If, in the wake of the pandemic, we end up feeling more vulnerable to the risks inherent in being physically in the world, we may, despite our immediate relief, continue to seek refuge in our new habits of remoteness. We won’t feel liberated, but at least we’ll feel protected.
Nicholas Carr, Not being there: from virtuality to remoteness, December 31, 2020
This is the second post regarding the project “From the Cave”. To read about the planning stage, please visit the first post.
More Research
When I received word of the project’s approval, I began researching the ideas and themes associated with it further.
“The Allegory of the Cave”, Book 7 of Republic, was one of my primary sources of inspiration, but I admittedly had a limited understanding of it at the onset, so I bought myself a hard copy and combed through the web for insight.
Plato’s position on art was disappointing. He argued that art is an imitation of an imitation and is therefore misleading and takes us farther away from reality.
Socrates: That, then, was what I wanted to get agreement about when I said that painting–and imitation as a whole–are far from the truth when they produce their work; and moreover that imitation really consorts with an element in us that is far from wisdom, and that nothing healthy or true can come from their relationship or friendship.
603a9-603b1, Book 10, Republic
Plato also considered artists/poets/musicians dangerous and argued that they should be censored (Book 3, Republic). After learning this, I concluded Plato was problematic but his allegory still useful.
In 1966, a German-American professor at MIT, Joseph Weizenbaum, unveiled ELIZA. ELIZA was a virtual psychotherapist running on an IBM 7090.
I continued my research on technology and modern society as well–reading books like How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles and The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Initially I was hesitant to spend time with these books as they were published some time ago (1999 and 2010 respectively), and I thought they would only state the obvious and repeat what I had already come to know by way of personal experience.
That turned out not to be the case. Both How We Became Posthuman and The Shallows were incredibly insightful (and I am still making way through the first). While I had experienced some form of life before smartphones (observing their introduction during my late adolescence), I was not witness to the introduction of computers. These tools (computers and smartphones) fundamentally changed how people behave, assign meaning, and see themselves. Oddly computers, while initially made to be more human, now shape what people desire of themselves–efficiency in particular.
I found Carr’s description of how the Net went from supplementing personal memory to replacing it particularly provoking. I recognized a familiar experience when he said that memory transitioned from something embodied to something disembodied (and outside oneself).
Researching this while also making the cave, I became acutely aware of the Net’s effects on my psyche and its negative effects seemed to amplify. I felt more isolated and more dissociated by the end of the project. From the Cave, while critiquing its use, depended on digital devices and social media. So to my surprise, I went deeper into the cave rather than out of it while making “From the Cave”.
Conversations
Art is always in conversation, so I went looking for those whose work I would be in conversation with.
William Kentridge, an artist I have previously written about, conducted a whole lecture series using “The Allegory of the Cave” as a starting point. He warns of philosopher-kings-world leaders using “knowledge” to justify colonial oppression. In this case, Plato’s allegory is incredibly harmful. Kentridge presents an alternative approach:
It is in the very limitations of shadows that we learn…It is in the gap between the object and its representation that the image emerges, the gap we fill in—in the shift from the monochromatic shadow to the color of the object, from its flatness to depth and heft, allowing us to be neither prisoners in the cave, unable to comprehend or conceive, nor the all-seeing philosopher returning with all his certainty, but allowing us to inhabit the terrain between what we see on the wall and what we conjure back behind our retina.
He proposes that we look critically and think creativity rather than looking away or blindly following a totalitarian pedagogy. “From the Cave” has a different subject matter but takes a similar approach to digital technology.
Writer Susan Sontag also used the allegory as a point of departure. Written in 1973 when mass media had begun its meteoric rise and cameras had become accessible to the everyday user, “In Plato’s Cave” describes a false a reality perpetuated by photography. Photographs guaranteed a sense of longevity – a little piece of reality made into something material.
Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.
Now, we live in a time when every piece of reality is being recorded, curated, and converted into something digital. Moments go from personal, present experiences to immaterial data point that is owned, shared, and used.
In 2018, the Getty Villa hosted a group exhibition entitled “Plato in L.A.: Contemporary Artists’ Visions” curated by Donation Grau which introduced me to several more artists including Huang Yong Ping and Michelangelo Pistoletto.
Raymond Pettibon, No Title (Lightly, swiftly, absolutely…), 2014, ink, acrylic, graphite, and watercolor on paper. 55 x 40 in. (139.7 x 101.6 cm). Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. © Raymond Pettibon
Huang Yong Ping, "Caverne," 2009. Courtesy of the artist and kamel mennour, Paris. Photo: Marc Domage
Sarah Sze, Flash Point (Timekeeper), 2018. © Sarah Sze, Photo: © ZKM | Karlsruhe. Photo: Elias Siebert
Mike Kelley, Sarah Sze, and Raymond Pettibon have used the allegory in their work as well. Because Sze also addresses the ubiquity of screens, I found her work particularly exciting. In a 2020 interview for the Gagosian, she describes “paintings as a portal, into interior space into the mind”. I think of many of paintings, particularly the ambiguous landscapes, as portals as well.
