7. Structure Signalling (Logical Structure or Relating to Something That Happened)

 

J.A. Kennedy / Space M / RM Gallery, 3 Samoa House Lane, Tāmaki Makaurau. 9 June - 3 July 2021.



Structure Signaling. Playing next to Escobedo’s Signals, 2021.  8:42 min:sec HD single channel video with sound. 

Structure Signaling. Playing next to Escobedo’s Signals, 2021.  8:42 min:sec HD single channel video with sound. 

 

An event exists within another event in time, like the flow of water through states of solidity(graspable), liquid and vapour(seemingly ungraspable). The flow continues to expand along with the proximity to an episode or an event.1 I look into a window toward the present while simultaneously out a window at the past. 

The event in focus for this project is Mexican artist Helen Escobedo’s sculpture Signals, installed in 1971 at Fred Ambler Lookout, Parnell. I consider the structure of Signals as a past event, one that embodies the action of looking, questioning what is going on around it. A structure labouring through time with the weight of Escobedo’s argument that sculpture should be functional.2 Structure Signalling (Logical Structure or Relating to Something That Happened) considers play as a potential function, using installation, drawing, video and photography as a means to consider an actor’s proximity to an event. Precedence for engagement originates from the fact that bodily actions are informed by surrounding objects that are inseparably a part of each other.3  

Author Milan Kundera points out that in Aristotle’s Poetics the episode is an important concept. Aristotle did not like episodes. According to him, an episode, from the point of view of poetry, is the worst possible type of event. It is neither an unavoidable consequence of preceding action nor the cause of what is to follow: it is outside the chain of causal events that is the story. Life is as stuffed with episodes as a mattress is with horsehair, but a poet (according to Aristotle) is not an upholsterer and must remove all the stuffing from his story, even though real life consists of nothing but precisely such stuffing.4 The ‘stuffing’ of an event is precedent for engagement. In the case of this project, the stuffing in focus is the aesthetic decision to not clutter the bald quality of Signals with curvilinear clambering elements at the structure’s base.5 This means there is fifty years of clambering among clutter that never eventuated, this stuffing is the potential of play.

Through the process of exploring the site where Signals is installed and its surrounding objects, I ask what or whom [controls] the meaning and content of [this current moment], and how much does meaning derive from this new time and space realisation?6 The shifting meaning of an event brings potentials of the seemingly static past toward the fleeting present. The result being a bricolage of fragments. Processes of making acknowledge material as lived-experience, stuffing that is composed of engagement with peripheral surroundings. In asking, “what is going on?” we seek signals to form a logical structure in a naïve effort to relate to something that has already happened, questioning perspective, intention, uses of time, and the expectation of outcome.

 

  1. Derrida, J. (1966) Structure, Sign, and Play (In Writing and Difference (1978), Trans. Alan Bass) University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 278.

  2. (Documentary of the International Sculpture Symposium, 1971. Directed by Arthur Everard.) Four Shapes for Four Spaces (1972), 10:08 - 10:34 (Escobedo talking on happenings and an artist existing and belonging in a “...natural environment”) https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/four-shapes-for-four-spaces-1972/overview (Accessed since 18-4-19)

  3. Burnham, J. (1971) The Structure of Art, George Braziller Inc, New York, 29.

  4. Kundera, M. (1990) Immortality, (Trans. Peter Kussi, 1991), Harper Perennial, New York. 313. (Excerpt originally found in a folder at the Paul Cullen Archive, Henderson. 3-4-21)

  5. (Correspondence between Jim Allen and Helen Escobedo.) International Sculpture Symposium 1971, Archive date range: 1969-1981 E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Accession no: RC2010/5 (Accessed 18-4-19 and 23-2-21)

  6. Conland, N. (2018) The Politics of Erasure: The Artists et al. (In Reading Room, Politics of Denial (2018), Issue 08.18 E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. 88.




A publication for this exhibition will be launched in October 2021 to mark half a century. 

 

6. Entering into.

 

Entering into the site and assessing the growth of the Hokataka that now stand about eleven meters in height. In 1971 each tree flanking the field at Fred Ambler Lookout was about two meters in height. I wonder what consideration was taken of this growth at Signals time of construction. Now encroaching into the form, one of the trees is disrupting the sculptures structural integrity and sign. I can now engage with this relationship, making space to play within the merging relations this site embodies.

