The Beat

A photographic disorder

Aava Anttinen

ANT13402071MA PhotographyCentral Saint Martins2015

Image I

Index

Preface 5

1. Photograph dislocated

1.1 Major and minor 6

Immutable imbalance

1.2 Other qualities of image 7

One representation less and its weakness

1.3 Intonation as a meaning 10

Imagestuttersandfindingnon-representationalelement

2. Rhythm and the succession

2.1 Difference in repetition 13

Continuous change

2.2. Stranger in photography 14

Otherness and exclusion

2.3 Sensing image 16

Image as a bodily experience

Conclusions 19

Tuningintovibrationandfindingthebeat

Bibliography 26

5

Preface

Thefloorandthewallsarelikealivingorganismpulsingaroundandthroughme.

lcanfeelthebassinsidemeandforamomentit’shardtobreathe.

That’showgoodthebeatis.

Similar beat can be found in photography in the unknown area, beyond representation.

This paper attempts to understand and explain how the same bodily experience, hypnotic presence,

which music can have on you, is also noticeable in photography.

Emotions music, for example, can trigger affect us as a whole meaning both body and mind, yet the

experience is absorbed physically. The body experiences things that are hard, or even impossible,

to reason intellectually. We are so drawn to for example music because us human beings aim for

evoking emotions and sensations. That is what artists attempt to do as well.

A photograph will always have a dualistic meaning whether it is intended or not. What this paper

investigates in photography, are the other alternative qualities that, in itself can create meaning,

leaning theoretically on Gilles Deleuze’s work, mainly his essay He Stuttered (1998). In He Stuttered

Deleuze introduces the idea of stuttering in language which can be interpreted as a carnal beat to

other rhythms, that is so unnoticeably absorbed.

Previously, the idea of stuttering has been applied in different mediums but funnily enough, not in

photography where stuttering is concretely quite palpable and obvious.

Instead of approaching this theme by using cinema as an example, this paper leans on previously

less used comparisons. It attempts to observe and define photographic rhythm by looking for similar

qualities in language and music, and how by using them one can create interesting, parallel points to

refer to. Both music and language are less demanding when it comes to being approachable since

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it is easier to point out the repetitive element in them. However, the camera is capable of sensuality

as any other medium. If not more so.

1. Photograph dislocated

1.1 Major and minor

Immutable imbalance

Like in all interaction, the issue in photography is distribution of power and, to be more specific,

imbalance. Self-evidently, photographs are encrypted from a symbolic point of view. In other words,

they are ‘read’. That is where the problem lies. The constant, automatic need and attempt to

understand the image. From the maker’s point of view; to pass on meaning and create content is the

ever-present trait of photography.

Perhaps due to the fact that photographs are everywhere and made by everyone they have become

invisible for us in the sense that we are so accustomed using and seeing them in the mundane.

And in a very specific way. Photographs are representing. What this means is that an image creates

a dualistic meaning and works as an illustration. In other words, it is acting as a substitute, a

description to something else. This means that in the current way of working with and using

photographs, people are distancing themselves even more from the present moment and would

rather be somewhere in between of (capturing) the past and (expecting) the future.

“And just as the new language is not external to the initial language, the asyntactic limit is not

external to language as a whole: it is the outside of language, but not outside it.“

(Deleuze, 1998, p.112)

There is no question about it that representation is the dominant quality of image. That is to say: the

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major. In order for there to be a major there needs to be a suppressed other as well – a minor. These

two are bound together and need each other to function. The major has an apparent dominant role

and the minor is often disregarded as insignificant.

Representation’s position in both mundane and photography is so strong and unseen that noticing it

or understanding how strong it’s grip is, can be troublesome. It is easier to define the major in

photography, but to pay attention to the minor, and recognise it, can be more challenging.

“… invent a minor use of the major language within which they express themselves entirely; they

minorize this language, much as in music, where the minor mode refers to dynamic combinations in

perpetual disequilibrium.” (Deleuze, 1998, p.109)

1.2 Other qualities of image

One representation less and its weakness

Experiencing image through this representative filter, the medium, meaning camera, is forced into

invisibility. By being kept hidden, photography loses other potential aspects. A significant impact in

hiding the medium is that the appreciation towards photography, compared to other fine art forms,

is being scaled down. However photography isn’t only a form or means of expression or a form of

representation. It already holds an expressive element in itself.

