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| ALICE OH 3 |
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"Passing Through" from Thinking Through, The Work of Alice Oh
Given the limitations of our senses in just looking, it is important to slow down, to heighten our sensitivity, always being aware that there is a finitude to our senses. In slowing down, we become sensitive to that which is second nature to the human: our limitations. In the work of Alice Oh, there are countless opportunities to arrive at such an awareness, an arrival that is never singular because no two eyes are alike. Moreover, no two colors are alike or exist in isolation. They interact with one another, the one through the other, through their differences, in the way they compliment and fail to compliment one another. Physiologically, the work emerges, through these interactions, interactions that pass through the eye, through just looking.
As our eye moves along the surfaces of Alice Oh's work, we discover through just looking circles that are not quite circles. These circles are never simply geometric, never perfect, always bearing the marks of the human. We find lines that are never simply linear. Through just looking, we discover lines that our eyes complete, attempt to straighten. We discover lines that bend through our passive activity of just looking. We discover grids that seem to provide order and grids that seem to offer no order. Our eyes move from the topographic to the graphic. We discover a depth to the surfaces, layers that seem to bring an order to the work. Through the layers, we begin to search for a temporal order, a time that is linear, a means of measuring and ordering through the accumulation of time. We think we can discover an archaeological order to the layers. We attempt to unearth a temporal logic. We pass from chaos to order. We make sense as we familiarize ourselves with the work.
As we familiarize ourselves with the work, the work seems to occupy a space between art and science. The molecular, cellular, microscopic aspects of the work lend themselves to such a means of thinking, of perceiving the natural world under a microscope. These microscopic phenomena quickly seem to become macroscopic, opening up to a stellar envisioning of the worlds of science. Quickly, we spiral along this seam between the microscopic and the macroscopic. Having spun away from a thinking through the work, we think about the work through science, engaging with how science represents nature, moving along the seam between thinking about and thinking within, a seam opened up through thinking through just looking. This seam seems to offer a passage through the work. Thinking through the work too hastily, however, we close this seam by ordering the work, telling the work where to go, where it belongs. Having begun to think through the work, we return it to familiar ground in an attempt to make sense of the work, and to order and give order to our senses.
But do we sense order or is order created through the eye that desires sense, that looks too quickly, the eye that fools itself? In just looking, do we start to do that which is second nature to us, remaining within the familiar, never moving beyond the familiar, failing to think through the work? It is just as easy to pass from order into chaos, finding what is random, seemingly chaotic. The eye wanders across these lands of wonder, fluctuating between order and chaos, between what seems to be ordered and what seems to be random, finding a seam along which all attempts to make sense navigate. The eye moves along this seam, wandering and wondering between the linear and the circular, between surface and depth, between form and the formless. The eye both makes sense and fails to make sense through the fissures opened up through the work, through the seams and the 'seems,' through what seems familiar and the seams that allow a passage from the familiar to the unfamiliar. What seems to offer a familiar ground leads to a seam of seismic activity. Layers that seem to cover over a depth open a seam through which depth is exposed through the surface as another surface. That which is most hidden is exposed and that which is most exposed is hidden. In this play, the play of the eye, the work allows a thinking through, a passage between order and chaos that is the passing of the human. The familiar becomes the unfamiliar and the unfamiliar is exposed as that which is most near, that which is second nature, a second nature presented through art.
How does art present us with a second nature? Art presents a second nature through the eyes of the human. These are eyes that move between the natural and the scientific, the scientific and the technological, the technological and the natural, all the mediating ways we think about nature, ways of mediation that are part of human nature. In mediating the natural, in re-presenting the natural and even the nature of the human, art creates a vision of nature through the human. Again, this not an argument against the usefulness of science and technology, but an attempt to see how art is against science and technology. In being against science and technology, art is both against it, right next to it, demonstrating similar ideas, such as the limitations of human sight, while also being against it, in demonstrating these limitations through a human conception, through art. Art, in demonstrating these limitations, shows how all our conceptions of the human, including science and technology, are bound to that which is second nature to the human: our flaws.
