Fold

...'To think of a fold is to create a fold, for it is to fold an image of the outside inside, and to apply ones conception of a fold to an external object of contemplation. I describe the fold here, as asymbol of the relationship between binaries, between inside and outside, for example. It is the brink and the annihilation of both in its very existence. It is neither; either; nothing and something. Can the fold, therefore, as the positing of a presence and an absence by the use of a style, be the expression of an ethic? The fold, acting as a bridge, is where art history can become philosophy, where form meets content and where formalism and historicism bend to meet, as in the work of our early art historical theoreticians - Panofsky,Wölfflin, Riegl etc. In this paper I use Riegl's conception of the fold in his book entitled Late Roman Art Industry to demonstrate this, and to elaborate a theory of the fold of subjectivity inrelation to the subject's decentred state. I argue that the fold of the self onto and into the object, and visa versa, is where the ethical moment resides. For, what the subject objectifies she or he subjugates. It is the moment of considered self-reflexivity that I speak of, which must inform our propositions as art historians. Our self-reflexivity is a fold in narcissism, which need never be solipsistic; it is an inter-subjective relation between self and other on which ethical judgement must be employed.'

etc, etc, etc.

is it just me, or is typing a word or two into a search engine then looking at the images it throws up one of the most fascinating things you can do? just me then? ok. i gave it a go with 'disenchantment' and the results are below.

i once gave a paper at middlesex university called 'queering the kusntwollen - folding ethics into aesthetics' (intro above) or something pretentious like that, and just googled the word 'fold' and had slides of a few of the images made. yes, the world before powerpoint. i thought, 'this will keep the artists and visual studies lecturers interested'. there was a little bit of an outcry - well, tutting and shifting about on chairs. i just wanted the images to float behind me like speach bubbles. image bubbles. maybe i was just being annoying. i just don't feel the need to genuflect in front of images.