The Aesthetics of Affect: thinking art beyond representation.

When I blogged Why Do I Walk (link here) I wrote: Even when ticking off peaks, however, walking is always joyful and I continue to take pleasure in nature around me, especially its intimate details.  I love the interplay of the weather on the landscape: clouds, wind, rain, snow and even mist and fog.  My tutor suggested that this was 'Affect' and directed me to Simon O'Sulivan's The Aesthetics of Affect, thinking art beyond representation.  O'Sullivan is Senior Lecturer in Art History/Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College, University of London.  He refers often to Deleuze and Guattari.  Gilles Deleuz is a French philosopher and Felix Guattari is a French psychiatrist and political activist.  As well as having distinguished independent careers they wrote a number of works together. 

In this paper O'Sullivan sets out to explain the fact that art, as well as being part of the world is also apart from it.  This apartness, he suggests, is what makes art important and rather than being external or extraordinary, the aesthetic power of art is that it takes place within us - the idea of affect.  He argues that art continues to produce affects which are moments of intensity, a reaction in or on the body.  He quotes Spinoza and asserts that 'we might define affect as the effect another body has upon my own body.'  This I feel is linked with phenomenology where we all experience the world in our own unique way (whether it is a work of art or the natural world) and this experience has a unique affect on us which is subjective.  He quotes Deleuze and Guattari who said that affects are a bloc of sensations waiting to be reactivated by a spectator or participant. He argues that you cannot read affects, you can only experience them.  Phenomenology again.

A point that O'Sullivan makes later in the paper, I feel, is particularly pertinent to me: 'We might say that as beings in the world we are caught on a spatio-temporal register: we see only what we have already seen (we see only what we are interested in)'.  I think that this is particularly important for my current assignment in BOW when, initially I photographed only what interested me and therefore portrayed the natural world as a perfect idealised place which, of course it isn't.

When discussing French intellectual Georges Bataille's book on the Lascaux cave paintings it is suggested that they may involve a representational function, as we all recognise the animals, but that is not their sole purpose.  The affect, in this case is transhuman and is what connects us to the world.  O'Sullivan suggests that art is a portal or an access point to another world or our world experienced differently.  Again everything is subjective and our unique way of experiencing the world results in us being uniquely and subjectively affected.  He asserts that art's function is to reconnect us to the world.  It opens us up to the non-human universe that we are part of.  He argues that it transforms our sense of our 'selves' and our notion of the world.

Although he does not mention Paul Klee he says that in relation to aesthetics and affects the function of art might be summed up as making visible the invisible.

O'Sullivan concludes by pondering on how this might effect the practice of art history.  He postulates that a certain kind of art history might disappear: that which attends only to arts signifying character, that which understands art as representation.  He suggests that art history could become a wondering or curious activity as well as an exploratory one.

From the point of view of my own work I need to keep in my mind how the natural world affects me and keep my mind open to what I observe; look at what is actually there and not what I want to be there.  I also need to consider how my photography will affect the viewer and, perhaps how I want it to affect them.  Do I want it to tell one story or many.  I certainly think, as I feel does my tutor, that my experience of the natural world does produce affects which are moments of intensity.