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WATCH THIS SPACE
Close Encounters
of The Third Mind
Without, Peter Gillies &
Rupert Loydell
(Self-published artist's book, edition of 100, £5 from Stride, 4B Tremayne
Close, Devoran, Cornwall TR3 6QE)
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Without is an artwork assemblage of ten double-sided foldout
sheets in publication format contained in a matching folder. Essentially, a
visual piece that can, nevertheless, sit comfortably on a bookshelf.
The artists are painter-poet Peter Gillies who has a painting website and
works at University College Falmouth teaching English with Creative Writing
and collaborator Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in English with Creative
Writing, also based at University College Falmouth - a painter poet who is
also the long-standing editor of Stride.
Essentially a word/image mosaic project Without comprises ten foldout sheets printed in austere
greyscale black/white tones. Sheet #1 opens to a large 'title' image
announcing the main theme: UFO Story and the legend 'The Truth Is Out There', that famous X Files tagline from 1993. Without a doubt we are in the
world of the Close Encounter, the alien zone and the anomalous 'event'.
There are five other main images scattered across the collection. 'Dark
Hollows' on sheet #2 is an abstract triple bar form. 'How Does Form Sound
Instead?' on sheet #4 incorporates torn text, longhand calligraphy, a pasted
column of fragmentary printed text and a cluster of the signature pictograms
or 'hieroglyph' motifs that pervade the entire work (and decorate the
presentation folder). On sheet #6 the reader or viewer is confronted by an
expressionistic form that might just be an alien xenomorph or, perhaps some
kind of land vehicle on stilts, rather like the war machines from War of
the Worlds, or, perhaps, it is an
alien being that moves on stilts. Running across the page, like a ticker-tape
message from the beyond, is the phrase 'Just Landed Just Landed Just La[É]'.
Together with the enigmatic question 'Where were you?' The fifth large image
is on sheet #8 and depicts a comfortably familiar holiday caravan isolated in
a mystic landscape with a hovering saucer shaped UFO looking like the
'classic' lenticular Venusian Scout Ship popularised at the height of the
1950s UFO scare. From the scout ship descent two rays of light, prelude to some
kind of manifestation or alien abduction scenario. Various themes and visual
motifs are incorporated into the image including textual references to
sundials and 'transparent skins'. There are trailing brush strokes and
various painterly 'splatter' elements across the composition that also
carries the defining text phrase 'Who Live Without: We Who Live Within'.
The final large picture on #10 features a low-resolution image of a squadron
of five scout ships and an assemblage of four five-pointed stars. Other
sheets are built up of smaller elements and motifs in a grid like format
across which are scattered textual lines and phrases that resonate with the
main theme. These are headline statements or questions like 'Did You see
Them?' (#2), 'Create An Education' (#3), 'Culture' (#4), 'Nonsense' (#5),
'Denouement' (#7), 'Eyewitness' (#8), 'We Travel Into The Past' (#9), and 'Un
Truth' (#10). Consciously or unconsciously these lines will invoke classic
Sci Fi/Ufo themes and ideas in the mind of the observer - alien abductions,
time travel, stars, lights, 'mist sprites', the hollow Earth, idyllic rural
landscapes, crop circles, various types of alien encounter and mysterious
apparitions with Eschatological or Apocalyptic undertones.
A symphonic organisation of textures, the aesthetic modalities of Without derive from the interaction of complimentary
factors: word and image, formality and informality.
Aside from the six large images already mentioned the pictorial elements,
although diverse, all tend towards invoking the notion of a hidden message or
a secret script. There are few photographic elements although they are key
markers nonetheless - a sinister low angle shot of a helicopter in flight
occurs twice (#3 and #7). There are some close images of textural forms that
look like plaited rope and also the drapes of a shiny fabric used as almost
decorative motifs. There is a view of wetland landscape, perhaps the
aftermath of some devastating 'event' and on sheet #9 we find three images
taken from what might be a sixties style Happening showing two performers
(male and female) manipulating a reflective surface, presumably a mirror.
This has a strange ritualistic feel and helps to provoke enigmatic narrative
possibilities. The other main photographic element is the low-resolution
image of a squadron of five flying saucer scout ships used on sheets # 8 and
#10. The same image appears on sheet # 7, although this is a partial image
and only two craft are visible. Although the method of montage is central to
this project, Without is not a
photomontage, like those pioneered by Hannah Hoch and other Dada artists.
Here the essence of the method is juxtaposition - diverse graphical visual
elements integrated into a decorative semiformal irregular mosaic, grid-like
schema interlaced with cut-up text and perturbed by drifts or clusters of
stylised hieroglyphs some of which look like signs of the zodiac, magic
sigils or ancient runes. The grid schema provides various compositional
options whereby for example some visual elements are boxed into a specific
pigeonhole while others are allowed to spill across the page creating the
effect of a formal structure constantly under stress from an irrational
force. Either the force of an 'alien' incursion, or the 'invisible,
intangible force' of the third mind, itself the product of the collaborative
process. The informal visual
element is carried to more extreme lengths by the use of numerous
expressionistic or tachiste
techniques such as drip patterns, blots and paint dribbles, horizontal
splatter, torn dechire effects
involving fragments of newsprint and gestural smear-style paint strokes. The
words in the text are sometimes illegible and this leads to the generation of
further open-ended narrative and symbolic options. For example the date '15th
February' is used, or phrases like 'we thought it was just an ordinary
balloon' or 'saw my name' - all verbal devices to provoke the imagination.