Photography’s own power is connected to the power of representation. By removing an essential

element, also the form of photography ceases to be representation. What is left is a free reign which

opens possibilities to other components.

Photography is always referring to everything else than itself. That is how representation works and

this is also why we are so used to looking past the medium and seeing everything else in a

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photograph. Concretely, this means that the way we look at a photograph is decoding and an

interpretation of the so-called reality the image communicates. Not like music, which is understood

more as a pure expression of itself. Photography gains more depth and gets abstract when the

major element, representation is subtracted and the actual medium is being noticed.

In his take on Shakespeare’s well-known play Romeo & Juliet, Italian avant-garde film director and

actor Carmelo Bene removes one of the main characters, Romeo. It does feel absurd to think how

the play would function when one of the two star-crossed lovers, Romeo, is a no-show.

Bene’s decision is a bold one. The main characters define the course of the story. The other elements

such as the milieu or the supporting acts exist to support main characters’ actions and existence.

When the dominant and vital element is removed from the the story, the plot falls apart. However,

within the chaos there emerges an opportunity and space for the other components to step forward.

Deleuze was interested in Bene’s way of operating and creating his own rules within the play. By

working with a method of subtracting (one less), instead of adding (one more), Bene makes space

for other building blocks which previously remained in the background, to shine. What Bene did with

Romeo & Juliet is about the same reassembling as what Deleuze wrote about breaking language

and creating one’s own language system inside the common one. Deleuze writes about removing

major and bringing forth the minor in his essay One Manifesto Less (1993) as follows:

“… here it is in one and the same language that one must succeed in being bilingual, it is on my own

language that I must impose the heterogeneity of variation, it is in it that I must carve out a minor use

and cut away the elements of power or of majority.” (Deleuze, 1993, p. 212)

As mentioned before, in photography the major is representation. It is so tightly welded into

photography, and in the camera as a purpose-built technology, that it is hard, impossible even, to

think about image without representation and to see the image simply as what it is; a photograph.

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Instead of trying to remove it completely, it might be easier to just keep in mind and be aware of the

dominant position it holds for representation, which will always be part of a photograph no matter

how much one would try to get rid of it.

Like in most things where power is distributed, the minor in photography is forced to remain hidden

and give space for the major. What if there was a shift? The minor would take the main stage and

the major would be suppressed. In One Manifesto Less (1993), Deleuze brings forward a notion that

these kinds of continuous drastic changes and variations make the work come to life; the movement

that takes place in the middle and not in the beginning nor end.

“It is in the middle where one finds the becoming, the movement, the velocity, the vortex.

The middle is not the mean, but on the contrary, the excess. It is by the middle that things push.”

(Deleuze, 1993, p. 208)

The movement in the middle Deleuze (1993) is referring to is about not following the linear logic of

thinking. Not to have a clear beginning and ending. By working with the minor qualities, the maker

encourages the viewer to combine otherwise separate elements with each other. This way of

combining, Deleuze refers to as rhizomatic thinking. Rhizomatic thinking is a nonlinear way of

creating connections between things logically separate. Rhizomatic structure comprehends

multiplicities and diversity in making connections and allows non-hierarchal entry and exit points in

connecting and interpreting. Rhizomatic model is basically endless map-like connections with no

clear point of origin, giving freedom to connect the unconnected. It allows the including and

excluding of information to flow freely and get away of things as well. It isn’t only about the viewer

following the non-linear, rhizomatic logic but it is also the way artists operate in their practice.

(Deleuze, Guattari, 2005)

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1.3 Intonation as a meaning

Imagestuttersandfindingnon-representationalelement

According to Deleuze (1998) there are two ways of writing, and usually the bad writers use them.

