Brett Jones
My pleasure can very well take the form of a drift. Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole, and by of seeming driven about by language’s illusions, seductions, and intimidations, like a cork on the waves, I remain motionless, pivoting on the intractable bliss that binds me to the text (to the world). Drifting occurs whenever social language, the sociolect, fails me (as we say: my courage fails me). Thus another name for drifting would be: the intractable—or perhaps even: Stupidity.  (Barthes, 1973)

I can ‘surmount’, without liquidating: what I have affirmed a first time, I can once again affirm, without repeating it, for then what I affirm is the affirmation, not its contingency: I affirm the first encounter in its difference, I desire its return, not its repetition. (Barthes, 1977)

This piece has become something rather intriquing; a sign of some action and labor seemingly with little purpose. The object produces several signifieds including ‘paper that has been bonded together with a tear in it’, ‘something that looks like paper that has undergone some kind of intentional or unintentional process’ or ‘a fragile paper like material that could be fabric which has been damaged’. It has a sense of a mishap of some description; the damaged flag of surrender, an impromptu flag made from a bed sheet? But not surrender in the sense of giving in, rather a surrender to the elements, to a process that had to be undertaken in order to prove its failure. A kind of small self-made tragedy to affect a reason for thinking, at least to justify that the thinking had an outcome. The work took on a life of it’s own. Through its impossible mission it became a representation of how an idea can be improvised from imagination to experience.

Michael Graeve is a Melbourne artist working across painting and sound installation, performance and composition. Recent exhibitions and performances include the 2006 Sonambiente Berlin, a 2007 Tonspur residency in Vienna, the 2008 Happy New Ears Festival in Kortrijk, and performances at t-u-b-e Munich and e/static Turin.

Michael is passionate about artist run activity, and is a board member of Liquid Architecture. He was a founding member of Grey Area Art Space Inc from 1996-1999, and had the pleasure of being Program Manager at West Space Inc from 2002-2004.

Since 1993 his musical instrument of choice has been domestic record players and loudspeakers. He assists these systems in picking themselves up: Rich textures and rhythms fall together and fall apart, evidencing simple interactions between machine process and human gesture.

Michael Graeve's photography by: Christian Capurro.