REFLECTION: The ‘So What Factor’
IN RESPONSE TO A CRITIQUE OF MY CURRENT WORK ON 2 NOVEMBER 2021
What does it mean when the phrase ‘so what factor’ is brought up during a critique of my work? Is it a positive observation or a negative one. In this blog I will attempt to unpick the meaning of this remark in the context of a Fine Art platform to better understand my practice and how it could be perceived.
The field appears empty. There is a faint view of trees in the distance but apart from that there are no obvious signs of life, no animals, crops nor people. It is a moment in time between harvest and sowing. It appears as if nothing is happening, a moment of pause, of waiting. Could this image be described as a ‘so what’ period in time. Does there need to be an interruption or a disturbance to provide the viewer with a way to relate to the image. There is in fact a presence behind the camera in the form of the photographer, which is me, but it gives no clue to its form or identity. Only the potential viewpoint and a probable position in relation to the landscape is suggested.
Untitled #3 (posted), 2021, black and white digital print and ink on Chinese rice paper
Untitled #3 (posted) is a series of works which experiment with placement of presence in space. The field is no longer empty. Traces of nails suggest figures or objects in the landscape, hovering and ephemeral. Interrupting the space it changes the image significantly and eliminates the ‘so what’ factor. It is an act of interference and connects directly to the hand through processes of drawing. The ghostliness of the drawing, contingent with the black and white nature of the photograph may suggest a moment captured from a time past. Leaving a trace or an impression, it hints at evidence of life associated with the land, an interference in the landscape, not whole but real and present.
Tacita Dean, The Green Ray (2001), 16mm film, colour, silent. Duration: 2 mins
If the traces were absent, the possibilities of occupancy would be entirely imagined, if at all. But Tacita Dean describes the act of looking as an event in itself. The outcome from her quest to capture the illusive green ray in her film became “about faith and belief in what you see.“ Not visible to the naked eye, nor even digital film, it was only when she returned to her studio after filming the setting sun in Madagascar that it revealed to her in one single frame a clear sight of the fleeting green ray. Said to flash briefly in the moment before the sun disappears behind the horizon, the materiality of analogue film was able to record and reveal the moment. Regarded as being of mythological illusiveness, “looking for the green ray became about the act of looking” and about the “very fabric, material and manufacture of film itself.” (Tacita Dean)
My practice has revealed that even though there does not appear to be signs of presence in the landscape there is in fact an abundance of evidence just beneath the surface. Objects and fragments, left by generations of use and habitation have worked their way into the soil. 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 the dark subterranean realm just beneath our feet. Hidden from view, not captured in my photograph of the empty field, (although arguably hinted at by the turned soil), the signs of life are not explicit to the viewer. Does the viewer yearn to identify with a likeness in their own image? Does the empty field feel threatening? Unaccommodating? Perhaps. It is our ego that requires validation of presence but I am suggesting that the uncertainty of not knowing, although perhaps unsettling, provides a greater scope of sensation and experience that stating the obvious might miss. The ‘so what’ factor is anything but so what.
