sarah bricke

1632 / PST

is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher working along the intersections of gender, sexuality, critical theory, and notions of the archive. her process and projects are distilled from the ways in which seemingly disparate landscapes, bodies, and processes are both distinct and inextricably linked, and how these paradoxical relationships are represented, perceived, and preserved through institutional and archival practices.

working through photographic processes, performative lecture, nonlinear narrative, and poetry, she engages in the production of objects and images as a mechanism to facilitate
dialogues around them. she is involved with making as a continual process in which things don’t become fully defined and can’t be considered completely understood or fully realized. bricke’s  work frequently utilizes fragmentary pieces or remains that can be taken apart and reconstructed, transferred into different forms, or become part of new cycles. 

ongoing artistic and research interests concern art that arises in the ruins of the built environment, artistic practitioners who create long-term and/or large-scale work without receiving recognition or institutional support, and those who make work in the face of oppression, disempowerment, or victimization. 

it will be difficult to distinguish the presentation of the work from the work itself.

the work deliberately engages the dissolution of such boundaries.

how is the documentation of the work encountered by the observer?

the work is the presentation of the work - its/it’s representation and replication via this platform.

03 thy sheep shall take no harm

this work is a mechanism for observation, availing itself of existing complex connections between three interrelated works: the pre-Raphaelite paintings The Hireling Shepherd (William Holman Hunt) and Ophelia (John Everett Millais), and the “anti-novel” Report on Probability A (Brian Aldiss). 


the complicated poses of the figures offer a representation of the possibility for metaphorizing the multiple realities dependent on a waking-dream state, where that which governs reality is dependent upon the length of the dream and the strength of the dreamer. This may be a representation of an eternal moment in which the subject neither drowns nor escapes death, but is suspended in a boundless, liminal space between life and demise.in which characters from parallel universes observe each other in an attempt to comprehend the alien worlds that they have been given partial access to. The painting is repeatedly described as an example of an image that may have a clear and legible meaning, if only it can be found, or, alternatively, it may be a fragment of experience forever locked into an unreadable moment with multiple possible narratives leading to and from it.

PROJECT NOTES:


Displayed alongside The Hireling Shepherd when it was first shown at the Royal Academy, from Shakespeare’s King Lear:

“sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?

thy sheep be in the corn;

but for one blast of thy minikin mouth,

thy sheep shall take no harm.



Quoted in Report on Probability A from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.”



From Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

“Her clothes spread wide

And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and endued unto

that element. But long it could not be

Till her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay    

To muddy death.”





The Hireling Shepherd: this painting is in the public domain.

William Holman Hunt (1851) oil on canvas, 30” x 43”, held at Manchester Art Gallery.



Ophelia: this painting is in the public domain.

John Everett Millais (1851-1852) oil on canvas, 30” x 44”, held at the Tate.



Report on Probability A: Cover art used with permission / falls under fair use.

Brian Aldiss, published in three editions: Faber (1968), Lancer (1968), and Sphere (1969).







Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 

vs.

Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood

Ungendered pre-Raphaelites

Post-Pre Raphaelite Collective







1.Combinatory elements: images which are departure points for the proliferation of more images, a proliferation achieved via a number of photographic processes, which is ongoing. There are 15 initial images, the proliferation is triggered by digital interactions through surveillance and social media. A performative aspect which allows the Aldiss text(s) to be read/performed through the camera and/or in the space, recordings of these also proliferate and become absorbed in the installation.



There is no fixity of meaning or lasting form.

There is no ultimate point of realization.





2. “What is the perception that we have when we are under surveillance?” 



3. Surveillance is simultaneously mundane and disturbing; it is ubiquitous in the developed world. We are under near-constant, nonconsensual surveillance… images generated through surveillance provide a strange approximation of reality, a form of documentation that seems inherently ominous.



surveillance and the uncertainty principle:

-   a fundamental limit to accuracy

-   a relationship of special relativity

-   Historically inextricable from the observer effect: the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation

“The uncertainty principle has been frequently confused with the observer effect, evidently even by its originator, Werner Heisenberg. The uncertainty principle in its standard form describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time – if we increase the precision in measuring one quantity, we are forced to lose precision in measuring the other. An alternative version of the uncertainty principle, more in the spirit of an observer effect, fully accounts for the disturbance the observer has on a system and the error incurred, although this is not how the term "uncertainty principle" is most commonly used in practice.”



4. The project will trouble boundaries of what is publicly accessible and acceptable, and what is not. Uncertainty, instability, and discomfort are aspects of this work. These are reflected in the seemingly irreconcilable interpretations of the ambiguous poses in the Hunt painting, and the tension between the perceived subject matter and site in the Millais painting. 



5. Controversies regarding the paintings: Hunt’s relationship with the model Emma Watson, the illness of the model Elizabeth Siddall after posing for Millais. The interpretations and reception of the paintings in their “own time.”



