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Pictorial Processes as Spatial Strategies

By: Verónica Lehner

Thesis Raumstrategien / Master of Arts Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee

Advisor: Frederic Schröder Berlin, 2009

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Table of Contents

1. Pictorial, Process, Space …………………………………………………... 3

1.1 The course of Painting ……………………………………………………… 4 1.2 Back to the “Leib” ……………………………………………………… 14

2. Dieter Mersch: Kunst und Medium (Art and Medium)

2.1 How can medium be defined? ............................................................... 20 2.2 Perceptual and discursive media ……………………………………………. 21 2.3 The process of image perception ……………………………...................... 22

3. About pictorial processes …….…………………………………………….. 24

3.1 The mundane but particular …………………………………………………. 24 3.2 Pictorial Processes in relational space …………………………………….. 28 3.3 Encounters in relational space: Pictorial Processes and “small gestures” …………………………………………………………….. 34

4. Conclusion …………………………………………………………….. 37

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………... 40

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1. Pictorial, Process, Space

Ever since Minimalism, the discussion of space in relation to art has become more

oriented towards perception rather than representation or abstraction. Perhaps

because of its three-dimensional quality, sculpture has always been at the center of

these analyses while painting has remained at the margins. However, as notions of

space develop, it is pertinent to bring in other disciplines within the arts into the

discussion. Does painting offer any possibilities to deal with new spatial concepts, and

if so, must it change its course in another direction? Can pictorial processes be

regarded as spatial strategies? Is it possible to make space-constituting relations

perceivable through this approach?

This thesis deals with the possible ways in which painting can broaden its scope of

action in order to address spatial questions. On the one hand, why is it at all relevant to

bring painting into the discussion of space? What can be gained from this perspective?

Some artistic positions dealing with the relation between space and painting will first

offer a gateway into the problematic, describing ways of working and approaches both

towards painting and space. This will be further analyzed by means of the theories of

Gernot Böhme, Lyotard and Henri Lefebvre, dealing with the division of the discursive

and perceptual and the possibilities that the latter has to offer in our “leibliche”

experience of the world. The other important question in this analysis is how can

painting dispose itself of limiting notions and become flexible enough - in a sense as

well “updated” - in order to deal with the subject of space? I propose to think of

painting in terms of “pictorial processes”. For this purpose, the possibilities of painting

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will be analyzed first from a medium-theoretic standpoint, focusing on Dieter Mersch’s

investigation of the basic conditions for mediality and the perceptual processes

involved in the encounter of an image. This will then extend into the role of perception

in the various phases involved in a work of art and the existence of it in stages prior to

reception, even previous to creation. Moving from painting towards the “pictorial

process”, the role of processes and actions in the constitution of space will be then

examined on the basis of Martina Löw’s definition of relational space.

Additionally, another author relevant to this study is Mika Hannula. In his book The

Politics of Small Gestures, he proposes the “small gesture”* as a new possibility to deal

with contemporary notions of site-specific art that must deal with its context and

purpose within it, and the role it plays in the perception of our surroundings. A

comparison between the “small gesture” and the “pictorial process” is also pertinent to

researching the possibilities of pictorial processes as spatial strategies.

1.1 The course of Painting

A phrase going around during the 19th century and later coined by Duchamp, “Bête

comme un peintre” or “As dumb as a painter” may have more to it than a mere belittling

comment. In fact, it might be getting just precisely to the core of painting. Duchamp,

who had been a painter himself, soon abandoned this practice in favor of one better

suited for criticizing the art establishment of the time, as his spatial pursuits within

painting soon translated into a special new interest on the exhibition space. Taking

ready-made objects out of their usual context and presenting them in the museum as

art, Duchamp disrupted the governing structures of art institutions and society in order

to reveal the discourses underlying them. Furthermore, art itself was shaken and

questioned, reverberations on which contemporary art is founded. More and more, art

rooted itself on language, on significations, symbols, signs and plays of meaning in a

quest for a proper definition of art that really got to its essence and purpose.

Furthermore, as the term Art rattled and shook, other disciplines started to permeate

and influence its direction. Art, in its hope for meaning, for a response to social, political

and historical advents, became a means of communication, until it eventually could be

* Term used by author Mika Hannula to describe “Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art” in his

book The Politics of Small Gestures, 2006. For full reference see: chapter 3.3, pg. 32

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read and interpreted as a text rather than staying at a purely “retinal” level. Painting,

which had always operated either on a perceptual level or was simply an instrument for

representation, began to be considered banal and superficial, as it did not seem to

have a meaning or a function, but rather presented itself to the spectator in a much-too-

mute-to-be-intellectual fashion. Moreover, as the pictorial turn became substituted by

the spatial turn, the static work of art took a second stance to the action or event. The

performative aspect of art became much more relevant in addressing an ever more

dynamic and changing concept of space, and painting on the other hand, a much too

millenary practice deeply inscribed in tradition, seemed to not respond satisfactorily to

the new inquiries. Moreover, painting's counted efforts in the performative direction

were soon labeled as something other than painting, were dismissed as marketing

stunts or macho bravado exhibitions.

Artists from earlier generations like Jackson Pollock, Richard Long or Yves Klein

experimented with natural phenomena like gravity and the body's influence on the work

of art without the interference of tools. Actions such as walking, dripping, splashing,

collecting, or even smearing nude women with paint so they would leave their blue

mark on the canvas were some of the processes used in this endeavor. Although they

paved the way for the later Performance, Installation, Body Art, Land Art and

Conceptual Art, they were still working with the container-like notion of space and not

really delving into the matter of what space is, if it can be produced, and if so, how.

They were also more concerned with the physical qualities of space and less with the

possibility of social relations also being a constituent part of it. Why they are pertinent

for this discussion is either because they declared that their work in painting is spatial

themselves, or because critics, curators and others regarded their advancements in

painting as expanding “into” space.

Pollock, on the one hand, was more interested in exposing his turbulent emotions than

on why action painting was relevant to the subject of space. The corporeal expression

of emotions as well as leaving behind traditional tools associated with painting, were

the emphasis of his work. He was also deeply inscribed in the tradition of male painters

who exhibited a quite macho-oriented behavior, what unfortunately gained excessive

importance in the art historic analysis of his work and most definitely did not do

wonders for renewing the notion of painting.

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Fig. 1

On her part, Katharina Grosse, a contemporary female painter, also left the traditional

brush for a spray gun, making it possible for her to cover colossal surfaces with paint.

Her work has also fallen into the category of a spatial approach to painting and to some

extent has a more procedural character as she brings in surfaces used before into new

installations. She has also done various works in renowned institutions, disrupting their

forms and discourse-impregnated architecture with paint. Her way of working situates

her together with those artists working on-site. Still, her work tends to not take into

consideration spatial relations other than the physical like the context, tending to not be

site-specific despite working within the space. On the other hand, her “anarchic” way of

working, as critics like to say, does not really exhibit a slow perceptual process of the

qualities to be altered in a given site. In being such an extreme gesture, it stops being

an irritation or subtle alteration of the site and becomes more of a personality, which

does not take into consideration the elements already given by the site but seeks to

destroy them and take their place. In this sense, what could be a humble, “small

gesture”*, which could redefine the boundaries of painting and be an exploration of its

process, becomes an arrogant, feathery, too obvious attempt at questioning institutions,

including painting and architecture. In way of comparison, it resembles an opaque,

colorful street-art piece covering a wall instead of one that uses details such as cracks

Fig. 1Jackson Pollock Painting, Summer 1950, photograph by Hans Namuth,

http://www.sfasu.edu/pubaffairs/pressreleases/january2007/17-photographs.asp * Term used by author Mika Hannula to describe “Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art” in his

book The Politics of Small Gestures, 2006. For full reference see: chapter 3.3, pg. 32

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Fig. 2

or nails on the wall to develop. All the more, it fails to do so as soon as it joins the

gestural abstract-expressionist legacy, its only link to space remaining its great

dimension, taking us back to Euclidian notions of space.

