Pure Means: writing, photographs and an insurrection of being

This book draws fictional writing, philosophy and politics tight together as it asks what ‘pure means’ can be. Delving into the question, and with reference to the later work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben’s development of it, the research brings enquiry to subjectification, inoperativity and the double meaning of species along with the idea of an insurrection of being. The motive for this research is the preponderance of management and ‘economy’ that has, for so long, captured not only writing and photographs but also being and living to make means that are steered towards ‘productive’ ends. What becomes troubled is the work of division that, alongside animal and human, separates image and being, desire and existence. Dissemination of this book has been world-wide. It has also featured in a Master Class for ARENA research programme, Brighton University, Oct 2014; see: http://arenaresearch.org Review: Gavin Everall, Afterall, Sept 2014; see: http://www.afterall.org/online/a-pressing-necessity#.V-4mxntv21w Development: Housmans Bookshop, London as part of the series, ‘Development and Contact’ with responses from Cecile Malaspina, Jess Potter and Kristen Krieder; see: http://www.copypress.co.uk/index/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Developing-Pure-Means-at-Housmans.pd

Vocation

This chapter was initially given at 'Monica Ross: A Symposium', British Library, Nov 2014 (ticketed). My contribution both starts and ends with the assertion that encountering the work, words and pedagogy of Monica Ross was to meet a conviction that art is a vocation, a calling. With the commodification of art and the cultural industry ever more present, Monica Ross gives us this question and makes it urgent and necessary to address: What today is the vocation of art? Drawing upon the messianic thinking of Benjamin and St Paul, and via the work of Agamben and importantly in relation to the Ross’s recitals and performances (60 in total) of The Declaration of Human Rights, this essay brings this question into focus as it also foregrounds the question of a new use of art. It explores a non-utilitarian notion of use with which comes an inseparability between the object and subject of use. NB: In 2000, Monica Ross contributed to seminar series at the Royal College of Art organised by myself and called Images of Thought. The series became published as two small volumes under the same title. For both the performance and published text, the debate centred upon the still photographic image and the ‘problem’ of documenting performance art

Passionate Being: Language, Singularity and Perseverance

Lomax’s third sole-author book, Passionate Being, explores the non-division between practice and theory, criticism and creativity. Formal experiments bring attention to the action of language and its presuppositions. Lomax proposes language as an experience in the world rather than a means of representation. The book extends Lomax’s research into the written image and the transposition of writing into the repertoire of visual art as originally set out in her previous books, Writing the Image (2000) and Sounding the Event (2005). Passionate Being integrates an inventive play of citation and annotation that embodies academic and scholarly reference. Written in the first and second person, the book pursues the core questions ‘What can you say?’ and ‘What is it to be an example?’ Lomax’s research into the peculiar existence of the example (through using concrete examples to show what examples do and, moreover, drawing upon Giorgio Agamben’s insights into the example and ‘paradigma’) underpins her writing and gives insight into key ideas on community and presupposition of the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben. The book concludes with the formation of a necessity – an ‘ethos’ for living and thinking – that is the ‘dividing of the division’ (Saint Paul) between the linguistic and the non-linguistic, of having the word (humanitas) and not having the word (animalitas). Lomax has given numerous related public talks and lectures, including ‘Beginning, ends and middles’, Writing and Critical Thinking In Architecture 2 symposium (2011) and ‘A conversation with myself’, Writing as Architecture open seminar (2010), both at the Architectural Association, London; ‘Writers in conversation’, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); and a workshop at Birkbeck, University of London (2010). Lomax’s short text, ‘Beginning’, was published in Inside, a newspaper printed by YH485 Press, Nottingham (2010)

A spoken performance — example, species and figure: presupposition in trouble

Spoken performance has become a key form for my research and writing practice and for this 45 mins performance, I speak of how ‘figures’ have always appeared in my writing, enabling me to say something I have found difficult to say. Through giving examples of mine and others written images/figures (here the work of Michel Serres is flagged up as key) and drawing upon the writing of my book Pure Means (Oct, 2013), this performance introduces questions as to ‘voice’, divisions between the human and the animal, ‘dividing divisions’ (Agamben and St Paul) and gestures towards a body of new writing that centers upon the figure of ‘as not’ (inoperativity), which can be found in the philosophical and political writings of Giorgio Agamben. This performance also contributes to my longstanding concern to trouble presupposition

The Art of Writing

A discussion of the specifics of writing as a form of Fine Art through the presentation of my own writings

Yve Lomax in Conversation with Wim Wenders: Places, Strange and Quite.

Discussion with Wim Winders on his exhibition of photographic images and his views on photography. On Line: ww.royalacademy.org.uk/events/talks/wim-wenders-in-conversation-places-strange-and-quiet,1527,EV.htm

To become an author (necessity)

This essay was commissioned by Maria Fusco for The Happy Hypocrite, a biannual journal led by artists’ writings. Lomax posits that, in becoming an author, an individual becomes subject to, and the subject of, an apparatus. Lomax conducts scholarly enquiry in relation to experiments and expositions in writing and with language. Her research is undertaken through maintaining an inseparability between form and content. For this essay, informed by the findings of her REF Output 1, Lomax drew upon the work of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault on the ‘unwritten’ and the ‘author-function’ to argue that writing can be an apparatus – in as much as writing, itself, can be captured by apparatuses. The essay provides a new context for a longstanding research concern that emphasises writing as a practice in relation to the art of writing and the art of writing theory. The essay plays upon a ‘pressing necessity’ for a work to address the division between human and animal. In the context of Lomax’s essay, however, the work does not come into being, thereby drawing attention to the significance of that which remains ‘unwritten’. Developing research into the non-division between practice and theory, criticism and creativity, Lomax’s methods of Art Writing in ‘To become an author’ open out the question of ‘pure means’. Lomax presented this research widely, including a keynote lecture, ‘Figure, gesture, pure means’, at the ‘A Breath for Nothing…Approaching the Limit’ research colloquium held at Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design, London (2012), and a writing workshop at the Slade School of Fine Art (2012). This research culminated in a sole-author book, Pure Means: Writing, Photographs and an Insurrection of Being (2013)

Friendship

An image and text contribution for the Transmission Annual, the theme of which is 'Hospitality', which addresses the idea that copndivision could be another name for friendship

To Be An Example

A text work —artist pages— that presents the paradoxical and paradigmatic existence of the example

A philosopher, a cat, a monkey and nudity

A naked philosopher encountering his cat, two photographs of yound girl holding a monkey with clothes on and 'nude: short text the introduces the concerns of a one day conference