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• Julian Jason Haladyn, OCAD University

This panel consists of several members of the Toronto-based art research group Pausa, exploring various aspects of what we term "infrathin art history." The concept of the infrathin (or inframince) is borrowed from Marcel Duchamp, who never directly defined but instead provided example—“The difference / (dimensional) between / 2 mass produced objects / [from the / same mold] / is an infra thin / when maximum (?) / precision is / obtained.” The Pausa will share some research around the idea of what an infrathin art history might look like, how it might function, why it is important in the current moment.

keywords: art history, infrathin, Pausa

session type: panel

The Metaphysics of the Creative Act

• Maxwell Hyett, Western University

What does it mean to create something? Two readily available answers might be: to make something new out of material or to contribute a new interpretation. For Marcel Duchamp, the creative act is primarily a social act: a conversation between intention and material as well as, and more importantly, between artwork and spectator. So it is a bit of both. Treating artwork in this way, as a kind of interlocutor, ascribes a radical form of agency to these peculiar objects. Thinking of objects, even art objects, as bearing some kind of thought, intention, or identity all their own has implications beyond physical reality. This presentation will take up the work of Henri Bergson and the Metaphysical painters of the nineteen-teens in order to think about the idea of the creative act in which Duchamp was steeped.

keywords: creation, intuition, duration, Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi

The Infrathin in Collage

• Elyse Longair, Queen's University

Key theorist, Marcel Duchamp, suggests that the ‘infrathin’ occurs in the “immeasurable gap between two things as they transition or pass into one another”. This paper evokes Duchamp’s concept of the infrathin in relation to collage with a specific focus on artists who embrace a flat seamless aesthetic eliminating the space or gap between image fragments. In this infrathin space, each artist is creating a new image while always bringing along a trace, a history, a relationship to the context of the world from which the collaged elements were taken from. To me, that’s a beautiful thing. I will present several direct comparisons between historical and contemporary examples of collage and my own collage practice, looking closely at the (in)visibility of the seams, the cutlines and the fragments. I argue that the infrathin in collage allows the viewer to imagine freely the possibility of the image encouraging us to rethink and reflect on the role of imagination.

keywords: art history, infrathin, Pausa, Duchamp, collage

Evolution and Influence as Sound and Silence

• Jevonne Peters, Independent

EVO is a collection of instruments that play as a section in an electronic acoustic orchestra. The aim of this experimental project is to explore the evolution of a composer's directions, as it propagates through a section of an orchestra. The project makes references to the evolution of RNA, and the way that mutations occur in nature. These concepts are related to the fields of memetics, philosophy of science and of the mind, and epistemology. In this paper, I will draw on scientific and philosophical theories of influence, mutation, and replication, to demonstrate how this work serves as a poetic analogy to real-life phenomena, and the boundary between sound and silence, life and non-existence.

keywords: infrathin, sound, experimental art, memetics, influence

Keats and the Dreamscape: A Reading of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” and its Relation to the Sublime

• Kashfia Arif, Western University

The question of the sublime has enthralled and evaded artists, poets, writers, and art historians alike. For Romantic poet John Keats, this pursuit of the real and the ideal is one that he chased till death, exploring our relationship to the sublime over and over throughout his works. Painterly in their language and imagery, Keats' odes and ballads have rendered him a favourite with artists (especially the Pre-Raphaelites) who used his quest for poetic beauty as inspiration for their own paintings. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is one such ballad which canonically has been interpreted as representing the ideals of love by artists and literary scholars. I present a slightly different reading of the poem, one which places Keats and his connection to the sublime at the centre of the narrative. I propose that “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” doesn’t simply narrate an entangled love story but rather presents the tale of Keats and his relationship to the poetic sublime—the dream that engulfs the knight represents the dreamscape of poetic expression Keats resides in. By imagining the “knight-at-arms” as Keats and the “belle dame” as poesy, this paper re-examines Keats and his relationship to poetry and the sublime, setting up the stage for more contemporary interpretations of creative expression and the Keatsian idea of negative capability. Using micropoetics for a purposeful re-reading of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, this paper explores the muse that moves creative expression in Keats’ poetry, the interaction with the sublime and the consequences afterwards.

keywords: sublime, John Keats, poetry, infrathin literary criticism, micropoetics