Colette Meacher
Kant: Walking the talk
A lecture on discovering Immanuel Kant's theory of the sublime
on the streets of the city.
excerpt from "Kant: Walking the talk":
Theoretical interest in the sublime has been enjoying a resurgence. Indeed,
the post-modern ‘condition’ would seem to be characterised by the
ever more dogged pursuit of the ever-elusive experience. Only the perpetual
succession of such thrills would seem to sate the modern appetite.
The society of the spectacle of which Debord wrote is now theoretically discussed
as embodied practices of performativity which permeate every area of social
life. Evidence of how what Kant recognised as a human necessity has become a
compulsive drive exists as the rise of extreme sports, outré sexual practices,
common use of recreational drugs, globe-trotting and an efflorescence of consumer
practises. Baudrillard dramatically shocks us to an awareness of how this thrusting
for transcendence is gratified by an inverse logic of distance and non-visibility
on the world-stage through mystical regimes of modern warfare. Readings of the
‘modern sublime’ thus have an implicitly moral tone whilst obfuscating
the pleasures which fill apparently mundane realities of lived existence. The
‘found’ nature of the sublime in experience, was, however, noted
by Baudelaire and Benjamin on their walks, and has provided subject matter for
artists since the ‘ready-mades’ of Sickert, as he called them. His
paintings of the city of London in its miasmatic glory were renditions of this
naturally occurring topological landscape as he found them. The sublime is not
something that we can seek to find, or make happen. Simply, it is perhaps a
consequence of the world we live in and the way in which we perceive it. Hence,
it is unsurprising that the notion of the sublime is now employed with such
egalitarian inconsistency that its Kantian inflexion no longer casts even a
shadow over its contemporary applications.
My aim here is to perambulate around an unknown cityscape and survey its vistas,
without the aid of map or compass (save, of course, for a well-thumbed copy
of Kant’s CJ ). The city itself, as landscape/s, offers moments of wonder
by virtue of the wealth of diverse practices which synchronously, and continuously,
manifest therein. The sublime views which can be gained neither depend on perspectival
privilege nor on a specific positionality within its spaces – a feeling
of awe can be achieved irrespective of familiarity with it or whether it is
approached with a ‘naïve’ eye. The aerial perspective provides
perhaps the most obvious example – the certain altitude, that is, at which
any city ceases merely to appear as a sequinned carpet of lights. But the vantage
points are many and various, whether they are points of first contact - the
sky, shore, station platform - or junctures reached amidst the hubbub of it
all, at the intersection of its gravitational fields. I intend to employ Kant’s
theory of the sublime as a point of departure, from which to consider that we
need not be a transnational traveller to experience a sense of human delight
and humility at the world that we survey.
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Bio:
Colette Meacher has worked as a freelance photographer, Artist in Residence,
and photography teacher, during which she filmed pieces of improvised theatre
and curated two exhibitions of mixed-media art. She has also worked as a lecturer
in Cultural Studies at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
Colette most recently showed photographic work at the ‘Slice’ exhibition
at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in the summer of 2002.
Recently, Colette has diverted her attention to freelance writing and collaborative
projects. An interview conducted with the painter Jock McFadyen from the Slade
School of Fine Art in London was published in the Room 5 journal ‘Eyeing
London’ in January. Amongst general philosophical
ramblings, this conversation discusses the divergent energies of London and
the importance of a sense of place to painting.
In an article called ‘Impish acts of sabotage’ in the book ‘Surface
Tension: Problematics of Site’, Colette questions how we can come to understand
acts of radical defacement, destruction against the modern image, sculpture
or edifice. She questions how we make sense of the spontaneous and creative
gestures that are born, phoenix-like, out of the displaced energy of sites of
desecration and loss. The article considers the impact of such acts on the work
of major British artists such as Rachel Whiteread’s ‘House’,
Vong Phaophanit’s ‘Ash and Silk Wall’, Anthony Gormley’s
‘TSWA 3D’ and Henry Moore’s ‘King and Queen’.
It situates this divergent radicalism in the contexts of both contemporary art
critique and the global response to events such as the Taliban’s destruction
of the Bamiyan sculptures, implicitly questioning what constitutes ‘acts
of terrorism’.
Most recently, Colette has contributed to ‘Occasional sights: an alternative
guidebook’, to be published by the Photographer’s
Gallery, London in March/ April 2003. This collection of images of the strange
and unexpected sights easily encountered on a walk through the city of London
has been compiled and re-staged by the artist Anna Best.
Current projects include editing and contributing to a book entitled ‘Earth
like me’ after a short story by the architect Cruzio Malaparte. The book
will be a collection of articles on contemporary art and culture: Colette is
writing about gated communities and hopes to engage the collaboration of a literary
psychogeographer to guide her through the no-go zones of the suburban enclaves
of London.
Additionally, Colette is scribing a book with the provisional title, ‘Monumental
Immateriality: Tracing the sublime in the contemporary landscape’. This
work examines the possibility of applying the (German romantic philosopher)
Immanuel Kant’s notion of ‘the sublime’ to contemporary life.
It questions whether, in the age of the spectacle, and given the purported general
disenchantment of city-life, the streets continue to be the most obvious medium
by which the subtlety of this unconscious engagement may be felt. It examines
the symbiosis of the sublime and the mythic and dismantles the assumption that
now we live in a ‘global community’ with highly complex trade and
communication routes that we can or have dispensed with our need for myth, as
some would claim. Given the historical continuity of an interest in street life,
at least at an artistic level, could it be that the sublime practice of walking,
even as a seemingly singular and disinterested event, involves or recreates
a process of myth-making or mythography which parallels those of primitive societies?
The book examines how the city can be considered as a space which incites mythopoeic
experiences – the generation of real-time poetic resonances of the cityscape.
This book will thus engage a history of walking with an especial emphasis on
modern practices such as psychogeography; and explore the myriad ways in which
both live-art and public-art are questioning and reinvigorating our experiences
of the city-street. Such events will be compared with anthropological examples
taken from aboriginal, South American and South African examples. Finally, it
will consider the implicit methodology of coincidence and predestination in
literary psychogeography.
Colette is interested in collaborating on both artistic and literary projects
regarding psychogeography and public or live art. She is also keen to interview
those willing to share their experiences of psychogeography. Please feel free
to contact her with suggestions!
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