an attempt to compose what I call a visual representation of the mystory, mytage. These terms are as follows:
  1. ​Shi (Jullien)--> libido (Lacan)-->artistic gesture, the precise moment when to press the shutter (The Cinematic).
  2. Gaze (Lacan)--> The Gap (The Cinematic)--> Yin Yang (Jullien)---> 
  3. Montage (The Cinematic)--> Tendency (Jullien)--> Unconscious (Lacan)
What is interesting about this arrangement of terms is that they can be paired in with multiple others and still function as a part or description of another term. For instance, while I am saying that montage is a representation of both Jullien's yin-yang and Lacan's unconscious, montage can also be paired with the gaze and the gap. With this model in mind, I would like to explore concepts of montage throughout my mystory. Specifically, What I hope to address is this notion of the gaze and shi through the artistic gesture of a moving montage. I will  use specific images that act as “headers” to my popcylce after I will add a comic avatar of myself to the sequence, who will live out the events of my mystory. In do so, I think I will not only the gaze, but I will also draw attention to the unconscious and the gap that lingers withing. In addition, regarding the gap, and unconscious, I will look at the space that accommodates and yet divides each image into its own separate thing. My decision to incorporate animation to tell my narrative reflects of shi or the gesture to communicate myself through a representation of, essentially, the other.  What does the spacing suggest regarding the distance between each image and how does the movement of an image shifts its meaning in the collective setting of the montage.  I hope that by arranging and re-arranging the images that it will help me understand why I was drawn to or tended towards specific photos in  mystory, and largely how this sometime abstract and still photos contrast and disrupt the flow of my animated self.

Instruction: Moving Mytage

Access the mystory completed in the first half of the course. Choose five representative photos from your popcylce: family, entertainment, community, career, and logo. After, create a bitstrip account and create an avatar of yourself and use that avatar to tell the narrative of yourself. To do so, you will have to have access to a video editor such as Kdenlive to arrange your images in such a way that it tells a sequential narrative that reflects what words could not communicate in your mystory. This sequential narrative will be a montage.  Consider the juxtaposing of still shots to drawings to animations. In addition, what has this experiment taught you.


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