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Elemental forms - squares, circles,
five-pointed stars both black and white, cubes, triangles, polka dots -
intermingle with spirals, whorls, a few technical diagrams and calligraphic
motifs, and, on some sheets, these elemental forms are reminiscent of the
symbols used in ESP experiments. Others have an oblique relationship to UFO
legends. For instance the five pointed stars recall the insignia of opposing
airforces during the Cold War period, the heyday of UFO hysteria. Or, again,
spiral shapes may indicate the erratic trajectories of alien craft or
associated anomalies like Angel Hair related to the occult chemistry of
attenuated matter that some esoteric interpretations link to alien forms of
energy. Density of texture is achieved through repetition and variation
within what is in fact quite a narrow repertoire of signs and structural
elements. Stars are grouped and stacked, and text is superimposed on
decorative features in various areas of the composition. The text itself is
an aesthetic element and confined, in the main, to horizontal cut-up strips
or vertical columns. The 'communication' motif is enhanced not just by
elements that look like they have drifted in from some weird flow chart or
Romulan flight deck computer screen but also by uprooted numerals, isolated
lettering and the large inverse (white on black) silhouette motif of a postage
stamp. The inclusion of some fragments of sheet music adorned with dots and
dashes continues this theme of 'contact' especially when one recalls that in
Spielberg's movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) the superhuman aliens communicated via musical
notes. 'How does form sound instead?' is one mysterious question that floats
amid the textual elements and broken word columns. On sheet #2 we find a
large spherical form that looks like a desktop study globe of the world but
might also be the staring face of an alien with 'saucer' eyes: underneath is
the slogan 'Imagining Reality'.
On the visual plane Without is
a diverse package of aesthetic references and mannerisms, a hybrid artefact
combining Neo-Pop style with Art Informel techniques. The paste-in elements such as
fragments of music score and technical diagrams hark back to Dada, Surrealism
and earlier Futurist or Cubist innovations, while the incorporation of
photographic elements derives from the same ultimate source and early
twentieth century experiments with composite photographic imagery.
The verbal elements comprise a kind of non-linear open field avant-garde
poetic text of free floating cut-up strips, word columns and even Punk style
semi-industrial punched embossed tape labels. The typographical features
ranging from isolated letters and numbers through to juxtaposed font styles
looks back to late seventies Punk graphics and do-it-yourself fanzines,
themselves an echo of early twentieth century Dada publications and later Pop
Art examples such as Derek Boshier's 'Airmail Letter' (1961). The 'classic'
Punk style typography as popularised by Jamie Reid with his 'God Save The
Queen' and 'No Future' graphics (inspired by criminal ransom notes) is not
part of the Without stylistic
repertoire. However many textual and other elements exhibit the 'ripped and
torn' bricolage manner so
common at that time.
Occupying an intermediate aesthetic mode between the cut-up text and paste-in
graphical or photographic elements are a battery of painterly features that
are part on a now established continuum of development. This continuum runs
from Paul Klee via Andre Masson and the Abstract Expressionists to Tachistes
like Michaux, Wols and Hartung or
to exponents of Art Informel
like Tapies, Mathieu and Patrick Heron. On one level this battery of effects
my be seen as a branch of decorative art arising from the spontaneous
interplay of 'signs' and 'gestures', a calligraphy of blots and scratches,
smears and drips. But like the Leonardo's Wall method or the Rorschach test
the deployment of these features can also function as an incitement to the
dynamics of the unconscious while, at the same time, providing for an
incursion of unplanned chance elements that, in this particular context, may
acquire a certain undertone. It might seem that the formal grid like
infrastructure of the work is continually in danger of destabilisation by
these tachiste effects, just
as, perhaps the stable predictability of mundane existence, symbolised by the
friendly holiday caravan, is turned upside down by the Close Encounter and
the anomalous alien event. Conceptually the painterly effects are soon fused
with the theme of communication as embodied in the extensive use of
semi-automatic calligraphy and blown-up sections of longhand writing.
An immediate precursor of this use calligraphy can be found in the artistic
and literary 'third mind' experiments of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Many of Gysin's paintings are based upon the spontaneous calligraphic forms
of non-western scripts, ideograms and hieroglyphs. This factor merges into
the thematic question of the secret message: the mysterious signals from
alien craft, or as in the case of the Silpho Moor object, engraved on the
craft itself. All of this imagery invokes the mystique of the 'hidden wisdom'
of ancient texts that await decoding by initiates inducted into the arcane
secrets of extraterrestrial super-science. Indeed the overall framework of
this project is reminiscent of those pages from Burroughs' cut-up scrapbooks,
a compendium of weird news stories, old photographs, graphical memorabilia,
Gysin-style calligraphy and other exotic features pasted into a grid like
framework of blotted vertical and horizontal lines. As Guy Debord once said:
'The construction of situations begins on the ruins of the modern spectacle.'
