Mending a fence - an example of bricolage.

 

Instead of reading Savage Mind or Derrida on difference, or pontificating on whether the bricoleur is connected to Guattari's concept of the nomadic, I have searched out a personal example of my bricolaging. I'm pleased with this repair. It has endured for 3 years, survived four storms with first names, and still has the capacity to make me chuckle.  

I shuffled back through my mind to find an example of something I had made that pointed towards what I read yesterday.  I will not use bullet points, but for simplicity and relevance I will make a list of why this repair fits the bill.

1. It is made from materials that were to hand.  

2. It reused old materials and borrowed from old structures in the garden that I had demolished.

3. The post to the left of the image is bolted to the living root of a buddleia.

4. Every decision was made for a practical rather than an aesthetic reason.

5. This is a simple repair that is fit for purpose and it will probably last as long as the rest of the fence.

6. I had no idea of what this job would look like when it was finished when I started.

7. This repair demonstrates an awareness of what materials can do but shows little skill or adherence to any convention.

8.  Stauss's engineer or Guattari's royal scientist solution would be to replace the whole fence with a new one. 

9.  There is an easy aesthetic that is not over-thought or over coded. It is what it is.

As I write this, I am reminded of Richard Wentworth's statement about a folded cigarette packet and Henry Moore. 

‘I find cigarette packets folded up under table legs more monumental than a Henry Moore. Five reasons. Firstly the scale. Secondly, the fingertip manipulation. Thirdly, modesty of both gesture and material. Fourth, its absurdity and fifth, the fact that it works.’ 

Modesty of both gesture and material - this is something to take seriously. I speculate one of my imaginary second year sculpture students from a parallel life. They present my repair as 'Fence-mend, restoring the borderline" to our crit group.  I would think them pretentious and cynical in appropriating my work, yet it would prove hard to not acknowledge modesty in both gesture and material. 

Bricoleur and Bricolage - what Ai says

 

I was thinking about ideas and concepts and if there was something I could draw on to start some useful writing.  I decided that Bricolage was important as it holds all sorts of possibilities and it is another word like Assemblage that benefits from not having a direct equivalent in English.  I've been doing some reading and it feels like Makeshift and DiY don't really cut the mustard. The French word holds more mystique, suggesting a romantic notion of a valid yet alternative way to approach a problem.  On the other hand, Do-it-Yourself conjures images of the half finished or poorly done job. The light switch fixed upside down or the square peg in the round hole.  The Bricoleur in my mind's eye wears a beret and creates interesting ways to effectively fasten onions to his bike. Like most of the French men I have met he is a bit cool, owns part of the UK's energy distribution network and is very good at everything he does. I have only met two alpha male French men and they both make artisan handbags. I see this is as a coincidence rather than a stereotype unlike the onions beret and bike.   The AI produced definition suggests the bricoleur is a Jack-of-all-trades but this doesn't feel quite right either.  I'm sure the expert bricoleur can plumb in a dishwasher and pull out the bump in the side of his car with a slide hammer, yet this seems quite pedestrian for a word that deserves italics.   

My reading today has expanded my understanding a little.  The term was employed by Levi-Strauss in his book Savage Mind as a metaphor to expand his thinking on myth.  Levi-Strauss was a structural anthropologist so bricolage is offered as a structure, a framework to understand how myths are made.  The breaking down and rebuilding of ideas, thoughts and experiences that are present, to-hand, ready to be reformed.  In contrasting the bricoleur to the engineer, Strauss sets a modern society with its systems and extensions against a society, neither savage or primitive, which only has available what is to hand.  

I feel like the actual real life bricoleur may not exist, he is a myth constructed to offer a metaphor to explain myth, a metaphor with traction. For Proposition Cottage, my desire to  present myself as a bricoleur is problematic as it would mean not buying all my materials from Wickes.  Practically, I cannot build my new workshop with materials that are to hand. I can incorporate my prosthetic leg and the remains of my friend Wayne's greenhouse-on-a-trailer sculpture. I can include childhood memories and my own myth as a maker/sculptor/scholar.  However, my mind has become less savage and I want, as Ruskin suggests, to build for a 1000 years or at least the potential useful last 30 of mine. I will need to buy some materials that will last the test of time.  I could just buy a big pile of stuff; I'm already collecting odds and ends and then see this pile as a proposition and begin to tinker and improvise.  There is something about the scale of a building that needs more than tinkering, perhaps not a design or a cutting list but something Deleuze would speculate as a diagram.  It is the relationship between purpose and possibility, not function and form. 

I think that to be a true bricoleur it is necessary to not try to be one.  If you make too much effort you are missing the point, you are trying too hard and will produce artifice, the artificial pastiche of an impossible desire for authenticity.  

