Extract - from my research on Hauntology and Art

'Dusk' 2011

oil on canvas 150cm x 90cm

from my Transience series which dealt with

how descending light can trigger our imagination

into stories from myths, legends and fiction.

[Artist as Agent of the Unseen. by Susan Godsiff  - Dissertation extract]

Chapter 1: Introduction

I have always been fascinated with mythology, legends, natural history and the supernatural. Combining this with contemporary art and theory, which also influences my studio practice, was a natural development for my on going practice based research. For this dissertation, my question is, simply: how and why is the unseen such an important subject for contemporary art?

Apart from the tangible aspect of natural history, all of my main interests are connected to the unseen, whether stories, ideas or non-material existence. The supernatural is an area often avoided by academic research as it can not be based on scientific fact or definite knowledge. However, metaphysical philosophy (the branch of philosophy concerned with issues ‘beyond’ the physical) attempts to give answers or thoughts on subjects which have no material substance (for example time, or theological belief). There is, therefore, an interesting link to make between abstract ideas and material reality, and the work of Jacques Derrida will allow me to explain how this might be made in relation to art.

Whilst the subject of this dissertation, ‘Artist as agent for the unseen’, could lead to an almost infinite number of lines of enquiry, for the purpose of this writing I will limit the focus of my research to an examination of the ideas of deconstruction and hauntology as proposed by the Algerian born philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004).  Explaining the significance of Derrida to contemporary culture, Nicholas Royle (in his introduction to Derrida from 2003) states that:

“Derrida’s texts have described and transformed the ways in which we think about the nature of language, speech and writing, life and death, culture, ethics, politics, religion, literature and philosophy. More than any other contemporary writer of thinker Jacques Derrida has defined our time.”  (Royle 2003, p.8)

Given my themes of the supernatural, art and theory, it’s important to acknowledge that philosophy always tried to deal with the metaphysical. The dictionary definition of what metaphysics is is two fold. Metaphysics is both:

the nature of abstract thought of subjects such as existence, causality, or truth; the first principles and ultimate grounds as being, time or substance

And

the incorporeal or supernatural, in that again it is an area relating to something non tangible, or having no physical body. (Dictionary 2011).

At this point it is worth noting that philosophical ideas are actually idioms – words which have a specific meaning in a specific context, but which often can’t easily be translated into another form. When applied to art, philosophical ideas do not always easily ‘translate’. Therefore the application or ‘translation’ of philosophical ideas to art (or the supernatural) should be carried out carefully and with caution, since ideas in one context may not apply ‘smoothly’ to another subject (so metaphysical philosophy may encounter resistance when it’s used to describe a physical or material practice like art).

In this thesis I will be looking at the work of artists using sculpture and two-dimensional mediums whose work actively incorporates the unseen. Given the scope of this dissertation, it’s important to acknowledge the areas and subjects which are beyond the range of my current enquiry, such as ruins and prosopopeia. Ruins act as a crossroads between the past and the present; although they hold many stories of inhabitation by various people, each with their own personal histories and worthy of being addressed as social and cultural history. Prosopopeia occurs when the author gives a voice to inanimate objects, for example when stones, trees or the landscape are given emotions or human features in order to convey a message in poetry, for example when William Wordsworth wrote in the fifth book of The Prelude :

While I was roving up and down alone,

Seeking I knew not what, I chanced to cross

One of those open fields, which, shaped like ears,

Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite's Lake

(Wordsworth, 1888)

Society and culture has always been influenced by the past, in that what has gone on before will have a direct or indirect impact on everything subsequently experienced. In this way the unseen can be described as an historical ‘fact’, mythological ‘story’, or a spiritual or religious belief. In a world where we are constantly being provided with answers by science, why is there an increasing interest, even obsession, with the unexplained, the unseen or the supernatural (seen, for example, in popular culture in the books and films of Harry Potter, Twilight and the television series Being Human which all deal with ordinary people with mythological or supernatural traits and abilities)?

In this context I want to suggest that the unseen, the unsubstantiated fact, or mythological act as a bridge between ‘factual’ history, the supernatural and the metaphysical. Mythology surrounds us; our culture has developed with the stories interwoven into the ‘fairy’ tales of our childhood: stories of dragons, heroes and mysterious beings (Eliot 1994). On a more fundamental level, our landscape in the United Kingdom holds many tales, still to be unraveled and some may never be told, for example Stonehenge or Glastonbury Tor. How many stories or legends surround these places?

As Alexander Eliot suggests:

“Myth is frustrating to the literal mind and inhospitable to the inhabited. Much of it stimulates and disturbs. All of it shades back to hearsay. There is no strictly accurate version of any legend” (Eliot 1994, p.20)

The myths and legends of the landscape are often dismissed as irrelevant superstitions by science because they cannot be easily explained. Art and mythology, however, both require an open mind as they dissolve the borders between reality and perception. They hold your attention with the same intensity as a good magician engaging her audience, committing the observer to return to the story or act in order to find out how ‘it’s done’; and with each return the observer learns something new about themselves.


[ full dissertation is published on Amazon Kindle - you don't need a Kindle to read it!  - search under Artist as Agent for the Unseen - Final year dissertation, should be available from 7.9.2011 ]