Retroductive sublation: by proxy

2021

Various sound recordings of the Common European Badger’s (Meles meles, meles), Norwegian European Badger’s (Meles meles, milleri), Honey Badger’s (Mellivora capensis), and American Badger’s (Taxidea taxus) barks, chirps, chitters, churrs, clucks, coos, growls, grunts, hisses, keckers, purrs, snarls, snorts, squeaks, wails, and yelps; imitations of the Common European Badger’s (Meles meles, meles), Norwegian European Badger’s (Meles meles, milleri), Honey Badger’s (Mellivora capensis), and American Badger’s (Taxidea taxus) barks, chirps, chitters, churrs, clucks, coos, growls, grunts, hisses, keckers, purrs, snarls, snorts, squeaks, wails, and yelps; Richard Wagner medley; assorted magic; bottle of pecan wood-infused Liquid Smoke (Colgin); refrigerator (Gram); micro HI-FI component system (Sony); speakers (Sony); usb- stick (PNY); interchangeability; seamlessness;

 

[space left blank for hopes, dreams and aspirations]

 

coincidental openings (but the coincidence was planned from the beginning); extension cord; 3-socket power strip; refrigerator magnet; and A4-paper

107 x 54 x 60 cm

 

In the work Retroductive sublation: by proxy, a household refrigerator is used as an environment- regulating surface, transmuted into an improvised AC unit. As environments supply their information through their surfaces (which the surfaces themselves also regulate) the inherent generality of a fridge, as its identity is repeated as a form of habit, means that whatever one could doubt about it is absorbed as a non-spoken feature into the present form of itself. With its door left open, the refrigerator doesn't loose its identity in it being given a new function, rather, it emerges as surface—the general form of itself. Understanding the general as that which can be abstracted to a point where interchangeability with anything else can occur, this work engages vision and hearing to explore notions of the general. What are the conditions under which objects can lack doubt? Under which circumstances can objects provide themselves as sources of belief?

 

Sound works not only as a distinctly immersive phenomenon, but also one that excels at curtailing doubt. All the while, the abstract nature of music makes its experience impossible not to conjure up a source of its sound object. The suspension of disbelief within the sensory experience owes much to sound’s particular relationship to representational as well as experiential emotion. While doubt may still linger, music ultimately secures itself as an art form which can validate any correlation whatsoever. What’s curious is music’s analogy to magic: where within magic a white rabbit is pulled out from a top hat, the belief in belief within music posits and validates audio recordings of badgers and Richard Wagner symphonies—all it takes is for someone to never doubt what it is. A non-generic rabbit emerging from a non-generic top hat is a detrimental (though not to say irrevocable) end of a world within a world, as the core function of belief within both music and magic is a contractually positioned one. Again, a belief in someone’s, or something’s belief in turn — completed by short-circuited reassurance. Refrigerator as air-conditioner / music as magic / smoke as liquid; one, all, and several, together and each produce correlative interchangeability.

 

Yet, there’s a lazy, yet folksy, yet poignant reference to a certain ICP song to conclude this with. Point is, magnets work by proxy.