Puddle Me This

On the solstice I posted a picture of a frozen puddle that I keep scrolling back to. I had never thought much of the picture-making potential of puddles, even after reading Kaja Silverman's book that argues why photography has been with us prior to the invention of the camera, but I do now.

A small depression filled with water produces an image of whatever enters its field. Once frozen, its surface is no longer reflective of what enters that field, but of the conditions (shifts in temperature, wind, etc.) that forms its contours. Not what the puddle is seeing, as Silverman emphasizes, but what, as the "vibrant matter" people suggest, it is feeling.

Until the 20th century, Art was concerned with the making and appreciation of physical objects (pantings and sculpture). Then, in the early years of that century, the re-assignment of purpose-built utilitarian objects as Art (the ready-made), and later, written instructions as and towards the making of an art object (conceptual art) or a gesture (performance art).

In the early-21st century it was recognized (formalized?) that human relationships form the basis of artistic activity ("relational aesthetics") and can manifest in extremes, from the affirmation/decoration of our world (false consciousness?) to a critique of unequal social relations (hetero-patriarchy, slavery, racism, colonialism, social class disparities, resource extraction...). 

In the mid-20th century, Adorno argued for the autonomous art object (art that is not in the service of humanist imperatives, but to be judged on its own terms, autonomously). More recently, scholars inspired by Kant have argued for objects that exist independent of human perception ("object-oriented ontology"), of which some indigenous artists (Tania Willard) have made art "with" and written ""on" (see Willard's excellent essay in Presentation House's Nanitch exhibition catalogue).

Looking once again at this frozen puddle I accept that its author might well be the Maker, but that's not the whole story. It is the eyes that Art, in all its histories, has given us that allow us to keep thinking about it, return to it, as we would return to a well on a hot summer's day.