The first one: To do it in which the character is made to stutter in his lines. The second one: To say

without doing it where the reader is told that the character stutters without it being made explicit in

the characters lines. But there is also a third way, that artists should aspire to achieve: When saying

is doing. In the latter, the character isn’t the one who stutters but the writer.

“… it is certainly not enough to be a “great” writer, and the means must remain forever inadequate.

Style becomes nonstyle, and one’s language lets an unknown foreign language escape from it, so

that one can reach the limits of language itself and become other than a writer, conquering

fragmented visions that pass through the words of a poet…” (Deleuze, 1998, p. 113)

The text should stutter, cry or mumble, and in this way convey a feeling and experience instead of

explaining it with logic or describing it in words. Deleuze (1998) also mentions a way to describe

character’s speech through his gestures or his ways of moving.

The general and approved mode of using language and words, for example how this paper is

written, is the major. Samples of the minor that is moulded from the dismantled major could be found

from the writings of the Beat generation. Samuel Beckett’s melodic Worstward Ho (2009) is also one

clear and tangible example because of the way the text is constructed. It whirls in circles and stutters

by repeating the words and sentences. It feels like a game with language and a search of different

ways of using it.

“Unchanged? Sudden back unchanged? Yes. Say yes. Each time unchanged. Somehow unchanged.

Till no. Till say no. Sudden back changed. Somehow changed. Each time somehow changed.”

(Beckett, 2009, p. 85)

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Stuttering can be applied to photography as well. Artist’s own language, her way of expressing is

connected to the general system within the art field and the medium in question. It is a certain

variation from it.

A continuous change like this is essential in language but also in fine art. If there isn’t any change,

things start to lose their meaning and reiterate themselves. It is desirable for the artists to direct the

language to disequilibrium. Creating a “stuttering” atmosphere, a “stuttering” piece of work, allows

us to pay attention to an imbalance in language as an act and encourages to combine otherwise

separate elements with each other.

Stuttering is commonly understood as a speech disorder, a fault that needs to be fixed. In He

Stuttered (1998), Gilles Deleuze speaks about creating a new language system as a minor from the

major, common system. Stuttering, for him, is another way of expressing. Paying more attention to

the act of stuttering and the meanings it might hold within itself, rather than concentrating on the

content that is tried to be conveyed.

Deleuze wants to bring forward an idea that maybe the stuttering in itself is the meaning, and what

we actually need, are new ways of expressing things. It is a way of breaking free from

representational path in order to find a voice through mistake, failing. Stuttering stands for different

kind of logic. A logic that is wild and reckless and which offers a free space for meaning, making,

being. Only if you have a destination or defined plan, you can get lost. When everything is a bit

unclear, all paths are possibilities to the unknown.

“To make one’s language stutter, face to face, or face to back, and at the same time push language

as a whole to its limits, to its outside, to its silence – this would be like the boom and the crash.”

(Deleuze, 1998, p.113)

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Stuttering, the Deleuzian way, creates meaning(s) within itself. Stuttering holds rhythmic qualities in

it. An artist should pursue to create her own way of speech, and test and try her own and art’s

boundaries. It is about the artist’s speech being from outside of the general system but not outside

of it.

“To make the language itself stutter in this manner, at the deepest level of style, is a creative process

that runs through all great works. It is as if the language were becoming animal”

(Deleuze, 1998, p. 55)

Stuttering is the beat and the rhythm. So, what is it in image that is as uncomfortable in itself as

stuttering is in language? Firstly, it is important to be able to look pass the representation and try to

ignore it. Then examine what is left, the other, less known qualities of photography. Secondly what

we have is repetition and reproduction. Repetition that in itself creates difference as there cannot be

two identical images. That repetitive trait can be seen same as the stutterer’s speech or the

pounding beat in a piece of music. Reproduction concretely repeats and creates the rhythm the

camera as an instrument produces. They share the same anticipation of what will follow.

Thirdly since there are multiple means to use and display photographs, stuttering within the medium

can also manifest itself in very different ways. Especially due to the drastic development of virtual

environments, the possibilities to use image and how they exist became endless. For example, from

more traditional ways such as collages or repetitive grid style series and contact sheets, to giffs and

photoshopped layered images floating simultaneously online. Just to name few. The captivating

element can be created by the usage of the surface. Unlike the painting which can be a three-

dimensional piece, a photograph’s surface stutters at a two dimensional level, which is in the image.