Moreover, Richard Long was especially interested in a primitive way of working with

materials found in nature just like the people from earlier cultures. Coming from a

sculpture background, Richard Long denies the relationship between his work and

painting, as he regards the latter as “too colourful (…) too exotic (…) Paintings are

made with a brush and my mud works are made with my hand...”1 However, many

could regard his “mud works” on paper and walls as very close to traditional painting,

as they exhibit the exotic qualities of china white clay or pigments he got “in Morocco,

Fig. 2 Katharina Grosse, Another Man Who has Dropped His Paintbrush, exhibition at the Galleria Civica di Modena,

Palazzina dei Giardini, 2008-2009. Köln: Verlag Walther König, 2008, pg. 27 1 Richard Long, Walking and Marking. Edinburgh: Scottish National Galleries, 2007, pg. 53

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Fig. 2.2

in the Souk”2, as well as the “primitive-like” marks of his hands and the “dripping”

reminiscent of abstract expressionism or “neo primitivist”, “naif” movements such as the

Cobra. Like him, many artists avoided being a part of anything that had to do with

painting, as it was, and is still seen today by some, as a puppet of the market, as

conventional, banal and not “contemporary”. Nonetheless, such manifestations could

have actually helped to do further research on the relationship between painting and

space along the course of their mutual changes, instead of just being pushed into

another medium category. Additionally, although this is perhaps an effort to not be part

of the popular “art as commodity” wave, it could also be regarded as a marketing

strategy: move as far away from painting as possible, and be part of the innovative,

convention-breaking trend of the moment. On the other hand, nowadays, when even

sharks in formaldehyde have become commodities, notions such as specific and

Fig. 2.2Katharina Grosse, Another Man Who has Dropped His Paintbrush, exhibition at the Galleria Civica di Modena,

Palazzina dei Giardini, 2008-2009. Köln: Verlag Walther König, 2008, pg. 37 2 Richard Long... 2007, pg. 53

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enclosed media appear quite obsolete. Richard Long's work was all the more greatly

important in the exploration of materials and their particular qualities as well as of

alternative places for art besides the white cubes.

Fig. 3

Fig. 3 Richard Long, Untitled 2006. Richard Long, Walking and Marking. Edinburgh: Scottish National Galleries, 2007, pp. 81

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Fig. 4

Fig. 5 Fig. 6

On his part, Yves Klein considered himself “a painter of space” as he stated at his

exhibition Yves Klein: Monochrome und Feuer in 1961 in Krefeld3. The “space” he

was talking about was a “sensorially perceivable, mute and timeless 'Farbraum'” or Fig. 4Richard Long, Untitled 1995. Richard Long, Walking and Marking. Edinburgh: Scottish National Galleries, 2007, pp.

69 Fig. 5Richard Long, River Avon Mud Circles, France 2002, Richard Long, Walking and Marking. Edinburgh: Scottish

National Galleries, 2007, pp. 37 Fig. 6Richard Long, River Avon Mud Hand Circles, James Cohan Gallery New York, 2000. Richard Long, Walking and

Marking. Edinburgh: Scottish National Galleries, 2007, pp. 74 3 Charlet, Nicolas. Yves Klein. München London New York: Prestel Verlag 2000, pg. 9

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'color space', which did not rely on an underlying form.4 From this perspective, space is

still something that contains, which can be “filled” up with the material presence of

“pure” color, making painting expand “into” space. Although space is still conceived as

an object that we “enter”, at least his monochromes do lead towards a notion of

pictorial as something which creates an encounter, a very important building block for

further media theory. Painting for him, on the other hand, presents a finished “product”

and is not focused on the process, or the spatial relations, and owes its existence

pretty much solely to color: intense, “pure”, and even patented color.

Fig. 7

Furthermore, in his Anthropometries series, the process of creation is exhibited,

coming closer to a space based on relations which can be experienced, but remaining

static, as it is still “out there” to be conquered, and is not continually changing and

being produced. These attempts are all the more reduced to the autonomous “fine

arts”, not giving much importance to the everyday or the habitual. They are clearly

separated from life, as there is no question that they are an “artistic event”, a

performance, despite Yves Klein's efforts at linking art and life. Wearing a suit, Yves

Klein even directs the women, one way or another, so they leave their mark on the

canvas: a very solemn act demonstrating his geniality as he directed the “symphony”.

However, he definitely remains a highly important figure in the development of painting,

4 Charlet, 2000, pg. 56, my translation Fig. 7 Yves Klein, Relief on the wall of the music theater foyer, Gelsenkirchen, 1958-1959. Charlet,Nicolas. Yves Klein,

München London New York: Prestel Verlag 2000, pp. 107

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pushing it towards the performative and breaking with its traditional notions and

purpose, still not yet outfitted with the more contemporary spatial thinking.

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

Fig. 8A sweat-cloth emerges, 14, rue Campagne-Première, Paris, 1960. Charlet, Nicolas. Yves Klein, München London

New York: Prestel Verlag 2000, pp. 171 Fig. 9Yves Klein, Performance Anthropometrien der blauen Epoche, Galerie internationale d'art contemporain, 9. März

1960. Charlet, Nicolas. Yves Klein, Mü nchen London New York: Prestel Verlag 2000, pp. 161

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As the previous artistic positions show, the course of painting has been a very long and

is still an ongoing process. Lyotard describes it as follows:

What is at stake in this dialectic is the question, 'What is painting?', and what keeps the dialectic moving is the refutation of what was done or has just been done: no, that wasn't indispensable to painting either. Painting thus becomes a philosophical activity: the rules of formation of pictural images are not already stated and awaiting application. Rather, painting has as its rule to seek out these rules of formation of pictural images, as philosophy has as its rule to seek out the rules of philosophical sentences.5

More than rules, I would like to call them possibilities. Possibilities to deal with the

changes we perceive in the world, with the changes of perception itself and the

exploration of it; our way of thinking about space for example, of perceiving it and

shaking what we “know”. Therefore, the question seems to hang in the air, as painting

keeps expanding its limits and art keeps questioning itself: does painting offer any

possibilities to address spatial questions? Or does it automatically become something

else when trying to deal with this field? In approaching more challenging notions of

space since the spatial turn*, traditional ways of working need to be analyzed in a new

light and transformed so that they may be incorporated in the exploration and

investigation of these issues. If space is no longer a container and is continuously

being constituted, how must the relationship space-painting change? How can we re-

think painting in order for it to function in relation to space? All the more, being a non-

discursive perceptual process, can painting, in becoming performative and focusing on

its various processes, become a spatial strategy? Or, can it be that language and

semantics have all the questions and answers to be questioned and answered about

that increasingly challenging notion, space? It could be that intense perceptual

processes as well as experience not yet permeated by rationality or predetermined

structures offer an equally detailed and accurate description of relations in space, as

well as an alternative gateway into analyzing them. Is it possible for spatial relations,

otherwise invisible, to become perceptible through pictorial processes?

5 Lyotard, Jean-François, transl. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby. The Inhuman, Reflections on Time.

Stanford University Press, Stanford, California,1991, pg. 121 * Spatial Turn is a term used to refer to the change of paradigm in the Cultural and Social Studies, in which

not only the question of time remained relevant but also the question of space started to permeate all disciplines. Within this analytical framework, such aspects as geography, topology and topography gained importance in the discussions about culture, and in so doing, the existing concepts of space were also reevaluated.

