RESEARCH APPRAISAL: A Field Study of Leftover Matter
Introduction
An exploration of leftover matter is a body of work that reflects on the discovery of rubbish excavated while working the land. Using methods such as photography, drawing, film and printmaking, the work not only gains understanding of seasons, growth and land management but continues to build a heightened awareness of care as an essential development. A ritualistic activity follows that embodies gathering, cleaning and collecting. The fragments shift from a position of being unwanted to an entity in waiting, poised, ready to direct notions of understanding and learning. There is no intention to seek and manipulate the discovery, rather it is key to encounter the fragments within a daily activity in a manner that responds to the land. John Scanlan says that leftover matter is what “remains when the good, fruitful, valuable, nourishing and useful has been taken” (2005:13). An assortment of emerging fragments that consist of wholes or parts, include such objects as tools, crockery, bottles, fencing, electronics, children’s toys and more. Their journeys to the hidden depths of the soil are not known, but it is likely they would have been useful and valued previous to their disposal. To understand context and the wider view, a development in the work introduces soil and fields as an entity that holds not only the dead and unwanted but living things. Maintaining a connection to the found objects, the practice begins to explore and include the neighbouring landscapes.
Fig. 3 Field Observation I (2021)
Phantasmagoria, Hyperreality and the Game
The practice has continued to look at flux between inertia and animation previously demonstrated in earlier work.
Fig. 4 Magic Lantern (1671)
Theories that inform this investigation come from texts such as Phantasmagoria where Marina Warner explores how phantasms, myths, ghosts and spirits continue to fuel the imagination. She writes about historical and contemporary procedures used to transmit life from beyond known domains and describes the ways evolving technologies have fuelled the imagination. “Through ten different vehicles—from wax to film—her book attempts to handle materials through which spirit and spirits have paradoxically taken form in the world…” (2006:12).
Jean Baudrillard addresses notions where the copy manifests as the real, and heightened focus leads to situations of hyperreality in Simulacra and Simulation. This text supports research gained from the theories of Phantasmagoria and builds on an understanding where illusion could be described as truth. Baudrillard opens with a quote, claimed to be the words of Ecclesiastes, “the simulacrum is never what hides the truth — it is the truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true” (1994:1). As "neither the word ‘simulacrum' in any variation, or the word ‘truth’ appear in Ecclesiastes” it appears that Baudrillard has himself created a simulacrum from the outset of his text. This disorientating and contested quote implies a circulatory motion between the truth and the copy, where the “duplicity of truth and its image is the paradoxical unity of reality and illusion” (Ward & Fernando, 2011).
As the map, according to Baurdrillard, illustrates a simulation “no longer that of a territory” (1994:1), the game (in the way it portrays a simplified version of the truth) embodies a comparable character of abstraction. But “it is the difference [between] which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real” (Baurdrillard, 1994:2), and it is the difference between the game and the real event that the work explores. A UCA workshop Gamify your Practice, suggested methods of practice that sought to broaden ideas of strategy and play (Blandy, 2020). The game, as a miniaturised unit, a matrix of commands, no longer has to be rational and therefore it is no longer real but hyperreal (Baurdrillard, 1994:2).
Untitled ( ) Series
The Untitled ( ) Series is body of work that centres around the rejuvenation of the objects. The significance of the empty brackets refers to issues raised by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija around the misuse of labelling within ethnographic institutions (2015). These concerns arose in the work due to close associations to field studies of archaeology and anthropology. Contested labels are under review in many established museums and the empty brackets acknowledge support of these issues.
Fig. 5 Example of images of objects
Untitled #1 ( ) (2021), is a carefully staged operation. The increased quality and precision of the objects in the photographs were key to creating an illusion and establishing a difference between the concept and the real. Like the waxworks Warner refers to in Phantasmagoria, whose origins began with the death mask, the photographs capture the stilled moment and make for an inert, blank, and unspeaking likeness (2006:24). Context is intentionally erased, depriving the viewer of any clues to their origin. They present an illusory likeness, a phantasm from another time and place, and could be interpreted as hyperreal.