I decided that I would write something to help artists come to bricolage in an informed way rather than the usual  'We all know what this means don't we'  approach.  I wondered what Chat GbT would come up with to see if it was actually worth trying to do my own version.  I've copied this below,  I don't think I could do any better but it may be worth trying to write of the struggle that this concept brings to actually making something. 

Structuralism did not last very long; Derrida deconstructed it almost in the moment of its emergence.  He also didn't agree with Strauss on Bricolage.  If it's rainy tomorrow I may try and write something about this. If it's a bit nicer weather I will chop down the holly tree.

The terms bricoleur and bricolage originate from French, and they have interesting meanings both in their original context and in their broader, more abstract uses, particularly in cultural and intellectual discussions.

Bricoleur:

A bricoleur is someone who engages in bricolage. The word is often used to describe a person who is a "jack-of-all-trades," someone who uses whatever materials or tools they have at hand to solve problems or create things. In a more philosophical or cultural sense, a bricoleur might be someone who combines elements from different sources, disciplines, or traditions in a creative and often improvisational manner.

Bricolage:

Bricolage refers to the act of creating something new by using a diverse array of objects or materials, often repurposing existing things. It’s a term that goes beyond just the practical idea of constructing or assembling something. It is often used metaphorically in fields like anthropology, literary theory, and cultural studies to describe how people combine cultural, social, or intellectual elements in novel ways.

Cultural and Intellectual Usage:

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss famously used the term bricolage in his structuralist analysis of myths and cultures. He contrasted the bricoleur (the “handyman” or “maker”) with the engineer—the latter being someone who approaches problems in a more systematic, rational way, with a clear understanding of all the tools and materials needed. For Lévi-Strauss, the bricoleur uses available resources, creating meaning out of things that might seem disconnected or random, much like how myths are constructed from available cultural elements.

In the 20th century, thinkers like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault also used the idea of bricolage in their work, referring to the process of reassembling fragments of knowledge, language, and power in new ways, without necessarily following formal rules or established systems. The bricoleur here is seen as someone who operates outside the strict boundaries of structured knowledge or rational design.

Modern Usage:

In contemporary culture, the idea of bricolage is often invoked in creative industries, DIY culture, and art, where individuals or groups take what they have at their disposal and make something unique and meaningful. The term is also used in digital and media studies to describe how people, especially in the internet age, remix and repurpose existing media, ideas, or technologies to create new forms of expression.

In AI Context:

AI and machine learning could be seen as a kind of bricolage in the sense that they often work by combining large datasets from various sources and "repurposing" them to generate new insights, predictions, or content. The "bricoleur" of the AI world would be those who develop and apply these systems, piecing together available technologies, algorithms, and data to create something new, even if they don't have a complete understanding of every underlying process.

So, AI might interpret bricolage not just as a creative, cultural process, but also as an analog to how data science, algorithms, and machine learning systems are assembled and employed in innovative ways.

Summary:

• Bricoleur = A person who uses whatever is available to create or solve problems.
• Bricolage = The process of constructing or creating something with available resources, often through creative or unconventional methods.
• In intellectual terms, both represent a non-linear, improvisational approach to creation and problem-solving, which contrasts with more systematic or scientific methods.

In short, bricolage and bricoleur speak to a certain art of making things in an opportunistic, inventive way, which can apply to everything from craft to intellectual work to AI systems.

Picking up where I left it

 

 

Almost a year since I stepped away from this project.  I thought this film of my Dad was going to be the next step in a long series of steps.  He was already ill when I shot this, we all knew really but it wasn't something any of us cared to dwell on. I forgot to put my lights in the car so the natural light gradually fades. Towards the end, Dad is in shadow though he isn't raging against the fading of the light. He is tired, and he has had enough. Dad would have built his workshop by now, unrestrained by self doubt. He pragmatically just got on with most things, building his house, supporting his family, and eventually dying with dignity and the least possible fuss.  I've watched the film a few times since his leaving and of course I did the edit so I have constructed the narrative.  I'm not sure I can watch it today, it's not that I'm trying to move on its just that this film was supposed to be the next post I was going to make in a line that got broken, an unraveling.  In a sad way it was trying to scratch into how Dad ever got the confidence to design and build his own house. I was struggling to get started on my workshop and wanted to catch a dose of his 'no time like the present' force of will.

Nine months since he died and the idea that grieving is a process becomes more and more of a reality.  This writing and the eventual making was intended to be about building a new identity and coming out of the deep dark underbelly of completing my PhD.  Perhaps the concept that the writing and building was identity work, got wrapped up with grief and spurned a need to escape from practice for a while.  In moments it was liberating to feel honestly and unapologetically that I have little to offer and nothing to lose by dropping the end thread of a practice that has recently become a little slack. 

Change is coming; I finish my last piece of funded work on Saturday.  This project will be all there is that could be conjured as a practice after that. I find it hard to believe I haven't done anything for a year.  This isn't like me, though I haven't been feeling myself.