Please leave a note in the comment section if there are any artists you are familiar with who reference “The Allegory of the Cave” in their work.
Paint to Canvas
Canvas for From the Cave
I returned to Houston the Friday before the project was set to begin, so I only had a weekend to prepare the space. The enormous roll of canvas arrived on time, and I began cutting it to fit the three walls. The first panel was cut to 83” H x 92” W, the second 155” W, and the third 138” W. After the third, there wasn’t any canvas left on the roll and the canvas fit each of the walls perfectly – my math and cutting skills pleasantly surprised me.
Immersed in walls covered by canvas, I was excited to get the project started. I decided to jump in with the first panel - the one on the left. It was smaller and seemed like a good starting point.
It was then that I came face to face with the issue of deciding what I would actually paint – while I had made a detailed concept for the grant proposal, I never specified the imagery that would be used in each panel. I had made numerous sketches that related to the project’s theme, but they were not specific to this context.
I made up my mind to use my intuition and let process guide me–at least on the first panel. That decision felt brave and empowering. Intuition required hyper awareness and recall. I was testing how much of my memory I had embodied–an idea I have been experimenting with in other projects such as my artist books.
Panel 1 in progress, From the Cave (August 24, 2021)
The first night of painting felt freeing and “right”. I was my most human - expressing my reality, making my mark, and thinking critically without diffidence. I made a rough scene of my bedroom–my phone taking up the center, and my hands engaged with the screen and acting as the only reference to the body. I drew a series of windows that resembled my smartphone screen in the background. The painting was active, and I moved and stretched myself across the canvas.
Panel 2 provoked some anxiety. It was the largest of the panels at 155” wide–much larger than any painting I have ever done before–and I would be broadcasting live for the first time. Both my painting and myself would be on display and recorded. Nervous, I didn’t trust my instincts to usher me through, so I prepared a composition ahead of time.
While I liked several elements which would have otherwise not been worked out, I did not enjoy this method of painting the cave nearly as much. It felt stifled and not surprisingly “planned”. I didn’t refer back to my “embodied” experiences. It lacked that “human” element from the previous panel.
Watercolor sketch for Panel 2
Morning after painting Panel 2 live
Broadcasted live August 26, 2021. Painting Panel 2. Click to view the original video.
Having a digital audience–real or not real–was intoxicating. I was “on stage” and Instagram TV was the portal to my cave, my painting, and my self. Nature was also recorded and translated–a storm passed by and thunder cracked in the background.
While energized by “being on stage”, I felt detached. I was both “present” and “not present” in the physical room. I was what Hayles might call “posthuman”. Part of me was participating online while another part of me was in the room painting. I had experienced this split previously during public presentations, but there was a subtle difference when this split occurred across a physical and digital space.
On the third panel, I returned to my earlier approach which emphasized instinctual, loose, and “human” painting. I made an abstract frame for the composition, but it was less figurative and more abstract. There was much more room for play and improvisation.
A friend reminded of my intention to connect the work to the earliest forms of painting, so I brought that back as well. I used my hands and fingers to paint and freely moved back and forth across the canvas.
Broadcasted September 2, 2021. Painting Panel 2. Click to view the original video.
After painting the three panels with red oxide, raw umber, and mars black, I applied phthalo blue across each scene–identifying the reach and ascendancy of digital technology across the cave.
Usually I enjoy using Ultramarine, Cerulean, and Anthraquinone Blue. Phthalo, in comparison to these colors, is incredibly bright and overwhelming. It is not calm and serene like Ultramarine, or peaceful like Cerulean, or nostalgic like Anthraquinone. It is electric. When I first began applying phthalo, I immediately wanted to cover it up. Stepping back, though, I realized this reaction was exactly what I wanted. In this case, technology wasn’t meant to appear mild or pleasant.
The first introduction of phthalo blue on September 2.
I finished painting just before dawn on Saturday, September 4th–the project’s deadline. I took a nap and live-streamed the completed installation later that day.
It was a rush painting the cave in two weeks. The practice of returning to this dark room and painting each night became a ritual. I was maneuvering my way down a newly illuminated path and making something elusive into something material.
Yet, the boundary between myself and the Net became more fraught over the course of the project. The project was only publicly accessible by digital technology. The reflection of that resulted in a double reality for the cave and myself. Meaning was tossed between the physical, protected, and present space and the placeless, public, and timeless space.