Withdraw to Seduce by Mocksim, one of the Yearly Print series: C-Type, 1m by 2m, completed 11th September 2010

Software or no software, the artist Mocksim’s impressive work looks positively digital and consequently, for me at least, leans towards the esoteric. Two complex confabulations of lines descend (or rise) either side of the stretched portrait- format picture-plane, as they contort themselves into complex pseudo- geometrical forms. These linear contortions are held in envelopes as they fall (or rise, we can’t tell if levity or gravity prevails here, paralysed, or frozen, the lines keep the trends of their motion a secret) invisible carapaces that jut out and seemingly shudder to the anarchic tumult of the fidgeting lines (imagining frozen fidgeting here is a neat demonstration of the ‘Reception Theory’ in action (see Hans Robert Jauss [1]). Mocksim, we have to assume, has performed some sort of digital wizardry here, through which the work is given its esoteric edge. This is a position that was predicted, strangely enough in 1992 - before the digital era had really kicked in - by the American theorist, Glen Mazis, when he wrote, “To understand how we can now comprehend sudden disproportionate change and unpredictable transformation, it is important to grasp how the notion of feedback has displaced linear causality insofar as we have begun to look at the world in terms of ‘open systems’”. [2]. The concept of open systems goes cheek by jowl, of course with the idea of chaos

The upper sections (or lower sections depending upon which way the image is hung) of these vertically orientated envelopes have a musical or poetic quality, they have broken into rhythmic play here, but they soon surrender to a sort of creeping decay that forges its relentless progress down the picture-plane (anachronistic terminology here that barely does justice to this slick hi-tech c-print coated aluminium) towards chaos (a state never quite achieved). I sense intriguing resemblances to the three-dimensional scores for electronic music that in the ‘70’s became artworks in their own right, (see Cornelius Cardew, Friedrich Cerha, R.Kayn, or David Weinstein) suggestions here of musical phantasms apparently coursing through these constellations of forms as they jostle for attention on this crisp green-surfaced aluminium sheet. Somehow, through all this apparently random graphigraphy*, run the threads or traces of what could be meaning, (don’t we always look for meaning?) we can sense strands of rationale struggling to breathe, maybe fighting for a handhold – admittedly a rationale that might be a digital clone of the real thing, but nevertheless it certainly signals its presence, flickering like isolated neon signs in an abstract morass of nocturnal urban lights. As far as the poetic is concerned I am, for some unknown reason reminded of the poetry of Tom Raworth (enfant terrible of the 60’s/70’s British poetry scene), his ‘Electronic Atmospheres’ loosely fits: -

cedar and sweet grease

hook by sense the next to savour
how do we know faint distance from faint here
by area the fading ring remembered seeing
two thoughts at once

for though my thought maybe your image
all our voices are the same
said rhythm pausing for reflection
leaving an error in the stream

snow in the railway cutting
a ruin artificially lit
high flat streak music
a cold headache with branches tingles [3]

We can see the ‘rhythm pausing for reflection’, ‘faint distance’, ‘faint here’, ‘a ruin artificially lit’ and ‘an error in the stream’ (in fact more than one) all nestled uncomfortably in this barely controlled pandemonium where any attempts at surface have been repeatedly consumed by the roiling substrate.

But enough of description, of analogies, of surmise, a move out into a stream of associations might now fit.

A phrase hits me full-on here ‘Bucky, eat your heart out!’ - Buckminster Fuller’s experiments with geodesic forms in the 1960’s gained a lot of publicity and went on to be influential in the development of lightweight roof structures for commercial buildings, and of course for his renowned domes – the geometrical webs that he designed were often complex, but the ones based on the pentagon were the most successful and abiding. Mocksim’s image seems to be infused with the remains of failed geodesic webs their catenae racked by disorder as if a plagiaristic spider had been foiled in the middle of a flawed attempt to simulate Fuller’s work.

It might seem that I am offering a lot of modernist references here, but there is no escaping the fact that there is something inherently neo-modernist in the mien of this work, whether that is deliberate or not – but I hesitate to push this as any reference to ‘isms’ is distinctly out of fashion.

The schematic linear maps of the global network of civil airline routes are visually fascinating, mesmerising almost, and there is a certain resemblance here. Spiders return, to scuttle hither and thither, freshly enthused by their research into aviation routes, high on sniffing kerosene fumes, laying their webs, a smokescreen of filaments to confound the gaze of analytical eyes. (remember those laboratory experiments involving spiders, psychoactive drugs, and the documentary footage of their consequently fumbled attempts to weave webs). The most significant aspect of all this seems to be the fact that where the web of lines is thickest, densest, it abuses, adulterates and abnegates the green ground on which it has trespassed and this trespass might be seen as symbolic of man’s ongoing abuse of the ecosphere whose generic colour, green, is seen to represent the eco-friendly network of environmental campaigns - here serially despoiled. This is paralleled on those aviation maps by the phenomenon whereby the densest areas of lines are found where they meet at busy international hubs such as Heathrow, Schiphol, Frankfurt, Paris, New York and Los Angeles and where air and noise pollution must at their greatest.

