The Tourist

Work in Progress 4

To draw, wrote Paul Klee, is to take a line for a walk. To write, I think, is much the same thing. The following - an unravelling of thoughts on history and my perception of the past and the present - can, in many ways, be seen as a ramble in both the physical and verbal sense of the word. Over time I will add to it, contradict myself but won’t take anything away. In this sense it will become a dialogue with myself, one which will evolve over time.

The origins of this project lie in a visit I made to Auschwitz in October 2006 and my subsequent attempts to identify in some small way with the millions of anonymous people who died there. In many respects of course this is an impossible task, but by turning to my own past and discovering hundreds of anonymous people to whom I am related meant that although I could never comprehend the individual experience of Auschwitz, I could nonetheless comprehend the individual in ‘history’.

To many history is the past. For me it is a dialogue between the past and present, as much to do with now as it is then. It fills the gaps between fragments of the past; letters, diaries, objects, the ruins of ancient – and not so ancient - buildings. Indeed. if the past is a dinosaur then history is a dinosaur living in Jurassic Park – a creature made from retrieved fragments of prehistoric DNA (letters, diaries, objects and ruins) mixed with that of present-day frogs (our imagination). It is, if you like, a fiction – and at times a very entertaining one.

The idea or notion of history as entertainment however is one which seems appallingly inappropriate when discussing the Holocaust and other historic traumas. But the truth is that when we visit sites of trauma, we do so from the comfort of the present, from a ‘seat in the stalls’. That’s not to say we’d view a visit to Auschwitz as entertainment, but that we can at the end of the day get up, leave and go home (leaving Auschwitz-Birkenau was in fact one of the hardest parts of the visit).

When looking at a ruin, we might use our imagination to rebuild it, but this idea of history as something which is both the past and the present combined isn’t meant only as a means of illustrating this process of mental ‘reconstruction’. Rather, history, in this sense, is in some ways the essence of the present which is of course a conflation of both ‘itself’ (whatever that might be…) and extant traces of times passed. We come to these traces - objects, texts, buildings and so on - with the experience of our own lives (knowledge, memory and being present in the world) which in turn helps us interpret these historical remnants. The landscape we move in is a mix of these remnants which come from a whole range of times, and through that landscape we make our way (being present in the world) in the present, using knowledge and memory to create the world we know. This is in many ways the same as rebuilding a ruin within our imaginations. Interpreting extant objects, text and buildings, ‘rebuilding’ ruins and negotiating our way through the world are all forms of history.

History is happening around us all the time. We are constantly living and creating history. Life is a continual dialogue between the past and present and the quiddity or ‘whatness’ of the present is something which can help us re-see the past without recourse to the intermediary of history.

Now I’m butting in on myself (from the future – so to speak) The quiddity of the present is something which can help us re-see the past without recourse to the intermediary of history. To see the past as it was when it was the present we have to do so without recourse to history and therefore without recourse to ourselves (after all history is a dialogue between ourselves in the present and the past). Or to put it another way, to see a past when we did not exist as it was when it was present we have to do so without recourse to ourselves and therefore history. For example, I’m looking at a piece of pottery from c.1300. To imagine that pot in 1300 I have to think myself out of the picture, as I did not exist in that year. Without history linking the pot with the present (without the dialogue) there is only the pot and the present remaining. Only the pot and the present? Well, yes and no. There is also imagination which is used to think oneself out of the picture. I appreciate here that there are some or many inconsistencies, such is the nature of my ramble. If we’re left with the pot and the present… didn’t I say that imagination fills the gaps when history is made? Am I going round in circles?

Some new information from Christopher Tilley… My vision, he writes in Body and Image, is an exemplar of a universal visuality existing prior to my being. Now one can interpret this in many ways, but for me it encapsulates the idea of seeing the past in terms of the present, because the past was of course once the present. Vision exists now, in the present and is an exemplar of a universal visuality that has always existed; in other words the present has always existed.

Ok, now back to where I was…

Now, I appreciate that this may (or does) sound contradictory; history being the essence of the present and the present helping us see the past without recourse to history?! But if we imagine these things as separate entities it hopefully becomes clearer. So, one, the past; two, the present and three, history – a conflation of one and two but perceived as a separate thing.

We might further regard the past in two distinct ways; as the extant past (those parts of the past which still remain, as objects, texts, buildings or ruins etc. and which have a place in the present) and the non-extant past (the greater part of the past of which no trace is left). In terms of the present, there is what we routinely think of as the present – i.e. now. But we should perhaps see this now in another way, as the present of being present in the world.

