Overview
This reflection is comprised from a series of field notes done throughout the artistic research and production phases that comprises Oceanic Horror. I have gathered these notes, be they lengthy analyses or more sporadic notations, in a mapping structure creating a form of overview of a meandering and layered reflection process. Visually the map forms a white studio wall with series of white paper notes stuck to it with black film set masking tape. The design of this wall is the last distillation of a mind map that has followed me through this project and covered my studio walls in an array of disfigured mutations. Here in this distilled version every note is here for a reason now and has been fitted to its function. This resembles the process of working towards a final installation, film or work. The schizophrenic sensation that everything can move in all directions from where it is situated in any given now and that every note on the mind map has an abounding offspring of sub-notes ready to shoot off in all new directions. Gradually as one grinds through the arduous work of translating thought into form the materiality of the map stiffens and so many sub-notes flake off the carrying structure. Piling up on the studio floor - a rustle beneath the feet. So here it is the distilled map. Distillation might not be the right word - a purification process it was not. It is a concentration, but to claim that these are the most essential parts of this research, cooked down to an essence is a stretch. It is more of a strange terminus that pushing through something eventually leads to. I look at it and much like looking at a final film work, I think: ‘Is this really what all that ended up as? What caused it to terminate here?
Archipelago of Notes
The notes on the wall form an archipelago in itself. Small groups of islands that together form a perimeter from where one can look inwards towards the formation of one small island group or peer out towards other groups of islands in the vicinity. The stretch of wall between these separate islands and archipelagos forms an ocean, of course. And to be truthful to that puzzled look contemplating ones own end result, it is really in the lines of flight between islands and island groups that the most enthralling connections can be dreamed up. In the oceanic, a chance to get a little lost appears, and it is often when we get lost that we find new ways.
Topology
This mind map or interface serves as a topology. This is the territory that I have moved through in this research project and which I am now inviting an outside to venture into. This topology should be one that can be travelled in the same meandering way, as I have used to structure the thinking process, that the topology aims to distill. One should try to find ones own way here. That said, the island groups does inform one another and a certain linear travel is possible. I do acknowledge that where writing may not be, reading is a fairly linear processes. This topology has an introduction; it also has a form of conclusion; it even has this compass for navigation. Furthermore, when opening a note, on is offered the choice to return to the wall of notes to continue composing ones own navigational route, or to continue to the next note following a more convenient linear reading flow. No one way is the correct way to read through this material.
The group of notes in the top left corner serves as a form of entrance.
Right next to them a formation of islands forms reflections on methodology.
Below them three groups of notes form three areas of interested that has followed me through this research project: ‘Horror’, ‘Finance’ and ‘Event’.
From these three topological categories one can discern two larger formations across a stretch of white ocean. Up above, right side, ‘Field Notes from Island’ and down below ‘Field Notes from Archipelago’. These comprise reflections that relate quite directly to the bodies of artistic works that constitute Oceanic Horror - first revolving around the advent of high frequency trading and secondly revolving around an even more opaque and submerged form of absolute capitalism and financialisation.
In between these clusters of islands, a single note is stuck to the wall, quite a stretch of wall everywhere around it: ‘Oceanic Horror’. Serving as a final thought, or a pathway further out into new explorations, this final destination is deliberately placed in the centre of this landscape. More than wrapping up a stream of ideas and reflections, it serves as an underlying premise for the whole endeavour - one that has informed the entire work process but also one that has developed and is considered an arrival point forming a new point of departure.
In the outskirts of this topology a few solitary notes can be found. The two notes down below lead to a list of literature and an appendix. The note in the far right leads to the artistic works of this artistic research project.
