I really like how you connected the way exhibits are arranged with how we think about time. Your story abot switching from chronological to thematic teaching really hit home. Themes can reveal patterns and connections that a straight timeline might miss.
When I researched history of science I learned that history should not be a looking back from the vantage point of the present, where it can be recited as a timeline of events. Judging from the knowledge of now forces a narrower picture where only events that fit now can be considered. However difficult it may be, a (good) historian of science tries to be present in the past, and see the ‘now’ that was then, from which happenings, discovery, knowledge, insight, emerge. There is a timeline of 'then', next then, ... to now etc. but history viewed as the present in the past becomes an active present, alive, seen in its own then. That makes sense to me in a way that is similar to the thoughts you have stirred. Is it that the notion of theme gives all sorts of associations etc that are not there if the thought process is timeline bound, but are there because a theme allows a kind of empathy?
I think this ialso links to the way psychoanalysts talk about the "past in the present" ... just thinking as I'm writing ... finding that theme that is in someone's inner world ??
Empathetic resonance with whatever is /was there brings much wider/deeper pictures of both then and now. So much is lost by chronology as a list, the old cause-effect rationality stuff.
It must be obvious that I know nothing about the history of art so when at the galleries I wouldn't even know that the hangings were chronological unless the label said so. I am loving what I find in your explorations.
Thanks for reading and commenting Elspeth. I've never heard that idea of being present in the past before, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps this point of view stops us from being critical of something like the (reduced) role of women in the development of Buddhism, or the ghastly mawkish sentimentality of naked women in Victorian paintings! As someone said about the latter, 'that was then', and we can't (perhaps!) judge then from now...
I like the idea of empathic resonance. I would see the theme as stimulating associations, yes; the viewer only has how they respond to the actual painting, as there's no other information (which is not entirely true in the gallery, because there is a label with a bit of information as well). It's interesting to think about how the viewer's resonance, if they find it, expands the meaning of the painting somehow... adds layers to its function in the world. This is true of course, for any painting, whether from then or now. But this is somehow interesting to think about in relation to paintings or painters that we think we 'know' from the past...
I also had a conversation recently where the topic of capitalism’s willful misreading of “survival of the fittest” came up. The conflation of “fittest” with strongest. At the heart of capitalism (which loves a narrow heroic history) is the narrative that evolution is a climb of the most fit to the top of the heap.
Oh, that's interesting, isn't it. The climb upwards rather than the move forwards, though of course the 'better and better' does suggest upwards, as you say. I hadn't quite thought of it like that. Now how am I going to adjust my image of the forward-moving arrow, to make it somehow include an ascent, but still only in one dimension...? More to think about! I've just remembered my God article about Christianity and the upward gaze. You're right, we do have a lot in our culture about progress meaning moving upwards.
There’s also the fallacy of the individual in there too. That at the top of every climb, a single strongest climber stands. Capitalism and Nationalism is so confusing because it constantly talks about the “freedom” to succeed for every individual while also systematically limiting the freedoms of most people.
In the conversation I had recently, we joked that the people misreading Darwin (and not that Darwin is flawless of course) imagined his studies of finches as a battle where one group of finches literally eliminated all of the others.
Your piece is super interesting, mostly because I’m not sure were you are going, and that seems playful, when reading it two quotes came to mind:
Ursula Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore:
‘Presently the mage said, speaking softly, ‘Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted the earth is lighter, the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale’s sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat’s flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole’
And from William Bateson, the scientist who coined the term ‘genetics’, about evolution, from a letter to his sister, Anna, in 1888:
‘My brain boils with evolution. It is becoming a perfect nightmare. I believe now that it is an axiomatic truth that no variation, however small, can occur in any part without other variations occurring in correlation to it in all other parts; or rather that no system in which variation of one part had occurred without such correlated variations in all other parts, could continue to be a system’
Thanks for reading and commenting Imma! As usual, you have such an interesting perspective on things that I'm never quite sure I understand, which makes me go back and force my mind to feel into new directions. I think you may be saying that even if my questions are leading me nowhere, it's still ok to ask them... The Bateson quote is very interesting. I take him to be saying here that the idea of evolution makes it sound as if a whole organism (system) moves in lockstep with itself, with everything lining up in the direction of its forward trajectory; and that the idea that a system might be containing other systems within itself, not all of which will respond in the same way or at the same time, was seen as being impoossible, in terms of the system surviving?