I’ve written before that to see that past as it was (in fact I phrased it slightly differently as I will come to later) necessitates the consideration of our own non-existence; we have to think ourselves out of the frame. We cannot use history to see the world as it was (not to be confused with remnants of that world) because what was, by and large, isn’t anymore, and what is (i.e. the present) hasn’t even happened, and for us (or for me) history is a dialogue between the past and present. Without one or the other there is no longer dialogue and therefore no history. Now, this may sound like splitting hairs, but what I am interested in is understanding as far as is possible what the past was like when it too was the present. History cannot help us with that but our being present in the world can.

The present is the space wherein lies amongst many things the mundane; our ordinary, everyday existence, fear as well as hope (neither of the latter exist in the past). It is a space filled with uncertainty. Indeed, a definition of the present might be that: uncertainty (a definition of the past might therefore be the opposite). Or, we could also say that the present is the uncertainty of being present in the world.

History is the sum of the present (as perceived by the individual) and parts of the past. The rest of the past (that which has no extant trace) can only be known without recourse to history and through a direct knowledge of the quiddity of the present. There is therefore a part of the past (by far the greater part) which history cannot see: idle conversations, an itch assuaged with a scratch, noises in the night (“...there is always someone who bursts out laughing in the darkness...” Italo Calvino), reflections seen for a second in a window as one walks down the street.

In a famous definition of the Metaphysical Poets (a group of 17th century British poets including John Donne), Georg Lukács, a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic, described their common trait of "looking beyond the palpable" whilst "attempting to erase one's own image from the mirror in front so that it should reflect the not-now and not-here."

I have borrowed this quote to describe my own work whereby the palpable might be the extant past (the past of letters, diaries, objects and ruins). Looking beyond the palpable is to look beyond history and the remains of the extant-past in an attempt to see the not-now and the not-here of the past of which nothing is left. This is the past of the everyday lived experience, the banal and the mundane. The everyday past which is a reflection of our contemporary experience. Boring things happened in the past too.

As I have mentioned, in a previous work I wrote how the study of history necessitates the consideration of our own non-existence, and although I still hold with this idea, I realise now that it’s not the study of history which necessitates this, but the study of that part of the past which is beyond the palpable, beyond history itself, requiring from us an attempt to erase our own image from the mirror. What is then reflected in the mirror is the past as it was; one pregnant with everyday uncertainty of being present in the world. (Strangely, when considering the past and our own non-existence, we have to realise that the chance of our ever being born were practically nil – therefore uncertain to say the least).

In my work on this project, I will, like the poets in Lukács’ mirror, attempt to ‘look beyond the palpable’ and ‘erase my image from the glass’. I will ‘trace the outlines’ of the not-now and the not-here here on its surface. In the case of this project however, the mirror will be the ground or the landscape, and the lines will be the roads and pathways my ancestors took in their everyday lives.

In his book Lines, Tim Ingold writes:

“Human beings also leave reductive traces in the landscape, through frequent movement along the same route… The word writing originally referred to incisive trace-making of this kind.”

“Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived,” writes Gaston Bachelard in ‘The Poetics of Space’.

By walking and leaving our reductive traces on the ground therefore, we could be said to be writing or drawing ourselves upon the landscape.

In this project I will walk in places where my ancestors lived, following roads, paths and trails they may have taken. And as I walk I will survey the area from a phenomenological and kinaesthetic perspective; recording how I experience the landscape - how I inhabit it – how I am being in it.

What I will be describing will not be an attempt to visualise the past, to see the world as I imagine it might have been; instead I will be describing the world as it is now, as it appears to me being in it. The reason for this becomes clear when we consider that the rest of the past (that which has no extant trace) can only be known without recourse to history and through a direct knowledge of the quiddity of the present. Lukács’ mirror reflects the not-now and the not-here, but reflects nonetheless the world laid out before it (if not the individual).

What working in this way reveals, in places where I know my ancestors would have lived is the sheer improbability of my own existence; the fact that I am here only because of an impossibly unlikely chain of events comprising links which are themselves utterly insignificant; idle conversations, an itch assuaged with a scratch, noises in the night…

But how can an artwork convey the nowness of an experience? Well, clearly it can’t – at least not entirely, it will always be ‘after the fact’ – a history of the experience. (Of course this depends on what the artwork is.) But that is no bad thing, for in a sense, by creating work based on a phenomenological and kinaesthetic response to a particular place or landscape I will bring aspects of the hidden side of the past to light, into the realms of history.

