invitation

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After 28 days of Surface Research at the Rietveld Academy it's a opportunity to show the results in a small, tiny exhibition. So, in the new year 2010 on the seventh of January the works are exhibited in the pavilion from 12:30 till 21:00 hours. Be welcome, the researcher is going to be there, to dialogue about the drawings.
Cordialement, Henri Jacobs.

repetition

civilisation

résumé

9. Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny, content. (Willem de Kooning)



8. Residues after erasing the texts of Sade, Cioran and Nietzsche.



7. To be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. (Friedrich Nietzsche)



6. After scratching the texts of Sade and Cioran.



5. Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact. (Emile Cioran)



4. After scratching the text of Sade.



3. In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction. (Marquis de Sade)



2. Scratched title.



1. Title.

a plan & an idea

A question : "what makes somebody starting drawing?". Is it because there is a slide, a dia-positive of an image, in the head? And the drawer projects it with an inner light through the lenses of the eyes on paper? So the hand can follow the projected lines, the contours of the enclosed area's, to remain the necessary white reservoirs of clean paper? Is drawing giving birth to an idea or is it executing a plan? Both, it isn't or - or, it's and - and.
The first drawing ever could it have been a single line drawn with charcoal? Or was it the print of a hand covered with mud? Or the negative of that hand by using a spray of mud over the hand on a stone surface. So, was it a single line of charcoal, the print of a hand, the left over of a hand? Or could the first drawing been made by five fingertips dipped in mud to draw five short lines...
I suppose there wasn't any idea or plan. The acting person didn't foresee what she was doing, perhaps she was surprised. As in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001 a space odyssey" monkey's where surprised while playing to discover a bone could be a weapon to hit with (civilisation was born). So, being surprised and amazed by making traces by hand. From than drawing is going to develop fast, draughtsmen discover and develop to draw after imitation of reality by drawing animals. Drawing is mimesis, imitation, a scheme, a depict or treat in a mannered and non realistic style.
The question was the difference between plan & idea, in order to start drawing.
PLAN : an intention or decision about what one is going to do.
IDEA : a concept, mental impression, opinion, a belief or a feeling that something is probable or possible.
The surface research project which is trying to work systematically on palimpsest drawings started not as an idea but started as a plan to execute. Perhaps a little, small idea is in it, some content that can be interpret. But that content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's tiny -, very tiny, content.

first film

(note : perhaps you have to press the space bar to start the film)

This first video film, of about 10 minutes, on erasing and drawing a text wants to show the making of a layered palimpsest. The text which is going to be white-out is a quote from Cioran : "Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact". A new layer of text is going to be constructed on the erased Cioran quote : (...) to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. This Nietzsche citation is also going to be white-out. At the end this palimpsest keeps over the residues of circle parts from the different letters.
Filming drawing and making a montage which is not to tedious is "autre chose" than drawing itself. Even though drawing is a slow process, filming it can show the act itself in a efficient and not too boring way. Perhaps it is a adequate manner to research drawing. Soon I am going to film drawing with a subject that is not so neatly constructed as these palimpsests. I want to try to evoke in the most simple way what drawing can be. I want to evoke how the simple act of drawing is working.

residues of a multi layered palimpsest

Three stages of the same palimpsest drawing. It is a plan to execute, the decision was to keep the parts of the letters which consists of parts of a circle. The result doesn't matter, if the drawing is beautiful, nice, good or interesting doesn't mean that much. The illusion of space by the rewritten black lines with white ink, the remains of words, sentences, texts with (heavy) content that is now forming it's own composition by accident...
Starting with a plan, with a decision such as wanting to draw a grid. Longing to draw a grid which is already the thousandth grid drawn by me. Choosing a text which has to fit in the grid, and afterwards wanting to erase the texts by scratching it. It is part of a all over plan, of an intention, of decisions made on forehand. It are conditions and by working with those conditions you can leave them, I can free myself from the boundaries created by myself because I don't have any idea nor theme to work with. Empty as a bottle. Creating conditions that can deliver unforeseen results.

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Rietveld Research Residency: the attached logo of my Surface Research project on Rietveld's pavilion . To promote or make visible through this blog to the students and tutors of the academy what that freak is doing all the time is his cube of glass. As a fish in the water of a fish bowl the researcher HJ is drawing and concentrating... Now I am filming the drawing process, trying to get closer to the act of what drawing is or how it happens. To compose the shots in a interesting way makes the film hopefully not too boring. For me it is quite exiting, but I am too close to the subject to make a judgement if it's interesting or not. Soon I hope to show a first version of filming drawing on this blog.

autumn

Rietveld's pavilion at 5:00 PM.

residue of a double layered palimpsest

In the drawing the text is erased not by scratching like it should be done in a proper palimpsest. But wiped out with white ink. There's left a residue of the circle parts of the words. Trying to go further with three "heavy" texts, to hide them in a drawing which is ornamental and decorative.

lust, becoming & destruction

A new layer of text, a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche is drawn on the scratched texts of Emile Cioran and Marquis De Sade. Should they agree of being in good company? The forcefield in the A4 sheet of Epson photo paper through the 3 different texts is becoming more interesting. Nietzsche's text is a quote found in his book Ecce Homo : (...) to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. It is written on the scratched text of Cioran : "Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact". Written on the scratched-out quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction". Written on the title of this research project "Surface Research".



