devolution/demolition

Research background
In Martin Amis' 2001 essay 'The Second Plane' (The Guardian), discussing the attack on New York's Twin Towers, he wrote that 'an edifice so demonstrably comprised of concrete and steel would also become an unforgettable metaphor', stating that the moment the buildings collapsed was 'the apotheosis of the postmodern era - the era of images and perceptions.' This work poses the question: is it now possible for us to view any demolished building without images from that primary über-demolition entering into our consciousness?

Research contribution
These broken buildings provide metaphorical readings of contemporary society, forming as representations of ciphers embodying change and entropy, poised between being and not being and functioning as signs evoking contemporaneity. This work forms as a fiction that 'allows us to imagine our world differently, and as such it offers escape routes¿ from our representational and often over stratified sense of self' (O'Sullivan, Art encounters Deleuze and Guattari : thought beyond representation. 2006, p. 29).

The imagery in this work forms as a kind of symptom of disorganisation and resembles what Gilles Deleuze calls a 'zone of indeterminacy' (Deleuze, Francis Bacon : the logic of sensation. 2005, p.16) due to it existing as an in-between of states, a becoming that is not 'finished'. 'Becoming' is to be distinguished from ideas of imitation and simple resemblance even though it instigates a zone of indescernability between two states. Deleuze claims 'becoming is an extreme contiguity within a coupling of two sensations without resemblance ¿ this is not the transformation of one thing into the other ... but something passing from one to the other.' (Deleuze Difference and repetition.1994, p.173)

Research significance
This drawing was a contribution to a conference and exhibition investigating the current state of drawing from three locations (Australia, UAE and UK).