Perhaps that’s why in part I find archaeology so intriguing; it’s the ‘unhiding’ of objects and artefacts with which one can begin, with the aid of the imagination, to construct a dialogue – to create a history where before there was none. Often these things are just below our feet and so it is with the past, that of which nothing remains. It too is just below the surface and in some ways perhaps, this project is an archaeology of the present.

But what about places where fragments do remain, places where history is very much in evidence? Places such as Auschwitz?

Clearly any artwork in Auschwitz would be inappropriate, just as it would on a Great War battlefield (where do monuments and memorials figure in this?) but through my work I want to amplify the present, to ‘dig up’ from below the surface of the everyday world, everyday things which we might otherwise take for granted, things which the mind filters, which often do not make an impact on our consciousness; things that make the present ‘now’. In places such as Auschwitz, this can only be achieved through an individual’s own response to being in that place.

When visiting a site such as Auschwitz, indeed, any historical place, what is missing, no matter how well preserved it is, is the sense of its ‘everydayness’. As I wrote earlier, we visit Auschwitz from the comfort of the present, it’s always something that is of the past which is dangerous when considering what it represents. Everyone of its victims, those killed as well as survivors, experienced the camp in the present. Only in this present are emotions located; despair, fear, hope and so on and only from the point of view of that present can we identify in however small a way with the victims.

Through my definition of history we have at Auschwitz a large number of remnants comprising an extant past; buildings, railway lines, barbed wire, signs, shoes, clothes, possessions and so on, and with these we can with our imaginations fill in the gaps. And perhaps this is where I need to modify a little my understanding of history. It not only comprises the extant past and the present, but also the imagination. It is the imagination which fills in the gaps; it is the imagination which is our Frog DNA. But what of the present? How does that fit in? (As an aside, Christopher Tilley writes that consciousness is corporeal, in which case so is imagination. It isn’t a part of our bodily presence in the world, it is our bodily presence. In that respect it is the present, along with all our senses.) So when I say that with the ‘unhiding’ of objects and artefacts one can begin, with the aid of the imagination, to construct a dialogue – I mean an embodied imagination.

Perhaps we need to think again of Lukács’ mirror and return again to the idea of a missing ‘everydayness’.

It sounds an obvious truism, but the victims of Auschwitz lived their appalling experiences and to identify in whatever way with the individual victim, to see the victims as people rather than just a massive statistic, we have to understand that lived aspect of the camp. That is not to say, and it’s always worth repeating, that we will ever know what it was like to be there; the point of my work is not to ‘comprehend the individual experience of Auschwitz,’ but that of the individual in history. Of course I have read the works of Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, Elie Wiesel and Jean Amery, which have helped me form a picture in my mind (in my embodied mind). It was Elie Wiesel who said that we (the modern day visitor) can move closer to the gate but not inside, because we can't go inside, but that's close enough, and for me this is the difference between comprehending the experience (that beyond the gate) and the individual in history – the man outside. This is as close to empathy as we can get. We understand what it means to be embodied conscious Beings, to be in the world, and the barbed wire which separates us from those experiencing Auschwitz is simply time.

I realise that inadvertently I’ve written experiencing in the sentence above which would imply that the victims of Auschwitz are some how still experiencing the camp. Of course I don’t mean this at all, but what it does point to is the fact that the past is made up of presents.

Individuals experience things with their bodies; consciousness, as Christopher Tilley writes is corporeal. If I took Lukács’ mirror and placed it in Auschwitz I would see myself removed from the glass and the glass itself reflecting back the not-here and the not-now. But this not-here and not-now is a reflection of the world which lays before it; it is in many respects the same thing; it is the ‘everydayness’ of the world. The way the clouds move, the colour of the sky, the way the sun glints in a window, the feel of the ground underfoot, the feel of the wind, the sound of the trees, of birds… all these things are the same as they’ve always been.

What is reflected and what has been reflected we must consider as the same thing. The not-here and the not-now are the same as the here and now. I wrote that through my work I aim to trace the outlines of the not-here and the not-now. As regards places such as Auschwitz, we must consider the reflecting image and that reflected as one and the same thing – that being the quiddity or ‘whatness’ of the present. And to trace the outlines is to walk along paths, roads and trails that have been walked before, by people with whom we seek to identify.

In Auschwitz, such a path exists in the ramp at Birkenau.

I have used Elie Wiesel’s quote in a previous work, but only now am I beginning to understand what it really means. As I wrote at the beginning of this text: although I can never comprehend the individual experience of Auschwitz, I can nonetheless comprehend the individual in ‘history’ because that is precisely what I am. I am on the other side of the gate just as I am outside the mirror. But, what is reflected in the glass and what lays beyond the gate are the same thing; the same ground, the same sky, the same air.

