Nine Drawings: seriality, postphenomenology and the force of time

ABSTRACT

This article describes a piece of practice-led drawing research titled: Nine Drawings (2016). Treated as a first-person investigation combining serial drawing, Bergsonian philosophy and a postphenomenological methodology, the purpose is to test the idea of research through drawing by seeking to represent the enigmatic Bergsonian notion that time acts as a force. The methodology employs serially developed drawing to ‘record’ (represent) the drawers experience of time ‘passing’. Treated as a form of praxis which is reflected upon in the drafting of this paper, the process of drawing centres around the effort to draw biro lines ‘in time’ to a ticking metronome. The metronome is set ticking at various increasing tempos, each represented by a different coloured biro ink, and the results displayed across a series of nine graph paper sheets. In conceptual terms, time is interpreted according to Bergson’s philosophy of la durée (duration), while the series is largely assessed using the phenomenological method of variations. Considered in terms of research, the assessment seeks both an invariant and a multistable understanding of the phenomenon under consideration – the experientially derived idea that time acts as a force. The nine drawings are presented individually after the conclusion for the reader to refer to, whilst being presented once as a full series. The results of this multifaceted investigation are reported at the end, and offer potential insights into the way in which research through drawing might operate when art and philosophy are combined.

KEYWORDS:

• Drawing
• phenomenology
• postphenomenology
• variations
• seriality
• temporality
• repetition
• Minimalism
• Bergson
• Ihde

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Joe Graham is an artist and drawing researcher. He is currently based in Falmouth as a Lecturer in Drawing at Falmouth University, whilst holding a Visiting Tutor post in Fine Art CHS (Critical & Historical Studies) at the Royal College of Art in London. Joe completed his practice-led PhD in Drawing Research at Loughborough University in 2015, prior to which he undertook an MFA in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2010) with the award of the Henry Tonks Prize for Drawing. Recent published outputs include an artist monograph, Flea, published by the Centre for Recent Drawing, London (2012), an artist bookwork, ANCHOR, published by Marmalade Publishers of Visual Theory, London (2015), and articles in the Journal of Visual Art Practice (14:1), Intellect’s journal, Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice (Vol.1.1) and the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR12).

ORCID

Joe Graham http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9811-9808