Fragments of a Method
2020-2023
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Fragments of a Method
Barely traced – the true drawing escapes. Rends the limit. Snorts. Like the world,…[1]
For Cixous the process of drawing and writing has no end, other than time. It is a beforehand, full of potency and impotency. Energetic and uncontrolled, it follows error without fear. In this lies a promise of truth.
Between 2020 and 2023 I drew and described 5,279 things from my studio, guided by three rules: 1) embrace mistakes, 2) avoid new purchases, 3) bypass value judgements and quantifiable information. The outcome (700 pages of drawing in 19 handmade books, and 1531 unique descriptions) is both a durational drawing project and analogue dataset. The method these emerge from is one of challenging habitual thinking.
The things depicted are (for the most part) mundane: scraps of wood, unfinished experiments, buttons, plastic bags, and assorted strange things (a dead moth, an apple core, a crash barrier). These were leftover, found, donated and accumulated over many years, for possible use in future artworks. They are drawn in books assembled from cast-off and repurposed paper. The loose pages were stitched together before drawing to mitigate the temptation to discard mistakes, as tearing out a page would cause a book to disintegrate.
My drawings are gestural, created with fast-drawing and blind-drawing techniques which are typically used as warm-ups and often produce unexpected results. Some descriptions are perfunctory whilst others note histories, likenesses, and textures. In these language is used as a drawing tool, capturing observations and responses quickly and (importantly) leaving out some information.
When I began this project I was moving studio and pondering whether to do a clear-out. I found a note-to-self written three years earlier, "possible project: draw each thing in the room". I wondered what might be learned from paying equal attention to each thing in a space. Although the outcome is an analogue dataset, it resists accuracy, uniformity and completeness – qualities often associated with “good” data. The work suggests that understanding (whether through drawing, language or data) is a creative act. It is porous, layered and always in progress.
[1] Cixous, H. (1998, p.17). Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner’s taking off. In Stigmata: Escaping texts (pp. 16-29). New York: Routledge.
Notes:
'Fragments of a Method' is the analogue presentation of this drawing project. For the digital iteration see BitParts