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1.2 Back to the “Leib”

To effectuate an analysis of the possibilities of pictorial processes as spatial strategies,

there are first three core concepts to deal with: pictorial, process and space. For this

end, painting must first be defined in such a way that its intrinsic qualities, its differenzia

spezifica as a medium, may be brought forth, and in so doing, the “pictorial” may be

derived from “image”. This approach from a medium-theoretic standpoint focuses more

on the perceptual processes involved in encountering an image as opposed to the art-

historic perspectives bounded to interpretation and other discursive tools to analyze

painting and its relationship with space. Besides, as briefly recounted previously,

painting as a form of art has changed an extreme amount of times in the past and has

all the more been sometimes condemned to limiting pre-existing notions of it which no

longer apply. Consequently, this approach avoids stagnant conceptions of painting

while also preventing the discussion from going towards such notions of space

representation and subject-object hierarchies that reduce space to an accessible

container, to geometry or an equation. In addition, as the medium-theoretic

approximation applies to all types of images and is not constrained within “Art”, it allows

for a clearer, more direct path towards the process of perceiving space, ignoring value

judgements traditionally present in art criticism and not requiring a learned code for its

appreciation but relying on experience. Lastly, “pictorial”, in being a description more

than an object, is a term no longer confined within the heavy artistic tradition of

“Painting”, flexible and autonomous enough to be used in the context of other media as

well as within the context of relational space. Within this framework, the issue of the

accustomed division between the different media within art and the hesitation towards

crossing those boundaries thus takes a back seat and looses its historically central

standing.

In his attempt at finding that which makes a medium a medium and nothing else, Dieter

Mersch looks for a way of laying out the basic conditions for mediality and its ways of

occurring. For this, he first differentiates two orders of medium: the perceptual* and the

* Dieter Mersch does not provide any information on if he regards sculpture as an image, but I will assume

that sculpture pertains to the perceptual and not to the discursive. Another reason for using the term pictorial is that it does not seek to exclude sculpture but rather incorporate it in its investigation of materials and way of working on them. However, pictorial processes are not centered on a question of form, but rather the perceptual process.

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discursive media. He lists image and sound under the former and word and number

under the latter.6 Although Mersch then moves the medium “image” towards the

performative when describing the way the image “presents itself”, its “Sich-Zeigen” or

“coming out”, the term pictorial alone lacks the kind of dynamism necessary to get rid of

absolute notions of space and flip to the discussion of relational space. Thus, the term

pictorial must be accompanied by another one which provides a stronger sense of

action. Something that moves and perceives and in so doing changes its position, its

perspective, the elements surrounding itself: process. In triggering movement, it allows

for encounter, for crashes, for questions, for transformation, for perception, it becomes

experience. The term process implicitly carries the dynamic relation between time and

space within it, which when changed, produces other series of relations. These

relations are of different natures, as are the practices and processes carried out by

subjects or objects. Thus a pictorial process can be understood as one in which the

core characteristics of painting have been not only extracted but also activated in order

to make relations perceivable and thus analyzable.

But, what does the term relational space imply? Why are relations relevant in the

context of space? Relational implies something that changes depending on a certain

subject's standpoint. For Martina Löw, in the first place, space is something that can be

constituted. This immediately brings up two issues: one, the question how is space

constituted? and two, it suggests that the possibility of a “true”, “immutable”, “static”

space which you “enter” is ruled out completely.7 The concept of absolute space is one

that has been arduously discussed and questioned lately, as it seems to fail in

providing an appropriate term to work with when dealing with the social aspects of

space. Referred to as the space from physics, the Euclidean absolute space is that big

box in which we have been culturally conditioned to live (and in which terms we have

been conditioned to think as well), fixed and eternal, existing mainly in equations and

physics theories but also in geographical, geopolitical or demographic statistics

amongst others. Highly abstract, this perspective of space becomes too rigid to include

the individual, society or the numerous new and complex phenomena arising in the

present world, such as globalization, accelerated information exchange, the unbounded

growth of cities and populations, and the subdivisions and subcultures deriving from it.

6 Mersch, Dieter. Zwei Vorlesungen, Band III Kunst und Medium. Materialreihe der Muthesius Hochschule

Kiel, published by Klaus Detjen and Theresa Georgen, 2002, pg. 169 7 Löw, Martina. Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 2001

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On the other hand, the concept of espace, goes back to the latin root spatium more

than to the germanic root rûm, which is more of a definite place or localization. Espace

includes a space for “freie Bewegung” or free movement, from which the word

spazieren in german language derives, bringing into play a “time interval”. In this way,

this term leads to the conception of space as relational and dynamic, functioning as the

opposite of the former. According to Jörg Dünne and Stephan Günzel, “Raum and

espace lead towards two very different positions within the theory of space: on one side

towards the assumption of an absolute and territorial fixation and on the other hand a

relational situatedness as a starting point...”8 In this way, there is a historical, linguistic

as well as a theoretical breech between two notions of space, the latter being ever-

changing depending on the focus given to one or more of its various levels. Analyzing

space under the light of sociology, for Martina Löw, people are not only an element that

constitutes space but people are continually producing space. Through people's action

of situating social goods and at the same time being placed and displaced themselves

by others, different spaces emerge.9 This idea of space allows for a more accurate

study of diverse social phenomena and the relations between people and their

surroundings. These relations tend to be imperceptible, however it is possible to

recognize the spaces constituted by them. In using pictorial processes in this spatial

context, these relations, otherwise difficult to grasp, can be made explicit.

So why should a medium such as painting, ascribed to the order of perception, that has

to undergo so many changes to become suitable for the discussion of space, be even

used in this context? One of the reasons is better highlighted by Gernot Böhme,

regarding the problems that the division between discursive and perceptive media have

generated in the course of developing an aesthetic theory that does not only take into

account art but also space. For one, Böhme states that the monopolization of the

discursive over the perceptual in contemporary aesthetic theories has given way to an

“Urteilsästhetik” or an aesthetic based on judgements of value.10 This aesthetic theory,

predominant until now, turns its back on the origins of the Greek word aisthesis, which

was based on experiencing something happening through the senses, what led to

practically shutting out nature and the sensory awareness inherent of “leibliches

8 Raumtheorie, Grundlagentexte aus der Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Hsg. Von Dünne,Jörg und

Stephan Günzel, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006, pg. 10 - My translation from the original quote in German: “Raum und espace verweisen somit auch auf zwei sehr unterschiedliche raumtheoretische Positionen: auf die Annahme einer absoluten, territorialen Bindung einerseits und auf den Ausgangspunkt einer relationalen Verortung andererseits...”

9 Löw, 2001, pg. 158 10 Böhme, Gernot, Atmosphäre. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1995, pg. 23

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spüren”, or “feeling-perceiving through the lived-body”.

Furthermore, this dominance of language also assumes an intention of meaning on the

part of the artist or even demands it from the work of art. Böhme proposes however,

that it is not necessarily true that “a work of art is a symbol, as far as a symbol is

always referring to something else... Not every work of art has a meaning. On the

contrary, one should always abide by a work of art being first of all something in itself

that possesses its own actual existence.”11 Taking into account the dissolution of the

former concept of image in the arts, for example, Böhme stresses the appearance of

works that do not say anything, do not illustrate anything and do not mean anything.

Finally, the course taken by aesthetic theory towards a critical art theory also brought

with it the consequence of categorizing some manifestations of aesthetic work as “high”

or “fine” art, as opposed to “handicraft”, kitsch or “applied arts”. Following these

parameters, all kinds of aesthetic work are to be measured with the scale of fine arts,

without taking into account other aspects of these manifestations also relevant to

aesthetics.12 This brings with itself a “fine art” that is too autonomous to reflect on the

more and more aesthetized everyday, and the various practices that produce our

surroundings.

Böhme thus proposes an alternative to this one-tracked approximation to art, a new

aesthetic theory that prioritizes a more expansive view of aesthetics. This new theory

should encompass all aesthetic manifestations instead of defining what is art and what

is not art. It is a theory of perception, “understood as the experience of the presence of

people, objects and environment”.13 Moreover, it should help us to develop ways of

discussing and talking about non-discursive media, without being obliged to incur in

negations, interpretations or relegating “mute” works to triviality.

