Jason Hendrik Hansma

Two thousand years under the light of the star, which we call the Sun. And under it, are running clouds, which hide the light of the sky.

The thesis will divide into three parts, both thematically and formally. All three parts will be interconnected through the concepts of the project. Although, each part should be able to stand on it’s own, whilst work collaboratively with its counterparts. Namely these different sections but also the final work in the gallery space should be considered equal to these writings. These parts will represent my three main attitudes and current methodologies for building up work artistically. They cover different techniques, which I will further develop,

and they are as follows;

Part one) Will be an interview with friend Bogdan Banu, lecturer at the University of Amsterdam in mathematical research and specifically on set theory. We will be conducting interviews regarding the creating of contexts in mathematics. For example, if you have a random number, how can you create the formula to make that number an answer to a question? How do you formulate a question when you already have the answer in your hands?

Part two) An essay on Rene Daumal and specifically on the book Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing. In the essay I will flesh out ideas, on artistic methods and ‘discovery’ that is within the book through Daumal’s influences as a writer. Specifically I will focus on creating the environment for the start of a journey in which exploration can begin. Also included in this writing will be the idea of the Peradam, which Daumal uses in the book and describes as “…the word may mean “Adam’s stone,” having some secret and profound connection to the original nature of man. The clarity of this stone is so great and its index of refraction so close to that of air that, despite the crystal’s great density, the unaccustomed eye hardly perceives it. But to anyone who seeks it with sincere desire and true need, it reveals itself by its sudden sparkle, like that of dewdrops. The peradam is the only substance, the only material object whose value is recognized by the guides of Mount Analogue. Therefore, it is the standard of all currency, as gold is for us."

The idea of the peradam is particularly interesting when thought of as art objects. As something illusive that makes a request to be discovered. As it had to be found by the finder, so the viewer must rediscover it.

Part three) Will be part essay, part auto-ethnographic account of my work leading up to the graduation-show. Whilst working on the above two sections, I will maintain a ‘diary-esque’ account of the tangents and movements of the project, implementing the research methodologies being dug up through the previous two sections. I have kept a detailed diary for the past few years, but this will now fit within the forms and processes that I am planning to set up before the project begins. This will advocate a distance between myself and the work, allowing me to function as a viewer to the projects. This will avoid a diary tone to this section, rather I hope that this will be a perpetuating research document. Carolyn Ellis defines auto-ethnography as the “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political”. (Ellis 2004) It is within this light that I would like this section to function.

These three sections have been considered as possible ways to formalize the processes that I have previously used in past projects. Nearly all projects come from forms of conversation, reading, watching film, and trying to have a practice that moves in and out of making.

There is something quite important about this movement. For example a work I showed in 2010 titled Tuesday 1972 came from a discussion I had with a friend, who after a few long haul flights suffered tinnitus. It not only gave him a constant ringing in his ear, it was also constantly throwing off his balance. I did some further reading and discovered that a similar experience happens to pilots during night flights, when their inner ear tricks them into thinking they are flying upside down. They then correct themselves with false information and fatally crash the plane.

During a check up, I had a chat to my doctor about this, and he told me that this was the case with Roger Peterson a pilot who suffered from this disorientation that was exacerbated due to bad weather conditions. Along with his own death, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were among the fatalities. The incident inspiring Don McLean to write American pie, distilling the disorientation and accident to ‘The Day the Music Died’

I then conducted email conversation with a friend of friend of my father who was a pilot during the Vietnam war who suffered a spatial disorientation incident in 1972, but could not remember the exact date only that it was a Tuesday. Thus giving me the title ‘Tuesday 1972’ . After showing the work I developed the idea further by writing an essay on how I tried to give myself the same experience, by closing my eyes while a plane was banking from a flight between Suvarnabhumi and Schiphol, aptly titled ‘Suvarnabhumi and Schiphol airports.’ This final manifestation of the work would not have been possible without the initial launch, kindly given by my friend’s misfortunate ringing of his ears.

This is what is interesting, how this progression occurs, and how this also occurs for the viewer. In ‘Reassembling the Social' Bruno Latour makes the claim that we must show the plurality of worlds around us and begin to observe and map these meta-physical pluralism. Rather than attempting to make an object speak the way you want it to speak, we must allow their voices to bubble up. ‘If we call metaphysics the discipline . . . that purports to define the basic structure of the world, then empirical metaphysics is what the controversies over agencies lead to since they ceaselessly populate the world with new drives and, as ceaselessly, contest the existence of others. The question then becomes how to explore the actors' own metaphysics’ Latour 2005 The theosophist Alice Bailey did this when she wrote the book 'The Consciousness of the Atom’ apparently not written by her, but channeled through an ‘ascended master’ named D.K.", later identified as Djwal Khul. I’m not particularly interested in her writing and god knows I don’t want to spend any more time on those black background-neon-letter-occultist websites, but I find her methodology extremely fascinating. In one stroke she is claiming so many enviable positions, both of the writer, the channel, the reader, the insider and the outsider, ultimately letting all those voices speak.

References;

Harman, G 2009, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, Re.Press, Melbourne.

Baily, A 1981, Consciousness of the Atom , Lucis Press Ltd, New York.

