Month: January 2015

Orientalism – Sat 10th Jan

Gaétan Henri Alfred Edouard Léon Marie Gatian de Clérambault was a French psychiatrist who, while perhaps less widely known than other practitioners working in the earlier part of the 20th century, was not without influence. He ‘introduced the term ‘psychological (mental) automatism’ and suggested that the mechanism of ‘mental automatism’ might be responsible for ‘hallucination experiences’’(1). He also defined the condition which became known as De Clérambault’s syndrome (aka erotomania) in which sufferers come to believe they are the object of desire for a person, usually famous or high-status, who they have usually had little or no contact with. ‘During an erotomanic episode, the patient believes that a secret admirer is declaring their affection to the patient, often by special glances, signals, telepathy, or messages through the media. Usually the patient then returns the perceived affection by means of letters, phone calls, gifts, and visits to the unwitting recipient. Even though these advances are unexpected and often unwanted, any denial of affection by the object of this delusional love is dismissed by the patient as a ploy to conceal the forbidden love from the rest of the world'(2). Jacques Lacan regarded de Clérambault as his ‘only master in psychiatry.’

In addition to his work as a psychiatrist, de Clérambault was also an accomplished artist – for a while teaching classes on the art of the draped costume at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris – and an obsessive photographer. Between 1914 and 1918 he produced over 30,000 photographs, some of which formed part of a research project on the symptoms of hysteria, but also a sizeable body of work portraying Moroccan women under the veil. In these photographs, all of the female subjects are so elaborately and completely concealed from head to toe by swags of cloth, that it is difficult to tell that there is a human being, let alone a woman, under these garments. Yet at the same time these enigmatic and spectral figures seem to possess a quality that is both predatory and erotic.

All artists project their desires onto their surroundings. Perhaps the same is true of psychiatrists, or indeed anyone seeking to further our own (or maybe just their) abilities to make sense of the world. What interests me most about de Clérambault is the conjunction between his psychiatric practice and his private compulsion to record this singular subject.

(1) Vladimir Lerner, British Journal of Psychiatry http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/197/5/371.short
(2) Anderson CA, Camp J, Filley CM (1998). “Erotomania after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage: case report and literature review”. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 10 (3): 330–7

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1000 rulers – Fri 9th Jan

If, on a winter’s day when the wind is up, you find yourself in search of something, but not entirely sure what that something is, go and find a copse of young deciduous trees. It is important that they are growing close together; a small thicket of self-set saplings is best, of a kind you’d find in unmanaged woodland or derelict lots.

Then press your ear against one of the trunks, and wait, and listen.

Bird Man – Weds 7th Jan

I first noticed it a couple of months ago. There would be the usual gulls, pigeons and crows hanging around the café, and then there was this one starling. Given its diminutive size in relation to the other birds I had to admire its tenacity in staking out the place as it’s territory. Indeed I was also curious: Do starlings actually have territories? Aren’t they flock birds? This one clearly hangs out alone and I am still wondering why: Fiercely independent innovator? Lazy opportunist? Anti social? Or just a runt who, fed up with being at the bottom of the pecking order, decided to clear out? At the end of the summer while the café was still busy and the weather mild enough for the scraps bin to be left outside, it’d dart in and out of it like a humming bird while the less agile pigeons looked on in jealous bemusement. Now in the middle of winter, and punters (and therefore scraps) are thin on the ground, it just perches on top of the wind break waiting patiently for plates too clean for the other birds to bother with, but still yielding enough for its tiny needs. Sometimes it’ll wait so patiently by a diner yet to finish their plate of chips that they can’t resist pushing a few crumbs across the table.

A few weeks ago it flew down and perched on the back of the chair next to mine while I was drinking some tea. It could see there wasn’t any food, but since no one else was around it just stayed there. After a while it began to sing. Starlings have the most extraordinary song, something like a cross between a budgie and radio static, full of pops, whistles and slow descending whoops. I was entranced. In a break in its song, I tried, badly, to imitate it, but it seemed close enough for the bird to recognise the effort. It whistled 2 peeps, one high, one low, and looked at me. I managed to mimic this as a response and after a pause it did it again. So, so did I… This went on for a while, until another customer turned up with a plate of food and it was off.

