THE GEOLOGY OF THE WORKSPACE

The Genesis of The Geological Method @ The Historiotheque by A.G.

“THE GEOLOGICAL METHOD @ THE HISTORIOTHEQUE” by A.G. © 2023. All Rights Reserved.

Workspace as 3D Material Memory or Analog Database: “The Geological Method; Geo-Grammar or Geo-Grammatical Forms”

• The Geological Method: Similar to Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge except it’s a Geology of Knowledge;
• 3D Surfaces of The Workspace + “The Art Operator as Land Surveyor”;
• Crackland & The Crackland Journals: “Crackland: Land of Fissures”

2023–12–08 04:05:43

• The Geological Method came about after I was reading a lot of Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud (I know, kind of a strange mix!);
• I began seeing three methods: The Genealogical Method, The Archaeological Method, and now my own twist, The Geological Method;
• These were kind of like Metaphors for Thinking, or for Historical Research;
• My Geological Method would treat the phenomenal world as though it were made up of sedimentary layers, made up of geo-grammatical forms;
• I only realized later that the True Geology was the geology of my WORKSPACE;
• It’s not that I’m a messy person, it’s just my research and art methodology;
• When I’m in the studio or research lab, I manipulate stacks of things, stacks of books, folders and papers, stacks of index cards and paintings and whatnot;
• As I work, I organize and re-organize things, and slowly over time stacks/piles build up by a natural process of ACCRETION;
• I manipulate these Stacks & Their Substacks as though I were a Geologist;
• In the 2001–2004 period, I came up with a concept I called CRACKLAND: THE LAND OF FISSURES;
• It had nothing to do with the drug and everything to do with an imaginary Abstract Landscape, a land made up of floating land-masses / land-fragments called CRACKLAND;
• I realize now more than ever that this Geo-Grammar I called it, or these Geo-Grammatical Forms, were really inspired by my own WORKSPACE and work methodologies.

“Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is called a land surveyor. These points are usually on the surface of the Earth, and they are often used to establish maps and boundaries for ownership, locations, such as the designed positions of structural components for construction or the surface location of subsurface features, or other purposes required by government or civil law, such as property sales.” — Ref. Surveying — Wikipedia.

• The Geological Method is a form of mental projection, a projection of the Mind onto one’s inward space;
• That’s where many of my Concepts come from in my novel-writing, which I call novelistic phenomenology, a type of writing that includes a form of metafiction that is a phenomenology of the novel, or of the novel-writing itself, i.e. “the novel as it appears in the mind of the author”;
• For each new novel, I basically come up with its own physical cosmology; that is, I create unique UNIVERSES;
• CRACKLAND: THE LAND OF FISSURES was merely one of many unique worlds that I created in the novel called The History-Project;
• Other worlds in that novel were St-Elsewhere (“Montreal is an Elsewhere”) and The Dream Assembly.

“WORKSPACE”. Processed photography by A.G. © 2023. All Rights Reserved.

CRACKLAND: THE LAND OF FISSURES

“The law of superposition is an axiom that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, archaeology, and other fields pertaining to geological stratigraphy. In its plainest form, it states that in undeformed stratigraphic sequences, the oldest strata will lie at the bottom of the sequence, while newer material stacks upon the surface to form new deposits over time.” — Ref. Law of superposition — Wikipedia.

• Immediately after birth, the child begins contemplating his universe, groping around his biological center towards a greater and greater area or periphery around that center. This is how the child learns the geo-grammar of his surroundings, that is, the geological grammar of the space that surrounds him, with its sedimentary layers. The child will develop according to its genetic baggage which we call “genosense” and the particular history of its infancy. Soon the child will learn to represent events to itself through self-narration and the beginning of the end has been engaged. Man can deny where he comes from but he can’t escape the deterministic force of the history of his development;
• It is important, firstly, to grasp the true nature of the narrative. The personality, as we see it, is a historical system. On top of that, it is a subjective historical system. The system orders itself, organizes itself around themes that are chosen by the individual. At the age when a child begins socializing, a main narrative picture is chosen: i.e. I want to be seen as x, y or z. Peak events are chosen and fitted into the main story. The personality itself is this subjective historical system that projects itself in narrative form to the Other or to itself, giving meaning to itself. This has a survival function: To strengthen the social group, to know what X is experiencing, to cut out the possibility of a threat, by means of seeking security;
• The personality is a self-reflexive system of representation. This is what makes it historical. It is subjective because it self-presents, or presents itself to itself and to the Other. At a certain age, a choice is made, the choice of autonomy, the choice that makes me an independent geological fragment or plate. The very nature of the subjective experience is “relatable”. We seek companionship to be able to tell our stories, our narratives. But there is such a thing as narrative failure, when everyone is so caught up with their own stories that listening does not take place. Then the self can become alienated or disillusioned. A sort of bankruptcy of the personality or subjective historical system takes place. Social stigma can also cause this disenfranchisement, this slow dehumanization;
• IN THE ART OPERATION @ THE HISTORIOTHEQUE, I, CHIEF ART OPERATOR, AM LIKE THIS CHILD, GROPING AROUND (IN) THE GEO-GRAMMAR OF EXISTENCE;
• Fictional Realms/Worlds in my Novelistic Phenomenology are Mental (Spiritual) Projections Onto the Inward Plane of (my) Being;
• Crackland (The Land of Fissures), St-Elsewhere, The Dream Assembly, even The Exhibition in Tonal Cinema which came before The History-Project novel, and also NOUS, ANTINOUS, Antiface-Cloud, Construction-Land, and Archives-Land inside its sequel novel The Archives-Project: THESE ARE ALL SUCH PROJECTIONS, OF THE GEO-GRAMMATICAL FORMS FOREVER SURROUNDING ME;
• This is the Genesis of The Geological Method in the Art Operation @ The Historiotheque; The Historiotheque itself has its own Inner Historiotheque, the primordial Witness-Box of Existence;
• [To be continued…]

“A fracture is any separation in a geologic formation, such as a joint or a fault that divides the rock into two or more pieces. A fracture will sometimes form a deep fissure or crevice in the rock. Fractures are commonly caused by stress exceeding the rock strength, causing the rock to lose cohesion along its weakest plane.” — Ref. Fracture (Geology) — Wikipedia.

A.G. © 2007–2023. All Rights Reserved.