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 of the thesis will be interconnected through the concepts and ideas that make up the overall graduation project. Although, each section of the thesis should be able to stand on it’s own, they should also work collaboratively with their counterparts (all elements of the graduation project). Furthermore these different sections should also conceptually interlock with the final work in the gallery space, as I consider the final exhibited work equal to the thesis. Moreover I consider the evolution of all these parts equivalent in their required attention and evolution. These three parts represent my current artistic attitudes and methodologies for building up work artistically. They cover different research techniques, which I will further develop for the graduation project, and they are as follows:

Part one) An interview and documented conversation with friend Bogdan Banu, logician and mathematical researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Bogdan specialises in set theory and we will be conducting interviews on the creation of contexts as done in his research. For example, if you have a random number, how do 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? The motivation for this section lies in an interest I have for abstracted mathematics. Where mathematics becomes language and tries to at times solve its own linguistic problems. Set theory is particularly invested in the creation of a context in order to create the ‘infinities of infinities’ and the formulas needed to see this through. I see many correlations to my work within these methods of set theory, abstracted but very real numbers with very real relationship. And not just their inner ‘set’ relationships but their context to the outside world, outside of their set, and outside of the mathematician’s knowledge. 


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 methodologies and ways of creating and instigating paths towards ‘discovery’ that are within the book through Daumal’s influences on him as a writer, namely George Gurdjieff and Alfred Jarry. I will focus on how Daumal conceptually sets the journey to Mount Analogue into action (an unknown and hidden mountain). Also included in the section dedicated to Daumal will be dedicated to an idea in the book, that of the Peradam, which Daumal 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 recognised by the guides of Mount Analogue. Therefore, it is the standard of all currency, as gold is for us." I will focus on the peradam as a way of thinking about the interaction with art objects. Objects where the material functions between presence and absence, a material that shifts into the perception of the viewer and then out again. The relation between the peradam and viewer is something e/illusive that makes a request to be discovered. As it made the request to be found by the artist, so the request must be made for the viewer to rediscover it. The sub-section will be particularly invested in the artist-object-viewer relationship and how this can be complicated.

Part three) 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 a formed part of the thesis. It is hoped that this formalisation through the means of short daily essay writing will advocate a distance between myself and the work, allowing me to function as a viewer of the project, map current influences and step back from the direct relationship to the project. The utilisation of a form in which content trickles into also shapes the temporality towards the final work. This section seeks to be added to daily and thus documents the evolution of the project’s outline. Cathryn 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 of the ‘auto’ moving outwards that represents the influence of the fringes of my research that I would like this section to operate. This section can also be connected to section one when thinking of it through set theory, as this section seeks to document what exists outside of the set and outside of presupposed ideas of my work.

These three sections have been considered as possible ways to formalise the processes that I have previously used in past projects. Nearly all projects come from forms of conversation, reading, watching film, playing with material, and trying to have a practice that moves in and out of making. There is something quite important for me about the movement of utilising different forms of influence but more over how a natural fluidity of ideas comes once a project has been instigated. 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 extremely dark nights, bad weather or the combination of the two. Their inner ear tricks them into thinking they are flying under an angle or even upside down. They then correct themselves with false information provided by their bodies and fatally crash the plane. All through misguided information. During a check up, I had a chat to my doctor about this. He told me that the same spatial disorientation was the case with Roger Peterson a 21 year old pilot who suffered from this confusion that was exacerbated due to bad weather conditions. Along with his own death in the February of 1959, 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. Lyrically distilling and tuning the destabilising accident into ‘The Day the Music Died’. I then conducted email conversations with a friend-of-friend of my father, also a 21 year old pilot during the Vietnam War who suffered a similar spatial disorientation incident in 1972. He could not remember the exact date of the event, only that it was a Tuesday, thus giving me the title ‘Tuesday 1972’ . I showed the work, which took the form of text on simple A4 laser paper, detailing his first person account. The sheet was placed on the terrazzo floor of the gallery and directly next to it a vertically standing roll of aircraft grade aluminium was positioned, as the completed work.

I revisited the the work by writing an essay on how I tried to give myself the same disorientating experience, by closing my eyes in a window seat while on a plane banking from a flight between Suvarnabhumi and Schiphol airports, aptly titling the essay ‘Suvarnabhumi and Schiphol.’ This final manifestation of the work and essay would not have been possible without the initial take off, kindly given by my friend’s misfortunate and inauspicious ringing of his inner ears. This is what is interesting for me, how this knock-on progression occurs, how a movement of ideas travels towards a work and particularly how this also occurs for the viewer when viewing and interacting with these accounts and the objects that create them. 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. Letting the objects’ autonomy gain momentum through their networks.

‘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)

This is where I am proposing a methodology of participation, as much as it worthy to create, the repositioning of pre-existing object’s energy is as much a part of discovering this network, altering and moving the flow intrinsic and already contained within the objects. Through collaborative object research we can enter at the ground level and view this network on the networks’ terms not only ours.

The theosophist and writer, Alice Ann Bailey explored the actor’s own metaphysics and her own when she wrote the book 'The Consciousness of the Atom’ afterwards claiming absenteeism in the writing of her book. Materially her hand was hers but the ideas in the book were not, but channeled through an ‘ascended master’ named D.K." later identified by her as Djwal Khul. It is important to note that her writing was deeply influenced by Helena Blavatsky, a key figures in the new age movement of the late 1800’s. Whether it was Baily that influenced by Blavatsky or D.K that is really undecided, as I’m not really sure who is the one that takes influence if you’re the channel to a spirit’s desire to write. I’m not particularly interested in Baily’s writing (she was a racist who preached regularly on the subject of the ‘ladder of evolution’) and god knows I don’t want to spend any more time on those black background-neon-letter-occultist websites, but I find the mechanics of her methodology extremely fascinating. In one stroke she claims so many enviable positions, the writer, the channel, the reader, the material, the insider and the outsider, ultimately letting all those voices consciously speak their individual declarations in the harmony of a single hand. Letting the network of voices speak within a single text.

...To be continued with further description of future work...8.11.12

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

.