The detail shows the damaged flat surface of the paper, which in certain light fall looks like porcelain. Questions, what questions are coming up? To compare the palimpsest drawing with the surface of battlefields of World War I what are the similarities and differences? Often making or creating things, objects, goods, articles of art or design is to add material. Creating is adding stuff on itself, on surfaces or mixing it, so it's possible to assemble it and to build or construct pieces for a whole. The opposite is so very interesting because we ignore it, we forget it, we don't want to deal with it.
Bon, this evening I want to read the essay "a walk for a walk's sake" by Norman Bryson, perhaps tomorrow I can be clear how to continue.

landscape & palimpsest

Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in January 1916.



Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in October 1916.



Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in 1917. After total destruction.



Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, seen on ground level after the total destruction.
The violent destruction during wartime changes the surface of the landscape as if it was scratched like the palimpsests are showing here before. After a heavily attack troops were digging themselves new trenches and so rewrote new lines in the surface of the soil.



It is quite a different way of looking at the topic of the palimpsest. But I would like to compare the making of palimpsests with the human writing in the ever changing landscapes. Most special with the landscapes whom changed under enormous violence. Passchendale and Ypres in Belgium, Verdun and Douaumont in north - east of France during the first world war 1914 - 1918. Villages, houses, farms, churches, buildings were totally destroyed, as in entropy, done in a short time and with tons of explosives, the surface of the earth was rewritten. What remained were traces, holes and craters of what once were 3 dimensional buildings.
Is the quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction" and looking at the photo's of the demolished landscapes changing the perspective how to deal with civilisation, culture or creation? I don't know, difficult question, stupid answer, far away topic. Perhaps in future drawings traces and residues sneak in of the digging and damaging in the surface-soil.

artist at work

Artist at work.
Artist at research work.
Artist at work research.
Artist work at research.
Artist research at work.
Research artist at work.
Research work at artist.
Research at work artist.
Research at artist work.
Work research at artist.
Work artist at research.
Work at research artist.
Work at artist research.
At research artist work.
At artist research work.
At work research artist.

surface 04

Surface means it's flat, it's two / 2 / dimensional. It hasn't any depth. A sheet of paper has no depth. An illusion of depth on a sheet of paper has no real depth, no surface to dig in. Same with a canvas, a stretched canvas has no depth, is a two dimensional surface and has two sides. It is a façade, like walls in buildings. The stretched canvas, the painting, is mostly hanging on a wall, it even can be a wall.
A film projection on a screen is 2 dimensional. A light-source projects the depth, the illusion, the narrative. Which opens possible wide horizons but it stays flat. We want to get beyond the surface? Beyond the boundary of the 2 dimensional? We want to get beyond the veil? Like in Plato's cave we want to escape from the boring and already to long known same old wisdoms.

flatland II

"In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate.

Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle."

surface research logo

bientôt ...

palimpsest scratching

scratch
erase
delete
wipe out
undo
damage
destroy

flatland

"I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows--only hard with luminous edges--and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things."

Flatland
by Edwin A. Abbott
1884

pages from sketchbook

Drawing : to leave traces on the surface of the paper. No necessity of having an idea. Draw and erase. To erase the yet drawn leaves also traces. To draw and to erase. To succeed and to fail. Failure is more important, or better: is more interesting, when you fail there is more to do. You can go on. You don't know yet. You're trying to figure out, searching, thinking, wondering. Drawing and failing is like thinking. While drawing concentration works best.
Soon there will be more...

zoeken

creation & destruction III

By scratching the texts the surface of the sheet of paper becomes like a little field, a small vegetable garden where the soil has been dug. Anyway it isn't a battlefield, it's too neatly arranged. These palimpsests are like small vegetable gardens in between the seasons with some forcefields of text citations.

palimpsest with 3 layers

detail of the drawing below



"Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact" (Emile Cioran, 1911 - 1995). Written on the quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction". Written on the title of this research project "Surface Research".



Archimedes Palimpsest

ideas

Do you need an idea to start drawing or painting? Nice question, stupid answer. Therefore... Perhaps the answer can be : "no, you don't need an idea to start drawing or painting". For sure you don't need a big or huge idea, already a small, tiny, little and simple idea can be enough. About for instance the materials so close to the draughtsman, like the sheet of white paper. The difficult part is not to get an idea but to continue with a simple idea into the depths of the unknown, in opposite of getting bored already after half an hour. To continue with a simple idea means you have to explore it by making variations and failure as much as possible.
Emile Cioran (1911 - 1995): "What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough".

creation & destruction II

detail of the drawing below



The quote of marquis De Sade "in actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction" scratched out. Two layers of text and construction grids are scratched out but still visible by the traces left behind.
By drawing with ruler, compasses and technical drawing pen, I do not want to deal with how to draw a good line. Adequate and efficient lines, rather drawn by a constructor or architect than an artist.
Enfin we all will be freed from our suffering, even the hedonists.

palimpsest drawings

Construction of palimpsests by drawing and erasing the grid and texts again & again. Tomorrow the palimpsest with two layers of text will be scratched off. Than another palimpsest has to be drawn by starting from the beginning. It will probably take two days to draw a three text layered palimpsest.

surface 04

blocked window by a surface of plaited canvas