Another way to create the rhythm is to create series, use repetition and to make the image an equal

with other elements and with where it is located.

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2. Rhythm and the succession

2.1 Difference in repetition

Continuous change

Behind the surface of the image, there is a camera and it’s mechanism. Things come to live only

in “continuous series of metamorphoses and variations.” (Deleuze, 1993, p. 206) The camera is a

reproduction machine. It repeats constantly until it breaks.

“Does not the paradox of repetition lie in the fact that one can speak of repetition only by virtue of the

change or difference that the mind draws from repetition?” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 70)

The criticism towards photography is that images aren’t unique, but replicable. That “weakness”

is also photography’s biggest asset. It is precisely that fascinating trait which makes photographic

images special. Images are reprinted over and over again and not a single one of them is identical

with another. Camera, photography repeats but with difference creating multiple versions which are

slightly different. This is significant because it is a unique characteristic of photography and the

factor that is able to reveal the representational framework.

“Repetition is a condition of action before it is a concept of reflection. We produce something new

only on condition that we repeat – once in the mode, which constitutes the past, and once more in

the present of metamorphosis. Moreover, what is produced, the absolutely new itself, is in turn

nothing but repetition…” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 90)

Just like in language, repeating in photography creates difference. In language the same words

don’t lead back to identical meanings, context, but the tone (intonation) differs. In photography, what

is being photographed and the image are obviously separate, but also, the physical repeating acts

as the meaning, and less about where the camera is pointed.

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Stuttering in language as well as in photography creates anticipation. It is repetition that points out

the difference and the structural, physical aspect of the medium. Photographs are as much about

the mechanical abilities of cameras, pushing representation to the side.

“…the world of representation is characterised by its inability to conceive of difference in itself: and

by the same token, its inability to conceive repetition, for itself, since the latter is grasped only by

means of recognition, distribution, reproduction and resemblance…” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 138)

2.2. Stranger in photography

Otherness and exclusion

Strangeness in photography is reached by approaching the medium from a different angle. Being

a stranger or a foreigner in photography, that is so familiar and embedded in everyday life sounds

difficult, but why is it important? First of all, there is an importance in not taking things for granted and

accepting them without questioning. The second reason is the outcome of the first. There should

be a demand for different kinds of logic. Not accepting what ‘everybody knows’ is the unchangeable

truth and recovering difference within representation.

Being the other is defined through exclusion. It is about not being included and being part of

something. That means the other is automatically situated outside of the common. However, this

doesn’t mean these two are totally separate from one another. The other is tightly connected to the

thing it is being excluded from. That is where it gets its wild and reckless sense and meaning. It is

like travelling to a country not visited before; observing from the outside and feeling like the odd one

out.

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“From the evening breeze to this hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth. Consciousness

illuminates it by paying attention to it. Consciousness does not form the object of its understanding,

it merely focuses, it is the act of attention and, to borrow a Bergsonian image, it resembles the

projector that suddenly focuses on an image.” (Camus, 2005, p. 41)

So, how to approach this otherness, feeling of exclusion and distance? In his essay The Myth of

Sisyphus (2005), Albert Camus speaks about the absurd and looks closely on what makes a piece

of art absurd. What Camus means is the strangeness of distancing yourself from your life. This

separation, the void, becomes eloquent, daily gestures are broken, they start to seek the link to

connect it again.

There come moments in life when “the mechanical aspect of gestures” (Camus, 2005, p. 13) or

“the meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them” (Camus, 2005, p. 13).

For example your own reflection in the mirror can be absurd. So familiar, yet a complete stranger.

Something absurd happens when the present moment is experienced and the emotional realization

of mortality is sensed.

There is a connection between the absurd, minor language and with the beat: being able to

acknowledge and see beyond representation. The common factor is work with other tools the

medium provides. By doing that, the maker brings the physical aspect of the image forward.