I’m glad my comment made you wonder, because your post made me wonder too! I totally 💯 love the idea you are making questions without a goal in mind, nowhere is always somewhere else… in that sense, since you are meandering, going for a walk without destination, I sense questions are companions for the walk… The quotes I shared came to me when you write about evolution being ‘movement through time in the interest of survival’ and my body felt a bit out of place with that definition… because to me that definition comes from a set of assumptions based on a reductionist way to understand the world. Evolution is movement, that seems real, the movement of life in love with curiosity, I think that’s what both authors are trying to convey and also from both quotes I sense that nothing exists out of contexts, time and place being the ones that are always present, because even ‘nothingness’ is born through, within, side by side contexts. I was wondering what other contexts beside time and place are there in a themed exhibition?
Yes, Darwinian evolution very different from complex adaptive systems moving and changing through time...
Your question about other contexts beside time and place in a themed exhibition... I was thinking that the context of time isn't represented in a themed exhibition, other than in the form of the stated date on the label by the specific painting. Certainly no sense of either how the stated date sat in a stream of many other things at that time, or of many other parallel or vertical contexts that would have been part of that painting's appearance. I've already mentioned the context the viewer brings...and of course there's also the context of the gallery itself...and the moment in present time, many things......But somehow I don't think I'm addressing your question. I'm working towards talking about multiple contexts a bit further on in this series of writings, but probably that won't address your questions either :-) At the moment I'm planning to write next about how I experienced some of the different themes in the gallery; did it work, did it not work for me? And then in article three to move on to what's lost in creating a theme....
I’m so thankful for this conversation Tamsin… the question at the end of the last comment, to me is kind of a pondering, or a reflection in the format of enquiry… does anything exist outside the context of place-time? I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and in my humble opinion, to escape place-time contextual reality one must do a sleight-of-hand trick and exist in abstracted form, and even then, I don’t think one can escape place-time contexts, even thoughts I would adventure! This wondering and reflection got me to think about the trend on themed exhibitions, and the idea of a library organised by colour code came to mind, I guess all depends on the deeper sense of the exhibition as a collage not outside or beside time-place contexts but within them, not escaping reality but showing what else are the chosen themes bringing to the experience?
I agree with you about not being able to escape place-time contexts, which is why I'm curious about this themed thing in the gallery. I don't know if the exhibition manages to be within space time, I had a mixed response to it. I don't think the theme is trying to escape reality exactly, I think it's trying to make its own reality, as you say. Tomorrow you can see what I had to say about the experience of two of them! Thanks for reading and commenting, as ever.
This is fantastic. I Was lucky to have a high school history teacher that—to the degree that a small town school allowed him—tried to get us to veer away from the ever present “hero in history”. The heroes of course being all of those powerful figures (almost all men) standing along that straight line of history.
He let us know in his admittedly still very Western view that history had branches and breaks, it had connections and asynchronous events, it had people with names and thousands more that were nameless.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting Davin. Your teacher sounds very inspiring, it's great to think that there are people like that who can introduce young people to wider views, who can question and bring in other perspectives.
Lovely reflection Tamsin. I have wondered at times what has remained in continuity of presence across time, irrespective of the current context. Has there ever been a moment on the planet across millions of years when there has not been affectionate touch, sleeping and dreaming, imagining, nurture and love, awe, flows of fear, love, hope, courage, despair, the sound of bird song, or ruminants chewing… ( the idea came as I watched a field of sheep on Iona!). And in turn, I have fancifully wondered what would happen if one of these constants were magically stopped even for a second - how would the fabric of reality unwind? So your image of lines of warp helped me visualise this in a more tangible form. This warp seems to be the underlying substrate that the conscious mind so often dismisses or denies.
'What has remained in continuity of presence across time, irrespective of context...'. This is a big idea, hard to pin down. Because there are patterns, like the ones you describe. There are shapes that things fall into, again and again (this is article 5 of my projected series!). I will have to sit with your underlying substrate in relation to the warp (and stopping the constant leading to an unwinding...) and see if I can feel into what this might mean. Thank you for reading and for giving me this to think about.