To implant the work with an impression of animation, a method of creating movement was essential. An electric fan was added. Technology, which was a major player in the Phantasmagoria shows, became an important participant in the work. The electric fan disturbed the air and demonstrated a physical presence that filled the space like an ethereal entity, both felt and seen. Warner describes air as the “element where the imagining of spirit mixes with stuff of this world most richly and intimately”. It is the realm where gods and angels inhabit, it is the substance of weightlessness and immateriality (2006:61). Air is the space between things and its lack tests any form of representation.
Fig. 6 Untitled #1 ( ) 2021, 28 digital inkjet prints on gloss photo paper, electric fan, brass pins
Untitled #1 ( ) participated in the group MA show Unsettled Focus on South Molton Street in June. During the process of installation, greater importance was attributed to the drawn line which measured the grid and the allocated spaces for the pinned images. Blank spaces were introduced in the grid and a dimension of choice presented a new but potentially problematic component. When the opportunity arose to hang the work once more in the show Coming up for air in November, it was a chance to resolve arrangement issues and introduce a deeper level of game strategy.
Fig. 7 Preparatory drawing for Untitled #1 (air) 21 x 29.7 cm
Preparatory drawings set out to develop strategic plans and established the dimensions of the space. Like a game of Tiddlywinks, a small object was flicked across the drawing, plotting reference points that were subsequently highlighted by a coloured dot. Finishing on 65 points, the plan was directly relocated to the wall. The game became the map, which in turn provided the instructions for the work. Resonating with notions of rules and rhythm, the work was able to become more in the world, rather than of the hand. In the way a grid maps a physical space, the game maps the choices of action within the grid. But rather than depicting reality, it too produces the copy, a duplication.
Fig. 8 Untitled #1 (air) (2021) Fig. 9 Untitled #1 (take down) (2021) 132 x 200 cm
When taking Untitled #1 (air) down, the remaining pencil and erased marks were intentionally left and documented. Pushing the work to mimic concepts of trace, it reflected the essential characteristics of the leftover matter as evidence of activity. Coming full circle, the objects came up from the earth, grew and flourished in the light, only to return, a ghost and a trace once more. Leaving the marks on the wall to decide their own fate, it was not long before all signs of the work were erased. Shortly after, the next show was hung in the James Hockey Gallery and all traces were buried beneath. Perhaps Mona Hatoum’s work or Wolfgang Tilmans sat snugly on top. Knowing that this work laid the foundations for such esteemed artists was an exciting outcome, quietly present but unseen.
Fig. 10 Untitled #5 ( ) (2021) 156 x 95 x 82 cm
A curatorial project titled Hyperreality established a key development in the work where reflection progressed more specifically to the investigation between truth and illusion. Theories of Phantasmagoria had introduced concepts of animation and phantasms, but Hyperreality took the research further into a jumbled world where truths were no longer real and the simulation or the copy is in fact the truth. It was the opportunity to expose concerns in the practice that sought to categorise, summarise and sterilise the found objects. Baudrillard writes, “the logical evolution of science is to distance itself increasingly from its object, until it dispenses with it entirely. Its autonomy is only renewed even more fantastic …” (1994:7).
Fig. 11 Untitled #1 ( ) in process (2021)
Untitled #5 ( ) (2021) represented a freeze-framed moment during the process of documenting objects for Untitled #1 ( ). Captured at a moment in time, the work explored the notion of the object as a model without origin, a hyperreal (Baudrillard, 1994:1). With stage, lights and camera set, the act of preservation is depicted in accentuated focus.
Over-lit, in sterile conditions, the discovered objects that were once safely protected in the dark recesses of the earth, are raised up and exposed. Rather than breathing life back into the objects, Untitled #5 ( ) emphasises their death and uselessness. Baudrillard explains, “in order for ethnology to live, its object must die; by dying, the object takes its revenge for being discovered and with its death defies the science that wants to grasp it” (1994:7). It would seem the very act of learning, of analysis and investigation denies true knowledge.
