In abstracting, or generalizing, or theorizing, the concrete is never lost

“One cannot avoid a certain feeling of discomfort reading descriptions such as those of Lévy-Bruhl and the young Luria – descriptions that portray the concrete as “primitive”, as something to be replaced in the ascent to the abstract (this indeed has been a very general tendency in neurology and psychology for the past century). There should not be any sense of the concrete and the abstract as mutually exclusive, of the one being abandoned as one progresses to the other. On the contrary, it is precisely the richness of the concrete that gives power to the abstract. This is clearer if one is careful about defining it, and defines it in terms of “superordinate” and “subordinate”.

[…]

In abstracting, or generalizing, or theorizing, as thus understood, the concrete is never lost – quite the reverse. As it is seen from a broader and broader viewpoint, so it is seen to have ever-richer and unexpected connections; it holds together, it makes sense, as never before. As one gains in generality, so one gains in concreteness; thus the vision of the older Luria that science is “the ascent to the concrete.”

The beauty of language, and of Sign in particular, is like the beauty of theory in this way: that the concrete leads to the general, but it is through the general that one recaptures the concrete, intensified, transfigured. This regaining and renewal of the concrete, through the power of abstraction, is radiantly visible in a partly iconic language like Sign.”

(page 122-123 footnote)

Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.

What is our purpose now

“What is our purpose, now, in relation to the people we meet every day? Do we need liberation? From what? In what way?”

(page 96)

Peter Brook, The Empty Space. London: Penguin, 1968.

From my own library, bought from the Emily Carr University Library booksale, used, for 50 cents.

We follow the trajectory of a storyteller’s attention

“In following a story, we follow a storyteller, or, more precisely, we follow the trajectory of a storyteller’s attention, what it notices and what it ignores, what it lingers on, what it repeats, what it considers irrelevant, what it hurries towards, what it circles, what it brings together. It’s like following a dance, not with our feet and bodies, but with our observation and our expectations and our memories of lived life.”

(page 72)

John Berger. Bento’s Sketchbook: How does the impulse to draw something begin? New York: Pantheon, 2011.

Borrowed from the Emily Carr University Library.

The phenomena into which thought is transformed

“When three or four signers are standing in a natural arrangement for sign conversation…the space transforms are by no means 180-degree rotations of the three-dimensional visual world but involve orientations that non-signers seldom if ever understand. When all the transforms or this and other kinds are made between the signer’s visual three-dimensional field and that of each watcher, the signer has transmitted the content of his or her world of thought to the watcher. If all the trajectories of all the sign actions – direction and direction-change of all upper arms, forearm, wrist, hand and finger movement, all the nuances of all the eye and face and head action – could be described, we would have a description of the phenomena into which thought is transformed by a sign language…These superimpositions of semantics onto the space-time manifold need to be separated out if we are to understand how language and thought and the body interact.”

(page 89-90)

Stokoe qtd. in Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.

One is presented with a set of conditions rather than a finite object

“[Space] is now being considered as an active ingredient, not simply to be represented but to be shaped and characterised by the artist, and capable of involving and merging the viewer and art in a situation of greater scope and scale. In effect, one now enters the interior space of the work of art […] and is presented with a set of conditions rather than a finite object. Working within the almost unlimited potential of these enlarged, more spatially complex circumstances, the artist is now free to influence and determine, even govern, the sensations of the viewer. The human presence and perception of the spatial context have become materials of art.”

(page 110)

Jennifer Licht qtd in: Holly Rogers. Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music. Oxford: OUP, 2013. In the context of a show at MoMA in 1969, Spaces, curated by Jennifer Licht.

Found while browsing the stacks at the Belzer Library, SFU.

New, and often very elaborate, dynamic notations

“[Scott] Liddell and [Robert] Johnson see signing not as a succession of instantaneous “frozen” configurations in space, but as continually and richly modulated in time, with a dynamism of “movements” and “holds” analogous to that of music or speech. They have demonstrated many types of sequentiality in ASL signing – sequences of handshapes, locations, nonmanual signs, local movements, movements-and-holds – as well as internal (phonological) segmentation within signs. The simultaneous model of structure is not able to represent such sequences, and may indeed prevent their being seen. Thus it has been necessary to replace the older static notions and descriptions with new, and often very elaborate, dynamic notations, which have some resemblances to the notations for dance and music.”

(page 88)

Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.

“Installation” is

“”Installation” is the art form that takes note of the perimeters of that space and reconfigures it.”

(page 109)

Erika Suderberg qtd in: Holly Rogers. Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music. Oxford: OUP, 2013.

Found while browsing the stacks at the Belzer Library, SFU.

Innumerable spatial patterns nested, three-dimensionally

“We see then, in Sign, at every level – lexical, grammatical, syntactic, a linguistic use of space: a use that is amazingly complex, for much of what occurs linearly, sequentially, temporally in speech, becomes simultaneous, concurrent, multileveled in Sign. The “surface” of Sign may appear simple to the eye, like that of gesture or mime, but one soon finds that this is an illusion, and what looks so simple is extraordinarily complex and consists of innumerable spatial patterns nested, three-dimensionally, in each other.”

(page 87)

Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.

The impossibility of a non-texted art environment

“O’Doherty recognises the impossibility of a non-texted art environment, remarking that it is always an intertextual space defined by commerce, aesthetics, the artists, and their audiences: “The white wall’s apparent neutrality is an illusion. It stands for a community with common ideas and assumptions.””

(page 103)

Holly Rogers. Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music. Oxford: OUP, 2013.

Found while browsing the stacks at the Belzer Library, SFU.

Intermedial environments

“Intermedial environments have always had a problematic relationship to existing institutions.”

(page 119)

Holly Rogers. Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music. Oxford: OUP, 2013.

Found while browsing the stacks at the Belzer Library, SFU.