Daumal, R 2012, Pataphysical Essays , Wakefield Press, Boston.

Ferric Rosenblatt, K 1999, Rene Daumal: The Life and Work of a Mystic Guide, State University of New York Press, New York.

Potter, M 2004, Set Theory and Its Philosophy: A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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There is nothing that falls and is forgotten. When an object falls, energy is transferred to the floor and a repositioned framework is created. A constantly shifting, perpetuating and unbroken transference morphing into new forms where one only need observe, participate and join in the movement.

Deciding to participate in movement, rather than believing in the creation of energy, is making and this is where it all begins.

It is important to partake and negotiate with this repositioning energy. By signing the contract, we agree to assist and collaborate with the materials’ inevitable nature. This participation must be what people speak about when they refer to the phrase ‘having a practice’. To regularly work with this movement and have a dependence on the material is recognizing and allowing its request to speak.

With the most recent work ‘Of meteorites and pearls’ there was this kind of energy to the revealing of the work. It followed a natural and continual flow, which felt like collaboration with material rather than a process of making work from the ground up.

Given a meteorite in 2009 by a geologist friend of mine. I decided that it would go in my suitcase when I moved to a studio overseas. I took it to different studios with no direct intention to link it to a work. This lack of intention transferred the meteorite into a personal object that lived with me. Suffice to say, without a good reason it was out of bounds to be used.

This transference of intention changed the object into something similar to personal photographs, as they for me exist within their own realm. In fact for a number of months it was kept next to personal photographs on a windowsill of my studio, the sky the background from where the rock once came.

Around this time I re-read Shakespeare’s Tempest (I.2) and in particular the following lines which Ariel sings.

Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange.

I became interested in a movement of diving or dipping your head under the surface of the water to observe an underwater space. The exception being that my eyes be made of the same material as what you were viewing, such as pearls. If you take into account that our eyes are made of 50 percent water it makes this theory of mine 50 percent possible and thus half full.

I’ll have to go on a tangent here to explain the second part of the work and my reasons for showing the meteorite. I’ll be doing this through a work that I made in 2010.

The work is titled ‘Tuesday 1972’ and came from an interview that I held with a pilot. We discussed his experience of spatial disorientation on the human body. The term in aviation is where the pilot cannot differentiate between up and down and thus makes a fatal mistake of flying the plane in response to misguided senses. This is because the Vestibular system within the ear confuses the perception of balance in the body and overrides all other senses. Our bodies find it hard to ignore the sensation of being upside down. We are quicker to ignore the sight from our eyes, as it so often tricks us anyway. Our body then relies on the inner ear as a truth.

The work existed as a printed text on standard printing paper and was displayed on the ground (the horizon) and was shown with a rolled up sheet of aircraft grade aluminum. This work is very important for me as I became aware of the functional display of my work. Aesthetics rearticulated the work, something that was much more solid then previous reasons for selecting certain modes of display.

When I was researching the phenomena of spatial disorientation I came across the female Japanese pearl divers who used to dive off the coast of Darwin, Australia. Without diving tanks they would free dive to find the pearl producing Pinctada Maxima oyster. It was often in the murky waters of a moving current that they would find a similar disorientation experienced by the pilot years later over the jungles of Vietnam. This was a leading cause of drowning for these women, as without a reference point it is difficult to find the surface.

To break the viscous barrier of water without knowing the location makes that thin layer all the more impossible to penetrate.

To counteract the unfortunate situation of drowning they wore white cotton head-scarfs embroidered with a star atop their head. It was this discovery that made me realize the complicated relationship that a pearl and a meteorite had together.

Both are from two extremes, the lowest and the highest. If one was to loose orientation from either the bottom or the top, you could use the reference point to find yourself again within a center. The center is a safe and buoyant space, like seeing the sun when swimming in a lake with bad visibility.

To escape the confusion of the water head for the star, to escape the confusion above the clouds head for the pearl.

By taking these two elements and linking them together it creates a vertical theater. Characters can be introduced to speak their voice and also change the fundamental components through their presence. This was done by introducing lilies in the middle of the vertical theater. A flower that is historically connected to the gods, gods from both above and below. This choice also provided a logical step for display. When showing flowers they are best displayed on a plant or flower table, and this became the main form of the work.

Lilies also provided a point of departure to explore time within the work, as they bloom a few days after they are put in water.

Ultimately they are dependent on the amount of sunlight in the exhibition space, which determines when they will open.

To further complicate the relationship of these elements, different frequencies of time were introduced into the work. Different speeds were to occur at once within the work. This was done through the introduction of framed texts lent on a wall. The text articulated through letter format the role that the pearl and the meteorite had in the work as ambassadors of the two extremes. This text is integral as it also changed the time for the work to be processed. If one would choose to read it, they enter into a written flow, different to the flow of viewing objects. This flow, the same flow used to create the work, would thus determine the viewing of the work. With different paths for viewing the relationships of the objects, there should also be options for the multiplicities of time within these objects,

That is

The time taken to read the text The time taken to make the pearl The time taken for the meteorite’s discovery The time taken for the flowers to bloom

from

the time taken for the sunlight to reach this space.

and to

find

the pearl

.