The non-linear open field cut-up poem that provides the backdrop scenario for
Without does not, of course,
tell a simple story. It functions more like a cluster of musical motifs that
sketch out a sinister scenario of alien incursion. On the first sheet we find
the ominous slogan 'You are not to blame'. This is ominous in itself as the
statement implies an indictment, however the word 'not' is boldly crossed out
so the message actually reads 'You are to blame' which is a finger-pointing
accusation. To blame for what?
There is no answer.
Also, there is a nuance of further implication implied by the crossing out of
the key word - some agency is changing the text. Most UFO scenarios involve
the idea of a final judgement or a warning, often delivered by some angelic
saviour figure or intergalactic council of superior cosmic legislators.
Existential anxiety is implied by the statement: 'since above you and the
Earth's crust there is a void' which plays to primeval fears of vacancy and
nothingness. 'Did you see them?' This is another question arising from the
text in juxtaposition with various verbal images such as 'cold stones', 'dark
hollows' and 'mist sprites'. These images are all playing to a modern
mythology linking the UFO occupants to the ancient Little People of fairy
tale (some aliens look like elves or goblins) who live in the 'strange
hills'. In would appear that the visitants possess the secret of time travel
('we of the past travel into the future') and are associated, like many
aliens, with bright lights and spheres, manifestations of supra-sensible
astral-etheric matter from other dimensions.
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The existential theme is further
emphasised on #5 with the highlighted phrase 'your desolate without'. From
the perspective of the others, we are inhabitants of the 'without'. Our
'without' is desolate and we are surrounded by a void. At some stage possible
contactees find a 'soggy blue balloon' which at first sight may be a banal
ordinary balloon, but in the end 'we are not so sure'. These anomalous
phenomena are contrasted with the materialistic everyday lives of mere Earth
dwellers too immersed in humdrum routine (Watch TV. Sleep. Wake up. Shower.
Eat. Go To Work. Come Home. Eat') to recognise an alien presence, even though
something has 'Just Landed'. There are other motifs like the sundial (another
hint at the passage of time, another cosmic dimension) and entities with
'transparent skins'. On #9 the idea of existential unease is further
emphasised by the thought that 'everything is uncertain, everything is
shifting'. Not an ordinary balloon the manifestation becomes a squadron of
scout ships that, perhaps, symbolises our own future, or may come from the
future, even though Earth's ancient past holds the key to the mystery of our
relationship to these stilted beings. The narrative is both ambiguous and
open-ended and the above summary is just one of several possible lines of
exposition conforming to some known preoccupations of UFO literature.
The final question must be the obvious one - how far have Loydell &
Gillies 'bought into' actual Ufology, or is Without, in the final analysis, a purely aesthetic
artefact? It is clear that the depth and multi-layered character of the work
make this a very difficult question to answer. There are obvious overlaps
with the 'reality' of the UFO myth, these overlaps are either deliberate or
the outcome of some Jungian a-causal correspondence phenomenon. For example,
if one looks at sheet #8 showing the caravan with a clearly depicted scout
ship craft, the scene looks like a version of well known early encounter as
described UFO cultist Orfeo Angelucci. This event took place in 1952 five
years after those defining UFO events the Cascade Mountains sighting and the
Roswell Incident. Angelucci's book The Secret of the Saucers was published in 1955 at the height of the flying
saucer craze fuelled by movies such as This Island Earth (1955) and The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). In his book Angelucci describes a red
pulsating, glowing oval object hovering over the horizon and says the disc
came close to the ground before suddenly shooting away towards the west.
Before the vehicle vanished, it emitted two balls of 'green fire' from which
a man's voice issued speaking 'perfect English'. The emissions were defined
as instruments of 'transmission and reception' in line with the underlying
theme of alien messages and communication.
Again the grid like structure of the work echoes Jung's thoughts on the UFO
myth or rumour, which he considered 'specific to our age and highly
characteristic of it'. He explained the phenomenon as a reappearance of a
traditional form of epiphany, and in his analysis contrasted the 'horizontal
axis' of our empirical consciousness as it is crossed or bisected by another
order of being, a 'dimension of the psychic'.
In a genuine collaboration, as William Burroughs explains, the two minds of
the collaborators may generate a third 'invisible, intangible force' which,
following Napoleon Hill, Burroughs called The Third Mind. This is the uncanny
'third who walks beside you' and who will answer the question 'why are you
here?' with the somewhat sinister answer 'I am here because you are
here.' Perhaps this
collaboration from Gillies and Loydell draws the reader/viewer into a
strange, shared space that discloses the psychic parallelism between the
Third Mind and an obscure 'alien' scenario - a modern mythical narrative or
complex rumour that resonates with our shared collective unconscious
disclosing our underlying existential anxiety. Its open field form and its
pervasive ambiguities allow us to project into the work the psychic side
effects and by-products of our unstable existential situation. What you find
in this seemingly innocuous folder may generate close encounters with the
radar echoes of your own hopes and fears - you have been warned.
© A.C. Evans 2010
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