On Crtitical Writing on Art, Design & Media

My revivability of writing was actually begun last semester when I started MfA after the long absence of words in my bachelor school. Parts of the credits supposed to go to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which came back to me by the hype from the film, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire that regained my reading habit, which also influenced on my writings later. (Tolkien was always the one who influenced me in writings since I was young, but that time it was Thai translation of his works. This time, it’s direct response by his words.)

I never really have much problem with writing itself in the first place, especially considered that my monologue usually in English. (I have a strong habit of talking to myself out loud, which draw strange eyes from people sometimes…) The usual obstacle’s what to write, as I used to have no clue of what to write about my works in the past, since they were all thinking visually. But when it comes to how I write, it appears to me the same with speaking, thinking out loud, just with different medium, one with vibration of vocal cords, one with movement of hand.

Anyway, the result of that was the writings I wrote usually appeared in the only style of free writing and interpretative writing which is my current practice. The class did expanded types of writings for me to write. Different workshops introduced me the new boundary, to know my new scope. Also let me know how to summarize and analyze the readings. Previously, I usually read for pleasure, so I didn’t carefully do those much often even though I did some analyze on it.

The expansion also totally helped me in current practice, since I’m working on writings and trying to introduce a new kind of writing myself. I am able to see the distinctions and elements of each kind of writings in order to reflect on my own writings.

Sketches

Cy Twombly : Quattro Stagioni, Estate

In order to read unreadable writing, we have to divorce conventional language.

In this large scaled painting by Cy Twombly which shared its name with Antonio Vivaldi’s famous violin concerto, Quattro Stagioni: Estate (The Four Seasons: Summer), three clusters of yellow paint and traces of white over bled down from where they met the canvas. Behind those layers of colors seemed to be some scribbles of writing, small sets of English alphabets. But if one tries to read them using the system of English language, they remained gobbledygook. Actually, they can’t even be pronounced out loud.

The original concerto by Vivaldi’s wordless, but it had a sonnet as its accompaniment. I almost saw the beginning of the third verse of the sonnet for Estate’s first movement, ‘Scioglie il Cucco la Voce, e tosto intesa’. Then at the second I started to read it, it was already gone, disconnected, unreadable. But is it meaningless?

Scribbles often seen in Twombly’s works. It’s part of his abstract visualization. They remained unreadable, but still able to perceive as visual forms rather than a servant of language, which filled his voice in silence storm of colors.

Back then when human started to mark something on the surface of the earth, it should be closer, whether between writing and drawing, or them and us, the markers. But languages developed, adding more complicated systems, parted writing farther and farther from us. Writing became ambiguous, unfamiliar, and less sincere. Twombly freed his writings from being owned by language, and reunited his verbal and visual interpretation.

Roland Barthes : Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes recorded his journey through the life of his deceased mother through photographs of her. He distrusted its potential of capturing his beloved, that he wouldn’t be able to find her. Photographs turned his mother to something else, called History, to look upon, excluding him from her. He doubted his own memories too, realized that he only recognized her in fragments while longing for her whole being. Until he looked at the last photograph with his mother as a child that he rediscovered her unexpectedly. He found the same fragments, gentleness, his mother lent both to him and camera, that he finally discovered her as into herself.

Barthes questioned the truth of beings, captured in photography and memory; the suppose of oneself.

He claimed that photography turned beings (that was captured) to objects to review.

He discussed the meaning of photography in relate to recognition of the readers.

Frieke Janssens : Smoking Kids, No Lighter

She stayed still on that round shaped, vintage-liked photograph, almost looked like a painting. She’s white, about ten or a few more years of age. Her auburn hair tied up in twin tails hairstyle. Freckles furnished on her forehead and across her nose from cheek to cheek. She’s wearing a blue and white plaid vintage dress, looked like a traditional western good girl in old posters I saw somewhere. Maybe come from a middle class family around 40s to 60s? She looks irritated. Her brows twisted in attempt to light a cigarette at her lip with a burning cigarette in her childish hands. White smoke danced in the air. In that moment, she lost her innocence.

Where do smokers come from if not inherited from other smokers? The trace of adult’s influences on children appeared in form of the burning cigarette she used to light hers. As an audience, looking directly at her attempt, it raised question such ‘Did I give her that cigarette?’ The photograph stops time, and we were witnessing her action forever as we look. Unable to voice, we keep looking in silence, and question ourselves, 'Did I give her my consent to smoke?'