In addition, in keeping spatial relations out of the discursive, other aspects of them

might come to light as those offered by semantics, as discourse is itself bound to power

structures. According to Henri Lefebvre, “any attempt to use such codes [worked out

from literary texts] as a means of deciphering social space must surely reduce that

11Böhme,1995, pg. 23, my translation from the original quote in German: “Ebensowenig... daß ein Kunstwerk ein Zeichen ist, insofern ein Zeichen immer auf etwas anderes verweist... Nicht jedes Kunstwerk hat eine Bedeutung, im Gegenteil muss man daran festhalten, dass ein Kunstwerk zuallererst selbst etwas ist, eine eigene Wirklichkeit besitzt”. 12 Böhme, 1995, pg.25 13 Böhme, 1995, pg. 23-24, my translation from the original quote in German: “Dabei wird Wahrnehmmung

verstanden als die Erfahrung der Präsenz von Menschen, Gegenständen und Umgebungen”.

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space itself to the status of a message, and the inhabiting of it to the status of a

reading.”14 He further discusses that in order to consider space a message there must

be someone who has in advance inscribed a message into it within a context of

“conventions, intentions and order.”15 This eventually leads to “do's and don'ts”,

therefore is based on prohibitions and a sense of someone or something ruling the

chaos. Under these at times implicit, at times quite explicit power structures, the

diversity of space is forgotten, together with the dynamism of the activities it triggers

and in turn create it, as well as the idea that space is something that must be lived and

experienced. It thus resembles more of a container, with clearly demarcated areas to

enter and exit, abstract absolute space, much like the yellow lines on the floor marking

a special squared space for smokers in German train stations.

Lyotard on the other hand, who also happened to dedicate a chapter of his book The

Inhuman to the sublime and the 'now' inherent to modern abstract painting, also

analyzes the effects of the division of discursive and perceptual. He states that we all

live in “a world of inscriptions already there” and thus “think” or question from those

inscriptions.16 He further develops that “if we think, this is because there's still

something missing in this plenitude and room has to be made for this lack by making

the mind a blank”, what in turn allows that “something else”, which is “thought”, to

“happen”.17 Although this then must be inscribed as well, this occurrence, this moment

of thought, this “discomfort” and this not knowing, is indispensable for breaking with a

machine-like existence, to really experience. Therefore, “thought is inseparable from

the phenomenological body.”18 This shows how spatial relations are not only discursive

but greatly rely on perception. When codes fail to provide all the answers, the “Leib”

and its experience of the perceived can also set in motion ways of approaching and

investigating our relation to the world.

In this same line of thought but from a very phenomenological take, Gernot Böhme

delves into the possibilities of using “Atmospheres” as a spatial concept to work with in

aesthetics, precisely because of their perceptual nature. For Böhme, Atmospheres are

essential to the study of space, as they are directly connected to the way we situate

and find ourselves in the world, they are what forms and affects our self and their core 14Lefebvre, Henri, transl. Donald Nicholson Smith. The Production of Space. Blackwell Publishing, Massachussets 2008, pg. 7 15 Lefebvre, 2008, pg. 142 16 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 20 17 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 20 18 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 23

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is the relationship self to self, self to surroundings and self to the other, or “the common

actual existence of the perceiving and perceived.”19 He first derives this idea from a

theory of nature, which should then help to achieve an “ais-thetic” theory as opposed to

an “aes-thetic” theory, that can better respond to the necessities of a world which was

suddenly confronted with its own “Leiblichkeit” as environmental problems started to

arise. According to Böhme, from this moment on, it became clear that human beings

are not primarily rational beings, but “leibliche” beings, who experience through the

“lived-body” and that the environmental problem is basically a question of the

relationship of human beings to their own selves.20 Furthermore, he points out that

Atmospheres allow the recognition of the human basic need of aesthetics, and in

analyzing the aesthetic in our surroundings and not only in the “fine arts”, it gives way

to the realization that the “Sich-zeigen” or “coming out of itself” and “appearing” is in the

essence of nature.21

In this way, an analysis of space through pictorial processes provides a gateway

towards experience and an alternative to codified structures by which space is usually

defined, described and analyzed. All the same, not only is the phenomenological take

on space important for the relationship of pictorial processes and space, but the

understanding of “medium”. This leads to the term “image” and the mechanism of

perception intrinsic to it, central to the approximation to “the pictorial”.

19Böhme, 1995, pg. 34 – my translation from the original quote in German: “Die Atmosphäre ist die

gemeinsame Wirklichkeit des Wahrnehmenden und des Wahrgenommenen”. 20 Böhme, 1995, pg. 14 21 Böhme, 1995, pg. 41

20

2. Dieter Mersch: Kunst und Medium (Art and Medium)

2.1 How can medium be defined?

Despite the various and committed attempts at coming up with an accurate definition

for medium in the past century, it remains a concept highly difficult to grasp. Maybe this

complication has to do with the numerous applications of the term “medium” in

everyday use, or maybe it is the constant talk about new media and technology that

tends to hide its primal attributes. Perhaps it is the medium's ethereal quality that gives

us such difficulties in even coming near to defining it.

According to Dieter Mersch, it is characteristic for a medium to show itself while at the

same time withdrawing.22 A contradiction in itself, a medium conceals itself, as it goes

through its process of mediatization, tending to remain masked as it brings forth

something else. When we look through a window, we tend to not see the glass but that

on the other side of it. It is precisely this intrinsic trait that separates a medium from

being just a means to do something, a mode, an instrument or tool to produce,

process, or investigate something for something. Not only does this approach broaden

the possibilities it can encompass too extremely (as saliva, a hammer, the wind, and a

train would all be then media), but as Dieter Mersch points out, this notion also reduces

the concept of medium into purpose and objective categories. This leaves out the

possibility that a medium can also show something, say something, or bring something

forth. Mersch further states that media enable or make possible, like tools do, however

they remain “virtual” in that they are formed by the “format of disappearing”. It is thus

this special quality media possesses, of dissipating its own “Sein”, of volatilizing and

making its appearance unseizable, that makes a medium a medium, and gives it its

power, its magic, its strangeness, its “Unheimlichkeit”.23

Likewise, media are not “mere passive instruments” but are actually actively involved in

opening up accesses to the world in the first place. They are what enables our 22 Mersch, 2002, pg. 135 23 Mersch, 2002, pg. 136

21

perception, structuring and organizing what we perceive, thus allowing for the

“gestalten” of worlds. This of course includes also a process of dividing and

demarcating, therefore of closing off spaces. Dieter Mersch develops these three

moments of the process, how media enable, structure and narrow down within each

individual medium and states that there is no “Meta-Medium” or definition that crosses

all of them, as the investigation of media leads to non-translatable, heterogeneous

instances. Mersch then comes up with two orders of media: the perceptive and the

discursive. Image and sound pertain to the former and word and number to the latter.

He is nonetheless very careful to point out that this “elementary separation” is only

possible for analytic purposes as their formats or “topoi” tend to blur.24

2.2 Perceptual and discursive media

Perceptual or aisthetic media are those pertaining to “Wahrnehmung” or aisthesis,

which are founded in the senses. These include the optical and acoustic systems but

also the haptic and olfactory. The latter are even more evasive media than the first two,

as they have not been developed as far as the visual and sound, but have stayed in

very intimate contexts, thus exerting an uncontrollable power that triggers emotions

and memories. Perhaps it is because of this reason that they have remained

marginalized and there has been a monopolization of the visual and sonic, or maybe it

is the difficulty they exert in trying to capture them or somehow fix and keep them for a

long period of time. The aisthetic media differentiate from the discursive, in that words

and numbers refer to structures, orders, subtle divisions and breaks, thus to the

construction of differences, logics, languages and grammatic forms. Their basic

elements are the symbol, marks and distinctions, as well as figuration, rules of

transformation and those of composition and rhetoric.25

Although the olfactory and tactile have been the most marginalized, the visual for

example has also been relegated to mere observation. Being intrinsically a spatial

sense, it needs a certain distance in order to be able to function properly. This has lead

to a misuse on the part of actual thought, in order to corroborate obsolete notions of

space, such as inside and outside. The eye tends to totalize and objectivize what it 24Mersch, 2002, pg. 153 25 Mersch, 2002, pg. 153

22

sees, thus conveniently serving the current division of subject and object, and then

tends to repeat this objectivization.26 This repetition can be a representation, illustration

or pre-sentation, what takes the visual into the discursive. According to Mersch, the

eye's hierarchy in the order of the senses leads to a mathematization of the visual (as

in central perspective in the painting tradition), thus, to the discursive “overwriting” the

aisthetic.27 Therefore, this take on “the visual” not only reduces this medium to

discourse, but everything we perceive, including space. It incurs in an abstraction of the

world into equations, measurement units, and illustrations, forgetting the “leibliche”, that

which we live-perceive with our senses, that which presents itself in its Ekstase.28

Mersch further states, in the same line of thought as Gernot Böhme, that the

dominance of the discursive over the aisthetic has made the most innate quality of

these media, their capacity to occur or happen, to disappear. Both sound and image

are grounded on presence and thus on a unique and “present” presence, a “now”.

