DONNA DAVIS – ACTIVITY REPORT – CIAM GRANT
Graduate Student/Grantee: Donna Davis (ID 1277774)
Programme: Graduate Certificate in Digital Technologies in Design Art Practice
Project Title: a) Print Series: Incarnations: Alternative Constructions of Body Image
(Three images included with report)
b) Bookwork: Beatitudes
(Two spreads included)
Year of realization: 2003-2004
Format: a) Series of 5 prints, each 42” h. X 24” w.
b) 20-page printed and bound bookwork, 9.75” h. x 8.25” w.
Media: a &b) Printed in colour on doubleweight matte photographic paper, on the Epson
Stylus Pro 7500. Image and text layout scanned/prepared, composited, and enhanced in
Adobe Photoshop 5.5; source material drawn from a large compilation of original
artwork: handmade media collages, decorative lettering, life drawings, ink paintings, and
digital photographs.
Faculty Advisor: Michael Longford, Associate Professor, Department of Design Art,
Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University.
DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT:
Research Question: How can we intervene in systems of symbolic representation/
signification in order to design new metaphors and meaning for the relation of the
subjective consciousness to the unconscious/the body?
In earlier academic work I had explored the use of the collage medium/principle
both as a critical tool for insight and analysis and as a reparative strategy for personal
reintegration and healing. A strong influence was Surrealist Max Ernst’s role as bricoleur
in the creation of the alternative realities of his collage novels—a reordering of signs that
“makes the world fit to be lived in.” Following, also, Louise Bourgeoise’s dictum, “I
work upon my fear,” in this project I sought to appropriate and subvert representations in
order to remake images of the body that would better reflect the experience of living
within a body and the cognition of “the body in the mind.”
Two final products emerged. The first is a series of iconic, self-titled prints. Each
print consists of an individual collage image, scanned and enhanced in Photoshop,
situated in a large vertically-oriented field of white. These collages are resyntheses of
disparate and often multiple parts of the female body, clothed and nude, sometimes
accompanied by totemic birds. They express the oppositional tension of living both as a
symbolic and material being, but also strive to achieve an equilibrium that may give
voice to complex emotional/biological states. I also worked to undermine the
presumption of the “feminine masquerade,” to imagine and design a more empathetic and
integral portrait of female desire. These prints were presented at the Galerie In Vivo in
Montreal as part of the exhibition of the 2004 graduating class of the Digital
Technologies in Design Art Practice programme at Concordia.
The second product is a bookwork. I experienced the book as an “alternative
space,” more intimate and participatory than a traditional gallery space; I was also
mindful of Lev Manovich’s description of the book as the “ideal random access
medium.” Whereas the print series coalesces as a tentative answer to my research
question, the bookwork exploits the collage principle more freely and assumes a
deconstructive, interrogative form. Here the more unified collage elements again become
components within a mixed media context. Moving from an imminent self into the
relation of the self to the world, the simulated narrative engages a fictional journey in
which Saint Teresa of Avila, Max Ernst, and Franz Kafka appear as psychopomps. A
visual narrative of light and darkness, water and ice, voice and silence flow upon an
underlying layer throughout more structured intercessions of text. Here the design of a
new relation to the unconscious becomes a quest to regain the “lost” contents which have
been exiled; the central issue is the redemption of desire via the balance of the forces of
sublimation and desublimation, selfhood and service.
In my previous studies in the philosophy of aesthetics, a weighty question was
phrased: “What claims to knowledge can be made for aesthetic experience?” In his final
diaries Max Ernst declared that the legacy of his work to artists would ultimately be the
remaining questions regarding the mystery and purpose of the creative conscious and
unconscious. Within the combinatory quality of the bookwork, and the persistent thread
of the “character” of St. Theresa, I address these questions through their equation to the
earlier question of Max Ernst’s collage novel: “What do little girls dream of who want to
take the veil?” Can a new reality or agency be created to resolve the dualistic tension
between “real” and “ideal”?
Finally, the notion of “equation” points to a critical role that the use of digital
imaging has played in my project. Lev Manovich notes how digital systems process all
input into interchangeable, essentially identical numerical units (e.g., pixels). Hence the
facility of digital imaging; compositing techniques bring multiple visions (and versions)
of reality into apparent alternation or synthesis. I have strived to sustain the eclat in the
midst of my “equivalencies,” that energizing moment when the synapse is leaped
between the poles of understanding; and I feel it is the sheer excess of digital data that
has enabled me to form and express these new intuitive links among my ideas and
images.