voice and narrative, Siún

The first piece pictured (badly) above is called Guessing and begins with the beauty of Helen of Troy:

Old leaders of the Trojans on the tower,
And watching Helen as she climbed the stair
In undertones they said to one another:
‘We cannot rage at her, it is no wonder
That Trojans and Achaeans under arms
Should for so long have borne the pains of war
For one like this.’
‘Unearthliness. A goddess
The woman is to look at.’

Homer, The Iliad, Book III, 147-155

The text of Guessing is a kind of spiral (with 4 cycles), reflecting anew on the idea that ‘we make meaning’ and echoing reflections upon the nature of Helen’s beauty. The ideas explored in the four cycles are:
That there is no absolute foundation for meaning

That the meanings we make (even the objective ones) are always situated, always embody a perspective and a set of
interests

That the actual is fragile and always open to being remade

That the endlessness of weaving and unweaving meaning is a promise rather than a curse.


This piece was made for an exhibition that looked at the relationship between art and science, and was made in response to an article that I had written previously entitled ‘An Exploration of How Objectivity is Practiced in Art’, published in an MIT journal, Leonardo: The Journal of International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology.

While I love its modes of enquiry I have a difficulty with how voice is exercised in ‘research’ and I have a desire to see what happens when some of art’s processes are played out through its structures. So, my work is a research process that through its manifestation questions the authoritative voice of research; that seeks to hold open the question of meaning rather than come to some, even temporarily held, position. The work tries to reinstate that accident of juxtaposition and the subjectivity of voice and perspective at the heart of a careful research process. Not only in what it says but also in how it attempts to say it.

The second piece is a from A Tale of Bread which I describe briefly in the Triangle-Project blog.

Welcome

The narrative sub-theme is proposed as a meeting point – one way of making contact with triptych people who share your interests so that you can begin to figure out a form of exchange and ‘output’ that will serve your interests (as individuals and as a group of people with a common focus).

To get things started you might make a posting that captures the nature of your interest in narrative.