The intention with this blog is to create paper's geo-story as well as pointing at paper as a medium in the 21st century.
A Metaphysical Approach to Paper indicates a hypothetical, mental, ethereal, imperceptible, spiritual approach. It is not about how to make............ but raising the questions: what are they doing the people bending over vats with water and pulp and why are they doing this? Imagine someone viewing ark making for the first time. The viewer would see the maker bending over a vat, holding a mould and deckle with two hands, dipping the mould into a vat of water and floating fibres, water running through a mesh like a small cascade, seeing an organic flat substance appear on the surface of the mould. Our viewer might ask: what is this person doing and why is she doing it?
The maker circles in water, doing circular movements, folding and unfolding nature. The repetition of circling is mirrored in nature, in plant life, think about tree rings, in wave formations, in prayers and in meditation. The answer my be: the maker lifts new surfaces of earth, the maker is creating a web.
In Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, a surface produced in the above described way is named an ark. In Finnish an arkki, in English a sheet, in French a feuille, in German a blatt, in Spanish a hoja, in Dutch a vel. Only in the Scandinavian language is the word ark used to describe the created surface.
The definition of an ark is a boat or a ship resembling that in which Noah and his family were saved from the flood. It is something that offers protection and safety, including the sacred chest which represents the presence of God to the Hebrews, a repository traditionally in or against the wall of a synagogue where the scrolls of the Torah are held ( Torah consists of the foundational narrative of the Jewish people). the Hebrew word for ark is teba, that has a connection with salvation from waters ark ( In this context ark = paper).
The story of the flood is connected with the story of creation - a continuous cycle of creation, destruction and recreation, similar to the act of creating ark. The universe as envisioned by the ancient Hebrews was made up of a flat disk with the heavens above and the underworld below - the three were surrounded by a watery ocean protected by a transparent dome which ringed the earth. The earth was a flat disk as an ark.
Noah's ark represents the 3 level cosmos in miniature - the heavens, the earth and the waters. In Genesis I it says, that God created the 3-level world as a space in the midst of waters for mankind. Making an ark goes from air through water to lift the flat earth. In Genesis 6 - 8 it says: he fills that space with waters again, saving only Noah, his family and the animals with him in the ark. In creating an ark one saves earth from water in a round movement.
Round is a calm word, as Gaston Bachelard calls it in his book the Poetics of Space. Being is round. the world is round around the round being. Bachelard refers to Rilke's Poemes Francais, where a lone
tree is at the center of the world feasting upon the dome:
Tree always in the center
Of all that surround it
Tree feasting upon
Heaven's great dome
Bachelard writes that he shall never find a better document for a phenomenology of a being, which is at once established in its roundness and developing it and that Rilke's tree would open an important chapter in my album of concrete metaphysics. What Rilke's tree opens for Bachelard's reflections, the making of an ark opens as well.
Together with textile and ceramics, making ark (paper) is commonly associated with craft. But paper and the woven canvas lie behind many of the world's most acclaimed works of art. Entire cultures are held together by this fibrous web, which is now endangered in digital culture, but it still remains an elemental substance in civilisation.
Fibre, the textual - we wear a text in the clothes that wrap around us, are we conscious of this? Fibres have their own secret text inside an ark.
Before becoming an ark, fibres have gone through a treatment of maceration, almost similar to digestion, to set free the cellulose from the stem of plants to be turned into pulp. Fibres have become small spirals intertwining and making strong bonds inside the ark space. The way in which organic and synthetic fibres weave and interweave are the basic inspiration for our texnological culture, reflected in technological terminology as e.g. Weaving a New Web: Education and Parenting in an Era of Technological Change/The weaving models themselves are subject to model transformation...
Ark making has a historical tradition implied in the way of the making. A physical living plant is transformed into an organic surface able to absorb as human skin. the strength of a handmade ark depends on how nature's plants have been processed - the possibilities are multitudes. The act of making ark anchors the artist to her work in a natural organic way and enlarge the spirit of the maker.
In the 21st century art world historic categories of material and form have become irrelevant and we place importance of the act of making. The making can rather be conceived of as a meta-action, an art in itself of making the invisible visible, physical and tangible. this exploration of a material is art. It is important to direct creative energy into the origin of things more now than ever.
The American author and art critic for the New Yorker, Calvin Tomkins writes in his book Lives of the Artist that the limitless freedom of the modern artist has been an unending burden and for the contemporary artist, art is, among other things, an approach to the problem of living.
Approaching the problem of living through handmade paper touches on biological, geographical, ecological, chemical, historical, cultural and aesthetical aspects.
A new born ark is a white space - an area with potential for improvement - a pause to let it sink in.
I make an ark
a new space emerges
possibilities expand
the action is repeated
the new born space has no memory
of a more fulfilled state
it is
it exists because of an undefined presence
it has a functional invisibility
it absorbs
it is alive
it has an ability to expand
it demands nothing
it is measured against itself
it is presence
An ark is the beginning of a myriad of things. It is dao = accumulating space; it is zen emphasising
from as emptiness.
Emptiness as form: Lao Zi, chapter 28: - knowing the white, retaining the black, it is the form of the world.
Chinese qi (chi) = formless empty space, bestowing life. Qi is a metaphysical concept of the cosmic power and empty space is where qi dwells, flows, tranquil or full of life. Japanese ma is that what takes place in the imagination of the person, who experiences a simultaneous awareness of form and non - form - a vision.
We all have pictures in the mind shimmering around the edges. Pictures we do not always act upon; they are just shimmering in the midst of out inner flow. To create an ark the mind has to be focused from within - the mind translates the past, the present and the future into the ark, whereas an ark comes to symbolize time and mind. Ark is about the mind.
We are born with 5 senses, meant to be developed. If we
relate these 5 senses to ark:
Ark contains sound - think about the German Joseph
Anton Riedl, who made Paper Music concerts..........
Ark contains taste – think about American John Cage
and his Edible Drawings based on his macrobiotic diet
Ark is tactile – each ark asks to be touched
Ark is visible, we have to see ark, not only to look
at it
Ark contains smell of plant and water, nature
Feeling our senses is more important than thoughts.
An ark enlarged 1 MY, looks like a river as seen
from above.
Ark as artefact has an own duration and occupy a different
system of time intervals and periods than lives of men and animals. Ark has the
possibility of telling its own geo – story. Geo – story is storytelling, interactive stories, combining pictures, videos and narrative.
Geography literally means writing about
the Earth. A typical dictionary definition will be a science that deals with the description,
distribution, and interaction of the diverse physical, biological, and cultural
features of the earth's surface.
Imagine
giving the physicality of ark its own story. This means to write stories on
ark’s geographies, which would enables us to rediscover our territory in a new
and shared way, which could be done as digital storytelling.
Informing about ark’s own stories would take ark
into the technological development and would highlight its importance as a nature
itself.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FRrqeqx6uM
Being is round. the world is round around the round being.
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