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February 16, 2009
In concluding Picture Theory WJT Mitchell raises the issue of representation.Representation s usually understood as this object (a picture) that seems to stand before us, a thing standing for something else.
Mitchelll says that we can usefully think of representation as a kind of activity process, or a set of relationships. We can understand this not as a homogeneous field of grid governed by a single theoretical principle, but as a multidimensional and heterogeneous terrain, as a collage or patchwork quilt assembled over time out of fragments.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, rusting grid, Adelaide, 2009
This patchwork quilt that is torn, folded, wrinkled, covered with accidental stances and traces of the bodies it has enfolded. Mitchell then says that this allows us to see the structure of representation as a trace of temporality and exchange, the fragments as mementos, as "presents" represented in an ongoing process of assemblage, of stitching in and tearing out.
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