MATERIALITY BY PETRA LANGE-BERNDT

THE THING AND STUFF:

Elizabeth Grosz (2001) The Thing p146:

"The thing became that against which we measured ourselves and our limits, the mirror of what we are not" - Reality of senses.

"(The thing as) inert materiality"

"Alienation from the subject, with an animated and potentially malevolent materiality, a biological materiality that is or may be the result of our unknowing (usually atomic or nuclear) intervention into nature, the revenge of the blob."

Robert Smithson 1968 A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects p149:

“The earth’s surface and the figments of the mind have a way of disintegrating into discrete regions of art. Various agents, both fictional and real, somehow trade places with each other - one cannot avoid muddy thinking when it comes to earth projects, or what I will call ‘abstract geology’.”

“Conceptual crystallisations break apart into deposits of gritty reason.”

“The entire body is pulled into cerebral sediment, where particles and fragments make themselves known as solid consciousness. A bleached and fractured world surrounds the artist. To organise this mess of corrosion into patterns, grids and subdivisions is an aesthetic process that has scarcely been touched.” - We’re limited to what our brain and senses can perceive, even the body and brain are biocentric, they are based on sensory analysis that requires itself to exist. 'The brain named itself'. What does this mean for my practice though? Am I denying that the work is capable of existing because it relies on a maker and viewer/interpreter?

"The city gives the illusion that earth does not exist. Heizer calls his earth projects 'The alternative to the absolute city system'."

"(Iain Baxter) Dumping and pouring become interesting techniques... My own 'Tar Pool and Gravel Pit (1966) proposal makes one conscious go the primal ooze."

"The tools of technology become a part of the Earth's geology as they sink back into their original state." - Am I looking at the natural world's impact on an art work or the art works physical impact on the world? Or both?

Mel Bochner (1970) Elements from Speculation p168:

"There is no art which does not bear some burden of physicality. To deny it is to descend to irony."