invitation

advertisement Surface Research Results

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.