Movement
('To Witness the Formulation and Construction of the/a Space – Time Era'
Catalogue statement by the artist for an exhibition at the I.C.A. Gallery, London, October 1966.)
Everything that lives is born of movement, as is everything we can think of and thought itself.
Without movement existence is nullified, but this is as incomprehensible to my thinking as is the notion of infinity, or how black holes in space operate and are created. Light is subordinate to movement, as is electricity; thought; speech; atoms; molecules; nature; industry; commerce; the sun's energy; the planets; explosions; water; earth; trains; cities; air; fireworks; motor cars; cinema; the universe and so on.
However, the first state of everything, logically, is stillness, and absolute stillness must be accompanied by the absence of all movement. Since thought itself requires and is embodied in movement in order to ‘see' and understand itself, the realm of absolute stillness evades comprehension. Yet this paradox to its existence inspires me!
In the sciences, particularly astronomy the theory of the big-bang is put forward to account for the creation of the universe and recently scientists have attempted to measure in time when this event took place. The time before this point-in-time, if time can be so allocated, is where absolute stillness is probably to be found.
Through movement (second to stillness), its shades and trickles, from the fastest (beyond my conscious perceptions but intuitively sought), to the slowest (also outside of my conscious perceptual waveband), I have tried to learn about my world from my inception into it. (1). Both conscious and subconscious reckoning of this central state begins at birth and perhaps further back in womb-time.
With the use of movement and through my limbs and body, my thought processes and trajectories I have tried to understand my world and its limits. My position and speed in it have been noted along with that of the other participants.
Although I haven't direct experience and understanding of absolute stillness, buried within me is the belief and a haunting trace of once knowing it.
It is this that I attempt to try to illicit from my subconscious and place into a format where it can be observed and studied. I have my anxiety about the transitoryness of this journey through time. My artworks, like signposts, typify each stage.
It is probable that we distance ourselves, emotionally and psychologically from this central moment of stillness, fearing that it will inexplicably overwhelm us. This I believe accounts for the form of a premonition I have of the other side.
Absolute stillness is everywhere at one and the same time. I feel I have to take stock of this.
Movement, the flux and flow of sequence within sequence engulfs and locates us. Movement brings with it self-determination.
There is an inevitability about absolute stillness.
From the projection of this end-thought some people try by acquiring great wealth, power, property and so on, to slow their movement towards absolute stillness but without notable success!
It is through a proper investigation of movement itself, laying bare its activities in as perceptual a way as possible, that I have attempted to and addressed the central concept of absolute stillness. My paintings, sculptures, performances, installations, films are part of this process.
Some Indian mystics are believers in, and practitioners of, universal stillness, both in their bodily movements (an absence of), and in focussing their minds onto a single concept of belief throughout their life times. They believe themselves eventually to become one with this great stillness. Their bodily functions such as breathing and heartbeat rates are slowed wilfully to the barest minimum.
*My first remembered image of the world is from the age of two when I was woken by an enormous earth shattering bang, the result of a German V2 rocket exploding nearby, and then seeing the entire bedroom ceiling slowly fragmenting and descending onto me and covering me in a suffocating layer. This was in 1945 in London.