Nonetheless, the aisthesis that takes place during the confrontation with an image for

example has been largely replaced by semantic exercises. These wish to interpret,

make “sense”, “understand” or discover a “hidden meaning” in the image, to some

extent forcing the image to talk and neglecting its phenomenological qualities, its

presence and its way of showing itself. It is therefore not to say that images cannot or

may not become discursive but to demand an equal place to perception beside

discourse, that allows for experience and is not only reduced to abstraction. The

Ekstase would thus be the particular way a thing has to show itself, to come out of

itself, to be present. It is a way inherent to a particular thing, its way of being-there, a

manner of its presence.

2.3 The process of image perception

More than trying to define the medium image, it is the process involved in perceiving an

image that is relevant to this analysis. What is so particular to this process? We are

26Mersch, 2002, pg. 156 27 Mersch, 2002, pg. 157 28 Gernot Böhme describes Ekstase by using this example: „Die Existenz der Tasse ist in dieser Auffassung

der Eigenschaft blau bereits mit enthalten, denn das Blausein ist ja eine Weise der Tasse, dazusein, eine Artikulation ihrer Präsenz, der Weise ihrer Anwesenheit. Das Ding wird so nicht mehr durch seine Unterscheidung gegen anderes, seine Abgrenzung und Einheit gedacht, sondern durch die Weisen, wie es aus sich heraustritt. Ich habe für diese Weisen, aus sich herauszutreten, den Ausdruck ‘die

Ekstasen des Dings’ eingeführt“. Böhme, 1995, S. 33

23

constantly being confronted with different types of images, from billboards, to shop-

windows, to x-rays, to paintings, to videos. However, how do we know that all these are

images? Is it about what they depict? Is it about their being framed? Is it about their

capacity to stand out from a background? Is it their two-dimensionality?

If we consider the very different types of images surrounding us, we can easily come to

the conclusion that what they depict plays absolutely no role in our regarding them as

images.29 If they represent a subject, or are a monochrome surface, or are a pattern on

the wall, we will regard them as images. It also doesn't matter if they are two-

dimensional or not, as we sometimes speak of an image and refer to a mimic or

gesture, a situation, or a person's “presence”. What seems to be important though, is

that the image conveys a kind of being-there that calls the viewer's attention, which

presents itself and demands observation. Dieter Mersch goes further and states that it

doesn't only depend on the presence of the image and how it shows itself, but that

there is an intrinsic quality pertaining to the medium image and that is the reflective

gaze. As we observe an image, the image tends to break the view and reflect it on the

viewer, tends to return it. In showing itself and thus confronting the viewer, the image

itself directs perception not only towards itself, but also towards our recognizing it as an

image. This is what Dieter Mersch refers to as “Chiasmus”, and it is what constitutes

the “Bildlichkeit” or “image-ness” of an image.30 It is precisely this quality that lets us

know we are dealing with an image and this knowledge delivered within images is what

differentiates the process of image perception from other kinds of perception

processes.31 In other words, ”image” cannot be defined but its definition is rather given

by the image itself when it allows us to recognize its “image-ness”.

Therefore, there is no point in trying to define an image by ascribing characteristics to it

as the image gives us the knowledge we need to recognize it as an image. This

perceptual process implies that the world is not something that we fill up with things but

rather the world comes up to us and shows itself. We are neither the sole creators of

our surroundings nor can we determine and name everything in a fixed way. Instead, it

is the perceiver who should try to heighten his/her attention and awareness of that

being revealed to him or her. In addition, to think of images from the standpoint of the

perceptual processes they trigger instead of trying to encase them into a definition,

29Mersch, 2002, pg. 172 30 Mersch, 2002, pg. 176 31 Mersch, 2002, pg. 176

24

provides a more useful and better routed gateway into analyzing the possibilities of

pictorial processes in space, which are also dynamic and “reflective”.

3. About Pictorial Processes So what can possibly be meant with “pictorial process”? There are two components to

be analyzed in this term proposition. One is the pictorial, deriving from the image.

Experiencing an image involves a perceptual process as it shows itself to the observer,

but also a specific “image-perception”, showing itself as an image. Therefore, to be

pictorial or not, is not a matter of the materials it is composed of, of two-dimensionality

or framing, but is rather that which can be extracted from the process of perception of

images or the previously mentioned “Chiasmus”: those moments of “two-way seeing”

which allow us to regard something as pictorial while at the same time calling our

attention towards it. Therefore, a pictorial process is, on the one hand, a mediatic

process of perception that functions as the “device”32 image. On the other hand, as a

perceptual process, it can also be characterized as an event, being something that we

experience and towards which we react. Still, it is not only present in the final “image”

or “product” but rather in a succession of events, and thus Chiasmi, that make up a

process. In this way, it not only mediates or facilitates as a device, but is at the same

time a “present presence” or form of “Vergegenwärtigung”, which gives way to

encounters. These encounters in turn ensure the maintenance of process,

indispensable to the dynamic relations constituting space. Whence, the word process

does not allow for the pictorial to be limited to a perceptual process, but rather brings in

the other component relevant to this thesis: relational, dynamic space.

3.1 The mundane but particular

Although we have all been somewhat conditioned to think about images in their

interpretation or discursive sense, many painters, amongst them Cézanne, have tried

32Mersch, 2002, pg. 249

25

to describe the process of “seeing” or perceiving as one of the stages prior to creation.

As Robert Walser writes in his essay Cézanne-Gedanken:

Er, von dem ich hier rede, schaute sich beispielsweise diese Früchte, die sowohl alltäglich wie merkwürdig sind, lange an: Er vertiefte sich in ihren Anblick, in die Haut, wovon sie straff umspannt sind, in die sonderbare Ruhe ihres Seins, in ihr lachendes, prangendes, gutmütiges Aussehen.33

Not only interested in his genius-like depiction of the fruit, it seems that the longest

process present in Cézanne's painting was that of perceiving, of letting the “Leib”

absorb all the sensory qualities, slowly, as if chewing them to be able to digest them.

Lyotard further mentions Cézanne's hypotheses in his book The Inhuman. According to

him, after having read Cézanne's correspondence, he concluded that what his work

had “at stake” was to regain access to those “little” or “elementary sensations” that

remain hidden under the “hegemony of habitual or classical ways of looking”.34 He

goes on to say that in order to get to this point, Cézanne must have had to undergo an

“interior ascesis” and strip himself of “perceptual and mental prejudices inscribed even

in vision itself”.35 Lyotard goes on to state that for him, the purpose underlying

Cézanne's oeuvre was “to make seen what makes one see, and not what is visible”.36

This points to the common resolution going around art schools: to unlearn everything

that was learned before that point. And what is this about, if not to try and get rid of

discourse and codes and really try to perceive that which is there, which shows itself to

us, which is present in the 'now'? This would explain why art students must endure

hours on end of drawing a model on a mattress, or why they spend most of their first

years drawing a skull from 50 different sides. It is highly doubtful that they are a

mimesis-oriented pursuit, as this type of teaching is still present in even the most

innovative schools. Rather, I think humans have practiced these exercises for years to

try to listen and stop talking.

