Florida State University Libraries
2016
I wonder if the Ground has anything to say? :
The visual aesthetics of knowing
Laura O'Connor
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I wonder if the Ground has anything to say?
The visual aesthetics of knowing
Honors thesis by:
Laura O’Connor
Bloomington
Now that I have been here for a little while,
I can say with confidence that I have never been here before. 1
-Lydia Davis
Following the heavy aromatic cloud of mapacho smoke, I trace my friend
Edinson’s path. Edinson always manages to keep quite a few meters distance ahead of
me; leading with his machete, he climbs through the thick selva with the ease that I
navigate my fenced in backyard. He pauses for moments, allowing me to catch up so that
he can point out trees and animals, which are so thickly embedded within the forest, they
would have been impossible for my untrained eye to discern. As we approach our
destination, the home of a Lupuna tree, the cloud of mapacho smoke becomes thicker and
more intoxicating, swiftly drawing my pace closer to his. Upon arriving at the Lupuna, he
introduces me to the tree and I introduce myself to it, we smoke mapacho cigars, offering
one to the tree. We hang out, enjoying our communion. I am struck by the manner in
which Edinson interacts with his surrounding, his genuinely familiar relationship with the
Earth; he knows it- knows it the way that he knows his mother and his wife, using the
Spanish word conocer.
In the Spanish language there are two words for our one English word know:
conocer and saber. The English word know homogenizes what the Spanish language
separates: the abstract and the concrete. Conocer is used when expressing familiarity with
what is directly perceived, while saber is reserved for expression of familiarity with an
1
Davis, Lydia. Can't and Won't. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
abstract concept.2 Watching Edinson move through and interact with space, paired with
musings about my perception-shaping experience of acquiring Spanish as a second
language, has led me to question the mode by which I know things; how has my language
shaped the way that I interact with space and others? Upon deeper investigation of
technical definitions of knowing- a conundrum within itself- I was struck by its similarity
and relationship to the notion of objectifying.
know
verb
1.
to perceive directly : have direct cognition of 3
ob·jec·ti·fy
verb
1. express (something abstract) in a concrete form.4
As a maker of objects, I am interested in the transference between knowing and
objectifying, as artistic practice essentially aestheticizes and objectifies its subjects
through its inherent nature. As the scope of my linguistic understanding of the world
broadened, it shook the finite foundation by which my perceived reality was built.
Suddenly comfortable definitions I had always accepted as truth began imploding and my
understanding of the familiar became obscured.
Acquisition of language is intrinsically tied to the building of relationships; as I have
built intimate relationships with people around the world, I have become more sensitive
to definitions of self- creation, the effects of objectification of the physical environment,
and the ever shifting matrix existing between the self and ‘the other’.
2
"Saber vs Conocer." Saber vs Conocer. Accessed April 2, 2016.
http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/sabcon.htm.
3
Merriam-Webster. Accessed April 2, 2016. http://www.merriam-webster.com/.
4
Ibid.
Early exploration of these topics within my studio practice manifested themselves in
the forms of objects. As I desire to dissect objectification and the known, it is impossible
to do so without the creation of objects. In 2014 I began my first venture into spatial/
identity projects. I interviewed friends about their favorite place on Earth; the project was
an attempt to get to know places that were so dear to them via storytelling and satellite
image collecting.
Thin Places (Islamabad, Pakistan- Nastaren Abad), Laura O'Connor, 2013
This project, called Thin Places, recreated the setting of each story and explored
notions of objectified space through way of mapping. The mapping of space offers us a
limited definition; it presents us a strictly empirical dimension, which even the advent of
Google Street View cannot circumvent. My longing to know a place so formative to the
people that I love took shape through empirical studies of the land in which they spoke.
Though I desired to know that space, which they held so dear, I knew that I could never
truly know it as they do. In this capacity, the collection of data, and transcription of
information to object form made sense: it gave a flattened definition of the space.
Through manipulation of scale, I was able to bring aspects of the piece into and out of
importance, i.e. the house being larger and therefore more important than the mountains.
I addressed my inability to hold an intimate relationship with these spaces through the
conscious use of model town aesthetics.
Encouraged by these empirical abstractions, I began to investigate space as a matrix.
While working in the Amazonian town of Padre Cocha on a coordinate mapping project
of local water holes, I became fascinated with the duality through which I was processing
space: staying up late listening to geo-centric, place specific oral folklore, and through
the blinking LCD screen of my GPS device. Through both of these experiences, I was
getting to know the land, though in entirely different ways. Just as the Spanish language
differentiates knowing into abstraction and the concrete, I found myself doing the same.
As an Anglo- American working in the Peruvian Amazon, I found this duality to be a
poetic summation of my attempts at building familiarity with the land and community. In
attempts to speak on ‘otherness’, I created matrix-based representations of landscapes
within Peru that are important to me. While I felt close with the land and community, I
could only attempt, through various techniques, to know the land that they have spent
generations living within.