Fig.12 Danh Võ: Untitled (2020)
Seeking to make amends for this duplicity, Untitled #5 ( ) introduced a living, evolving component. Danh Võ demonstrated pairings between gardening and sculpture in his show, Chixculub in the White Cube in 2020. This was significant to the practice in considering the inclusion of plants as subject matter. Inspired by his juxtaposition of artefacts and nasturtium plants like offerings to the viewer (Võ & Silwka, 2020), Untitled #5 ( ) presents a pot of nasturtiums at the foot of the work.
Fig.13 Detail of Untitled #5
The plant sits alone, underneath, like an after thought. Directional lights connect the display to the living nasturtium, but the work has yet to resolve the aims and intent behind the addition. Further research and evaluation is required to establish the necessity for the plant and the pot. It does, however, introduce soil and plant life to the practice as a visual phenomenon and provides the platform for the next phase of development. Rather than indirectly through the unseen activity of working the land, soil, as a substance, begins to take a greater role in the work.
Field Study Series
Fig. 14 Field Observation II (2021)
Big empty fields, ploughed, churned and turned surround the place where the objects were found. The phenomenon of tilled fields is in developmental stage in the practice and is currently establishing itself through printmaking and film. Recognising emptiness as a key component, the work has had to confront concepts of banality and ways of seeing when it would appear there is not much to see.
Research has led to artists such as Bob Law whose ‘Field Works (1959-1999)’ depict, in his words, “the position of myself on the face of the earth and the environmental conditions around me” (Fogle, 2015). His drawings and paintings suggest outlines of marked fields, and draw rectangles and rhomboids around an otherwise blank space.
Anselm Keifer’s exhibition at the White Cube in 2019 exhibited a series of paintings depicting fields. Usually post harvest where all that remained was stubble and mud, some of the works had the addition of an inverted axe embedded in the paint (Keifer, 2019). There was a sense of hopelessness and destitution, that the soil has been overworked, stripped of all its vitality and life.
Tacita Dean described the act of looking as an event in itself. The outcome of her quest to capture the illusive green ray in her film became “about faith and belief in what you see” (2007:89). Not visible to the naked eye, nor digital film, it was only when she returned to her studio after filming the setting sun in Madagascar, that a clear sight of the fleeting green ray was revealed in one single analogue frame.
Anne Imhof includes the human form in her film ‘One’, depicting the power of the sea against the fragility of a lone figure. The figure is wielding a whip but is no match for the grandeur and epic nature of the seas vast body-less substance (2021).The big landscape music only heightens the fruitless efforts against such a force.
The earth, sky and sea hold all life forms in their grasp (Latour, 2020) and like an ephemeral ghost, the body passes through them like fleeting shadows. Each artist notices that the vast expanse of perceived emptiness in the landscape is not truly empty. Through faith, the imagination and symbolic gestures, signs of presence and activity exist beneath the surface and beyond the field of human vision. The soil itself is teaming with life. It seems only recently that scientists have made an increased effort to notice the extent of life that exists hidden in the dark subterranean realm just beneath our feet (Montag, 2017). Hidden from view, not captured in the photograph of the empty field, the signs of life are not explicit to the viewer.
Fig.19 Untitled, Screen print and ink on paper, 38 x 28 cm
In response to the aim to notice the empty fields, the work is exploring new methodologies of screen printing, photo etching and intaglio, to learn skills and establish outcomes not achieved before. Combinations of field as place and object as presence are demonstrated through unfamiliar mediums that investigate familiar ideas and push the work into new territory. Outlines of found nails are drawn with a feather and ink on screen prints depicting empty fields. These leave awkward and delicate marks that hover in front of the landscape. Disrupting the space, the materiality of the screen print and the drawing test differing forces between the heaviness of pushing ink through a screen to the lightness of touch of the drawing. The work opens a dialogue between method and materiality and fills the space with both durability and ephemerality, longevity and temporality.