In synchrony with these thoughts and after an exhaustive study of what can be the aim 33 Walser, Robert in: Das Gedächtnis der Malerei: ein Lesebuch zur Malerei im 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. Von

S. Omlin und B. Wismer, Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau, Verlag derBuchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2000, pg. 43. “He, of whom I here speak, by way of example looked at these fruits, that are as much mundane as particular, for a long time: He immersed himself in their “Anblick”, in the skin that tightly envelops it, in the extraordinary calmness of its being, in its laughing, gleaming, good-natured appearance.” - my translation.

34 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 102 35 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 102 36 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 102

26

of contemporary painting, Lyotard states that for him, “it seems... that the aim of

painting, beyond and by means of all the plots with which it is armed, including the

museum, is to render presence, to demand the disarming of the mind.”37 He further

writes that this is not connected to representation but that it “belongs to voluntary

memory, to the intelligence, to the mind, to what questions and concludes”.38 Lyotard

continues with the following phrase: “But it happens that a yellow... can suspend the

will and the plot of a Marcel. It is this suspension that I should like to call soul: when the

mind breaks into shards (letting go) under the 'effect' of a colour... I want to make it

clear that when I say colour, I mean any pictural matter”.39 Lyotard likes to call it “soul”,

I like to call this suspension “shutting up” in order to contemplate, to experience, to

encounter.

Similarly, Lyotard also dedicates a chapter of his book to “Scapelands”. Here, he

describes the way a baby sees his mother as a landscape. According to him, in order

for a landscape to exist, we must get rid of our sense of place.40 If there is place, there

is no landscape. In the same way, a pictorial perceptual process tries to meticulously

study the qualities of what is being perceived without recurring to anything a priori or at

least delaying its recognition - without naming that “landscape” of skin, wrinkles, hairs,

moles, smells... “Mother”.

In this sense, the pictorial triggers a very particular series of perceptual events which

are not only limited to seeing the final result “image” but can also appear in earlier

stages of production processes. It is also not restricted to the phase of creating,

intervening or transforming, but a pictorial process begins with perceiving: seeing,

touching, smelling, hearing, tasting. It begins with how we find ourselves in the world,

our “situatedness”. These investigations, observations and approaches towards certain

materials, objects or surfaces are also part of the pictorial process as it is then when

we direct our senses towards something in a pictorial way and begin to experience it. It

is only then, when something has our attention, that it can show itself in such a way

that it also calls forth a certain type of treatment, depending on its texture, color or

other material qualities. Here, however, we can further develop Cézanne's hypotheses,

in that for example an apple does not necessarily demand from us that we paint the

color sensations it irradiates onto the canvas, but rather that we research its material 37 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 151 -152 38 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 151 - 152 39 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 151 - 152 40 Lyotard, 1991, pg. 183

27

qualities farther: squash it onto the table so that all its contents are visible or put it

against an inorganic material to highlight its natural qualities. Since we no longer rely

on color or canvas to regard something as pictorial, it would still be pictorial if it involves

the perceptual process of Chiasmus as that which is being perceived shows itself and

awakens further pictorial processes.

Additionally, objects also provoke certain actions or practices that are carried out in

space, like finding, moving, collecting, displacing, documenting, repeating, removing,

returning, etc. In the example of a work of art, these processes would also be

comprised in it and not only those perceptual processes pertaining to the stages of

creation or the final state, the “Werk” or product, but the entire series of actions that led

to it. Furthermore, all the states it goes through after one of these culmination points or

“frozen” points of exhibition are also part of the perceptual process a work of art goes

through: the circulation is interrupted for a brief period, then reinserted in different ways

into the circuit. The artwork as a process also includes the actors carrying out those

practices, those who might be surprised at the fate of their belongings but also those

who are not aware of encountering a work of art.

Thus, a pictorial process would then be a medial process, which functions similarly to

the perceptual process involved in encountering an image. There is a “Chiasmus”,

there is a crossing of the “Blicke” or ways of seeing between perceiver and perceived.

This Chiasmus calls certain actions forth from the part of the perceiver that have to do

with the object or material itself, but also with the spatial relations it is a part of.

Therefore, a pictorial process is a perceptual process (aisthetic process), which is not

limited to a subject and an object alone, or a perceiver and a perceived, but goes

further into the process of the constitution of relational space. Moreover, in being

related to “aisthetic” media, the pictorial process is not interested in being subdued to a

mathematical equation or a semantic figure, but these aspects are all equanimous and

do not try to dominate the other. In this way, a term such as pictorial process opens up

the term “image” or “painting”, expanding the possibilities of perceptual processes onto

other stages without binding it only to an end product and excluding it from spatial

contexts.

28

3.2 Pictorial Processes in Relational Space

As mentioned before, in trying to come up with a more accurate concept of space to

work with in the context of sociology, Martina Löw has used relational space as a

working hypothesis. In order to not assume two separate “realities”, that of space and

that of actions, Martina Löw understands space as “a relational '(An)Ordnung)'* of

bodies, which are in continuous movement and through which the '(An)Ordnung' itself

is constantly being changed”, therefore space is constituted also in time.41 For her, it is

very important to not separate space and actions in order for space to remain dynamic

and avoid notions of space as a container, which do not include social and material

relations. According to Löw, “space and the bodily world are interwoven”.42 Further on

in her book Raumsoziologie, Martina Löw changes the word “bodies” for “soziale

Güter” or “social goods” and proposes her thesis as follows:

Space is a relational '(An)Ordnung' of social goods and living beings. Space is constituted through two processes that can be separated analytically, Spacing and Syntheseleistung. The latter makes the abstraction of ensembles of goods and people into one element.43

Although social goods can be of a material or a symbolic nature, Martina Löw refers

mainly to material goods, or goods in their material character. She further notes that in

order to understand the 'Anordnungen' taking place, it is necessary to decipher their

symbolic characteristics. However, she also brings in living beings into her definition of

space, something rather unusual in the theories of space. For her, people are one of

the elements that constitute space and are not only producers of space. People also

place themselves and leave places behind, as much as they can also influence the

character of space through gestures or the use of language. She develops further by

* I have left the word '(An)Ordnung' and the way of writing it as it appears in the original text in German, as

Martina Löw plays here with the words 'Anordnung' or arrangement, and the word Ordnung which means order, by using both in one. 'Anordnung' in German refers to an order or organization that has come to be through the process of ordering into, in a certain manner or for a particular reason. 'Ordnung' refers to ordering or organizing in general while at the same time alluding to the different orders or categories of things. This ambiguity is left deliberately by Löw to stress that space refers not only to a structure or order but also to the process or action implicit in the verb 'anordnen': to arrange, to configure, to place in a certain way or manner, is equally important to the resulting order. 'Anordnung' would thus refer to one of the aspects constituting space: “Spacing”, while Ordnung refers to the structures involved in the other aspect, “Syntheseleistung”.

41Löw, 2001, pg. 131- my translation from the original quote in German: “ (…) eine relationale (An)Ordnung von Körpern, welche unaufhörlich in Bewegung sind, wodurch sich die (An)Ordnung selbst ständig verändert.”

42Löw, 2001, pg. 131 – my translation from the original quote in German: “ (…) Raum und Körperwelt sind verworben.”

43Löw, 2001, pg. 160

29

saying that although in comparison to people, social goods would seem to be of a more

passive nature, this is not the case as they also have an effect on people through their

smell or noise for example.

This idea goes back to the previous analysis of images and their way of showing

themselves. Objects or social goods can also provoke certain actions or practices from

people, consequently being everything but passive. A hammer, for example calls forth

hitting something for different purposes, used as an extension of the arm that weighs

more and can resist a bigger impact. Objects can also call forth pictorial processes,

which can be related to their material characteristics, their placement and particular

way of being there. For example, a piece of paper on the floor can provoke someone

interested in the repercussions of private goods in public space, to mark them and

collect them, leaving their trace on the street. It could also generate a need to blow it

away to others. In the same way, the debris of a former wardrobe left beside a house

could move someone to take it to research the material and work on it, as much as it

could lead someone else to use it as a material for construction or to burn it in an

incineration plant. In the same modus operandus of images, objects not only present

themselves, but also show themselves by calling forth certain processes, actions and

interactions. This two-way seeing or chiasmus implies that “social goods” as Martina

Löw calls them, are as active as people in constituting space.

