The Phantom and its Reflection: Representing Absence

In this paper I demonstrate my understanding of absence as a recurring theme in my own practice. I reflect on the theme of absence in an abbreviated art historical and literary context, and use theory, poetry, film and philosophy that address the phenomenon of absence, to investigate the value of absence as a theme in the production of my own images and objects. Absence is central to my practice in large part because of the nomadic (1) childhood that has shaped my ways of relating to people, places and language. For this reason, I see the study of absence as a compelling element of ontology; as a way to situate my art practice and as a line of inquiry that is essential to my creative productivity. In this paper, and in light of the theme of absence, the reader may discern three predominant motifs: failure; language; the sea. It is also my intention to demonstrate through the structure of the writing, a specific approach to creative thinking and working. In this text the reader may move through the work according to her or his own peregrinations and make her or his own connections between and among those ideas (2). So while the thesis is specific: it is about my research; my aesthetic sensibilities; my journey, and my belief in the significance of absence in cultural production, the writing style is a way of acknowledging that an idea acts like a living organism. An idea is sustained and changed by every hand that turns it over to inspect it. (1) The term, “nomadism” is used in different ways by different theorists. For example, Deleuze and Guattari mete out a complex definition of nomad art as having “’close-range’ vision...and ‘haptic’ space,” (492) and use the term to describe a way of considering history in a non-linear way: a “nomadology” (23). While these ideas may apply to my own work, I am more interested in the term, “nomad” as it is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “a member of a people who have no fixed residence but move from place to place usually seasonally and within a well-defined territory.” The question then becomes, “What is my ‘well-defined territory, and what am I doing here?’.” (2) See especially footnote 23, on Graham Badley.