Chiromancy | In Stitches (2009) for David Spooner’s exhibition Chiromancy at Boxcopy.
© Copyright 2009. Boxcopy and the writers and artists.
bat right off the bat- at the very beginning. While the universe is limited in extent and contains a finite amount of matter, time is infinite with no starting or ending point. As the heaviest conceivable weight, the thought of eternal recurrence is horrifying and paralysing. To comprehend it, requires amor fati (“love of fate”), an acceptance that everything in life has purposes within larger networks of occurrences. Hume describes it as the “eternal return”; Bergson discusses the “élan vital”; Deleuze explores the “non organic vitality”; and Bernard Shaw focuses upon “life force”. wood bat vulgar slang -wood, bat off- masturbate- wank or to be a wanker: an egotistical person or self-indulgent focus. To embrace the ontological anxiety of eternal recurrence, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi promotes an operation of “flow”. “Flow” is a state where the individual is fully immersed in the material-physical processual aspects of creation. During the creative process, emotions are simultaneously contained and channeled, (energised, and aligned with the creativeness of a task) whilst remaining open to spontaneous feelings of joy (receptive, and appreciative of the randomness of chance occurrences). robotic bat a robot built by North Carolina State University Researchers to conduct surveillance. Moulded from ‘soft’ metals, the bats are powered by shape memory alloy spokes programmed to process webs of information gathered via echolocation. Bats store series of complex auditory maps, networked by characteristics of sound. Recent experiments published by the Royal Society of Biological Sciences reveal that bats continually adjust the width of echolocating beams by drawing upon their network of knowledge to predict changing, unpredictable elements within the geographical field of environments. The robotic bat built by the University researchers weighs less than 6 grams and easily fits inside the palm of the hand. metallic paint paint of, relating to or resembling metal. David Spooner recalls a period during his childhood when he believed that his friend’s father could build metallic robots from wood and wire. Eventually David realised it was an elaborate fib, his friend’s father merely constructed houses. lead a soft, malleable, heavy metal, to have caused a person or animal to go with an idea or with one by holding them by the hand or rope, to have initiated action particularly in a game. In childhood development, there is a stage of play where the imagination leads the creation of rules. Such play eventually gives way to games where the imagination becomes subservient to rules. This transition is often read as a development of cognitive- semiotic functions, as the object of play is understood to represent another thing. Consequently, Piaget located imaginary play at the assimilative end of the learning spectrum. This view dismisses play as an infantile stage of development that is replaced by more logical and rational ways of thinking/behaving. Ultimately,it undervalues the significance of imaginative play in human experience. Sutton-Smith (1971:341) conceptualises imaginative play as a unique type of expressive form that is neither solely a cognitive nor an affective function. Not subservient to adaptive thought, this play is understood as a process that creates layers of expressive personal meanings. plumb measure, to explore fully, to a very high degree, completely. David Spooner stitches intricate networks that explore the connections between materials through words, forms, places and experiences. Everything is sewn into larger webs of occurrences as his imagination continually shifts the rules that govern structural transformations. This continuously evolving imaginary play is childlike, but not childish. When conducted by adults, play is not normally a process that enables an individual to imagine something as being other than what it is commonly understood to be. David’s works do not just play with unfamiliar ways of understanding the material qualities of things, they imaginatively reconfigure different ways in which we can understand the connections between things. plumbism technical term for lead poisoning, also known as painter’s colic, colica pictonium, saturnism, poisoning due to the absorption of lead into the body. The Watsons Brothers Building is registered on Brisbane’s Cultural Heritage List. The building is significant due to its connection with local plumbing company Watsons Brothers; a company that played an instrumental role in Queensland’s building history. The origins of international records of childhood plumbism can be traced to reports of lead poisoning in Brisbane in 1897. In Queensland, the majority of poisoning arose from domestic exposure to lead-based paint because few lead water pipes were seeded. Lead Poisoning is an example of a neurosis. It is a lesion of the nervous function unconnected with any known pathological alteration. Children are most susceptible to the toxicity of lead as it affects physical growth and the ability for the brain to build connections between different areas of cognition. Symptoms and effects include delayed neurodevelopment, linguistic deficits and hyperactive, inappropriate and uncontrolled behaviours. batty crazy,insane. In the first instance, David’s artworks appear to play with layers of non-sequiturs. Seemingly illogical and strangely disconnected, the juxtapositions of materials, words, objects and forms are actually intricately connected segments of complex, absurd networks of logic. The absurd is a state of confrontation between the desire for rationality for systems of logic and order, and the reality of the illogical and random nature of the world. Humour emerges from this threshold of the absurd. Chiromancy origin Chiro- of the hand or hands, also known as Palmistry or Palm Reading, in the palm of one’s hand, to have someone wrapped around one’s finger. Chiromancy is the practice of evaluating a person’s character or future by “reading” the palm of the hand. Various “lines” and “mounts” suggest interpretations by their relative sizes, connections and intersections. The line of fate (line of destiny, Saturnian) is the centre upright line on the palm. Possessors of philosophic, conic, and psychic hands with heavily marked fate lines tend to be strong believers in fate, whereas possessors of square and spatulate shaped hands rarely believe in fate. David Spooner talks, draws, sculpts and stitches networks of logics with his hands. This sophisticated imaginary play forms an ordered nonsense that converts the anxiety of eternal recurrence into eternalised absurdity.
by Danielle Clej
© Copyright 2009. Boxcopy and the writers and artists.
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