Sunday, October 2, 2011

One schizo, two schizos, three

I wrote a paper this week on Lewis Carroll's book, Through the Looking-Glass (the sequel to Alice in Wonderland).  I couldn't find any secondary source material to support my premise, so I began looking at visual communication on the topic.  I found that there has been a profound shift in the ways visual artists depict key scenes from the book, and this visual information changed the way that I, in turn, saw those scenes in my mind.  I doubt my professor understood why I included so many illustrations in a short paper, and until today I couldn't have articulated an adequate response.

As I began writing about Capitalism and Scizophrenia today, my other paper suddenly came into focus.  That's the maddening thing about Deleuze and Guattari: they seem to write unintelligible gibberish, but if you give it time to percolate a bit, something useful eventually rises to the surface.  In this case, what came to the surface was the realization that my paper is written as a conversation on three levels:
  • The top level, of course, is the text.  It's not fabulous text, but I think it makes some valid points.  
  • The illustrations serve as a visual commentary about the ways artists today view the book through a contemporary lens.  This conversation is very different from the ones that existed when the book was published in 1871.  It would be easy to dismiss these changes on the basis of technology, but not all of the images used new media.  I thought it was interesting how many artists used materials and techniques that have been part of the artist's toolbox for centuries.
  • The third level is the spoken conversation we have about the intersection of the paper, the art, and the book.  This is a transitory, impermanent part of the paper that I consider a to be a variant of performance art.  I am the lucky recipient of several iterations of this level, courtesy of my wonderful colleagues.
There were three sets of pieces in particular that created interesting visual conversations about how our view of Through the Looking-Glass has changed over time.  First is the discussion of the looking-glass itself.  What, exactly, was it?  And what did Alice see through it?  The first illustration is Tenniel's 1871 answer.  The second two are contemporary viewpoints.

It is interesting that Tenniel "mirrored" Carroll's text about mirrored
logic with twin images that depict both sides of the looking-glass. 
It is a very photo-realistic approach to a work with heavy fantasy
elements.

Elena Kalis' opinion is that the looking-glass is actually 
the reflective surface of water.[1]


Jan Mecke sees a non-traditional view in the looking-glass. 
Is this a reflection of the way she sees herself, just a
pinpoint in the cosmos?  Or does the reflection show
the infinite possibilities inherent in each of us?[2]


The next set of images investigates Carroll's use of mirrored characters, Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  In all three images, the twins are looking directly at the viewer.  What are they thinking?

Again, Tenniel attempts photo-realism (rather than
cartooning) to depict the twins.  Notice that here he
begins the 1 + 2 composition that complements the
way Carroll handles Alice + a pair of similar characters.


Annie Liebovitz' famous photo of Alice and the twins.[3]


As noted, Barbara Balzer's treatment of Tweedledum and
Tweedledee.  She shows them in women's clothes (are
they in fact female?) with no hair, laughing at the
world that watches them.[4]

The third set of pieces concerns Alice and the two queens.  She becomes one of them, yet she retains the ability to remain objective about her surroundings.  What do these images say about being assimilated? 

Another of Tenniel's 1 + 2 compositions.


Beck Berrett depicts Alice and the two queens as a
single chess piece, capable of combining strengths
to win the battle around them.  It is a statement about
the power of women.[5]


What does all of this have to do with Deleuze and Guattari?  And with assemblages in general?  There are a lot of reasons why visual art is an important part of my understanding; here are a few from the reading.
  • The term "assemblage" is defined so many ways, Alice art seems like yet another way to continue the conversation.  D&G use visual information throughout the book to contribute to the topics under discussion.  In particular, I love the Klee piece on p. 310.  In this context, it compares biological and mechanical assemblages and shows how they straddle strata.  I suspect Klee would have found this interpretation somewhat surprising.
  • The metamorphosis of ideas over time, shown in the Alice pieces, adheres to D&G's description of how we morph as assemblages: cofunctioning by contagion (p. 242).  I rather like the idea of becoming-Alice.  I have no idea, however, what category of "becoming-" that would fit into.
  • Color is an important marker, an identifier, that helps us make sense of a territory or helps us define the central characteristics of an assemblage (p. 314-15).
  • Visual, verbal, and aural communication combine to form a "machinic assemblage of bodies" and "a collective assemblage of enunciation" (p. 88)
I think it is interesting that my task was to spend so much time deconstructing the text on assemblages, because an assemblage is essentially a schema.  Schema theory is one of my favorite learning theories.  It postulates that we learn by putting things in context, sorting new information by making connections with familiar content.  Each one of these contextual connections is a schema, and each varies according to the experience of the person who is learning something new.  So as a teacher, I have to be aware of the fact that each of my students is going to try to fit what I'm teaching into what they already know.  Their perception of what I'm communicating is colored by their previous experiences, so their perception of what I'm saying may not match what I think I'm saying.  I've often wished I had a T-shirt that said, "Stop messing with my schema!" but only people who are learning theory nerds like me would understand it.  It would be the ivory tower equivalent of a slogan written in Klingon.  But is that so very different from what D&G did? 

------------------------------------
  1. Kalis, E. (n.d.). Through the looking-glass. Illustration. Retrieved 9/30/11 from http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=464093http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=464093
  2. Mecke, J. (2010). Through the looking-glass. Illustration. Retrieved 9/30/11 from http://restlessmoods.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html 
  3. Liebovitz, A. (2003).   Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Retrieved 9/20/11 from http://www.soothbrush.com/portrayal-of-alice-in-wonderland-by-annie-leibovitz/  
  4. Balzer, B. (n.d.). Tweedledum and Tweedledee! “Let’s fight till 9 & then dine.” Clay figures.   Retrieved 9/30/11 from http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Brevard=Art_Museum.htmlhttp://www.artknowledgenews.com/Brevard=Art_Museum.html  
  5. Berrett, B. (2011).  Alice. Collage. Sent by the artist.

2 comments:

  1. Here is the article I referenced today about the potential problems with the way that “assemblage” has been translated from the original.

    Phillips, J. (2006). Agencement/Assemblage. Theory, Culture & Society 23. 108-109, doi:10.1177/026327640602300219

    http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/2-3/108.full.pdf+html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great article, Russ! I had problems figuring out an exact translation but dismissed the difficulty as a symptom of my drastically limited vocabulary. It looks like that might not be the entire problem, doesn't it? The author's book on critical theory looks good -- I would love to read about the subject from a writer who is both precise and knowledgeable. I like the way he writes; he isn't pretentious or condescending.

    ReplyDelete