Fig. 22 Documenting nasturtiums
The concluding project is an ongoing work that will continue into the next phase of the practice. It seeks to bring some of the building blocks from experimental observation throughout the year into a single coherent form. Photography, moving image, sound, gathered data and the processes of editing are emerging slowly together in a stop motion, digital film. A continual documentation of one field that records the changing seasons, daily weather and the progression of growth from one stand point, establishes a dialogue with the landscape. A record of daily images of a growing nasturtium refers back to Danh Võ’s influence. Lily Carr from Feral Atlas suggests “plants are in a different time reality and move slower which hinders our ability to notice them”. Considered intelligent, Uriel Orlows, raises the issue that people do not “feel empathy with a life form that is not in our likeness” (ZKM 2021). As an area in the practice only lightly touched on, there is much still to discover about what is meant by the intelligence of inanimate objects and plant life.
Fig. 23 Samuel Beckets script ‘Breath’
The work introduces one last area of research. Samuel Beckett’s play Breath focuses on an amplified recording of breathing. Given minimal script instruction, he sets a scene of scattered litter, a slow increase and decrease of light and a faint brief cry. Among these visual and audio instructions are moments of hold, of silence given 5-10 second time frames (1969). These few descriptive instructions and specific time restraints set the scene, while still providing room for interpretation and creativity. Beckets script reinforces a belief and inclination towards restraint. Work that includes intervals and space allude to rhythms that replicate, for example, the rhythm of breath, the beat of the heart and the dawning of each new day. It supports the aims of the work to animate rather than to suppress and to imagine sequences of events that come alive in the telling.
Field Study (2022) is a short clip that considers rhythm and intervals. Reflecting on research gained from Beckett’s script, it plays with light and dark, and manipulates fade in and out’s to create a show. Interrupted on occasion by sharp flashes of images and sound, the gaze is disrupted, but the breath and the rhythm of each day, holds the piece together. The field has a story, past and present, real and imagined, and a phantasmagorical show is in the making. Sounds infiltrate, extracted from the vibrations transmitted through the air. Wind, birds, traffic, voices and other collected sounds appear in the film. There is evidence of distortion through technological manipulation that begins to form a song. This is just the first 30 seconds. There is a long way to go and more data to source. The accumulation of images and sounds are coming together to create an imagined scene, on the one hand not entirely untruthful, but on the other, neither strictly real. The intention is to find the space, not clearly in view but nevertheless there. Time is both slowed down and accelerated, objects appear abruptly then fade slowly, and the airwaves distort but the sounds are true.
Fig. 24 Field Study (2022)
Conclusion
It is the aim of the work to notice the found objects, the living plants and the empty fields. It seeks to revere the earth, to pay homage to its greatness and nurturing aspects. It is the ground we walk on, the surface that gives us stability and the support for the home we shelter in. But it aspires to go deeper than that. Daro Montag suggests “we, descendants from the living earth, are that aspect of the living soil that has taken form—that has pulled itself together and learnt to move around” (2017). The work may look to exclude the body (in the most part) but presence is always there. This is demonstrated sometimes from behind the camera, sometimes in front, through activities of working the land and through the hand drawn line.
Fig. 25 Being in the Landscape
The leftover matter, the found rubbish, is the trace in the landscape of past activity and “the ghost that haunts presence” (Scanlan, 2005:14). Once, encased in the depths of Earth, their moment has arrived, and they are seen, revealing glimpses of knowledge held in deep time. But to raise up and to preserve presents a danger of misrepresentation and takes the object out of context. Baudrillard suggests that instead of implanting life, the means of learning “emphasises their death and uselessness” (1994:7). The magic of phantasmagoria can aspire to bring the objects back to life, but it is not real, or at least it is not what occurred. The question arises in the work, what is real? If “the simulacrum is true” it would appear that the stories are valid as long as they are understood to be an imitation (1994:1). They do not hold the objects up on a pedestal, frozen in time, clinging desperately to a truth that never was. In short the stories live on, evolving, changing and adapting. In this form the work brings the objects (the characters), and the landscape (the setting), into situations that ebb and flow. Technologies which implant light and shadow and propel movement interrupted by moments of hold, simulate the rhythms of life.