Paying attention to the artist’s effort and production and working around it is exactly working within

the minor and making the piece palpable and relatable. It is about sharing knowledge and

understanding, identifying with the experience of making.

“The eternal return is a force of affirmation, but it affirms everything of the multiple, everything of the

different, everything of chance except what subordinates them to the One, to the Same…”

(Deleuze, 1994, p. 115)

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The absurd is achieved intentionally by pinpointing difference. It can be found between the

perception of the thing and the thing itself.

2.3 Sensing image

Image as a bodily experience

“…whenever a language is submitted to such creative treatments, it is language in its entirety that

is pushed to its limits, to music or silence.” (Deleuze, 1998, p. 55)

It requires unity to sense image. For example in clubs, repetitive, shared movement creates unison.

Unison is something both physically concrete and personally experienced. The beat is the thing

in an image or in a body of work, which creates a certain rhythm in it, a loop that takes a hold of

you. Phil Turetsky (2004) looks into rhythm in music, the connective quality of it and the effect it has

on the experiencer.

“This as Deleuze points out, echoes Hume’s claim that ‘repetition changes nothing in the object

repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it.” (Turetsky, 2004, p. 146)

In his article Becoming-Music:TheRhizomaticMomentofImprovisation(2004), writer and

researcher Jeremy Gilbert mentions English music journalist and writer Simon Reynolds who has

been looking into stuttering and what it might be in music, especially in house music, rap and jazz

– which all are quite organic and don’t follow strictly beforehand planned structure. According to

Gilbert, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote about music and the effect it has on the listeners

and the interaction between these two. Reynolds on the other hand concentrates more on the actual

technique of making music and how to create stuttering concretely. All house, rap and jazz,

uncontrolled and organic, do stutter. The idea Reynolds introduces, that of rave being a desiring

machine (Gilbert 2004, p.119), a mechanical beast, is very interesting: in house music for example,

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the DJ is creating the music whilst performing. There is unison of the dancers and the physical

feeling of the bass. The music reacts to the mass and vice versa.

In photography the maker isn’t present physically as DJ’s are in raves. That is why in photography,

the ability of recollection is so notable. Recollecting is important because by calling to mind and

unconsciously making use of the already existing knowledge and experiences, it is possible to get

closer and sense the photographic beat. In addition to recollecting, the technical aspect in

photography is as interesting and important as it is in music. There is sensuality in technicality, and

in both music and photography, as in any other art form, the quality that attracts is in technology.

The technical process and actions that create the piece of music or image.

Technical sensuality also brings forward the mastery of the medium. For example in rap music, the

talent of rhyming and controlling the flow and creating a beat is more impressive and enchanting as

the actual piece or the lyrics. Working and mastering the camera and all things related, induces the

same kind of curiosity and admiration towards the human-camera system. In other words, creates

or strengthens the connection with the viewer. The sensuality of the technology and mastering it are

connected to the body. The performative element in the photograph can be found in the presence of

the photographer, the relationship between the viewer and the image but also in the technology, the

suave performance of the camera and the rhythmic process.

“Performances of such rituals inherit their sense from their resonance, replay, and non-localisable

connections with a distant past which is reactualised in the present… Such symbols act effectively

in the actualisation of the dance in the living present. The effective reality of the symbol is not it’s

representational content but its differential structure.” (Turetsky, 2004, p. 149)

Just as music, fine dinner or a way of walking can be sensual; photographs also hold in themselves

this possibility for sensation. This physical feeling that makes your stomach cramp, affects

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breathing, as if you saw your long time crush on the street. This sensation can be found in the core

of a good art work. It is precisely the element/quality that haunts the viewer. The hypnotic quality as

that which can be felt in front of Pollock’s paintings for what feels like eternity.

Unlike music, which doesn’t face any expectations to be informative, photography is often

considered just a documentation, representation and often the very artists themselves settle with

that as if it is immutable part of the medium that shouldn’t even be questioned. However, without

that sensual element which can’t be reasoned the image is nothing more than an illustration that is

so easy to brush aside. By making a photograph a bodily experience, it not only makes that particular

image ‘work’, it also, more widely perceived, restores photography’s position as a fine art practice.