Although solipsistic in nature, the consideration of self and other is present, I can not say my freedom to act is without relation to another. I must consider how my actions effect another, but how should that act be pursued? What is going on when a freedom is actioned? An action then becoming an event in time to direct further questioning, a sort of layering or ‘stuffing’ that come to define that event.

In thinking of freedom to act and consideration of others, Simone de Beauvoir comes to mind and the descriptions of self reflection, or revisitation of past actions as a means to unpack, deconstruct them in an effort to bring forward questions of intent.

The Auckland City Council have cut down the sections of the Hokataka that were beginning to push into Signals, a curious moment of request and action taken by municipal contractors. Growth is still imminent but the actioned request takes into account what has come before, the tree and sculpture sharing space without one imposing in on the other.

5. Letter to the council , following in footsteps, logical structure.

 

The symposium documentary Four Shapes for Four Spaces includes eight sound bites of Escobedo talking over the video image. This includes the statement “...I’m interested, not in putting up a sort of monument to somebody, but to making the city more beautiful. And I’m not really afraid of using the word function in sculpture — I believe sculpture should be functional.'“  This is one of three significant points made in the documentary, the first is the point noted above at 5:23-5:35 (Escobedo talking on 'function in sculpture’), the second at 8:40-9:03 (Escobedo talking on 'sculpture and painting’'), the third at 10:08 - 10:34 (Escobedo talking on 'happenings and the artist belonging to our natural environment’').

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/four-shapes-for-four-spaces-1972/quotes

These three points give precedence to proceed with the presentation of three key elements of installation where sculpture, video and photography make up the developing formal outcome. Escobedo’s note of functional sculpture can be ambiguous in its parameters but allows a particular perspective to view intentions from. Noting sculpture and painting, sculpture as painting, painting as sculpture is a discussion seconded by Rosaline Krauss’ statement eight years later, “....sculpture and painting have been kneaded and stretched and twisted in an extraordinary demonstration of elasticity, a display of the way a cultural term can be extended to included just about anything.” Escobedo goes on to note the ideas of happenings, gatherings becoming relevant to artistic discourse, continuing on to talk about the artist trying to connect, connect with their surroundings, to the ‘natural’ environment, in my case the environment or surroundings I find myself in.

In taking the time to question what is going on when doing something, is engagement with a ‘natural’ environment wasting time? Time is continually measured, time for sleeping, time for eating, time for shitting, time for working (9-5). In trying to exist and engage with a world that presents itself as a physical and tangible reality. I ask myself, what am I doing, what is going on?



Krauss, R. (1979) Sculpture in the Expanded Field, October 8 (Spring 1979), 30. https://monoskop.org/images/b/bf/Krauss_Rosalind_1979_Sculpture_in_the_Expanded_Field.pdf (Accessed 13-5-21)

4. Structure signalling, fragments of a structure.

I can’t seem to focus, can’t clearly see, what’s going on? .

The trees have begun to encroach, the wild cats linger waiting for their next meal, and what point is there if you can't get a good look over the fence? Gladly I sit, not content, but thankful in knowing it is not raining, at least not heavily, yet. Water runs down my back. Moisture has built up on my shoulders while facing prevailing winds, I have nowhere to wipe the droplets off the lens of my glasses. 

Looking out, an action is taken and a direction faced, in this specific case, at 316°. Smoke signals, a steam or vapor calling from the past, here to help transport / transfer cognition into the past, to 1971. Now fifty years on since the episode of its construction, this site is being re-considered, questioned, acted in/on, photographed once again. With a desire to find and make new connections to a past moment I stand on platforms to see a little further into the offing. From a peripheral position, I am trying to look to see what is going on. Milan Kundera writes in his novel Immortality, “....In Aristotle’s Poetics, the episode is an important concept. Aristotle did not like episodes. According to him, an episode, from the point of view of poetry, is the worst possible type of event. It is neither an unavoidable consequence of preceding action nor the cause of what is to follow: it is outside the chain of causal events that is the story….Life is as stuffed with episodes as a mattress is with horsehair, but a poet (according to Aristotle) is not an upholsterer and must remove all the stuffing from his story, even though real life consists of nothing but precisely such stuffing.” The ‘stuffing’ is everything outside of the direct focus, the deconstructed information.