Yesterday I had some chips at the café. I whistled the two peeps and the starling turned up on queue (to be honest, I think I ordered the chips in the hope it would). So I broke one chip up into tiny pieces and placed these on the opposite side of the table to me. It darted across the table, its claws skittering on the plastic surface, retrieved the crumbs one at a time, skidding and flying back to its perch while finishing each beak-full. Once the chip pieces had gone it sang again. Once again I was entranced.

Today I made it a packed lunch out of a thin slice of salami chopped into bits the size of small garden worms, plus some crumbs from a seeded loaf of bread, and dropped the bits into an old plastic film pot. The wind hit me as soon as I neared the sea front and I could hear the waves booming in the distance. I wondered if it was going to be just too wild, but nevertheless I peeped twice and there it was again. The breadcrumbs were ignored but the salami went down singing hymns (and it bloody well should, my favourite saussison sec avec herbes de provence).

Why does this make me so happy? I don’t know, I don’t really care.

Simulacra and Simulations – Mon 5th Jan

Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful. But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more the social microcosm, the miniaturized and religious revelling in real America, in its delights and drawbacks. You park outside, queue up inside, and are totally abandoned at the exit. In this imaginary world the only phantasmagoria is in the inherent warmth and affection of the crowd, and in that sufficiently excessive number of gadgets used there to specifically maintain the multitudinous affect. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot – a veritable concentration camp – is total. Or rather: inside, a whole range of gadgets magnetize the crowd into direct flows; outside, solitude is directed onto a single gadget: the automobile. By an extraordinary coincidence (one that undoubtedly belongs to the peculiar enchantment of this universe), this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized; Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade.

Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), p166

Green – Sun 4th Jan

Everyone’s heard of Santa and his little helpers, who work tirelessly throughout the year to make sure everyone has something to open on Christmas day (by the way, on that subject, everyone really does get something from Santa. The myth about naughty children going without is exactly that, a myth. Santa’s ways are far more subtle, if you’ve been bad he just makes sure you get something you can’t even get rid of on ebay). Anyway, so, we all know how Christmas is prepared for, but what about the aftermath? Well today I found out when I met one of the cleanup fairies pulping abandoned Christmas trees in the crescent round the corner from me. They do this job in secret, assuming no one is about because we are all at the January sales. Consequently he was a bit surprised when I walked over to him, but was reassured by my confession that I hadn’t got any film in the camera (well I haven’t, it’s digital). He let me watch him at his work for a bit and then we had a chat. Apparently all the wood-pulp is collected and flown by reindeer back to the north pole where, because Santas workshop now has injection moulding facilities, the pulp is turned into next years presents. Smart eh?

He also told me the equipment logo stands for: JENSEN – January Elf (North) Sanitising Everything back to Normal.

In future posts I will tell you more about the tooth fairy, the hangover fairy (she’s the one that comes in the night and carefully coats your tongue in off-white goo that tastes like the bottom of a parrot cage) and the office party photocopier fairy. However I will not be revealing anything about the Sandman as his case is still sub-judicae.

Ozymandias – Sat 3rd Jan

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

P. B. Shelley

The last of 2014 – Dec 31st

It was a bit of a rush taking yesterdays photos but I wanted to get something out to mark the end of the year. Almost too hung over to do a post today, but how could I not put out an image of the last sunset of 2014, or for that matter, half naked action men in what looks suspiciously like fetish-wear (only in Brighton) and by contrast, chairs dressed in party frocks for their big night out? Plus of course (and after several impassioned pleas following their absence in yesterdays St Ives special) the last stone of the day for the year that’s now gone.

So, 2014 is done. File away the bad bits like old bills and tax returns. Treasure the best and be sure you make room for more of the good stuff in 2015. Happy new year!