On top of working with representation, image works with senses as well.

“When I extend my hand to grasp the ashtray, I clearly anticipate its metallic feel, its resistance, its

weight. A multiplicity of knowledge comes into play here, knowledge of the body itself, with the help

of which and in relation to which I sketch out my behaviour in relation to the object. Now, although

within perception, the knowledge of the body itself is directed entirely toward the pragmatic

apprehension of the object, in the rhythmizing act, the perceived object is given with a view to

another entity that surpasses it and which we grasp precisely as rhythm. It is precisely this

transcendence of rhythm with respect to the rhythm-object that will reveal the specific nature of

rhythmizing anticipation.” (Abraham, 1995, p. 74)

Psychoanalyst Nicolas Abraham (1995) identified rhythm as being the vital connection between the

poet and the readers. Repeatable succession makes the viewer numb and boredom steps into play.

In this case dullness is far from a negative thing or something that should be avoided. It is

comparable to the state you often find yourself whilst sitting in front of a fireplace or standing on

the shore gazing the waves. It is almost like a hypnotic state, a different level of being. When the

work repeats in this way, it brings forward the significance of the environment and the context. Both

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of them are essential part of a work for several reasons. Firstly, the environment adds in duration.

Together they enforce the bodily experience and make the work come to present. Secondly, the

context makes repetition more meaningful and strong. It binds it tightly to the presence and the

connection with the viewer becomes more fluid.

To harness sensuality into practice requires pursuing unison of the body and the mind and attracting

above all the physical. The interaction and anticipation is result of the realisation of the present. The

repetition in photography brings forward the notion of the camera, but also of the photographs being

real. That is when an image stops being flat and earns its place in the shared space and actually

turns carnal. Image embodies experiences, steps out of representation into sensation.

Conclusions

Tuningintovibrationandfindingthebeat

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see,

something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make silence, we cannot.” (Cage, 1978, p. 8)

There is silence in every piece of music between the notes. Just like in music, it is possible to find

silent moments in photography as well. When this silence, which isn’t silent at all, is translated into

photography, it is addressing the minor and saying that even without representation there are things

communicated. What is being passed on are mechanicalness and the present qualities.

Photography embodies repetition perfectly. It is the core, beat and sensuality of its craft.

Photographs are manmade and the photographer is creating the beat by merging with the

camera, becoming a cyborg. That cyborg is constantly repeating from pressing the trigger to

creating a contact sheet or uploading the ‘same’ image to different online platforms simultaneously.

So, the repetition flows in the space, time and the physical level of being.

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Photography has fluent and illogical side. This side makes room for inviting rhythm that is so hard

to resist. Anticipation and desire allow the beat to take over. Like in music, with images as well, the

openness and willingness to experience is a necessity. Getting lost in the rhythm is easy. Almost

insidious. It sucks you in and makes you part of the whirlpool. Time becomes just a ticking sound

somewhere in the background that invites half state to be. The rhythmic succession repeats

constantly. It progresses only through the difference the repetition creates.

In documentary 20,000 Days on Earth (2014) Nick Cave recalls over a lunch, with his band mate

Warren Ellis from The Bad Seeds, an anecdote of Nina Simone as a performer. How once, getting

on the stage, she became something different. That someone else, both divine and horrid at the

same time, was so captivating that while she lost herself to the moment, she made the audience

lose themselves as well. Or as Nick Cave put it: “Everyone wants to get lost.”

(20,000 Days on Earth, 2014)

This getting lost, losing yourself, is about creating a free space for something outside of mundane

logic and restrictions. Inside this space, it is no longer about grasping things and understanding

them with your brain but, rather, sensing the beat, becoming something a little bit more primitive and

trying to sense things in the present moment. The key to losing yourself is in the body and in art that

is achieved by through physicality and through sensing things ‘primitively’.

In 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), Cave mainly talks about getting lost as a performer but, as it comes

clear from the anecdote, the beat is communicated to the audience as well. In that shared moment

both the performer and the audience are lost. Though performers, like Nick Cave or Nina Simone

work with very different tools and approaches than photography does, the same vibration lies

underneath. What is left for the viewer is to surrender to the concrete aspect of image; the rhythm of

repetition and allowing photography to be poetic.

