THUMP THUMP Richard Nonas

Listen. Im going to tell you about the dignity and propriety of dangerous objects. Don Bahr is an old friend, an anthropologist. I was an anthropologist, too. We both worked with Papago Indians in the Southwest. I stayed for two years and left. Then I started making sculpture. Don stayed on. After seven years, he wrote a book on shamanism and the Papago theory of sickness. A beautiful, tough, closely reasoned book. I ran across it by accident. I havent seen Don in eight or nine years. I was moved and excited by it. Dons mind is both literal and wonderfully abstract. Analyzing in the most creative and yet plodding way. Real creation, by continual and careful classification. It's a mind that works differently from mine. So it impresses and confuses me. - Smaller steps, more steps. Smaller jumps, more jumps. I dont know. The idea of maintaining control, knowing at each step what, and why, and how, youre moving. Knowing the meaning, the importance, of some context Larger than that of your own excitement. The exotic idea of activity structured to end in conclusion. Structured to have meaning and importance outside itself, no matter where it leads. Relevance to theory, to frame, to a context already accepted, or at least recognized, as a communicable understanding of the world. But that gets done only by selection. By weighting, by screening, by choosing to avoid certain information. By starting with some defensible and previously agreed upon theory of relevance, out of which everything else grows, against which the work is measured, and on which the final meaning depends. - And that is the step I somehow miss. The ongoing knowledge of what is relevant and what is secondary to the matter at hand. That sense of what is important. That sense of selection - of both problem and the methods of solution that keeps the work tied to an identifiable context, a communicable frame through which it can be read and judged. - And more than that, I continually forget what the matter at hand is. 1

What I lose is not only the continuity of activity but any clear way of understanding it. I not only forget what I am doing, I forget why I wanted to do it and why it seemed important. I forget what my context was and how I got there. I forget what selections I made and why I made them at the beginning and all through the course of working. And this despite the relative simplicity of my sculpture. I narrow down my choice of materials and how I can use them. I select the few forms that are interesting to me. I decide on the limited ways I can modify them. And I attempt to control the relationship of objects to the space they are in. But with all that, I still cant really remember what Im trying to do or why Im trying to do it. I still cant remember what it is Im trying to look at. And what it is that Im trying to say. I cant remember what the idea, the context, of my work was when I started it. I cant imagine what it will be when I finish it. And I certainly dont know what it is now; other than my own excitement, my own immediate feelings, my own immediate interests. Which is not, I think, where I thought I was when I started. Im trying to tell you something now, without doing much to help you understand. But you can understand, in an ambiguous way. And that is what interests me now. That ambiguity is the thing that fascinates me. That is the clue to what is important to me. - Because its not just bad memory. Its a sense of the limitation of those selective processes. A sense of their specificity, of their narrowness, and the ways in which they necessarily distort reality. And its more than that. Its the continuity of that reasoning process that unnerves me. The idea of sticking to one viewpoint, one sense of what is important, one yardstick. The idea of sticking with one theory of relevance, one sense of task and its meaning. The idea of focusing everything on one view. Its the clarity that unnerves me. The elegance. The single mindedness of it. The unmitigated simplicity. Im much happier with the idea of confusion. Much more comfortable with ambiguity. 2

Much more content with unpredicted change. They are what interest me. Interest me because through them I touch the world. Stroke my life, rather than point at it. Play with it, rather than diagram it. Hide it, rather than explain it. - Those ideas toss me in for more. And more is what I want in an inconclusive world. But its not as simple as that either. For what I sense is not just confusion, ambiguity, flux as the way the world is, but rather that that kind of complexity is one constant aspect of the world. Is one unavoidable feature of it which I cannot allow myself to ignore. Is one overpowering characteristic of the world which I must acknowledge constantly. So what I search for are the boundaries of ambiguity, the edges of change. The ball on the top of the curve. What I want is to whittle the ambiguity down to a fine edge. What I want are the flash points of change, where an object, an idea, an activity is neither one thing nor the other, but something in between. What I want is: almost-clarity about not-quite-confusion. And making sculpture? I start with memories of how places feel. The ache of that desert, those woods, that room opening out. Places Ive been, places Ive seen and felt. And felt always with some component of unease, apprehension, disquiet, fear even, discomfort certainly. Memories of places that seem always slightly confusing, slightly ambiguous. Places whose meaning slips away, but not too far away. Places that tantalize, tantalize by their approach to - and lack of - clarity. By their existence on - and insistence on - an ambiguous edge. And what is my memory of these places? Its a memory of space, open or closed, space pushing down or up, in or out. Space as an emotional and intellectual stimulant. Space shaped by materials, by objects with complex and confusing realities. Objects and materials whose connotations, whose meanings, are always more complex than the place they make. Objects and materials that somehow come together to shape a space that is always less diverse than they are. Less confusing, but still not clear. 3

Less ambiguous, but ambiguous still. A place on an edge, neither one thing nor another. But one thing becoming another. Spaces insistent on their own ambiguous edge. These memories are my strongest memories. I feel them almost as pain. And what I want as a sculptor is to make objects that feel like those places. Objects that move like those places. Objects that cut their own boundaries. Objects that jump when I reach for them - And I dont know why I want to do it. Art history doesnt help me much. Nor does other sculpture. The idea of art itself doesnt help either. But I work and I show. I show because I cant even see what Im doing until I watch other people seeing what Ive done. And I show because each new space is a challenge. The challenge not only of how to shape that new place, but the challenge also of whether I can shape it. And why do I work within this art system? Because Im a part of it; narrow and necessarily selfinterested. Open eyes are a dream. Don Bahr knows that too, I think. Understanding is tentative. Knowledge is conditional. Each persons world is partly his own. Even marginal communication is difficult. Its a slippery stage we give our speeches from. -And besides, what I want is a place to stop in. A place to bump around in. A place to jump from. A place to rest in the not-quite-confusion of my me. What I want now is a place to flash from. Listen. A place to thump - in the dignity and propriety of dangerous objects. Richard Nonas