As if to give all this multi-linear confusion some semblance of security, through its ordered presence, a subtle framework of evenly-spaced horizontal and oblique lines that join along a vertical axis, appears to create the corner of a cage, underpinning the crazily-figural lines, offering a sort of rack on which sanity might be hung. It seems ironic that what might be perceived here as the most ordered element amidst this general disorder, is also the most enigmatic. Its incongruity might be forgiven if it were to offer a structural role, but this would take some mathematical wizardry to establish – end of conversation! Remember Dan Hayes’ 1997 John Moores Prize-winning hamster cage, ‘Harmony in Green? If not, let me reassure you that its multi-toned metallo-verdant bars, which, except in terms of proportions, look nothing like Mocksim’s cage corner, but who knows which ardent art historian, eager to feed as many supplements as possible to a burgeoning art-historical archive, will correlate the two in times to come, perhaps quoting Sol LeWitt as a common reference – come to think of it LeWitt‘s ‘Lines to points on a Grid’, 1976 …… Give the work of 1960’s Op-Art operator, Francois Morellet, the Angela de la Cruz treatment, and the result would have to be described as ‘Mocksimesque’. This would seem to be a good point to leave this critical strategy behind.

Inevitably we must tackle intentionality. The zeitgeist dictates that we must correlate intentionality with concerns about identity, the illusion of harmony, or how the plurality of culture must be addressed, and against whose perspective a work of art must be measured. Then there are the phenomena of celebrity, celerity and inter-cultural synergy. I have to say, however, that I am somewhat resistant to the concept of zeitgeist, despite the fact that certain trends in the ‘world of art’ would seem to corroborate its existence. The supposed effects of the zeitgeist are undoubtedly causative, however, nothing will ever move on if it is habitually reverenced – we are talking vicious circles here. Reverential I’m not and I have the feeling that Mocksim isn’t either. So what is going on here, is this simply digital madness, has Mocksim become a cyberslave? or is he merely enjoying himself, and should not necessarily be counted as a devout worshipper at the shrines of Babbage, Turing, Backus, etc. The possibility remains that he has become a studious follower of the random effects of spontaneity, a factor that endlessly feeds the rich reservoir of the aleatory, the element of chance, that acts as a supercharger to the creative act. Much is born of chance, but through its auspices, much rests on the shoulders of the practitioner who heeds its pull. Mocksim seems to be bearing up well if this image is anything to go by. He confounds the expectations of those who would like to see something immediately recognisable and classifiable, and his integrity, as a result, remains irredeemably secure and inviolable, this is not, however, to suggest that his work is obscure or impenetrable. It is an unspoken fact that the contemporary idiom requires that nothing should expose itself to the threat of classification or the numbing adjunct of an ‘ism’. Without having seen the precursor or successor to this image (I am aware that this is a frozen extract of or excerpt from a video sequence, something much more animate and dynamic, something, which as a result of its movement with the flow of time would convey a totally different message or meaning) it is very easy to afford it an importance that it does not actually claim. In fact it might be true to say that it does not claim anything at all outside of and beyond its video context.

Carsten Nicolai’s recently published book, Grid Index, [4] undertakes an exhaustive study of grid patterns, with reproductions of hundreds of permutations on the geometric grid, where the evidence of cause and effect moves rapidly from the glaringly obvious in the simplicity of the square grid through to the mind-boggling complexity of 10-fold symmetry, where to establish any presence at all of the workings of cause and effect would be a minor miracle. The minimal meeting of cause and effect, visually at least, in Mocksim’s work leaves the eye free to roam - without the burden of cognitive responsibility - across those finely woven linear webs, inventing, at will, diverse and extravagant versions of cause and effect scenarios. At one point I was convinced that these lines composed an armature for some mechanico-organic mutant, whose essentially benign presence was such only because it was frozen and for an instant I was in fear of ever confronting the video version (a catastrophic battle between two obese, unarmed, but impressively beteethed carnivorous (homophagous** worms – akin to the dune-monsters in Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic, ‘Dune’). Then, fortunately I snapped out of that and was immediately overcome by the beauty of this infinitely fine network of delicate, ethereally interwoven, lacey lines, stunned into meditative mode, I retreated and left the work free for the unhindered puzzlement of others, and wondered why beauty has become such an ugly word. But that’s another story.

* my neologism
** man-eating

[1] Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. [Trans. Timothy Bahti]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
[2] Glen A. Mazis, ‘Chaos Theory and Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology’ in Merleau-Ponty: Interiority and Exteriority, Psychic Life and the World, Edited by Dorothea Olkowski & James Morley, SUNY, New York, 1999. Page 222.
[3] Tom Raworth, Tottering State, Paladin Books, London 1988. Page 203.
[4] Carsten Nicolai, Grid Index, Gestalten, Berlin. 2009.