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Experiencing rhythm is something that is difficult to verbalise and share in words to others, but even

though the experience is unique for everyone, there is a shared knowledge underneath. In the case

of the rhythm we share the finding of the rhythm in ourselves. The beat in the music is like a

heartbeat; the repetitive element in image is similar to our mundane repetitive actions and things we

see.

The rhythm cannot exist unless there is a feeling of unity, interaction of some sort. On the dance

floor the interactions are easier to pin down; the unity of moving bodies, the shared bodily

experience, but also, the interactions between the performer and the mass. In photography, that

shared space might not be that clear, noticeable. How is the viewer supposed to interact with an

image, a photograph? This question brings us back to the body. One conclusion as an answer could

be work and physical effort and the ability to identify, share the experience of the work,

photographing and things involving that action.

In comparison with the music, where the unity is found in the present presence, there is an element

in photography, an echo of the past, which induces the affect.

Tacit knowledge, a personal knowledge in a way, is what makes art works relatable. It is the things

we know which are so difficult to put into words. It has to be experienced and learned by practice

and imitation like riding a bike or learning a new language. Another good example of tacit knowledge

could be facial recognition. We can a spot a familiar face from the crowd immediately but it is hard

to pin down the exact features that stand out. These kinds of skills cannot be taught by explaining or

instructing. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2015)

In an artwork, tacit knowledge and recollection of memory can be vital elements. The two enable

linking instances together, and the interlaced relation of the past and present becomes more

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apparent for the viewer.

“This is because in reality there is no experience of death. Properly speaking, nothing has been

experienced, but has been lived and made conscious.” (Camus, 2005, p. 14)

According to Camus, nothing that hasn’t passed through our conscious remains meaningless.

“We are in the presence not of a work of art which is a thing but of an action which is implicitly

nothing. Nothing has been said. Nothing is communicated. And there is no use of symbols or

intellectual references. No thing in life requires a symbol since it is clearly what it is: a visible

manifestation of an invisible nothing. All somethings equally part-take of that life-giving nothing.”

(Cage, 1978, p. 136)

Nicolas Abraham writes about rhythm and it being dependent on the invitation “The rhythmic event

happens because we have willed it. We only have to reject a rhythm and it will not occur.”

(Abraham, 1995, p. 73) Just as a good rhythm in music makes you gasp for breath, an image can

make you feel like a teenager in love. On concrete level, surrendering means tuning into vibration,

in other words, sensing the beat in an image which is quite simple in the end. All it requires is

willingness to see the image as an object, as a photograph that it is. For you cannot see the

photograph in its hidden meanings.

Index

Preface

1. Photograph dislocated 1.1 Major and minor Immutable imbalance

1.2 Other qualities of image One representation less and its weakness

1.3 Intonation as a meaning Imagestuttersandfindingnon-representationalelement

2. Rhythm and the succession 2.1 Difference in repetition Continuous change

2.2. Stranger in photography Otherness and exclusion

2.3 Sensing image Image as a bodily experience

ConclusionsTuningintovibrationandfindingthebeat

Image II

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Bibliography

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CAGE, J. (1978) Silence: Lectures and Writings, London: Marion Boyars

CAMUS, A. (2005) The Myth of Sisyphus, London: Penguin Books Ltd.

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DELEUZE, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, London: Athlone Press

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Princeton: Princeton University Press

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University of California Press

TURETSKY, P. (2004) Rhythm: assemblage and event. In: Buchanan, I. & Swiboda, M. (eds.)

Deleuze and Music, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Film

20,000 Days on Earth (2014) Documentary. Directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard.[DVD].UK:

Drafthouse Films.

Art

Image I: TUORI, S. (2011) Forest #13, [Photograph]

Image II: TUORI, S. (2011) Forest #16 [Photograph]

Website

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2015) Tacit knowledge.

[Online] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge [Accessed: 21 February 2015]

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