The history of the site and its surroundings are this stuffing. In recent history, the Hokataka, Griselinia, cats, and Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd now define Signals. The trees located at either end of the field at Fred Amber Lookout now hold presence over Signals, existing as a visual stuffing, their presence imposing in on the form of the sculpture itself. Based on their growth, according to the footage in the documentary Four Shapes for Four Spaces, it seems the two Hokataka flanking the field were potentially planted in dedication of Fred Ambler in 1957/8. In the documentary, shot in 1971, the trees located between the car park and the field and on the other end of the field are about two and a half meters tall. Now fifty years on, each tree seem to be reaching near the height of Signals, which stand 11 meters in height, giving precedence to shifting time and the ever changing landscape.

Since this documentary was produced a Griselinia has also been planted next to / below the Hokataka that is pointed out in the below. For approximately the past 35 years wild cats have also fed and live below this tree, their presence protected by both the Hokataka and Griselinia, and maintained by a community group. This group is made up of volunteers who are private citizens and public officials, who care for them daily. The cats and group have received a range of reactions during their occupation. There are a number of people who are now “registered cat feeders,” volunteering to visit each day to lay out cat food. “She saw in the cat a superb independence, pride, freedom of action, and constancy of charm (so different to human charm, which is always spoiled by moments of clumsiness and unattractiveness); in the cat, she saw her paradigm; in the cat , she saw herself.” This mirrors the reaction to the construction sponsor of Signals, which stands in stagnant repose next to a tree that continues to claim its place in the site.

Jim Allen secured Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd as a sponsor for the construction of Signals in 1971. Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd is now known as Rio Tinto Aluminium, it is a 100% owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Group. This is the same company who had the New Zealand Government fund the construction of both the Manapōuri Power Station and aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point, whose builds were also completed in 1971. Since the 1950’s it seems this company has received various reactions from local bodies who understood the apparent transgressive attitude toward environmental issues this company has regularly actioned since this time. But, in a parallel sense of the cats at the Fred Ambler Lookout, it is a similar case of public officials having vested interests, and arguably this company continues to operate just within the law.

This being said, we as consumers are complacent, we drink out of aluminium cans and require metal for our digital technologies to operate, and as artists we often continue to look for funding where it is readily given.

At this moment the Tiwai Point Smelter is again being audited for environmental negligence, an ongoing issue since it was opened in 1971.



Kundera, M. (1990) Immortality, (Trans. Peter Kussi, 1991), Harper Perennial, New York, 313. (Excerpt originally found in a folder at the Paul Cullen Archive, Henderson.)

Dawson, J., Lucas R., Connor J. (2011) New Zealand's Native Trees, Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson. 248.

https://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora/species/corokia-macrocarpa/?download=pdf Accessed 22-5-2021)

Conversation with registered and unregistered ‘cat feeders’

Kundera, M. (1990) Immortality, (Trans. Peter Kussi, 1991), Harper Perennial, New York, 104.

www.comalco.com (Accessed 24-2-21)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manapouri_Power_Station (Accessed 24-2-21)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_Aluminium (Accessed 24-2-21)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelter (Accessed 24-2-21)

3. In the function of a structure.

In the opening lines of the 1966 lecture, Structure, Sign, and Play, Jacque Derrida speaks of the concept of a structure, where something has occurred that “…could be call an event.”

The ‘event,’ a thing in itself to be reduced, break down into its parts, into fragments. Each part being an event in itself, existing as the embodiment of unseen connections that define a structures existence in the world. Asking the question, ‘what is this and where has it come from, what might happen if its “exterior form” is disregarded and we look beyond the callus of formal materiality. When speaking about the sculpture Signals, Helen Escobedo articulates that she did not want to put up “…a sort of monument to somebody,” and believed “…sculpture should be functional.” Where might this function exist, does the sculpture allow you to clamber on it, does it suggest a moment to be taken on the walk up the hill, a moment to look out and question what exists beyond the interior?

Escobedo mentions three points in the documentary Four Shapes for Four Spaces, These points were the function of sculpture, sculptures relation and overlaps to the processes and outcomes of painting, and finally the notion of a shift to happenings, aware that the arts do not need to be a stagnant bronze but an event as a structure in itself.

In taking time to engage, there is potential for a moment to be captured again. Within my own inquiry of the structure that is Signals, the sculpture can be understood as an “event” comprised of many parts, its conception extends past its locality in terms of material ontology, its conception can be questioned based on it’s primary sponsor being Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd, what signals does it continue to emit? Now, in this moment, fifty years since the event of its installation, this sculpture is part of a continually shifting time scale.

What is the definition or meaning associated to a / this structure, and how might a ‘functional’ sculpture’s meaning shift over time, can there be a fixed locality when questioning a structure?

What is this notion of function? Aesthetic function, physical function, is function defined as the aiding of an action, an action of questioning?