El Río Abajo, Laura O'Connor, 2016
In El Río Abajo, I created the topographical elevations of the riverbanks surrounding
Iquitos and Padre Cocha expressed through ceramic coils. Threaded through the coil, is
steel support wire, which ultimately lets the form take its shape. I strive to honor the
beauty and interaction between raw materials, not only allowing for each to be seen
as it truly is but also, to facilitate the most lucid aesthetic dialogue possible. With this
in mind, I left the steel supports long and protruding from each coil, allowing them to
proclaim their importance.
Blanketed over top the of coil built form is unfired local terra cotta clay. This raw
clay is referential to language, and the inability to express the dynamism and vitality,
which the riverbed truly is. I used the coil structure as a way to help give this language its
form. This object then sits on a raw pinewood table, whose design is meant to subtly
reference modular space. The placement of this object onto handmade furniture is
intended to create a sense of familiarity, while furthering its identity as an object.
No, Laura O’Connor, 2015/ 2016
[s]pace, like the entities or objects within it, is dynamic. That is, all
“entities,” “objects,” or similar units of action and perception must be
considered as units that are engaged in continuous processes. In the same
way, spatial units and spatial relationships are “qualitative” in this same
sense and cannot be considered to be clearly defined, readily quantifiable
and statistic in essence.5
In tandem with the structural landscape sculptures, I was creating large drawings of
emotional and spatial maps within the studio. The map shown in NO is an almost
complete, yet not entirely truthful street map of Padre Cocha. Overlaid on the pen
drawing of local streets, are telephone poles, wires, and radio towers, all of which are
5
Pinxten, Rik, Ingrid Van Dooren, and Frank Harvey. Anthropology of Space: Explorations into the
Natural Philosophy and Semantics of the Navajo. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
pg. 168
dashed by a gauche through line, whose end is marked by an iPhone emoji dropped pin.
Placed in front of this drawing is an amorphous sculpture mounted on a wooden shelf.
The map was created as a way for me to question the dimensionality of my
experience of the space, while the overlaying of communication system symbolism
references language as well as a desire to connect and share. Radio towers take shape in
the 3rd dimension; its 2 dimensional self is represented in pen behind it, like a shadow.
This pulling into space was my first attempt at showing the process of translation from
one mode of expression to the other. How do the forms reference one another, yet each
have qualities that the other could never have? How do different modes of representation
articulate different aspects of the same thing?
The sculpture placed in front of the drawing represents an abstraction of land. The
bottom half which is made of organic patterns, represents the subterranean, while the
mound and coil structure on the top half reference habitable space. The habitable space is
then covered in black glaze, which is intended to represent the homogenizing nature of
language; the two components of the landscape then become one under the blanket of
language.
“I wonder if the Ground has anything to say? I wonder if the ground is listening to what
is said?”
-Young Chief, of the Cayuses tribe
(upon signing over their lands to the U.S. government, in 1855)6
6
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1996.
pg. 181
Tell me where (Where are you? Where are we going?), Laura O’Connor, 2016
The above-mentioned projects laid the conceptual and aesthetic foundation for my
thesis work, Tell me where (Where are you? Where are we going?), which explores
notions of knowing and objectification of abstract concepts and living entities through
such modes as object making, mapping, and furniture construction.
The three conversing tower sculptures placed in front of the wall-mounted work are
made of ceramic, gold luster, and wood. The ceramic sculptures resting atop the wooden
towers represent land through two modes: one mode demonstrates land through an
empirical lens, notating strata, topography, and resource wealth, while the second mode
represents the structure of negative space and the unattainable nature of defining a living
entity through representation. I then placed these ceramic objects atop wooden towers,
which not only reference Amazonian architecture in their form, but also elevate the
objects from the ground and reference the shape of radio towers, whose form is
represented multiple times throughout the work.
The radio tower is an important symbol used throughout the work, it’s not only a
visual symbol for communication, but the radio tower itself utilizes and objectifies
seemingly negative space as a medium for connection and language. The radio tower
essentially functions in similar capacities as the western mode, harnessing and exploiting
what is otherwise ineffable to indigenous communities, such as land. These concepts are
all woven seamless together by the indispensible role of language.
Separated from this group of towers, but visually homogenous, is another empirically
demonstrated landmass which has been placed on a low hanging shelf. This landmass,
with its notated strata, topography, and glimmering gold rocks, represents land
objectively, while its placement on a shelf further articulates its identity as an object. The
shelf that this object sits on is made of sustainably sourced pinewood, which is left raw.
Its design is simple; its squared matrix embellishments are referential to the structure of
negative space.
