Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect’ Part 2

An Interpretation and Summary of Thrift N (2004) ‘Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect’, Geografiska Annaler 86 B (1):57-78

I do not know what it is I am like

Thrift suggests that the realm of video art conveys and engages explicitly with affect while utilising century old strategies to manipulate space and time. The author also points out the more recent developments and sophisticated use of moving image technology within the visual arts, as well as the possibilities of translating moving image into film, video, web and virtual reality artworks (here, I would also include DVD movies, mobile films and animation/anime).

Furthermore, video work easily translates onto the web with access to a more diverse group of viewers than the usual gallery audiences. I wonder if Thrift’s focus on video art also suggests that moving image is more effective to evoke affective responses than other visual art disciplines such as painting, sculpture or textiles. In addition to video art’s distinct representation of the connections between emotion, movement and city spaces as well as influencing space and time.

Thrift draws upon Bill Violas video work as it produces emotional reactions from the audience and utilises depictions which purposely engage the history of affect. Thrift sets out historical and contemporary past examples of affect which Viola draws upon in his work, such as the history of representation of the agonies of Christ from Middle Ages and the Renaissance tradition, which stems back to the ancient Greek pathos and the Christian notion of passion.

This reminded me of the Polish folk sculptures Sorrowful or Worrying Jesus and an evocative wooden sculpture of Saint Mary Magdalena praying while kneeling on a skull. Her grieving yet hopeful face seemed to simultaneously be looking towards the heavens as well as over her shoulder, an affective depiction which continues to fascinate me and for this reason I am considering to reference it in my artwork.

This representation, (my interpretation) would continue to engage the historical depictions and the unconscious history of affect as well as the original intension of the sculpture, the generation of collective affective practices of resurrection (of which most notable is absolving) and ascension (of which most significant is the reunion).

Placing this representation in a contemporary gallery space will affect the space and viewers within the space differently (if shown in Poland for example) and in different ways due to viewers’ affective capabilities formed by their social/cultural/political positioning, if at all. The artwork may even appear to be about something else entirely.

The possibility of such reactions and outcomes requires consideration as it opens up a range of theoretical and practical issues. Some of which are issues of representation, communication and finding ways of expressing affect, how affect can be located within an artwork and how an artwork transmits affect? Other issues would involve ways of unpacking, navigating and rendering knowledges of affect from other studies as a way to generate affective spaces that in turn enable viewers to be affected.

Another point which I mentioned earlier (previous reading) is the consideration of consequences for artists, who purposely utilise the universal to engineer affect for spaces and for spectators. Thrift identifies results of such a motivation as ‘unnatural naturalism and magical realism’. Viola’s aesthetic outcomes lend themselves to this type of interpretation but could also be viewed as over-produced, emotionless artificialities with superficial materiality.

This also brings to mind the work of Jill Greenberg tilted End Times (2007) and Thrifts suggestions on affect production; the larger than life faces, hands, lighting, crying, and historical depictions of agony, just to name a few. The large carefully staged photographic stills, display portraits of crying children. Aesthetically and technically these photographs utilise current press advertising clichés and media’s political vision of reproducing reality. As well as the Renaissance icon paintings particularly of cherubs and baby Jesus.

In this case it seems, that some viewers did not respond to the affective qualities originally intended by the artist but with concerns for the children’s well being, their unprotected position as under aged models in the hands of a photographer. However, as Thrift predicted the face was the leading engineer of affect, spectators were affected and emotionally reacted to Greenberg’s work.

The result of these images seems to represent more closely the consequences of over manufacturing affective qualities. As well as being about the engineering process of affective depictions, rather than affecting the audience with the ‘raw emotion of children crying’ as a vehicle for personal views of political and global situations, which seemed to be the intention of the artist.

I wonder whether Greenberg’s awareness of the individual/personal, the idea of herself, her children and other individual lives being governed by political and social factors, was overlooked and undetectable (or at least ineffective without reading her statement) due to a reduction of the general affective practices to aesthetic and singular defining subject matter by explicitly employing the universal and formal knowledges of affective response, such as a crying face of a child.

In a way the engagement with the traditional depiction of agony was appropriate, as it was the emotional back bone of the narrative but not the artist’s intended meaning of the work. However, the use of the universal approach of affective practice to communicate the collective, the individual and the personal, limited the reading of the work and striped it of any other possible affective qualities and emotional expressions. Resulting in images that became about the distress, agony and tears of the actual children being photographed, rather than evoking affects through manipulating space, time and the emotion reactions of the affected signifiers (the ‘future of our planet’) to current environmental and economical policies set by governments.

The potential representation of Magdalena is also problematic, one reason for this is that the inherent universal affective tradition of spiritual absolving and reunion is unachievable (not that this was ever my intention). This is mainly related to the object’s own and dislocated embodied memory, cultural, political and spiritual history. Yet, this position could open up a space for more plural ways of reading the artwork and in turn being affective.

Another reason is the range of affective capacities, the ascending and descending of emotional responses, which the representation may or may not emanate. This raises earlier questions about the language of representation of affect. What is an approach for constructing the visual language of affect that harnesses affective dialogue and exchange with viewers? How is this language to be arranged? And what are the knowledges of affect that are fundamental to the construction of the visual language of affective response?

Deploying expression that evokes intended affective dimensions seems obvious; avoid pitfalls of inability to affect such as silencing of emotions, which seems to arise when the affective signifiers are over-manufactured and the historical/political memory of affective practices is ignored. In other words, ignoring the issues of power from the resent or distant past when drawing upon affective traditions can constrain the emotional voice with superficiality risking ethnocentric representations.

Perhaps it is worth considering shifting and layering rather than reducing affective signifiers to their bare minimum. For example, shifting the awareness of the individual and linking it with the personal as primary motivation to evoke affect. Furthermore, the historical models of affective practice need to be positioned as connections to the resent and distant past power orientations and political landscapes, rather than ignoring their history and exclusively using them for their aesthetic and narrative constructions. This approach of linking past memories and present reactions could generate a place for manipulating space and time which are important elements of evoking affect.

The malleable relationship between individual lives and political/social situations and the various capacities for being affected or affective would be the fundamental concern. Linking ideas of the individual with memory of the affective practices and the personal, which in this case involve a memory of a lived experience, and the post-migrancy reaction memory, or even post-dislocation memory would evoke a process of post-emotional response memory which would be accessible to the viewers. This approach would also allow this process to be documented through representations and depictions without the need to declare a personal emotional experience or exorcism in the narrative component or in the ostensible meaning.

This would not guarantee an emotional response in a gallery space but it would forge a foundation for a multilayered approach to evoking affect where varied capacities of affect and emotional expression could be formed rather than a singular orientation being shaped or channelled.