The sculpture in question is located at the corner of Gladstone Road, Parnell, a peninsula that once defined the original foreshore, currently known as Fred Ambler Lookout. It is a site with a complex and layered history, one that continues to unfold in time. As a landmark it holds particular significance to several iwi, including claims by Ngāti Paoa Iwi Trust, Marutūāhu Rōpū Limited Partnership and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust. The site is currently named after the civil servant and businessman Fred Ambler who was was awarded the title of ‘Ordinary Officer of the Civil Division to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ as part of the New Year Honours in 1957/8. The Hokataka trees flanking the grass field where the sculpture Signals stands seem to have been planted as part of this dedication.

These histories are significant in themselves and are relevant to this project as ontological extensions, but these histories are not the area of direct focus of this particular project. It is important to acknowledge this site as a landmark that holds various meanings to a variety of parties, each who define and care for it in just as many ways. Evidently, this site is in a continued state of flux, it’s significance changing and developing over a period of time.

SignalsKennedy5 copy.jpg


Derrida, J. (1966) Structure, Sign, and Play (In Writing and Difference (1978), Trans. Alan Bass) University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 278

https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2018/sc_jdg_1709.pdf (Accessed 14-1-2021)

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/40962/supplement/45 (Accessed (23-5-2021)

2. One of four/five.

I’m interested, not in putting up a sort of monument to somebody, but to making the city more beautiful. And I’m not really afraid of using the word function in sculpture — I believe sculpture should be functional.

- Helen Escobedo

In consideration of Helen Escobedo’s statement towards sculpture and its functionality, the potential opens for considering what those potentials might be. In pairing that statement with formal outcomes and actions that might be understood as function, the conceptual function is framed In the question Conland articulates, “…What or whom [controls] the meaning and content of the work, and how much does its meaning derive from this new time and space realisation?”

I am standing at the base of a sculpture constructed fifty years ago, formally, it has stood the test of time, but “how stable is the content of the work and where does its meaning lie?” Escobedo envisaged something rather different in its completion, with “curvilinear cambering elements” to be added once it was erected, this never happened with a suggestion from Jim Allen to Escobedo, explaining the work did not require them. The mood or “theatre” of the scene (A scene to look out from, and a lack of theatre as the clambering elements were not realised.), the textual references [plaque stating the sponsor], the site (Fred Ambler Lookout, or the characters invoked either through authorship of staging (Helen Escobedo, Jim Allen, Auckland City Council, et al.)

Signals embodies collaboration and connections that allow the work to exist as a beacon of hope for collective action, or the physical relation to a site or place, looking out from within while on the periphery, a place to play and be near the sea while continuing to exist within a city space that is in a continual state of change. Signals conception was to mark a moment in this constant.

To mark Tāmaki Makarau's centenary as Auckland City, four international artists arrived in Auckland in 1971 to contribute to the International Sculpture Symposium, hosted by the N.Z. Society of Sculpture and Painting Ltd. Helen Escobedo's sculpture Signals was one of five works commissioned. (The fifth being Wind Tree by Michio Ihara, constructed in 1977, a possible replacement work for Tom Burrows’ Gasworks, which was removed that same year.) Looking North out of over Tāmaki Makarau's port and the entrance to the Waitematā Harbour, Signals is located at a site between the field and carpark of the Fred Ambler Lookout, located on Gladstone Road, Parnell. Standing at 11 meters in height, the sculptures gaze looks beyond Maungauika, squinting past the offing of the Hauraki Gulf toward the horizon of the South Pacific and the western shores of Mexico. A line of site unwavering, unforgiving, its gate staunch and foreboding.

This sculpture has been present while the city has moved into the contemporary moment. I now standing below, as a witness, connected as the figure who is looking to the potential function Escobedo speaks of. In the same same year of Signals construction, the sponsor Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd opened the aluminium smelter plant at Tīwai Point, there are also wild cats that populate the site. This frames the sculpture in a particular way, it has seen the progression of a city, and exists now to instigate a critical lens to be placed on what it might mean to exist as a form created from particular materials and now defined by a ever shifting but static context.



Four Shapes for Four Spaces, 1972.
5:23-5:35 (Escobedo talking on 'function')
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/four-shapes-for-four-spaces-1972/overview
(Accessed 21-10-20.)

Correspondence between Jim Allen and Helen Escobedo.
International Sculpture Symposium 1971, Archive date range: 1969-1981
E H McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Accession no: RC2010/5