Ha Ha. Yes. its good f:lux, and i am certainly not interested in one upmanship sebastian! I try not to talk purely conceptually and circularly, usually without success. sorry of that comes accross in a way i dont intend.

I am a very textual person and concept driven. I have a lot of issues with communicating visually. I work WITH artists and photographers, and it is always a hilarious interchange sometimes i need an interpreter as no doubt you can imagine.
I always champion concept over aesthetic.

So I dont have references, because these are musings and casual discussions. Im sorry but i can try to reinterpret them!? apologies to all who get misinterpreted.

What i was trying to communicate or discuss in this thread is the idea that my 'creative persona' is a constructed entity. So if we are to believe in revealing process (and because this is SHOWstudio's overt manifesto which i quoted, i thought that is a given in the forum) do i need to reveal how that persona is constructed? how it informs my decisions at a basic level and do I need to do that in every work. (that is do i need to reveal that i try to see the back of my own head in every work)

That was really what i intended to ask. I probably didnt do it very well, cos it went haywire, but in a direction i liked.

F:lux You commented on the feeling that there was a veneer of 'constructed value' that seemed to exclude process and that created this system of 'great masters, perfect work, denial and exclusion of variation" and that your experience of seeing past that construction of perfection, (seeing some evidence of process) was a good experience for you.

I think de Niet then actually saying something like "revealing process can be important but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater" ... There is still value in work that doesnt overtly show process. and the danger is that work that reveals process (like showstudio)is becoming fashionable, and might take the value away from work that doesnt reveal its process (like a stand alone photographic exhibition). which can then only be understood as something called 'surface'

So I said, yeah, but didnt f:lux just define 'surface' as the veneer of only valuable bits excluding the bits without value? and de Niet said yes.... so that was confusing and becoming circular around the concept of value. but he then said...

BUT BOTH TYPES OF WORK BENEFIT FROM BOTH EXISTING that's the intertextuality. when you or i look at some work, we know that work that acknowleges process exists and also work that doesnt celebrate process exists, so we shouldnt assume that just because some 'final work' is presented without overt reference to process that doesnt mean it is purely 'surface' ie only presenting this 'constructed value'.

eg intertextuality as i understand it:
Your single shot from the contact sheet has more value in context of process, even if you hadn't seen its series, because you had seen something like SHOWstudio and that became part of your experience when you saw the single shot. and you didnt feel like you were relying on his veneer of constructed value in 'reading or understanding or appreciating' the shot.

And I said, yes, but for me, if I dont acknowledge my own process (of self referentiality), then I feel i am giving tacit approval to this world of 'surface' as being the norm. And also I feel that this concept of 'surface' has wider ramifications than art interpretation... surely this is the same veneer of constructed value that most everything is based upon? Maybe if i acknowledge my process, i'm contributing to a wider discussion. (maybe i can contribute to the wider intertextuality!)

de Niet said , I am only talking about the intertextuality of people who have a body of knowledge about visual work. but maybe ethan has a point about wider audiences. and de Niet said he thought there is a place for both.

De Niet also said something along the lines of "even if process is valuable you could still say it was part of this veneer surface of constructed value" because 'value is constructed' !!!

which is really where the whole circularity comes in.

So clear as mud? ha ha.

I guess I should may be hold my hands and say sorry. I am sort of an academic as I teach at university both fashion and graphic design. But at the same time I work commericaly as an art director for a museum, some magazines and as well as for general companies. This might be why my writing may be a bit general at times as I’m thinking more of how my stuident operate rather than myself. If is of any comfort I am very dyslexic so I find these very hard and long to write.

From reading the posts every one is what I’d call ‘visually literate’, I’ll try hard to write examples of what I’m talking about in context as soon as I can. I have found everything everyone has written very interesting and I to also hope that there is no one-upmanship here, I haven’t felt any, only people interested in there subject. which is a joy to read and be part of.

oh yes i agree de Niet
It took a day of musing for me to manage to write the last post. The discussion is something central to what i do every day. I'm a circular nightmare.
And I have also really enjoyed all the posts.
Thanks All. look forward to your post de Niet.

Ethan has said much of what I ment but far better than I could.

To clear up one issue of what I was talking about with intertextuality I was meaning in the roland Barthes sence of the word.

If this helps try looking at

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.htm

I’ll write something better soon

Ah yes, mud. Now I see!

Kidding aside, thanks for the precisions. Just so you know, it's not that I necessarily have anything against the conceptual but I do find it all a lot easier to grasp if I can visualise it in some way. That said, I'm not convinced that concept and aesthetic are exclusive. What this discussion had left me wondering was what 'processes' and 'surfaces' you and de Niet might specifically have in mind, in whatever form, that 'fuel' your musings. In the way that access to a specific photographer's contact sheets inspired in me a line of thought about the value of accessibility and the mystique of perfection.

Sorry if my questioning has been a bit blunt!

Now you have opened up with your views it has proved very interesting Ethan, that is what I was trying to get you to do at the begining, it was hard to know what aproach you where coming from, its great to here the views from Flux and De Niet also.

Is it really so complicated? Both of you (Ethan and de Niet) claim to admire some of the observations I made at the outset, but then you’ve seemingly ignored the value of my having given those observations a specific context. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t say exactly who the photographer in question was. Seeing the contact sheets of an eminently referential artist/photographer when I wasn’t supposed to look at them inspired a lot of thoughts, which have contributed in part to shaping my own experience as photographer and which I shared with you here, along with the source of inspiration for them. So I talked you through the experience by which I arrived at my observations. I showed you the (thought) process, and fairly clearly, no? All I wanted in return was to ask you to do likewise with your points of reference, so I can perhaps better ‘see’ where you draw the inspiration for your ideas about process etc from. I’m not accusing anyone of obscurantism. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a visual reference – as I’ve said, I haven’t told you the identity of the photographer I originally referred to, and this hasn’t made a difference to you seemingly. I just want to better understand how you’re thinking. Does that make sense?

Even as it's been so far, this whole discussion is sort of extraordinary for me. I reached the stage today where I thought, oh fuck it, why can't I clearly express myself in words? why can't I just show what I mean?

And now a question directly inspired by this thread. How entertaining does process have to be for it to be accessible?

Sorry f:lux, I was working late last night til 230 am, (I am in Australia) and posted my last response then and went to bed.

I am planning to (try) get back to you on specific examples today!

you're questions are really valuable to make me realise that perhaps i am not being as concrete as i could, i appreciate that. I am never concrete in my day to day.

No need to apologise Ethan - and no rush!

Hey F:lux,

did you read the reference de Niet posted? its great, and made me laugh, Actually it made me feel quite normal. Like recieving a letter written in a foreign language that i havent read for a while, although i always think in that language.

I am off for dinner and I will try and throw off the shackles of this self conscious textuality and write something candid, abut experience. afterwards. if possible.