5. What is the relationship between Wikipedia and the proliferation of images? 

What is the relationship between the proliferation of images, and the proliferation of information?



There is a falseness at the core of these reproductions, there is a constant potential for what seems clear and legible to be fallacious; these seeming truths are Janus-faced.



It is possible to access the history of Wikipedia entries and observe the changes made to entries over time, all of the changes are archived.



6. An entangled world where time is nonlinear: the model for the Shepherd is Brian Aldiss. Millais and Hunt paint on opposite sides of the same stream. The multiple inhabitants of the worlds of Probability A observe these and other worlds: the paintings are each windows into yet other worlds, where time moves so slowly that it essentially stands still; from these worlds are vantage points that view still other worlds.



7. "And", reveals Aldiss, "there were watchers watching them, and they too had watchers, who also had watchers, and so on, and so on", while "Mr. Mary's wife sat at her own screen and regarded the cycle of universes as night closed in" and C lay in the loft above the garage, contemplating a picture of two snakes swallowing each other's tail like an ouroboros.”



8. In “our own” world/timeline, Hunt did paint The Hireling Shepherd when he was living and working in close collaboration with Millais, who was painting Ophelia at the same time at the Hogsmill River near Ewell, Surrey. Both paintings depict English rural scenes, the innocence of which is disturbed by subtle but profoundly threatening violations of natural harmony. 



9. The shepherd ignores the sheep as they founder. He leans over a young woman who leans neither towards him nor away, her face unreadable. He places his arm around her shoulder to show her, cupped in his hand, a death’s head moth.



10. The irreconcilability between the interpretations and ambiguities led Aldiss to discuss the painting in detail in Report on Probability A in which characters from parallel universes observe each other in an attempt to comprehend the alien worlds that they have been given partial access to. The painting is repeatedly described as an example of an image that may have a clear and legible meaning, if only it can be found, or, alternatively, it may be a fragment of experience forever locked into an unreadable moment with multiple possible narratives leading to and from it.



11. A young woman floats a in river, surrounded by plants and flowers. Her mouth is parted, she may be speaking or singing. Ophelia’s pose is also ambiguous: it can be interpreted as a gesture of inevitability, an allusion to the crucifixion and the genuflection of martyred saints, or as an erotic invitation. It has often been claimed that a human skull is visible in the weeds, and that a water vole was depicted in an early version of the painting alongside Ophelia. 



12. The complex and conflicting possibilities inherent in the imagery has been reinterpreted by artists and filmmakers, among them Salvador Dali, Nick Cave, and Wes Craven. The painting functions as a constant reproach to the notion of fixity of meaning and is instead a representation of the possibility for a proliferation of realities dependent on a waking-dream state, where that which governs reality is dependent upon the length of the dream and the strength of the dreamer. This may be a representation of an eternal moment in which the subject neither drowns nor escapes death, but is suspended in a boundless, liminal space between life and demise.



13. “polytemporality: a synchronous sense of the past, present, and future.” (Andrea Ray)

How is the proliferation of images connected to polytemporality? 

How does polytemporality trouble or counter the narrative of helplessness that the pre-Raphaelites imposed on their female subjects/muses/models?





14. Within Report on Probability A is the leitmotif of the Wandering Virgin:

There are copies of the painting The Hireling Shepherd “in the outbuildings occupied by G, S and C, and it also exists in Domoladossa's world, where it is attributed to a "Russian-born German of British extraction" named Winkel Henri Hunt. A detail from the painting is reproduced in black and white on the dust jacket of the Faber edition, and superimposed on the reproduction is a picture of a book with the words LOW POINT X on its cover in pink block capitals. The book lies on the grass in the foreground of the painting and is one of the books on a shelf in the upper room of the outhouse occupied by S. It may also be a reference to "the pigeon known as X" which frequents the Mary's garden, since a black-and-white cat stalks the pigeon and eventually catches it. (The painting, as seen on the Faber dustjacket, is also referenced on the cover of the 1969 Sphere Books paperback edition. This depicts three bubbles, each containing the central detail of the painting, receding in perspective, as they apparently drift through thick clouds.) The Faber version of the painting with the book exists in another world where a woman known as the Wandering Virgin is in a trance-like state. She is reciting events in the worlds of G, S and C, Domoladossa, and the men in New York to a jury of ten men, whose members include the Suppressor of the Archives, the Impaler of Distortions, the Impersonator of Sorrows, the Image Motivator, and the Squire of Reason. The book is thought to indicate the mental state of the girl in the painting, but the Virgin's recital becomes confused, and the jury cannot decide whether the worlds she is describing are real or imaginary. The novel ends with the suggestion that the painting is a window on another world where time stands still. However, there is also a world in which both versions of the painting exist – in Manchester Gallery and on Faber's dust jacket – and readers of the novel who are, in effect, 'watching the watchers' may be left with the feeling that perhaps they too are being watched in other parallel universes.” (Wikipedia)

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