This 'dance' being the one we occasionally find ourselves lost in, in those moments when perhaps lost in the rhythm of an enfolding piece of music or when looking carefully at something as we draw it, we inhabit the moment rather than regard it as something for disinterested contemplation. In the book 'Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia', by Skerritt, Perkins, Myers, and Khandekar, we are introduced to the idea of the 'ever-present', time being something that is bent into a loop, old things being interwoven with new ones in an endless cycle. But there are other aesthetic traditions where art forms engage with the world as part of life. Kant's aesthetic idea of 'disinterested interest' is an idea that allows us to stand back from the art we make in order to contemplate it, and it stands at the centre of the history of European aesthetic discourse. We are embedded into our world and the concept of an art form that is separate from the culture we inhabit is a very strange one. In aesthetics the term 'gesamtkunstwerk' is used to refer to a total work of art, something that encompasses a range of approaches rather than just one media. This is art as total culture, not unlike what happens elsewhere and else-when throughout history. Try and picture in your mind jazz playing, the dancers trying to zig-zag their bodies in an accompanying visual rhythm, in a room with a zig-zag floor and with zig-zag art Deco decoration and people's speech patterns being inflected by cool jazz type syncopation. She invites us to look down into this crack, and to confront discomforting truths about our world, truths that are at the moment coming home to roost. It is one of those differences that gives people the power to judge, to reject others or to kill them.įor Salcedo, the crack represents a history of racism, running parallel to the history of modernity of the divide between the rich and poor, northern and southern hemispheres. A shibboleth is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. T heir language did not include a 'sh' sound, so if they couldn't say the word, they were executed. In order to check they were of the Ephraimites tribe, every person was asked to pronounce the word, 'shibboleth'. The crack in the floor of Tate modern by Doris Salcedo, entitled 'Shibboleth' refers to the Biblical tribe the Ephraimites, who when attempting to flee their persecutors across the river Jordan were captured by their enemies, the Gileadites. This effect it has been theorised, is why cave painters produced both abstract forms and representational ones and most importantly mixed them together. There is a further stage to this effect, as time goes on and there is no relief from the dark, the mind begins to 'see' other more recognisable things and abstract amorphous forms gradually take on animal or human like shapes. A “light show” in the mind gradually emerges out of the blackness, and often begins with abstract zig-zags and dots. “Prisoner’s Cinema”, an effect that occurs when you are in darkness for a long time, is another example. Normally there are too many interesting things going on for the brain to be bothered with these insignificant visual events. These phenomena only come into vision when you are faced with a plain background such as a white wall or a clear sky. Another way to get the brain to 'see' a zig-zag is to apply pressure to your closed eyes and this generates a phosphene, perceived as veiny or zig-zag-like lines. One zig-zag form in particular is called the “Purkinje Tree”, this is when you see your eye's blood vessels when light shines into the pupil from an unexpected angle. The zig-zag you see being your brain's attempt to decode your own eye's movements as it tries to 'see' something. Another reason is that floating coagulations of vitreous jelly can drift through the interior of the eyes and you sometimes see them or if not these 'floaters' themselves, traces of their movement, as your eye attempts to focus on them. One of the reasons that we see entoptic images is because of the movement of white blood cells in capillaries in front of the retina. The eyes operate in such a way that they are also looking at our inner selves at the same time, but we tend to forget that. We sometimes forget how much a part of the body the eye is, it cant be separated out from the way blood circulates or the nervous system works, but we tend to think of our eyes as being a sort of window through which we perceive the world, rather than a working organ that like all our other organs is integrated into the rest of the body. Zig-zag patterns alongside dots and other abstract shapes, can be 'seen' because of the fact that eyes are embedded into your body.
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