Fig. 10

Fig. 10Verónica Lehner, photograph from the series mal dies, mal das, mal hier, mal da, intervention in

public space, 2008-2009, Berlin

30

So what can be meant with Spacing* and Syntheseleistung? With Spacing, Martina

Löw refers to such processes constituting space that have to do with erecting, building

or positioning.44 Putting up a commercial banner, a flower vase on a table or building a

fountain in a city would all be examples of Spacing. Additionally, a person placing him

or herself in front of another would also follow a process of Spacing. According to Löw,

spacing is a positioning in relation to other placements or positions and takes into

account both the moment of placement as well as the movement towards the next

position.45 As mentioned before in her definition, these two aspects, Spacing and

Syntheseleistung are only separable for analysis. Space is constituted by both of them

and one's existence is not possible without the other.

* It is important to note that Löw uses an English term – Spacing – instead of the German räumen, which

implies to make place for, to empty out. Meaning mainly to bring something from one place to another, this would refer to only one “substance” and not to the whole complex of social goods and people in motion constituting space.

44 Löw, 2001, pg. 158 45 Löw, 2001, pg. 159

31

Fig. 11

On the other hand, with Syntheseleistung Martina Löw refers to “the processes of

perception, association and memory, through which goods and people are combined

and form spaces”.46 When these processes become habitual or are repeated for a

prolonged time, spatial structures are generated, which are, together with temporal

structures, forms of social structures.47 Spatial structures, Löw states, emerge when

the constitution of space becomes inscribed in the form of rules, mostly secured

through resources* and is then embedded in institutions. Although we are in a way

programmed by these structures already inscribed, there are ways of breaking with the

habitual, producing irritation and thus encounters. It may be that the same hammer

mentioned before misses our sight if it is in its place on the tool board. We are used to

seeing it everyday, to the point of not seeing it at all.

Fig. 11 Verónica Lehner, photographs from the series D-14467, intervention in public space, 2008, Berlin-Potsdam 46 Löw, 2001, pg. 159, my translation from the original quote in German: “Zweitens (…) bedarf es zur

Konstitution von Raum aber auch einer Syntheseleistung, das heißt, über Wahrnehmungs-Vorstellungs- oder Erinnerungsprozesse werden Güter und Menschen zu Räumen zusammengefaßt”.

47 Löw, 2001, pg. 167 * Resources for Martina Löw can also be of a material or symbolic nature; the former derived from the

domination of nature and the latter which refers to people.

32

Nevertheless, if it happens to be lying next to a pile of wood splinters, we might have a

better chance of seeing it and at the same time perceiving the possible space-

constituting actions which were involved in its presenting itself to us 'now', in its

“Vergegenwärtigung”. In this way, those “little sensations” which we are sometimes too

accustomed to perceive can suddenly become noticeable if altered in a subtle way,

producing an encounter.

Fig.12

Fig.12 Verónica Lehner, intervened material from the series mal dies, mal das, mal hier, mal da, 2009, Berlin

33

Fig. 13

Fig. 13Verónica Lehner, photograph of material as found at its original site and documentation of intervened material,

from the series mal dies, mal das, mal hier, mal da, 2009, Berlin

34

3.3 Encounters in Relational Space:

Pictorial Processes and “small gestures”

In his book The Politics of Small Gestures Mika Hannula refers to process as “the third

space”.48 Based on “encounter” and “experientiality”, it is “a result of negotiations about

being together; a space that the parties involved in create in mutual reciprocity, and

which belongs to both of them only for that fleeting moment.”49 Since it must be

experienced, an encounter can never be repeated or translated in its totality, however,

it actually starts within each individual.50 In surprising resemblance to Böhme, Hannula

states that there are three levels inside each encounter:

1. self – self 2. self – immediate environment 3. self – difference, otherness51

One way of producing this encounter is through a “small gesture”. For Mika Hannula, a

“small gesture is characteristically a process” that “confronts the big gesture”52 and

“lives for the chance to be able to create alternative ways of being”.53 Opposite the big

gesture's monumentality and arrogance, the small gesture “is about the beauty of

ordinary acts”, of “trusting an experience that is happening near enough to you…in

your situatedness”.54 It becomes political as it becomes personal, making way for

reflection and awareness of the context in which it takes place. As Hans Hemmert said

to Mika Hannula in an interview in September 2005:

For me it is all about perception, about how we perceive things. And a small gesture, for example, is a way to change and alter the existing reality slightly. It means visually changing the taken-for-granted parameters of a site just a little bit.55

In this way, a small act that takes into account the one thing common to all that has

48 Hannula, Mika.The Politics of Small Gestures, Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art. Istambul:

art-ist tasarim prodü ksiyon ve yayincilik, December 2006 49 Hannula, 2006, pg. 77 50 Hannula, 2006, pg. 82 51 Hannula, 2006, pg. 83 52 Hannula, 2006, pg. 15 53 Hannula, 2006, pg. 16 54 Hannula, 2006, pg. 16 55 Hannula, 2006, pg. 33

35

unfortunately become invisible or over-looked and makes it visible again is what would

give a chance to contemporary art according to Mika Hannula. Moreover, it is this type

of gesture that has the power to involve others, to give way to participation, to go into

the fabric of daily life and get its raw material from there. For Hannula, the context in

which this raw material is most abundant belongs to the realm of the public sphere, “the

realm of give and take, push and pull”, more specifically the “open public space”, where

“the hope of being able to live with oneself and one's surroundings in a slightly more

meaningful way”56 can come closer to realization. Although a notion of an “open public

space” is problematic as it seems to be quite utopian (despite otherwise diffused), there

is a chance for art to help us get closer to this ideal.

He further states that “a small gesture... does invite interaction and exchange” and has

an awareness of being out there where it can “be seen, considered and criticized in

terms of... how the act relates to its discursive past, the public sphere, and the politics

of the given site and situation.”57 At this point it is also important to note how Mika

Hannula refers to the past as discursive and to what is already there as the “politics” of

the site. Linking this to Martina Löw's discussion of structures, spatial thus social ones,

the “small gesture” in a way breaks with this past and perhaps its stagnation, as it

makes it no longer habitual. Likewise, a pictorial process that reveals some of these

underlying structures (already codified and inscribed in rules, ergo discursive) by

altering the site and thus producing some kind of encounter, could also invite

interaction and exchange. Maybe not in a traditionally “communicative”, dialogue-based

way but in a chain of placements, displacements and other actions triggered by those

elements showing themselves, which can in turn make the spatial relations explicit to

others. Contrary to Hannula's “small gesture” which has as ultimate objective that of

being “meaningful”, the pictorial process tries to keep out precisely those codes and

meanings already there, and focuses on the material qualities and the actions triggered

by them.

As Martina Löw states, “in the first place people are in the world corporeally. They

move and place themselves with their body. Secondly, their corporeal expression is

directed by their positionings as well as the 'Synthesen'* of others.”58 In this way, the

56Hannula, 2006, pg. 23 57 Hannula, 2006, pg. 23 * The word “Synthese” has been left untranslated to avoid confusion, as it refers back to the term Martina

Löw uses to describe one of the processes of space constitution: “Syntheseleistung”. 58 Löw, 1991, pg. 179, my translation from the original in German: “Erstens sind Menschen körperlich in der

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body is central to many space constructions. As mentioned before, not only are people

and their bodies continuously constituting space but social goods as well, and not only

because of the meanings ascribed to them but due to certain perceivable qualities and

the presence they exert on who perceives them. It seems such qualities remain

relegated to a kind of automatic perceptive selection we exercise though, which

immediately lets us know what is “relevant” and what is not. This causes us not to

notice all the elements of our surroundings. We do not take the time, with patience, to

taste, chew and then digest, but we wrap the environment into a little pill called “world”

and gulp it down hastily.