I really like how you connected the way exhibits are arranged with how we think about time. Your story abot switching from chronological to thematic teaching really hit home. Themes can reveal patterns and connections that a straight timeline might miss.
What thought provoking writing - thanks Tamsin!
When I researched history of science I learned that history should not be a looking back from the vantage point of the present, where it can be recited as a timeline of events. Judging from the knowledge of now forces a narrower picture where only events that fit now can be considered. However difficult it may be, a (good) historian of science tries to be present in the past, and see the ‘now’ that was then, from which happenings, discovery, knowledge, insight, emerge. There is a timeline of 'then', next then, ... to now etc. but history viewed as the present in the past becomes an active present, alive, seen in its own then. That makes sense to me in a way that is similar to the thoughts you have stirred. Is it that the notion of theme gives all sorts of associations etc that are not there if the thought process is timeline bound, but are there because a theme allows a kind of empathy?
I think this ialso links to the way psychoanalysts talk about the "past in the present" ... just thinking as I'm writing ... finding that theme that is in someone's inner world ??
Empathetic resonance with whatever is /was there brings much wider/deeper pictures of both then and now. So much is lost by chronology as a list, the old cause-effect rationality stuff.
It must be obvious that I know nothing about the history of art so when at the galleries I wouldn't even know that the hangings were chronological unless the label said so. I am loving what I find in your explorations.
Thanks for reading and commenting Elspeth. I've never heard that idea of being present in the past before, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps this point of view stops us from being critical of something like the (reduced) role of women in the development of Buddhism, or the ghastly mawkish sentimentality of naked women in Victorian paintings! As someone said about the latter, 'that was then', and we can't (perhaps!) judge then from now...
I like the idea of empathic resonance. I would see the theme as stimulating associations, yes; the viewer only has how they respond to the actual painting, as there's no other information (which is not entirely true in the gallery, because there is a label with a bit of information as well). It's interesting to think about how the viewer's resonance, if they find it, expands the meaning of the painting somehow... adds layers to its function in the world. This is true of course, for any painting, whether from then or now. But this is somehow interesting to think about in relation to paintings or painters that we think we 'know' from the past...
I also had a conversation recently where the topic of capitalism’s willful misreading of “survival of the fittest” came up. The conflation of “fittest” with strongest. At the heart of capitalism (which loves a narrow heroic history) is the narrative that evolution is a climb of the most fit to the top of the heap.
Oh, that's interesting, isn't it. The climb upwards rather than the move forwards, though of course the 'better and better' does suggest upwards, as you say. I hadn't quite thought of it like that. Now how am I going to adjust my image of the forward-moving arrow, to make it somehow include an ascent, but still only in one dimension...? More to think about! I've just remembered my God article about Christianity and the upward gaze. You're right, we do have a lot in our culture about progress meaning moving upwards.
There’s also the fallacy of the individual in there too. That at the top of every climb, a single strongest climber stands. Capitalism and Nationalism is so confusing because it constantly talks about the “freedom” to succeed for every individual while also systematically limiting the freedoms of most people.
In the conversation I had recently, we joked that the people misreading Darwin (and not that Darwin is flawless of course) imagined his studies of finches as a battle where one group of finches literally eliminated all of the others.
Ha ha, that's good!
Your piece is super interesting, mostly because I’m not sure were you are going, and that seems playful, when reading it two quotes came to mind:
Ursula Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore:
‘Presently the mage said, speaking softly, ‘Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted the earth is lighter, the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale’s sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat’s flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole’
And from William Bateson, the scientist who coined the term ‘genetics’, about evolution, from a letter to his sister, Anna, in 1888:
‘My brain boils with evolution. It is becoming a perfect nightmare. I believe now that it is an axiomatic truth that no variation, however small, can occur in any part without other variations occurring in correlation to it in all other parts; or rather that no system in which variation of one part had occurred without such correlated variations in all other parts, could continue to be a system’
Looking forward to the next piece 🧡
Thanks for reading and commenting Imma! As usual, you have such an interesting perspective on things that I'm never quite sure I understand, which makes me go back and force my mind to feel into new directions. I think you may be saying that even if my questions are leading me nowhere, it's still ok to ask them... The Bateson quote is very interesting. I take him to be saying here that the idea of evolution makes it sound as if a whole organism (system) moves in lockstep with itself, with everything lining up in the direction of its forward trajectory; and that the idea that a system might be containing other systems within itself, not all of which will respond in the same way or at the same time, was seen as being impoossible, in terms of the system surviving?