In this way, thinking through what is second nature to us through art doesn't lead to some utopic past or transcendent future. The work bears witness to our flaws, to how we are never done thinking through the work that awaits. The work provides an occasion to think through, a thinking that tries to think through the present towards a future. The work does not provide being, but becoming. However we choose, singular plural, to conceive of the human, at this moment, all we have are phases of conception that the work bears witness to. Re-presentation is never graceful, but it is what it is. In being, art is not divine, but it becomes the means of divining the human.
This happens neither through thinking about the work or thinking within the work, even if these too are human activities. They become human activities through thinking through the work. This is a thinking that thinks through the work, passing through the work with and without resolve, through the active passivity of just looking, an active passivity that is second nature to the human. This passage happens with resolve through the active passivity of just looking. This passage, however, has no resolve as we pass through openings presented by the work, as we pass through the seams between art and science, between the technical and the human, between art and the human, between art and nature, and all the other oppositions that the work opens up without resolving. In these passages, a passing through happens that is also second nature to the human.
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As I have tried to suggest, the work of Alice Oh offers an occasion to think through, to think through just looking, to think through what is second nature to us, moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. In my passing through her work, I have been attempting to translate into words these works, works whose quality I want to attest to, to bear witness to. The quality of her work bears witness to the flaws of my translation, to the flaws of any translation, that there is no end to translation. These works, however, also bear witness to my passing through, just as they will bear witness to my passing on, works that bear the title 'phases of conception.' These works provide for our passing through, naturalizing and nurturing that human activity called thinking. We pass through phases of conception, of thinking, singular and plural, conceptions that give birth to the singular plural 'we' that we are, even in our differences, the differences that are our own phases of conception.
Born(e) through and born(e) by our phases of conception, we never pass beyond these conceptions, whether they be scientific, technological, artistic, and/or otherwise, conceptions that are only beginnings, only phases, not endings. These are phases of conception that are neither simply circular, nor simply linear. They neither return us to the past, to an origin, nor lead us to a transcendent place where our conception would be complete, total. We do not arrive at a more complete conception of being through science or art. In art, however, we pass through differing phases of conception, phases of becoming that are always to be determined, even if through science and technology we believe we have already determined these phases of conception. In the work of art, these phases of conception do not offer paths that we ever become familiar with, never providing a determining path that we can recognize for once and for all. In this way, they provide a seam through which the work opens up to a future, awaiting us. Science and technology would close this seam, this rift, seemingly making the world appear familiar, natural.
As determined as we may be to find the familiar, we are always passing through the unfamiliar. In passing through the unfamiliar, we attempt to think beyond the familiar. In thinking beyond the familiar, we try to think through the work. We think through the work through just looking. In just looking, we discover that what is second nature to us is unfamiliar and the unfamiliar discovers us. Passing through the unfamiliar, we recognize that our phases of conception are neither simply circular, nor simply linear. We recognize that we are always in the midst of conception, of becoming, of thinking through, of just looking, that in life as in art, the paths that are second nature to us are the paths that only seem familiar. From what seems familiar, we pas through seams, seams that the work provides through its phases of conception.
In passing through the work, we pass through the undecidable, beyond indecision. In passing through the undecidable, a decision is made. If a decision is to be made, however, we must pass through the undecidable, beyond indecision. If we make our decisions based on the past, we never leave the familiar. We let the past decide. If we make a decision by basing it on the work, we retreat into the work. We never leave the work, letting the work decide. In passing through the undecidable, we think through the work, just looking, discovering what is second nature to us, that all our phases of conception, all our works, bear the flaws that make us human. These flaws mark our passing through the work, a work that bears witness to our passing through the undecidable. Singular plural, active passive, we decide. The work awaits.
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