By walking where those who suffered walked, by seeing the sky, the trees from the same place, I can at least experience being an individual in history.

I wrote earlier that life is a continual dialogue between the past and present and the quiddity or ‘whatness’ of the present is something which can help us re-see the past without recourse to the intermediary of history.
This I suggested seemed something of a contradiction, writing that if we imagine these things as separate entities ‘it’ might become clearer. I suggested that we might regard the past in two distinct ways; as the extant past (those parts of the past which still remain, as objects, texts, buildings or ruins etc. and which have a place in the present) and the non-extant past (the greater part of the past of which no trace is left).

But can there really be two different pasts; an extant one and a non-extant one? When one considers that the earth still exists (just as well) along with the sea, the sky, the sun, moon and stars, it becomes harder to argue for the idea that there are two different entities. There is just the past.

So can we access the past without the intermediary of history? If we are in the world and the world is a palimpsest of pasts, then by definition, when we navigate our way through it (writing ourselves upon the landscape) we are creating a kind of history albeit an individual one.

Christopher Tilley writes in The Materiality of Stone Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology:

The painter sees the tree and the trees see the painter, not because the trees have eyes, but because the trees affect, move the painter, become part of the painting that would he impossible without their presence. In this sense the trees have agency and are not merely passive objects. Dillon comments:
The trees 'see' the painter in a manner comparable to that in which the mirror 'sees' the painter: that is, the trees, like the mirror, let him become visible: they define a point of view on him which renders visible for him something that otherwise would remain invisible - his outside, his physiognomy, his carnal presence ... The trees and mirror function as Other.

Just as the trees function as Other, so must the sun, the stars, the clouds, hills, mountains, the sea, rivers and so on. These see us as the mirror sees us (or doesn’t see us in the case of Lukács’ mirror) and let us (to borrow from Tilley) become visible. Where we are in the world, where we stand or walk, which direction we are facing are all significant features in this respect. We are what we are because of where we at a given moment.

But if the mirror in this example lets us become visible, what does it mean when Lukács’ mirror does the opposite?

One way to illustrate the answer if by recalling at a visit I made last year to Hafodyrynys in Wales, the village where my grandmother grew up. Whilst standing on top of the hill where she played as a child and across which her father walked on his way to work in the mines at Llanhilleth, I looked and saw a view I knew he would have seen. I found it strange to think that 100 years ago he would have stood there, just where I was, at a time when I did not exist. 100 years on and I was there when he did not exist. And yet we shared something in that view; in the nowness, not of the time, but of the perception. I was, at that point, made visible by the view, the hills, the sun, the sky, the trees and so on and invisible through thinking of my great-grandfather.

History, I wrote earlier is the sum of the present (as perceived by the individual) and parts of the past. The rest of the past (that which has no extant trace) can only be known without recourse to history and through a direct knowledge of the quiddity of the present. I have since changed my thinking on this so that now we have no split-past, no extant or non-extant version. The past it would seem is just the past. When one considers that the earth still exists along with the sea, the sky, the sun, moon and stars, it becomes harder to argue for the idea that there are two different entities. Indeed so. It also becomes difficult to argue for a physical remnant of the past, as what is present in the world is present.

Again as I wrote earlier:

History it seems to me is a walk in the park. A walk in the woods or by the sea. It is sitting by the river, being bored in an office and gazing out the window. It seems it may have nothing to do with the past at all.

Roland Barthes once wrote:

"Is history simply that time when we were not born? I could read my non-existence in the clothes my mother had worn before I can remember her."

I would phrase it differently. Is the past simply that time when we did not exist? Well one would have to say no. What about – in my case - 1973 when I was 2 years old. That was, or is, the past and I was alive. And what about yesterday, an hour ago? Ok, I must refine it; the past is a time when I did not exist as I do now. And whether that time was 1300, 1789 or one minute ago, they are (whether I was not-yet-born or alive) both a kind of non-existence. One minute ago (14:28) is as much a part of the past as the year 1428. And in each, I am non-existent from the point of view that I am existing now, being what I am because of where I at this moment.

I have been reading Christopher Tilley’s excellent book, Body and Image in which he writes: ‘The self is a combination of perception and memory, always reworking embodied perception in a creative and generative process, creating at any particular moment a new self in relation to the old selves that preceded it.’

This seems to tie in with what I have stated, that the past is a time when I did not exist as I do now. Furthermore, the creation of a new self is down to memory (of previous selves) and my being in the world at a specific point in the world.