The ceramic sculpture that sits on the shelf is then echoed in the first of three
drawings, playing with the fluidity of the concrete and abstract through its representation
as a tangible object and then as a 2 dimensional drawing. The concept of oscillation
between the concrete and abstract is further explored within the same panel, this time
using the radio tower as its subject. The radio tower is represented in three modes, a flat 2
dimensional drawing, cut fabric, and ceramic object presented on a small shelf. While
each of these is meant to represent the same object, they do so in different modes, using
different language, and articulating different aspects of the towers identity.
Tell me where (Where are you? Where are we going?), detail, Laura O’Connor, 2016
Each of the panels is interconnected by strings that allude to power lines, creating
a linear viewing approach and also speaking on the concept of communication. The
drawings on all three panels are done in a diagrammed style, constructing a sense of
space through the use of axes. This created space is then intentionally disturbed by the
introduction of elements that do not follow the rules of space that were previously
established. This is done to intentionally demonstrate the existence of objects in other,
seemingly incorrect, dimensions of existence.
Each of these drawings uses my life as their subject, essentially objectifying
myself in the same way that I have objectified the living entity of earth. The first drawing
is a map of the different places that I consider to be home, street maps of different
locations are butted up against one another, creating a false map of a now imaginary
place but, whose components are true. The second drawing is of the interior of my room,
where I represent myself as a mattress leaned against the wall, confusing my sense of self
with that of an inanimate object, all while further questioning objectivity through
depictions of shelves, and floor tiles. The final panel is a map of my interior dialogue, my
abstracted thoughts about place, where I should be, and where people are located in
reference to me.
A cone, a box, and a thin cylinder are drawn on a small piece of paper, which
hangs alone on the left hand wall of the installation space. This is intended to be a nonfunction key to the drawings.
These three shapes are repeated throughout each panel and have particular
meanings; the cone represents listening as well as simultaneous magnification and
diminishing. The box is symbolic of containment, and the thin cylinder is symbolic of
balance. These meanings are intentionally excluded from the key, so as to leave the
nature of the maps ambiguous.
The amalgamation of this thesis project, my musings regarding the ability to
know, to objectify, and the role of language, has shown me the importance of plurality of
expression in a world that attempts to define expansive concepts through singular and
finite means. In this way, I have found mixed media to function in similar capacities as
multilingualism, and I plan on expounding upon it as my chosen mode of production for
future bodies of work.
Ultimately this thesis project feels like a beginning, rather than an end; the
multifaceted nature of this installation has left my mind whirling with ideas regarding
concepts of expansiveness, the ineffable, and the role of language as an identifier of self
or object-hood. As I continue to move through my work, I intend to apply concepts of
spatial and self-abstraction that my language learning experience has triggered, while
simultaneously introducing elements of humor and anthropomorphization of objects. Just
as Edinson and I can converse and hangout with a tree, smoking cigars like friends; I
hope to establish modes in which myself and the viewer can hold similar relationships
with art objects.
Mesa
Muchas veces la mesa sueña con haber sido un animal.
Pero si hubiera sido un animal no sería una mesa.
Si hubiera sido un animal se habría echado a correr
/ como los demás
cuando llegaron las motosierras a llevarse los árboles
/ que iban a ser mesas
En la casa una mujer viene todas las noches
y le pasa un trapo tibio por el lomo como si fuera un animal.
Con sus cuarto patas la mesa podría irse de casa.
Pero piensa en las sillas que la rodean y un animal no abandonaría
/ a sus hijos.
Lo que más le gusta a la mesa es que la mujer le haga cosquillas
mientras recoge las migajas de pan que dejan los niños.7
-Juan Carlos Galeano
7
Galeano, Juan Carlos. La Lluvia Se Emociona Con Los Aplausos. Lima: Areángel San Miguel, 2015.
Bibliography
Davis, Lydia. Can't and Won't. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
"Saber vs Conocer." Saber vs Conocer. Accessed April 2, 2016.
http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/sabcon.htm.
Merriam-Webster. Accessed April 2, 2016. http://www.merriam-webster.com/.
Pinxten, Rik, Ingrid Van Dooren, and Frank Harvey. Anthropology of Space:
Explorations into the Natural Philosophy and Semantics of the Navajo. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. pg. 168
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-thanhuman World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996. pg. 181
Galeano, Juan Carlos. La Lluvia Se Emociona Con Los Aplausos. Lima: Areángel San
Miguel, 2015.
Table
The table often dreams of having been an animal.
But if she had been an animal, she would not be a table.
If she had been an animal, she would have run away like
the others
when the chainsaws came to take the trees that would
become tables.
In the house a woman comes every night
and rubs a warm rag over the tableÕs haunches as if she were
an animal.
With her four legs, the table could leave the house.
But she thinks about the chairs surrounding her,
and an animal would not abandon her family.
What the table likes best is for the woman to tickle her
as she gathers the breadcrumbs left behind by the children.
!