The future of the work will continue to build upon Field Study (2022), but also to explore drawing and trace depicted in the screen prints and the most recent drawings shown in Fig. 1 and 26. Unknown and Unfamiliar I & II (2022) illustrate the landscape with a simple horizontal line. Gathering research from Bob Law’s methodology, they suggest an ambiguous landscape, open and fluid. Not wanting to exist only on the surface, the work strives to understand the nature of time and the weaving of stories passed down that illustrate evolving truths and impart deeper understanding. Seeking to draw attention to care and a rhythmic ritualistic relationship it continues to investigate methodologies of learning that hope to support and cohabit rather than inflict and impact.
Fig. 26 Unknown and Familiar II (2022), ink and charcoal on rice paper, 70 x 56 cm
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1 Jacobs, R. (2021) Colláge of found fragments. [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 2 Jacobs, R. (2020) Unknown and Familiar I, ink and charcoal on paper, 34 x 23 cm [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 3 Jacobs, R. (2021) Field Observation I. [Photograph, landscape] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 4 Science Photo Library. (1956) Magic Lantern (1671) [Print] At: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/979665/view/magic-lantern-1671 (Accessed 11/01/2022)
Fig. 5 Jacobs, R. (2021) Example of images of objects. [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig 6 Jacobs, R. (2021) Film of Untitled #1 ( ) [28 digital inkjet prints on gloss photo paper, and brass nails] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 7 Jacobs, R. (2021) Preparatory drawing for Untitled #1 (air) 21 x 29.7 cm [Pencil and dots on graph paper] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 8 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled #1 (air) [65 digital inkjet prints on gloss photo paper and brass pins, 132 x 200 cm] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 9 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled #1 (take down) [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 10 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled #5 ( ) 156 x 95 x 82 cm [Ceramic, plastic, wooden box, metal, terracotta, soil, plants, artificial lights] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 11 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled #1 ( ) in process. [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig.12 White Cube. (2020) Danh Võ, Untitled (2020) 1st–2nd century CE Roman marble torso, nasturtium plants, glass bottle and grow lamps, dimensions variable. [Photograph] At: https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/danh_vo_bermondsey_2020 (Accessed 12/01/2022)
Fig. 13 Jacobs, R. (2021) Detail of Untitled #5 ( ) [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 14 Jacobs, R. (2021) Field Observation II [Photograph, landscape] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 15 Karsten Schubert London. (2022). Bob Law: Mister Paranoia IV 20.11.70 (1970) [Oil on canvas] At: https://www.karstenschubert.com/exhibitions/185/works/image395/ (Accessed 29/01/2022)
Fig. 16. White Cube, Bermondsey. (2019) Anselm Keifer: Der Gordische Knoten, (2018) [Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, wood and metal on canvas, 110 1/4 x 149 5/8 in] At: https://whitecube.viewingrooms.com/artworks/9659-anselm-kiefer-der-gordische-knoten-2018/
Fig. 17. Dean, T. (2001) Tacita Dean:The Green Ray. 16mm film (colour, silent), Duration 2 mins [Photograph, film still] At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/110983 (Accessed 12/01/2022)
Fig. 18 Vimeo post of a film by Anne Imhof ‘One’ (s.d.) [Vimeo, Screenshot] At: https://vimeo.com/498332306 (Accessed 4/01/2022)
Fig. 19 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled, 38 x 28 cm [Screen print and ink on paper] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 20 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled, 38 x 28 cm [Photopolymer print on paper] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 21 Jacobs, R. (2021) Untitled, 28.5 x 38 cm [Intaglio print on paper] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 22 Jacobs, R. (2021) Documenting Nasturtiums [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 23 Beckett, S. (1969) Samuel Beckets script ‘Breath’ [Script] At: https://1960sdaysofrage.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/cglc6suw4ae_zlg.jpg?w=640 (Accessed 4/01/2021)
Fig. 24 Jacobs, R. (2022) Field Study, [stop motion digital film (detail), duration: 30 seconds] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 25 Jacobs, R. (2022) Being in the Landscape [Photograph] In possession of: the author: West Meon
Fig. 26 Jacobs, R. (2022) Unknown and Familiar II, 70 x 56 cm [Ink and charcoal on rice paper] In possession of: the author: West Meon
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