I’m glad my comment made you wonder, because your post made me wonder too! I totally 💯 love the idea you are making questions without a goal in mind, nowhere is always somewhere else… in that sense, since you are meandering, going for a walk without destination, I sense questions are companions for the walk… The quotes I shared came to me when you write about evolution being ‘movement through time in the interest of survival’ and my body felt a bit out of place with that definition… because to me that definition comes from a set of assumptions based on a reductionist way to understand the world. Evolution is movement, that seems real, the movement of life in love with curiosity, I think that’s what both authors are trying to convey and also from both quotes I sense that nothing exists out of contexts, time and place being the ones that are always present, because even ‘nothingness’ is born through, within, side by side contexts. I was wondering what other contexts beside time and place are there in a themed exhibition?
Yes, Darwinian evolution very different from complex adaptive systems moving and changing through time...
Your question about other contexts beside time and place in a themed exhibition... I was thinking that the context of time isn't represented in a themed exhibition, other than in the form of the stated date on the label by the specific painting. Certainly no sense of either how the stated date sat in a stream of many other things at that time, or of many other parallel or vertical contexts that would have been part of that painting's appearance. I've already mentioned the context the viewer brings...and of course there's also the context of the gallery itself...and the moment in present time, many things......But somehow I don't think I'm addressing your question. I'm working towards talking about multiple contexts a bit further on in this series of writings, but probably that won't address your questions either :-) At the moment I'm planning to write next about how I experienced some of the different themes in the gallery; did it work, did it not work for me? And then in article three to move on to what's lost in creating a theme....
I’m so thankful for this conversation Tamsin… the question at the end of the last comment, to me is kind of a pondering, or a reflection in the format of enquiry… does anything exist outside the context of place-time? I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and in my humble opinion, to escape place-time contextual reality one must do a sleight-of-hand trick and exist in abstracted form, and even then, I don’t think one can escape place-time contexts, even thoughts I would adventure! This wondering and reflection got me to think about the trend on themed exhibitions, and the idea of a library organised by colour code came to mind, I guess all depends on the deeper sense of the exhibition as a collage not outside or beside time-place contexts but within them, not escaping reality but showing what else are the chosen themes bringing to the experience?
I agree with you about not being able to escape place-time contexts, which is why I'm curious about this themed thing in the gallery. I don't know if the exhibition manages to be within space time, I had a mixed response to it. I don't think the theme is trying to escape reality exactly, I think it's trying to make its own reality, as you say. Tomorrow you can see what I had to say about the experience of two of them! Thanks for reading and commenting, as ever.
Looking forward to reading it!
This is fantastic. I Was lucky to have a high school history teacher that—to the degree that a small town school allowed him—tried to get us to veer away from the ever present “hero in history”. The heroes of course being all of those powerful figures (almost all men) standing along that straight line of history.
He let us know in his admittedly still very Western view that history had branches and breaks, it had connections and asynchronous events, it had people with names and thousands more that were nameless.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting Davin. Your teacher sounds very inspiring, it's great to think that there are people like that who can introduce young people to wider views, who can question and bring in other perspectives.
Lovely reflection Tamsin. I have wondered at times what has remained in continuity of presence across time, irrespective of the current context. Has there ever been a moment on the planet across millions of years when there has not been affectionate touch, sleeping and dreaming, imagining, nurture and love, awe, flows of fear, love, hope, courage, despair, the sound of bird song, or ruminants chewing… ( the idea came as I watched a field of sheep on Iona!). And in turn, I have fancifully wondered what would happen if one of these constants were magically stopped even for a second - how would the fabric of reality unwind? So your image of lines of warp helped me visualise this in a more tangible form. This warp seems to be the underlying substrate that the conscious mind so often dismisses or denies.
'What has remained in continuity of presence across time, irrespective of context...'. This is a big idea, hard to pin down. Because there are patterns, like the ones you describe. There are shapes that things fall into, again and again (this is article 5 of my projected series!). I will have to sit with your underlying substrate in relation to the warp (and stopping the constant leading to an unwinding...) and see if I can feel into what this might mean. Thank you for reading and for giving me this to think about.