ESSAY: Presencing an Absence

By Andre de Jong

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​What is a fossil but a presence of an absence or the absence of a presence?
 
North of Stoke-on-Trent lies Biddulph Grange, a Victorian stately home where James Bateman created a unique geological gallery in an attempt to reconcile his Christian faith with Darwinian theories of evolution.
 
The gallery, subdivided by means of eight granite markers engraved with the word ‘DAY’ followed by a roman numeral, historically featured fossils embedded into the wall to force a narrative that corroborated the Bible’s account of events. At the far end of the gallery there is an unmarked stone that not only signifies day zero in the creation myth but also creates a placeholder for creation to start from; a void that offers a basis of comparison for what follows. The Zero-Cipher gives meaning to the sequence both in terms of its absolute difference in nothingness but also a placeholder. Bateman’s solution to overcoming the problem of a fossil record of millions of years was to suggest that each ‘day’ of creation was an epoch in geological time. The gallery tried to legitimise itself by correlating incompatible ideas, in essence creating false memories.
 
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE) described a system for accurately recollecting memories, the technique was to construct an imaginary space where information can be stored for recall by means of a visualised journey. Cicero’s Method of Loci  used placeholders eg. a golden object or a familiar name to set up wayfinding stations that formed into a rhythm to orientate and guide the pilgrim through their recollections.
 
It is interesting to note then that a scrambled section of another text by Cicero: de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil) has been in use since the 16th Century as a placeholder for information. Lorem ipsum has remained the industry standard for blocking out areas during design layout. In the process of appropriation the text did not only lose its narrative but it also gained a new function radically opening it up to new readings depending on the context in which it is used; the text now assimilated the attitude of the image, design, colour and font. In stripping the text of its singular meaning it has become multifunctional and able to become more in its plurality.

Prior to its adoption into the National Trust’s portfolio the gallery was stripped of the fossils leaving voids that speak as much of what has gone before as it does of what it anticipates. 
 
Prior to its adoption into the National Trust’s portfolio the gallery was stripped of the fossils leaving voids that speak as much of what has gone before as it does of what it anticipates. The National Trust is currently commissioning copies of the specimens to re-embed into the wall. Considering then the history, its current state of disrepair and future public offer the gallery presents itself at a unique and intriguing juncture that requires further enquiry. The voids in the wall describes the fossils that were, in their own right, only ever copies of lifeforms and replacing them with manufactured copies will not fill the cavities but open them up to further ambiguity. Where the original fossils had an indirect space-time connection with the lifeform it immortalised as a mineralised copy and the voids in the walls a space-time relation with the architect the new copies will be no more than indexical records with no space-time value at all, the reproductions will only ever exist in the moment of their encounter with only an incidental relation to its master.
 
Once renovations are completed a walk along the gallery will be no more than a simulated experience but on a closer inspection it offers an alternative, more malleable reading. The purposely manufactured replicas will not act as placeholders for a future object but will remain in situ, unable to signify anything outside themselves forever deferring to an unpaid debt of meaning bringing them close to Cicero’s appropriated text: plural, ambiguous and open to interpretation.
 
The new space will engender itself through an inverse form of the Method of Loci: the Victorian gallery will be re-membered by means of the procession of bodies through a physical locale. The replicas now become a cipher to unlocking the multiplicity of the situation, the presencing of an absence not only takes on the context of the space but also those moving through forever changing in attitude, creating a feedback loop with no edges, no beginning or ending.
 
The presencing of an absence not only takes on the context of the space but also those moving through forever changing in attitude, creating a feedback loop with no edges, no beginning or ending.

The physical linearity of the gallery and the eight stones markers that previously acted as the direction of time is all that remains of the old dialectical progression. But with the advent of a self contextualising space the forced discourse is abandoned in favour of a open ended digression, and with no meaning to the ‘text’ and an ambivalent numbering system the layout can be accessed at any point without any accumulation or loss of narrative. It is now entirely possible to move through the gallery in any direction, stopping, turning around and double backing without it making any difference to the experience; erratic enactments that create infinite variations.
 
Seventy-Five kilometres south of Biddulph Grange lies Wightwick Manor, another National Trust property, where a collection of Glacial Erratics from the local area was accumulated during the 19th Century. Another stately home, another geological collection but a very different reading. Displayed in an informal linear arrangement on the side lawn the Erratics are labelled as to their mineral and speculative sources in Scotland and the Lake District. As with the fossils at Biddulph the Erratics have a space-time relationship with an elsewhere and elsewhen, but as opposed to the fossils this is a direct relationship with the elsewhere and elsewhen. The Erratics are not placeholders for an elsewhere and elsewhen, they are the elsewhere and elsewhen; they are trapped in their space-time, unable to move, unable to become more.
 
At Biddulph Grange there was/is/will be no history, only one fabricated story replacing another ad infinitum, the reconditioned gallery escapes the confines of its space-time coordinates, slipping the tethers of its intended narrative to become a dwelling; a temporary space for encounters.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

De Jong's practice is research and process led as opposed to material based resulting in a body of work that manifests itself in a variety of mediums, he also works across disciplines from collaboration to curation and has exhibited nationally and internationally.

See Andre de Jong's art on his website.