Fig. 14

On the other hand, a basic similarity between pictorial processes and “small gestures”,

is that Hannula describes them as “activities that are not in themselves against

products or commercialization, but which definitely do not see themselves primarily as

a product”. Although they would like to be a part of the “mechanism of exchange that

we call advanced market capitalism”, small gestures want to set their own rules and

Welt. Mit dem Körper bewegen und plazieren sie sich. Zweitens steuert der körperliche Ausdruck sowohl die Plazierungen als auch die Synthesen anderer.”

Fig. 14Samstag Nachmittag, zuhause in Neukölln, 1995. Latex balloon / air/ artist/ livingroom, slide on light box. http://ingesidee.de/page.php?pgid=35&lang=en

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“criteria for it, not passively taking everything at face value”.59 As mentioned previously,

pictorial processes not only refer to those which take place prior to or during creation,

intervention, alteration, incision, etc., but also include those taking place after a “frozen

point” such as an exhibition. In this order of ideas, all the placements, displacements,

perceptual processes, exchanges and circulation of those elements, including all the

actors involved, are part of the experience. The product may be thus replaced with a

“frozen point”, which then returns to movement to keep on being a process.

4. Conclusion More than any conclusions, the role pictorial processes could play in the perception of

relational space would be that of a possibility to break with the discursive invasion of

painting, a perceptual medium, as well as with encrusted notions of absolute space. It

is clear that in the search for spatial strategies adept at working with such newer

notions of space theory as relational space, art and architecture as well as other

manifestations dealing with it need to be thought of differently. As for art, I think

practices cornered and criticized within contemporary art, such as painting, could

actually offer numerous possibilities in making this “relational space”, which is always

“dynamic” and thus fleeting, more graspable. They just need to be rethought.

This thesis is a proposal for a new way of thinking painting in dealing with relational

space. If space is no longer static, painting also needs to become dynamic and thus be

regarded as a process that also triggers other processes. The development of painting

into pictorial processes is also an attempt at blurring the discriminating demarcation of

different artistic disciplines - at least it seeks to question these divisions. In coming to

terms with one’s place in the world and one’s experience of it as well as others’

experience of it, is it really that relevant to still focus the discussion on “is this

performance? Is it more like sculpture? Is it just plain, boring, old painting?” As

everything is transformed, these questions cannot possibly remain the same. Based on

perceptual processes, pictorial processes also try to provide a different approach than

the usual towards how we situate ourselves in the world. In this sense, although they

may not deal directly with say, violence in third world countries or engage in a

59 Hannula, 2006, pg. 25

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community kind of interaction, they are nevertheless social despite of their simplicity.

They have to do with our daily experiences, even if some of their manifestations can be

found in an exhibition with white walls and not public space. Nonetheless, the

encounter they produce, if only once and within an art institution, will generate further

instances of awareness and attentiveness in the visitor’s everyday from that point on.

In short, the relations that constitute space, those that are chaotic as well as those that

have become structures, can come to our attention through slight alterations in our

environment. In breaking with the habitual and giving way to further actions and

processes, these irritations in our everyday can contribute to the creation of spatial

relations and in so doing, make us notice them in the first place. Furthermore, Painting

derived into pictorial processes, being of a perceptual nature, can possibly show us

spatial relations in another light than more discursive media, leading not only to a new

perception of space but also to the eventual transformation of it. Besides creating a

rupture with traditional ways of thinking space, perceptual media can offer a more

immediate connection to the environment, as they break with codes and equations and

generate experience and encounter. It is not to say that the perceptual should have a

higher position than the discursive, but rather that it is just as important and should not

just be relegated to the banal and trivial. Ignorance of a code does not necessarily

question intellectual capacities. All the more, it opens other doors into experiencing the

world. It also becomes an issue of dealing with “the other”, who is different and

operates under codes other than our own. Instead of marginalizing “the other”, it is

perhaps useful to delve deeper into possibilities being offered, negotiating a way of

being together so that new ways of thinking can not only be thought of, but be applied

to our everyday perception of the world.

It is necessary that perceptual media such as painting change in order to be able to

deal with non-static notions of space. It is not enough to work in grand dimensions, to

try not to represent space with the traditional central perspective or to try to erase all

aspects of a site by overpowering it with paint. It is also not enough to regard painting

as something two-dimensional, dependent on color and a flat surface as it is plain

simplistic to define it as paint on a support. Its core elements are not “being exotic” or

“being saleable”. Aspects such as the perceptual processes involved in the

“Chiasmus”, its independence from the discursive and the meticulous attention involved

in perceiving the world pertaining to that particular tradition are much more important

and to the point. Painting, as conceived traditionally, separated from other “disciplines”

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such as sculpture, drawing, video and performance, and providing only a minor

interaction by way of encounter, needs to become more dynamic. For this reason, a

concept such as pictorial processes, supported on the mechanism involved in the

perception of images but also applicable to “social goods” or people, is more accurate

in dealing with relational space. The emphasis is not solely on the physical qualities of

space, on materials and objects, but it is also focused on the actions and processes

deriving from them.

Furthermore, pictorial processes are not limited to the stages of creation or reception

as in the case of “THE work of art”. Instead, they include all the actions set in motion

not only by art, the artist, art history, or the art-spectator, but the environment itself and

the whole of other factors that influence it. They open a perceptual gateway into

experiencing the world and try to break with hierarchical notions that objectify space

and thus reduce it. The idea behind pictorial processes is also the one of allowing the

world to present itself, allowing it to “come out” and reveal itself, something that we

have become aware of only after seeing our harmful way of acting on the environment.

In this way, an emphasis on these processes is not only relevant for the subject of art,

but it is also helpful in our relation to ourselves, to our surroundings and to “the other”.

It provides another way of transforming spaces or coming to terms with the ones we

live in already.

Moreover, pictorial processes might bring to our attention such space-constituting

actions as collecting, placing, displacing, demarcating, producing, occupying, emptying,

disposing, appropriating, exchanging, amongst others. All the more, they can make us

notice that all of this is going on in the first place, as we have become accustomed to it

and thus take it for granted, and then show us how this impacts our perception of

space. First we perceive and then we question what we perceive. We can then start to

realize how our relation to others, to the environment, to “social goods” changes,

transforming space and thus our “situatedness” within the world. We can then start to

think spatially and stop regarding space as an object. We can begin to really

experience, to live space.

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Bibliography

• Böhme, Gernot. Atmosphäre. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1995 • Lyotard, Jean-François, transl. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby. The Inhuman, Reflections on Time. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California,1991 • Hannula, Mika. The Politics of Small Gestures, Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art. Istambul: art-ist tasarim prodüksiyon ve yayincilik, December 2006

• Löw, Martina. Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 2001 • Das Gedächtnis der Malerei: ein Lesebuch zur Malerei im 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. Von S. Omlin und B. Wismer, Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2000

• Lefebvre, Henri, transl. Donald Nicholson Smith. The Production of Space. Blackwell Publishing, Massachussets, 2008 • Richard Long, Walking and Marking. Edinburgh: Scottish National Galleries, 2007 • Katharina Grosse, Another Man Who has Dropped His Paintbrush, exhibition at the Galleria Civica di Modena, Palazzina dei Giardini, 2008-2009. Köln: Verlag Walther König, 2008 • Charlet, Nicolas. Yves Klein. München London New York: Prestel Verlag, 2000 • Mersch, Dieter. Zwei Vorlesungen, Band III Kunst und Medium. Materialreihe der Muthesius-Hochschule Kiel, published by Klaus Detjen and Theresa Georgen, 2002 • Raumtheorie, Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Hsg. von Dünne, Jörg und Stephan Günzel, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006 • http://www.sfasu.edu/pubaffairs/pressreleases/january2007/17-

photographs.asp • http://ingesidee.de/page.php?pgid=35&lang=en

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I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely the result of my own work except where

otherwise indicated. I have only used the resources given in the list of references.

Verónica Lehner

Berlin, September 8th, 2008